The Cursed Coastline

​By M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
The Devil's slide is an infamous section of Highway 1 which is two miles south of Pacifica and it's been eroding since it was opened in 1936. ​

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Devil's Slide, California

The Devil's Slide is a steep 900 foot cliff consisting of shale and sandstone with a soft sedimentary layer. This makes the rock very prone to erosion. It's a scenic but dangerous spot, and events of high strangeness are called to it like a moth to flame.

In 1973, serial killer Edmund Kemper threw the heads of two of his victims in the ocean from that spot.

Seven years later a large chunk dropped 300 feet into the Pacific Ocean. The roadway had to be closed for several weeks to allow for repairs.

In 1986, James Lund, 36, decided to take his life by driving his pickup over the side.

Stories like these were common every year in addition to unusual accidents that occurred in this stretch of the California coastline.

In the late 1980s, Dan Moss was driving north along the road when a deer bolted in front of his vehicle. A twist of the the steering wheel plunged the car over the edge. Luckily he dropped to only 50 fee of a 200-foot cliff. Below churned the ocean  waves. He climbed up the rock face, his vehicle was beyond any help though. He had two broken ribs and a gash on his head.

In 2017, his twenty-two year old son Richard drove through the same stretch. A traffic camera inside a nearby tunnel captured his Hyundai going through the tunnel, but that was the last seen of him. 

The mystery of his disappearance was solved a year later when a cervical vertebra was found at the Montarra State Beach. It belonged to Richard Moss. Parts of his car was in the ocean near the area where he had last been driving. A DNA match confirmed his identity.

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Gull House supposedly haunted by Peter Trunson c.1989 (Source - Peninsula Times Tribune)

But's there more than tragedies at the Devil's Slide that have produced strange stories.

A story is told that in the town of Half Moon Bay, Peter Trounson, a recluse, owned a small house built in 1890. He lived there during the turn of the century, and in the 1970s the house was bought by Patricia Hart. It was known as Gull House.

All was well until she decided to sell it. A would-be buyer remarked he would tear down a 6-foot redwood shelf. No sooner had the words left his mouth, than the shelf in question flew across the room and knocked him on the head. As far as he was concerned the deal was off. 

Patricia Hart kept living there, but now she started to have encounters with this unseen entity, however they only occurred from late September to early November.

When she had been there 3 years an old woman stopped by, and told her that in 1910, she had found the body of the cottage's owner named Peter Trounson. He lived there by himself selling fish, milk and eggs.  The child had discovered him on an errand to buy eggs.

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Gull House in Half Moon Bay c. present day

There was another time when Patricia Hart had an episode of automatic writing. She wrote, "Peter belongs in a time that is timeless... his soul lingers among the timber and he protects his space... not here, not gone, just somewhere in the middle... "

On Sept. 23, 1980, she arranged for a seance. The medium was able to reach Peter and he made his entrance with a swirl of cold air, and rapping came from the corner. Peter then gave advice as to how he wanted the cottage decorated. 

What happened  to Patricia and her ghost is unknown. Gull Cottage still stands at 408  Grove Street.

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Peter Trounson visits Grass City from Half Moon Bay

​Research finds that Peter Trounson did exist, but during those years he lived in Grass City, California. Around 1903, he worked for the Union Blue gravel mine, however he was kind of an unusual character.

In 1903, he was arrested  for a complaint of disturbing the peace. The incident occurred when he went to the stage office for his baggage, which he had been brought down from the Bloomfield stage. He was in a hurry to catch the the car going to Grass City, and asked to have his baggage brought out. Mr. Crawford who worked at the station asked him for a hand with a heavy piece. Trounson helped him, then they fought about the fee of $1.50 being charged for the luggage. Trounson said he would only pay $1.00 since he had helped taking his own luggage down, for which he charged $ .50.

Crawford threatened to keep his luggage. Trunson then cocked the hammer of a shotgun he was holding in his hands, "commanding Crawford not to touch the articles."

A bystander stepped in and further trouble was avoided. Crawford summoned the marshal who arrested Trounson. When the sheriff examined the shotgun, it was not loaded, which is why he was only charged with disturbing the peace. The charge was dismissed.

In 1909, Peter Trouson's small cottage that was located several miles below Grass City burned down. He had friends living there. 

