Suburban Legends GALLERY: Snapshots of History Balboa Pavilion McFadden Square The Piers The Arches Restaurant Red Cars The Dory Fleet Newport Harbor High Jamboree Road Other landmarks    RELATED STORIES Suburban Legends A home to celebrities A community remembers Fun Facts Test your Newport knowledge    COLUMNS Publisher's Note From City Hall Editor's note Ending note NB100 Magazine (PDF)               Getting to the bottom of Newport’s tallest tales. By Elia Powers Nothing illustrates the first 100 years of a city like a few wacky stories. So we asked longtime Newport Beach residents to share some of their favorite tales, tall or not. We didn’t get anything about underwater creatures or alien invasions-though there is the one about the ghost house on Balboa Island. What follows is a consortium of stories that, with any luck, will live on in Newport Beach lore. It’s up to you to decide if the truth ends and the fiction begins. Tale No. 1: The Ghost House Newport Beach history buff Jim Jennings tells the story of the Ghost House in his recently released book, “Old Balboa Island Stories.” We wanted to talk directly to the source. As he tells it, a quiet couple named the Zilgots lived at 104 Onyx Ave. for years without socializing with neighbors or causing any disturbance. When the husband died in the 1970s, his wife decided to move to Pasadena and keep ownership of the house. “She was disturbed,” remembers Jennings, who lived nearby. “She wouldn’t let anyone use it.” The house was kept intact and permanently locked. On occasion, the woman came from Los Angeles to water the plants or paint the exterior. One morning, the woman motioned for Jennings to come over. She brought him into the house, took him upstairs and showed him the bedroom, where the husband’s clothes remained untouched in the closet. Everything in the house remained the same for years and years. One Halloween, as Jennings was talking to three young trick-or-treaters, he referred to the Zilgots’ abode as a “Ghost House.” The legend grew and Jennings said people started peeking in the window. Some were afraid to go near the premise. The house remained locked until this past year, when the woman died and the house was put up for sale. Tale No. 2: A Bizarre Trip No athletic team from Newport Harbor High School had ever made a trip to Catalina before the basketball team did in the early years of the school’s sports program. Maybe this is why: The team was playing a road contest against a school on the island and was playing inside a tiny gymnasium that was poorly designed for basketball. “The place was a cracker box,” said Sparks McClellan, a former Newport Harbor High School basketball player. “There was a post in the floor you had to run around.” One of McClellan’s teammates, Hal Sheflin, had just committed a foul when he began to turn around to show the referee his number, as league rules dictated. But this official was a novice and thought the player was preparing to take a swing at him, McClellan remembers. The referee ran scared into the stands and the crowd quickly turned on the team from Harbor High. Sheflin walked over to explain himself, but the referee continued to retreat higher into the stands. “He wasn’t having any of it,” McClellan said. The issue was resolved, but the trip continued to produce odd sightings. The following day, the team traveled to a bird farm on Catalina, which was a big tourist attraction. McClellan and friend Bill Ritter spotted a raven sitting in its cage. They approached the bird and saw it cock its head in their direction. That’s when they heard the line they will never forgot. “Hello, you son of a bitch,” the raven said, according to McClellan. The two looked at each other in disbelief and fell to the ground in laughter. As they walked away, the boys heard the bird give the same greeting to two old ladies walking past. “We couldn’t stop laughing,” McClellan said. Tale No. 3: One Brainy Encounter As the owner of Richard’s Market on the Balboa Peninsula, Dick Richard was used to making small talk with customers. But one interaction stood out from the rest. On an afternoon in 1933, Richard received a telephone order for $230 worth of groceries. He boxed up the order and waited for the food delivery to arrive. But the man who placed the order became impatient and came down himself to the shop. “A little guy came waddling down,” remembers George Grupe, a friend of Richard’s. “He wanted to know why the food hadn’t been delivered to the boat.” The man was in Newport Beach to monitor the heartbeat of whales. He pulled out his cash and the transaction was complete. Before the man left, he pulled out a book and introduced himself. “My name is Einstein,” he said, according to Grupe. Then he pulled out a copy of “Relativity: The Special and General Theory” and signed a copy for Richard. Tale No. 4: A Successful Correction Sometimes it takes a near-tragedy to change a person’s life. One day on the Balboa Peninsula, three teenagers were walking near the Ritz Theater when a car ran onto the curb and struck them. The driver was John Horman, a local fish vendor who was drunk behind the wheel of his Model T vehicle, according to Bill Grundy, president of the Newport Beach Historical Society. The teenagers were taken to Grundy’s father, Dr. Gordon Grundy, the first doctor in Newport Beach who had an office on 9th Street. Dr. Grundy successfully treated the victims, and Horman was taken to a jail at Newport Pier. As the three youngsters were being treated, Dr. Grundy had Horman watch the proceedings so he could see the results of his actions. The action seemed to work: Horman never drank a drop of liquor again, Grundy said. And finally... Many Newport Beach residents have heard the story of how actor James Cagney won the rights to Collins Island in a poker game and briefly renamed it Cagney Island. The story is unsubstantiated as far as we know. But the tale will likely live on well into the city’s next century.