As you walk the quaint, historic streets of Orange, it may occur to you that there is something more to the original town center than what first meets the eye. Some lurking spirit may have left its mark in the very spot you’re standing or perhaps you may have experienced some paranormal activity in one of the antique shops. Historic community buildings, antique shops, industrial buildings and residential buildings are all part of this section of town, and they make for a fascinating walk of Old Town Orange, especially after the sun goes down.
In celebration of spooky season, I embarked on a walking ghost tour of Old Town Orange led by HauntedOC tour guide Valerie Brewster. What I discovered was not only remnants of an oldVictorian district but I also experienced a hugely entertaining and historical adventure that tied in various aspects of the creative and cultural industries. I recently sat down with Ernie Alonzo, CEO, Creative Director & Founder of HauntedOC and Valerie Brewster the Tour Docent for Old Town Orange, who offered a behind-the-scenes look into what goes into creating a unique experience such as this, and how they see CCIs tie into its creation and execution.
Alonzo opened HauntedOC in 2010 in Old Town Orange, making it the first ghost tour in the city. Tours are led by paranormal historians with a passion for storytelling and a knack for digging up the darkest tales from Orange County’s past. However, prior to opening his own company, Alonzo worked for a real estate association in the South Bay and enjoyed exploring the haunted history of the cities he visited on business trips. Eventually his love for ghost touring grew and his focus slowly shifted when he noticed that aside from Los Angeles, there weren’t many ghost tours that operated in Southern California.
A City of Orange native, Alonzo’s interest in the paranormal started at a young age. After listening to visitors and residents recount ghost stories and paranormal activities around the Old Town area he was inspired to begin an online repository containing the most compelling ghost stories he could find. Alonzo visited and collected stories from local shop owners & employees, antique dealers and public archives documenting them on his site for anyone who was interested. It wasn’t until Alonzo met local historian and author, Charles Spratley, a native of San Diego who had recently relocated to Orange County, that the OC tour started to spring to life. Alonzo recalled that Spratley, “had formerly operated a successful ghost tour company there [San Diego],” and so between the two of them they were able to gather enough material for their first Old Town Tour. This first tour debuted in September of 2010 and had the “goal of educating and entertaining guests about our area’s history,” Alonzo noted.
Once it was clear that people from all over Orange County were interested in ghost tours, a regional expansion strategy was born. The popularity of HauntedOC amongst OC residents and visitors alike allowed the company to expand its borders and start offering tours in eight neighboring cities and sites including San Juan Capistrano, Santa Ana, Fullerton and The Bowers Museum, to name just a few. “Usually, people don’t know how much research goes into it,” says Alonzo. “We’re always looking for stories, for the history, to back up the ghost stories and sightings.” He reveals that to create a new tour, they begin by “looking at selections of historic articles that have been recorded and detailed, and personal and third party accounts of hauntings and paranormal activity that people have experienced in various locations around the city.” Additionally, Alonzo explains that it’s helpful when “locations have had ghost tours in the past or they have them on a seasonal basis because that means that our research is accelerated and we can start creating our own version of a tour and debut it in a given city a lot faster.” Conversely Alonzo adds, “If we are going into a location voluntarily and trying to assess the validity of the stories that we’re researching then the whole process can take anywhere from six months to a year to put together.”
Valerie Brewster, the lead tour guide of HauntedOC’s Old Town Orange tour escorts brave souls on expeditions around the Orange Circle. Brewster claims that she has been a Halloween enthusiast for as long as she can remember stating, “I'm the type of person that celebrates Halloween every day of the year and I love getting involved in my community and participating in spooky activities whenever possible.”
