I had to take my mom into Los Angeles yesterday for a doctor appointment, so I do not have a new post for today . . . but I do have a new post up at Discover Los Angeles. It’s about film noir locations, so be sure to check it out.
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The Phillips Mansion
The Grim Cheaper always tells me that it is not about the destination, but the journey. He’s right. Getting lost can have its perks. While driving around looking for Spadra Cemetery (which I blogged about on Friday) a couple of weeks ago, we happened upon a seemingly abandoned mansion set back from the road behind a chain link fence. The site appeared to be beckoning to me, so we pulled over for a closer look.
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As it turns out, the property is known as Phillip’s Mansion and it is one of Pomona’s oldest residences. The pad was originally constructed in 1875 by a wealthy rancher named Louis Phillips, who I wrote about in my Spadra Cemetery post.
According to the The Historical Society of Pomona Valley, the three-story, eight-room estate was built in the Second Empire or “Classic Haunted Mansion” style of architecture (I didn’t even know there was such a thing, but LOVE it) at a cost of $20,000. The exterior was fashioned out fired bricks that were hand-made on the premises, while the ornate interior featured gas lighting, sixteen-foot tall ceilings, a whopping six fireplaces (!!!!), and cherry and maple woodwork. Phillips, who in 1892 the Los Angeles Times named the “richest man in Los Angeles County” with an estimated net worth of around $3 million, lived there until his death in 1900. His wife continued to reside at the mansion until she passed away in 1918. Both are buried at Spadra Cemetery. Their tombstone was, sadly, upended by vandals a few years back, the sight of which only adds to the spookiness of the graveyard.
After it was sold, Phillips Mansion was used for a variety of purposes. At one point in time, the site was turned into apartments and then it later served as a dorm for Cal Poly Pomona foreign exchange students. Over the years, the property fell into disrepair and in the ‘60s was bought by an industrialist who planned to demolish it in order to build a factory. Thankfully, the Historical Society stepped in and purchased it in 1966, rescuing it from the wrecking ball. The organization immediately set about renovating the structure with the hopes of turning it into a museum. The project took years and the museum finally opened to the public in 1978. Sadly, it has not had much luck since that point. Phillips Mansion, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, suffered severe damage in both the Upland earthquake of 1990 and the Sierra Madre earthquake of 1991. The Historical Society began to restore the wreckage in 2002 and was even hosting special theatrical productions titled “A Premature Burial” on the premises each Halloween, but then tragedy struck in July 2008 when the property was damaged yet again in the Chino Hills earthquake. The group is still currently working to repair the manse and return to its original glory.
While stalking it, I felt like I was standing in front of the Bates’ house from Psycho. The two properties look so much alike!
Supposedly, two movies, one starring Buster Keaton and the other starring Tom Mix, were shot at a barn located on the Phillips Mansion property in the 1930s. I am unsure of the names of the films, though, and, unfortunately, the barn is no longer standing.
Fellow stalker Darnell let me know that the mansion itself appeared in the 2005 horror movie Mortuary as the home where Liz (Alexandra Adi) lived.
While researching the mansion for this post, I was floored to discover that there is a dilapidated residence located directly behind it. I had not noticed the second property while I was there, which is unfortunate being that not only is it fabulously run-down, but it was also featured prominently in Mortuary. The dwelling is known as the Currier House and it was designed by architect Ferdinand Davis for local politician/philanthropist Alvin Tyler Currier in 1907. The home, which cost $12,000 to construct, was originally located about 15 miles west in the City of Industry. In 2004, after standing vacant for over a decade, the City of Industry gave the house to the Historical Society of Pomona Valley and paid to transport it to the grounds of the Phillips Mansion.
In Mortuary, the Currier House masked as the abandoned Fowler Brothers Mortuary.
I am unsure if the real life interior of the Currier House was used in the filming. Being that the interiors shown in the movie do not appear nearly as run down as the exterior of the home, I am guessing that a set was used for all inside filming. That is just a hunch, though.
Update – my friend Scott Michaels, of the FindaDeath website and Dearly Departed Tours, recently got a chance to visit both the Phillips Mansion and the Currier House and was kind enough to share the photos he took with me to add to this post.
During his tour, Scott got to see the interior of both residences. The inside of the Phillips Mansion is pictured below.
The Currier House could not be more fabulously dilapidated!
I am in love with the photo below! Scott thinks the happy face might have been left over from a filming of some sort, but he isn’t sure. Either way, it’s spectacular! Thank you, Scott, for the great pictures!
