Location: Orange County, CA

The Allure:

At the corner of Euclid Street and Hazard Avenue sits a house known as the local haunted house. Kids dare each other to get close, and stories about it have been whispered for years. It’s become a symbol of our shared curiosity about the unknown.

For years, people have shared scary stories about this corner, each one more frightening than the last. But what if these tales are just myths? What if the ghost stories are actually hiding a real tragedy that happened nearby, with its painful details slowly becoming part of local legend?

The Legend:

According to local rumors, a pregnant woman was struck by a car late one night between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m while she was crossing Hazard Avenue.

Badly hurt, she crawled to the house and knocked on the door, hoping for help. No one answered, and she died at the front door. Some people say the homeowner did open the door but chose not to help.
Before she perished, she cursed the house and the land it stood on. This story gave rise to the property’s most famous specter: the recurring apparition of a woman with long hair who appears annually around Dia de Muertos (Day of the Dead) carrying a screaming, crying baby.

Other stories tell of strange events. One local grass cutter named Mr. Rodriguez swore that one night his Ford Pinto suddenly died right in front of the legendary house. When he got out to check the engine, he heard his car door slam and mysteriously lock from the inside with the key still in the ignition.

Mr. Rodriguez said, “That day, around 8 or 9 p.m., I drove a Ford Pinto on Hazard, going east. Suddenly, the engine stopped. I stepped out and was about to open the hood to see what was going on. Then I heard a slam. I turned around, and the car was locked. I couldn’t open the doors because the car was locked from the inside. Looking in, the key was still in the ignition. My body was eerily cold. At that moment, I saw I was in front of that famous house.”
After returning the next morning with a friend to find the car mysteriously unlocked, he insisted, “My friend laughed at me, but it really was locked last night.”

Other locals claim to have had their own horrifying encounters.
The owner of a nearby liquor store, which has since closed down, recounted a terrifying incident that he claims was captured on his security camera.
“Without a word, she bared her white teeth and pulled up her skirt, then suddenly sat down. Then her body splashed blood all over my face. I felt soaked with a burning fluid. I screeched and ran into my store. I have never been so scared in my life.”

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The House Owners:

Reporters from Nguoi Viet News were intrigued by the widespread reports and set out to uncover the truth. They discovered a much more ordinary past than the legend implies by locating the property’s true former owners.

Julie Pung and her husband, Dr. Pung Navann, owned the property from 1989 to 2002 as a commercial investment, though they never lived there while waiting over a decade for rezoning. While rumors of hauntings circulated, Julie explained that the “ghosts” were actually squatters who occupied the original house at night, leading her to eventually level the house.

Dr. Pung even camped on the lot to investigate the rumors, but saw nothing supernatural; he later passed away in 1998 from overwork-related exhaustion rather than any paranormal activities at the house.

Julie stated, “When we bought the old house, homeless people lived in there. I had to call people to get them out; so burdensome. I heard people say it’s haunted, but we didn’t care.”

By 2016, Van Thai purchased the newly built front house as a rental investment, further debunking the myths. He rented the house to a single Vietnamese family who lived there for the entire duration of his ownership before he sold it in the summer of 2018. This fact directly contradicts the popular rumor that “whoever lives in this house moves out within days.” For the owners, the property’s reputation was a footnote to the practical challenges of real estate.

Both owners viewed the history of the house as a standard real estate venture defined by family transitions and property management rather than the paranormal.

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The Theory:

As I was digging through the historical archives of any traffic fatalities involving mothers and children to see if there was any truth behind the local legends, I uncovered a possible connection that bridges the gap between folklore and a devastating reality.

A cold case from 1992 with details that align far too closely with the “pregnant ghost” lore of Euclid and Hazard to be a simple coincidence.

Most significantly, my research shows that no other tragedy in the region’s history correlates with the legend as perfectly as this one. While the local folklore speaks of a pregnant woman dying in a collision and cursing the land, this 1992 event is the only documented disaster of major scale involving a pregnant victim and children in the area. The community’s collective memory of this horrific event likely drifted over the years, attaching the death of a pregnant woman to the once empty lot at Euclid and Hazard and manifesting as the legend of the cursed property.

The Deadly Crash of 1992:

On the evening of Sunday, September 20, 1992, at approximately 6 p.m., the intersection of Civic Center Drive and Flower Street in Santa Ana became the site of one of the deadliest traffic accidents in Orange County history. A Ford Econoline van was traveling eastbound, carrying between 15 and 18 passengers to services at the Nonsectarian Church of God.

The peaceful Sunday routine was shattered when a Chevrolet pickup truck, traveling at an excessive speed, ignored a red light and broadsided the van squarely on the driver’s side. The force was so immense that witnesses described seeing passengers flying out of the van’s flipping cargo doors “like when a pilot ejects from a jet fighter.”

The aftermath was a scene of “horrible carnage” that repulsed even the most seasoned firefighters. Scattered across the pavement of Santa Ana Stadium were the bodies of the victims, intermingled with Bibles and other religious articles that had been thrown from the van.

Bystanders desperately using their own clothing as rags stop the victims’ bleeding while medical evacuation helicopters whirled overhead to land in the street.

10-11 victims survived with scratches to critical injuries, and 8 victims died among the wreckage.

Reporting of the eight victims who perished:

• Ruth Mendez (30): An adult passenger who had moved to Garden Grove from Guatemala two years prior.
• The Unborn Child of Ruth Mendez: Ruth was eight months pregnant at the time of the crash, and the fetus did not survive the impact.
• Carlos Mendez (5): Ruth’s young son.
• Daniel Mendez (2): Ruth’s youngest son.
• Erica Mendez (16): Ruth’s niece, identified as one of the two teenagers who perished.
• Sonia Castro: An adult victim and the aunt of Sandra Castro.
• One of the Salomon Siblings: While the sources do not explicitly name which one died, they note that Saul Salomon (15) and Sara Salomon (14) were both in the van. Since the official count includes only two teenagers, and Erica Mendez was one of them, either Saul or Sara was likely the eighth victim.
• One Unidentified Adult: The sources state that three adults died in total. With Ruth Mendez and Sonia Castro identified, one adult remains unnamed in the provided material
  
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The driver of the truck, Fernando Hernandez Flores, did not stay to face the consequences of his actions. According to authorities, he returned to his family’s home in the state of Guerrero, Mexico, and has evaded capture ever since. As of 2015, active arrest warrants in both the U.S. and Mexico remained for Flores as investigators continued to seek information in the cold case, and authorities were still unable to track him down.

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The legend of the Euclid and Hazard corner might be the community’s way of carrying the heavy, unresolved grief for Ruth Mendez, a devoted mother whose life and eight-month pregnancy were tragically stolen in the 1992 collision. While the folklore speaks of a late-night curse and a crying infant, the real-world carnage at Civic Center and Flower left a scar so deep that the city’s collective memory may have drifted, seeking a home for its sorrow in the mysterious silence of a once vacant lot.

Whether these hauntings are the lingering echoes of a real life “morgue” where justice was never served, or merely a chilling coincidence of two separate tragedies, both stories reflect a profound human ache for the memory of lives that were cut short far too soon.