Calling All Ghosts, or... Our Uncanny Experience on the Leo Politi Bus Tour in Angelino Heights

Feb 17, 2024

Gentle reader,

Traditionally around Thanksgiving, we offer a tour that’s even more elaborate and ambitious than a regular Esotouric adventure. This doubles as Richard’s birthday celebration, and we bring cake.

In 2023, after a pandemic-sized gap, we resumed the birthday bus festivities with a tour honoring the great Los Angeles illustrator, author and preservationist Leo Politi in the places where he lived, worked and fought to save precious landmarks threatened by foolish planners and redevelopment agencies.

The tour was planned as sort of a sister outing to our personal road trip visiting the mansions Leo painted for his wonderful picture book, Redlands Impressions, and we unlocked a subscriber-only post about them for the occasion.

When tour day came around it was a cloudy Saturday, and we had a great turnout, including a very special guest, the artist’s daughter Suzanne Bischof. And it proved to be a memorable day—including some things that we can’t explain, and have been struggling how best to write about.

We’re making our uncanny experience the subject of today’s newsletter for two reasons. Firstly, because tomorrow we will return to the place where it happened, on the Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue walking tour. The second reason frankly stinks, and we’ll leave that until the end.

Our first tour stop was Central Library, and a little bit of magic. A year earlier, we’d asked City Librarian John Szabo if it might be possible for library staff to pull three or four of Politi’s paintings of old Bunker Hill from storage so our group could view them in the Special Collections room. These paintings include illustrations from his 1965 classic Bunker Hill Los Angeles: Reminiscences of Bygone Days, and have been out of view for decades.

The answer was no—but the best possible no. Just a few days before the tour, the library unveiled a new permanent exhibition in two wings of the second floor Children’s Room: Leo Politi’s Bunker Hill!

Gordon Pattison, Bunker Hill native son, stands beside Leo Politi’s painting of the stained glass door of his family’s boarding house, The Castle.

It’s a wonderful show, and you can see it any time the library is open. But visiting in the company of Gordon Pattison was special, as he flitted from painting to painting, calling out people and pets he recalled from his childhood on Bunker Hill Avenue, and the beautiful, demolished landmarks that still live in his dreams and in Leo’s paintings.

Stop #2 was Olvera Street, where the young Leo was a street artist drawing the local characters, shopkeepers, animals and historic buildings. It was while working in public that he was “discovered,” becoming staff artist for Script magazine and getting his first children’s book contract. Near the end of his career, he returned to El Pueblo to paint a mural of the Blessing of the Animals ceremony on the monument’s administrative headquarters, facing out onto the Plaza where that lovely event is held annually.

After viewing the mural, we crossed the road to a less prominent landmark: a spreading olive tree with a plaque honoring the artist. Some of his ashes are mixed in with the soil that nourishes the tree. Here, our friend Father Dylan Littlefield gave a moving benediction honoring Leo’s creative contributions to the city.

And then the tour moved on—with a ride on Angels Flight Railway up to the new corporate Bunker Hill, where historian Nathan Marsak told us stories of the lost neighborhood and where we planned to sit on top of Disney Hall and eat our lunches. But the heavens had other ideas, and it started to pour rain—much heavier and earlier than the weather report had indicated. Richard made some quick adjustments to the schedule and route… and soon after, things turned odd.

We chased the sunshine west into Angelino Heights, picnicked there on delicious sandwiches from Arto’s Broadway Deli, then explored the Victorian time capsule of Carroll Avenue, ending up in the garden of Leo’s own home, where his mosaics still sparkle under fallen leaves.

Here in Leo’s garden, Kim read a typescript of the remarks that Paul Politi had made back at the olive tree at El Pueblo on the occasion of his father’s memorial, a story of visiting his elderly dad at home and complaining that the garden was dangerously overgrown, of getting frustrated and cutting the weeds himself and of his father’s anguished cry that the weeds were beautiful, and he had planned to draw them.

It was in this moment, Paul said, that he really knew his father.

It was a still, muggy afternoon, but up in a tree, the wind chimes jangled boldly—as if somebody had pushed them. In the middle of reading, Kim stopped and exclaimed “wow!” Richard, meanwhile, became aware of figures in Edwardian dress who were moving around the edges of the garden.

The atmosphere had changed. The past was present—at least it was for us.

We’ve had shared paranormal experiences before, but never while leading a tour. So we weren’t able to confer while it was happening, and had to keep it together, marveling at the odd things that were happening, while doing our jobs.

Former neighbors Julie and Shizuko Tatsumi with Suzanne Bischof.

We took the group across the road to the little store that had been converted to a residence, and here Julie and Shizuko Tatsumi showed Leo’s painting from his book Mieko (1969) and talked about living in the rooms in back, operating the neighborhood market, and being friends with the quirky artist across the way.

The sun came out and the odd atmosphere grew heavier. Richard announced that it was time to get back on the bus, which was waiting a quarter block away. He hurried ahead, and Kim lingered to ensure everyone had heard him. Back at the old store, Julie and Shizuko were still telling stories.