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: The Phillips Mansion is located at 2640 Pomona Boulevard in Pomona. The Currier House is located directly behind it.
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Spadra Cemetery
Finding the words “ghost town” used to describe a cemetery is likely to cause my head to start spinning. Which is exactly what happened while I was doing some research on abandoned locales for an upcoming Discover Los Angeles post. I happened to come across an article on the Avoiding Regret blog about a forgotten, dilapidated old graveyard in Pomona named Spadra Cemetery and my eyes practically bugged out of my head. The photographs displayed showed an overgrown, crumbling site marked by toppled, cracked tombstones. I was instantly intrigued. An abandoned cemetery? Count me in! I knew the place would be perfect for my Haunted Hollywood postings, so I ran right out to stalk it shortly thereafter.
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Prior to reading about the cemetery, I had never heard of Spadra. The now defunct small town came to be thanks to a stagecoach line established in 1859 that ran from San Francisco to Memphis via Los Angeles. Several stations were constructed along the route, one of which was in the area that came to be known as Spadra. In 1864, a wealthy rancher named Louis Phillips purchased a 12,000-acre portion of land that included the station, with the intention of breaking it up and selling it off. One of the first to purchase a parcel was a colorful character named Billy Rubottom, aka “Uncle Billy.” Not only was Rubottom wanted in Arkansas on two separate murder charges, but he had also killed his son-in-law in El Monte.
The enterprising Rubottom built a hotel and bar on his new land in 1866. It was not long before stores, warehouses, a post office and a school sprung up around it. Rubottom dubbed the fledgling community “Spadra,” in honor of his hometown of Spadra, Arkansas. It doesn’t sound like it was a great place to reside. According to a post on The David Allen Blog, a Historical Society of the Pomona Valley booklet describes the town as such: “The village of Spadra was characterized by murder, suicide and mysterious deaths.” Not surprising considering its founder.
The 2.5-acre Spadra Cemetery was established in 1868 on land donated to the town by Louis Phillips.
Spadra continued to thrive and in 1874 the Southern Pacific Railroad extended their line to the town. While that caused a boost in popularity, it was short-lived. The following year, the line was again extended about thirty miles farther east to Colton and Spadra became an all but forgotten stop along the route. As the neighboring town of Pomona began to grow and boom, thanks in large part to the fact that the area had a water supply, the population of Spadra dwindled. The establishment of a mental hospital in the area in 1927 and a landfill in 1957 further drove people away. The town was finally acquired by Pomona in 1964. The last burial at Spadra Cemetery took place in 1971 and four years later the site was deeded to the Historical Society. You can read a more in-depth account of Spadra’s history here.
Today, Spadra Cemetery, which boasts 212 graves (that’s the official number, at least), is almost completely hidden from view and extremely hard to find. Situated underneath State Route 57, the site shares a driveway with a company named Altec Southern California Service Rentals, which bars it from sight. (A Google Street View image of the shared driveway is pictured below.) We actually drove past the entrance twice before stopping to ask a local resident for directions. Upon finally finding it, I was a bit disheartened to discover that no part of the property is visible from the street.
The graveyard itself is located about 500 feet south of a locked gate and can only be reached via an open field to the west of it. And no, the Grim Cheaper and I did not venture over past the gate. The cemetery is on private land and I am not one for trespassing. But man, do I wish I could have seen it because the images I found of it online are haunting. There is good news, though! The Historical Society does sometimes offer tours of the cemetery. One such tour takes place annually on Halloween night. I honestly cannot think of a better place to spend the holiday!
I was thrilled to discover while researching this post that the entrance gate is also a horror movie location! In a case of art imitating life, the gate stands at the entrance to the abandoned funeral home and cemetery that the Doyle family – Jonathan (Dan Byrd), Leslie (Denise Crosby) and Jamie (Stephanie Patton) – purchases in 2005’s The Mortuary.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: Spadra Cemetery is located at 2850 Pomona Boulevard in Pomona. As I mentioned, it can be hard to find. The entrance, which shares a driveway with Altec Southern California Service Rentals at 2882 Pomona Boulevard, is situated about 100 feet east of the 57 Freeway. The actual graveyard is located about 500 feet south of the entrance gate, across a set of railroad tracks. Pleased by advised that the cemetery is private property and venturing onto its grounds is trespassing. There are legal ways to see it via the Historical Society of the Pomona Valley. You can contact them regarding tours here.
