Meet Craig Owens - Photographer, Paranormal Investigator & Author
When we say Craig Owens is the epitome of what we envisioned 13 Days of Strange to be, we mean it. A renowned historian, paranormal investigator, photographer, author, and chili con queso lover? If you ask us, there’s no one better to kick off the series.
When I meet Craig for our Zoom interview, he appears on screen fully clad in a three-piece, marine-colored pinstripe suit, a crimson red tie, and a fedora. He fiddles with his settings trying to get the preloaded virtual grass background off his screen. After a few minutes he jokes, “I’ve actually done Zoom meetings before, you would never know.”
Many of us know Owens as the moderator of Bizarre LA, a website and blog dedicated to exploring Los Angeles' forgotten history. Or maybe you’ve picked up his book, “Haunted by History Vol. 1,” which dives into separating the facts and legends of eight historic hotels and inns in Southern California. Craig’s love for history and paranormal came long before these achievements.
When asked how he got his start in the field, Craig casually responds, “The paranormal chose me, I didn’t choose it.” He proceeds to describe how at a very young age he fell in love with ghosts and old places by way of a 19th century, restored mansion in the deep south, better known as the Waverly Mansion of West Point, Mississippi. “They had a small child named Gage and we played a lot together but then I heard about a little ghost girl. I was literally ghost hunting at seven years old because I wanted to see that ghost girl.” He never was able to make contact with the ghost girl, but the experience sparked a lifelong intrigue of spirits and the stuff that often gets overlooked in history books.
As a recent graduate in the mid 90’s, Craig made his way to Los Angeles from Texas to pursue a film career. He recalls one of his first memories upon arrival, “Everyone has an LA story if you come here from out of state… With me, it was the OJ Simpson murders, I arrived that weekend.” He eventually landed a coveted position as a script production assistant on the Warner Brothers’ lot, a role that would also present him his first LA ghost experience.
Fast forward to Halloween day, 1999. Craig was delivering scripts late into the night when he overheard a deep husky female voice coming from Stage 4. “The voice would move around but I couldn’t make out the exact words. Some of us in the paranormal field refer to it as ghost gibberish. It’s fairly common phenomena,” he explained. Once he began to investigate, the sound stopped. “Because it happened on Halloween night, no one, I mean no one, believed me.” Twenty years later, Craig finally received validation for his experience when he met a long-time security guard who worked on the lot who confirmed his suspicions. With excitement in his voice he exclaims, “I wanted to kiss him right then and there because, finally, after how many years? 1999 to 2017? It took me that long to find someone to corroborate it.” The story of the woman from Stage 4 lives on as one of the haunts you’ll hear while on Warner Brothers’ infamous lot tour.
In 2009, Craig decided to pair his passion for photography and history by staging vintage style photo shoots at haunted hotels as an idea for an Old Hollywood themed project. “One of the things that kept popping up - any old hotel is rumored to be haunted. In fact, if they aren’t rumored to be haunted, there’s something terribly wrong with their marketing,” he joked. He settled on a suite at the Mission Inn in Riverside, CA for his first shoot.
Little did he know at the time, the room he booked was the Carrie Jacobs-Bond suite, where she wrote the lyrics for her famous song "A Perfect Day," in 1909. Almost immediately, odd occurrences began to happen. This is where Craig saw his first apparition - a shadow figure. Similar to his obsession with the ghost girl from his childhood, he dove head first into learning all that he could about the real history of the room at the Mission Inn. This experience became the groundwork for his first book.
“If the history is wrong, the paranormal stories can’t possibly be right,” he explained. Craig began to take a fine tooth comb to some of the city’s most notable landmarks to debunk a lot of misconceptions. “Some of this stuff [is] so buried in archives that everyone got kind of comfortable with it and they were going by word of mouth and guesstimates.” Through his photoshoots and extensive research Craig has been able to bring to light the truths of many historically haunted locations, his favorite being the Alexandria Hotel. He pauses before emphatically saying, “I have to do this because I'm one of those people who have to clear up urban legends. Valentino's ghost does not haunt the Valentino suite. The Valentino suite was named in honor of Rudolph Valentino in 1970. No one actually knows what room Valentino stayed in.”
The driving force for Craig’s investigations and research is focused around unveiling the truth. He’s a sceptic that likes to challenge everything and in terms of the paranormal investigation world, he often feels like he’s on the outside looking in. If he discovers that something is contradictory to popular belief, he’s going to talk about it. He described himself as a frank talker, “That's what makes me different from other paranormal investigators. I don’t view ghosts and the paranormal has horror. I actually think of it as beautiful and melancholy and that probably makes me weird,” he explained.
With the pandemic, it’s been harder for Craig to be on the ground conducting investigations and tours but he’s been keeping busy. His time is split between working on several mini books, one of which is centered around the Aztec Hotel in Monrovia, and a “truth-telling podcast about forgotten history,” which will include stories about the Cecil hotel, Hotel Figueroa, and more.
Craig also shared his excitement for his involvement in Dark Harbor’s Halloween Live Stream from where he will conduct a photoshoot and paranormal investigation in one of Queen Mary’s Salons. The four-day event will also include 24 hour surveillance in the most haunted locations on board, musical performances, and a virtual costume contest.
As our initial 30-minute call approached an hour, I had to catch myself before I spent the entire day chatting ghosts and ghouls with Craig. Although our conversation was jam-packed with captivating stories and information, I felt we barely scratched the surface of the vast amount of knowledge Craig stores inside of brain. There are so many more truths to be shared and I will wait with anticipation until our next conversation.
You can find out more about Craig by visiting BizarreLA.com or by purchasing one of his Haunted By History books through this link.
This post has been a collaboration between Strange Los Angeles and The Making Waves Project for 13 Days Of Strange - a social distanced, Halloween photo series spotlighting spooky and strange Angelinos.
Visit Strange Los Angeles’ homepage for more.
Written by Britnay Rice
Photographs by Robiee Ziegler
