In Search of Firehouse Spirits

Michael Imlay · October 5, 2026

Back in the early 2000s, while researching an article on DTLA haunts for the Los Angeles Downtown News, I canvassed the El Pueblo de Los Angeles Monument (aka, Olvera Street) for ghost tales.

I wasn't disappointed. According to numerous sources, many of the Old Plaza landmarks teem with spirits – including, possibly, L.A.'s first firehouse.

I say "possibly" because my initial investigations at the station met with mixed results.

"There are no ghosts here; this was always a happy place!" snapped an elderly male docent clearly agitated by my questions.

The young woman who worked with him wasn’t so convinced. She admitted to hearing odd noises upstairs, but had told herself it was only the wind.

"I don't really like to believe in ghosts. There are a lot of cracks in the walls and windows up there," she explained – all the while casting a wary eye toward her stern-looking senior counterpart.

Obviously, there was more to this story. So like any good reporter, I went snooping.

By the time the station was built in 1884, the L.A. Plaza had already seen its heyday...

I soon learned that the firehouse wasn't always "the happy place" the older gentleman believed it to be.

By the time the station was built in 1884, the L.A. Plaza had already seen its heyday, and was slipping headlong into decay and squalor. Nevertheless, the city chose to base its first paid engine company there, replacing the volunteer firefighters that had served Los Angeles since 1869.

In the close confines of the modest brick two-story, the firemen were quartered upstairs, with the horses and a steam-pump engine occupying stalls and a turntable below. Not exactly a first-class arrangement by today's standards, but in 19th Century L.A., the operation was viewed as fairly cutting-edge.

Within a few short years, however, the City Council found itself in a legal dispute over the property's ownership. The courts ruled against the city, forcing it into a costly lease. When the lease expired in 1897, officials opted to relocate the fire department. Over the next six decades, the building deteriorated along with its surroundings, passing through phases as a flophouse, an alleged bordello, and a cigar store, market and saloon before the State of California finally purchased it for restoration in 1954. It reopened as a museum in the 1960s.

With a history like that, I reasoned, how could there not be a ghost or two lingering about?

The Plot Thickens

Sure enough, I struck paydirt further down Olvera Street, where two other female docents were much more willing to reveal the pueblo's darker side. Veteran tour guides, both were intimately familiar with the firehouse.

The first told me that her husband, also a former museum volunteer, had been spooked several times by ghostly footfalls emanating from the station's second-story hallway. "I know my husband heard them," she insisted. "Something used to walk that floor."

The second docent agreed, saying she had also personally encountered it, whatever "it" was.

She related how, several years earlier, with the tour buses gone and dusk falling, she entered the fire station to visit an upstairs restroom reserved for staff. Almost as soon as she closed the door behind her, she heard slow, methodical pacing in the narrow hallway.

"I'll be out in a moment," she called. That’s when the doorknob began jiggling violently.

Thinking someone desperately needed the bathroom, she immediately opened the door – only to find herself staring down a dim, lonely hallway. She rushed downstairs and outside to rejoin her waiting friend, who assured her no one else had entered or exited the building.

For good measure, they conducted a thorough search. The place was empty.

So who is the apparently troubled spirit that haunts this supposedly happy place? Popular legend says it's the city's first fire chief, but no one can offer any evidence to support the claim. The specter has never been seen, only heard.

Then again, it may only be the wind…

Location: Plaza Fire Station, El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, 200 N. Main Street, Los Angeles 90012.

This article originally appeared on Michael Imlay's Dateline>City of Angels blog, October 30, 2007. It has been lightly re-edited/vetted for BackstoryLA.