Fresno Famous

You are right

It was about 7 years ago I was walking with my friends one night we had been playing laser tag their and I was hiding out front of Royce hall and saw a girl throw the doors. I went to get a friend to come and see but before I could call her to come and see, the girl was gone.

i know of a place you should investigate

My old town house. I moved in there in early 2005. It was located in NW Fresno. Recently renovated into a condo and sold. It has an owner now that you may have to contact to perform
Investigation. I feel it was VERY haunted and on several occasions experienced paranormal activity there. I believe someone hung themselves in my bedroom closet. No matter how hot it was upstairs, that closet was ice cold and the door would slam and open by itself. My friends didn't tell me till after I moved out that they too felt scared there and couldn't explain why. I asked the manger when I first moved in if anybody had died there and she didn't know of any recent deaths but couldn't confirm for previous years since they were several years old. Please tell me what you find there. I've always been curious. Thx

Shell, definitely keep me

Shell, definitely keep me updated on if the blessing works or not. You can also get some sage and do what's called smudging, which is something that Native Americans would do to cleanse their homes. You can get sage at Brass Unicorn and someone even told me that Trader Joe's has it, though I'm not certain if that is true or not.

If the blessing does not work and your boyfriend is still seeing things and you are feeling uneasy, e-mail me at weirdfresno@gmail.com. I used to investigate haunted places and can refer you to several reputable groups that can assist you. Seriously, don't think what is happening is nothing, a lot of people do and dismiss it when it is something that is bothering them.

RE My apartment

My name is Shell.. just forgot to put that. I have read comments on here to other ppl before about "why not have it investigated" but if blessing the apartment doesnt work and if i grow the courage to ask our neighbors questions (and i find out more info) then maybe an investigation will be something i look into.
But maybe my boyfriend seeing scary things doesn't count all that much to anyone and perhaps i just get scared too easily.

Thanks for your time.

my apartment

I live with my boyfriend on Ashlan near Maroa... i love my apartment, even though it is older. I feel that at the size and price i wont find anything better. i think this is why i rather just have it blessed than investigated. If its investigated and someone confirms there is evil in my home then i will have to move.
Everytime i am alone i hear noises and feel scared for no reason. But i have never seen any type of ghost. But one night i woke up in the middle of the night and i saw my boyfriend laying next to me on his stomach but his head was up and we was just staring into my closet (on his right) so i called his name, he just ignored me and kept staring. It gave me the chills, so i called his name louder, then finally he looked at me, brushed it off and said that he thought he had seen something but for me to just go back to sleep. The next week i overheard him telling his mom in her kithchen (when they thought i was in the other room) that he had seen a man's face with dark eyes hanging from the top of my closet, not from a rope or anything but i'm guessing from the pole that my clothes hang from... and that he even closed his eyes and opened them again to see if he was seeing things but the man just stayed there looking back at him. His mom just told him to pray because maybe he has heavy things on his mind right now. I am thinking that he didn't want to scare me that is why he didn't tell me. But i brought it up later & told him i heard him talking to his mom & asked him about it and he said he wasn't scared but just that it was wierd to him because he never experienced anything like that before.

The second time this happened is when i really got scared. I woke up as i did before and he was looking into my closet. This time i shook him and said what are you looking at?! He told me he it was nothing and he just kept hugging me the rest of the night. Finally in the morning we were getting ready for work and he told me he saw a little boy at the bottom of my closet but this time when he closed his eyes and re-opened them the boy disappeared right away.

He and i don't attend church, but i have an uncle who is a Preacher and i asked him to come bless our apartment. I hope this works. My boyfriends grandma thinks that this is happening to him because he doesn't pray. My boyfriend and i also have nightmares sometimes that are beyond words i can't explain, i've never had these types of nightmares before moving in here. My theory is that a spirit or demon is following my boyfriend. Or maybe his mom is right and he just has a lot on his mind. I only know nothing shows itself to me or hurts us. So i hope the blessing makes us feel more at peace. I will update if anything else happens.

I guess i should ask our neighbor if she ever felt or seen anything before(because she lived in our 1 bedroom apartment before moving to the 2 bedroom next to us), but i'm afraid that she will think we are wierd people. I think when i am afraid i try to convince myself its all in my head.

His sister has also experienced evil things in her moms house. But i can only listen to these stories, i dont experience it myself so i guess i can only believe them so much.

AlSO
I went to Wolfe Manor last year for a private tour and my boyfriend and i didn't feel anything strange but a girl on the tour with us, my friend swears that someone touched her shoulder and she thought it was my boyfriend since we were behind her but i know it wasn't because i had both of his hands when he was hugging me. That was really wierd.

Oh and back to possible spirits in my apartment. MY grandma told me that the people you let into your home are usually the ones who can bring in bad spirits. SO just be careful who you are letting into your home. It takes a lot for me to believe in this stuff, but i do believe my boyfriend. He wouldn't make this up.

RE:Selma Pioneer Village

my friend told me that when he was in 6th grade he saw something in one of the houses. and he said he started crying and ran. thats how scarred he was.

too many hmong girls on

too many hmong girls on here...

