The House On West Eleventh Street

San Pedro, California — November 1988

San Pedro is a port town where salt air carries whispers from the bay. The ocean counts hours against pilings—one lap, one breath, one heartbeat at a time. The houses sit modest there, built for working men and women who dock boats and unload cargo and believe firmly in the arithmetic of work, home, family.

At 593 West 11th Street, a bungalow waited.

It had seen families before. Lives lived behind its walls. Laughter and quarrels. The ordinary business of breathing. But houses remember. Or perhaps they attract. Or perhaps something waits inside them, patient as stone, until the right person arrives to turn the key.

In November 1988, Jackie Hernandez moved into the bungalow with her two-year-old son Jamie with a daughter named Samantha ready to be brought into the world. She was twenty-three years old. Her name sat upon rental agreements and employment records and birth certificates Her name sat upon rental agreements and employment records and birth certificates.

Jackie’s husband Al had walked away. The marriage was broken, but the bills remained. She would finish her degree. She would work three jobs. She would feed her children. She would believe, as all people believe in this country where optimism is birthright, that everything could be built new.

The house did not care for optimism.

The house waited for Jackie.

Whispers In The Woodwork

December 1988 — January 1989

Hauntings never begin with drama. They begin small. They begin with things that make a mother’s chest tighten when she sees them.

The attic door found itself open when Jackie knew she had closed it. The attic door found itself open again. And a third time. Doors do not open by accident when latches hold firm. Something from the other side turned them.

Her cat, the sentinel of the house, pressed itself into corners and hissed at walls that held no mouse, no rat, no intruder but silence itself.

A high-pitched sound rose from the attic after a month of living High-pitched sound rose from the attic. Not mice—mice have their own music, their rhythm of claw on wood. This carried intent. Something moving with purpose. Something nested itself above their heads while they slept, nestled in between the rafters.

An Uninvited Guest

February 1989 — Spring 1989

The first true face emerged in February. It remains in records as one of the clearest documented apparitions in American paranormal history.

Jackie stood in her son Jamie’s room. The temperature dropped—the way cold falls into a grave, the way water settles to a bottom. Air grew still, heavy as underwater.

Then it appeared.

An old man, approximately sixty. Thin as a corpse. Skin gray like something dredged from a river after years of submersion. He wore a red flannel shirt and high-water pants, clothes from another century, another life, another death Clothes from another century, another life, another death. He sat cross-legged on Jamie’s bed where a two-year-old child should have slept. His eyes glowed with emotionless light.

Jackie froze. Time stopped. The ocean outside stopped breathing for a moment.

This was not hallucination. Not fever-dream of a tired mother. Something ancient and dead occupied the space where her child should have been sleeping, watching her with the gaze of something that had forgotten how to love.

In the months that followed, she saw this apparition several times, always with a menacing look on his face.

A couple of months later, while exploring the attic for the first time, Jackie felt the presence of something behind her. Turning around, she saw a large disembodied head floating toward her—a pudgy man’s face with glowing red eyes.

Different from the gray-skinned man but equally present. Equally real.

Another day, Jackie and a friend heard a loud crash from the kitchen. A large framed picture leaned against the opposite wall, propped up on the countertop—the hanging nails sitting upright on a table. Placed by invisible hands with care and intent.

A friend heard a voice in the darkness say, “don’t come in here,” as she made her way to the washroom.

Jackie had invited three friends for support. Susan Castenada, her neighbor and confidante. Chrissy. Al, her estranged husband. But the entities did not care for her support system. They had come not for her friends.

They had come for her.

Susan Castenada documented what Jackie documented. She became witness. She helped record a case that would one day be studied in books by men who would never quite understand.

Gore On The Walls

August 1989

The attic became the storm’s center.

Smell came first—thick, metallic, the rotting stench of decay. Iodine clung to the laundry room beneath the attic stairs, sharp as a hospital where someone died and no one opened windows. Jackie’s children walked through rooms smelling of medicine and metal and something older, something from deep water.

Then blood appeared.

It seeped from cabinet doors where food was kept and hands washed and children fed. The substance was viscous, orange as dried rust, like the material that once pumped through living veins before stopping forever The substance was viscous, orange as dried rust. Jackie watched it drip and pool on the floor like a wound that would not close.

She called for tests. UCLA would analyze the substance and return with one answer:

Heavily oxidized human male blood plasma. Loaded with copper. Loaded with iodine.

Human blood wept from inanimate surfaces. The house was bleeding.

