Topline:
Journalist Hadley Meares had written about the extensive haunted history at the Biltmore Hotel, the famed DTLA spot which hosted the Oscars and is renowned for the Black Dahlia unsolved murder case. But then she stayed overnight — and experienced a spooky close encounter with a ghost herself.
Clutch the covers closer: It's Halloween time, and we love our L.A. ghost stories.
Convinced yet? Everyone's a skeptic ... until a strange spirit takes over their body at 3 a.m.
It was a dark and stormy night in downtown Los Angeles. Remember those rains which came down for months earlier this year, turning L.A. from the land of sunshine into a grey city of slippery sludge? Well, that’s when my parents came to visit me in Los Angeles from their home in North Carolina. They have visited me many times in the past 20 years, but this time was special — instead of renting an Airbnb, they were staying in a suite in downtown’s legendary Millennium Biltmore.
How lovely it was to find respite in the Biltmore, with its gilded, if slightly faded glamour, after another day of tourism ruined by the rain. We are a family of history buffs, so to know we were walking the halls of a century-old hotel which hosted the Oscars, political conventions, and — my personal favorite — the high society fashion shows produced by the eccentric Peggy Hamilton — what a thrill!
I have a long history with the Biltmore. As a historical journalist, I have written about it for years, and of course, I am fascinated by the legends of ghosts and ghouls that supposedly haunt its halls. A ghostly little boy has been seen on the 10th floor, while another boy, this one without a face, haunts the roof. There is a little girl on the ninth floor, and a nurse on the second. On a tour of the property, a hotel employee told me that his own beliefs had been shaken by the number of employees who had strange otherworldly encounters.
I know all about Elizabeth Short, aka the Black Dahlia, L.A.’s most infamous murder victim, who disappeared from the hotel lobby to her doom. On the night of Jan. 9, 1947, around 6:30 p.m., the immaculately dressed Short allegedly entered the Biltmore’s lobby, escorted by an anxious man with red hair. After he left, Short spent the next few hours restless and nervous, repeatedly asking the hotel clerk if she had any messages, and making calls in the phone booth.
Others in the lobby became fascinated with the striking woman in the pristine white gloves, who looked so desperate and alone. Short paced, made more phone calls. But the hours passed. Finally, she appeared to get in touch with someone on the phone. Suddenly her mood noticeably lifted.
Bell captain Harold Studholme reported that a little after 10 p.m., a person on Olive Street motioned to Short for her to follow them through the lobby windows. She walked confidently out the lobby doors and disappeared into the night.
The Black Dahlia: The Murder of Elizabeth Short pic.twitter.com/zVZ6wYcSD8
— spooky threadz (@threadsbymads) October 30, 2018
On Jan. 15, Short’s body was found in a vacant lot in Leimert Park. She had been bisected and drained of blood, a sinister smile carved into her face. To this day, her case remains unsolved.
For years, there have been reports that Short’s tortured spirit haunts the 10th and 11th floors and rides the elevators, staring straight ahead. According to historian Janice Oberding, Short’s ghost — as beautiful as ever, with luscious dark hair — never greets or even notices any mortal who crosses her path. She seems preoccupied, on edge, forever waiting for the mysterious person who perhaps caused her death.
So yes, I knew all the stories. But did I believe in this paranormal activity? Not really, but I would never be arrogant enough to claim I knew one way or another. I have made a career exploring mysterious, often creepy places, but it’s been more from an anthropological point of view. My true interest in ghost stories has always been what they tell us about the places, people, and times from which the legend sprang. Cold, hard history —- and facts — could explain it all away!
All that would change that night at the Biltmore. Exhausted after a day of driving with my parents in the rain, I was happy to spend a cozy night with them in their suite. The dated suite wasn’t exactly luxurious, but it was huge, with a sitting area, two beds, and large windows with views of a soggy Pershing Square. After a night of watching college basketball on the room’s TV while eating Subway sandwiches, we all turned in around eleven.
I went to sleep easily, my parents snoring lightly in the bed next to me. Then all of the sudden — I was awake. The room was dark and silent, save the rain pattering on the window. Yet I could barely hear the rain due to the thoughts that were loudly rushing through my head. But instead of my usual middle-of-the-night thoughts — about my schedule the next day, or the appointment I had forgotten to make — they were thoughts I had never had in my life.