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The Evers’ House from “The Haunted Mansion”
My Los Angeles magazine editor is on vacation this week, so I will not have a post on LAmag.com today. To make up for it, though, I’ve got a Haunted Hollywood locale for you right here! One of my favorite parts about the Halloween season is watching scary movies. (And of course stalking their locations and blogging about them.) It always shocks me how many horror flicks and thrillers there are out there that I have yet to see. One of my more recent screenings was of The Haunted Mansion, the 2003 Disney flick based on Disneyland’s popular ride of the same name. I didn’t have very high hopes for the movie, but it turned out to be really cute – and a perfect watch for this time of year. The best part? Years ago, my buddy Mike, from MovieShotsLA, told me about the location of the home where the Evers family – Jim (Eddie Murphy), Sara (Marsha Thomason), Michael (Marc John Jefferies), and Megan (Aree Davis) – lived in the flick. He had tracked it down via this 2006 Pasadena Weekly article. As it turns out, not only is the pad an extremely popular filming location, but it is located very close to where I used to live. For whatever reason, I had never stalked it, though. So I finally amended that by running right on over there while I was in the area a few weeks back.
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In real life, the Colonial-Revival-style residence, which was originally built in 1925 and sits on a 0.26-acre plot of land, boasts 4 bedrooms, 3.5 baths, and 3,234 square feet.
As you can see below, the dwelling is extremely picturesque. For some odd reason, though, the exterior rarely makes it onto the silver screen.
Such was the case with The Haunted Mansion – only the interior of the property was used in the filming. The exterior of the Evers’ house was never shown, not even in an establishing shot, which I found a bit weird. You can check out some photographs of the inside of the home here and here.
According to the Pasadena Weekly article, to accommodate the filming, the home’s then owners had to move out for two and a half weeks (the longest they had ever been displaced for a shoot), which is surprising being that the residence was only shown in a couple of brief scenes.
The haunted mansion that appeared in the movie, which was referred to as the Gracey Estate, was unfortunately just a façade that was built at Sable Ranch in Santa Clarita. Only the lower part of the manse was constructed for the shoot – the top portion was added via CGI in post-production – and was subsequently torn down after filming wrapped. You can check out some photographs of the façade here and here. What I wouldn’t give to have been able to have seen it in person! (Side note – I was floored to discover while researching this post that the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland was modeled after a real home, the Shipley-Lydecker House in Baltimore, Maryland. Sadly, it no longer stands, but you can see an image of what it used to look like here. It is the spitting image of the Disneyland mansion. SO incredibly cool!)
I actually think the mansion looks quite fake in the faraway shots that appeared in the movie.
But the close-up views of it are amazing! Personally, I think they should have forgone the CGI and utilized the façade as it was.
The interior of the Gracey Estate was an elaborate set constructed at Barwick Studios where The Haunted Mansion was lensed. You can read a fabulous blog post written by a few lucky souls who were able to visit the set on the DoomBuggies website here.
According to DoomBuggies, the couch that appeared in the library scene was also used in the 1954 movie 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
And, according to internet lore, after filming wrapped a chair from the mansion’s dining room set was placed inside the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. It is said to be the chair that Jack Sparrow is sitting in at the very end of the attraction. Upon closer inspection, though, I do not believe that to be correct.
You can check out a picture of the Pirates chair here. While the two chairs are strikingly similar, there are some differences. Most notably, the movie chairs have an elevated carving of some sort located at the top, while the Pirates chair does not. Internet lore further states that one of the same chairs is also pictured in a portrait of a bride in the attic area of the Haunted Mansion ride. You can see an image of it here.
The Evers’ house was also where Michael Feller (Ken Howard) and Sydelle Feller (Candice Azzara) lived in the 2005 dramedy In Her Shoes. That movie was one of the few instances in which the exterior of the dwelling was shown.
The interior of the home made an appearance in the film, as well.
In the 2009 drama State of Play, the residence belonged to Anne Collins (Robin Wright).
And while 2007’s Spiderman 3 also did some filming on the premises, those scenes wound up on the cutting room floor.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for telling me about this location!
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: The Evers’ house from The Haunted Mansion is located at 1480 North Michigan Avenue in Pasadena.
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The Orchid Tree Inn
It’s no secret that there’s nothing this stalker loves more than an abandoned site. Throw in a waterless pool and I am an even happier camper. So a couple of months ago when I passed by an abandoned motel that appeared extremely accessible in downtown Palm Springs, I immediately pulled the car over for a closer look. I came to find out the property was a shuttered 1930s-era hotel known as the Orchid Tree Inn and that it not only boasted three pools, but had been deserted for over a decade. My kinda place!