A couple of months later, he took a 30 foot fall from a pine tree while gathering sugar pine cones on Banner Mountain. He was taken to Jones Memorial Hospital, where it was found he had a badly wrenched back, but no broken bones.

It wasn't until 1924 that Trounson was heard from again. He was referred to as a ranch owner who had moved to Half Moon Bay. He lived in the area of 119 Arleta Park. He was planning to visit England and New Zealand during that year.

Peter Trounson was born December, 1854, in England. He immigrated to the United States, in 1880, and he died December 19, 1936 in San Mateo, California. He was about 81 years old. There is no mention of suicide connected to his death.

So who was haunting Gull Cottage, and Patricia Hart?

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Sea Gull Cottage in Montecito c.2010 (Source - LA Times)

The original story of The Ghost and Mrs Muir was set in the sea captain's earthly home known as Gull Cottage.

Not far from Devil's Slide there was another place, known as Gull Cottage where the pilot episode for the series The Ghost and Mrs Muir (1968-1970) was filmed. The house was originally built on a headland overlooking the sea, in an area known as Portuguese Bend by a family of shipwrights. It was situated on a 100-acre estate in Montecito in the 1800s, and said to be haunted by a former owner who committed suicide.

The house later became known as the Neal House. It went up for sale in 2010. The Neal family settled in the area in 1871, and ran a 200-acre family farm. They built the house in 1906. ​

It could be possible the stories overlap, and were mixed up to produce the story told to Patricia Hart in the 1970s.

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View from the Moss Distillery c.2006

Not far from The Devil's Slide is another site said to be haunted. The place is the Moss Beach Distillery, 20 miles south of San Francisco. The phantom is the Blue Lady, named thus for the blue dress she's always seen wearing.

She is like a banshee; her appearance comes as a warning of injury, tragedy or accident. 

The restaurant, Frank's Place was built in 1928, by Frank Torres a Peruvian immigrant. Next door he built the Marine View Hotel which burned down in 1953. Up to then he had run the Marine View Tavern, a speakeasy located close by. 

There were rumors that a bordello was run from a building next door, and businessmen would take their mistresses over to the hotel after having eating dinner in the secluded restaurant.

The coastline close to the restaurant was a favorite spot for bootleggers during the 1930s. The liquor came from Canada to be  transported over the Devil's Slide to San Francisco. Under the cover of fog, the Canadian rum-runners unloaded ships and hauled their cargo up the cliffs.

No doubt this is why it became a favorite speakeasy for silent film stars, politicians and even Dashiell Hammett visited and used it as a setting for one of his stories.

Murders and shootouts came with the business of rum-running near Devil's Slide. It was during those years that the Blue Lady was said to have been killed on the beach below the Distillery. No one knows her name, and there were no police records about her murder. It was said she was the wife of a jealous bartender. Her husband caught her being unfaithful with a piano player named Charlie. He found the pair walking on the beach, which is when he killed his wife, and left his rival injured. 

There's another version of the tragic episode. In this one the Blue Lady dies in a car accident. Another story is where the piano player had another lover, and the Blue Lady committed suicide by jumping from the cliffs into the ocean.

Prohibition ended in 1933, and so did the illegal activity, but the Blue Lady stayed behind. Frank Torres continued to run the business as a restaurant which later became known as the Moss Beach Distillery. His son Vic continued as owner until 1964 when he died of a heart attack. 

Mike Murphy bought it and changed the name to the Galloway Bay Inn.

The next owners were Dave and Patricia Andrews, who changed the name to the Moss Beach Distillery. They kept it for 8 years. Dave claimed  to hear chairs moving upstairs when the restaurant was empty. Faucets would turn on by themselves, and he said the Blue Lady had even locked him out of his office on more than once occasion.

In 1981, Mike and Shirley Sarno the new owners told the story of the Blue Lady to a reporter from the San Francisco Examiner, and the ghost story took wings.

Waitresses claimed they would hear the ghost call their name in a monotone voice. However there would never be anyone there.​

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Frank's Place later to become The Moss Distillery c.1920s

​In 1992, Sylvia Browne the well-known psychic visited the restaurant. She gave the ghostly lady a name; it was Mary Morley.

