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The Murderous Elizabeth Báthory & The Haunted and Cursed Griffith Park
12 Plays4 years ago
This week Felicia covers the torturous Countess Elizabeth Báthory and Lauren discusses a curse laid on Griffith Park by Dona Petronilla, who may still haunt the park today.
If you have requests for future episodes or just want to hang out follow us on Instagram @sinistersisterspodcast
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Transcript
Introduction to Sinister Sisters Podcast
00:00:12
Speaker
Welcome to the Sinister Sisters podcast. I'm Lauren. I'm Felicia. We're best friends. And we like spooky stuff. That is correct, Felicia. Thank you, Lauren. We're holding this nice and present the day before it comes out. Lauren's going to sift all night editing it. It just depends on how many ums we say. Here's a couple for you.
00:00:41
Speaker
I'll leave those in. What kind of recommendations do you have this week?
Netflix Series and TV Show Reviews
00:00:46
Speaker
Ooh, I have one that I'm really excited about because it's a show that's, it's a hot pick on Netflix right now called Behind Her Eyes. It's a limited series. Do you know it?
00:01:01
Speaker
No, I actually I just was offered it for the first time. And I was honestly offended that it was the first time it was offered to me. It just came out. It just came out. I mean, like, maybe it was like a week ago. I'm not sure. But I watched it all. And it was spectacular. It's like a thriller. They're British and they're Scottish. And it's like this woman that gets a little too involved with a married couple.
00:01:26
Speaker
And it gets it's great. It's great. And it has so many twists and turns. It's got like true crime aspects, feels to it. And it goes. Yeah. The place it gets to in the last couple of episodes is never what you expect when it starts. And it's just fabulous. I loved it. I love it. And it's not it's not funny. Like it's not like dead to me.
00:01:53
Speaker
No, it's definitely like a true psychological thriller situation. Oh, I'm excited to check that out for sure. Yes. And what else have I watched? Oh, I've started rewatching just for a little comfort, Vampire Diaries. And I haven't seen the first season since in many years. I've never rewatched the show. And the acting is so
00:02:23
Speaker
mediocre and the story is is also
00:02:28
Speaker
a little mediocre, but something about it is so magical and addicting that you just can't look away. It's like that. It's the same thing as the freaking Twilight series where it's like a girl being fought over by two supernatural beings, except for this time they're brothers. They're both super hot. It's thrilling. It's thrilling. I did not know they were brothers. Yes.
00:02:53
Speaker
Yes, Damon and Stefan Salvatore, just a couple of sexy 100-year-old vampires fighting over Nina Dubrav. It's just so good. Okay, I have to watch it at least once. Yeah, just like, I mean, I can't remember. Like, how do you feel about teen supernatural dramas?
00:03:15
Speaker
I will say I've never made it through any, except Buffy, if we count Buffy. Okay, so that is my genre that I love, so you might just think it's really stupid. I might buy, I mean, I got through the MTV Scream series. Oh, I like that. Did you ever watch Pretty Little Liars?
00:03:35
Speaker
I never did, which I also feel like I know I missed out. I guess I should. I never watched Gossip Girl. It's just pretty girl dramas. That's all they are. It's just like CW, like ridiculously good looking people going through situations that would never happen. That's it. Which to be fair, I watched all of Desperate Housewives and loved it. So it feels like it's in that vein kind of.
00:04:01
Speaker
Maybe, except for it's supernatural. And they're young. And they're teenagers. Yeah, so those are mine, I guess. I love it.
Exploration of Classic Horror Films
00:04:11
Speaker
Mine are weird and old, but I texted you because I watched Frankenstein for the first time. Original Universal Monster Frankenstein. And I loved it. And then I watched Special Features because that's the other perk of me being home with my family right now is my dad has almost every horror Blu-ray that I could want.
00:04:31
Speaker
ever. And so I've been watching special features when I can. And it was so cool to see them because I feel like people's idea, I don't know. It's always fun for me to be like, oh my gosh, this is like who Boris Karloff was as a man, like not the actor. So that stuff is really cool. And just seeing them talking about the makeup and
00:04:54
Speaker
he was the one that wanted to have his brow built out, which meant that he ended up having makeup in his eyes and it was a much more annoying process, but he wanted, he asked for that, which I just love stories like that. But it was fun to watch because I had forgotten that the monster is so sympathetic. It's not a real monster story. It's very close to
00:05:20
Speaker
you know, shape of water or any of those things. We were like, oh, the monster's just trying to help, just trying to be good. The true monster is the human. Exactly. Man is the monster. Yeah. Love that. It's just a good story. I'm really excited because I have to watch Bride of Frankenstein next, of course. Which I don't even know if I've ever seen, to be perfectly honest. My dad said it has a different vibe. Like he said, it's sillier somehow. So I don't know.
