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<\/p>\nBeyond the Rose Bowl and historic bungalows, Pasadena has stranger tales to tell. David Kalbeitzer has been seeking out those stories where rocket science meets the occult and ghosts haunt the city\u2019s grandest buildings.<\/p>\n
For Kalbeitzer, a Disney executive who investigates the paranormal in his free time, his fascination with the city\u2019s mysterious side started when he bought a Victorian north of Old Town.<\/p>\n
He sensed a spirit at the open house a dozen years ago and took it as a reason to move his family to Pasadena. Then he started learning the city\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
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David Kalbeitzer, a paranormal investigator from Pasadena, is giving a talk about the city’s strange history tonight in Old Town. <\/p>\n
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Courtesy of David Kalbeitzer<\/p>\n
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\u201cI realized, \u2018Oh, this place called us just as much as we were looking for it,\u2019\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Tonight, he\u2019s sharing the lore he\u2019s collected at Mesmer Mesmer<\/a> an Old Town shop and event space. While the event<\/a> is full, there\u2019s a waitlist, and more talks featuring Kalbeitzer are in the works.<\/p>\n A city of ghost stories\u00a0<\/p>\n Ask Kalbeitzer about haunted Pasadena, and the list stretches from alleyways to the Colorado Street Bridge to Castle Green, the turreted former hotel overlooking Central Park.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Pasadena Playhouse theater is, you know, very haunted,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n He says playgoers have reported hearing disembodied voices.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd you look and there\u2019s no one there, or apparitions that have been seen sort of standing in the corner, and then you walk up, and they kind of disappear,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n As for the spirit that helped draw him to his current Pasadena home?<\/p>\n Kalbeitzer says she\u2019s still around \u2013 and a psychic friend says she has a name: Dolores.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s actually haunted by a very kind ghost that looks out for the house, protects my family, and has been able to activate our alarm,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Having a Dolores in the house might send some people running the other way. But Kalbeitzer said he grew up in a haunted house as a young boy in Idaho Falls, Idaho.<\/p>\n And when his family moved to Charleston, South Carolina, a teenage Kalbeitzer started seeking out places known for paranormal activity.<\/p>\n Rocket science, ritual magic and mind-reading<\/p>\n Having lived in different neighborhoods in L.A., Kalbeitzer says there\u2019s something uniquely otherworldly about Pasadena \u2013 and it goes beyond ghost stories.<\/p>\n He said the city has an energy that draws people exploring the unknown, perhaps most famously, Jack Parsons.<\/p>\n The rocket pioneer who helped launch the Jet Propulsion Laboratory also practiced ritual magic at his Pasadena home with the likes of L. Ron Hubbard before he founded Scientology.<\/p>\n \u201cMany people call it the occult. I don\u2019t know that I fully subscribe to that, but there is spiritualism and occult mixed in there,\u201d Kalbeitzer said.<\/p>\n Then there was Upton Sinclair, the muckraking author of The Jungle, whose interests while living in Pasadena extended to telepathy and s\u00e9ances.<\/p>\n Upton Sinclair, pictured with his wife Mary Craig Sinclair in 1935, several years after he published a book examining her reported telepathy.<\/p>\n (<\/p>\n Los Angeles Times via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n )<\/p>\n In 1930, Sinclair published Mental Radio, a book about experiments in mind-reading. Albert Einstein provided a preface. Yes, that Einstein, who would spend the following winter at Caltech expanding on the theories of relativity and cosmology.<\/p>\n \u201cLike it\u2019s the craziest mixture of things that were happening at that time and all of it at the same time,\u201d Kalbeitzer said.<\/p>\n A presence in the shop\u00a0<\/p>\n The event couldn\u2019t have found a more appropriate venue.<\/p>\n Since opening five months ago in Old Town, Mesmer Mesmer has embraced the dark and mysterious, offering tarot and crystal readings and hosting events on subjects such as hip-hop\u2019s relationship with ghosts.<\/p>\n At that event, a medium told owner Tyke O\u2019Brien she could sense a presence in the shop, which formerly housed a bridal store.<\/p>\n \u201cShe goes, \u2018Do you ever feel it?\u2019\u201d O\u2019Brien recounted, \u201cAnd I\u2019m like, \u2018I am such a bummer. I really wish I could. How wonderful would that be to be able to?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The same can be said for this writer who\u2019s lived and worked in and around Pasadena for years without so much as a brush with the otherworldly.<\/p>\n Kalbeitzer, on the other hand, reports supernatural encounters all around town.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that how you see yourself in the world has a lot more to do with it, and whether you want to have those experiences,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Dark & Strange in Pasadena<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1792804332_250_.jpeg\")
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