The Ghost of San Jacinto
10/31/2007 - By Brian Casey
The Ghost of San Jacinto
A tale of love and horror on Halloween, 1946, in San Jacinto, California.
Retold by Brian Casey, Radio PersonalityIt was a hot and sticky, humid Halloween night in Southern California, 1946….the kids all home from trick or treating…and it’s late….not many cars or trucks on the road. There’s a terrible fog all over the eastern inland empire. …A truck driver is driving along, southbound off the 10 on what was then known as Sanderson Rd.….and as he’s driving ahead down the steep hills toward San Jacinto, over a small narrow bridge running over a canalway. He can hardly see in front of him as he slowly drives through the fog…. Suddenly, he thinks he see’s some taillights to his right. As he pulls over to the side of the road, he can now see it ...a car… off the road…rolled over, crushed tightly, sitting upside down. There’s a young boy still in the driver’s seat…and he’s gone…killed by the impact of rolling over of the accident. …..he looks across the car and see’s a young woman wearing a white dress covered in blood…still alive …still moving…on the passenger side of the car. She’s crying softly…
He races to her side of the car…the windows with broken glass..too crushed to reach in to her….and he pulls and pulls on the car door, but it’s badly crushed in….the young woman turns her head and moves her arms as if to say…”help me…help me” with her cries….. Nothing will work, he can’t get in to get her out…. 16 minutes go by….he watches aimlessly for 16 minutes …unable to free her. And then… she moves no more. The trucker driver begins to sob.
When the authorities arrive, the bodies are removed from the crushed car but it takes many hours. The next day the truck driver reads the story in the paper that a young couple from San Jacinto had gotten married in Riverside and were on their way home on the Cajalco Rd. near Sanderson crashed in the heavy fog. The trucker driver, haunted by this, talks with his brother, who works for the county road department…. And the next year on Halloween, the names of those roads are changed.
Those 16 long minutes of her crying screams in his ears….became two numbers… Yes, 16 became 7 & 9. And Sanderson became California 79. And right there the Cajalco Rd. was renamed…. the Ramona Expressway. For the young bride’s name….was…Ramona.
And even now…on Halloween night at about 11:30, you can drive out there….southbound on the 79 just before the Ramona Expressway….and you can roll down your window….and between the Santa Ana winds… you will still hear her cries….for 16 minutes. It's the spirit of a young bride still facing onlookers beside the desolate 79. And that is Ramona…..also known …as the Ghost of San Jacinto.
…..I’m Brian Casey. Happy Halloween!
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