00:05:48
Speaker
Nice. Well, you let me know. I'm sure it's something I should watch at some point. I feel like I have to do the costume at some point just because her hair is so good. It's fabulous. Absolutely. Yeah. But my other thing I was going to say that I watched way late was I watched the Jeffrey Epstein documentary, which I know is not horror. It's in fact horrific true life. But as we kind of have like talked about true crime, I felt like I should say it, but it's so
00:06:15
Speaker
disgusting and fascinating and just like more about you know how much Hollywood hides it up and it's like it came out so many different times and it was never completely shut down just crazy. I mean this kind of thing happens over and over again it's like even in like
00:06:34
Speaker
like when tabloid news stories come out about crazy drama. And it's like, yeah, this already came out like, like the Marilyn Manson stuff. It's like, everyone already knew this because this was headlines years ago. And it's just repeating, people are acting like they forgot. Right, right. It's like, I mean, even to some extent, I found myself guilty of this with the Michael Jackson documentary where it's like, yeah, we knew, like we knew. Right, right.
00:07:01
Speaker
And we just wanted to not believe it so we shoved it right back under. Yeah, it's so sure I haven't watched the Epstein documentary cuz I don't know I just I kind of felt like I Would be disturbed by it and didn't want
00:07:16
Speaker
to watch it. I don't know. It's a pretty hard watch, I'll say. I put it on in the background while I was working and then I quickly was like, oh, I can't do this. Yeah, I have to watch this or not watch it. Yeah. And it's really good because it focuses, I mean, obviously because he's dead, but it focuses a lot more on the victims and
00:07:37
Speaker
They're telling their stories, which is really hard to watch, but good. But better than it's like, you know, we've talked about this before, I think, but like the serial killer thing where it's like, when you talk so much about the person doing the crimes, it almost hurts to like glamorize that. Exactly. Versus the people it's really about, which is the people they hurt.
00:07:59
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah. But those are my two weird recommendations this week.
Introduction to Main Story: Elizabeth Bathory
00:08:04
Speaker
No, I don't know. But it's funny that I've seen things almost, not that it directly relates to my story today, but the ending of my story will relate to
00:08:17
Speaker
what we've talked about, I think. So that'll be interesting. Can't wait. Can't wait. Should I go out and get into it or do you have any other news? Let's do it. That's, I think that's it. What if I just was like, I'm pregnant. I'm not. And I'm pregnant. That's the other news. That's my other news. I'm not everyone. On this show it'd be, I'm pregnant with an alien baby.
00:08:39
Speaker
After last week, that would be perfect. Exactly. Oh, man. All right. So today, I am talking about one of the most infamous female serial killers of all time, Elizabeth Bathory. We love female serial killers. Yes. As I just said, we are not glorifying serial killers. I know. Well, this story is just so crazy. So yeah, I'm talking about Elizabeth Bathory, and if you
00:09:07
Speaker
have heard this name, the things you might picture are a lot of Google image searches of a woman bathing in a bathtub of blood and also the idea that she may have inspired vampire stories such as the original Dracula.
00:09:27
Speaker
So, unclear whether either of those things are actually factual, but that's what gets talked about a lot when you hear about Elizabeth Bathory.
00:09:38
Speaker
So let's get into what we do know. This story is so crazy.
Elizabeth Bathory's Early Life and Crimes
00:09:43
Speaker
All right, so she was born in 1560 to a prominent Protestant family in Hungary. She was the daughter of a Baron and a Baroness. And they were both batheries by birth, which means they were probably cousins. So her parents, so she was actually kind of the
00:10:04
Speaker
product of a little casual inbreeding. She's not right in the head. Yes, that's a great way to start this story. Throughout the beginning of this story, you're going to hear a lot of things that are like, oh, well, obviously, she was not going to turn out well.
00:10:21
Speaker
She was dropped on her head, et cetera, et cetera. So from an early age, Elizabeth had seizures. And we think now that this might have been because of the end breeding, but she had some symptoms just basically relating to epilepsy. And one of the treatments back in the day for treating epilepsy was rubbing blood of a non-sufferer
00:10:47
Speaker
on the lips of an epileptic, or this is even worse, giving an epileptic a mix of non-sufferer's blood, so someone that doesn't have epilepsy, and a piece of skull as their episode ended. So as they were coming out of their epileptic
00:11:07
Speaker
Seizure. Seizure, thank you. So I'm sure neither of these were very effective, but for some reason that was the treatment back in the day. Also, can you imagine trying to shove a piece of skull in someone's mouth? Sure. Yeah. It's like history is just a horror movie. It is. It is horrifying.
