Bury me deep

Halloween would not be complete without mention of Astoria’s very own glamour ghoul, Vampira, aka Astoria High School grad Maila Nurmi. Using her real name, she wrote “The Ghost Of James Dean” in 1964 for Borderline Magazine, “which dares the unknown” (http://tinyurl.com/mailadean). Both Maila and the actor are pictured.

“I have always been interested in psychic phenomena,” she revealed. “I have displayed ‘powers’ along those lines.” So she wasn’t surprised when a cut-up glossy print (“one eye, one nostril and one ear”) of actor James Dean, a close friend, “acted up” at the time of his death — the partial photo, pinned to the wall with a small dagger, started swinging “pendulum fashion” minutes before she received the phone call with the bad news.

After that, there were several other unnerving episodes with the photo. In one incident, mediums told Maila that Dean was in great pain because he was earthbound. So, she asked the photo on her wall if it was true. “The top part of the ear wiggled,” she reported, “… and at the same time from my radio came the song, ‘Dig Me A Hole and Bury Me Deep and I Will Lie in Peace.’”

And it gets stranger from there, with her continued conversations with Dean’s photo “ear” (still pinned to the wall) and the ear’s wiggling responses, a consultation with famed astrologer Sydney Omarr, and flaming ashtrays. “The word spread — fast — word of the ‘haunted’ house on Larrabee Street in Hollywood,” she wrote.

The topper was a chilling séance to contact Dean. Just as it got started, a spooky incident with Maila’s telephone caused one woman to faint, and the rest of the group scampered off in fright. End of séance.

Eventually, Dean’s ongoing “unearthly manifestations” unnerved her to the point that she had to move. So what happened to Dean’s partial photo? A friend removed it from the wall and kept it. But where is it now?

Like a spooky yarn? Maila/Vampira spins a good one.

— Elleda Wilson