In April, she held a seance. Three ghosts were identified. One was the unfortunate Mary Morley, a married woman, her lover John Contina, and Anna who was a second woman Contina was involved with.

According to Browne, Anna threw herself from the cliff, and Mary died from injuries received to her head and upper body. Even though Contina died when he was older, they all returned after death to haunt the place they would meet at during their life.

Research found that Mary Morley did exist, and died in a car accident in November, 1919. However the crash happened on the San Bruno Road after she drove off the road when she encountered a fog bank. Her husband Fred was traveling with her. He was hurt, but survived. This place is not close to the Moss Distillery, and this predated the existence of the speakeasy.

Census records do not find a John Contina or Anna Philbrook living in this area during the years that would correspond to Browne's story.

A fourth ghost that Browne encountered was Hannah Elder a lady from the late 19th century with an unknown tie to the area.

Some believe that Sylvia Browne, who had known of her visit to the Distillery a year before, had a staffer do a little research. They came across the story of Mary Morley's death on a San Mateo County highway, and assumed it was close to the restaurant. With this information in hand they tied her to the mysterious Blue Lady.

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Advertisement for Frank's Marine View Hotel and Grill c.1931

In 2008, the show Ghost Hunters investigated the restaurant and found several pranks implemented throughout the building, including a mirror with a ghostly reflection, and a sensor-triggered speaker that laughed.

Daryn Coleman, a former Disney employee, in a 2018 interview with the Fresno Bee said he installed a hydraulic lever that caused the chandeliers to sway, and a phone to ring by itself.

You would think this would cast some doubt about the Blue Lady except there's a tantalizing clue that appeared in Dashiell Hammett's story, The Girl with the Silver Eyes released in 1937.

The setting is a roadhouse south of San Francisco at Half Moon Bay during Prohibition, where his private eye hero finds trouble, and a beautiful femme fatale named Elvira; the silver-eyed girl referenced in the title. Her real name is Jeanne Delano, a gangster moll which is ultimately turned over to the law. 

One has to wonder if the description of his lady villain, like the setting of the story, is based on a real woman.

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I had seen the girl before. She was a slender girl in a glistening blue gown that exhibited a generous spread of front, back and arms that were worth showing. She had a mass of dark brown hair above an oval face of the color that pink ought to be. Her eyes were wide-set and of a grey shade that wasn’t altogether unlike the shadows on polished silver that the poet had compared them to.

Dashiell Hammett's 1937 story, "The Girl with the Silver Eyes" seems to be describing the ghost 50 years before her appearance. Was she real after all?

Nye's on the Beach (Moss Beach) a cafe and dance hall was built on the sandy beach by Charlie Nye. Charlie would tell stories about famous writers like Jack London renting his rowboats. c.1915

In November, 1928, residents of Moss Beach were questioned concerning what was suspected to be a murder ring that was responsible for the death of at least 3 persons during four years. All were found at Pillar Point.

The last body belonged to Harold L. "Harry" Peterson, 39, a San Francisco waiter who was killed by blows on the back of the head. He was found at the bottom of a dry reservoir, his personal effects scattered around him. Four men living in a house at Moss Beach where Peterson was last seen alive on September 23, were being questioned based on the findings of the Half Moon Bay coroner. They were said to have been making beer.

Fred Brarens and Jack Casais with who Peterson had been staying in a house at Moss Beach, said he was in poor health, physically and mentally, and had been drinking heavily. Up to 3 weeks before he had worked at 2251 Market Street in San Francisco, which was owned by Brarens.

Brarens would follow his friend to the grave two years later in 1930, when he was 37 years old. The cause of death was not specified in his obit.

After the removal of Peterson's body a 3-foot length of heavy bloodstained rope was found near the reservoir. Strangely the rope was not there when the body was found or on the following day.

Within the next few years, the body of a cook and blacksmith, both former residents Moss Beach were found near where Peterson's body was dumped. Both men were killed by skull fractures identical to what caused Peterson's death. 

Despite promises of the local sheriff that clues were being followed to bring the culprits to justice, none of murders were ever solved.

No doubt that stretch of coastline holds many secrets, including a long forgotten story of an unlucky lady that wore a blue dress when she met her end. 

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