00:11:27
Speaker
I was also watching bits and pieces yesterday of The Vincent Price Last Man on Earth. Have you ever seen that? No, I know I should. It's a fine movie. It's not groundbreaking. Maybe somebody will say it is. But there's a part where he's transfusing his blood with a woman's blood to stop her from being a vampire zombie. And I was like, no one knows what's going on.
00:11:54
Speaker
Nothing makes sense. I also think that they drank it. That's not going to do anything. I know. I know. I know. It's crazy. OK. So also as a child, first of all, she lived in pretty brutal times in general. But apparently, Hungary was real brutal. So as a child, she witnessed not only the daily beatings of peasants and people that worked for her family,
00:12:24
Speaker
But this is just a story, a brief story that came up in many articles I read that she watched a thief who was punished for his crimes by being sewn up, just really listen to this, sewn up into the belly of a dying horse and left to die in there. What? What? Exactly. Sown up inside? Sowed into the tummy.
00:12:52
Speaker
like how why that seems like the weirdest form of torture I've ever heard exactly and that's going to be like the theme of today weird forms of torture that she witnessed as a child as a young adult and then that she created
00:13:11
Speaker
on her own. She's very creative. Okay. There's also some word that she was introduced to Satanism by one of her uncles, and that she learned about sadomasochism from one of her aunts, and that this is just all kind of swimming around her in her youth. I mean, Christmas in this family. I can't imagine, can't imagine.
00:13:34
Speaker
So at age 10, and this was more common back then, so it might, it sounds wild, but she was engaged to a Count, Count Farinick Nadasty.
00:13:48
Speaker
I think, but they weren't actually married until she was 14. And her husband, the Count, was actually from a slightly lesser family than hers because the Bathories were a big deal. They were extremely wealthy. So she actually kept her name because it was a higher class than his, which is kind of fun. His fears. His fears. And also was decided at 14.
00:14:14
Speaker
I know, right? They're like, ah, she's better than you. Keep bathroom. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. This one article says she was, she, she socially outranked him. It's a really funny way to put it. I'm inside saying that about myself.
00:14:29
Speaker
I socially outrank you. I socially outrank you. I will be keeping my last name. Yeah, that's all we got. So once they got married, oh, and their marriage was also a huge to-do. They had like, in their village or whatever, it was like a three-day party of like 4,000 to 5,000 people. It was a huge, huge deal. And after they got married, he gave her her own castle for them to live in.
00:14:55
Speaker
Very nice. As expected. As expected. And it's called the Nodasty Castles in Hungary. And I don't know if I'm going to say this right, but it's at Savar and Cesschi, which is now basically Slovakia. Sounds beautiful.
00:15:13
Speaker
I think. I love to see it. Yeah. Sounds great to me. We're guessing. Okay. So her husband was an ambitious... He was a soldier. He was a soldier. He worked with the army and eventually he would go on to lead armies of Hungary against the Ottoman Empire. So he was gone a lot. But I'll say early in their marriage, he also introduced her to torture techniques to
00:15:42
Speaker
do on the peasants and servants that basically did something, even a minor infraction, something wrong and as a punishment. But he also seemed to enjoy the idea of torture, and both of them really bonded over the idea of violence. Oh, gosh. So a couple just made for each other.
00:16:08
Speaker
She's guilty picturing her at 14 being like, mwah. Yes, I love murder. And she did. And she also, even as a kid, there's reports of her just like, seeming to enjoy watching people being beaten. And she just she was very drawn to violence throughout her even as a kid.
00:16:26
Speaker
Not good. Not good. Not good. So at the same time, even though he was also very into violence, she was a lot worse when he was gone. She seemed to be
Investigation and Legacy of Elizabeth Bathory
00:16:40
Speaker
on a little bit of better behavior when he was home from war.
00:16:46
Speaker
And when he left, she would kind of like really go at it. Maybe out of boredom, I don't know exactly, but she had also a lot of lovers and did a lot of torturing when her husband was out of town.
00:17:02
Speaker
Busy lady. Busy lady. And we'll really get to the torture stuff in a hot sec. So also, I will say this stuff is going to be really brutal. So if you don't want to hear graphic details, feel free to skip to Lauren's story. I don't just turn my volume up.
00:17:21
Speaker
So she did also have four children, which I don't have a ton of information about, but I'm very curious like how they ended up. But it also seems that she didn't have a large presence in the raising of these children. They were pretty much raised by whatever their version of like governesses were. She was too busy with her lovers and torture.
00:17:43
Speaker
Yes, basically. And she was also like raised by a governess or you know, whatever you call it. So that was just kind of like
00:17:53
Speaker
standard fare back in that time with royal families. So her victims and her first victims tended to be peasants or servants or children of servants. And her victims were typically, this is very sad, aged 10 to 14 years old. That's who she typically liked to torture.