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The Orchid Tree Inn is a sprawling, ramshackle property that takes up almost an entire block of land. That was not always the case, though. The motel, which was founded in 1934 by a man named Horace L. Cook, was originally established as a tiny 10-bungalow complex known as the Sakarah Apartments. The site offered both short- and long-term lodging. The original ten units still stand to this day. One is pictured below.
A reader who is a distant relative of Horace recently sent me scans of the property’s original advertising pamphlet! The booklet boasts of mountain and desert views, a roof garden, gas heating, breakfast nooks, and “tasteful, early Californian furniture.”
She also sent me the photograph below and informed me that the Sakarah was named after a favorite cat. Couldn’t love that more!
When Horace decided to relocate to Los Angeles in 1941, he sold the property to Beverly Hills contractor Harry Irvin, who renamed it the Apache Lodge.
By 1948, the name had been changed yet again, this time to the Bel-Ardo Villas. The complex was finally given its current moniker, the Orchid Tree Inn, in 1952. A pool was also added to the property’s central courtyard at that time. You can check out some postcard images of what the site looked like in those days here and here. The area featured on the postcards is the same area pictured below. As you can see, despite the hotel being abandoned for over a decade, it still looks very much the same today as it did then.
During its heyday, the Orchid Tree Inn played host to several Old Hollywood celebrities including William Holden, Troy Donahue, Tab Hunter, Anthony Perkins, and Rosalind Russell.
Over the years, the owners of the inn purchased the many different properties surrounding it. It eventually came to be made up of seven different structures and complexes, the oldest of which, a private residence, dated back to 1915. The home, which was Craftsman in style, belonged to a Christian Science Practitioner named Genevieve Reilly for over 45 years. Sadly, it was destroyed in a fire in 2007 and all that currently remains of it is the stone archway pictured below.
According to a Historic Site Preservation Board report done on the Orchid Tree Inn in 2010, the archway was hand-laid.
From what I have been able to gather, I believe that the large stone pad visible below was the bungalow’s footprint.
A faraway view showing the footprint, the archway, and the motel units beyond and adjacent to them is pictured below.
At some point (I believe in the ‘90s), the Orchid Tree Inn acquired a neighboring motel known as the Desert House Inn that was originally built in 1941.
The Desert House Inn’s dry, but intact pool . . .
. . . hot tub . . .
. . . and fountain practically had me drooling!
While most of the Orchid Tree Inn’s acquisitions were Spanish in style, there was one mid-century modern building formerly located on the premises. When the nearby Premiere Apartments, originally designed by prolific architect Albert Frey in 1957, were threatened with demolition in 1972, the entire complex was moved onto a vacant plot of land on the Orchid Tree Inn premises. Sadly, that building was also burned in a fire in 2007 and no longer stands. It was formerly situated in the area pictured below.
The Google Street View images below were taken in 2007 and show what the Premiere Apartments looked like shortly after the fire. And you can check out some photocopied pictures of the building in its original state here.
The pool located behind the Premiere Apartments remains intact.
After over seven decades in business, the Orchid Tree Inn was shuttered in 2005 and has remained vacant ever since.
The hotel’s former owners held an estate sale during which its furnishings were sold in 2010. You can check out some photographs of the many items put up for sale here.
I was shocked – and delighted – at how photographically accessible the Orchid Tree Inn is.
Virtually all of the property is visible from the street.
Even through the chipped paint and crackling walls, it is apparent how beautiful it once was.
On a neighboring parcel of land sits the former Community Church, which was devastated by a fire in 2013. It has been left charred and dilapidated ever since.
The church was originally designed in 1935 by William Charles Tanner.
Developer Richard Weintraub is currently seeking the city’s approval to turn the Orchid Tree Inn and the Community Church into an 89-room luxury resort. He plans to revive the ten historic bungalows in the process. The property renderings looks absolutely gorgeous and, being that many portions of the original hotel will be kept intact, I hope the plans are approved and that new life is brought to the site. In the meantime, though, I sure enjoy passing by it in its current state.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: The Orchid Tree Inn is located at 261 South Belardo Road in Palm Springs. The aerial view below denotes the many different properties that were added to the hotel throughout its history and what year they were originally built.
