Community Report #4 - The Silver Lake Werewolf

An eerie drama about the Silver Lake werewolf.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Jeremy  0:00
Silver Lake is a neighborhood in Los Angeles centered around, not surprisingly, the Silver Lake Reservoir, which stretches 3/4 of a mile from head to toe and is flanked on both sides by steep hills. The hills are very popular with walkers for their challenge and with residents for their privacy and rewarding views. During construction of the reservoir in 1907, the city water department ran into a snag. Workers in the northeast corner of the dig site began to disappear without a trace. But the growing city of Los Angeles needed water, badly. So what do you do when you have a major waterworks projects and workers start to disappear - you round up a posse and root out the problem. 

Papers  0:36
sound of papers rustling 

Jeremy  0:37
I’m in the archives of city historian Bill Roberts.

City Historian  0:40
You can see it right there.

Jeremy  0:42
Whoa. Wow. It says it right there, ‘By special order of the City of Los Angeles, with superintendent of the city water department acting as its agent and proxy, a party of men is hereby to be convened for the express purpose of identifying and neutralizing the threat to the 773 million gallon high gravity Silver Lake Reservoir project.’ Oh wow, and it’s signed right there by Mr. William Mulholland himself.

City Historian  1:16
Yup.

Jeremy  1:16
So how did it go?

City Historian  1:18
Um. Not well. Apparently, whatever it was that was causing the disappearances was hunting the men at night, sort of picking them off one by one. So that, even though there was this large band of men at the outset, maybe 30 or so (armed to the teeth of course), by the end of it when they finally decided, ‘Aw to hell with it, we’ll just build around the northeast corner,’ only 15 or so were left.

Jeremy  1:44
So they basically gave up?

City Historian  1:46
Yup. Yup. And that pretty much took care of the problem. Because after that very few men disappeared, but you were left with this curious bulge of trees and forest and a small hill at the northeast corner of the reservoir.

Jeremy  2:03
Which of course you can still see today, when you look north from the south side of the lake.

City Historian  2:08
Yup. Yup. 

Jeremy  2:10
Except that it’s fenced off.

City Historian  2:12
Probably for good reason. 

Jeremy  2:15
And so our story begins.

Hyp  2:17
Hi, my name is Hyp (it’s short for Hyperion, just like the avenue) and I was a child growing up in the Silver Lake area in the mid-to-late 80s. I think my first memory of him is the year before he was my teacher - so I must have been in second grade - and it was Halloween. And the morning routine at the school was that we would be out on the asphalt, like the basketball courts and such, and the teachers would collect us. And sometimes there would be a morning assembly. Well, since it was Halloween there was basically a big assembly about all the guidelines for the day - no candy before the parade later in the day, no attacking each other with fake guns and knives (which you could bring to school back then), etc., etc. And as the principal (who by the way hated Mr. L - in fact, I think she hated everybody, even the kids), as the principal was standing there talking, suddenly this person dressed in a white sheet with two eyeholes in it - basically a bad excuse for a ghost - starts peeking out from various buildings and running from behind one building to the next and hiding. And the campus was full of bungalows, or basically permanent trailers to handle the overcrowding in the school district -  so as a result, there were a lot of buildings to run and hide behind. And so the principal is trying to deliver this information, except that the kids are totally getting distracted and starting to titter and point and talk to one another. And it was clear the principal was totally unaware that this ghost was running around the buildings behind her, because she kept getting more and more agitated and saying, “I’ll wait… I’ll wait. I can sit here all morning.” And just when things would settle down, that ghost head would pop up again and get everyone riled up and pointing and whispering. Finally, after a few threats to cancel Halloween, the principal gets thru her speech, and as the classes start going to their rooms, the ghost reappears with some shopping bags, takes his sheet off (it’s Mr. L of course), and starts handing out candy to each classroom. And I remember hoping that I got Mr. L next year, which I did. In fact, I got him halfway thru second grade.

Mr. Tethys  6:18
My name is Tethys, but you can call me Mr. Tethys. I’ve been trapping and relocating animals out of Silver Lake for decades. This includes bobcats, mountain lions, coyotes, and bears. Well, I perform a service for bears, but have never been needed for it yet. Most common thing is coyotes, but every 10 years or so there seems to be a flare up. It’s almost like a severe flare up of animal killings. Just gruesome stuff. And I tell people about it, but no one seems to take my expertise seriously. See, only if you’ve been around for the long haul, can you spot the trends. Anyway, I’ve had it as my mission to catch whatever is behind those flareups, and prove these snotty people wrong.