THIS MUST OF BEEN A HMONG PERSON TELLING THIS THIS STORY

I heard that there was this little girl who died there or something and that if u bring a teddy bear and call her name she would come out and take that bear. There was this hmong boy who heard of this and brought a teddy bear w/him and called out that he has a teddy bear...moments latter he saw a little white girl who peaked her heard out from a tree in front of him. He got scared and hurried home. later that night His mom heard a knock on the window and there she saw the little girl. the mom said that "see look what you have done...u didn't give her the bear when you were at the park that's why she followed u home.just give her the bear and I'm sure she'll be on her way." the boy was scared and handed the little girl her. After that just like the mom said the little girl left with the teddy bear. This was so freaky the first time i heard it!!!!

Heard a boy screaming for help on Herndon Ramp Exit/HWY 163 (Fre

My sister and her daughter experience a few weeks ago. They were returning from a nephew's birthday party. They took the Herndon ramp exit right off the 163Efwy. While they were making their way through the ramp, My sister was having a conversation with her husband, and she heard a fainted voice screaming something out 3 times. She couldn't make of what it was saying so She thought it was nothing. At the very end of the ramp, right before making a right on Herndon, her daughter told her dad that she heard a boy screaming help, help, help coming from the back. Her dad accused her of lying but my sister told her dad, she's not lying because I heard it too.

For the people that lives near this area in Fresno/Clovis, California, have you guys ever experience this or know of any accident that happened in this area.

Thank You.

Fresno High School Haunted.

I can say that FHS is haunted. I'm currently a sophomore at FHS, and have had weird expiriences there. Like in Royce Hall, you get a weird vibe. A girl hung herself in Royce Hall, and fell in a certain spot, and my friend happened to fall in the same spot recently and she said it freaked her out, she got a terrible vibe. And a janitor died in royce hall too. He fell off of a ladder on the stage, onto the ground. Even when I walk through the halls to go to the restroom, and the halls are empty, I look behind me many times because it sounds like someones behind me. I could feel someone behind me. It's the worst feeling ever. I believe there's something in Fresno High School, especially Royce Hall. It may not be bad, I think it's just some student's who haven't yet let go. I think the girl is still sad about how her death ended up.

Nelson Elementary Fresno/Pinedale

hi me and a couple buddies have been going out to this school everyone around has been telling us is haunted. curious as we are we wanted to check it out for ourselves. the first night we got there we saw a figure of a janitor turning the corner of the hallways. even more curious we walked onto the campus. i guess every night people go there and the same owl and cat are always there they apparently dont leave. a black cat and white owl stay there all night. sure enough they both were there. online i read that cats were a portal for the other side. anyway, we get onto the school parking lot and out in the field we see something running across the field looking like it was really lost. we left instantly. the second night we got to one of the hallways. we all were standing by a garbage can and scoping out the school. as we did this the metal trash can tipped over then came back to normal. we immediately left. even more fascinated we went a third time, tonight.. four of us were there and the lights were still on usually they are off by 11. we split up into two two person groups. me and a buddy were walking the halls and we both stopped and heard the same sound of a growl. very soft though. then we said lets get off the campus. oh like five to ten seconds before that i asked to give us a sign they are still there. then all that growling happend as we were leaving, in mid step, my feet got swept from under me and i fell it tripped me. then laying there for a second the lights all shut off. we ran to the car and after all that i need to know for sure what the hell is going on there. there are many other stories about this school but for some reason i cant find them online. its all through the people around the school.

Sunnyside area

I lived in my parents home in the sunnyside area and I have felt heard seen many things in there house. sometime you like to think that it is just your mind playing tricks on you. One time when i seen a little boy in my room my sister dreamed of the same boy without even me telling about the boy she described the exact someone that i had seen.

RE: Lost Lake

I've gone there several times, but never experienced anything myself. I have heard stories from friends and family. They say that when you come through the entrance, and go to the right, you're going through a vortex. There used to an indian burial ground. To the far left, where the water is shallow and where kids usually play & swim, a young hmong boy hung himself on one of those trees & there have been other suicidals too.

Lost Lake

Has anyone encounter anything odd about this place? Especially in the evenings? On 09/09/09 my sister-in-law and I were out there fishing late in the evening at about 10:30pm. We were alone and by the beachy area where alot of people hang out to play in the water durung the day. We had our lantern on and each of us had a flash light. I was flashing my flash light around the little island across the way and I saw a shadow move in around the trees and bushes. I thought it was a cyote but thought to myself it was to big to be a cyote. I kept looking to see if it was someone over there fishing. I didn't see nothing so I turned off my flashlight and just before I clicked it off (like it knew what I was about to do) It showed itself to me. It was about 4ft tall pale skin no shirt just trunks very thin looked like a little asian boy. Then as the flashlight clicked off we heard a big slash in the water like something heavy was thrown in the water. Now I know some of you are thinking that it might of been a fish that jumped out of the water but I swear to you I'm a regular at Lost Lake and I've seen fishes jump out of the water and the splashes aren't that loud and big. Anyways I turned the flashlight back on and kept searching the the water surface to see if I see a pair of eyes or something nothing came up to surface of the water nor the shore. After a few moments it dawned on me that before I turned off my flashlight I saw a ghost. LOL!!! I was scared shitless. We took off in an instant. I think I'll leave the late night fishing alone for awhile.