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Mary Miles Minter’s Former Mansions
The death of William Desmond Taylor remains one of Hollywood’s most notorious unsolved mysteries, over 90 years after its occurrence. On the evening of February 1st, 1922, the 50-year-old director was shot and killed in his Westlake apartment complex. Though there were suspects aplenty, no one was ever indicted in the murder and the case was officially closed without resolution (for the second time) on February 23rd, 1938, never to be re-opened. Common belief, though, has long since held that the guilty party was Charlotte Shelby, the mother of 19-year-old starlet Mary Miles Minter, with whom Desmond was said to be having an illicit May-December affair. I became fascinated with the case after reading Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood and stalked the site of Taylor’s former bungalow as part of my 2014 Haunted Hollywood postings. So this year I thought it only fitting to venture out to visit two mansions that once belonged to Mary and Charlotte, the addresses of which I found thanks to my buddy E.J. Fleming’s new book, Hollywood Death and Scandal Sites: Seventeen Driving Tours with Directions and the Full Story.
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The life of Mary Miles Minter was a strange one. The actress was born Juliet Reilly on April 25th, 1902 in Shreveport, Louisiana. Her mother, then known as Lilla Pearl Reilly, soon tired of what she deemed a lowly existence in the Bayou and moved Juliet and her sister, as well as her widowed mother, Julia Miles, to New York, hoping to catch a taste of the good life. Lilla changed her name to Mrs. Charlotte Shelby and quickly became the stage mom to end all stage moms, pushing her daughters into the limelight. Charlotte was the OG momager. Before there was a Dina Lohan, before there was a Kris Kardashian, there was a Charlotte Shelby. It wasn’t long before Juliet caught the eye of theatre producer Charles Frohman, who hired the nine-year-old to act in rather sexy stage productions. When Juliet’s age was questioned by child labor advocates, Shelby’s response was to acquire the birth certificate of a 16-year-old dead relative named Mary Minter and pass it along as her daughter’s. The scheme worked and from that point on the youngster was known as Mary Miles Minter. Shortly thereafter, Charlotte relocated the family to Los Angeles and Mary quickly secured a $1.3-million contract with film magnate Adolph Zukor, going on to act in 54 silent films.
After finding success, Charlotte, using Mary’s money, leased the family a mansion in Hancock Park that had once belonged to silent screen star Mary Pickford. Today, the estate, which still stands at 56 Fremont Place, is a popular filming location, appearing in everything from Taken (screen capture below) to CSI: Miami to Beverly Hills, 90210. During the time the family was living there, Mary landed a role in the 1919 movie Anne of Green Gables. William Desmond Taylor, who was then 47, was the director. For 17-year-old Minter, it was love at first sight. Though rumors of an affair between the two are still persistent to this day, Tinseltown author William J. Mann asserts that Taylor kept her at arms length. Either way, Mary was smitten and wanted nothing more than to marry Desmond, retire from the film industry and have his children. Charlotte would have none of it, though. Mary was her meal ticket and she did not want the gravy train to end.
In late 1920, when the lease on the Hancock Park mansion was up, the family headed to the East Coast for a brief vacation. Upon returning, Charlotte, using Mary’s money once again, purchased a 20,000-square-foot, 3-story, 40-room mansion that they named Casa de Margarita (or Casa de Marguerite, depending on which website you are reading). They lived at the property for a short time before beginning a renovation project in the fall of 1921, at which point they relocated to a house at 2039 Hobart Boulevard in Los Feliz, where they remained until the spring of 1922. It was while they were living on Hobart that Taylor was murdered in his bungalow. Mary’s career came to an almost screeching halt.
Charlotte was immediately painted as a prime suspect. Shelby had vocally opposed her daughter’s adoration of Taylor for years, had done everything she could to keep the two apart, and had even once threatened him publicly, saying “If I ever catch you hanging around Mary again, I will blow your goddamned brains out.” A grand jury was convened at one point, and while they chose not to indict her, the murder plagued both Charlotte and Mary for the rest of their lives.
At the time of William’s murder, Hollywood was in a precarious position thanks to the Fatty Arbuckle scandal, which had hit the industry hard financially. Studios did not want their stars to have connections to any sort of salacious behavior as it proved detrimental to the success of their movies. The Famous Players-Lasky Corporation decided that Mary had to go. When she was informed that her contract would not be renewed, she was just shy of her 21st birthday. The unemployed actress had just moved out of Casa de Margarita and into a Hollywood Hills bungalow. The move had caused an estrangement between the star and her mother and, unfortunately for Mary, it was Charlotte who held the purse strings. Without a studio contract, she no longer had a way to pay the bills.
