If you travel south to Yorba Linda, California you might wish to visit the grave of the Pink Lady in the Yoruba cemetery.
There are a few variations of the Pink Lady's story, but it seems the most common one is this: One evening after a dance at the local high school, a teenager by the name of Alvina de los Reyes was returning home in a carriage when it overturned and she was tragically killed. The reason she is called the Pink Lady is because she was wearing a pink gown at the time. It is said that on June 15th, The night that the accident happened, on even numbered years between the hours of midnight and three am, Alvina's ghost rises from her grave to mourn the early loss of her life.
This is a romantically tragic story, yet it is very easy to disprove. Alvina's grave marker is a simple granite marker with a cross covered in flowers etched on one side. The marker reads, "Alvina de los Reyes, died December 2, 1910, aged 31 years. Beloved wife of Francisco de los Reyes."
Alvina was the mother of eight children, and her cause of death was either pneumonia or possibly complications due to childbirth, not a deadly accident. Records show that Alvina gave birth to her youngest child, a girl named for her, on November 25, 1910. Alvina the mother, died just seven days later. Sadly, baby Alvina only lived 28 days herself, dying on December 23, 1910. She is buried in Yorba Cemetery, most likely with her mother. With the exception of baby Alvina, the other seven children all lived well into adulthood, including Alvina's two sets of twins.
It is not entirely clear how the haunting of the Pink Lady story began, though some speculate the origins of the tale date back to the 1940s when local teens invented the story just for chills, but as often happens with ghostly tales, the story became legend and it wasn't long before large crowds began to gather at Alvina's grave every other year on June 15th in hopes of witnessing the spectre of the Pink Lady. It seems those determined to see this ghost have chosen to ignore the facts of the case, that Alvina was not a teenager, but rather a wife and a mother and that the high school where the dance was supposed to have happened had not even been built until 1933, 23 years after the alleged events.
It is not unusual that ghost stories persist around Yorba Cemetery as it is one of the oldest in Orange County, California, having been established in 1858 upon the death of Bernardo Yorba, when he deeded a portion of his ranch to the local Catholic Church to be used as a burial ground and for the church building itself. Burials took place regularly from 1860 through 1939, at which time the cemetery was closed to further burials.
Today, the cemetery is a historical site managed by Orange County Parks. The cemetery is opened to the public on the first Saturday of each month from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m.
(Photo Credit: Lesa Pfrommer 6/2/2013)
