The
Oleander street house: (Warning: Graphic
photos of ghosts)
This
Oleander Street house in Bakersfield, California has a history.
In the early 1900s it was constructed with its secret rooms,
its large creepy cellar and with its share of Yokut nightmares,
as it was built over a sacred ritual tribelet and burial chamber.
This is the house of the old Newspaper publisher, the man
who crept his way through children's nightmares and surprised
a valley with his coverage of the apocalyptic dust storm of
1977 dubbed as, "The Storm of God's Wrath.". No
one is really certain of all the secret happenings in this
house. There could have been murders: unproven. There could
have been torture: unproven. There could have been ghostly
and ghastly molestations by a sickened monster who now creeps
along ghostly streets late at night. He is the vilest ghost,
creeping with the ghost of Jeremy into the dreams of children
with sharp and gnashing teeth to tear out hearts. This is
where the demons and ghosts of the story radiate like spokes
from a tire... and the Satanism...
Image 1: What you see in the shadows
isn't your imagination...
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Research
and the wicked spires of Oleander:
When
I was doing my research for Lords: Part One I explored
this creepy mansion in the Oleander area. I was told by Source
#1 in audio tape 6, hour 2 recorded June 25th, 2004, "The
Lords frequented this brothel, this most vile mansion. Though
sold years ago to another family, this is still a haunted
place. The spirits of victims, the tortured, their ghosts
wander the local streets at night. I have seen them, the ghosts
of children... It is a local legend here, one that has been
feared by the people of this street for decades..."
It
was very late. We drove down Oleander Street, past the gas
lamps that glowed very eerily I might add. I had my camera
with me, and the things this person was telling me, I couldn't
help but to think: what if they were true? I thought I saw
something. I asked him to stop the car and shot these strange
photos outside the mansion he spoke of. What was out there
in the Oleander darkness? Was it just my imagination? I don't
know what I saw. I got back in the car and we drove away...
Image 2: The boy in the bushes
Image 4 and image 5 : The boy in the
window and on the stairs
Image 6 and image 7: The boy disappears
and the wicked spires of Oleander
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The
nearby streets of the Oleander mansion:
This
doesn't seem like a wicked community, and isn't. People live
in the area in the thousands. The flock to the local gaslamp
lit park where skaterboys ride the concrete edges of an old
amphitheatre. In 2004 I asked a group of skaterboys about
the myth of the Oleander house. J.J. Hearns, a local skater
youth told me this story:
"Me
and the friends skate down this street late at night. We beat
the curfew, we don't care. We just duck and hide when we see
headlights. One night we thought we saw headlights. There
were two lights in the center of the road. We hadn't been
looking too closely so quickly ducked by this house that has
a giant fern garden. When we lifted our heads to see if the
car had passed we were suddenly looked dead into the eyes
of two horrible ghosts. They looked angry, like they were
hungry to be live again. We were frozen, and man we don't
get scared. But this, these ghosts they had us, man. But then
they turned. It was then we could tell one was much taller
than the other, like they were father and son or something.
They drifted down the street toward that creepy freakin' mansion
that people all talk about. Anyway, there's a lot of stories
like that around here... it's just what these streets are
like... haunted."
Image 8: Headlights, or...?
Image 9: Sidewalk, streets, and a demon face in the trees
Image 10: The Streets of Oleander
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The
spirits in the trees
I am
no ghost hunter, but in my investigations I have seen what
you would think were supernatural happenings that are only
in the movies. There's been more than one occasion where others
have spoken of the people hanging from trees outside of the
Oleander street mansion. Could it be the dead? Strangled at
the hands of the Lords and hanging their own spirits in protest
of their untimely ending? Some people have been known to see
entire bodies hanging. Others, like me, only saw strangely
glowing heads. Why did they reveal themselves to me? Perhaps
the very same reason I wrote about so many ghosts in my novella
Thick
White Crust. One thing is for sure, I won't creep
around there in the dark anymore, not after seeing Satanic
carved heads swinging from midnight branches in the yard of
the Oleander Street mansion. These were taken over a series
of nights with one of the sources who showed me some of the
secret exteriors of the mansion.
Image 11: The bright head of a ghost
hangs
Image 12: The head turns
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Secret
exteriors of a haunted mansion
If you've
ever been to the Winchester Mystery House in the place of
my birth, San Jose, California, then you are fully aware of
architecture and the occult. Ask yourself why such demented
people live in such wicked places, and why often the very
architecture of such demented place is evil to its very floorboards.
Builders are paid huge bonuses to place certain numbers of
planks in a floor, or certain angular pieces of wood at certain
unfounded dark angles. Have you counted the windows of the
Oleander mansion? Why don't you try counting them and then
emailing me to see if you're right. Maybe I will tell you
the Satanic number of windows, sub-windows and window panes
installed in the mansion, or the theory behind the height
of the mansion's tallest point. Are you getting this? I don't
want to curse myself by writing down certain numbers. But
did you see any numbers carved into the walkway and driveway
cement? Have you asked anyone why where there are six strange
doorways leading from the home?
Legend
states that evil was transplanted from Europe as well as from
within the mansion itself that spawned such crazed humans.,
"It's not about the ghosts. Evil in Oleander is found
in its very roots. The imported plants and the story of the
witch tree of blood and screams. That's why evil has lurked
in the Oleander Mansion for over 50 years. Years ago a tree
was planted to celebrate the rebirth of evil, the wicked cycle
of death and how darkness sprouts up to engulf all around,
even this mansion."
It is
said that once large cars would park around that tree and
that young men, silenced, would be mutilated and killed, their
spilled guts as lifeblood for such a dark rooted plant.
Image 13: The tree of blood and screams
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The
Ghost in the Gaslamp
If you
haven't yet read about Jeremy Sebastian Sinclair, then stop
now and go read about him on my page, 'the
child', and then on ghostkids.com.
Becuase I just may have seen him in one of the freakiest camera
images ever.
Old
electrified gaslamps light the Oleander area; one of the few
areas on town where you can find the old style streetlights.
They seem to have an ethereal history of their own, adding
such a disturbing midnight gloom to the Oleander area.
In August
of 2004 I had one of my most mysterious run-ins with an Oleander
ghost. Although in the same month I had my first ever true
encounter with a ghost on Blanche Street as a box in my kitchen
rocked back and forth, it was the floating head of the gas
lamp that truly had me spooked. As usual, I brought my camera
down on a midnight prowl, inspecting architecture and doing
unnamed Lords research. I was standing near the Oleander mansion
corner gaslamp when I looked into the light and saw what appeared
to be the head of a child. I thought I was seeing things until
the head actually floated through the lamp and down the pole.
A body appeared. Arms reached out and clawed the air and then
at me before the spirit actually quickly turned and floated
to the house where it disappeared through a wall. I still
have nightmares about this incident. (Warning:
Don't scroll down if you have a weak heart)
Image 14: Gaslamp on the mansion corner
(without ghost)
Image 14: Gaslamp on the mansion corner
(just after ghost head floated from lamp
a body appeared, arms wrapped strangely
around the pole then reached for my throat)
Image 15: Exterior imagery, ghost floating
toward house
Image 16: More exterior imagery, ghost
floating through wall
Image 17: a spirit-filled night in Oleander
Image 18: The creepy Oleander neighborhood
