Where Peg Entwistle Walked Off the Edge
2800 East Observatory Road, Los Angeles, CA 90027
Age
All Ages
Cost
$
Griffith Observatory admission is free. Planetarium shows have a separate fee (approximately $7-10). Hollywood Sign trailheads are free; nearby parking lots charge fees. Check the observatory website for current show pricing.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Observatory is paved and accessible. Sign hiking trails are unpaved with moderate elevation gain; not wheelchair accessible.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1923 · Hollywood Icon · Los Angeles Landmark · Great Depression Era Tragedy · Griffith Park Heritage
The sign now known worldwide as the Hollywood Sign began as a marketing installation. In 1923, the Los Angeles Times real estate developer Harry Chandler commissioned a sign reading HOLLYWOODLAND to promote a hillside residential development. The letters were 45 feet tall and lit by 4,000 lightbulbs, visible from the city below.
On September 16, 1932, Peg Entwistle climbed to the top of the H. She was 24 years old, born in Port Talbot, Wales, trained on Broadway, and had appeared in only one film — Thirteen Women, released by RKO earlier that year. Her contract had been terminated. She left her jacket, purse, and shoes at the base of the sign's service ladder. Her body was found two days later by a hiker. Her suicide note, signed P.E., read in part: 'I am afraid, I am a coward. I am sorry for everything.'
The irony the story has accumulated over decades: a letter arrived at her uncle's house shortly after her death, offering her a lead role in a film about a woman driven to suicide.
The city of Los Angeles took ownership of the sign in 1949, removing the LAND suffix. The current sign, rebuilt in 1978 through a fundraising campaign that included donations from Alice Cooper and Hugh Hefner, bears no physical connection to the 1923 original. The Griffith Observatory, opened on May 14, 1935, occupies the ridge directly below, providing what became the most photographed angle of the sign.
Sources
The ghost stories tied to the Hollywood Sign began accumulating in the 1940s, shortly after the H from which Peg Entwistle jumped collapsed unexpectedly. Hikers on Griffith Park trails began reporting the figure of a young woman in clothing from another era, disoriented, sometimes drifting slightly above the ground.
The accounts carry a consistent sensory detail: gardenias. Reports describe a wave of floral fragrance arriving without botanical explanation — no gardenia plants grow along the relevant trail sections — preceding or accompanying the sightings. Gardenias were Entwistle's documented preference.
Griffith Park ranger John Arbogast has been cited in multiple published accounts describing encounters with Entwistle's figure, noting she appears most often when the park is foggy and always after dark. He also described the motion-detection alarm system installed around the sign's perimeter activating without corresponding physical presence — sensors registering something approximately five feet away when the surrounding terrain shows no one there.
The Griffith Observatory connection is less specific: observatory employees have historically reported unexplained visual phenomena near the sign when observed from the building's upper deck, though no detailed first-person accounts have been published in sources available for this research.
A second reported death at the sign — sometimes cited as a second suicide — has not been independently confirmed in historical newspaper archives available during this research.
Notable Entities
Multiple trailheads — Brush Canyon, Canyon Drive, and Hollyridge — lead to viewpoints near the Hollywood Sign. The trail passes through the hills of Griffith Park where Peg Entwistle's figure has been reported along the ridgeline, accompanied by the scent of gardenias.
Free admission to the observatory building, which offers a direct sightline to the Hollywood Sign. Observatory staff have reported unexplained phenomena near the sign visible from the observation deck. Planetarium programming covers astronomy and space science.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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