Ominous angels overlook the dark ballrooms of the Alexandria.

As I drove west on Cesar Chavez the downtown skyline stabbed at the heavens and I could see a dark cloud looming from the Pacific, threatening our city, but as Tom Waits uttered maladies on my radio I embraced the ominous cumulus as a good omen. I was on my way to visit some of the darkest hallways and stairwells that exist in Los Angeles. Rumors of spirits lurking have drawn me here tonight.

These “appearances”, along with the tenants in the old buildings, are rapidly changing nowadays but underneath it all is a soul that you cannot supplant. Just take a walk down Spring or Main Street late one night to feel the remnants of the past; spirits of yesteryear still electrify the passageways.

I parked my car and came across Mike, a homeless man in his late forties. He is laden with regret. He makes his home at the steps of Saint Vibiana’s Cathedral on 2nd & Main, built in 1876. Until recent renovations, the old church had been condemned since the 1994 earthquake.

“I saw a whole family walk out of that church once and into the street,” said Mike in a shaken voice. “Then they disappeared, vanished, right in the middle of the road there! I just shook my head and tried to get back to sleep.”

Looking into his eyes I could see his fear and I ask, “Are you scared?”

“No, I got the lord right there,” he says as he points to the church.

He then told me that one time when he and a friend were standing outside the Alexandria Hotel, scaffolding had masked the façade and plywood covered the entrance to Charlie O’s, and they saw a man in a “fancy black suit and chucks” exit the famed bar and then simply disappear in front of them.

“That time I had a witness but we never tol’ NO-body,” he said, wide-eyed, as if the spirits still took residence in his gaze.

Mike followed me for a while, but I wanted to shake him off, so I made my way to Bar 107, gave him five bucks for his storytelling, and I went inside for a dose of bottled spirits.

The dirty walls of this place made me nostalgic for the dying breed of dive bars and I wondered if Mike’s stories could be true. Then again, he did also show me medical proof of a skull fracture he got when he took a two-story drop while running from the cops. Ouch!

True or not, I drank my beers and I went next door to the Hotel Barclay. I asked Jose, the man behind the wrought iron gate check-in-desk, if he had ever seen any ghosts here. He looked at me in an odd & unsettling way that made me turn around and start walking. Then he said, “No, not here. Try the Alexandria. I worked there for 8 years.”

He said there have been many sightings of a little girl in a white dress. Multiple witnesses saw her at one time come out of an elevator and into the lobby. She played with a ball, then, stepped back onto the elevator. They tried following her to no avail.

“Go ask,” he said.

Oh, I will.

But I stopped first at the new swanky joint 8Hill Club on the corner 8th & Hill. Samson Slater is the man running the once-bank now newest downtown club with a vault. “That shit is definitely haunted,” he said.

During renovations of the old building Samson spent many nights working late with his construction manager, Elvis Gibbs. They used wooden shelves and the vault as storage. Late at night heavy tools would fall off shelves, the two-foot thick vault door that takes two people to move would shift…all by itself, and in one far corner of the club is where they often see shadows dancing and felt the strangest vibes. I got chills just thinking about it. The place is cavernous too, unnervingly cold, with thirty-foot high ceilings. I’m going to have to return, shoot back a bottle of courage and see if I can witness anything myself.

Finally I arrive at The Alexandria Hotel, built in 1906, and was once part of the downtown celebrity glitz before Hollywood took away the spotlight. I entered the hotel from Spring and felt all eyes on me immediately. From a crowd of tenants shooting the shit a young security guard emerged. “I can’t answer any of your questions, Sir. I’m gonna have to ask you to leave,” he said. Fucker.

As I walked out he radioed another guard to brief him on the situation and to make sure he didn’t answer any questions either. Fine, I get it.

Unbeknownst to them, they lead me in the right direction. Outside the Fifth Street door of the hotel were a group of tenants smoking cigarettes, enjoying the cool evening air.An older, heavyset man sitting on a rascal scooter said, “This place is full of ghosts.”

Allen was his name. He told me that everyone he knows has heard noises and seen shadows but that the two re-occurring stories are that of the little girl in a white dress and the one of the bellhop.

“Bellhop?” I ask.

“Yeah, you know; the guy in the fancy suit.”

I felt stupid asking such a husky man if he was scared. He said, “No, they’re not dangerous, I just don’t think they know they’re dead yet.”

I listened to a few other similar stories, then, left, but as I did I felt them staring at me, they all fell silent. Maybe they were hoping I would have stayed longer and allowed them to tell me more. It was clear that it made them feel good to tell their tales almost as if they poured their ghosts into my thoughts and were now free of them.

I got the same feeling when I left Mike, the homeless dude. He too seemed to not want me to leave his side. Eyes-wide, the look on his face begged me to stay longer and chat. I now wish I had.

Walking back to my car, I contemplated the history buried beneath all of this concrete and metal, imagining souls come and gone, I felt myself connected with them through a timeless field of energy. It brought a strange feeling of melancholic-comfort.

I stopped counting the cracks on the floor and looked up. No, I didn’t see any ghosts that night but I did see an Ed Hardy store on Spring.

Now that’s scary.

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Rafael Cardenas can be reached at eastsiderwriter@gmail.com

This article was previously published by Citizen L.A.

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