Investigation Team: Dave Miller
Date: 1991 and June 2009
Photo #1 shows the famous iconic sign in the distance as I jogged down Sunset Blvd competing in the Los Angeles Marathon in the spring of 1991. The next day I drove up near the sign as I drove over the ridge to Burbank. I was not aware there was a ghost associated with the sign until I stumbled across the story talking to two park rangers when we visited Griffith Park Observatory and the huge park in 2009. Back in 1932 when the original sign said “Hollywoodland” (land was removed from the sign in the 1940’s), an early film starlet but soon out of work actress named Peg Entwistle hiked up steep Mount Lee in Griffith Park, climbed onto the sign and jumped 50 feet to her death off of the letter H. Many say the sign has been haunted ever since.
The park rangers told me the first ghost stories began in the 1940’s. In 1990 a couple hiking the Griffith Park trails were approached by a disoriented blond woman dressed in 1930’s clothing and then vanished before their eyes. Adding credibility to the story is that many park rangers over the years have claimed to see the sad young woman wandering the trails near the Hollywood sign especially on foggy nights. When rangers approach, she vanishes. A third ranger I talked to said he had a sighting of a disembodied woman on a switchback trail near the sign three months earlier which gave him a fright. Sometimes the smell of Entwistle’s perfume “gardenias” has been smelled on the trail near the base of the sign where her body was found. That day the five of us Miller’s did not get to hike down the canyon trails to the Hollywood sign for an impromptu investigation but it was fascinating to learn from the park rangers of this local urban legend.