Hyp  7:08
As a foster kid, as you get older, your chances of getting adopted shrink with each year that you age. And it’s kind of cruel really, because with each year you age (at least for me really), you realize more and more how you don’t have a family. So naturally, I always had these fantasies about some family taking me away. But while I was in Mr. L’s class, he was that fantasy. I looked forward to every day at school. He had this way about him - he was like a mountaineering / survivalist Santa Claus. But instead of a red suit, he’d have these rugged boots, a thick flannel shirt, ruffed up jeans. He drove this giant, beat up  SUV and he told us he lived in the mountains. Which explains why he was late so often, because the nearest mountains are like two hours away. And he would bring us stuff from where he lived - so stuff like animal skulls or rattlesnake skins or pine cones. And he would just tell us everything related to these things, how they started out, how they went thru life, and how they had gotten into his hands now. Also the thing about his class was that you felt safe. Our school would sometimes have these lockdowns. So the police would be chasing someone in the area, and they’d ask all the classes to lock their doors and stay in place. And as a student, the lockdowns just meant that you could not go to the restroom, so no real change in routine. Well, our class was in one of these bungalows, like a giant trailer turned into a classroom. And during one of the lockdowns the criminal they were chasing was going from classroom to classroom frantically looking in the windows and trying to open the doors. And we knew this, because he had tried our classroom once already. And right after he did that, Mr. L just calmly said how irritated he was that someone was trying to interrupt our class, and he moved everyone to the story carpet away from the door, and the teacher’s assistant started reading stories to us. In the meantime, Mr. L just stood by the door, very calmly looking out the window. And when the criminal came to Mr. L’s door a second time - Mr. L suddenly opens the door, which must have freaked out the guy, because the guy just stood there. And Mr. L grabs the guy by his shirt and pants, swings him over his head and body slams him to the ground. And the guy moans for a second, rolls over, and then just goes lifeless. We all thought that Mr. L had killed him, which he hadn’t, and quickly the police came and took over from there. And the way Mr. L explained the whole thing to the class, because we were all a bit freaked out of course - was that sometimes people make bad choices, and unfortunately, interrupting Mr. L’s class was a very bad choice. So one day Mr. L did not show up. And what made this unusual were two things. One, he was always there (maybe late, but always there). I mean, we had had him since halfway thru 2nd grade, when they had merged some classes together, maybe because of budget cuts or something, and this was now into the fall during 3rd grade… So I don’t think he’d missed a day in like 7 or 8 months. And two, his absence lasted two weeks. I mean, that’s a really long time for your teacher to just suddenly not be there, especially when you’re a kid and time just passes more slowly. Of course there was no explanation given as to his absence (at least not to the kids). And the whole thing just really upset me. I mean, in a way, this guy was like my dad or something, and suddenly he just disappeared. In fact, I was so upset I couldn’t sleep. So, on about the 5th or 6th night of that first week he was out, I started sneaking out at night into the neighborhood. Which was no big deal for me. I mean, most nights I would just sleep with the window open anyway, so it was very easy to just climb out it into the backyard and head out. And what struck me walking around the neighborhood in the middle of the night was how still everything was. There were no car sounds, no bird sounds. I mean it really felt like everything was asleep. And that was particularly true of the reservoir. During the day, especially the afternoon, the wind typically ruffles up the surface of the water. But at night in LA, the middle of the night, unless there’s some storm or Santa Anna event, the wind is just non-existent. And that creates this situation on the reservoir where, when you look west across it to the hill on the other side, you see this giant cookie mound of glowing chocolate chips reflected perfectly in the reservoir, like it’s a mirror. It is so peaceful… And I discovered this spot at the intersection of Baxter and Apex street, way up at the top there, that has a perfect view down of this. So I would just sit up there until my brain kind of quieted down and I was tired enough to sleep. Eventually Mr. L started coming back to class, but he just wasn’t the same. His breathing was labored. His energy level was quite low. And he would be out a day or two every few days. Whenever someone would ask him if he was okay, he would just say that he didn’t want to talk about it. He also started losing a lot of weight. So of course, all of this continued to really upset me, but I just handled it with my nightly routine of watching the water on the lake, the reservoir. Well I was doing this one night, and I just saw the oddest thing. It was a full moon, and the reflection of the moon was resting in the lake and the lake of course was very placid - but suddenly I saw this disturbance, like something swimming across the lake.

