I’m just back from what seems to be coming my annual trip to Australia. Below are a handful of ghost signs I saw during my time in Melbourne and Hobart, the capital city of the island state of Tasmania.

A bakery in Hobart

Hobart harbor…

Newman’s in Melbourne

A wonderful sign on the Cascade road in Southern Hobart

Down one of Melbourne’s many alleys in the CBD

Shakespear Hotel – right in the center of Melbourne’s CBD (I saw it last year too)

Warehouse – also in Central Melbourne

Two marvellous – but neglected – Morris Minors I saw in Battery Point, Hobart. Two classics in one place!

For all you fans of real/true crime, these are pictures I took in and around Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the center of the legal profession in London, England – it’s barely changed in centuries. The regal-looking place is the Royal Court of Justice, there’s a ghost sign too, a very old postbox (mailbox) and Peabody the Cat!

Royal Courts of Justice

A ghost sign – “aerated bread”

Be quiet!

Peabody the Cat in the ancient Seven Stars pub in Lincoln’s Inn Fields

A very old postbox

Last week I was in England (where the temperatures were actually hotter than Los Angeles!) and I thought I’d share some pics from my trip. The first ones are from my home town of Watford in Hertfordshire, which is about 15 miles north of London (and very close to Warner Bros Studio London, home of the famous Harry Potter tour).

I read a story that mentioned Jackson Jewellers on the Parade in Watford High Street (or what American would call “Main Street”) was haunted, so naturally I went in there to investigate.

I spoke to David Jackson, the third-generation of the family, and he told me the building was built in 1480 – as you can probably tell – and that the shape of the hearth and chimney were still there (as you can see in the picture).

It felt (and smelled) like a very old place, what with the silver, the antiques, the quiet atmosphere and the chiming clocks, and one of those clocks even had it’s original receipt from 1888 – the year Jack The Ripper was killing prostitutes in the East End of London.

As for the ghost, David explained that there used to be a restaurant upstairs – and as soon as he said that I had a flash of my childhood; we used to go there for lunch sometimes! Talking to my mother later, she remembered the restaurant’s name: The Copper Kettle (and she told me that her engagement and wedding ring both came from Jackson’s!).

As for the Elizabethan ghost, that turned out to be “fake news”. The restaurant owner HAD said that he “always felt as if there was someone or something moving around in the dark” when he was there late at night, but that was about it! Either way, I’m glad Jackson’s are still around!

Jackson Jewellers – 15th century

The hearth/chimney

Some of their old clocks

Underneath this one is it’s first receipit from 1888 – and it’s still working!

The Bizarre and Deadly World of Mortuaries

The February 10, 1990 edition of the LA Times reported that – for the first time in American history – someone had been charged with murder using the weapon of oleander, a toxic plant that’s nonetheless very common in gardens.

David Wayne Sconce was the accused, and it was alleged that back in 1985 he had killed a rival mortician, Timothy R. Waters, to stop him exposing some dark and illegal activities at the Lamb Funeral Home, the family business where Sconce worked.

By this time Sconce was already in jail for those illegal acts – mingling human remains, stealing body parts and removing gold teeth from cadavers.

Though “mingling” sounds rather innocuous, in the most notorious incident it saw 38 bodies stuffed into two furnaces, an employee later admitting that breaking one of the corpse’s legs to make it fit perhaps led to a chimney blockage and the Altadena mortuary burning to the ground.

Incredibly, Sconce’s parents Laurieanne and Jerry were also awaiting trial accused of similar offences in 1990, but it was earlier in 1985 that rival mortician Waters had been assaulted in his office by hired thug Danny Gambalos, who said that Sconce had paid him to carry out the crime.

A few weeks later in April, Waters died after becoming unexpectedly ill while baby-sitting for his sister in Malibu.

After two days of agony his death was thought possibly to be linked to heart problems, but it later emerged that a witness said he saw Sconce slipping something into Waters’ drink at the Reuben’s Plankhouse restaurant in Simi Valley (now long-gone), and Sconce – whose car licence plate once read “I BRN 4U” – was said to have bragged about it to a cellmate and others.

Sconce was accused of making murderous threats against other people as well, and the shocking story – which seemed created for a Hollywood movie – tore back the lid on what a highly lucrative but competitive and seemingly dangerous business it is to be involved with the dead.

The Sconces’ empire stretched from Pasadena and beyond, and Sconce was alleged to have said that he made $5000-6000 a month from the purloined gold teeth alone.