By the summer of 1923, Mary was in dire straits. She was broke, had lost the love of her life, her career had disappeared, she had developed a heroin problem and gained a large amount of weight. To stir up publicity (which would hopefully lead to a job), she created a fake story claiming an attempt had been made on her life and that the killer’s intentions had been to forever silent her on what she knew about Taylor’s death. Neither the police nor the tabloids bought her story, though. The starlet then moved to New York for a time, hoping to carve out a career on the stage, but it never took shape. She eventually began legal proceedings against Charlotte in order to regain the money she made as a young star. For reasons that are not entirely clear, but that I am guessing have to do with the lawsuit, Shelby was forced to sell Casa Margarita at auction in December 1932.
Mother and daughter eventually reconciled. Ever the shrewd businesswoman, Charlotte had invested Mary’s money rather wisely and the two moved in together, first to an estate in Beverly Hills and then, in the 1950s, to a spacious, 6-bedroom, 9-bathroom (!!!), 5,501-square-foot home known as the Bishop Conaty House in Santa Monica. The pad, which sits on 0.46 acres, was originally constructed in 1907 for the Reverend Bishop Thomas Conaty of Los Angeles and San Diego. Charlotte and Mary would live there for the rest of their days.
Mary’s later years were not happy ones. The former starlet started turning into a recluse. Shortly after Charlotte passed away in 1957, Minter married a real estate developer named Brandon O’Hildebrandt. When he passed away in 1965, she grew even more reclusive. Last year I attended a Q&A about Tinseltown and photographer Michael Childers happened to be in attendance. He spoke of meeting Minter at her home in her final years and described her existence as a very “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? situation.“ Apparently, the then obese actress surrounded herself with photographs from her younger years and continued to wear the hairstyle and clothing from her movie star days. On one particularly bad night in 1981, a robber broke into Mary’s residence, tied her up and stole $300,000 worth of items. It was later discovered that her caretaker was behind the theft.
On August 4th, 1984, Mary Miles Minter passed away silently at the home, her film legacy largely forgotten, but her entwinement with one of Hollywood’s most infamous unsolved murders still very much intact.
Casa de Margarita served many incarnations after it was sold by Charlotte in 1932. For a time the property was utilized by a seminary, then it became a home for unwed mothers, and then a shelter for children. Today, it is a family service center named Children’s Institute, Inc. According to this article, the dwelling still boasts much of its original décor, including large fireplaces, a grand staircase, built-in bookcases, a central courtyard with a fountain, and hardwood flooring. It is also supposedly haunted. You can see some interior photos of it here.
A big THANK YOU to my friend E.J., of The Movieland Directory website, for providing these addresses. For those who are as into Haunted Hollywood locales as I am, I highly recommend his book Hollywood Death and Scandal Sites: Seventeen Driving Tours with Directions and the Full Story (the second edition was just released via McFarland). The tome is chock full of macabre spots (I swear, one year virtually all of my Haunted Hollywood locations came from the first edition), all of which are well-researched and well-documented. As I have mentioned many times before, E.J. is one of the very few fellow stalkers whose information I trust. He is a rare breed in this field in that his data is accurate, his locales unique (read: not regurgitated from all of the other websites out there), and his story-telling bar none!
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: Casa de Margarita, aka Mary Miles Minter’s former mansion, is located at 701 South New Hampshire Avenue in Koreatown. The home where Mary spent her final years can be found at 144 Adelaide Drive in Santa Monica.
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Gramma-Jess’ House from “Poltergeist II: The Other Side”
I have never seen Poltergeist, which, considering my love of the ‘80s and all things spooky, is rather shocking. I tried to remedy the situation this past weekend, but the Grim Cheaper was having none of it, unfortunately. I did recently stalk a location from the sequel, Poltergeist II: The Other Side, though. I had come across a post on the Then & Now Movie Locations blog about the residence used as Gramma-Jess’ (Geraldine Fitzgerald) house in the flick and became quite intrigued. Not only is the dwelling gorgeous, but it is located in Altadena, in close proximity to my old home. So I ran right out to see it in person.
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Their house having imploded in Poltergeist, the Freeling family – Steve (Craig T. Nelson), Diane (JoBeth Williams), Robbie (Oliver Robins), and Carol Anne (Heather O’Rourke) – moves in with Diane’s mom, Gramma-Jess (Geraldine Fitzgerald), in Poltergeist II: The Other Side. Virtually all of the movie takes place at the large Craftsman-style residence, which is said to be located in Phoenix, Arizona.