Mr. Tethys  16:17
This head would pop up, disappear for like 10-15 seconds, then reappear like 10 feet further along. And it kept doing this until it made it to the opposite shore, kind of on the curve near the rec center.

Hyp  16:31
Then it got out, shook itself off like a dog, and hopped the fence. I wasn’t afraid, but was more like, what is that?

Mr. Tethys  16:43
The frustrating thing about these sightings is, was, always has been, that wherever I am, they occur on the opposite side of the lake. I put my camera on one side, it appears on the other. I wait on one side, it appears on the other. It’s like there are spies out there helping it. But you wanna’ know the creepiest thing about it - whatever it is, wherever it goes, it always returns to the lake with something. It never returns empty-handed.

Hyp  17:21
Finally, Mr. L just stopped showing up altogether. And we got this string of subs. But there was one lady who showed up over and over - gosh - what was her name? She talked about how she worked at this shop. House of something? She always complained about going up the stairs to work. Anyway, the class was enchanted by her, because she would teach us about crystals and their healing powers. And she would bring these crystals to class, and even give them to us to keep. In retrospect they were probably just smoothed soda bottles. But I treasured mine, it was just so soothing to press it and rub it whenever times were tough. And I carried it around with me all the time. Now that I’m telling you all of this, I realize how crazy that was - I mean energies and chakras and crystals are cool and all, and the kids loved it. But if the parents had known or really cared, they probably would have flipped out. And something else I remember about her - that probably would have flipped out parents as well - is that she had this crazy way of controlling the class. Anytime the class would get out of control, you know, talking and fooling around and what not, she would just lay down dead on the ground. Which I thought was brave of her, because that floor was never cleaned. But anyway, she would be so convincing, that each time, the class would fall terribly silent. And she had told us that the only way to wake her was to lay a crystal on her chest. So someone would always have to approach her, lay a crystal on her chest, and up she would rise, back from the dead to take care of the class. I guess the school felt very comfortable with her, because they decided to let her tell us about Mr. L. He was very sick and in the hospital. And I knew what that meant, because I had lost a brother that way. At this point, sitting over the lake wasn’t really helping me. It’s almost like, I didn’t need quiet, I needed some sort of chaos and excitement to sort of occupy my anxiety. I had this buzzing that had started in my head, and it would only go away when I was completely consumed by something else. So I became fixated with tracking this creature I had seen (and would see every once in a while) swimming across the lake. It was difficult because it didn’t show up consistently. Sometimes it would be when the moon was out, sometimes when not. No pattern that I could recognize, at least as an 8 year-old. The closest I ever got to it was on a windy night - one of those just before the rain hits. And I was just sort of wandering around the northeast side of the lake, you know, where that odd kind of bulge is. And I was there because I had noticed that’s where it seemed to swim back to. It must have been about midnight - and every time a jogger or someone would go by, I had to hide in the bushes. Well, I was hiding there for like 10-15 minutes or something. And just when I thought it was safe to come back out, there’s what I thought was another runner. So I went back into the shrubbery. Except this time the runner (or what I thought was a runner) stopped right next to me, and it was carrying something. I quickly realized that this was no runner. This was it. And it was carrying something that was still alive, because I could hear the something whimpering a little bit. The creature itself looked like some hairy half-humanoid that couldn’t decided if it wanted to be upright or down on all fours. And it had these silvery eyes, kind of like a cat’s when it’s dark and all you see are these disks staring back at you. And I think it sensed me, because it sort of kept sniffing the air, like it was trying to determine exactly what was going on. And I was paralyzed, I had no idea what I was supposed to do now - like a dog that catches a car. Suddenly, it just howled like a coyote would howl - which explains why no one would think twice about it, because the coyotes howl all the time. And it literally bounded over me, with this dog or whatever under its arms, didn’t climb the fence, but somehow went under it, and just disappeared. Needless to say, the buzzing in my head stopped for a few days. Eventually, I found Mr. L’s hospital and started visiting him. If you’ve ever been around someone who’s dying and they’re not in a coma or something, you know it’s not like the movies. The person is often very weak, and you get in a few words or discussions between their sleeping spells. Mr. L was no exception. Though it was funny, the first time he saw me, he woke up, looked at me, and it took a moment to register. Then he said, “Am I dead?” And I told him no, it was just me, Hyp. He asked me what I was doing there, and I said visiting. Then he asked me if the whole class was here. And when I told him no, he got this sort of relieved look on his face and just went back to sleep. But so um, so I visited him just about everyday. My foster parents thought I was at an after school activity. And, he and I didn’t really talk too much, but I do remember near the end, he started asking me if I was coming back. That’s how I knew he liked me being there. 