00:18:17
Speaker
And it seems to mostly start with like punishment, right, for doing somehow bad things. And she liked to make very creative punishments for whatever their usually minor infraction was. So for example,
00:18:35
Speaker
One of the things she was most famous for was sewing needles. So if somebody stitched something wrong or something like that, she would – and once again, this is about to be graphic – she would put sewing needles under the fingernails of these girls and
00:18:53
Speaker
There was one thing, and I wish I could remember the exact quote because I didn't write it down, but she would basically also like to kind of psychologically torture these girls, sometimes making them stripped naked before they were tortured. And also she would kind of like toy with them where she would be like, she would kind of tease them and then have them pull the needle out themselves. And if they did it, she would like cut their finger off. I know. So she really took a lot of pleasure.
00:19:22
Speaker
in all of this. She also, of course, enjoyed extreme beatings. She apparently liked to bite chunks of flesh out of her victims. This is a really strange and creative one. She would like to tie girls down, smear them with honey, and then leave them in areas to be attacked by bees and ants.
00:19:47
Speaker
Like she was like really, truly getting off on torture. And in this castle, apparently her husband, like when they got married, literally had a torture chamber built for her because this was something that he knew she just loved to do. A sweet gift. I know. And the poor apparently was just always covered in blood.
00:20:14
Speaker
And yeah, so it's just, it's truly horrible. So this mostly at first was servants, peasant children, et cetera. She even had people that worked for her go out and steal children to come back to the castle and torture them. But then her husband died.
00:20:34
Speaker
And after her husband died, and she was at this point, let's see, he died in 1604, so she was 43 years old, she really went wild. And she felt that the girl she was killing was not enough anymore. And so she wanted to be killing girls that were of more noble blood.
00:20:55
Speaker
oh my gosh i know so she started and this is just so outrageous to me because people had to know what's going on but i guess there's also the issue of like
00:21:08
Speaker
The people that she was killing and torturing were mostly of really low class, so people probably didn't believe them. So she got away with this for a very long time. But then she decided to start what's called a gymnasium. And not what we say now is a gymnasium, but this is something that's basically
00:21:29
Speaker
from ancient Greek times. And it's a woman's house where they could... And I don't know exactly how it was used in Greek times, but that's where the term comes from. And it was basically like an etiquette school. Like she started this museum where people, noble families would send their young girls
00:21:48
Speaker
to learn etiquette. And something I didn't really mention is that because of Elizabeth's very wealthy and prominent family, she was extremely well educated. She spoke many languages, spoke like Latin, German, Hungarian, there was many more that I forget right now.
00:22:05
Speaker
she was really smart and she had a lot of opportunities so she started this gymnasium to get more girls not only sent to her but their parents paying her to send their children to be tortured.
00:22:20
Speaker
Brutal. So at a certain point, she also started truly just killing people. But at first it was mostly torture. And then people started disappearing, basically. I was going to say, the torture is crazy because then people would have more likelihood, I feel like, of seeing them after or knowing they had been torturing. And maybe that's why she started killing people. I'm not super sure.
00:22:47
Speaker
So a lot of the atrocities that came up in this time, in addition to what we've already talked about, burning, being poked with hot pokers, putting people out to freeze or starve to death. Yeah, just a lot of just horrible things like that. Placed in freezing cold water.
00:23:09
Speaker
And then the biggest thing, which is a little unclear about how this started or if this is true, but Bathory was eventually also suspected of cannibalism, not only eating the flesh of her victims, but also drinking the blood.
00:23:25
Speaker
And this is where the stories sort of come into legend as well of her using blood, as we said earlier, to treat her epilepsy that she had, but also because she believed that it would keep her young and beautiful forever.
00:23:44
Speaker
Classic. Classic. There was one story that she had hit a servant girl so hard that it left blood on her hand. And the next morning she wiped the blood off and it looks, you know, she said it looked much younger, that part of her hand. I don't even know what that means, but it looked refreshed. And so this is when she started to bathe in blood. But once again,
00:24:09
Speaker
And I'm going to go into how she was eventually caught and all that. But there isn't really any documented testimony of the bathing in blood. So I'm not super sure if that's actually true or if that's more just rumor and legend building on itself.
00:24:27
Speaker
Wow. Okay. So 1602 to 1604. And this is once again around the time that her husband died. Rumors about everything she was doing started spreading around. And a Lutheran minister, whose name I'm probably going to say wrong, Istvan Mangiari, he made some complaints against her publicly and in the court of Vienna, because he had heard what was going on.
00:24:58
Speaker
And unfortunately, because of the time period, it took the courts a long time to basically respond to any of this and investigate. So it took until 1610, which is basically like six years later.
