The Hollywood Wax Museum, 6767 Hollywood Boulevard, Hollywood, California 90028

When the Hollywood Wax Museum opened in 1966, people lined up for blocks to rub elbows with the likenesses of their favorite stars. They claimed that the wax figures were so lifelike, they wanted to reach out and touch them.

People from all over the world still come to admire the animated sets and wax figures but many visitors get a little more than they originally paid for because the Hollywood Wax Museum is full of ghosts and rumor has it that these disembodied spirits move among the wax figures.

The museum building has been home to a variety of businesses over the years. During the 1930s, the second floor of the building, which is now the Stella Adler Academy, once hosted the Embassy Club, a private dining venue for celebrities which is said to have been Hollywood's first nightclub. Before the Wax Museum moved in, the building was home to a luggage company, and the museum's current Operations Manager, Marc Agena was told that the luggage company might have been a front for organized crime. "And during the 1920s," said Marc, " the basement of the building was used as a speakeasy, so who's to say who might be buried beneath us that we're not aware of."

A sign posted at the museum's entrance warns visitors that the building is haunted. It explains that the location was once the site of a business that burned down, killing an employee who was sleeping on the job, and whose ghost now haunts the museum. While some might consider this warning to be "Hollywood hype" there have been reports of cold spots, lights going off and on all by themselves and disembodied voices heard throughout the building. Is that sleeping employee continually reliving his tragic death, or do some of Hollywood's greatest stars pop in from time to time to admire their likenesses?

Another possible resident ghost could be that of Spoony Singh, founder of the Hollywood Wax Museum, who passed away in October 2006. It was his vision to create a museum "where people screamed instead of tiptoed." One of his favorite stunts was to place breathing actors among the wax figures so visitors would be startled by sudden movements. Fearing lawsuits, (and the reported heart attack of a woman visitor) the museum ended the practice of "live scares" more than a decade ago, but the museum's resident ghosts don't seem to be breaking any rules when they decide to scare someone because after all, they aren't technically alive.

Two to three million people visit the Wax Museum each year, including a host of celebrities who come in to check out their likenesses, and many people have reported seeing and hearing things they weren't expecting, especially around closing time. Some even have tangible proof that the museum is indeed haunted.

"A woman from England was here not long ago," said Marc, "and when she got back home she called me and asked if we had any kind of strange activity going on in the museum because when she had her pictures developed, they came back with huge shiny orbs on several of the pictures she took. She was so concerned by the eerie images that she had her camera checked out by experts who concluded that nothing was wrong with her equipment and stated that the anomalies were within the photos. She FedExed the photos to me and I saw them for myself."

Tourists aren't the only ones who have experienced strange goings on. About a year ago, manager Joseph Pascua was closing up the museum at midnight when he had his own scary encounter.

There were only two of us working that night and the other guy was outside," said Joseph. "I was turning off the breakers near the door that leads to the Chamber of Horrors when all of a sudden, the door slammed shut, really hard, all by itself. I immediately broke out in goose bumps, the hair stood up on the back of my neck and all I could do was try to get away from there. There was no wind in the building and since I was all alone, it had to have been a ghost that slammed the door."

Marc Agena admits that he and other staff members hear disembodied footsteps and strange noises all the time, but he had his first real supernatural encounter at the museum shortly after he began working there four years ago.

I came in one weekend morning very early, about 7:00 AM and was in the process of turning on the lights in the center of the museum when I saw a mist coming up from the floor. It looked like something created by fog machine. I also felt moisture in the air and immediately thought that there was a problem in the facility, like a water leak or a seepage from underground so I went to look for the maintenance engineer. I was only gone for a minute or two and when I came back, there was nothing there. I did a thorough search but couldn't find anything, so I just let it go. Then about a year later I hired a new employee and one day we were sitting and talking, and he started telling me about having seen the same phenomenon."

With such a stellar reputation for ghosts and hauntings, it seemed natural to go and explore the Wax Museum and find out for myself whether any of these ghostly rumors were true. Just in case they were, and since it was decided that the investigation would take place at midnight when the spirits were likely to be more active, I asked psychic and paranormal investigator Victoria Gross, investigator/cameraman Barry Conrad and Hollywood historian Scott Michaels to come along.

We met Marc at the back door just before midnight and after walking through a maze of dismembered body parts and severed heads in the storeroom, we made our way down one of the world's narrowest hallways into the employee lounge where we sat down and worked out a game plan for our investigation.



It was initially decided that I would walk around with Victoria to see where the hot spots of activity might be while Barry set up to film interviews with the employees who have had paranormal experiences in the museum. Then, armed with digital cameras and walkie-talkies to keep in touch, we walked downstairs into the museum. Barry, Scott and the museum crew took off in different directions, but because Victoria immediately felt a strong male presence at the foot of the stairs, she and I stayed behind to see what she was picking up.

He's a big man, very tall with black hair and olive skin and he's not from this time," she said. "I'd say he goes back to the 1920s or 30's and I'm getting the name Joe or Joseph. "

Just as she said that, Victoria felt as though someone hit her hard in the upper back and had to steady herself because she began feeling quite dizzy.

"I'm feeling a sharp pain in my back right now and I also feel a great deal of confusion." she explained. "I think something bad happened to him here on this spot. This isn't residual energy," she went on to say, "This is an active haunting even though Joseph keeps fading in and out. I don't feel as though he ever leaves this area, nor does the woman in a long black dress who I can see going up the steps. This whole area right here is very active."

Because Victoria's dizziness was not subsiding, we decided to leave Joseph and the woman for a while and join the others.

We met up with Barry and Scott at the entrance to the dark and foreboding Chamber of Horrors, and found out that Barry was also feeling dizzy and a bit disoriented. "It's the kind of dizziness that makes you feel like you're underneath several fathoms of water," he said, but after walking further into the chamber, the atmosphere quickly changed. Victoria felt the presence of a woman near the Hell Boy exhibit and when Barry took a picture of the area with his digital camera in the dungeon, he caught a couple of bright orbs.

Scott and I decided to continue on through the Chamber leaving Barry and Victoria to continue their investigation.   Next Page