Edwin's Getting Haunted in Turnbull Canyon

Turnbull Canyon is a place known for creepy paranormal happenings and murders. Even Edwin has had his own paranormal experience there. 😬

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Hosted by Michelle Newman and Edwin Covarrubias. Episode edited & sound designed by Sarah Vorhees Wendel of VW Sound

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
I have like a funny little segue, and now I can't remember what it
is. Oh, your diarrhea pills. That's what I was going to talk
about. I'm looking for diarrhea pillsjust in case emergency recording diarrhea pills.
That's a scary mystery surprise right there. You don't know when it's coming.
It's scary. Welcome to Scary MysterySurprise, where we talk about scary things

(00:26):
that surprised us around the Internet.I'm Edwin and I'm Michelle. All right,
Michelle, So this episode is goingto be a little bit of a
personal journey for me, right,So I'm going to share with you some
of the things that I went throughwith the paranormal, specifically dealing with Turnbull

(00:48):
Canyon. To everyone I think thatI meet, I end up talking about
Turnbull Canyon. So I am nowback to like being a teen in the
two thousand thousands. I'm scrolling throughthe internet block Spot, Yahoo forums,
GeoCities. It was awesome and dangerousand really cool. Geo cities was dangerous.

(01:11):
I don't know, it was justmaybe not GeoCities, but like when
you have the forums and the commonsections that are not moderated just like anything
goes click link, it'll send youto like whatever. They'll catch your IP
address with anyway, very dangerous.But as I'm there, I'm scrolling down
and I find this block. Bythe way, the area where I used

(01:33):
to live was around the Downy norWalk Bellflower Repping five six two. You
know, there's what I do.At that time. There was a lot
of this is a very important thingto me. But at that time,
by the way, like researching ghoststories, paranormal things, because I was
vice president of our local Research andInvestigation of the Paranormal chapter in our high

(01:53):
school. You know how, likeI'm that show ghost Writer. They have
like little pens for their mystery club, Like what did you guys have any
sort of like talisman? Do identifyeach other? No, we just had
our shirts, like our polos.Did it have a little logo on it?
Yeah? I did. It wasyellow and I think I still have
a shirt. It was a littleyellow tombstone. I think that says RIP.
But anyway, there was this onehaunted asylum that I found and I

(02:17):
wanted to go there and like figureit out. So I was on,
you know, scrolling around. Ifound this forum and this person's just kind
of saying, Hey, we're gonnameet up by this haunted abandoned asylum and
we're gonna go from there. Some, I'm thinking, like, okay,
they're meeting up at nine, Ihave a car. I didn't think
of telling my parents. Honestly,I was just like I'm just gonna go,
Like, I'm just gonna go meetup. I'll take a friend and

(02:38):
we'll just kind of go there.And then in the comments or whatever,
there was this person I think Idon't know, Kathy or something. She
was like, so you're for suregoing I'm like, yeah, I'm going.
Okay. Cool. We got agroup of like six or seven people
and I'm like, okay cool.They had a schedule of the guard when
they do their round, so they'relike, oh, once he goes past

(02:59):
it like with a car, hedoes another walk through, we're gonna go
right after that walkthrough. And I'mlike, wait, so there's some like
door or anything. It's like no, we have to hop through the roof,
go through the window, and thenget in. I'm like this is
getting serious, right, Like Idon't know how old these people are,
don't even know if they're teens.What if there's just a bunch of like
predators and they're just trying to getpeople to show up. They sent me

(03:20):
a link to this other place thatthey have already seen, right Turnbull Canyon.
Basically, there was a group ofpeople just walking around trying to do
this investigation in this kind of mountainyarea, like imagine like a little trail
park, kind of like where wewent to to do the Rando Nautica episode.
Oh yeah, like devs Yeah,yeah, yeah. They're going down

(03:43):
this trail. They're going through thevalleys kind of you know, down the
trail. All of a sudden,one of them stops, stares out into
like the darkness, and freaks outand runs back the trail up to head
towards where the car was. Theremaining group, like the people that were
still there. One of them kindof stops and that kind of freaks out
a little bit. He kind offreezes and starts looking out to see what

