The Old Spaghetti Factory

The Old Spaghetti Factory in Duarte, California, occupies a building with a history that reflects the development of education and community infrastructure in southern California during the early twentieth century, a history complicated by the darker chapters of American wartime policies and the tragic consequences of those policies on vulnerable populations. The structure was originally constructed in 1909 as a five-room schoolhouse, purpose-built to serve the educational needs of the growing community of Duarte at a time when the region was undergoing rapid development from rural outpost to suburban settlement. The schoolhouse remained the sole educational facility for the town until 1925, when a larger and more modern educational building was constructed to accommodate the expanding student population. For sixteen crucial years, the 1909 schoolhouse served as the primary location where generations of Duarte's children received their formal education, learning foundational skills and knowledge within its walls during a transformative period in American history.

Following its replacement as a school, the building was repurposed for various commercial and institutional uses, its sturdy construction and serviceable design making it suitable for adaptation to different functions. It was eventually converted into a restaurant and subsequently became the location of the Old Spaghetti Factory, an Italian restaurant establishment that operated in the space and served as a dining destination for Duarte residents and visitors to the community for decades. However, the history of the building became profoundly complicated by geographical circumstance and wartime policy during the Second World War. Directly across the street from the former schoolhouse was established a Japanese internment camp, a facility that housed persons of Japanese ancestry who had been forcibly removed from their homes throughout California and the western United States pursuant to Executive Order 9066 issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1942. The internment camp, which operated during the latter half of the 1940s, represented one of the darkest chapters of American civil rights history, a period during which an entire ethnic group was deprived of their liberty and property without due process of law.

The basement of the former schoolhouse building, during or immediately following the operations of the internment camp, was apparently utilized as a morgue facility. The exact circumstances surrounding this use remain unclear from historical records, but the basement space served as a repository for the deceased, a grim and necessary function given the mortality rates within the internment camps and the need to process and handle the bodies of those who died during their internment. The basement's transformation into a morgue space imparted to the location a history of death and tragedy, a history that would persist in the spiritual and paranormal dimensions of the place long after the physical structure had been converted to new uses.

The paranormal phenomena reported at the Old Spaghetti Factory are among the most persistent and well-documented in the Duarte area, with consistent accounts from employees, patrons, and paranormal investigators spanning decades. The most frequently reported phenomena center on the basement and restroom facilities, with employees hearing ghostly sounds of children at play, voices of young people engaged in typical childhood games and activities, laughter and running sounds, and other auditory phenomena consistent with the presence of children. The apparitions of children have been observed by multiple witnesses, particularly in the basement restrooms where the sounds are most frequently reported. The presence of these child spirits appears most concentrated in the areas closest to the former schoolhouse's original function as an educational facility, suggesting that the powerful emotions and experiences of childhood learning may have impressed themselves upon the location's spiritual dimensions.

In addition to the child spirits, employees and guests have reported footsteps moving through the establishment when no physical persons account for the sounds, unexplained moving objects, and disembodied voices that cannot be attributed to living patrons or staff. The convergence of the building's history as a schoolhouse where children learned and developed, combined with its later connection to the internment camp and the basement morgue facility, appears to have created a location of considerable spiritual significance and sensitivity. The restaurant's continued operation as the Old Spaghetti Factory has not diminished the paranormal activity; instead, the location remains one of Duarte's most actively haunted buildings, drawing paranormal investigators and curiosity seekers interested in the intersection of California history, ethnic tragedy, and supernatural phenomena.