The walls began to ooze blood-red fluid, thick as syrup, metallic in its smell. Her daughter Samantha’s room became a chamber where paint itself turned to gore. In the darkness, Jackie saw ghostly orbs fly from the attic, heavy dragging sounds following them across floorboards.

Susan and Jackie saw floating balls of light—one flew to the doll shelves and illuminated the eyes of a doll. Jackie got a few photos.

Then came friendly balls of light in August—small, fast-moving orbs dancing around the kitchen ceiling in a light film of smoke. The balls broke apart and rejoined, collapsed into one little ball, and disappeared.

The universe bent around 593 West 11th Street. Toward her. Around her. Against her.

The Dark Lashes Out

August 8, 1989

By August 1989, the haunting had grown too large for one mother to contain. Violence escalated to threats. Blood flowed from walls.

Jackie called for help. Someone who had seen this before.

Dr. Barry Taff came to investigate, Associate Director of the UCLA Parapsychology Laboratory, a man who had examined over three thousand cases across twenty-five years of looking into shadows. He had seen manifestations that made air heavy. He had seen objects move at a glance. He had seen things scientists cannot measure, engineers cannot calculate, priests cannot lay to rest.

He arrived with Barry Conrad, a producer who would document everything with film. And Jeff Wheatcraft, a videographer with cameras and hope and belief that the supernatural could be captured on tape.

They brought equipment. They brought science to confront what science cannot explain. They brought cameras that would malfunction, lose power, drain batteries to zero then inexplicably refill to full charge.

Something attacked not just Jackie now. It attacked the people who came to understand her torment.

Dr. Taff’s team heard something like a two-hundred-pound rat running wild in the attic. The sound was too heavy for any rat The sound was too heavy for any rat. Too deliberate for any animal. They smelled iodine. They experienced something Taff would call over-pressure—a sensation identical to being underwater, standing in San Pedro bay at fifteen feet, the weight pressing against eardrum and chest.

They stood in a room that felt like the ocean.

Jeff, skeptical of Jackie’s story, volunteered to go into the attic. He took some photos in darkness, then climbed down saying he saw movement in his peripheral vision and felt being watched. As he went back up to take more pictures, Al heard a menacing voice in his ear downstairs. Jeff felt something yank the camera from his hand and hurried down shaking and pale Jeff felt something yank the camera from his hand.

He and Conrad went back up to retrieve it with a portable light. The camera faced downward inside a crate. The lens discovered four meters away—completely undamaged.

The video camera lost power, both batteries failed at once.

As the men left the attic, Jeff was pushed by a cold, bony hand on his back—significant pain, confirmed by chiropractor as traumatic internal bruising. They heard footsteps from the attic. The attic door yanked from Jackie’s hand. Scratching. Pounding. An unintelligible conversation between a man and woman.

Jeff saw three flashes of light and a large dark mass drifting across the room and dissolving.

The next morning, Jeff saw the apparition of a dead-looking man. Conrad found a comet of light in a photo Jeff had taken. Weeks later, Conrad filmed Jackie’s front gate opening and closing itself—fast-moving light in the footage.

The Attic Incident

September 1989

September brought violence. September brought death’s closest touch.

On September 1, 1989, Jackie could not breathe. Weight pressed her face. The smell of rotting corpses filled her lungs. She would remember this moment as one where the house itself tried to crush her to death.

But the worst came September fourth.

Jeff Wheatcraft was in the attic with Barry Conrad and Gary Boehm. Investigators now. Witnesses. Seeking answers and evidence.

Jeff’s camera was ripped from his hand during an earlier visit in November. Nothing in the attic was safe.

This time, a mysterious clothesline appeared in the attic. No one knew where it came from. No one had placed it. No one could account for it. In a moment too fast to record, too fast to believe it wrapped around Jeff’s neck wrapped around Jeff’s neck.

The clothesline was tied in a sailor’s knot—a knot requiring skill, intention, malice.

Jeff was hoisted upward, strangled against a rafter. His terror-stricken face captured by Gary Boehm in photographs taken in total darkness. Photos showed what no photograph should show: the face of a man being murdered while witnesses stood helpless.

Jeff’s memory went blank. Years later, the trauma severed his recollection. He could not remember dying.

Gary Boehm had to lift Jeff up, unhook the noose from a large nail. Jeff’s clothes were covered in spiderwebs and dust from the attic’s long-neglected corners. His leg had been held down by icy fingers. Something cold bruised him internally.

A chiropractor confirmed Jeff Wheatcraft had traumatic internal bruising from being pushed by a cold, bony hand.

Something had tried to kill Jeffrey Wheatcraft with rope and nail in Jackie’s attic. It had failed. But barely.