To my horror I realized something was very wrong. The voice, cadence and vocabulary were not my own. It felt like I had been inhabited by an angry, vengeful, man from another time and place. When I think of the voice now, I see a sweating, haggard middle-aged man from the 1940s, hunched at a hotel bar spewing disgusting vulgarities, his humanity blotted out by his rage.
The thoughts came through me at a rapid pace. They were strange, hateful and violent thoughts. I tried to rouse myself, to “wake up.” I tried to sit up. But I couldn’t move. I felt as though two forearms were pressing against my chest, like a shiny face was breathing over me, dripping spit and sweat on my cheeks. It felt as if the entity was taking me over. I didn’t know what to do. I have experienced sleep paralysis before, but it wasn’t that. It was terrifying. I was out of control. I WASN’T ME.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, the television in the hotel suite turned on, and instead of angry, incomprehensible words, a chatty, suave announcer was soothingly recapping basketball games on ESPN. The terror ended. I was myself again.
I opened my eyes, and saw both of my parents sitting straight up in their bed. “Did you turn on the TV?” we all asked each other.
No one had. It was 3a.m. “That’s so freaky!” my mother said. Then she chuckled — “Maybe it was a ghost!.” I was not laughing, and was now even more fearful — who the hell had turned the TV on? My dad got out of bed to turn off the TV, and then climbed back into bed. I wanted to say something more, but I resolved to attempt to forget it and go to sleep. I was exhausted, and felt as if I had just been engaged in a monumental fight.
I fell asleep quickly, but kept waking up periodically through the night, waiting for the TV to turn on again. In the morning I was shaken and confused. I remembered the violent rush of words, the terrifying feeling of pressure on my chest — but weirdly I could not recall anything specific the voice that inhabited me had said. To this day, I still can’t.
As I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, desperately trying to remember what the spirit had said, my mother hummed as she opened the heavy blackout curtains in the room. The sun was hazy and cloudy over Pershing Square, and the room felt once again like a normal hotel room. After a much needed cup of coffee and a day-old croissant, I told my parents what had happened. “I am never staying there again!” I said emphatically.
That next night, I stayed at my apartment in the Arts District, undisturbed by dreams or nightmares. I simply forced myself to put the night before out of my mind. I’ve always been a pro at conveniently forgetting things.
When I went to pick up my parents in the morning for another sodden museum day, they had news for me. The TV had turned on again at 3 a.m. It would turn on in the dead of night for the rest of their stay. They messed around with the TV, but could not discover any timer that had been set. Being the tight-lipped Southerners they are, they never complained to the Biltmore or told them what had happened. Neither did I.
After my parents went back to North Carolina, I decided to put my historical detective skill to good use. I pored over notes, books and blog posts, trying to figure out which of the alleged paranormal spirits of the Biltmore could have visited me. But none of the known ghosts of the Biltmore seem as malevolent, as evil, or as chaotic as what seemed to enter me that night.
Could it have been the spirit of the nervous red-headed man, who escorted Elizabeth Short into the lobby of the Biltmore that winter night of 1947? The unknown person who motioned her out of the lobby? A murderous traveling salesman, or a slighted mobster, a traitorous politician, who checked into the Biltmore many moons ago, and whose spirit never left?
I don’t think I will ever know. The Biltmore has given Los Angeles many gifts in the past century. To this cynical reporter, it’s given me a new perspective and a new healthy fear of things that go bump in the night. I now empathize more with those who say they have experienced the paranormal, and am not as quick to look to the logical to explain their experiences away. There are things all the research in the world can’t explain. And nowhere in L.A. is that truer than at the Biltmore Hotel.
Topline:
Many Native American languages are endangered. With the help of his mentor, a 12-year-old in Michigan hopes to help preserve his language through robotics.
Why it matters: U.S. Indian boarding schools played a major role in the loss of Indigenous languages. Children separated from their families were taught, sometimes violently, not to speak their native tongues, and many did not pass them on to their children.
Today, some Native youth are learning their languages in schools. That's why SkoBot was invented.
