Few other clichés find their way into American culture like building over ancient burial grounds, or even old cemeteries, as a staple element of horror films and novels.

Yet, when the doors of the Pomona High School band room mysteriously swing open or shut, most students ascribe the events to a spirit who was once buried in a small cemetery on the school grounds that was the region’s oldest “bone orchard.”

Pomona High School hauntings

Probably no other haunting in the Foothills region offers more mysteries than the reported Pomona High School hauntings.

The story begins in 1956, when a fire swept through the original Pomona High School on Garey Avenue and the entire school was relocated to the grounds of what was once Palomares Cemetery – which actually predated Spadra’s Old Settlers cemetery. Today, only a small park and a historical marker near the sports fields commemorate the ancient graveyard.

Yet, the cemetery still poses a mystery: while many of the graves were said to have been relocated to Pomona’s Holy Cross Cemetery, the www.findagrave.com website lists 117 interments including Azusa pioneer Henry Dalton, Don Ramon Carrillo, as well a dozen members of the founding Palomares family.

Lost headstones

Today, many people seeking their ancestors’ graves are often unable to locate their family members’ final destinations. And for years, stray headstones from the cemetery popped up from time to time in abandoned homes and garages in the region.

Yet, Pomona is not alone in famous mysteries in the region. Another ghost is said to haunt a San Dimas hotel near the spot where the city’s first recorded murder occurred – that of Rancho Cucamonga owner John Rains. While some contend that the spirit is that of a distressed man who committed suicide in the hotel some years ago, others find it odd that the haunting occurs at the scene of the 1862 crime that changed the face of the Foothills region.

A sad spirit is said to haunt the Claremont Botanical Gardens after visitors first reported the specter of a young girl dressed in what appears to be either Tongva or Cahuilla Native American garb weeping by the pond. Visitors report experiencing cold spots and phantom gusts of wind felt nowhere else in the area.

Ghost of a madam

Modern-day ghost hunters equip themselves with state-of-the-art technology to capture sounds of hauntings that elude the human ear, yet one reported Chino haunting comes complete with a rattling carriage, snorting horses and hoof beats clattering near Monte Vista Park on hot summer nights.

Witnesses claim a translucent and driverless old-time carriage rumbles down the street. And some old timers say it is the ghost of a prominent local madam who traversed the roads checking in on her brothels during the gaslight era.

However, one haunting may prove to be the most well-documented in the region when employees of a Montclair video store, after hearing complaints of ‘cold spots’ in the store, posted security camera footage of a spectral orb darting around the store on YouTube.