Ravenhurst Manor

This story is the most terrifying thing that has ever happened to me—I swear! I believe in ghosts, demons, and everything else that might be considered paranormal. So this is my story…about two years ago, my best friend, Jensen and I, including a couple of our friends decided that we are going to go to the Ravenhurst Manor in Whispering Pines, California. The place always reminded me of Amityville - True American Horror Story or the Murder House in Los Angeles.

Okay, so I’ll give you the creepy backstory first on this place: With its many cemeteries, gothic mansions, billowy fog, and wooded areas, Whispering Pines, California fits the bill of a haunted town about as well as any place in America. It meets all of the criteria that tend to produce urban legends—a coastal location, a volatile past, and a potent mix of old and new world religion— can be found here.

It has an extensive history of hauntings and paranormal activity that has been known to spook even the most professional of the ghost hunting community.

Ravenhurst Manor

One of the town’s most famous haunted houses is the three-story building christened, Ravenhurst Manor, which served as a school for disturbed teens in the 1800s and is said to be haunted by the ghost of its former headmistress. It is purchased in the 1960s by Maxwell Donovan who hoped to restore it, and it is then that supernatural phenomena began to occur. At one point during construction, a portion of the roof collapsed, killing three of the workers. Other builders claimed they would hear voices and footsteps whenever they are alone, and that pieces of construction equipment would often be thrown across the rooms. Even spookier, the workmen said they often spotted a Shadow Man staring at them from inside the mansion. Innumerable exorcisms and investigations have taken place at the mansion since, but the presence that haunts it is said to still remain there today.
One of my friends had done some research on Ravenhurst and wanted to check it out. During my childhood, the insidious house is vacant, with barren, gnarled and terrible old trees, and long, queerly pale grass with nightmarishly misshapen weeds in the high terraced yard where birds never lingered. I hadn’t been back to my hometown in years, since I’d went away to college and moved to San Fran. And I wasn’t that eager to go back… We had just started on Highway 101, which leads you to the road that Ravenhurst is on when I got an eerie chill. As we are driving, everyone kept on getting this feeling like something bad is going to happen, but we wanted something scary to happen so that we would have a good story to tell.


We drove through the affluent neighborhoods on Pine Street and Acorn Avenue, past mansions built in the style of the grand Victorian era. The estates had curving driveways, high gates, and spacious lawns. Although Whispering Pines appeared serene among the lush landscape, like other coastal towns, it seemed like twilight had signaled the churning fog to ominously surround the town. Neighborhoods are bathed in an eerie mist now.

When we got to Ravenhurst, the property is fenced off.

We parked in front of it and just stared at first. No one said anything. I gotta tell ya, it is an unusual Gothic mansion, and its perimeters are barricaded with a high wrought-iron gate. Beyond it is this dense, thick wooded area that the locals call, Deadwood Grove. Crickets sang and dragonflies buzzed the entrance. Grass grew wild and tall in the yard, sprouting through the cracks in the cement path leading to the portico. The huge mansion is vast, rambling, and wilting. It consumed the sky and blotted out the weak sun. Harsh seasons had torn shingles off the roof. Windows are randomly boarded shut. Tall, thorny weeds grew rampant and towering trees threatened to overtake, overwhelm, and engulf the grounds. Wind rustling between the oaks whispered of an ageless fear. Shrouded in shadows, nocturnal things slithered through the grass like snakes. A crooked No Trespassing sign hung from the newel post.

A prickling sensation glided over my body then settled in my stomach. Ground fog swirled over the ground.

Two of the people in our group, Jensen and Jared decided that they are going to hop the gate and go inside. My Best friend and one other girl decided that we are going to stay in the car. I am very superstitious and I believe that if you don’t bother spirits that they aren’t going to harm you or anything like that. So when they left the car it is around dusk. So Jensen and Jared hoped the gate and walked toward the mansion.

And after Jensen and Jared left, the three of us, Sunday (this really cute girl with red hair who I was crushing on), me, and Erik stayed in the car, talking. We are told to keep the engine running, because I guess if you turn it off, sometimes it doesn’t start back up.

My friend, Sunday said that she’d been to Ravenhurst before about two years ago with her old boyfriend and they had seen this dark figure, like a tall, super dark shadow near the back of the house. It freaked them out so bad that they left.

All of a sudden, Sunday said that she saw the black figure—and when we looked; there is this big black shadow by an oak tree. It moved! It is only about 15 feet away.

The three of us freaked ducked down in the car. Jensen called on my cell and asked if we okay, and I replied yes.

Unexpectedly, we hear a scream and the phone goes dead. At this point, I am freaking out, so I try to call Jensen back, but he doesn’t pick up.

And then we here another blood curdling scream, and we see Jensen and Jared running toward the gate. They climb over it and jump in the car and we drive off. We tried to ask them what happened.

Jensen said that as they stepped onto the porch, they saw two yellow eyes staring at them from out of a black shadowed area on their left, so dark it looked wrong. Then Jared felt someone touch his arm.

I told them to stop the car because we are all freaking out. When we stopped, Jared opened the door and said he felt sick to his stomach. I glanced at Sunday, she had her head tipped back, and her whole body is trembling. She could barely talk, except she said she didn’t feel well.

So we left and turned back onto the highway and we are going toward Castro Valley, which is about a 45-minute drive from where we are to drop Sunday off at home. So as we are driving I notice that Sunday still has her head resting on the back of the seat and she is still shivering. She got really freaked out when the phone went dead, so I figured she is just having some kind of a panic attack. Then she started screaming, “It’s coming to get us! It followed us! The shadow—it’s demonic—it’s coming!”


Sunday told Jensen to drive faster because the dark figure that had been watching us from the Deadwood Grove was going to follow us home.

Later that night after we dropped Sunday off at home, I tried to call her to make sure she was okay, but she never answered her cell. When I went over to her house the next morning, her mom told me that Sunday had nightmares all night and that something black like a tall shadow man had stood over her bed and whispered her name. Her mom said that Sunday went to stay with her grandfather who is a priest, and I never saw or spoke to Sunday again.

So the events of this night are a little unexplainable but once again, it is the scariest thing ever to me and my friends…

Sent in by Joss