September 1989 nearly took Jeff’s life. The haunting became more than a family’s tragedy. It became a death sentence for anyone who looked too close.

Conversation With A Spectre

September 1989 — Ouija Board Sessions

They sat around the table where the Ouija board lay. The wood was smooth, plastic letters printed in black on white. The planchette moved with fingers that could not be touched.

The spirit identified itself: SME.

The spirit claimed to be a ghost from hell.

The spirit claimed it was born in 1912.

The board said the ghost had been trapped in the spirit world for sixty years. The board said the ghost’s murderer still lived in the San Pedro house where Jackie stayed. The board said the ghost had died in San Pedro Bay, held underwater rather than drowning naturally.

The planchette said: “Fear” when asked what energy the spirit consumed.

When asked, “How many ghosts are here?”

The planchette said: “Phantoms fill the skies around you.”

Dr. Taff believed two entities haunted Jackie’s home. One benign. One malicious. The benign spirit guided Jackie to the grave of John G. Damon, the Civil War veteran who owned her house between 1910 and 1913. The malicious one was something else. Something from 1912. Something drowned in San Pedro Bay. Something that would die every day forever.

The spirit said it thrived on fear. It grew stronger the more Jackie became terrified. In the cold light of September 1989, this was no longer speculation.

Jeff had nearly died. Terror covered them like a spilled ink well.

The spirit ate well.

The Church Falters

Fall 1989

The haunting’s violence pushed Jackie beyond rational belief into spiritual desperation.

Priests visited her home. They suggested she was possessed by the Devil. They came with holy water, prayers, tools of their trade. But they failed to exorcise the spirit.

The next day, Child Protective Services arrived.

They came investigating whether Jackie Hernandez used drugs during her pregnancy. The priests’ claim sent authorities looking for evidence of hallucinogens. Jackie’s supernatural torment was pathologized as chemical dependency The priests’ claim sent authorities.

Jackie’s daughter Samantha’s red mark. The lamp falls. The bedspread fire. The apparitions. None of it mattered to authorities. They could not see what Jackie saw. They could not smell what Jackie smelled.

Kristina Zivkovic, Jackie’s friend and babysitter, witnessed the paranormal events and feared they were going crazy. She became more deeply religious after the haunting. Jackie and Kristina drifted apart. The haunting became the only thing they had in common.

Kristina remained frightened by the events years later, avoiding talking about them. Jackie became more afraid of dying than she had ever been before. She had seen the edge of death.

A few days after the priests’ visit, Jackie noticed a chilling message spelled out with magnetic refrigerator letters: “Get the hell out.”

With nowhere else to go, Jackie remained—at least for a little while longer.

The Grave On The Hill

October 1989

Jackie followed a ball of light.

The ball was softball-sized. It floated over her neighbor’s fence into Harbor View Memorial Cemetery, where dead men rest under San Pedro sun. It circled a grave. Circled again. Then disappeared.

Jackie followed it back. She saw the name on the stone.

John G. Damon.

John was a Civil War veteran. He had arrived in San Pedro around 1912. He had died in 1913 John was a Civil War veteran who arrived in San Pedro around 1912.

He owned Jackie’s bungalow.

The benign ghost led Jackie to his grave. The vengeful ghost would not let her rest.

In May 1990, Jackie visited Susan in San Pedro. The two saw a light the size of a softball outside the window that floated over the fence and into the cemetery. They walked to the graveyard and saw a ball of light appear that led them to John Damon’s grave, thirteen blocks from the bungalow where he had lived and died.

The ball of light was a message. A guide. A promise that one entity would leave.

The other would follow.

The Haunting Hits The Road

May 1990

September 1989 ended with Jackie fleeing San Pedro with her children. The strangulation had happened. Death had visited. The house at 593 West 11th Street would not keep its secrets.

As Jackie’s kids waited on the porch that night, a red mark appeared on her daughter’s forehead Red mark appeared on her daughter’s forehead. That the presence would target her kids crossed a line for Jackie. By 3 a.m., she moved out for good.

She moved with her husband Al to Weldon in Kern County. Remote. Few neighbors. Few witnesses. The ocean’s breathing would not reach this far inland.

For a while, the activity stopped.

But a few weeks later, the haunting followed.

In March 1990, Al was napping at her trailer when he got up and went outside to the storage shed. Jackie watched as he stood staring into the shed before coming back into the trailer.

A plume of smoke flew into the back of his head. Al started to attack her. Jackie fought him off until the smoke flew out the back and disappeared. Al returned to normal.