(04:04):
this other guy had seen, andthey can kind of see this glow out
into the distance past the bushes,like something's glowing. And as they're staring
the girl who posted the thing andwho's also referring me to this post that
she wrote. She's staring out andshe sees a group of people and they're
kind of like going around in circlesand they're kind of waving their arms,

(04:27):
just acting kind of strange, justlike a strange fire in the middle of
them. Twenty thirty people Like they'rejust kind of there and a little crowd,
and all of a sudden, theyall stock. One of them makes
a call like a car just likethat exactly, and then they start stabbing

(04:48):
each other. She said that theywere like a distance of like not that
far, like thirty forty feet,Like they can run at you, like
it's that runnable distance. We're like, oh, this is where you choose
to run away from a bay.Then when she sees that they start savving
each other, they're like god,they' everybody's screaming that they're just going crazy,
and they kind of see this,like the silhouettes of them like stabbing

(05:08):
like that, they run. Everybodystarts running back. They feel like they're
getting chased. They look back andthey are, in fact, somebody's going
after them. They make it tothe car. They wait there, but
they just don't see anybody else.They're just like Okay, what happened,
right, they try to like figureit out. One of the events of
going to like a church and theyfind out people have been known to do
Satanic rituals in that area. WhenI found out this is like a real

(05:32):
thing, and I believed it.I don't know how true it was when
she shared it, but I waslike, when I believed it, I
bailed on it. I'm like,I'm not going. And I'd never showed
up to that haunted asylum that reallylike scared me. Everybody freaked me out.
And then that really triggered the ideaof Turmble Canyon, like investigating like
what happened here, And it turnsout there were a couple of cases in

(05:53):
that place that could explain some ofthe hauntings and things that people I've seen.
Now, Turmal Canyon is this areaand Wittier in southern California. The
area itself is dark, very creepy. If you drive there at night,
it's like it can just be youalong the road because there's a road that
runs through it, and then onceyou get to the top you kind of

(06:13):
see I think it's a sand ofheights that you see all the lights from
the city and people just go andhang out there. At least when I
was in high school, we usedto go like get Jack in the box
and hang out, say, bythe side of the road. Then they
made it like illegal for you tojust hang out there because I guess somebody
always has to ruin it. Iguess I was always into that creepy vibe,
you know. Yeah, but that'slike a teen move, like you're

(06:34):
not gonna go somewhere nice, really, You're gonna go somewhere empty. Yeah.
I remember going with my friends,like, you know, just get
in the car and we're like,okay, what do we do. All
let's go to Turnable Canyon. Itwould just literally just drive through it and
then stop and then drive back.My friend Jonathan and I we were there.
Jonathan had these like intense flashlights wherelike police style, like it would

(06:58):
stop, turn off all the lightat first, like okay, this is
creepy, and then we turn onthe lights and then go drive through right.
Well, one time, as we'regoing through this car from behind,
it just kind of appeared behind us. It just kind of flew turn on
the headlights. We were going superslow by the way all this time,
so We're like, there was acar behind us, we would have sped
up, so we knew. Wewere kept looking behind to see if there's

(07:19):
a car. Hills. Yeah,it was really creepy, and then we're
like what do we do? Wekept driving. We kind of went normal
speed and make the turns. Itthis very twisty road, like you have
to make these turns. You can'tsee in front of you. Like the
car behind us is following pace,like we're speeding up, it speeds up,

(07:40):
we slow down. It slows downobviously instead of passing us by.
We're like, what don't we turnoff to like the curb side and just
kind of let it go because youhave these little areas where you can pull
off and let the car pass.We pull off to the side and the
car slows down, pulls up rightbehind us. No, no, whoa.