Mr. Tethys  24:35
So it would always climb back into the lake with something - like a dog, or a deer, or a cat. Then it would swim across the lake and disappear into the woods in the northeast corner. And if you remember, back in 1988 around the fall, there were two things going on:  baseball fever and residents were just getting PO’d at all the pets going missing - we were on one of those 10yr cycles. So I was double-timing it, putting in a lot of hours trying to catch this thing. The main problem was (1) no one would believe me, and (2) I wasn’t about to be arrested again for jumpin’ the fence and going onto the reservoir side. The police have always had a zero tolerance policy for hopping that fence. So I started to inspect the perimeter - look for clues there. I mean you couldn’t be arrested for walking around the lake - people did it all the time - they do it now - that’s what the lake is for - walking around it. And - rasplendo - I finally found something.

Hyp  25:44
I remember the day very vividly. I went to the hospital to see him and when I got to his room, the bed was empty. I asked the nurse where Mr. L was, and they went to get someone. So I’m standing there waiting and it’s like some giant took its fingers and was slowly but steadily squeezing me and pushing me down like a thumbtack. And one of the nurses who looked a little familiar told me. He had passed. And I didn’t cry, I didn’t say anything, I just said ok. That’s it. OK. And then the nurse asked if there was anything she could do for me. And I said no, and she just left, and that was it. I can remember standing there feeling like the whole thing was so unfair - had he been my real family it wouldn’t have gone this way. I would have been there with him, there would have been a funeral, there would have been something. But instead there was this callous white hospital hall with people just going about their business. I remember feeling the same way going home, sitting on the bus, and people were getting excited about the baseball game - that night was the last time LA won it all, 1988. And people were so excited. I just thought it was so unfair, but that’s the weirdest thing when someone dies, the world just carries on, and that time everyone one was carrying on as if it was the greatest day ever, which for some people it was… just not for me. Needless to say, that night I was definitely not staying in - the buzzing in my head was almost the only thing I was aware of - it was that intense. So, pretty much as soon as I was put to bed, I was out the window. And this time, for whatever reason, I mean, I know the reason now, I was going to find that creature. And I headed to the northeast corner of the lake where I had had that close encounter. There was a lot of activity in the neighborhood that night, because people were celebrating, because by then LA had won, the series was over, and there were fireworks going off everywhere. All illegal of course, but that didn’t matter.

Mr. Tethys  28:41
This was my chance. I had discovered kind of a ditch under the fence where something had been sneaking in and out, on the northeast side of the fence. It was like where the fence had been bent up, so something could roll under and scurry off into the brush. And with all the firecrackers and booms, I had perfect cover. 

