Ghosts of Oxnard:The capital of the Hoodoo Triangle

Excerpts from Ghosts of Oxnard:The capital of the Hoodoo Triangle By Richard Senate for FateMagazine.online

Many mysterious triangles exist all over the world, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, on land and

lakes. These are sections of the earth where odd and strange things happen, things like

monsters, UFOs, mysteries and ghosts. In my 40 years of ghost hunting I have discovered one

such triangle in my home state of California. It extends from Mugu Rock on the coast to the hills

above Camarillo, to the Ventura Mission. In the center of what I have named The “Hoodoo

Triangle” stands the City of Oxnard. Yes, many strange things happen here and more than a

few buildings in Oxnard are haunted. In this zone of supernatural energy people have seen

UFOs and encountered creatures that seem to boggle the mind.

Yet, few know of Oxnard, made famous in a several monologues by the late great Johnny

Carson on the Tonight Show. The City of Oxnard in a relative newcomer to California,

incorporated in 1903 in the shadow of the world's largest sugar beet plant with its distinctive two

tall smoke stacks. It was named by the factory builder and owner, one Henry Oxnard. The town

grew around the plant, on the fertile Oxnard plains that produced the big ugly beets that were

turned into sugar to feed the sweet tooth of the nation. In those early years it was a wild boom

town, a place of saloons and violence, a multi-cultural community with many nationalities and

cultures, each with its own traditions and customs, brought together, trying to build new lives

working in this booming factory town. Not long after being established, the railroad came to

carry the bags of sugar to the hungry nation. It attracted a young lawyer named Erle Stanley

Gardner to defend the downtrodden Chinese merchants. These events would serve him well

when he left the law to write mystery stories and books, creating the crusading lawyer, “Perry

Mason” (loosely based on himself).

Perhaps it was the violent past that caused a “psychic vortex” to open here, a place where

strange things happen on a regular basis. It has grown to become one of the largest cities in

California, and the biggest in Ventura County. This book lists some, only a few, of the many

haunted places and bizarre happenings in my files. They include things in Port Huneme, with a

haunted mansion, to Camarillo's Mental Hospital (Now used as a California University) to Mugu

on the famed Pacific Coast Highway. But, it is Oxnard that reigns supreme, the capital of the

Hoodoo Triangle, where a walk down “A” Street is a walk though the portals of the supernatural.

Such accounts are easy to dismiss in the warm sunlight of a California summer, but, wait till the

cold fog rolls in from the Channel, when the full moon is fuzzy and dim, then the stories become

very believable—very believable indeed.

Richard Senate 2018

THE FLOATING HEAD OF “C” STREET

In July of 1978 I encountered a ghost monk during an archaeological dig at the Mission San

Antonio de Padua, near King City, California. The unexpected meeting caused me to rethink my

opinions on the subject of the supernatural and set me on the path of psychic investigation.

After returning home from the archaeological expedition, I began to collect ghost stories and

write them down, as well as read everything I could find on the paranormal. My first case in my

files was located in Oxnard. It was the report of a mysterious floating head seen on “C” Street in

the older section of the community. I had placed a letter to the editor, in the Star-Free Press

Newspaper asking for ghost stories and received a handful of accounts and a few samples of

hate mail as well. One of the letters told of a woman seeing in bizarre apparition floating along

“C” street in Oxnard. At first she thought it was a balloon, but as it drew closer, she saw it had

hair and a mustache! She watched the thing until it passed her on the other side of the street.

I called her up and, after a few try's, spoke with her about the strange encounter. She said it took

place at dusk as she was coming home from the market with the makings for the nights dinner.

She said the odd thing seem to float along at about five feet off the sidewalk. It even looked at

her and she had the impression that it was looking for something or someone. I wrote up the

account and labeled it as the phantom of some decapitation murder, perhaps seeking justice for

his death.Research at the Foster Library in Ventura disclosed that headless bodies are reporting all over

the world, but floating heads seem to be rather rare. A search found an example in San Jose,

California. In looking over the case, and visiting the site where it took place, at dusk, It came to

me that the sighting may well have been not of a severed head at all, but a full apparition that

somehow failed to fully materialize. The head was where a head should be, if it had a body,

but, for some reason, the body was invisible. I wrote down all I had discovered and filed it

away. I made a note that the witness may well have imagined it all. Perhaps she saw a child's

balloon and imagined it in the dim light of the setting sun. I forgot the story as other cases came my way.

Then in March 1983 I received a second account of a man driving on “C” Street near 1st

Street when he saw the floating head going down the sidewalk, heading towards the downtown.

This gentleman saw the head, in the early hours of the morning and said it looked right at him.

“It sacred the sh*t out of me,” he recalled in my interview. Again, it appeared to be five feet off

the ground, behaving, as if it had a body, unseen my the witness. He said the odd apparition

simply vanished. I asked if he had met the first witness or knew of the story of the floating

head. He claimed he never heard of such a thing—and didn't believe in ghosts! He drew a

simple picture of the object at my instruction, and it was lean with sharp features and a long

nose and black mustache and rather long hair. The image looked to me like someone from the early 20th

Century.