SAULT STE. MARIE, Mich. — The idea came to Danielle Boyer in a toy store. The inspiration? It was Tickle Me Elmo.
"Whenever you'd press his belly, he would talk, and he would teach you things," she said. "There are toys that teach us in English, but there aren't toys that teach us Anishinaabemowin. And I wanted that to be different."
Anishinaabemowin includes the Potawatomi, Odawa and Ojibwe languages. Exact estimates vary, but there are fewer than 10,000 people in the U.S. who speak Anishinaabemowin. That number is around 25,000 in Canada. Some Native languages have just a few dozen fluent speakers, while others have none.
Boyer has seen how quickly language loss can happen. Her grandmother speaks Anishinaabemowin, but she is one of the last fluent speakers of their dialect.
"It is devastating to feel like your language could be lost," said Boyer, a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. "You lose your culture, you lose a way to describe who you are."
U.S. Indian boarding schools played a major role in the loss of Indigenous languages. Children separated from their families were taught, sometimes violently, not to speak their native tongues, and many did not pass them on to their children.
Today, some Native youth are learning their languages in schools. But Boyer said many of them still aren't invested. "They see it as another homework assignment."
That's why she invented the SkoBot. It's a customizable toy robot designed to get Indigenous children excited to learn their languages.
"I can say 'Hey SkoBot, what is bear?' And it will say, 'Bear is makwa, makwa,' and it'll repeat it, right? So I can say, 'What is crane?' It'll say, 'Crane is ajijaak, ajijaak.'"
SkoBots use a form of artificial intelligence to speak Indigenous languages, and they're small enough to mount on the user's shoulder. They sort of resemble mini R2-D2 droids, from Star Wars, except these robots are designed to look like woodland creatures and decorated in Native American florals.
Through a nonprofit she started when she was 18, Boyer, now 25, has mentored hundreds of Native American children across the country, teaching them to build SkoBots of their own. One of them is 12-year-old Holden Hoy in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
"I was already a big fan of robotics and how they work, how you can bring inanimate objects to life," he said. "And I'm Ojibwe, and so I've always wanted to save the Ojibwe language."
Hoy, a rising seventh-grader, showed off his design at an end-of-the-year science fair at his school, JKL Bahweting Anishinaabe School in Sault Ste. Marie. Like Boyer, he is a member of the Sault Tribe.
He programmed his SkoBot to answer three questions ahead of his presentation. One of them was, "What's your name," to which the robot would respond in Hoy's voice: "Aaniin, Hello. Sabe indizhinikaaz, Bahweting indoonjibaa. I was built by Holden Hoy. I will not gain sentience and take over the world. Or will I?"
Hoy named his SkoBot Sabe, which means Bigfoot in Anishinaabemowin. In Ojibwe culture, Bigfoot represents honesty, one of seven sacred teachings.
His classmates and their parents stopped by his booth to see Sabe in action. Boyer was there too, helping Hoy with his presentation.
"I'm very happy that people are actually coming to this booth," Hoy said. "I'm happy that they are learning things, and I'm really happy that I'm part of the Ojibwe."
Sabe has one eye, a sensor that detects movement and lets it know to start listening.
"Basically, when it hears that one trigger word, it then plays a prerecorded audio file. So there isn't synthetic speech, there isn't any generative AI," said Boyer. "It's simply listening to what you're saying, identifying it and playing [audio files] that already exist."
That means the SkoBots will never make things up, often called AI hallucinations. Hoy said it's important not to use generative AI. "AI tends to falsify things a lot, not get things from trustworthy sources."
Boyer's goal isn't to replace interactions with real language speakers. Instead, it's to get kids interested in not only their languages, but in subjects like science, math and engineering as well. That includes getting them to think about how to use AI ethically.
"Artificial intelligence, especially when it's not created by Indigenous people, stands to do a lot of harm to our communities," she said. "When you are putting accurate information into these models … you're giving away sacred information to companies that don't have our best interests at heart."
And as chatbots have become more popular, Boyer said some people have turned to them to help them learn their languages. She's even seen large language models like ChatGPT invent fake words in Anishinaabemowin, which she said is dangerous. "If we're not learning our language correctly, we shouldn't learn it at all."