----------------------------------------------

There was another time my sis-in-law and I were at the broken bridge fishing off of the bridge it was like almost dark but you can still make out a silhouette of the tip of your fishing rod we were just chit chattin' and I had this errie feeling something was going to happen. When I looked down the bridge I saw a big figure in the water swimming to shore it beached itself on the shore for a few minutes not moving. THAT THING WAS HUG!!!! It looked to be 5ft long it stood on its hind legs and walked around like a human for a few seconds like it was searching for something then it crouched down on all fours like an animal walked really close to the ground and layed on its belly and slithered into the water and disappered. My sis-in-law and I were in shocked to even make out what that thing was. To some of the Hmong communities they would say that its a dragon but to others they would say its a demon.

JVL

Fresno Ghost Stories

Check out the Ghost file in the California Room at the Central Library. There are several newspaper articles about hauntings and ghost hunters.

Good luck.

Pinedale reply

The story of sandlady not a ghost but an actual fact in 1994-95 there was an incedent of an elderley women throwing sand in young mens faces for apperently checking out her grandaughter I know cuz I remember reading about it in the Fresno bee as far as ghost very doubtfull

FPU

I am an FPU alumna, and am familiar with the types of difficulties one may encounter, getting information on the paranormal goings-on at the Chestnut campus. I have too witnessed/ felt some interesting "things" during my time there. Having had experiences before in my youth and adult years, THAT school was the last place I would have ever expected an "event" or "occurrence" or "pronounced feeling". In other locations in life, my antenna are a bit more poised for such things. Being a biblical and religious studies student, made it an all the more tantalizing prospect, kicking up more questions about the nature of things, than answers. Anyhoo, the only semi-official bit of information that I came across was an unexpected lesson in dorm history there. I cannot remember the exact details so I am going to give you a story in words that I do recall. Keep in mind that this was handed over in JCC class by a well respected prof. (semi-retired at the time, but was previously University president) who was illustrating some New Testament features.... Here goes : 1) 1970's, 2) Students in one of the dorms (maybe what is now Kriegbaum Hall/ not sure), 3) Ouija board, 4) Trouble in dorm with entity, 5) Had to call in help. This is all that I can remember with any degree of certainty. If anyone can chime in on this, please do. It has been an interest of mine as well. My personal experiences have centered around the women's gym rest/lockerroom, Gym, Kriegbaum, and Sattler. First time to this site---Will keep a look out for responses and more info, too.

HAUNTS IN FRESNO

I USED TO LIVE IN PINDALE WHEN I WAS A LOT YOUNGER! IM 26 NOW AND LIVED THERE WHEN I WAS 4 WITH MY OLDER BROTHER AND SISTER. IT WAS A PINK HOUSE BEHIND ANOTHER HOUSE WHERE THE 7-11 IS NOW. BUT I REMEMBER MY MOM AND DAD ALWAYS WHISPERING ABOUT THINGS THAT THEY SAW OR HEARD IN THAT HOUSE. THEY WOULD TRY 2 KEEP US FROM OVER HEARING THEM AT NIGHT. WHEN I GOT OLDER I ASKED MY MOM ABOUT THE " PINK" HOUSE, AND SHE TOLD ME ABOUT HEARING VOICES IN FOREIGN LANGUAGES DOWN N OUR BASEMENT. ALSO HOW THE WATER FOUNTAINS IN THE BACKYARD USED TO TURN ON BY THEMSELVES.MY BROTHER AND SISTER SINCE THEY WERE OLDER STILL REFERENCE THE "PINK" HOUSE AS THE HAUNTED HOUSE. MY BROTHER TELLS ME THAT HE HEARD MY SHOES MOVING ONE NIGHT. WHEN HE WOIKE UP THE NEXT MORNING THEY HAD MOVED FROM OUR BEDROOM TO OUR PARENTS ROOM SOME DISTANCE AWAY. THE HOUSE IS STILL THERE, STILL WANT 2 GO BACK AND CHECK IT OUT. NOW OLDER.

I love that story!!!

I love that story!!!

By Request 17 Months Ago, The Story of Ma Murphy

Sorry all, I've been away for some time now, something like 17 months.

When I was last here I provided my story versions of the Ghost Rider of Rocky Hill, The Mooney Mansion Poltergeist and the Red Haired Ghost Boy of the Mooney Auto Theater.

After I posted those stories, I received a clutch of e-mails from other readers interested in my version of Ma Murphy.

Ma Murphy was a story told at YMCA and Boy and Girl Scout campfires from the 60's though at least the late 80's. Most of these requests were from people who remembered hearing the stories themselves while attending youth camps in the area.

Well, after almost a year of collecting versions from my brother and friends in the area I finally put pen to paper (so-to-speak) and wrote down the most accurate recount of the story I could recall. In various versions, this story takes place anywhere from Lake Tahoe to Big Bear Lake. Given the local history in the Sierra Nevada range above Visalia and Fresno, I think this is perhaps the most "believable" version.