00:25:12
Speaker
for them to actually really get in there and investigate, which is just so annoying and such a bummer. And let's see, King Matthias II assigned this guy named Thurzo to investigate. And I think he was actually close with the Bathory family, or sorry, Elizabeth's husband before he died, but he did investigate. And so I think he was maybe lenient at first, but then kind of
00:25:40
Speaker
realized what was really going down. So Thurzo started collecting a bunch of evidence and by October 1610 he had over 52 witness statements and by 1611 he had over 300 witness statements.
00:25:57
Speaker
So that seems like a lot. I was gonna say that he needed that many. Yeah, apparently. I don't know. But the other issue here is that because she was for such a high ranking family, she got away with it for so long because there was really nothing they could do.
00:26:16
Speaker
Right. Because first of all, at first, she was basically getting rid of people that had no strong standing in society. And so they, you know, this is horrible. You know, they weren't missed, even though they were surely missed by their families. And unfortunately, I think this kind of still goes down today. But we can get into that another day with some true crime stuff. So by by the end of 1610, they finally did arrest Elizabeth.
00:26:45
Speaker
and also a few of her servants and intimates that were kind of her accomplices and kidnapping girls and definitely known torturers and such like that. And this is where it relates back to the Epstein thing a little bit.
00:27:02
Speaker
So Elizabeth herself was never put on trial because her family wasn't such high standing. But they basically were like, they didn't want the public embarrassment of a trial for such a prominent family. So instead, they basically put her on house arrest.
00:27:24
Speaker
They had sort of a solitary confinement situation in the castle where she had to basically stay until she died, which she died in 1614, so that was basically only like four years. And yeah, so she was basically just put on house arrest when she was basically found guilty of killing hundreds of girls aged 10 to 14.
00:27:49
Speaker
That is so effed up. Isn't that horrible? I mean, that's really awful. I was going to say, I feel like you're right, though, that we haven't come so far from that. Yeah. We haven't come far enough from that. Exactly. I feel like that happens all the time where it's like extremely rich people that can just pay their million dollar bail, maybe killed someone, but still get to chill in their house. Like what? Insane. OK.
00:28:18
Speaker
Oh, one other bit that I kind of forgot about, but I'll mention now. So at age 13, when she was engaged but not quite married yet, she had a child, which I know seems quite young, but yes, she had a child and apparently the father was a peasant that she had had a little rendezvous with or something, which sounds
00:28:39
Speaker
ridiculous to say I'm a 13-year-old. Yeah. But that's what went down. And so she had the baby, and the family gave the baby away to, I think, someone of lower class, but who they trusted to take care of the child. So there's also another bathory cell. That line is continued in a place that is not documented. So I'm very curious what happened to that child, too.
00:29:06
Speaker
And of course, that peasant boy was killed, which is ridiculous. I don't know if this is true either. And that's the thing with things that happened so long ago. It's kind of hard to tell what's myth or what's, you know, truth, but that he was castrated and then fed to a bunch of hungry dogs. No. Yeah. Like because of her or just because he was a bastard child? Do you know? No, this is the peasant boy she slept with.
00:29:37
Speaker
Oh, oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. I see. I see. The baby got to live on. The baby lived its life. Okay, great. I mean, not great. But the boy that impregnated her was killed. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. And of course, nothing happened to Elizabeth because, you know, she's of royal blood. Yes. Also, when she was arrested,
00:29:57
Speaker
they came to get her. They said that they caught her in the act of torturing someone. And they found bodies all basically all over the castle. They found a body half burned in one of the fireplaces. It was just literally like a horror show when they got there.
00:30:16
Speaker
I guess then there's no question if it was true or not. Yeah, it's clearly happening. And the body count was just totally outrageous. And it's so sad that it didn't really become a big deal until it was noble people's daughters. And they said, why are my children going missing? And she would come up with all these kind of elaborate
00:30:39
Speaker
reasons of how the children had died she even said because i guess she had killed a bunch of children in one period she said that one of the girls went crazy killed a bunch of the others and killed herself.
00:30:51
Speaker
which of course is not true. But that's kind of a, I mean, that's a smart lie because how could you really? Yeah, how else would she was going to explain all of these dead girls? Wow. Yeah, it's awful. But yeah, so that's basically the story. It's such, it's a bummer and it's just awful that she wrote in one of her diary entries that she killed 650 girls
00:31:19
Speaker
It's unclear, but it was definitely hundreds. Oh my god, 650? Yeah.
00:31:27
Speaker
It's just awful. That's horrifying. Yeah. And it's also unclear whether there is some speculation on whether she got off on this murder and tortured sexually, or if it was just fun for her, if it was out of boredom. There's not really a clear understanding of what her psychology was behind it, but she did it her entire life until she died. Wow.
00:31:52
Speaker
Yeah. Wow. That is really, really crazy. And just how creative that's a weird word. I know. But how many different forms of torture she used and murdered. Exactly. And that she had her own torture chamber just for funsies. Right. And so many servants. Everyone knew. Everyone knew. And people were involved in it. Servants were in charge of going to kidnap girls. It was a whole thing. But yeah, the freaking crazy story.