The oleander poisoning however could never be comprehensively proved scientifically – nor was it certain where it might have been administered or ingested – so those charges were eventually dismissed, but even then that wasn’t the end of the story.

Sconce’s name appeared in the LA Times in July 2013, and again it was under strange circumstances. This time he was being sentenced to 25 years to life in prison after violating his probation after he had pled guilty years before to conspiracy to murder a former district attorney who had been assigned to his case.

At the conclusion of that case in 1997 he’d been given the unusual sentence of lifetime probation, but when Sconce – now 56 – was convicted in Montana of stealing a rifle from a neighbor and trying to sell it in a pawn shop, he violated that probation.

Sconce argued that the neighbor had merely given him the rifle and he was going to use it to “protect his pets from wolves,” but he now felt the force of the law.

That said, with so much time already served, it was reckoned he might be out of jail within 10 years….

I was in Australia recently – the city of Melbourne and the island state of Tasmania, which was an hour’s flight from Melbourne – and here are some of the interesting, weird and ghostly things I saw (and some tasty things too).

First, some ghost signs; Shell’s Tea was in Hobart, Tasmania, the others Melbourne.

Mlebourne CBD

Melbourne CBD

Shell’s Tea – Hobart, Tasmania

North Fitzroy, Melbourne

I also paid a visit to the gorgeous Victorian Princess Theatre, which is famously – and proudly – home of the ghost of Frederick Federici, a noted actor who actually died on stage of a heart attack during a March 1888 performance of Faust. He was playing Mephistopheles and was stricken WHILE HE WAS DESCENDING IN THE TRAP DOOR DOWN TO “HELL”!

The bistro beside the theatre is named after him (great bacon and cheese sanger!), and there’s an excellent portrait of him made out of stainless steel wire in there, as well as other mementos from the theatre’s history.

As for the ghost of Federici (real name Frederick Baker, who was born in Italy), he’s been seen many times by staff and actors over the years – they even keep a seat for him at every opening performance.

Even on the night he died, the cast were astonished to be told their leading man was dead – he was with them taking the curtain call with just moments ago…

Also in Melbourne was the Polly Woodside, a 130 year old sailing ship – an iron barque – that traveled the world many times over a decades-long career, and has been painstakingly restored and maintained.

The Polly is docked permanently here alongside an excellent museum, and is over 90% original fixtures and fittings – it was also the place where 8 sailors were killed, an extremely low figure for that age of maritime travel.

Alternatively, in Hobart I was lucky enough to get close to the massive icebreaker Aurora Asutralis, which smashes through the Antarctic ice many months of the year.

Near the Aurora was the city’s famous Salamanca market, which we visited on a VERY windy day, and in one of the side streets was this great little book shop.

I of course bought a book from him on UFO’s in the Bass Strait, the stretch of water between Tasmania and Australia that’s a famous ship’s graveyard; we learned about many of those wrecks – and a strange, unexplained one – at the Tasmania Maritime Museum.

In Hobart we also saw the Tasmanian Tiger – or Thylacine – everywhere (even in the city’s logo). A marsupial that looked like a dog but with stripes, it could open its jaws almost 180 degrees, revealing a set of nasty teeth, but was wiped out by hunters after official bounties decades ago, the last dying in the local zoo in the 1930s.

Or was it?

Thousands of apparent sightings in Tasmania and parts of Australia have persisted ever since, and in image alone at least, the Tassie Tiger is alive and well; we were tickled to see an official encounter kit from the 1980’s at the Tasmania Museum and Art Gallery, plus taxidermy Thylas and pictures that show their cruel demise, but also how cute – or scary – they looked.

I drunk only Australian/Tasmanian beers during my trip, and one of them was a pint of Captain Bligh’s Lager at the Hope & Anchor in Hobart, which claims to be the oldest pub in Australia (circa 1807).

The Cascade Brewery – definitely the oldest in the country – is in Tasmania too, but we didn’t make it there this time. Can you guess what’s on their labels?

I visited several museums overall, and at the Victoria Police Museum in Melbourne there were artifacts and evidence from notable events including the remains of a car after a bombing, a set of armour from Ned Kelly’s gang and even a vampire hunter’s kit!

The museum also had handcuffs worn by – and the death mask – of Edward Deeming, the English multiple murderer who killed his wife and four children in England, conned multiple people around the world, and ended up in Melbourne, where he killed his wife Emily Mather. Deeming was also, for a while, thought to be Jack The Ripper.