Enjoy!

-----------------

It was the mid 1890’s. Mining, trapping and logging were the predominate industries in the Sierra Nevada mountains east of sprawling Fort Visalia. The county of Fresno was barely 40 years old. The gold rush at Sutter’s Mill in the northern part of the state had come and gone a generation ago. It was an early time in California history. A time of many transitions.

Since the gold rush had tapered off, new fortunes were to be made off the abundances of natural resources and potential agriculture in the area.

Above Fresno there was partnership formed between two men named Smith and Moore. Smith and Moore realized that lumber was an instantly available product to market from the arbor rich Western Sierra Nevada slopes. There was one problem with their plan though; how do you get the lumber from the rugged slopes of the mountain range forests to the San Joaquin Valley floor for delivery?

Railway? No the terrain and engineering knowledge at the time could not cost effectively conquer the many miles of gorges and canyons that needed to be crossed.

Mule teams and wagons? The current dirt roads and trails were not wide enough at the time to afford any safety in delivering the logs and slabs.

Smith and Moore decided there was but only one option at the time – a water flume. The logs could be taken from the slopes to a mill in the area where they could be rough hewed for length. They then could be floated down the entire length of the flume to the larger saw mill they contracted with in Sanger - some 54 miles away.

They purchased thousands of acres in and around the Mill Flat Meadow area. The flat was water fed by Mill Flat Creek. With Chinese laborers, Smith and Moore dammed up the creek feeding the meadow and created what is known today as Sequoia Lake. About a mile down stream from the lake’s dam was a decomposed granite flat area the stream flowed through. Here was where they decided to build their rough mill and where the flume started supplied by the stream. They called the encampment Millwood.

Smith and Moore made sure that their business hamlet of Millwood had all the necessary conveniences of a real settlement, even though it was not much more that a few real wooden structures and collection of heavy canvas walled tents on sturdy wooden foundations. There was a doctor with nurses and a modern hospital on site. There were a couple general stores and dry goods businesses, carpenters and woodrights, a blacksmith with stable, a cold house for storing ice cut from the previous winter’s frozen lake, a survey and assessor office and a small schoolhouse with teacher for the 3-5 children that seemed to be on hand at any given season. There were even rentable office “buildings” and seasonal homes to house the workers and their families. Smith and Moore made sure they had everything needed for their employees and their families. It was here Smith and Moore ran their newly formed and highly successful Kings River Lumber Company. Millwood was truly a company town by the standards of the day.

Let’s shift now from setting the stage, to focusing on the main characters of our story.

At the Millwood Hospital was Dr. Phineaus Thompson. Dr. Thompson was a brilliant medical surgeon. He was a Boston educated man of medicine who brought his family out West at the age of 25 seeking to not only adventure in the wild-west, but a fresh start in gaining fortune for his young family. He was a thin man with a thick brown moustache. His wife was Ellen, was also a Boston educated woman. She was a petite woman with long red hair. The two met as he was attending medical college and after a whirlwind romance, married inside of a year of meeting for the first time. It was love at first sight.

Ellen worked diligently as the devoted wife and nurse along the side of her husband. They had two daughters – Emmy age 6, and Edith age 3. while Emmy was born in Fort Visalia, Edith was born at the Millwood encampment. Both children were blonde of hair, fair of skin, and each had infectious smiles that could melt the heart of the roughest and gruffest logger, miner or mountain man in the area.

There was another person in Dr. Thompson’s life as well, her name was Martina Murphy.

Martina was a couple years older than Dr. Thompson and more than a few than Ellen. She was a striking woman with jet black hair and sparkling turquoise eyes. She was thin in frame and tall in stature measuring up to almost 6 feet tall, which bode well of her Irish heritage. She came to the lumber camp looking for work after her husband was killed in a freak carriage accident near Porterville. Martina and her deceased husband once lived a prosperous rancher’s lifestyle, but without any children to call their own. She arrived only a few days after the Thompsons. She therefore she was able to witness the childhoods of Emmy and Edith almost from their day of birth. This experience filled a void in her life an experience she thought she would never have. Ever since a young age each of the young girls had difficulty pronouncing Martina’s first name. Almost from their first meeting of Martina they shortened her name to simply Ma.

Matina was much beloved by the logging and mining community in the area. She was a kind, gentle, soft spoken woman with a warming glint in her eyes. Whenever anyone came to the hospital to seek attention they always wanted Martina at hand. She possessed a calming demeanor that made all who visited the hospital for treatment instantly calm and secure.

During an unusually warm March weekday afternoon, a large brass bell rang from the saw mill signaling there was an emergency. This usually means that someone has been hurt at the mill and the Doctor was urgently needed. The saw mill was only a few hundred yards from the encampment, so when the bell was rung, all in the area could hear it.