Now the air filled with a cacophony of sound, mostly birds, strange unfamiliar birds that seemed very big and very close. But there were also human voices, sounding like a party, singing and talking, the words impossible to make out. The sounds seemed to be coming from the north and from above. Looking back towards the store, Kim experienced the sidewalk getting longer, a sense of having emerged into very bright daylight from darkness, and the store and the people shrinking from distance.

What was happening? Was there a real party somewhere nearby? Or could we be hearing and seeing some remnant of the people who lived in Angelino Heights when the Victorian homes were new, and the different kinds of birds present in Los Angeles at that time? Was this akin to the Moberly–Jourdain time slip incident at Versailles? Or could it be some manifestation of the jumbled memories that Leo collected from old folks, as he roamed around his neighborhood researching the history of Los Angeles before bringing the past back to life in drawings and paintings and stories?

These metaphysical questions would have to wait, for we still had a tour to lead. The bus rolled on to South Pasadena, where the library boasts a Leo Politi mural in the children’s section and his bookish siblings sculpture at the door, as well as Tim Carey’s stained glass tribute to Ray Bradbury. Library Director Cathy Billings gave us a great tour.

We were supposed to eat birthday cake at the library, but were both a little rattled and time got away from us. Instead, we had a party on the sidewalk across from Grand Central Market, a sweet end to a day that left a lasting impression.

That evening, we talked about what we had seen and heard, and wondered if anyone else on the tour had noticed. In the spirit of Victorian-era paranormal research, we sent an email questionnaire to tour attendees, not saying where or what anything odd had been observed.

Did you see, hear, smell, feel or otherwise sense anything during the tour that seemed at all strange to you? If so, please describe the experience, including where we were on the tour and if anyone else had the same experience.

Three guests responded that they had indeed experienced something:

I remember at one point [I think in Angelino Heights] there was what sounded like singing and laughing. Not exactly human though. -T.D.

While we were in the front yard of Leo Politi's home and the wind chimes sounded, I am quite certain they chimed because he was with us all in that moment. They only rang once and I do not recall it being windy at the time. -C.R.

I felt like we were being watched on the last walking part of the trip to Leo’s house and at Leo’s house. I don’t mean by neighbors. When we were at Leo’s house, before you were going to read I caught a chill, as you started to read I had a feeling of sadness and felt warm then the wind chime sounded and I caught a chill again, when I looked up the wind chime was moving but I didn’t see a sign of wind. Looking at the building that used to be a store across the street from Leo’s house I heard what sounded like a small gathering behind me of children and adults, when I looked back at Leo’s house the sound went away. - E.K.

It felt good to know we weren’t alone in experiencing something on Leo’s block, even though most people who got the email responded that they had not noticed anything.

And after some discussion we decided that whatever it was that manifested on the tour, it had something to do with all the things we’d done together: seeing the Bunker Hill paintings at the library, visiting the olive tree and plaque, riding his beloved Angels Flight, standing in his garden listening to his son’s memorial speech. Maybe we could even do it again some time and see what happens!

But maybe we can’t. Earlier this week, Father Dylan Littlefield called us in a panic. Leo’s plaque at El Pueblo was gone! It had been violently pried off the concrete marker, leaving chips strewn all around.

While city staff had previously told us they removed some of the more high profile El Pueblo plaques for safe keeping due to the metal theft epidemic, this one was left in place, stolen, and presumably taken to a crooked recycling yard to be melted down for scrap.

It is an ugly thing that a monument honoring an artist who loved Los Angeles and whose work reflects its finest qualities of multi-cultural community, creativity and kindness should be lost this way. It is almost unspeakable that it should happen to a plaque that served as a grave marker, since some of Leo’s ashes are under the tree.

So many good people are fighting so hard against the criminal enterprise that has corrupted City Hall, using real estate speculation to displace people, suppress independent entrepreneurship, divert civic resources and make public space unpleasant and inaccessible.

It’s not enough. We call on the ghosts or the memories or whatever the hell showed itself on our visit to Leo Politi’s house in November to rise up and join the fight. Los Angeles deserves so much better than we’re getting, and we need every spirit, living or dead, angelic or demonic, every wraith and scrap and creature that ever cared about this place to help drag our city, our beautiful magical city, back into the light!

Now we can’t promise a time slip or weird birds when we visit Leo Politi’s block tomorrow on the Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue tour, but if you’re looking for a delightful day out in good company, we’ve got you covered. The weekend special at Guisados where we start and end the tour is Chile Relleno tacos. Join us, do!

Also, If you've been meaning to take our flagship Real Black Dahlia crime bus tour, then sign up for the February 24 tour soon. We're filling up and plan to take a break from bus tours, so it won’t come around again for some time.

Yours for Los Angeles,

Kim & Richard

Esotouric

Psst… If you’d like to support our efforts to be the voice of places worth preserving, we have a tip jar and a subscriber edition of this newsletter, vintage Los Angeles webinars available to stream, in-person tours and a souvenir shop you can browse in. We’ve also got recommended reading bookshelves on Amazon and the Bookshop indie bookstore site. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking and bus tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.

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