I had been hoping for a suitable streak of gloomy, dreary winter weather with which to revisit this chilling story involving Machine Gun Park, the old Catherine Hotel and a mysterious “lady in black.” But the weather doesn’t seem to want to cooperate and instead just wants to continue being gorgeous.
I had been hoping for a suitable streak of gloomy, dreary winter weather with which to revisit this chilling story involving Machine Gun Park, the old Catherine Hotel and a mysterious “lady in black.” But the weather doesn’t seem to want to cooperate and instead just wants to continue being gorgeous.
Dreary weather or not, this story is one of the more chilling and bizarre such tales I have encountered in my local lore gathering, a story that took place nearly three decades ago. The story is told by a local gentleman I will call “Larry.”
While I am not at liberty to disclose his true identity, trust me that he is an active and well-respected member of the local community. If you have lived in Avalon for more than about a week, you have heard of him or met him and, no doubt, respect him.
One evening, Larry and a couple of friends found themselves sitting in the dark at a picnic table in City Park, that patch of green grass we colloquially refer to as “Machine Gun Park” because of the old World War I-era machine gun mounted there for display.
The trio had met there with the goal of sharing a bottle of (ahem) tequila one of them had hidden in the nearby shrubbery.
They were all set to extract this treasure from its carefully-chosen hiding place when their trip to the Twilight Zone began.
“Suddenly, this woman came out of nowhere and just started talking to us,” said Larry.
The mysterious and highly attractive woman, who Larry described as being in her late twenties, was dressed all in black and kept referring to herself as “The Princess.”
Shortly after her introduction to the conversation, “The Princess” informed the trio that she wanted to sing for them.
“So she started to sing in the most angelic and haunting voice any of us had ever heard,” said Larry. “It was mesmerizing.”
Then things got really weird. “Right at the end (of the singing), she looked at my friend and said something. We don’t know what it was, like it was in Tongues or something, and my friend just started vomiting.”
Bear in mind, Dear Reader, the tequila-consuming had not yet commenced and none of them had had anything to drink at this point. The unfortunate friend would later say that he didn’t understand what The Princess had said, but he knew instinctively it was her who had somehow caused him to get sick.
Then more tricks from The Princess: “All of a sudden, in her hand was the bottle of tequila,” said Larry, the bottle that had been hiding in the surrounding shrubbery. “And once again,” he continued, “she started singing again in this haunting voice.”
It was at that point that Larry and his friends had had enough. “So we just took off.”
But their adventure wasn’t over yet. The trio then went back to the apartment of “the vomiter” where they might find safety from The Princess.
“But all night long,” said Larry, “we could hear on the wind or in the background a combination of that singing voice and the laugh.”
In fact, at one point the friends all looked out the second-story window of the apartment to see The Princess looking up at them from the street, singing her ethereal songs.
In those days, Larry was attending college overtown and when he returned to campus he told the story to his friends.
“I think I might have met a demon this weekend,” he told them. “Because the voice was so pure and beautiful, but just had this really haunting sound under it.”
Who was The Princess? While Larry doesn’t use the word “ghost” to describe her, he has clearly assigned an “other-worldly” quality to her. This, he insists, was no ordinary encounter. The Princess never again paid a visit to Larry nor any of his friends, a fact with which they are all quite comfortable. Perhaps someday soon she will return to the shadows of Machine Gun Park.