Dr. Thompson was attending to a small child’s sprained ankle when he heard the bell. Ellen was with him and instantly sprang into action. The doctor grabbed his medical bag, his wife collected many pieces of cotton cloth and gauzes. Both bolted out the hospital’s door and ran down the wide muddy path, a shortcut if you will, forgoing the even muddier dirt road that also lead to the mill.

Upon arriving at the mill the sound of the bell had become deafening. The mill foreman stopped ringing the bell as the Thompsons ran up the path from the woods. They were led to the mill’s saw floor to discover that Jantzn May, the young burley mill worker from the Yukon Territory of Canada, had completely severed his arm at the right shoulder. Jantzn came to the camp a year earlier from Canada after the gold rush up there went bust. At 6 foot 3 and 250 lbs, he was 22 years young and as strong as an ox… and a bull. He was equally handsome and made more than one schoolgirl swoon in his lifetime.

Jantzn was screaming hoarsely at the top of his lungs and had been doing so since the accident happened 6 minutes earlier. Five other mill workers were holding him down while yet a sixth was applying pressure with a dirty denim cloth to his right shoulder to stop the fountain of arterial blood from spurting from his body.

Given the catastrophic severity of the injury, Dr. Thompson mustered up all his medical experience and expertise and sedated Jantzn as quickly as he could with a large dose of morphine. Dr. Thompson learned early in his career that with such injuries, shock could be just as deadly as blood loss. This required the patent to keep quiet and remain still. Pressure was still applied to his shoulder to slow the bleeding. The morphine worked and soon Jantzn passed out unconscious. He was breathing and his heart was still pumping – he was alive for now. Other mill workers had collected the severed arm and wrapped it cotton cloth. They packed it in ice from the cold house. A buckboard and horse was readied to transport the young Jantzn and his arm back to the hospital.

Hearing the bell sound earlier, Martina knew her first priority was to stay with Emmy and Edith. She knew that Dr. and Mrs. Thompson always take care of these emergencies. In situations like this, her job is to watch after the kids in the spare room at the rear of the hospital.

The buckboard pulled up to the side of the hospital’s dormer. The wagon’s wooden wheels were caked with mud - mud created by the warm sun and residual patchy snow. The heavily sedated Jantzn lay motionless in the pole and canvas stretcher. Four mill workers assisted Dr. Thompson in moving Jantzn from the buckboard, through the side double doors of the hospital, and onto a steel examination table. Phineaus began considering the young Jantzn’s options for saving his life. “Poor soul” Dr, Thompson thought to himself. “The clock is ticking”.

As most could imagine the forceful ripping-off of a human arm or leg by high speed sawmill equipment is a violent affair to say the least. This type of massive injury takes only a split second of carelessness to change one’s life forever. The right side of Jantzn’s upper torso was now nothing more than an unearthly bloody stump on his right side. He was still bleeding even though since seconds after the accident other mill workers and Ellen had been applying constant pressure. The bleeding was requiring massive amounts of cotton cloth and gauze to keep the bleeding under control. Ellen realized after a few minutes of arriving at the hospital that they would not have enough cotton cloth to maintain pressure on the wound until the Dr. could determine if the appendage could be reattached.

Dr Thompson had read books in medical school where such procedures had been attempted in Europe. The overall successes of the procedures were mixed. With medical knowledge at the time, a successful result meant that the arm would physically be re-attached, but it would never function as a usable body part. The hand could not grab and the arm could not lift. It was essentially dead. Blood flowed through the arm, but there were no longer any nerves or muscle control to facilitate use. Right now, before he could even try to re-attach the arm he needed to get the bleeding under control.

Ellen summoned Martina. She knew that there were more clean bandages at the clearing site where the logs were currently being cleared. The company maintained an onsite first aid shed wherever they are working. The current clearing site was up the creek about a mile above the recently created Sequoia Lake. Martina was instructed to take the buckboard to the site and retrieve all the bandages and gauze she could and return to the hospital. Time was of the essence, so Martina was instructed to drive as fast as she could to get there and return – young Jantzn’s life depended on it.

She jumped into the buckboard and smacked the horse with the reins to get up on it. The horse responded and started trotting down the muddy road that led to the lake and clearing site. “Poor Jantzn” Martina thought. She was an extremely passionate woman. It made her sick to her stomach to see anyone in pain. In Jantzn’s case, she was extremely distraught that such a horrendous turn of events could possibly end the life of such a handsome strong and likewise compassionate young man who had so much yet to give to the world.

Martina drove the horse and wagon up the slippery road, past the lake rim and onto the the clearing site. She bolted into the foreman’s office and ransacked the wooden shelf of all cotton cloth and gauze she could find. She tossed the cloth and gauze into the rear of the wagon and covered with heavy burlap blankets to keep them in plce. She turned the buckboard around and barreled back down the road at breakneck speed.

She didn’t see the large rut in the muddy road. How could she at the speed she was traveling.

The wagon took a hard right hand lurch as she was heading around a blind corner. The front wheels of the buckboard were forced into hard right angles causing it to careen onto two wheels at first, and then flip completely over, and over, and over down to the stream bed 80 feet below.

