Est. 1928 · Golden Age Hollywood History · Celebrity Animal Burials · California Cemetery Preservation Law
The Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park was founded on September 4, 1928, by Dr. Eugene C. Jones, a Hollywood veterinarian who identified a practical problem: California law and Los Angeles city ordinance prohibited the burial of pets on residential property, and the city's most prominent residents had nowhere to put their animals.
Jones established the cemetery on 10 acres in what was then unincorporated land outside the city, now the community of Calabasas. The founding coincided precisely with Hollywood's golden age, and the cemetery accumulated the animals of the film industry's most prominent names through the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.
Today the park holds over 50,000 animal graves spanning species from dogs and cats to horses, a chimpanzee, a lion, and a rabbit. Notable interments include Topper, the horse of Hopalong Cassidy; Pete the Pup (or a Petey dog) from the Our Gang/Little Rascals film series; Charlie Chaplin's cat Boots; Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall's cocker spaniel Droopy; Mae West's monkey Boogie; and Kabar, the dog of silent film star Rudolph Valentino.
In 1986, California legislation afforded the site the same legal standing as a human cemetery. Development is permanently prohibited, making it one of the few pet cemeteries in the United States with such protection. The park continues to accept new interments.
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Pet_Memorial_Park
- https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/21465
- https://lapetcemetery.com/
Phantom soundsResidual hauntingPhantom smells
Among the 50,000 animals interred at the Los Angeles Pet Memorial Park, one grave carries a persistent paranormal tradition: the resting place of Kabar, the dog of silent film star Rudolph Valentino.
Valentino, whose death in 1926 produced one of the most dramatic public grief responses in American entertainment history, had a deep attachment to the dog. Kabar died in 1929 and was buried at the park by Valentino's brother. The Shadowlands index account identifies Kabar as a Great Dane; other historical sources have described the dog as a Doberman Pinscher. The Wikipedia entry on the cemetery lists Kabar simply as 'Dog of Rudolph Valentino' without specifying breed.
Visitors near Kabar's grave have described an unmistakably dog-like sensory presence: the sound of panting, the warmth of an animal's breath, and the sensation of a tongue making contact with an outstretched hand. These accounts describe a playful, not threatening, presence.
The park carries additional layers of Golden Age Hollywood atmosphere independent of Kabar's grave. The inscriptions on monuments from the 1930s and 1940s — owners' heartfelt farewells to their animals — document grief in the specific language of another era. Several graves belong to animals that appeared in films still viewable today.
Notable Entities
Kabar (Valentino's dog)