I wrote about Deeming’s possible time in Los Angeles for the LA Weekly, and while in Melbourne I met Carly and Lee, the lovely people behind the Dead & Buried podcast, which looks at Melbourne history and crime.

We recorded something about Deeming (due in the new series – download it on iTunes!), and went to see if we could find the grave of Emily Mather, which we did (along with a stark warning etched on it).

It was another great trip to Melbourne – and a real find in Hobart/Tasmania too – and I leave you with something that should bring a smile: my friend the Bunyip, who stands outside the National Gallery of Victoria, where W gave all her lectures for MIFF this year.

Murder Over Dinner

Bella Napoli Café                                                                                       

Today what was the Bella Napoli Café on N. Vermont Avenue is a laundromat with a Papa John’s pizza restaurant, so it didn’t really qualify for Gourmet Ghosts 2 – we really prefer unusual or unique restaurants, and a chain doesn’t quite fit the bill.

Nonetheless, this is a good example of how buildings or places that seem quite innocuous today have actually often had an interesting – and deadly – past.

Back in 1933, this was where you found the “quiet and fashionable” Bella Napoli Café – though during a busy dinner hour on August 28 it rang to the sound of bullets and a double murder.

According to the LA Times, three “swarthy gunmen” strode in with “their hats pulled down over their eyes,” cornered a couple of victims who were sitting in a booth, and opened fire.

The “deadly fusillade” – multiple bullets from automatic pistols – “tore through the heads and necks” of the victims, and induced “horror and panic” among other diners. Police immediately indentified one of the victims; Harry Mackley (AKA Abe Frank), a hat store owner from New York. Later, the other was announced as Fred Kitty (AKA Fred Harris and Fred Keller).

Both victims were described as being Italians, about 30 years of age and “immaculately dressed,” and the newspaper was strongly implying this was reprisal for a mobster hit in New York in June the previous year.

“Let’s get out here,” the leader of the murderous trio said, and right outside they were met by a large black sedan in which they made their getaway.

The “murder tableau” had been enacted in just three minutes, and within a few days the guns had been found in a drain and the LAPD had made many arrests and charged several “New York hoodlums” with the murders…..

The restaurant did its best to get back to normal….

Cut from Gourmet Ghosts 2 at the last minute: a fateful day in a restaurant at 110 S. Brand Blvd in Glendale…

Though it’s now a location in the Vegas Seafood chain, in the 1980s this was Uncle Lee’s Restaurant, and on July 30, 1987 it was the scene of a violent shooting.

“Then he tried to shoot me in the head. I told him ‘Don’t do it! Don’t do it!’ And he just said, ‘I want to kill you! I want to kill you!‘“

According to reports in the LA Times, it seems that owner Wen Lee had agreed to sell the restaurant to Johnny Soong and had already let him and his wife Tuai Li-chun start running things, but then Soong defaulted on a $5,000 payment.

Soong had already pulled a knife during a confrontation with Lee, and when Lee visited the restaurant that deadly day expecting – but not receiving – the payment, he returned soon after, only this time he was armed with a .38 pistol he had got from his car.

This time he entered the restaurant, greeted the pair – and then opened fire.

“He shot me in the back,” Soong said, adding that when he began to grapple with his would-be killer, Lee shouted “I want to kill you, I want to kill you!”

Soong suffered further bullet wounds to his foot and, tragically, Li-chun was hit in the face by another bullet meant for her husband.

Glendale Police Detective Joe L. Jiminez, who interviewed Lee after the shooting, said that Lee admitted he was going to kill Soong, and then kill himself.

It’s perhaps not surprising then to learn that Lee tried to commit suicide in jail, leading to a mistrial being declared. Lee was deemed incompetent, and was placed in psychiatric care indefinitely.

In James Cameron’s 1997 movie, Bill Paxton’s treasure hunter sees the Titanic emerging from the gloom, and from next year extreme explorers and even fans of the Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet blockbuster can get up close with the luxury liner.

For the first time in over a decade, concierge companies are offering submersible journeys – what they call “missions” – to the wreck, and there are already plans in place for 2019.

Bluefish, based in California, are offering expeditions costing nearly $60,000 that set sail on the RV Akademik Keldysh, which Cameron used and featured in the movie, with dives to the depths in small, nickel steel MIR submersibles.

For the pricier ticket of over $100,000 per person (the cost of an original First-Class ticket in today’s money, according to one travel service), you can gaze out from a much wider viewport and enjoy more elbow room in Cyclops 2, the cutting-edge titanium and carbon fiber sub from private outfit OceanGate, who are based in Everett, WA.