She awoke in a start and found herself in one of the hospital’s beds. It was night time and the air was very cool. As far as she could tell in her less than lucid mental state, it was probably very early in the morning. She looked across the very small room and saw Ellen asleep in a wooden rocking chair, a blanket draped across her shoulders. There was a dimly lit kerosene lantern flickering on the short table next to her.

Martina laid there for a few moments trying to piece together what happened. She remembered when the buckboard threw her towards the stream bed but that was all.

“How long have I been here? Where is everyone?” she thought to herself.

She made an attempt to sit up, but it was met with extreme pain from almost every part of her body. She was bundled up in heavy bandages and could feel cuts and scrapes on her face.

As Martina was trying to get up from her hospital bed, Ellen awoke. She cast aside the blanket and quickly went to Martina’s side. Ellen has almost no expression on her pale face.

“What happened?” Martina asked.

In a dry, monotone voice Ellen responded with “There has been an accident, a terrible, terrible accident”.

This confused the clouded mind of Martina a bit. She knew there had been an accident at the saw mill involving young Jantzn May. Was that what Ellen was speaking of? Other than a few bumps, bruises and scrapes, she herself felt fine, but… there was something odd about her. She wasn’t quite sure what it was - but she wasn’t quite right.

Martina noticed a single tear drop from Ellen’s face.

“What happened?” asked Martina. “Please tell me!”

Ellen took a long drawn out breath and slowly exhaled.

“You were involved in an accident with the buckboard. You were tossed out of the wagon and into the streambed. Your body was hurled against one of the jagged granite boulders and the buckboard itself landed on you.” she started to explain. “You were knocked unconscious and badly mangled from the impact. We were not able to find you until almost sundown. This was three days ago” Ellen recounted.

“Three days? Three days I have been lying here?” Martina thought to herself. Being the compassionate person she was she quickly asked Ellen a more import question.

“How is young Jantzn May?”

“Phineaus was not able to save him. He unfortunately passed away later that day” Ellen explained.

“Why did he die?” asked Martina. Deep down in her heart she knew there could only be one reason given the extent of his injury.

Ellen looked off across the room breaking her eye contact with Martina. “He died from losing too much blood. We did all we could to stop the bleeding but the damage was too extensive. There was no way to save him.

Martin was suddenly overcome by grief. She started to cry uncontrollably.

Martina had never really seen death before at the hospital. She was a person of love and caring. Ever since her husband perished in his own …

“Wait a minute” she though to herself. “I had almost the same type of accident as my departed husband. The experience was starting to consume her. She started to tremble.

Martina was now in an uncontrollable fit on the verge of a mental breakdown. The loss of young Jantzn and having the same near death experience as her husband’s demise was too much for her. She started to scream at the top of her lungs. She tried desperately to rise from her bed, but she was finding her torso and legs were strapped down to the bed itself. Her struggling with her restraints was not getting here anywhere. It was then she realized something strange.

Martina had not noticed that only her left arm was responding to her attempts of freeing herself from the bed restraints. She noticed that her right arm was still laying under the hospital sheet. With her left arm she reached to remove the sheet covering her right arm.

NO! MARTINA PLEASE DON’T!” Ellen shrieked.

Martina snapped back the sheet revealing her right arm in the dim lantern light. What she saw made her heart stand still. There, surgically attached below her right elbow was a grotesque and engorged forearm. It was muscular and covered with blonde hair. The arm was swollen and she could see functioning blood vessels just under it’s skin. She was momentarily speechless, unable to utter a single sound while her mind tried to process what she was seeing.

“IT WAS ALL WE COULD DO! IT WAS ALL WE COULD DO!” Ellen cried out. “HE WAS DYING! HE COULDN”T BE SAVED! IT WAS ALL WE COULD DO!”.

The now fried synapses in Martina brain started to connect what she was seeing to what happened.

“YOUR RIGHT ARM WAS SEVERED IN THE ACCIDENT!” Ellen stammered uncontrollably. “YOUNG JANTZN HAD PASSED AWAY A FEW HOURS EARLIER. PHINEAUS THOUGH TO USE JANTZN’S SEVERED ARM TO REPLACE THE PART OF YOUR ARM THAT NEEDED TO BE AMPUTATED. IT WAS ALL WE COULD DO TO SAVE YOU! YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND! PLEASE UNDERSTAND!

Martina’s mind let go from the reality around her. With an un-human like burst of strength and agility she suddenly broke from her restraints and jumped up on the hospital bed. She was crying uncontrollably, but with the gaze of a maniac, she looked towards the single window in the room and jumped through it, crashing through the pane of opaque glass. Barefoot and dressed in only a white hospital gown, Martina disappeared into the blackness of the forest.

-----------------

15 years had passed. Millwood was slowly becoming a ghost town as the logging industry in the area started to collapse. The encampment was bought and sold many times until the business was finally shuttered for good.

Dr. Phineaus Thompson left the area and moved to San Francisco to begin a local medical practice after the Great Earthquake of 1901. He temporarily left his wife Ellen and daughters behind at Lake Sequoia where she worked as a nurse for one of the local family camps that sprung up around the lake. The plan was for Ellen and their daughters to follow Phineaus to San Francisco once he had the practice established. As the late summer months approached, their daughters Emmy and Edith had grown into beautiful young women. They too worked for the family camp at the lake as housekeepers and seamstresses. They were extremely happy working at the camp and were starting to realize they will be sad to leave.

