Those fun-loving folks of the Los Angeles Paranormal Association will be investigating Pico House again this January (they did it last year too). What do they hope to find?
The event starts at 8 pm on Saturday, January 28 and goes to 2 am Sunday morning. Cost? $85, which if you divide by six hours is probably not too bad.
Participants will be divided into four teams and will be prowling in and under the Pico House (there are tunnels) and the Masonic Temple and Merced Theater nearby. Here is description and details.
Their blog is lots of fun--they've held investigations in Virginia City, Tonopah, and Goldfield, NV, Northern California and down here at Linda Vista Hospital in Boyle Heights and the Queen Mary.
And they've done the Pico House before, in January of 2011. Lots of pictures and the information is here, including a description of the Chinese Massacre of 1871, which happened just outside. But besides taking pictures, it doesn't sound like much happened.
Ghost Adventures also locked themselves into the Pico House for an investigation, and had enough for a TV show on the night--shadows, mysterious voices, cold spots, etc. Here's the show on YouTube.
This last picture shows the Pico House being built, in 1869. I found this at the SkyscraperPage--if you scroll about half-way down the page, there are several old pictures of the Plaza and Pico House and the Merced Theater, which opened on New Years Day, 1870.
The theater, LA's first indoor stage theater, was built by an undertaker and named for the man's wife, Mercedes.
Pio Pico, the last governor of Mexican California, built the Pico House Hotel in 1870, and lost it (financially speaking) ten year later. The place had indoor plumbing, gas lighting, and a French restaurant--quite elegant and state-of-the-art. I believe it was renovated about a dozen years ago.
Pico was an interesting guy, a mixed race man who seemed to love life and had a generous disposition. He was born at the Mission San Gabriel, so he was a true native Californian. Can't really imagine him haunting the place, but the ghost could be a disgruntled resident, I suppose. Or someone killed in that massacre.
1 comment:
Happy New Year! That's an amazing historic picture of Pico House under construction. Just beyond it in the background is Calle de Los Negros (commonly referred to as "N--g-r Alley," even on some maps of the period), site of the infamous "Chinese Massacre" that occurred two years after that image.
PS. I went to Skyscraperpage.com but couldn't find it. Do you have a direct link?
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