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Spooky LA stories from beyond the grave to get you in the spirit of Halloween
Cyril Thorn's wife is buried at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
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In honor of spooky season, we're digging up scary L.A. stories to tell in the dark. Esotouric LA’s Kim Cooper and Cemetery influencer Grace Waronker spoke with LAist Morning Edition host Austin Cross.
Here are three tales...
The outlaw who traveled dead
Elmer McCurdy was a terrible outlaw with bad friends and worse aim. He once blew up a train car trying to rob it, only to discover he'd destroyed his own payday.
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After a posse killed him in 1911, a mortician mummified his unclaimed body with arsenic. Carnies posing as relatives hauled him off to the circus.
Cooper said McCurdy probably traveled around the Earth one-and-a-half times in death. He eventually ended up as a forgotten prop at the Pike in Long Beach.
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4:57
Elmer McCurdy: The outlaw who traveled dead
In 1976, a crew member on The Six Million Dollar Man accidentally broke off his arm and discovered human bone inside. Now, McCurdy is remembered at a free sideshow museum in West Adams. It's the world's only life-sized effigy of an outlaw who became L.A.'s most-traveled mummy.
The girl kept on ice
When 16-year-old Willa Rhodes died in 1925, her foster parents couldn't accept it. They belonged to a cult awaiting divine instructions on defeating death.
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Willa Rhodes: The girl kept on ice
Cooper said the family preserved Willa's body with "a secret sauce" of salts, spices and massive amounts of expensive ice. They were waiting for an angel to finish dictating the location of all Earth's mineral wealth.
For four years, they moved her around. But when a disgruntled cult funder ran out of money and went to the police claiming fraud, investigators found Willa under a hatch in her foster parents' Venice cottage floor, alongside seven dogs meant to accompany her into the afterlife.
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Despite being carted around for years, Cooper said the autopsy photos show she still looked like a young girl, and that the embalmers “did a very good job.”
A failed experiment
Cyril Thorn couldn't shake his grief after losing his first wife. His obsession with contacting her led him down a dark path.
Waronker, who shares L.A. cemetery lore on her Instagram, said Thorn studied under psychic Hereward Carrington. He was convinced he could prove the existence of the afterlife.
In 1953, Thorn drove to Hollywood Forever Cemetery with flowers for his first wife's grave and a briefcase containing a cylinder of carbon monoxide. He fastened a mask to his face, turned on the gas, and killed himself, clutching photos and notes with detailed instructions for his funeral.
He wanted Carrington to place three light objects on his coffin and ask his ghost to knock them off in front of everyone.
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4:58
Cyril Thorn's story on an experiment and death
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Carrington carried out his instructions, but the objects never moved.
Carrington tried to claim that Thorn was just "disoriented" in his new form, but the experiment failed spectacularly. Waronker said the story's real takeaway is simpler than proving the afterlife: check in on your loved ones, especially when grief starts looking like obsession.
If you need immediate help
If you or someone you know is in crisis and need immediate help, call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline by dialing 988 or go here for online chat.
Find 5 Action Steps for helping someone who may be suicidal, from the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
Six questions to ask to help assess the severity of someone's suicide risk, from the Columbia Lighthouse Project.
To prevent a future crisis, here's how to help someone make a safety plan.
Kyle Chrise contributed to this story.
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You come to LAist because you want independent reporting and trustworthy local information. Our nonprofit newsroom doesn’t answer to shareholders looking to turn a profit. Instead, we answer to you and our communities. We are free to follow facts wherever they lead and to hold power to account without fear or favor. Our only loyalty is to our readers and listeners and our mission: to inform, engage, and strengthen Southern California’s communities.
If this story helped you, please become a monthly member today to help sustain this mission. It just takes 1 minute to donate below.
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