(08:00):
My friend freaks out. He's nervousnow, so he like steps on
and we're just like going and thecar starts following. We're like, what
do we do? Like that we'rebeing followed by a car. We're going
down to this place where there's housesnow and we're going down all the way
down the hill, down the hill. We keep looking back and there's no
one there. There's no car behindus. Right. The only way that

(08:22):
this car could have disappeared quote unquoteis if they just lived there and they
pulled into a house right, orthey parked and they turn made a U
turn and go back because we lostsight of them. And that said,
we never we waited at the baseof the hill. Like now at this
part, there's like lights, there'sother places, other things, other cars,
So like every park we're gonna blendin. Nobody canna know it's us.
Another car showed up for a while. We were just there, so

(08:43):
like what do we do. Wehave to go back to the same place,
or we can take the round,or we can go all the way
around to go back home. Sowe just went right through. We didn't
see anything else after that. That'sbrave. I would have taken the long
way. Later on we researched stuffand they say that there are cases of
people that have been followed by carsthere. It can either be like just

(09:03):
some weirdo that is just trying toscare people, or it could be a
ghost car, like as in ghostvehicles. In two thousand and nine,
this woman from Bellflower, she wentwith this bizarre claim saying that three people
from this city called El Monte tryto kill her, basically saying that they

(09:26):
try to slash her throat, cuther jem needles into her neck, and
then throw her down a steep hillin Turble Canyon. She was getting a
ride home with three other who shethought were friends and then they ended up
trying to kill her there in TurnbleCanyon. Eventually the people were caught sent
to jail, which is good.There was another case of this woman that
was dragged, like literally tied anddragged along the roads in Turble Canyon.

(09:50):
But the place itself has way morethan just like serial killer stuff, murder
people that try to commit crimes andstuff. They also have this area that's
called the Gates of Hell. There'sa set of gates literally just gates,
and they have signs that say likeno trespass or do not cross, don't
go in. But it's so beatup. The rumors was that there's Gates

(10:11):
of Hell, like you go inthere, like there's an abandoned haunted place
or whatever. Yeah, we usedto go there and hang out by the
entrance and like try to get inthere and take like crappy pictures with the
flip phones, like oh we wefind but yeah, nobody ever sign anything
there. But it was just partof the lore. But there was one

(10:31):
thing. Turboal Canyon itself started withthe story of a murder. And right
now we just think of like,oh, it's just the gates of Hell.
It's the accidents and the people gettingmurdered and the Satanic rituals, all
that stuff, all claims I kindof take more to prove if they're true

(10:52):
or not. But this one actuallyis facts. The name Turnbull Canyon comes
from murders. There was this guy, Robert Turnbull, and he was actually
an Irish immigrant. He arrived inCalifornia in eighteen seventy three and he saw
this opportunity to buy and sell realestate and he started making a lot of

(11:13):
money and he owned that area ofTurnbull Canyon like it was all his.
The Quakers starting in June eighteen eightyseven, who were really trying to make
like try to buy it from him, and they were like, hey,
here's her offer, like take itor whatever. By the way, at
this time dollars not adjusted or anything. He finally ended up selling for thirty
thousand dollars, which was a lotof money. So he's like, yeah,

(11:35):
I'll accept it. By the way, this guy just would always drink,
and one evening on his way backhome, he fell off his horse
and he was arrested. They're like, you can't be drunk in public,
even though he was always drunk.For drunk riding, he got an RUI
writing under the influence. So thenext morning, after he gets arrested,

(11:56):
he gets home and he's beaten up, bloody, but he couldn't remember like
how he got into that state,you know, falling off a horse.
But it turns out he had alsogotten beaten up pretty hard beating, and
he suffered a brain anerism oo andhe died. Shit, this is what
the coroner said. No, thisguy, this was in an accident.

(12:18):
He'll just fall off his horse.This guy was murdered, so who would
want to kill him? Nobody reallyknows who could have done that. I
don't know what technology they used backthen to say like, oh, he
was definitely murdered in this thing.But it's what the story that's stuck and
the one everybody accepts. And basicallyfrom then on the Quakers were like,

(12:41):
oh, man, that sucks.This guy was not that bad, so
they named the canyon after him,Turnbull Canyon. Along with those true stories,
though there are more. On Aprilfifteenth, nineteen fifty two, the
La International Airport lost contact with LewisPowell, the captain of this flight,
Flight FORCED sixteen. This airplane wassupposed to land in Inglewood and sometime in

