A semi autobiographical look at the start of our strange meanderings.
By Anthony S Burdge
After 22 years together Jessica and I have covered thousands of miles on planes, Greyhound buses, our car, and on our ailing feet through many abandoned, historical, allegedly haunted historical landscapes.
These sites include abandoned brick factories, cemeteries, and structures deep in the woods of New Jersey, New York or elsewhere in the US, somewhere off the beaten path inspired by Weird NJ, Atlas Obscura, and our own research for places to visit. Some of these sites may have a more darker aspect than your average historical location. This could range from murders, suicides or cult activity having taken place at the site. Whether underground tunnels, abandoned farms, ruins, giant Monoliths of Tuckerton or the site of alleged cult activity in Untermeyer Park, we have found our feet taking an observing look into the past. We’ve documented each one and will be posting pictures, videos, audio and text to this site over time.
This is at the core of our new blog, “Our Strange Meanderings,” which is to share what we have documented, recorded and witnessed over the years.
However, this is all well and good, a repository for articles, pictures and video concerning our strange encounters during our jaunts and hikes everywhere. This is an extension of our lifelong joint interest into the macabre, weird, strange and obscure, wherever we may encounter it. There are some of you reading this who may have read our fiction, which includes experiences from paranormal investigations at these locations. Whether we find somewhere local or a drive away from home there’s an interesting story to our strange meanderings together.
Where does such an interest begin before one meets your best friend and spouse? We both have our origin stories as to where our interests began, and in this introduction I shall offer my own. In future articles Jessica will offer her tale of the strange and weird before joint articles on our experiences.
As I look back at my life and document all of the strange occurrences I can definitely say I had an early exposure to true crime, alleged paranormal activity, real life boogey men and horror. Not only are there strange occurrences in my life, but events I have learned of where Uncles, and distant relatives were directly involved with or adjacent to scenes of war, murder, or something far more sinister in between. Perhaps this is why I have cultivated a lifelong interest in true crime, the occult, paranormal, strange events, write weird fiction inspired by these activities, and now blogging of those experiences.
For instance, my life began at Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital to parents Anthony and Diane in February of 1972.
My parents had since moved from the Cecil Hotel (more below on that) and now resided on Los Feliz Boulevard. This apartment is a short distance from 3311 Waverly Drive, where Leno and Rosemary LaBianca resided and were killed by the Manson Family in 1969. This occurred a few short months after they arrived in Los Angeles where they had witnessed Manson’s black bus going around the LA area.
My parents had eloped three years earlier in 1969 to Los Angeles, California from Long Island, New York, Mom from West Islip, my father originally from the Bronx.
My father had served in Berlin, Germany with the US Army and had been back in civilian life a short bit when he found a job at Macy’s. My father did not go to Vietnam, he spent his Army years in Berlin, specifically Spandau prison and the Berlin Wall near the Brandenburg Gate. My father guarded Rudolph Hess, private secretary and Deputy Fuhrer to Adolf Hitler. The only prisoner in the whole facility.
Ever hear of the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon,” parlor game? If we start from my father, to Hess, to Hitler, then theres just three degrees between me and the most foul being ever to walk the planet.
At Macys, my parents fell in love, and took off to be alone and start a life together in early 1969. They boarded a Greyhound bus from Port Authority in Manhattan headed for the West Coast. The Los Angeles Greyhound terminal had space age chairs, mega ashtrays, terrazzo floors and coin operated TV sets a vastly different aesthetic than the harsh concrete of New York’s largest bus terminal.
According to the story told to me when my parents exited the bus terminal they found themselves in Skid Row looking up at the infamous Hotel Cecil.
Does this hotel sound familiar intrepid reader?
“The Cecil Hotel, a downtown Los Angeles landmark with a troubled past riddled with deaths and tales of violence…” –CBS News Dean Fioresi Read More Here
The hotel opened in 1924 and has as many as 16 deaths associated with it, including the Black Dahlia, and Elisa Lam, aside from the infamous serial killer Richard Ramirez aka the Night Stalker having stayed there. I am not going to go into the dark history of the hotel, nor recap the Netflix series “Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel.” There is alot of information out there concerning the Cecil and leave it to you to research more if you do not know about it.
So, my parents life together in California 1969 began at this infamous hotel. In my possession are all of my parents pictures, letters and papers from their early life. Since I am still organizing and reading documents I do not know exactly when they got to California. What I do know is that by the time the Manson murders occurred August 9-10th 1969 they had moved to the Hotel Figueroa.
In Part Two of this Introduction to Our Strange Meanderings I will further explore early childhood paranormal experiences in Vermont, familial connections to famous cases such as Willowbrook State School, The Amityville Horror, the Cropsey legend and discuss my view on “belief” in my paranormal experiences.
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