The Spectral Voyager Episode 5: The Haunting of Jackie Hernandez (Sample)
In 1989, in the bustling seaport of San Pedro, California, Jackie Hernandez began to experience strange phenomena in her newly rented bungalow. Lights would turn on and off. Objects would move. A heavy breathing could be heard rattling in the attic above her laundry room. After a neighbor experienced the activity herself, she encouraged Jackie to reach out to a team of Ghost Hunters she had recently seen on TV. What would follow was a year-plus long investigation that included everything from full-figured apparitions, to dripping ectoplasm. Jake and Brad provide a comprehensive look at either the best evidence of a poltergeist ever captured on video, or perhaps the first ‘found footage’ horror movie ever made.
To listen to the full episode, and gain access to our other mini-series such as Manclan and Trickle Down, you can subscribe for just five bucks a month at: http://www.patreon.com/QAnonAnonymous
The Spectral Voyager theme composed by Nick Sena.
Additional music by Pontus Berghe and Jake Rockatansky.
Jackie Hernandez dramatizations performed by Katie Amis.
Editing by Corey Klotz.
QAA’s website: http://qanonanonymous.com
As I'm sure many of you are aware, the 1984 film Ghostbusters had a tremendous impact on my life.
There's a famous childhood photo of me strangling my younger brother with one hand and clutching Winston and Egon action figures in the other.
This is true.
I've been so open about my love for the film that one year, as an elaborate Christmas present, an old boss and mentor bought me a 1 to 1 scale replica proton pack.
Probably spent thousands of dollars on it just to bring me one step closer to my childhood dream.
And every now and again, someone will ask, have you ever considered actually going on a ghost hunt, you know, just for fun?
And the answer is always a resounding no.
As someone who suffers from a manageable amount of neuroticism, the last thing I need is to be unfortunate enough to find out that poltergeists are real and that they've followed me back to my apartment.
And that fear is partially due to the story that we are about to share with you today.
In fact, you're probably familiar with it.
The haunting of Jackie Hernandez in San Pedro, California is either one of the most well-documented cases of a real spirit infestation, or it is perhaps the first found footage horror movie.
The documentary film An Unknown Encounter, directed by Barry Conrad, from which I'll be sharing some clips, released in 1997, just two years before the Blair Witch Project.
Jake, I'm just remembering when you brought this doc up, I looked it up on Letterboxd to see some reviews.
Yeah.
And the first one was that the upscaling on Tubi for it was scarier than any of the paranormal footage itself.
Really?
So to be upscaled?
That doesn't make any sense to me.
Why would they do that?
Why would they mess with the film in its original presentation?
The most impressive thing about this particular story are the sheer amount of witnesses that were willing to go on record to corroborate Jackie's story, and are even seen on videotape as they appear to experience paranormal activity.
So turn up the air conditioning, shield yourself from our slowly dying planet, and pour yourself a probiotic soda pop.
because it is time for The Haunting of Jackie Hernandez
Behind the cracking wallpaper of our reality there exists another world that science has yet to explain.
In here dwell monsters and madness, and potentially, the answers to our most important questions.
In this world, gravity intensifies, time slows down, and your heart rate quickens.
I'm Jake Rakitansky.
And I'm Brad Abrahams.
And you're listening to The Spectral Voyager.
[MUSIC]
Jackie Hernandez moved into the San Pedro apartment, just on the corner of Grand and 11th Street in November of
1988.
The house was tucked into the back of the corner lot behind an adjoining bungalow.
She wasn't a California native and had spent her early childhood in Saratoga, New York where she was the youngest of four.
Her family had moved to San Pedro at some point in the 70s after her father was relocated for work.
Jackie was around 26 years old when she moved into that house that would change her life forever.
She was on the tail end of a marriage disintegrating and was pregnant with her second child, Samantha.
Jackie probably hoped that the new place would represent a fresh start for her and her children.
But the moment she moved in, it was clear that there was something wrong with this house.
It started with a feeling of uneasiness in the home.
Jackie couldn't shake the feeling that someone, a man, was watching her.
She would have moments where she swore that she saw something move out of the corner of her eye, but when she turned around, nothing was there.
Jackie's neighbor, Susan Castaneda, chalked it up to just her being a crazy pregnant lady.
Yeah, those hormones, right?
But then Susan saw it for herself.
One day, while she was over at Jackie's place, helping out with the kids, both she and Jackie heard a large crashing sound coming from the kitchen.
The pair sprang up out of their seats and went to investigate.