Brewster crossed paths with HauntedOC several years ago as a guest. After going on her first tour she mentions that she “made it her mission to go on every single one that they offered.” As a naturally social person and lover of all things paranormal, Brewster decided that it would be fun to try her luck at becoming a tour guide for the company in 2020. She explains that the audition process consisted of researching and writing her own script based on a series of bullet points that she had been given from another tour location. “I presented my story, they listened, they liked what they heard so they gave me the bullet points for Orange and I did the same thing with that,” she said. Brewster remembers that she conducted her research “by analyzing articles from the OC Register, visiting the City of orange archives page, watching Youtube videos and listening to first-hand accounts from guests, shop owners, and Orange residents.”
For example, during her research, she came across a YouTube video of the former antique shop owner discussing paranormal activity that would go on in Elks Lodge on Chapman Ave located next to an antique store. In the video the shop owner mentions a story about an incident when a large mirror randomly fell to the ground and didn’t break. In addition, the shop owner mentioned that at one point he had to close off the basement of the antique store after some employees reported experiencing paranormal activity.
Brewster concedes that it’s hard not to be skeptical of these events. However, she says that the validity of her stories are often backed up by the experiences that her own guests report feeling. “I’ve had a few guests on different tours tell me that they remember the basement to the Chapman antique store being closed off or they see the face of an old woman staring at them from the top floor of Royer Mansion. To me those things are validating in regard to the stories that I’m telling because how on earth could different guests feel or experience the same things when they’re not on the same tour?”, she posits.
Both Alonzo and Brewster ruminate on how the creation of such tours deal with a number of creative and cultural industries such as tourism, history, writing, marketing, and content creation for social media. In addition some tours required the establishment of partnerships between other CCI institutions including museums and historic preservation sites. “A third of our tours work with [local] museums including both the Bowers Museum and the Kellogg House in Santa Ana,” states Alonzo. Brewster says that the first thing that comes to mind when she thinks of the intersection between CCI and being a tour guide is the performing arts. “I’m a dancer and I've also taken a few acting classes so to me a huge element of being a tour guide is being a great storyteller and a performer which are skills that are heavily learned within the world of performing arts. In addition, memorization is a key part of being a tour guide and as a dancer you're thrown a lot of material at once, so you need to be able to catch on very quickly. The same applies to ghost touring.” Brewster admits that her favorite part of the tours is talking to the guests, “I just love interacting with people and I enjoy when tours are interactive as well. If guests are responding positively to what I'm doing then it makes me feel like a star for a moment and I know that's not the goal of the tour but I'm a performer and performers love the spotlight– it genuinely feeds my soul with happiness.”
Photos L-R: Orange's first hotel (Wahoo's Fish Taco), Old Town Orange Circle, 307 E. Chapman (Royer Mansion), Elk's Lodge.
Ghost tours can and often are very steeped in history and historic actions and while ghost tours don’t necessarily touch upon contemporary issues, Alonzo and Brewster both view the tours as starting points for having discussions about historical preservation needs. Alonzo admits that, “guests often walk out learning about the local history that they didn’t know a lot about and sometimes end up developing an overall appreciation for preserving historic sites moving forward.”
States across America are dotted with cities and towns that contain historic spots and districts or old town centers that all contain stories. These stories, be they celebrated or sorted, give us a chance to look into our collective past and hopefully gain some lessons as we travel forward. Ghost tours give us that chance wrapped in a bit of mystery and awe. Old Town Orange is no different and when taking a ghost tour here you can expect to gain a new perspective on many of the locations we, who live here and those who died here, interact with on a daily basis.
If the possibility of ghostly encounters and the chance to look at magnificent historic buildings and are insufficient to tempt you to explore the dark alleyways of haunted Orange, then keep an eye out for videos posted on the @HauntedOCOfficial YouTube account which include interviews with paranormal experts and tour snippets.
I want to give special thanks to Ernie Alonzo, CEO, Creative Director & Founder of HauntedOC and Valerie Brewster the Tour Docent for Old Town Orange for taking the time to speak with me, and for more information on Historic Orange County Ghost Walks and Tours, go to HauntedOC.com.
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