Laura Wright 
Titanic Tales
In 1915, one of the prettiest bungalows in California stood on Pasadena Avenue in Los Angeles. From the outside, there was apparently nothing particularly sinister about the attractive little home.
Unfortunately, according to contemporary stories, the bungalow was haunted.
The alleged ghost was not an unknown former resident or mysterious stranger. He was said to be Dr. Mills, the former owner of the property and a spiritualist during his lifetime.
Dr. Mills had died aboard the Titanic.
According to the story, death did not prevent him from returning home.
Dr. Mills and the Titanic
The sinking of the RMS Titanic on April 15, 1912, produced an extraordinary collection of supernatural stories. Premonitions, prophetic dreams, strange coincidences, ghosts, and alleged messages from the dead all became associated with the disaster.
Dr. Mills became part of that strange folklore.
Before his death, Mills had reportedly been a spiritualist. His belief in the possibility of communication between the living and the dead makes the story of his supposed return particularly intriguing.
After he perished aboard the Titanic, stories began to circulate that Dr. Mills had returned to the Pasadena bungalow he once owned.
But unlike some supposedly peaceful spirits, Mills apparently had no intention of quietly sharing the house with its new occupants.
The Haunting Begins
Tenants living in the bungalow began complaining about unexplained disturbances.
The most persistent phenomenon was pounding.
According to reports, Dr. Mills made his presence known by pounding violently on the walls of his former home. The disturbances became troublesome enough that tenants were driven from the property.
As one frightened occupant left, another could presumably be found.
But the haunting continued.
Eventually, the landlord began to doubt the stories being told by his tenants.
Rather than accept their claims at face value, he decided to investigate the bungalow himself.
The Landlord Spends Two Nights in the House
The landlord stayed inside the supposedly haunted bungalow for two nights.
Whatever happened during those nights apparently changed his opinion.
The skeptical property owner emerged convinced that something was seriously wrong with the house.
He did not call a medium.
He did not attempt to have the property blessed.
He did not simply search for another tenant willing to tolerate unexplained pounding from the walls.
Instead, the landlord ordered the bungalow demolished.
A new house could then be constructed on the property.
Whatever had frightened him during those two nights was apparently enough to convince him that the existing house was no longer worth saving.
A Lost Pasadena Ghost Story
The destruction of the bungalow makes the story particularly frustrating today.
Unlike many famous haunted houses, there is no surviving building to investigate. There are no modern paranormal teams spending nights inside the rooms, no tourists photographing the exterior, and no present-day tenants reporting footsteps or knocks from unseen hands.
The physical setting of the haunting disappeared.
What remained was the story.
And that story fits surprisingly well into the larger supernatural folklore surrounding Pasadena and the surrounding area.
Haunted Pasadena
Pasadena has accumulated numerous ghost stories over the years. Historic buildings, hotels, theaters, bridges, and private residences have all acquired reputations for unexplained activity.
Castle Green, originally part of the luxurious Hotel Green complex, is one of the city’s best-known historic landmarks. Over the years, stories have circulated of unexplained sounds and other strange activity inside the building.
The Pasadena Playhouse has also acquired its own ghostly traditions, including stories that founder Gilmor Brown continued to make his presence known after his death.
Perhaps the most famous haunted location in Pasadena is the Colorado Street Bridge. The historic bridge spans the Arroyo Seco and has long been associated with stories of apparitions and other supernatural encounters.
None of these places has any known connection with Dr. Mills or the mysterious bungalow on Pasadena Avenue.
They do, however, demonstrate that the little Titanic story was not the only ghost tale to emerge from Pasadena.
The Ghosts of the Titanic
The Pasadena bungalow also belongs to another, much larger collection of folklore.
The Titanic disaster produced ghost stories almost immediately.
For some people in the early twentieth century, communication with those who had died was not necessarily regarded as impossible. Spiritualism had already attracted believers interested in mediums, séances, automatic writing, and other alleged methods of contacting the dead.
The enormous loss of life aboard the Titanic inevitably became intertwined with those beliefs.
Stories circulated of passengers appearing after death. Others supposedly communicated through mediums or relatives. Premonitions and warnings were remembered and retold after the disaster.
Dr. Mills supposedly chose a simpler method.
He went home.
What Happened in the Pasadena Bungalow?
More than a century later, there is little left of the strange story.
A spiritualist named Dr. Mills was said to have owned an attractive bungalow on Pasadena Avenue. After dying aboard the Titanic, he supposedly returned to the house and began pounding on its walls.
Tenants fled.
The landlord remained skeptical until he spent two nights in the house himself.
Then he ordered the building destroyed.
Perhaps there was a perfectly ordinary explanation for whatever occurred inside the bungalow.
Perhaps frightened tenants influenced one another until every creaking board and knocking pipe became evidence of the dead doctor.
But that does leave one intriguing question.
What happened during those two nights that convinced a skeptical landlord it would be better to tear down one of California’s prettiest bungalows than spend another night wondering who, or what, was pounding inside the walls?
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