To their surprise, a large painting of a goose that had been hanging on the wall was now smashed on top of the kitchen counter, nearly five feet away.
The nails that were originally holding the picture in place were now standing upright on the kitchen table.
So the ghosts are not goose gang members?
Not goose gang members, apparently.
More things began to shift locations within the house.
Pencils flew out of jars.
Lamps were thrown to the ground.
At times, they swore they could hear footsteps in the small attic above the laundry room.
Jackie's neighbor, Susan, even began to experience phenomenon when she would return to her own house.
But I saw it.
And I smelled it.
I experienced it.
I felt it.
It touched me.
It talked to me.
It communicated to me.
It did things here at my house to let me know that it was there.
On one particularly unsettling occasion, Jackie was walking through the house at night and noticed a stream of water trickling down from one of the light switches.
She described it as if a faucet had turned on inside of the wall.
About five minutes later, it suddenly stopped.
And then, the apparitions started appearing.
At first, Jackie was hesitant to claim the house was haunted, but once she started seeing ghoulish faces in the dark, she was at a loss at how to proceed.
Susan had recently watched a television program on cable about the haunting of the Queen Mary that featured a group of ragtag paranormal investigators led by parapsychologist Barry Taff.
She got his number and asked if he and his team would be interested in coming to San Pedro.
Taff was somewhat of a celebrity in the ghost hunting world.
He had been involved in the investigations surrounding Doris Bithers, of which the 1983 film The Entity is based on.
Which has an incredible soundtrack.
Really, you know what?
I've never seen The Entity and I probably should have watched it before recording this, but there is so much in this case to document and so much to read and so much to watch that I'll have to do it at some other time.
He even served as a technical advisor to the film.
Dr. Taff holds a degree in psychophysiology with a minor in biomedical engineering and worked as a research associate at UCLA throughout the 70s.
He, along with videographers Barry Conrad and Jeff Wheatcraft, arrived at Jackie's residence on the night of August 8th, 1989.
The videographers, the crew, Taff, they all look like they're casted.
They look like they're all from a B-movie about people who are making a movie about a haunting.
Well, this sort of gets into my sort of penultimate question about this case.
And I sort of set it up in the beginning.
Is this the best footage that we've ever gotten of a poltergeist on camera or Is it a brilliant mockumentary about a group of ghost hunters that somehow, you know, transcends, you know... I know people say that Cannibal Holocaust, I believe is 1980, is supposedly the first found footage movie, but that actually involved real footage of animals being tortured, so... Sure.
I don't know, but something scripted with an arc, and I don't know, this could be the first horror one.
Now, the same year I believe that this was being filmed, there was another film that my father showed me when I was growing up called 84 Charlie Mopick.
Are you familiar with that, Brad?
No, I'm not.
So tangent here, but we love tangents.
This was a film about a Vietnam reconnaissance team and a news camera crew that was sent in with them to sort of make propaganda.
And the entire film is shot through the videographer's camcorder.
So that also is one of the very, very first found footage movies.
But in the horror genre, maybe if this isn't real, maybe this is it.
Yeah, it's just as soon as I saw them, I was like, wait a minute, this is too... these guys are too perfect.
But it might be that they sort of set the archetype for everything to come.
They might have.
And you have to remember, these guys were also working in entertainment, you know, around this time.
I mean, Wheatcraft and Conrad had met working on a project, I believe, at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank.
And, you know, they were heavily involved in in Hollywood.
You know, Conrad was starting his own production company and, you know, worked on a ton of different movies and television news segments.
So they have that kind of Hollywood sheen.
But maybe that's not because they're fake.
Maybe it's because they're just they were Hollywood guys who sort of stumbled into this investigation.
Right.
Yeah.
It had been a year since she had moved into the house.
Jackie's second child, Samantha, was still a newborn and her son, Jamie, was around three years old.
The paranormal activity had ramped up considerably.
Jackie's friends and neighbors, even her babysitter, Chrissy, had all witnessed unexplainable occurrences within the small bungalow.
In the initial interview with the investigators, Jackie recounted the events that took place shortly after she had moved in.
She told them about the water coming out of the walls.
About objects flying around and about the man she had seen sitting in her son's bed.
You have been listening to a sample from The Spectral Voyager, a new miniseries from the folks at QAA where we explore true tales from the edge of reality.
To listen to the full episode and gain access to our other miniseries such as Man Clan and Trickle Down, you can subscribe for just five bucks a month at patreon.com slash QAnonAnonymous.