One evening, Emmy and Edith were taking an evening walk around the lake as they usually did before retiring for the evening. It was a warm night with absolutely no breeze as was usually the case for this time of year.

Ahead in the tall pine trees that towered over the dirt path, Emmy noticed what looked like a wild animal hunched on one of the tree branches high above the ground. Sometimes the girls would see a brown bears in the tees, but they usually were spooked and ran away when human approached. This animal just seemed to stare and watch.

The girls stopped and looked up at the animal. It looked as if what they were seeing was some kind of ghostly spectre draped in a tattered sheet.

Suddenly there was loud crack in the tree above them and a shadowy figure jumped to the ground 30 feet ahead of them on the path. They could not make out any real features of the entity other than they were sure it was human. Probably one of the prankster boys visiting the camp for the week they assumed.

A cool breeze cut through the once still mountain air as the figure just stood there.

“Who are you” the younger Edith called out. “Quit trying to scare us”.

Suddenly the air became still again. Suddenly the girls could hear the slight whimper of a woman crying and calling their names. The sound of the crying woman’s voice was strangely familiar.

“Oh Emmy. Dearest Edith. I have missed you both so much” the voice murmured with a crack in it’s voice.

“MA? MA MURPHY?” each girl cried out.

Suddenly the entity shot straight up and high into the trees. The girls became frightened and started running back to the camp screaming. Did they really just see Martina Murphy, or was it her ghost? Long ago the people of Millwood had believed that Martina had gone insane from the sight of Young Jantzn’s arm attached to her body, eventually perishing due to exposure the following harsh winter.

The girls ran as fast as they could down the path to the camp. They could hear something above them jumping from tree to tree in pursuit. The girls screamed even louder as they ran back to the camp. Customers and staff were setting up for a campfire as the girls bolted into the compound. They mother was there as well assisting with the fire preparation.

“WE SAW HER” both girls blurted out. “WE SAW MA MURPHEY WE DID!”.

Ellen’s face drained of all color. “WHERE? WHERE DID YOU SEE HER?”

“Down the lake path before the dam” said Edith. “She talked to us and we scared her”.

“What did you see” asked one of the other campers.

Emmy and Edith proceeded to tell how they came upon her and what she said before they ran and she seemed to chase after them high above in the trees.

A group of men from the camp returned to the site a few minutes later with lanterns and large clubs where the sighting took place. They were able to see the young girls’ boot prints in the dirt… along with a set of barefoot prints on top of them. No other physical sign of the experience could be detected. The girls and their mother left the camp the next day for San Francisco.

-----------------

Today it is said that Ma Murphy is still alive and roams the forests in the night, barefot and dressed only in a tattered dirty white hospital gown. Some say she is nothing more than an unsettled ghost. Some say the forearm that was transplanted onto her has provided her with super human strength and stamina, and un-intentinal "gift" to her from the deceased young Jantzn. They say she had developed great physical skills in surviving and that she still roams the forests of the area at night searching for those two little girls she was so fond of when she worked for the Thompsons at Millwood.

It is also said that when she does find children walking through the forests at night they had better beware. In the decades since, it is said she will sometimes pounce on a young child and take it as her own to rear in the wilds of the forest as a means to soothe her broken heart and psychotic mind.

RE: Craycroft Home on Palm

That’s is very interesting in-deed. However....not accurate. In-fact it's a fabrication. According to Valley's Legends and Legacies Vol. III, Frank Craycroft built his home in 1927 at 6545 N. Palm avenue. Craycroft was the owner of the Craycroft brick company in Fresno. Mr. Craycroft designed a specially insulated brick which would stay cool in the summer and retain the heat in the winter. This is what the Craycroft mansion is built from. This is where the below story is debunked. Frank Craycroft closed his business and retired. He and his wife sold their home (on Palm avenue) sometime in the 1950's or 1960's and moved to the central coast of California. The original buyers of the home had intensions on revamping the structure but never did and fell into disrepair. The house was sold sometime later and in, I believe 2005, a plan was brought forth before the Fresno City Council to make it a land mark and do further renovations. The home is now in the registry of historic landmarks. As for Frank Craycroft, he is dead. But didn't die in the home. My research shows no death ever occurring in the home.

Now I don't know where you got your information from, but it is highly inaccurate.

Craycroft Home on Palm

Re: Craycroft house on Palm

Was curious about the house myself, so did a little research about the builder/owner of the house on the Internet. Found something that does not go with the previous post (claims he died in 1929)?:

Republican, (September 15, 1929), Frank J. Craycroft, owner of the Craycroft Brick Company and resident of Fresno for about 45 years, died yesterday at his home on Palm avenue in the Fig Gardens. He had been ill for four months, but was reported to be slightly improved recently.

Funeral services will be held at the home on Tuesday, September 17, at 9:30 a.m., with the Lisle Funeral Home in charge of the arrangements.

