Time, Ghosts, and the Haunting of Corriganville

Corriganville Ranch/Park is hidden in the east hills around Simi Valley, in a gulley between mountain ranges. It was a movie ranch, a theme park, and finally a regional park. The opening of Disneyland in 1955 killed off the theme park, and fires, distance from Los Angeles, and complicated land negotiation deals prevented any further development or recreations of what it once was. See: https://obscurehollywood.net/corriganville.html for more information.

Corriganville currently adds something else to the history of the area, and that is a reputation for strange apparitions and a feeling that one is under observation from the boulders and outcroppings of enormous rock formations. The area was home to the Chumash tribes long before Hollywood involved itself with Western theme parks or movie sets.

There are so many layers to the history of Corriganville and the surrounding areas–known for cults, plane crashes, Western movie sets, the Manson family caves, the hanging tree, the oldest stagecoach road in California, and so much more–that time seems to warp and overlap when walking around the enormous sandstone boulders and meandering down the many trails, some hundreds of years old.

When I received the following email from Megan, I asked her if I could answer her on this blog, since what she asks about is something I believe we have all had experience with: time slips and alternate dimensions of realities invading this one:

Hi Kirsten,

I’m reaching out to you because I have a question for you about the paranormal events in this area. I’ve spent a LOT of time walking, hiking and running through the trails and hills of Corriganville and the Santa Susana mountains. I live about a minute walking distance to Smith Rd. along the Allied Studios.

Yesterday, I went out at 5:30pm for a hike and run. As I was cutting through that corner dirt lot and at the edge of the dirt and where it spills off into the road, I saw a tall very slender man, very tan looking. White hair, longish, white shirt (like a men’s undershirt – crew neck) and short shorts colored red and some white and maybe green. it was a half circle red pattern (remember Dolphins shorts from the 80’s). I watch him cross over the road from the homes to the tree-lined fence. I am watching him the entire time for safety reasons and I was planning to stay on the opposing side of the road. as he goes in between the trees, I don’t hear crunch noises of the leaves and bark. Then he disappears. Completely dissipates into nothing. I inspected the fence and the trees and there was no way he could hide or get through anywhere else.

I was so shaken about it that I turned around and went back to my neighborhood on Katherine and finished my exercise there. I went back this morning before work to inspect again and I’m stumped.

I’m wondering, are you familiar with any ghostly figures that may resemble this man or thing I saw? I’m trying to find answers and I am completely shaken by it still. I’d like to hear your opinion on what this may have been. I know Corriganville is known for activity, but I’m curious who or why this spirit thing was there.

Thanks

Megan

What I have experienced personally at Corriganville is more along the lines of occult activity, evidence of rituals or ceremonies, and a strong sense of indigenous presences from the rock outcroppings. And, I suppose I should be rigorously honest here, I have felt “nature spirits”, along the lines of small creatures that seems to be connected to certain oak trees. It hurts me to admit that, since my academic background and skeptical nature make such statements anathema to serious investigation, but to hide the fact that I saw and felt presences around those trees seems dishonest. The sensation was one of constant surveillance and curiosity; and the certainty that I was being followed by someone, only to turn around quickly and see nothing.

I also feel the layers of history and time overlapping there. As I have written about extensively in this blog and on the sister site, soulbank.org, time as we experience it is a biological phenomenon and not an independent, existing, quality of reality. All events in what we call “past” and “future”, co-exist along with a possibly non-existent experience we call the present (see: https://iai.tv/articles/ethics-death-and-the-block-universe-nikk-effingham-auid-2461). What that means, simplified, is that everything that has ever happened, is happening, or will happen, is mapped out in space, but not time; it’s ALL occurring NOW. We don’t have access to the point in space where we had dinner with our grandparents that summer in 1977, nor can our conscious experience live the events of our 76th year where there was a surprise party on the Queen Mary, but all those events are “out there” in the Block Universe. They are real. We simply cannot perceive them, because our brains have been designed to interpret reality as successive events that “happen” and then fade away. We create chronology, as we could not function as biological beings if we could experience everything, everywhere, happening right now. Our brains organize, erase, remember, create, and narrate our lives in what appears to be a certain order.

However . . . there are moments when the brain goes offline, or there is a change in consciousness for whatever reason, and our finely-tuned, story-making machines relax just enough to allow one of those events from what we call the “past” to slip past our guard gates into our conscious reality. Hence, we see a jogger from the 1970s or 1980s who used to make that run on a regular basis, and he sees us, wondering where we came from. He won’t remember ever seeing us, and we don’t remember ever seeing him, as he belongs to one layer of reality and we belong to another. The brain mechanisms that prevent us from witnessing something that doesn’t belong in our point in space either fail or shut down momentarily, and we are allowed to see an event from another perspective in the Block Universe.

This, I believe, is a partial explanation for ghosts. “Ghosts” might simply be people inhabiting another dimension of spacetime that slip through the guard gates of consciousness. I think we see them all the time without realizing it, because these layers of reality are more porous than we think. How do we know that everyone we see belongs to our current reality?

That would be my explanation for the runner in the park who vanished. He slipped into our present moment from what we call the past, which is just as “present” as what we are experiencing right now. The person who saw him could have been a vision of the future for him; but both realities are equally valid–they are on the same ontological footing, so to speak, one not privileged over the other; we are simply used to thinking that what we perceive is the Ultimate Reality of Right Now, when in reality, it’s the partial point in space of one layer of the Block Universe that our brains have turned into the only possible reality. Sorry, brains. We are no more “real” to the jogger from 1980 than he is to us.

I also found this video on Corriganville and the paranormal happenings around the park:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=q-LiIoB_RKc%3Fsi%3DhkgUF793KewEfMGq

There are many differing perspectives on the “paranormal”, but I think it’s a good idea to consider that what we call paranormal is simply the superposition of different points in space, creating a multilayered reality where then is now, now is then, and what will be has already happened. You died in the Block Universe already; you just haven’t experienced it yet. This view of reality allows for the weirdness of Corriganville, but perhaps does not explain nature spirits, aliens, and other entities that would not classify as human. For that, I need another blog post and more energy!

Thank you to Megan for allowing me to answer her questions, at least in part. Although, it occurs to me that I did NOT answer her original question, which was about the identity of this man and if anyone else has seen him. So, I open up this post for comments on his possible identity, if anyone else has run across him (pun intended).

Thank you for reading.

–Kirsten A. Thorne, PhD