Amazingly, the house looks very much the same today as it did onscreen in 1986.
Love the images below!
And LOVE that the driveway is exactly the same as it appeared onscreen!
A few areas of the home were used in the filming, including the front exterior . . .
. . . the backyard . . .
. . .and the front porch.
Interiors were filmed on a soundstage at MGM Studios in Culver City (which is now Sony Pictures Studios). According to the Poltergeist II production notes, “Preceded by months of intensive preparatory work, the production fully occupied two of the largest soundstages at MGM’s famed Culver City studio lot. On Stage 30, [production designer Ted] Haworth and his crew constructed a full-scale house, duplicating in exacting detail the real-life house selected to represent Gramma Jess’ home in the film –– inside and out.”
Because it is obvious that most of the exteriors were shot at the actual home in Altadena, I am guessing that the replica exteriors mentioned in the notes were only used for more close-up, tight shots of the outside of the residence, such as in the scene below. UPDATE – I recently spoke to David, who runs the amazing Poltergeist Fan Website, and it turns out that my hunch was correct. David informed me that the residence’s backyard and garage were re-created on a soundstage for use in a few night scenes, including the scene in which the Freelings ran out the back door of the house, through the backyard and into the garage, where they found Carol Anne hiding in the station wagon.
In real life, Gramma-Jess’ house, which was built in 1913, boasts three bedrooms, two baths, 2,766 square feet of living space, and a 0.53-acre plot of land. The property was last sold in 1973 for $18,500, which cracks me up being that Zillow now estimates its worth at around $1.5 million.
The home is absolutely gorgeous in person and I am quite surprised that it is not listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
While researching this post, I was floored to discover that the Poltergeist franchise is laced with behind-the-scenes mystery and intrigue. According the the television special Real Fear: The Truth Behind the Movies, the original 1982 film is said to be loosely based on supposed real life events that took place at a one-story ranch-style house belonging to the Hermann family in the Long Island suburb of Seaford. In early 1958, the Hermanns began experiencing many odd occurrences at the home. James and Lucille and their two children witnessed random objects flying across the room and furniture toppling over for no apparent reason. The disturbances only lasted about five weeks and the family attributed them to an Indian burial ground located nearby. You can read a more in-depth article about the Hermann hauntings here, though there is some contention about their connection to Poltergeist. There is also quite a bit of contention over who actually directed the first installment. While Tobe Hooper is listed on the credits, many believe that Steven Spielberg was actually at the helm. Mystery also shrouds the re-shot ending of the third movie, which no one involved in the production seems to want to discuss. And, of course, there is the so-called “Poltergeist curse,” which I talked about in my post about the house from the original film. For those who want to delve deeper into the intrigue surrounding the movies, I highly recommend checking out the Poltergeist Fan Website.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Big THANK YOU to the Then & Now Movie Locations blog for finding this location!
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: Gramma- Jess’ house from Poltergeist II: The Other Side is located 1589 Homewood Drive in Altadena.
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Groman Eden Mortuary from “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead”
Never in a million years did I think that the 1991 comedy Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, one of my all-time favorite movies, would provide me with a Haunted Hollywood posting, but it did! In July 2014, a reader named Frank Vollhardt wrote a comment on my post about the DTMTBD house alerting me to the location of the mortuary featured in the flick. Because the morgue scene was rather brief, until reading his comment, I had completely forgotten about it. So thank you, Frank! I immediately added the place, Groman Eden Mortuary in Mission Hills, to my To-Stalk list, but somehow did not make it out there until just recently.
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Groman Eden Mortuary, or Eden Memorial Park as it is also known, was originally established in 1954. The 67-acre site is one of the largest Jewish cemeteries in the U.S.
Though the setting is quite beautiful (as far as cemeteries go), Groman Eden has reportedly been the site of some very dark deeds.
Quite a few famous souls are buried or entombed at Eden Memorial Park, including comedian Lenny Bruce, The Three Stooges’ Phil Arnold, Laverne & Shirley’s Phil Foster, Howard Caine and Jon Cedar from Hogan’s Heroes, The Knack’s Bruce Gary, and musician Fred Katz.