He was 53 years old and a native of Illinois, but came to Fresno with his parents when quite young. His father, the late C.J. Craycroft, was at one time chairman of the board of trustees of the city of Fresno, a position corresponding to mayor.

Washington Acadimic Middle School, sanger, CA

Well in the 1990's before the middle school was created it use to be the old sanger high school. There was a young couple, madly in love with eachother, yet she was hispanic and he happened to be african american. With strict parents alwayz telling her what to do she never told her parents that she had a boyfriend. Still they found out in the next several months and her mother didnt approve of him because he was black. Yet, the girl refuse to dump the man she loved and her mom was palnning to move far away from him. Not knowing what to do she and her boyfriend sunked out and walked to the school where later committed suicide on the balcony and the theater room.

sightings have been in the theater room now that both balcony's have been removed the little girl has been seen on the second floor by where the doors to the balcony use to be. she has also been seen hanging on a rope n front of the stage. her so called lover has been seen in the front of the theater doors no one knows why he stands there but its been rumored that he waits for his beloved girlfriend like that same night where they hung themself...

it's also been heard that the hallway lights flicker on and off at excactly 2:oo am same time the couple arrived that awful night..

Tagus

Did a bit of research since I had never heard of any POW camps in the area (though there were two Japanese-American internment camps in Pinedale and the Fresno Fairgrounds) and it was a German POW camp. Found these links and thought I'd share them.

http://www.tularehistoricalmuseum.org/articles/TagusRanchTulareentity.ht...

http://exploringtagusranch.blogspot.com/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/java1888/3652856276/

Honestly I don't know who owns it, but I'm pretty sure it's abandoned. Best way to find out who owns it may to be to contact the Tulare Co. historical society as they would probably be able to point you in the right way.

And please don't trespass. I remember years ago some asshole kids broke into the Academy Cemetery in Clovis and destroyed some headstones, most over 100 years old. They said they heard it was haunted and wanted to look for ghosts. From then on Clovis will not let anyone investigate the place as they don't trust paranormal researchers.

question

Do you know if this place is abandoned because i would love to do a paranormal investigation there. Please call or email me at donovankerry@rocketmail.com or call at 559-308-1686

tagus ranch motel

is definitely haunted. me and my buddies went there the other night and it was really creepy the whole time. there was a thin piece of plywood covering a 30ft hole that we almost fell in. Then, inside there was one room that had some crazy witchcraft symbols on them and a jacket with blood on it too. i did some research and it used to be a PoW cap during ww2

tagus ranch motel

is definitely haunted. me and my buddies went there the other night and it was really creepy the whole time. there was a thin piece of plywood covering a 30ft hole that we almost fell in. Then, inside there was one room that had some crazy witchcraft symbols on them and a jacket with blood on it too. i did some research and it used to be a PoW cap during ww2

lester

lester is real ive seen him me nd a few of my friends went in2 the auditorum yesterday after cheer cause the doors were open nd i had a few min's 2 spare b4 my mom came 2 pick me up yah i kno its a no no but im a freshman nd ive never realy seen the auditorium but we kept hearing whispering in our ears nd we felt a few cold spots near the stage we got creaped out d booked it outa there

FHS Auditoium

ok yeah i use to go to FHS now im a student at Fresno City and i remeber when i went there i had theatre as one of my classes and when i went under the stage it would freak me out i never really heard anything just standing on the stage and going under it gave me a bad vibe

Selma Pioneer Village

Our group did an event there this week. We had a couple of members stay overnight in the park for 2 nights. They say they heard what sounded like spurs, and kids laughing all night. They say when they would go to look, they saw shadow figures run from tree to tree. The park does have some lights, but not many and there is abundand tree coverage. There was also about a 1/2 full moon those nights. Now this may have been real kids, except it was after 2 in the morning when they were woken from their sleep by it. They also would hear their dutch ovens being toyed with but when they turned on the flash light, nobody or nothing was near them. In case you dont know, a dutch over is very heavy, not soemthing a squirrel would be able to move or make to kind of sound they reported hearing.

I know many of the buildings there are original and relocated to the park from other places. Most are close to 100 years old, I believe some are older too.

Tagus Ranch

Never heard of Tagus Ranch. Where is it?

tagus ranch

well me and a group of friends last night walked arouond the whole place of tagus ranch and there was tagging and the place was destroyed but the thing that creeped us was an old mirror inside the place that was never touched, it was altogether and nothing was wrong with it on that mirror there was a white cross that appeared on it. we walked through holes in the wall and walked on that stage. but if you go in watch your step and bring a flashlight. we didnt have light at all we had was two cell phones. rumor has it that at midnight the old lady that died there will scream at midnight.

There wasn't really a flood

There wasn't really a flood at Millerton per say. Friant Dam was built on the San Joaquin River and the result was Millerton Lake. Yes there were remnants of a town there (Millerton used to be the County seat many years ago before it moved to Fresno proper) and the Courthouse was moved like you said.

But there weren't any miners that perished. There are stories of workers being trapped in the damn, sealed up in concrete, but there really isn't proof of this.