The next morning, Jackie found “Al” written all over the closet walls.

The spirit was bound to her. To her fear. To the arithmetic of prey and hunter.

Jackie’s babysitters experienced strange things as well. 16-year-old Tina Lawler in 1995 saw a dark gray shadow in the trailer. Red slash marks on the walls. Anomalous lights. A lamp fell onto the bedspread, leaving a burn mark that looked like a horned face.

On the morning of April 1, 1990, neighbors were helping move a television when they saw the face of an evil, corpse-like old man with moving eyes in the corner of the screen. The screen flickered on showing the old man apparition from San Pedro. Then came pounding on the inside of the shed, as if something wanted to climb out.

After this, activity increased. Doors opened themselves. The sofa levitated. Tapping at windows. Voices from the shed. Human apparitions. Skeletal figures.

Jackie had taken the spirit with her. The house was not the prison. The house was only the beginning.

A Bad Roommate

1990 — July through December

Activity declined in the following weeks, but persisted when Jackie moved into an apartment just four blocks from her previous San Pedro home. She believed she could escape by proximity without entering the same building. Close to where she had lived, but not in the house itself.

She was wrong.

The haunting followed her. For years.

On two occasions, she again saw orbs of light and got some photos.

The spirit thrived on fear. The more scared Jackie became, the stronger it became. A feedback loop of terror and power, a machine of malice that consumed her trauma and multiplied itself.

From July 1990 on, however, it was the investigators who experienced most of the unusual activity.

Barry Conrad had experienced some anomalies in his Studio City apartment before, but after July 1990, it became the center of the activity.

Conrad saw lights. Heard breathing. Household objects caught fire. Electronics manipulated themselves. Stove burners turned on. Objects moved or “apported” around the house.

He found live bullets on his stove, which had mysteriously been turned on. His own home became a battle zone.

Jeff experienced his leg being held down by icy fingers. A shove on his back left a claw-like scratch.

Both Jeff and Gary Boehm experienced anomalies in their own homes.

In December 1990, Conrad, Jeff, and Gary experienced over forty poltergeist events within hours. On December 4, the pattern repeated. Forty events in hours.

Gary saw a light fly directly into Jeff’s chest seconds before he was thrown backward across the room. The same Ouija session showed the spirit telling them to hate Jeff.

Jeff’s camera lens detached from the body, found inside a fruit crate fifteen feet away. His camera had been ripped from his hands in the first attic exploration.

They witnessed a large humanoid-shaped slab of light disappear into a wall in Conrad’s home, hit with flying coins and other objects as they followed its path to the bedroom.

The investigators had become the targets.

For three years, Jackie Hernandez lived with ghosts. Dr. Taff would write she was followed by a pair of puzzling and persistent ghosts.

The hauntings persisted across multiple relocations: San Pedro bungalow. Trailers in Weldon, Kern County. An apartment four blocks from the original home. The house could not contain what was inside.

The haunting followed.

The Fire And The Mark

1990 — 1995 — Physical Escalation

The haunting’s physical nature crossed the boundary between spirit and substance, as if the entities had learned the living require proof beyond eyes.

Jackie saw a black mass shortly before her daughter Samantha’s bedspread burst into flames. Mysterious fire. The bedspread burned.

Susan Castenada witnessed a painting torn from the wall during one of her visits. A loud crash echoed from the kitchen. When they investigated, the spirit had torn a framed picture from the wall, leaned it against the sink backsplash, and pulled out the nails that had held it. The nails lay pointed-side up on the floor—a clear act of aggression waiting for someone to step on them.

Magnetic refrigerator letters spelled “Get the hell out” during an aggressive haunting period. Letters arranged by something that could move metal Magnetic refrigerator letters during haunting.

The daybed collapsed many times, often while someone slept in it.

When Jackie approached a plumber’s leak, it stopped on its own. A pencil holder flew off Jackie’s desk as she walked by, sending writing instruments flying in her direction.

Jackie saw a red mark on her daughter’s forehead. Susan touched the baby’s skin. It was unbroken underneath.

Her toddler’s toy Jamie flew into the air, pushed by invisible force.

Babysitter Tina Lawler in 1995 reported seeing the old man apparition in Jackie’s former trailer. She found red slash marks on the walls. A lamp fell onto the bedspread, leaving a burn mark that looked like a horned face.

These were not hallucinations. Physical events. Multiple witnesses. Documented. Recorded. Photographers confirmed Jackie’s pictures of light orbs were not faked.

The Presence Fades

1991

Time does not heal all wounds. Time does not exorcise all spirits.

