Hidden in a quiet neighborhood of Yorba Linda there lies a cemetery that many believe is haunted by The Pink Lady. Local lore alleges that Alvina De Los Reyes appears on June 15th between midnight and 3 A.M. of every even-numbered year to visit relatives. Legend has it that she was wearing a pink dress on her way home from prom at Valencia High School when her carriage overturned in 1910, resulting in her untimely and tragic death

However, this legend has been debunked by relatives of De Los Reyes who said that Alvina died when she was 31 while giving birth. Therefore, it is believed that the Pink Lady legend started in the forties as a daring thing for local teenagers to do to spend the night in the cemetery on June 15th. One clue that kills this haunting is that VHS did not open until 1933. Aside from some of the legends not standing up, there is still some credence to the Pink Lady story. A relative of Alvina’s family, Elmer de los Reyes, recalled a story about a young girl around the age of seventeen dying in a carriage accident. What was that girl wearing? You guessed it, a pink dress! In addition to this, there is also an early story about glowing lights reflecting from Alvina’s grave on the night she was supposed to rise, however, the cemetery has no lights and streetlights were not installed yet in the neighborhood at the time of this sighting. The final rumor shrouding this mystery is that Alvina’s husband was driving the carriage and intentionally caused the carriage to tip over, hoping his wife would be killed. There are a lot of speculations surrounding this mystery, leaving a trail of unanswered questions and curious ghost hunters.

So is the story of the Pink Lady true, or is it a piece of local folklore that has been handed down from generation to generation? For more information, or to research more local history, check out the books available at the Yorba Linda Library. If you’d like to check out the cemetery yourself, it is open for tours on the first Saturday of each month from 10 to 11 am, except for in May.