"All the studios are haunted, and not only by famous people," said Jacobson. "In the old days, people held their jobs at the studios for a lifetime. You can still see ghosts of old security guards, walking their beats."
Chinese Theater
Jacobson says her interest in Hollywood ghosts intensified after she and a group of historians visited the famous Grauman's Chinese Theater in 1994.
At one point, Jacobson walked around the stage behind the movie screen. When she returned to the group, standing in the middle of the auditorium, she suddenly saw the velvet curtain on the stage being shaken by an unseen figure.
"I looked at my friends and I uttered the classic phrase, 'Do you see what I see?'" Jacobson recalled. "I could see the impression his 10 fingers made, and I sensed a lot of anger."
Two years later, a woman approached Jacobson at a book signing and claimed she used to work at the Chinese Theater and had more information about a ghost there.
"She told me his name was Fritz and he used to be an employee of the theater," said Jacobson. "Apparently he was an unhappy man, and one day he went behind the movie screen and hung himself."
Investigating
Jacobson admits she has no training in paranormal activities, but says she has always believed in ghosts. "I don't believe that this life is all there is," she said. "To me, it makes sense that of all the people who die, some of them get lost going to the next place. It's especially true of people who don't believe in an afterlife. They can't hear the spirits who are trying to guide them."
Jacobson has teamed up with a parapsychologist, Barry Taff, for numerous investigations of Hollywood hauntings. In one case, they investigated a run-down Hollywood hotel where the owner had reported a ghost in the basement.
"We asked the ghost to leave us a sign that he was there, and then we left," said Jacobson. "When we returned, the place was filled with the most putrid odor. The ghost did the one thing that we could not explain away. If the lights flickered in an old building, we could have blamed it on bad wiring. But this was an odor that none of us had ever smelled before."
Alas, the television cameras that followed the team could not capture the smell.
But Jacobson dismisses critics who charge that a lack of photographic evidence proves that ghosts and hauntings are merely products of people's imaginations.
"I've heard ghosts explained in every shape and form," she said. "I've interviewed so many people who don't believe in ghosts, yet they can not explain what they have seen. Sometimes, there really is no other explanation."
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