00:32:23
Speaker
Wow. Well, I mean, I had never heard it before, so very well told. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed that horrifying story.
00:32:37
Speaker
Since we don't have official ads for the podcast yet, we'll do one for ourselves. We would love if you could subscribe to us and leave a review. Also, if you want some pics to go along with the episodes, follow us on Instagram at sinister sisters podcast. And now on to the next story. And if you're just coming back now because you didn't want to hear about torture, here's Lauren.
Creepy Personal Stories and Urban Legends
00:33:02
Speaker
Yes, I'm doing something very different than that. I want to start with, I said a couple episodes back that my little brother had creepy wood stories.
00:33:12
Speaker
And I got to the bottom of it a little bit. The craziest part to me is that the first text he sent back to me was that he has an early memory of seeing aliens in our woods, in our backyard, which I'm like, uh, actual aliens. And he thinks it's all fabricated. Like he thinks it was just, he was reading a lot of sci-fi at the time and he's like, I don't think it's a real memory. But I was like, where, that's not what I was asking about at all.
00:33:41
Speaker
But the really spooky story that's true is that he and his friends stumbled upon this abandoned house in the woods behind our home in Virginia and he found like young Latina girl's diary which detailed her family's deportation which is
00:34:03
Speaker
crazy. I know in the wood like it was just this like small abandoned kind of shack like home where they found a diary where they were so scared that they left it there but I'm like what I know.
00:34:19
Speaker
Which also to me feels like maybe this is a grand story he has made up now, but I think it's true. I mean, he's an adult now. I feel like why would he lie now, right? But then there are people that lie their whole lives about things like this, but I think it's true. And it's very scary. I mean, the woods behind our house are like pretty extensive. Like I've never really explored them, but my brother has a lot. So anyway, those are my creepy wood stories. He also found these scary,
00:34:47
Speaker
deer skulls at some point that had been like decorated as if someone had like
00:34:52
Speaker
touch them, it's very spooky to me. I can't actually think about it because then I get scared. Yeah, I get scared some things in our woods. But anyway, that's my woods update.
Haunted History of Griffith Park
00:35:02
Speaker
But this week I am doing Griffith Park in Los Angeles. So for some context, this is the park where they like filmed a lot of the dance, like that dance sequence in La La Land. That's so famous. But it also has like Griffith Observatory. Anyway, I think
00:35:21
Speaker
I think I've been to this park, maybe I'm just creating it in my head, but it's apparently the site of a lot of restless spirits and paranormal activity. So it's like a greenery kind of park? Yes, yes, a greenery kind of park. For my brain, okay. Yes, for your park. For your brain. For your park.
00:35:41
Speaker
We've lost it. We're losing it. We're losing it. But this story starts in 1863, not quite as old as Felicia's, but a while ago. But it starts with Dona Petronella, who was the 17-year-old niece of a wealthy landowner named Antonio Feliz. So Antonio was dying of smallpox.
00:36:01
Speaker
another pandemic in our country. And so he sent his niece and his heir to downtown Los Angeles so she could be safe from the disease or from its spread. And after she left, Antonio Coronel, who was a former mayor and school superintendent, which is crazy that they had school superintendents at that time.
00:36:26
Speaker
But he came kind of skulking around to try to influence this dying old man to sign over his land to him.
00:36:38
Speaker
and this meant that he cut Dona, his niece, out of the will. So she was quite angry when she found out and put a curse on the land. So my favorite, she was reportedly declaring, the wrath of heaven and the vengeance of hell shall fall upon this place, that the cattle and fields would become deceased and diseased and die, and that no one will ever profit from this land.
00:37:07
Speaker
And then some other people say that she cursed the land's new owner, specifically saying, this one shall die in an untimely death and the other in blood and violence. But anyway, these seemingly came true pretty quickly.
00:37:22
Speaker
There are even some rumors that she maybe had a hand in her uncle's death so he died and the land went over to this other man. Some accounts say that she died on the spot of grief after she delivered this curse.
00:37:37
Speaker
But according to historians, she lived to the age of 92. And also according to historians, this man, Antonio Coronel, didn't actually cheat him out of the land and that he purchased it for $1 an acre.
00:37:53
Speaker
but cheap seemingly the curse has prevailed. Yes, very cheap. I love a curse. I didn't know this is a curse story. That's so exciting. I love that it's a curse story. I feel like I don't know a lot of curse stories.
00:38:08
Speaker
The first sign of this curse was the man who negotiated the land being transferred to this new owner was killed in a saloon. This man who bought the property Antonio Coronel, he was so scared of the curse that he quickly sold the land to a new man whose name was Leon Baldwin.