The floating head seemed to go dormant for a decade when I picked up another account in

1994. This time two women saw the thing, in the early evening, about 8 pm, on April 16. They

were driving down “C” Street near 2nd

street Street and saw it moving along the street heading

towards downtown. The description was the same, but they said they felt a disturbing feeling

linked to the ghost, as if it was an omen of ill fortune. “ I saw it for some time before telling my

friend about the thing”. Both the women believe themselves to be psychic and had a string of

paranormal encounters all over Ventura County. Again, I asked if they had heard the stories of

the floating head. One of the pair said a friend had told her about the phenomena, and she was

the one who saw the thing the longest. I had to wonder just what they had seen. Both seemed

credible but something seemed odd in their telling of the story. I marked it down and placed it

in my files, until there was another sighting in early 2004. This time the sighting was on “C”

Street, near Fifth Street. One of my former students claimed he was walking down the street

when he heard footsteps following him, He turned and not six feet away from him, the

mysterious head was coming towards him on the sidewalk. In less than four seconds, the

strange apparition simply vanished. This time the report of footsteps might give a clue, It has

nothing to do with the way the person died but something to do with materialization process.

The ghost was there, but the area below the neck was invisible. This might account for headless

ghosts and ones without legs of feet. Maybe, if he returns to “C” Street, the mystery of the

floating head can be solved. So next time you drive on “C” Street keep an eye out for the

mysterious head. He hasn't been seen, as far as I know, since 2004.

THE THING IN THE UNDERGROUND ROOM

The large Victorian House on Hueneme Road, Oxnard, is gone now. It stood for many decades

near the corner of Hueneme Road and Ventura Road, not far from the Frosty Freeze that once

stood there. It was perhaps the first haunted house I ever investigated and what ever was there

was chilling indeed. It was a big farm house, built for a large family, complete with a tall tower so

beloved in the 19th

Century. It was once a beautiful home with hardwood floors and ornate

fireplaces. The place was in need of work when the family bought it back in the early 1970s. It

sold for an exceptionally low price. In looking back they might have figured out why it was so

cheap. They never discovered why the family sold it so quickly as they left the county not long

after the sale was complete.

The house had newer central heating, something well needed on cold, foggy nights, that roll in

off the Channel. But there was one room that was always cold and dank. Even when the

thermostat was turned up to ninety degrees, that one room was always near freezing. The

family didn't know that such things as cold spots are symptomatic of a haunted house.

Then, things started to happen. In the cold room, in a large walk-in closet, there was a large

trapdoor that gave access to the basement or an underground room. It was nailed shut and

had boards nailed over it to keep it from opening. What ever it was they didn't disturb the

blocked door. One night they came home and found things in the house moved about,and

broken. Nothing was taken, just re-arranged and smashed. They found the trapdoor to the

underground chamber open and it was clearly done from below, pushed up, breaking nails and

wood, almost as if something had “escaped.” They re-closed the trap door, adding new boards,

glue and nails. The father believed it was kids, who somehow broke in though the unused

basement. The locks were all changed, and door chains installed. Still, when they were out,

something would continue to move things about.

Curious, I told them to put booby traps in the house, black threads and tabs of paper in the door

jams to see if anyone was there. They enhanced this by trying an old 19

the Century trick.

They dusted the floor with a fine coat of flour. If anyone (or anything) was present it would leave

footprints behind. They placed the white powder at the doorways and windows as well before

they left for the night. When they returned, they found items had been moved but none of the

doors had been opened and the flour on the floor hadn't been disturbed! What ever had caused the movements had left no trace of their presence.

Relatives came to the house to stay and a young mother and her baby slept in the “cold room”

with an electric blanket. She thought everything would be OK. That night the baby refused to go

to sleep, crying all night, and she was overcome by a feeling of absolute terror. She left that

morning. After this, the family sold out and moved to Hollywood. The house became a rental

after that, with many families coming and going, none stayed long in the big house. When the

family returned to Oxnard after a few years, they came and saw the house was vacant and

being burned by the Oxnard Fire Department, to train their fire crews. I wonder if the fire got

rid of the negative energy that lingered in the house. Perhaps, the ghost remains still, and a new house, or condo will be built there and the new owners may get more than they imagine on Huneme Road.

The Ghost in the old Oxnard Cemetery

The Japanese Cemetery at the Pleasant Valley cross roads is well known and maintained. It is

a land mark honoring the contributions of Japanese Americans to the Oxnard Plain. The

phantoms are linked to the area behind the Japanese Cemetery, beyond the trees. This is the

Yankee Protestant Cemetery, now abandoned, weed encrusted and forgotten. A few of the old

stone monuments still stands, forlorn and weather beaten, The stories of ghosts lurking here

date back to the late 19th

Century. A glowing phantom is said to appear at the old burying

grounds on nights of the full moon. Some describe it as a humanoid form, others say it is a

woman in white, with white hair and a long dress. Some say her eyes glow like cold blue stars.

An old sighting, told by an Irish Catholic boy, wrote it was the ghost of a banshee or Satanic

imp who comes to take sinful people to Hell. If you see the figure you have been selected by your

actions for a swift trip to the underworld. Just seeing the image is a sort of curse that foretells

death. One story says a young man saw the figure one night and within a week the he died in

a strange accident where he was struck by a train and cut in half by the sharp steel train wheels.

It is an odd place to visit, even on a warm afternoon it is somber and cold, a place of death and sorrow.

Perhaps it can be restored someday, and maybe then the phantom figure will not walk

here.