Jocelyn Hoy is Holden's mom. She's excited that her son is not only exposed to their culture, but he's eager to know more. She said he's even been teaching her new things.
"As someone who, at a time in my life, did not want to be identified as Native American … now as an adult, I cannot wait to learn more, and I think the SkoBots are going to help me and so many kids — so many people in general — learn their heritage and who they are."
Holden Hoy said that heritage and the language are inseparable: "The language is the culture!"
He added, "It is important to protect it, because it's some people's way of life. Generation after generation is based around this culture."
Edited by: Steve Drummond and Lauren Migaki
Visual design and development by: LA Johnson
Copyright 2026 NPR
Topline:
Korean American artist Dave Young Kim has completed his first mural in Koreatown, aiming to revive a tradition of Korean public art that has largely disappeared from the neighborhood where he grew up.
The mural: Installed this summer at the Korean Resource Center, the mural centers on pungmulnori — a traditional Korean folk performance combining drumming, dance and acrobatics — with drummers moving beneath sweeping ribbons of color and plum blossoms blooming across the wall.
Why it matters: Kim, 46, who was born and raised in Koreatown, says many of the culturally rooted murals he remembers from childhood have vanished, along with the public funding that once supported them. His work carries forward a tradition established by Korean American muralists like Dong-In Park in the late 1980s and early 1990s — at a time when longtime residents worry the neighborhood's Korean character is fading amid rapid change.
This story first appeared on The LA Local.
Murals depicting Korean drummers, dancers and historical figures were a large part of Dave Young Kim’s childhood in Koreatown.
At the time, the Korean American artist didn’t know what all of the imagery meant, but it left a lasting impression on him.
“We don’t learn culture via formal education. It’s all gleaned,” Kim said. “It’s just what we sense, and we feel a connection to it without actually knowing anything about it. It belongs to us, and it feels very familiar.”
Many of the murals Kim remembers from his childhood have since disappeared. With his latest mural at the Korean Resource Center, Kim hopes to bring some of that visual imagery back to the neighborhood.
Completed this summer, the mural is Kim’s first in Koreatown.
The mural shows a group of traditional Korean drummers moving beneath sweeping ribbons of color, with plum blossoms blooming across the bottom of the wall. Faint outlines of traditional Korean architecture appear in the background.
At the center of the mural is 풍물놀이 (pungmulnori), a traditional Korean folk performance that combines drumming, dance and acrobatics and has long been part of village festivals and celebrations.
For Kim, the project was a chance to reconnect the neighborhood with the kind of cultural imagery he says shaped his own understanding of identity growing up.
“It was important to me growing up, and for me to see myself through very purposeful art, very intentional art,” he said. “For my own formation and identity, I think it was very important. I’d like to do that for future generations.”
Kim, 46, who was born and raised in Koreatown, said the project felt different from his other murals because it was rooted in the community where he spent his childhood.
“The formative years of my life are here,” he said.
The project grew out of the Abbey Mural Prize, a national grant program that supports community-based public mural projects.
As part of the project, Kim partnered with the Koreatown Storytelling Program, which trains youth to interview community elders. Students interviewed residents at Durae Crenshaw House, an affordable senior housing complex and home to the Korean Resource Center, and shared transcripts with Kim as he developed the mural.
The architecture in the mural reflects the idea of home that emerged repeatedly in interviews with elders, Kim said.
“There were a lot of iterations of the mockups. The very initial ones were very, very, very rooted in the stories, the narratives from the elders,” Kim said.
The interviews also left an impression on Daisy Yeon, 17, one of the students who conducted them. She said participating in the project changed the way she thinks about Koreatown and its history.
Yeon said she believes traditional Korean imagery still has a place in a neighborhood that has changed rapidly in recent years.
“Personally, the way Koreatown has evolved in these few last years from the pandemic and the shift where people move into other Korean enclaves like Buena Park and Torrance, Koreatown is partly becoming a place of pop-up matcha spots, for example,” she said. “So I think it’s important for tradition to still be here.”
Seeing the finished mural was “a full-circle moment,” she said, after spending months interviewing elders whose stories became part of the artwork.