Trips leave from Newfoundland, and passengers are part of the team and expected to be hands-on. This is no day trip or theme park ride, and even though you might only get an hour or two just feet away from the famous staircase, the radio room or even personal mementoes of the disaster, tickets are already selling fast.

Expeditions have been available before, but they came to an end around 2005.

Submersibles strong enough to withstand the pressure at such depths were Government-owned and rarely available, and the bulk of the cramped journey is just an hours-long dark descent to and from the ocean floor.

The crumbling wreck was getting less than camera-ready too, but the demand has never gone away, even after the 100^th anniversary of the disaster.

The remains of the 1912 disaster were found 2½ miles down by explorer Robert Ballard and his team in 1985. The tragedy killed over 1,500 people when the vessel sunk after hitting an iceberg around 375 miles off Newfoundland on its maiden voyage between Southampton and New York.

You’ve got time to save up for your super-dive, though only about 15 to 20 years according to a study from last year, which revealed that due to “extremophile bacteria,” the wreck could have collapsed and been eaten to little more than lumps of metal by then.

Club Tee Gee was another story that I cut from the book at the last minute: it was rather on the short side I thought. Now though, you get to read about it here…

Deadly Stray Bullet

Located on Glendale Boulevard, the Tee Gee wasn’t always a bar – the LA Times of May 4, 1927 announced that this address was originally given permission to open its doors as a bank – a branch of the Citizens Trust and Savings Bank, to be specific.

Today it’s rather an anonymous building. The windows are covered and the exterior is square mosaic cladding, though it’s more impressive at night when the neon signs light up in yellow and red (though it doesn’t really help with the fact that the “G” in the Gee looks a bit like a Y).

It’s definitely T and G though; the bar was named after owners Neil Tracy and Joe Grzybowski, who were in charge from day one. It was over twenty years later before this address made the newspapers again though, and this time it was in relation to something much more dramatic: a brazen robbery that led to murder.

In the wee hours of March 2, 1948, two armed youths had entered the tavern and said “This is a stick up!” prompting owner/bartender Tracy to immediately reach under the bar for a pistol, shooting 18 year old Charles Hagadorn in the arm before being shot in the chest himself.

There were only six customers present, and one of them – John R Markland, a local man aged 27 who was sitting in a booth nearby – was tragically struck by a stray bullet and killed. Lucille Tracy, sister of the now-injured owner Neil, was unseen in the kitchen and called the Police.

Officers followed a trail of blood to the nearby Los Angeles River, and the bleeding Hagadorn was quickly taken into custody, while the other robber, Sidney Moody, a 19 year old from Texas, surrendered soon after.

Tracy was listed in critical condition at a hospital in Pasadena, and when evidence later showed that it was a bullet from his gun that had killed the unlucky victim, both youths had murder charges dismissed, but pled guilty to charges of attempted murder and robbery.

Overall this spot seems to have had a quiet life – at least in terms of the city archives – though it was called Lathams for a very brief period in 2010, though that was strictly for the television cameras, when it was a location on the one-season ABC science fiction “FlashForward” television series (the episode was called “Blowback”).

Then in late February 2016, there was some sad news from here: the death of owner Betty Barlotta, who had been in charge since 1981 when she took over from the original owners, was announced.

I had written a whole entry for the Kawada Hotel, but it got cut from Gourmet Ghosts 2 at the last minute – so here it is now!

Operating as a mid-budget hotel, the unobtrusive Kawada has had a central spot in downtown on South Hill Street for nearly 100 years, and is a great spot especially if you’re a visiting tourist.

It’s close to Grand Central Market, Disney Hall, MOCA and the Broad Museum, while the building is also home to the cheerful Cherry Pick Café. During the day the Cherry Pick offers a large selection of pizzas, deli sandwiches, coffees and smoothies, and stays open until early evening.

Though its windows are covered with signs and pictures of food, inside it’s actually a little hidden treasure: brightly lit, green sofas, silver tables, a large display case of pastries, cookies and cakes, and always plenty of office types at lunch – you can even buy coffee mugs with positive slogans written in Chinese on them!

Years before in the space on the opposite side of hotel there was a restaurant called Epicentre, which opened its doors in August 1991.

Believe it or not it was earthquake-themed, and opened just a few years after a real quake in Whittier Narrows in the San Gabriel Valley, which caused $350 million worth of damage and took eight lives.

Still, themed restaurants are nearly always popular, and the LA Times of August 8, 1990 quoted the-then Kawada assistant general manger as saying “Californians have a good sense of humor.”