00:38:29
Speaker
He was obviously a wealthy businessman and he put a lot of money into the ranch, but it was plagued by a series of bad luck. His cattle died in a drought and his crops were devoured by insects, so he had to sell the farm because he was not able to handle it financially.
00:38:51
Speaker
So he sold it in 1884 and this was to a Welsh immigrant named Griffith Jenkins Griffith, who you will note the park is now named after. His first name was Griffith and his last name was Griffith.
00:39:06
Speaker
Unfortunately, that is what the Los Angeles Times reports. What a bummer for that guy. Yeah, right. But Baldwin could not escape the curse even after he sold the land and he was later murdered by bandits in Mexico. So unfortunately, this murder going on couldn't escape.
00:39:29
Speaker
So Griffith Jenkins Griffith, our new owner, in the same year that he purchased the ranch, a flood wiped out all of the oak trees and almost everything else, including the livestock, the other crops. And during this time, there were reports during this flood storm situation that people saw the ghost of Dona Petronela drifting about, possibly renewing her curse. She said, I cost you again.
00:39:59
Speaker
She said, I'm coming back just to make sure this flood works. But in 1893, Griffith was shot by a business rival outside of the old Calvary Cemetery, which is creepy to me because most of, I looked up the cemetery to be like, oh, can I go to the cemetery? And I think there is some of it left, but it's mostly been built over by a high school. Oh.
00:40:26
Speaker
Not a great move. Haunted High School? Haunted High School. You can't, like, I just think you can't move bodies. Or if they built over it, even worse. But you know what, Lauren? I bet there are bodies below you right now. And what if I just get taken? Taken by demons. I think you're right. We should have just burned them when we had the chance.
00:40:54
Speaker
So it was all too much for Griffith, clearly, after he was shot. And in 1896, so he was shot, he didn't die. I should have said that. Okay. Still living. And in 1896, which was 12 years after purchasing the land. So I honestly think he made a good, a good try of it.
00:41:12
Speaker
he began to gift large parcels of the land to the city of Los Angeles for free, trying to be a good man, have a good reputation, but even that didn't break the curse for him. To celebrate his gifting the land, he invited several of the city, I don't know, heads of the city, whatever, people who worked in the government
00:41:36
Speaker
to dine with him on the ranch at the old, so basically there's this adobe, that's where Feliz Dona's uncle, Antonio Feliz, had this old home on the property, so he invited people to dine there, and as the party continued, this is also, I'm getting all my information from the LA Times, there's an LA Times article about it, so it feels like a pretty- Reliable source. Reliable source.
00:42:06
Speaker
So to celebrate the gift, he had people over. As the party continued, the ghost of Antonio Feliz reportedly crashed the party. The ghost seated himself and said, Señores, I am Antonio Feliz. Come to invite you to dine with me in hell. In your great honor, I have brought an escort of subdemons. And supposedly the lights went out and screeching demons came dancing into the hall. And those demons were Lauren and me.
00:42:37
Speaker
I love that image just us being like, but the, you know, the leaders of the city fled from the house. And that is seemingly the end of that story. Then in 1903, seven years later, he shot his wife
00:42:58
Speaker
at a hotel in Santa Monica. She did survive, but I mean, there was a lot of people surviving from gunshots in the 1800s, 1900s, which was crazy. But she survived, but he was sent to San Quentin Prison to serve two years for shooting his wife.
00:43:17
Speaker
because he claimed alcoholic insanity and some sources say he was drunk, some say he was dead ass sober. But he still did it. He still did it. He shot his wife released two years later and he died
00:43:35
Speaker
so that's 16 years later from liver disease when he was 69. I feel like that's still not a bad life for that time period. It's still pretty old, but people say that that too was the curse that he died of liver disease. Now that Griffith Park was gifted to the city, as Dona wanted, it isn't making anyone rich. It's part of the city.
00:44:02
Speaker
Maybe that's part of it, but it hasn't had easy years. There was a large brush fire on October 3rd, 1933 that killed 29 of the public workers who came to put out the fire.
00:44:17
Speaker
That's a lot. Yeah, right? It feels like a lot of people. There were floods, there were a lot of floods and fires that have gone through this park, but the 150-year-old house that was built by Antonio Feliz, it has still survived this entire time, which is crazy. It's cool.
00:44:40
Speaker
So, some say, as I said, that her ghost haunts the land, appearing, as you guessed, a lady in white. Classic. It's the most cited apparition, even though there's the story about Antonio coming to Griffith, but nowadays, it seems like she is the one that people see. And she's described as a young woman in a white dress, sometimes riding a white horse, which leads me to ask, a ghost horse? I guess so.