While researching Koreatown’s public art history, Kim learned many of the murals he saw as a kid grew out of cultural initiatives and public funding that no longer exist. He also discovered an earlier generation of Korean American muralists whose work once covered parts of Koreatown.
In 1993, artist Dong-In Park completed a mural of traditional Korean farmers’ dance in the Korean Community Center at 981 S. Western Ave.
He told the Los Angeles Times he hoped “the 1.5- and second-generation Korean kids” would not forget their language and history. Park, along with artists including Sonia Hahn and Kuk Chol Han, helped establish a tradition of public art celebrating Korean culture during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Kim wants his mural to carry that tradition forward while also reflecting the history of the community it was created for.
The Korean Resource Center, founded by South Korean democracy activist Yoon Han-bong, has long organized around immigrant rights, workers’ rights and civic engagement. During the project, Kim learned that traditional Korean drumming has long played a role in the organization’s activism.
In the mural, an older drummer who immigrated from Korea leads the group, followed by a middle-aged performer who learned from him and younger drummers wearing sneakers, modeled after college students who continue the tradition today.
“Where we landed was very much to the core of what KRC is,” Kim said. “They are very activist and progressive.”
The Koreatown of today is filled with Korean-owned businesses and Korean-language signs, Kim said, but far fewer public murals reflecting Korean culture.
His latest mural isn’t about recreating the past so much as restoring something he believes has faded from the neighborhood.
As an artist, Kim said, public art has the power to shape how people experience a place.
“There’s something about the everyday landscape that you kind of are forced to take in,” he said, “and then as an artist, having the ability to shape what that might be.”
Topline:
Lineage, the company leasing the storage warehouse in Boyle Heights that burned in June, says “nearly half” the food waste has been removed.
Why it matters: The rotting food inside the warehouse has led to noxious odors in the surrounding neighborhood, causing issues with vermin.
The backstory: Lineage has been removing the food products for weeks and has faced citations and warnings from L.A. County and the South Coast Air Quality Management District.
What's next: Demolition and cleanup of the rest of the burned building will be completed in the coming days, the company said, as it begins cleanup of the unburned section.
Go deeper: Lineage cleanup by the numbers: Will they meet their deadline?
Lineage Logistics, the company that operates the burned cold-storage warehouse in Boyle Heights, announced yesterday it's removed “nearly half” of the food waste there.
The waste, the company said, has been sealed in deodorized containers and is being transported off-site.
Lineage estimated that demolition and cleanup of the rest of the burned structure should be largely completed in the “coming days.”
Before the weeklong fire that began on June 17, the warehouse stored approximately 44,000 tons, or 88 million pounds, of food.
The company said it has started removing the wall separating the burned and unburned sections of the building this weekend to speed up the cleaning of the unburned structure.
The process includes installing plastic sheeting where the wall used to be to help tamp down odors
That part could take up to three days and may temporarily increase odors. To mitigate the smell, the company said three carbon filters will be added on the Union Pacific side of the warehouse.
The company is trying to meet a 45-day deadline set by L.A. Mayor Karen Bass to complete the cleanup. Lineage has faced citations and warnings from L.A. County and the South Coast Air Quality Management District for "an ongoing odor nuisance" and “unsanitary and nuisance conditions.”
Topline:
Advisers to the Food and Drug Administration voted in favor of easing regulation of popular peptides. The recommendations could pave the way for specialized pharmacies to produce them in the U.S.
Why it matters: Currently, these peptides can't be made in the U.S., except for research purposes, leading many peptide users to buy unvetted substances sold online, with disclaimers such as "for research use only" and "not for human consumption."
By narrow margins, the panel voted in favor of all but one. The FDA isn't required to follow advisory committee recommendations but typically does.
A slate of popular peptide therapies has won the backing of a key advisory panel to the federal government — a step that could eventually open up broader access to the experimental drugs.
In a marathon two-day meeting last week, the panel of doctors, academics and pharmacists recommended the Food and Drug Administration reclassify almost all of the compounds under consideration so that specialized pharmacies in the U.S. could begin offering them.
Seven different peptide therapies — none of which are FDA-approved drugs — were under consideration.
Currently, these peptides can't be made in the U.S., except for research purposes, leading many peptide users to buy unvetted substances sold online, with disclaimers such as "for research use only" and "not for human consumption."