(13:03):
the middle of the night, likearound three in the morning, but it
never made it. So they endedup calling the captain and the crew,
but nobody ever answered. They're like, well, I don't know what happened.
Moving on, we'll never find it. That's it. Oh well,
he changed his mind. He keptflying somewhere. He just disappeared. A
rancher actually discovered who was driving aroundwer Whittier Heights. He saw smoke like

(13:28):
that morning, like around ten inthe morning, and he was like,
oh man, So he climbed upone of the hills and saw that there
were flames and metal and like allthis stuff on the hillside. That was
Flight for sixteen. The reason whyI crashed literally ten feet made the difference.
This is just a altitude was justten feet higher. He went ten

(13:48):
feet lower. It was really foggyand he crashed. Shit. Yeah,
and now people that go around lookingfor ghost stuff or even just regular people,
they say, wires just spoke comingout of there. It turns out
the ghost the residual of the ghost. Yep. They say they also hear
sounds like metal hitting rock, thingsthat sound like bombs. Basically that's what

(14:13):
they say. Oh yeah, thatsounds a lot like when metal hits a
rock, like when a there's acar crash, imagine a plane crash.
It's like there's a lot more stories. The one that I said that was
the the girl that was dragged aroundTurnbull Canyon. It's actually it's it's super
tragic. Basically she was shot andthen dragged by two of her friends.
Her name was Gloria Gaxiola. Whowere these friends drive into Turnbull Canyon and

(14:39):
try and kill you? Yeah,it was. It's messed up finally,
like the body was found like aSanta Boulevard and Khalima Road. But when
I say dragged, you might imagineher being dragged by like a rope behind
the car. But no, itturns out her foot was stuck on the
seatbelt. No, when the doorwas closed, the car was going away
and Gloria was drag ooh brutal.Yeah, they were all convicted of first

(15:03):
agree murder, so makes it reallycreepy. If anybody's around that area of
you've visited a Turnbull Canyon, haveyou had a strange experience? I want
to know about it. It's reallycreepy. Michelle and I actually got to
hear a story of this place,remember, Michelle, Oh I do.
We were We went to see SapphireTalk and she asked her audience if they

(15:24):
had any ghost stories, and thisguy stood up and it was me,
you and your friend Natalia. Nataliaactually shared her Turnbull experience on tell Me
a Ghost Story, but this guyjust stood up and basically kind of repeated
her experience of like seeing weird shapesin the bushes. The story you shared

(15:48):
was he was out in the carand they start seeing these little heads kind
of pop out of the bushes.When he's telling this, Natalia next to
me is like like this, likeare you serious? Like this telling?
Like what is that what we saw? Because one of the very I think
the very first story on true ScaryStory is Natalia and Felipe, which are
two of my friends that are werethere when Natalia's story happened, the one

(16:12):
that she shared with you. Butyeah, if you want to hear the
rest of the story, tell mea story has Natalia's version. It's pretty
freaky. It was funny. Aftershe told that story, I googled Turnbull
because it was like, is itTurnball or Turnbull? And Google what did
you take? No? No,no, no, no, it was

(16:32):
Turnbull. It was Turnbull. Butlike you know how places get reviewed.
One of the first reviews that poppedup for Turnbull Canyons don't go there at
night. It's an interesting place,like it has a different vibe. Like
when you're there, you're like,huh, you could be parked there and
all of a sudden, it's misty, right, Like all of a sudden,
it's like, whoa, we justgot covered and missed. You're driving

(16:52):
along and all of a sudden,like you feel like what's next to me?
You feel like a thing, likeyou feel something. It's a very
dark place. It really messes withyour mind. So if anybody's visited,
or anybody has stories about Turnbull Canyonor any areas around there, please send
them in let us know. Orif you have a specific place in your

(17:12):
city, or town that's known forthis kind of thing. Let's hear about
it. But yeah, hold on, let me see if I have my
conclusion. No, I don't.I said it in the very beginning.
Oh well, I ruined my conclusion. We just end abruptly and abruptly.
What are we gonna talk about nextweek? Edwin, I don't know.

(17:33):
We couldn't be a surprise. ScaryMystery Surprise is hosted by Michelle Newman and
Edwin Kovarubias. This podcast was editedand sound designed by Sarah Borhe's Wendel,
a VW sound