What are the most haunted places in pomona?
a san francisco newspaper wrote about spadra cemetery. in my opinion, spadra cemetery must be the most haunted places in pomona
There are more than a few stories of hauntings at the cemetery, including a ghost that grabs you and “very frightened teen-agers who told [a tour guide] they had seen a vampire emerge from one of the graves on several occasions,” according to the LA Times in 1984. This reporter and an accompanying photographer didn’t feel anything paranormal on a recent visit, but it’s certainly a spooky place, made all the creepier with many cracked headstones or ones missing altogether.
the same newspaper article wrote that there had been reports of “bizarre cultist activity, believed to be associated with devil worship” at the cemetery in 1982. Black and red candles were left at grave sites and “666” markings were made on tombstones.
A forgotten Calif. town lives on in one mansion, a vandalized cemetery
Along an industrial stretch of Pomona, lined with warehouses and low-slung manufacturing buildings, a grand 1875 mansion sits set back from the street behind a wide, green lawn. The historical landmark has undergone multiple renovations, resisted demolition and survived major earthquakes over its more than 150 years, prevailing stubbornly as one of the last remaining symbols of a forgotten town.
Just down the road, a locked iron gate guards a road to a small cemetery that has withstood a similarly long battle for subsistence, though the dead’s descendants have long moved away. Years of vandalism, grave robbing and even alleged cult ceremonies have taken their toll, though the graves remain. Today, the two landmarks are the only remnants of Spadra, a Wild West settlement that’s all but disappeared into California’s history.
In the 1850s, an enterprising immigrant named Louis Phillips saw potential in the outskirts of Los Angeles County. He’d made his way down from San Francisco to try ranching, acquiring land in the San Gabriel Valley to raise cattle and farm, eventually finding it a lucrative business. He then acquired 12,000 acres of land in what would become modern-day Pomona, and, hoping to capitalize on this new investment, sold parcels of land to newcomers in an effort to spur development.
William “Uncle Billy” Rubottom, an Old West businessman, bought 100 acres and gave the new town its name in 1866, an ode to his hometown of Spadra, Arkansas. He owned a tavern and stagecoach station that “was one of the most important stopping points on the Butterfield stagecoach line,” according to the Progress-Bulletin, a newspaper that once covered the Pomona area.
The small town seemed poised for greatness as hotels, shops, a school and a post office soon sprang up. Phillips even convinced the Southern Pacific Railroad to stop in town, and by 1870, as many as 500 people lived there. “Spadra was the social center for the area,” the newspaper wrote.
Meanwhile, resident Melinda Arnett died in 1868 and couldn’t be buried in any of the area cemeteries, which were all Catholic. Some of Phillips’ land was used to create a new cemetery that would house non-Catholic burials, and today Spadra Cemetery is full of prominent early area residents.
Adjacent land would host Phillips’ grand mansion. Built for an estimated $20,000, it was one of the first brick homes built in the area and the first to have gas lighting. But by 1883, the train stop had moved to nearby Colton, and the town suffered. It didn’t matter for Phillips, though, as he’d already started buying up blocks of downtown Los Angeles, and was profiting handsomely from his investments. In 1892, the Pomona Progress dubbed Phillips the “richest man in Los Angeles County” at the time, “worth not a dollar less than three millions,” largely gained from his extensive real estate holdings, as well as successful ranches that produced wool, honey, hay and wheat.
Phillips died in 1900, and his wife Esther lived in the mansion until she died in 1918. The family sold the house in the 1940s, when it was renovated into apartments. It was occupied until the 1960s, then sat vacant for years until the Historical Society of Pomona Valley saved it from demolition in 1974 for $45,000. The organization aimed to restore it to its former glory and had it added to the National Registry of Historic Places.
When Louis Phillips’ son George died in 1923, he left $2,000 in his will — nearly $40,000 in today’s dollars — to care for the cemetery. The funds contributed to its maintenance for years, but the cemetery mostly closed down in the late 1940s, with the last official burial taking place in 1968. Over time, there were fewer families of the deceased in the area to look after the grounds and in 1971, the historical society took over, under an agreement that they would preserve it as a landmark.
Protecting the land has been difficult, though, especially given its secluded location, behind the railroad tracks and amid other vacant land. It has been a “playground for vandals” for decades (in the words of the Progress-Bulletin) and many of the headstones have been damaged over the years. In one particularly brazen act of destruction in 1961, three teenage boys even robbed a grave and took a deceased person’s head with them, which was later found in Pomona. Newspaper reports wrote that as soon as the managing association restored the headstones of the 200 graves, they’d be vandalized again.
“The old cemetery has been the site of ghoulish pranks of teen-agers for years. Headstones, taken from the place, have been found on front porches and at street intersections occasionally for a long time,” a Progress-Bulletin article reported in 1962 after another grave robbery.
There are more than a few stories of hauntings at the cemetery, including a ghost that grabs you and “very frightened teen-agers who told [a tour guide] they had seen a vampire emerge from one of the graves on several occasions,” according to the LA Times in 1984. This reporter and an accompanying photographer didn’t feel anything paranormal on a recent visit, but it’s certainly a spooky place, made all the creepier with many cracked headstones or ones missing altogether.
he same newspaper article wrote that there had been reports of “bizarre cultist activity, believed to be associated with devil worship” at the cemetery in 1982. Black and red candles were left at grave sites and “666” markings were made on tombstones.
For those looking to get a glimpse of long-forgotten Spadra, the Historical Society of Pomona Valley offers tours of both the mansion and the cemetery, though they don’t happen often. The cemetery’s Halloween tours are particularly popular, and operate as a big revenue stream for the historical society, making as much as $10,000 over one weekend.