By narrow margins, the panel voted in favor of all but one. The FDA isn't required to follow advisory committee recommendations but typically does.
The outcome represents a win for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has publicly supported peptide therapies, and the broader wellness and longevity industry, which stands to profit substantially.
These peptides are promoted for a wide range of uses and are often taken together, including for injury recovery, muscle growth and fat loss, improving athletic performance, enhancing metabolism and more.
If the agency takes the panel's recommendations, clinicians could have the ability to prescribe six peptide therapies: BPC-157, MOTS-c, KPV, TB-500, Epitalon and Semax.
A compound called Emideltide, sometimes used for insomnia, was the only one to receive a down vote.
The panel's endorsement of peptides was a striking rejection of the FDA's stance against them.
While the level of evidence for each compound varies, all of them lack the kind of large, well-controlled trials in humans that are necessary to establish safety and effectiveness, which is required for drug approvals. Peptides are strings of amino acids — smaller than a protein — that often act as signaling molecules in our bodies and carry out many critical functions.
They can be synthesized and delivered as drugs, often by injection. Some of those, like insulin, are naturally occurring in the body. Others are modified versions, as with the blockbuster GLP-1 obesity drugs.
Scientists for the agency spoke extensively about the lack of reliable data for any of the seven peptides before the committee. They advised the panel to vote no.
In some cases, they couldn't find any published clinical studies in humans — and there were safety concerns like the potential to encourage cancer growth or to trigger a massive immune response.
A "foundational challenge" was simply defining the substances, because the chemical composition for peptides labeled with the same name varied considerably, explained FDA official Russell Wesdyk.
"You will see many, many different forms," he said. "We can't create quality standards until we actually know what it is."
The divide among the experts on the panel was a study in contrasts.
Ahead of the meeting, eight new members were appointed. Most have ties to the peptide industry and include physicians who work for medical practices and companies that promote them.
In almost all cases, they voted in favor of lifting restrictions.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services pushed back on criticism about potential conflicts of interest and said all underwent the standard ethics and vetting process.
"I think it's about patient access," said Dr. Asare Christian, one of the panel members who runs a Pennsylvania-based clinic that advertises peptide protocols and hormone optimization.
That sentiment was echoed throughout the many hours of public comment.
Compounding pharmacies, large telehealth providers and others from the industry underscored the perils of the unregulated marketplace, with some offering anecdotes of patients obtaining unmarked vials from sketchy suppliers.
"What we are advocating for is not the Wild West," said Brigham Buhler, who runs a telehealth company that offers hormone optimization and peptides and is an ally of Secretary Kennedy.
"What we are advocating for is to slow down or shut down the gray and black market and to allow patients to have a safe and effective manufacturing process," he told the panel.
But some panelists were skeptical of that argument.
"I'm concerned that we are responding to market-induced demand rather than a decision based in solid science," Dr. Elizabeth Rebello, an anaesthesiologist at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, commented after casting a no vote.
The FDA committee was tasked with reviewing data that supports using these peptides to treat a variety of specific conditions, such as BPC-157 for treating ulcerative colitis, an inflammatory bowel disease.
However, if the FDA ultimately reclassifies them and they are produced by compounding pharmacies in the U.S., clinicians would have discretion to write prescriptions outside of those narrow indications.
During the meeting, industry groups — and some on the panel — repeatedly criticized the FDA presentations for not reflecting more recent scientific data on the substances, including results from other human studies that had been submitted ahead of time.
FDA staff said they had considered everything submitted by the meeting deadline and would still take new information into account as they weigh next steps.
The decision to place the products on the FDA's official list for compounding doesn't come close to the standards for drug approval, but some worry that nuance will not be clear to the public, which may not be aware of the limited data for humans.
"I think this endorsement can be potentially harmful and I cannot in good conscience vote yes," said Dr. Brian Lee, a member of the panel and an associate professor at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.
If the FDA moves to reclassify the peptides so that compounding pharmacies can make them, it will be through a formal rulemaking process that could stretch into next year or 2028. There is a possibility that Kennedy could invoke special authority to make them available sooner.
The panel is scheduled to meet again in February to consider additional peptide therapies.
Copyright 2026 NPR