Barry Conrad’s new cleaning lady in 1991 reported seeing the old man apparition in his red flannel shirt and pants at a property near the original bungalow. The entity had not left. The entity had not been defeated.

For several years after 1990, Jackie felt the presence. Eventually, active anomalous activity stopped. The haunting had diminished but not ended. The fear had faded with time, but the memory remained.

Jackie was free.

Legacy Of The San Pedro Haunting

1993 — 1997 — Beyond

The house at 593 West 11th Street remained. People moved in. They stayed six months. They found objects thrown at them. They found kitchen items moved around.

Something had left with Jackie. Something else had remained.

Over fifty TV and radio shows covered the case. At least ten printed publications wrote about it. In March 1993, journalist Garry Abrams of the Los Angeles Times wrote an article titled “Tangled Tales From the Crypt” covering the three-year haunting duration.

In 1997, Barry Conrad produced and directed the documentary “An Unknown Encounter.” Footage from the haunting could still be seen years later Barry Conrad produced and directed documentary.

In 2012, Syfy’s Paranormal Witness interviewed the primary witnesses and dramatized some events. The documentary appeared on various streaming platforms after its 1997 release.

Dr. Taff wrote “Aliens Above, Ghosts Below” documenting the case. His lab technician refused to be interviewed. He refused payment. His work was kept off the books.

The Man Behind The Haunting

Research Ongoing

Barry Conrad found articles about Herman Hendrickson, variously spelled in records. His body was discovered floating under a pier in San Pedro Bay on March 25, 1930, with a jagged wound on his head. The official cause was a fall from a dock. He was twenty-eight years old.

The Ouija claimed 1912. The body was 1930. The math did not match.

Dr. Taff theorized two spirits haunted the home: one benign, one malicious. The malicious one consumed fear. The more Jackie became terrified, the stronger it became.

Dr. Taff noted this was the first case he had worked where the phenomenon followed the researchers. He knew of only one or two other cases where ghosts followed someone.

Stephen Braude observed that poltergeist activity is most common among teenagers and young adults undergoing stressful situations. Jackie fit the pattern: husband left. Two young children. Struggling with bills. Working multiple jobs. Stress enormous.

But stress does not explain blood from walls. Stress does not explain Jeff Wheatcraft’s strangulation. Stress does not explain why the haunting followed her to three locations. Stress does not explain John G. Damon’s guiding light or Herman Hendrickson’s drowned spirit seeking someone to kill.

Legacy Of The San Pedro Haunting

The Aftermath — Present Day

Jackie and Al drifted apart. Jackie’s husband left her again in remote Kern County. Children grew up. Some became afraid. Some became more religious.

Jackie had become more scared of dying than she had ever been. She had stared into death. She had heard the ocean breathe. She had felt weight press on her face.

New property owners at San Pedro said the longest anyone stayed was six months. The house still claimed tenants. Still objects thrown. Still kitchen items moved.

Dr. Taff and Jackie had not gotten along personally, though they corroborated what happened in their stories. Barry Conrad survived all poltergeist attacks. Jeff Wheatcraft survived his strangulation. They remained consistent in telling stories despite differences.

The house still stood. The ocean still breathed. The shadows still gathered.

Whispers In The Salty Air

San Pedro, Present Day

San Pedro remains. The port still operates. Boats still dock. Cargo still unloads. The salt air still carries whispers from the bay.

The house at 593 West 11th Street still stands. It still takes tenants. It still has six-month leases. Objects still move. Kitchen items still relocate.

John G. Damon’s grave at Harbor View Memorial Cemetery still sits where Jackie followed the ball of light. Herman Hendrickson’s body still floats somewhere in San Pedro Bay, his wound from 1930 never fully understood, his killer never found.

The blood from the UCLA tests is gone now. The photographs exist. The documentary exists. The book exists.

But what of the spirits?

One left when Jackie followed the ball of light to John’s grave. The other—SME, the ghost from hell—remained. It followed researchers. It attacked homes. It fed on fear. It learned how to kill in an attic with a clothesline and a nail.

Dr. Taff said there are only one or two cases in history where ghosts harmed or injured someone. He said this was unique because the phenomenon went after the researchers. He said the case would be studied for what it showed.

What it showed was this: Something was in the bungalow. Something followed Jackie. Something could be documented. Something could be recorded. Something could be photographed.

Something was there.

Something remained.

And the ocean still breathes against the pilings, one lap, one breath, one heartbeat at a time, counting down to something, counting for someone, waiting for the next person to move into a house where the spirits still remember.