Griffith Park and the Feliz Curse
Los Angeles, California, United States
The great urban park of Los Angeles, carrying a documented curse-legend tied to the 1861 Don Antonio Feliz land-grab story and a century of ghost tradition in its canyons.
Griffith Park is one of the largest urban parks in North America, and its esoteric reputation has a documented spine: the Feliz land-grab legend, in which Don Antonio Feliz's Rancho Los Feliz was swindled from his heirs in 1861, with a deathbed-curse on the land attached in the retellings. When Griffith J. Griffith, who gave the park its land, later shot his wife in a scandal that wrecked his name, the curse story gained a second life; the park's fires, its haunted picnic site, and its ghost-riding lore have kept it current ever since.
Los Angeles' own historical institutions have presented the curse tradition as such, a legend with real documents underneath, and the park remains the city's great wild interior: chaparral canyons, mountain lions, and trails where the folk history is part of the ground walked on.
Visiting
Open daily dawn to dusk, entrances across Los Feliz and Burbank Blvd; see laparks.org.
Photo: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:View_of_Griffith_Park_from_Sunset_Boulevard.jpg), CC BY-SA.
Associated traditions & practices
Visitor stories