Hyp  29:01
It was a mad scene really, people out in the streets, cheering and yelling, police everywhere, making sure things didn’t get out of hand. Choppers were circling overhead, trying to triangulate where all the firecracker launchers were. Anyway, so I go to this spot in the fence where something clearly had been going in and out. And I didn’t give a sh beep t. I just went for it. I rolled under and pushed into the brush. Only the brush and chaparral were so thick, I couldn’t really move, and that’s when I saw like this kind of tunnel going thru the thickets. I had to crawl thru the tunnel on my belly, kind of like a GI on their elbows and knees. And when I got to the end of the tunnel, there was this clearing. Maybe like 30 feet by 30 feet, almost like a circle of dirt. It was lit by the moon, but was still difficult to see. And there were these shapes, like large skinny dogs, concentrated in the center, pacing about. As I approached, I saw that they were coyotes, and they were upset, whimpering a bit. They didn’t seem to mind me, but let me walk thru them toward the center of the circle. And once I got to the middle of the circle, they cleared a bit. And there was this human form crunched up in a fetal position. Its breathing was very labored. It had blotches of hair all over it. Instead of nails, it had long claws. And when I got to its head, it had a gnarled expression that was clearly in agony, kind of like when someone has a severe stomach ache. But that wasn’t even the weirdest part, because when I got really close to the face, that’s when I saw: It was Mr. L, except he was transformed into this, this, I don’t know what it was. And I started yelling, ‘Mr. L! Mr. L! It’s you! It’s you! You’re alive!’ One side of his face was in the dirt, but on the other side, he opened his eye a slit. And this yellow, catlike eyeball rolled into view and just looked at me. Then, slowly, and with a lot of effort, Mr. L rolled onto his back. And even though he was this creature, it was clear he was still extremely ill. His ribs were basically a cage with this mangy, sickly skin wrapped around it and his teeth and fangs seemed like they had lost a good bit of the gums. We looked at each other for a moment. Then he weakly reached his hand into the air. So I grabbed it. Really all I could latch onto were these two clawed fingers. And I just held them and we sat there a while. Then he whispered: ‘Hyp, Thank you.’ By this time I was just a blithering mess. I mean tears and snot rolling down my face. I started going on about bringing him home and he could adopt me and we could live in the mountains. I mean that’s just hilarious now, could you imagine me bringing him into Child Services? ‘Hey, can you let this thing adopt me?’  But anyway, he just became unresponsive at that point, and just sort of slipped off, you know, like I thought he had done a few hours ago. And I don’t know why, but I took that crystal that the sub had given me, and I just laid it on his chest. I guess I was trying to bring him back to life. It didn’t do that, but right before my very eyes, he transformed back into human form. And then of course, all hell broke loose.

Mr. Tethys  33:58
So finally, I make my way into this circle of death. It was the most bizarre scene I had ever witnessed. Like some sort of animal ritual. These coyotes had encircled this poor little girl. And next to the girl was this naked dead man just laying there. God knows what had gone on before I got there. As soon as the coyotes saw me, it was like they knew me, and they attacked. I’ve got two of them pulling at my right ankle, three of them jumping up at my neck. I’m desperately trying to fend the rest off with my heavy-duty flashlight. And just when I think mother nature has me by the ba beep s, BOOM, the canopy above explodes in a shower of sparks. One of the fireworks had landed in the trees above. All the coyotes scattered, the little girl disappeared (in fact, I never did see her again). And I was sort of deaf and blinded for a moment - stunned really. When I regained my bearings, there was a helicopter searchlight shining into the clearing. And I was just there, with this naked dead man, the thicket ablaze, and wondering how the hell I was gonna’ explain my way out of this one. Of course afterwards, no one believed my story and the local papers had a field day. One of them claimed it was some sort of lover’s quarrel that had gotten’ badly out of hand. And no one cared one lick that there was some sort of creature out there - still is to this day. 

Hyp  35:35
Yeah, there was some sort of explosion, and I just booked it and went home. I never went back there again. And pretty soon after that I was sent to another foster home, so it didn’t really matter anyway. 

Jeremy  35:52
Hyp spent the remainder of her years up until 18 in and out of different foster homes. Today she works as an immigration attorney, mostly representing children. And she lives in Silver Lake. When asked if she believes werewolf-like creatures would ever return to Silver Lake, she says no, but that she does make sure her pets are never unattended in the the backyard - especially at night - and especially when the animal killings flare up, as they do every so often. As for Mr. Tethys. The police report said he had been found trespassing (again) within the confines of the reservoir. He was slapped with a felony this time and told (again) never to return. Since then, he has returned and services neighbors in Silver Lake who need natural predators relocated. As for the fire and Mr. L - an unidentified homeless person who had died of natural causes was listed at the scene. And indeed the fire had been caused by an errant firework. There was no record, however, of a little girl ever having been there. The school system did record the death of a Mr. Lelantos around the time Hyp had reported. But there were no coroners’ records indicating that such an individual had died in the city or the surrounding mountain communities.