Post #120981 by Sabu The Coconut Boy on Thu, Oct 21, 2004 9:32 PM

Of course Sabu has a story children. Doesn't Sabu always have a a story?

In 1982, while going to college, I worked part-time at a small computer company on Signal Hill in Long Beach. We made cutting-edge computerized cash-registers - one of the first in the industry. I was the programmer who wrote the software. It was space-age stuff for a college boy.

The only strange thing that I can remember happening at that small industrial park was when I and one of the engineers found the naked body of a young woman in the dumpster out back. She had obviously been killed the night before and discarded like so much trash. I remember my friend running to call the police and me staring at the body clinically and dispassionately. Dead bodies never seem to affect me strongly. I know the soul has moved on and the body is only a shell. But people in pain, however, that is a different story. Seeing a person covered in blood at a car accident and crying out in pain usually makes me faint dead away. Crazy, isn't it?

Unfortunately our company was too successful. Couldn't meet orders with our small manufacturing plant and we went bankrupt. At the end, all the staff had been layed off but me, (being part-time, I was cheap). And the boss was constantly away to Florida or New York, trying to get new funding, so I was left alone in the building.

It was only when I was alone in the office that I would notice the poltergeists. Some people claim that Signal Hill is an ancient Native American burial ground. I'm not sure if this is true. All I know is because I was all alone in that now-quiet building, my ears began to pick up the sounds of footsteps running about upstairs. When I climbed the stairs and turned on the lights, I could find nobody. I remember turning off the lights and walking downstairs. Before I reached the bottom of the stairs, the lights went back on upstairs.

I retraced my steps but could find no one in any of the closets or bathrooms. The light switches had indeed been flipped back on. I turned them off again and headed back downstairs. I heard the light switches click back on again. After about three times, I finally left them on and didn't provoke the spooks further. Pretty soon the ghosts got bolder and I found myself living in a scene out of the movie "Poltergeist". Lots of pounding footsteps on the ceiling above my head. Doors slamming upstairs all the time. Lights going on and off. Faucets turning on and off. It was hard to get work done. I put on my stereo headphones and tried to drown it all out. Thank God my boss finally gave up and let me go as well. I quickly found a job in Silverlake, in an office converted from an old mausoleum. (just kidding, it was an old Ice Cream Factory). It takes a lot to scare me, but that office in Signal Hill surely did it.

My cousin, an Archeologist, has some great ghost stories from when he was working on the excavation of Indian burial sites on Bolsa Chica Mesa, near Seal Beach.

He was my roommate at the time and would always bring fascinating stories home to tell around the fireplace.

Once, they discovered a new burial site containing seven Native American skeletons. The whole week the excavation went on, seven crows circled overhead constantly.

Another time they found the burial of an Indian Shaman. Artifacts such as spirit-sucking straws, various colors of ochre powder in abalone shells, and certain carved, sacred stones indicated the importance of this individual. All the while this burial was being exhumed, a large hawk sat in a branch above the grave. It would not move, even when they threw rocks at it.

My cousin would show me photos taken of the archeological sites. On every photo of a burial, there was a strange, tiny image of a human embryo that would appear floating at different spots on the photograph. No explanation as to where this image came from. The camera lenses were checked, but they were quite clean. Still the tiny embryo was clearly evident, floating above the Indian skeletons. Pretty creepy stuff.

Sabu.