The restaurant wasn’t as over-the-top as something you might see in Las Vegas though, but it did have walls that looked cracked, a map showing California falling into the Pacific, an artwork of City Hall – before and after an imagined temblor – and an open ceiling showing exposed wires and ducts (before it was fashionable).

Though the menu was somewhat standard – fish, chicken, pasta and steak – they did have some fun. You chose from a list of “epitizers” and desserts were called “aftershocks,” while a curry’s strength came on the Richter Scale: 1.0 for mildest, 10.0 for the spiciest.

The archives tell us that this hotel was built in 1922, though back then it was known as the Astor Hotel. It had no connection with the famous New York hotel – or family – but was doubtless one of the many around America that used the name to infer opulence.

The 200 room hotel changed hands in July 1933 when a Mr. and Mrs. Peck paid $40,000 for a five year lease, and though doubtless there were other owners, it was nearly 50 years before another change was noted in the LA Times on August 10, 1980.

V.J. Thomas Lee, the owner of a stock brokerage house and a theoretical physicist, had paid $1.3 million for what was then known as the 118 unit Astor Apartments, but there were bigger changes coming, as a 1988 article in the LA Times made clear.

Now it was owned by the Kawada Investment Co, the Astor was being upgraded and expanded, and Levi Velasquez’s barber shop – one of a number of businesses on the block – was closing to make way for the new development.

But the Astor Hotel had plenty of stories to tell before it became the Kawada.

On October 16, 1927 the LA Times reported on a $63,000 payroll robbery at the Municipal Bureau of Water and Power.

Leonard Efanti, 25, had arrived in Los Angeles two weeks ago from Chicago, and had taken a room at the Astor – which was right near the Water and Power building. He had three visitors while at the hotel – three men who matched the description of those who had carried out the robbery with him. Police also alleged that he had he observed the target building for days before the gang’s robbery took place in broad daylight.

Efanti, who registered as J. Eads, left the hotel without his luggage, but then later a torn curtain from his room was found in the alley behind the Water building and he was arrested.

Then, the February 1, 1940 edition of the LA Times reported on a deadly card game that took place in one of the rooms here.

Frank Urena had been shot and killed when bus boy Demetrio Palay grabbed Urena’s gun and opened fire, the bullets also hitting Paul Areola, who was in a critical condition. Palay, 25, was in custody on suspicion of murder and attempt to commit murder, and had been tackled to the sidewalk by Morrey Kline, who worked for the Los Angeles Evening Herald-Express.

Palay said he had won $500 from his card rivals in a previous game, and claimed self-defense. When he had won another hand “Urena drew a pistol and Areola grabbed my money,” he said.

As the struggle began, nurse Katherine Kershaw ran from the room and hid for five hours before being found – though she didn’t see who fired the fatal shots.

Finally – as far as the records show at least – in March 1958 the man who registered himself as “George Andrews” was found dead in his room here.

Also, there is something else – something unusual and rather famous – right across the road from the Kawada, and it was built at the same time as the hotel.

Known for its appearances in movies including Blade Runner, The Terminator, Independence Day, Con Air, Gattaca, Kill Bill and many more (to say nothing of hundreds of car commercials and pop videos), the brightly-lit white-shell curving 2^nd Street tunnel is perhaps L.A’s biggest secret star.

You’ll know it when you see it, that’s for sure, but like the 3^rd Street Tunnel (featured in Gourmet Ghosts – Los Angeles) it too came with a death toll.

Like most municipal projects it spent years in the planning and many weeks in the courts and the press being debated and criticized by both sides.

Planned to relieve heavy traffic from that 3^rd Street Tunnel, it was controversial from day one; even the white tiles, which came from Germany, ruffled feathers because WWI had only ended a few years before. There were even (rejected) plans for a moveable sidewalk inside too.

A couple of thousand people turned up to see the first digs of earth on his then-huge bore project in April 1921,  though early the next year there was the first (and inevitable) accident.

A hundred tons of earth, rock and timbers slid down the west end of the tunnel trapping six workmen – two of whom were buried alive. One of them, Jesus Venzula, 32, was buried up to his neck, and with serious injuries that the LA Times said “probably will cause his death.”

Just over a year later in August 1922 there was another cave-in when two workmen were badly injured, but there were no other major incidents after that, the tunnel opening to much acclaim and applause in July 1924.

If it’s nighttime, check out the tunnel – it looks amazing lit up in the dark.