00:45:11
Speaker
It was a real live horse, a real white horse with a ghost riding it. But I want to see a ghost horse. That sounds nice. Me too. Sounds like somehow romantic. Yeah, right? She just disappears on her white ghost horse. I hope I have a ghost horse in the afterlife. Me too.
00:45:29
Speaker
But at midnight, she is reportedly seen in the home frequently. So I guess she goes to bed after she rides her ghost horse. But according to folklore, there is another ghost that roams this park whose name is Peg and Twistle. So obviously, this isn't my main story. But she reportedly leapt to her death from the H in the Hollywood sign in 1932. And her classic move is startling hikers
00:45:59
Speaker
in her 1930s get up and her death was widely publicized. So I shouldn't have said reportedly leaped her death. She did leap to her death and her suicide kind of struck a nerve in Hollywood. So people are not sure if that ghost is just like emotional, you know, people, emotional turmoil after that, or if it really is her ghost, but I would be curious if she's still there now.
00:46:26
Speaker
Not to be morbid, but I guess why are we here? Do you think that the Hollywood sign is like a site of a lot of suicide? I am curious now after this story. I mean, I never really thought of that, but I don't know. I guess it is a way to sort of get a lot of publicity or a lot of attention to your
00:46:49
Speaker
death, which is sad that- Yeah, and also I just feel like Hollywood's such a difficult place. Yes. There's something like poetic and very sad about that site of death.
00:47:03
Speaker
Maybe we're going to have to look into that too. I'll look into the Hollywood signs specifically. The park has also been the final resting place for many murder victims. In the 1970s, it was the preferred dumping ground for the Hillside Strangler.
00:47:23
Speaker
Yeah, we're really modern now. Yes, we are much more modern now. And there have been dead bodies found in the park almost every year, which sounded awful to me. But now I'm like, maybe that's true of Central Park too. Is it? I don't know. I don't know. I feel bad, but homeless people or I don't know. I see what you mean.
00:47:47
Speaker
I don't know. But a body found every year does feel like there's a lot of death in the park.
00:47:55
Speaker
And in 1990, the LA Times reported that 10 dead bodies had been found in that two year period. So lots of dead bodies. And then in 2012, because I was just looking up this area afterwards, in 2012, there was a decapitated head found near the Hollywood sign and additional limbs were found strewn in other parts of the park.
00:48:20
Speaker
I mean, who had to be walking their dog that day and find that? That is so horrible. That's honestly, yeah. Mostly, I get scared about being at the scene of a crime where I would be required to jump in and help someone. That's so scary. But finding dead bodies is up there for me too, where I'm like, I cannot cope. Oh my God.
00:48:44
Speaker
So my most recent update is in 2019, three bodies were found that year. A woman's body was dumped in the park and found wrapped in blankets. There was a man's body found in a park restroom. And another man's body was discovered near a transmission tower in the park. So the moral of the story is there's a lot of death in this park. I am not surprised that people see ghosts. And I love the story of the curse. That's it. You know what's so funny?
00:49:13
Speaker
Let's hear it. You texted me today and you said, I'm going to do Griffith Park in LA today. And you said haunted park. My brain went to haunted amusement park.
00:49:25
Speaker
And so that's what I was sort of waiting for until I realized that I should no longer be waiting for the amusement park. Wait, but you were like, cool. Well, I thought that was very exciting. It was like a haunted amusement park. Amazing. Okay. Well, I promise. Next week, Felicia, I will do a haunted amusement park. If you could find one, that would be really nice. I will do that for you. I'm sure there are ones.
00:49:53
Speaker
Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure there are. There's that abandoned Santa thing in California. I'm sure there are many things like that. I know. There's an abandoned Wizard of Oz one, too. Oh, yes. And I think there's an Alice in Wonderland one, too. Somewhere. Let's do some Googling. I was going to say, we're going to do some spooky amusement parks maybe next week. But mostly, would anyone pay to have us travel there?
00:50:21
Speaker
If we could get a sponsored vacation to a haunted children's park, that would be really good for us. What if we just start putting our Venmos in the comment section of the Instagram? Just like TikTokers, just like TikTok teens. Yeah. To our cash out. To our 200 followers. Yeah.
00:50:40
Speaker
I'm down. I'm down.
Episode Conclusion and Call to Action
00:50:42
Speaker
That was a cool story. I love that it started with a curse because like the deaths now that you said that about like, you know, maybe a homeless person died of, you know, natural causes or maybe a drug overdose. But like the idea of the curse being there makes it a lot spookier. Right. Anyway, that's it for this week.
00:51:03
Speaker
Thank you so much for listening. As we always say, please rate and review and subscribe and interact with us on social media. Let us know what stories you want us to cover because I'm getting to a place where I'm just Googling spooky stuff. We love it. So if you have stories that you want to hear more about, please let us know. And until next week, we hope you have some sweet, sweet nightmares. Bye.