Legendary funnyman Groucho Marx has been entombed there since his death in 1977 – well, sort of. In a rather chilling (and absolutely bizarre) turn of events, the comedian’s ashes were stolen from the cemetery on May 12th, 1982 and then found later that same night about twelve miles away on the steps of the administration building of Mount Sinai Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills. The ashes were quickly returned to Eden Memorial, where they remain today, but the culprit was never found. According to lore, scrape marks from the screw driver used to remove the ashes are still visible on the exterior of Groucho’s niche, which you can see a photograph of here. While there are noticeable marks in the lower portion of the placard bearing his name, whether they are actually from the 1982 robbery is anyone’s guess.
The columbarium where Groucho is entombed, which is pictured below, is located in the southern portion of the cemetery. You can find more precise information on where to find his niche here.
When Sue Ellen Crandell (Christina Applegate), Kenny Crandell (Keith Coogan), and their siblings discover that their babysitter, Mrs. Sturak (Eda Reiss Merin), has passed away in Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, they decide to place her in a chest and drop her off at a local mortuary with a note saying, “Nice old lady inside. Died of natural causes.” As you can see below, Groman Eden Mortuary’s real name was shown in the scene.
Aside from the entrance changing from a double to a single door, the building featured in the scene looks pretty much exactly the same today as it did when Don’t Tell Mom was shot over 24 years ago.
The gate shown in the movie is not the cemetery’s main gate on Rinaldi Street, but the side gate located on Sepulveda Boulevard, which is pictured below.
I failed to snap a photo of the gate taken from the same angle that appeared in Don’t Tell Mom, but you can see a matching Google Street View image below.
While I would have guessed that Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead’s closing scene, in which the mortuary workers (played by Robert F. Newmyer and Brian Reilly, both of whom served as producers on the movie and both of whom have, sadly, since passed away) pay their respects to the “Nice Old Lady,” also took place at Eden Memorial Park, I have it on good authority that that is not the case. According to Keith Coogan, who just so happens to be married to my friend Pinky Lovejoy, of the Thinking Pink blog, that segment was shot at a park on Temescal Canyon Road, in between Sunset Boulevard and the Pacific Coast Highway, in Pacific Palisades. I have not tried to pinpoint the exact spot where the scene was lensed yet, but will do so in the near future.
For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Frank Vollhardt for telling me about this location!
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: Groman Eden Mortuary, from Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, is located at 11500 Sepulveda Boulevard in Mission Hills. The gate and building used in the filming are denoted with orange arrows in the aerial view pictured below.
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New “L.A.” Mag Post – About The Coffee Roaster from “The Simpsons”
Be sure to check out my latest Los Angeles magazine article, about The Coffee Roaster from The Simpsons’ very first animated sequence!
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The World’s Most Haunted House
I’ve mentioned before that my good friend Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, and I have an almost eerie synchronicity. So what happened this past Monday shouldn’t have surprised me. Last October, he informed me that there is a pad that has been dubbed “the world’s most haunted house” located in the next town over from him. I started salivating upon hearing those words and asked if he would write a guest post about the dwelling for my blog. It was too late in the game by that point for him to get it to press in time for last year’s Haunted Hollywood postings, but he promised to pen it for me in 2015. Flash forward to Monday. My mom found out that she was going to have to have emergency surgery on Tuesday due to complications from last week’s foot operation. Because I would be spending all day with her at the hospital, I would not be able to write a post for today. So imagine my shock when I received an email from Owen that afternoon saying that his guest post was ready to go! Not only was I already so looking forward to having an Owen article on my site, but he saved my butt with his timing! I will forever be grateful. So without further ado . . .
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Lindsay, friend, Starbucks addict and blogger extraordinaire, asked me to guest-write a post. Being the gentleman I am, I harrumphed and unequivocally turned her down. She cackled and said she’d force me to do it. “Over my dead body!” I screamed gutturally. Long story short, she killed me. Now I’m her, ahem, ghostwriter, a one-man skeleton crew patella-deep in haunted IAMNOTASTALKER posts.
Whatever. Lindsay’s favorite month has just become her worst nightmare. She got an Owen, and it turns out that’s scarier than The Omen. Now I am the puppet master, and her blog is under my control. Mwa-ha-ha!
Today we travel far from California, but we’re still in a liberal, coastal C-state. East Coast, represent!
I live in Fairfield, Connecticut, and recently I ventured, for Lindsay, to Lindley Street in neighboring Bridgeport. The state’s most-populated city, Bridgeport is where I was born, raised and electrocuted, though the latter is a frightening tale for another time. Today we’re headed to 966 Lindley Street. The modest home at this address was, in the mid-1970s, ground zero for poltergeist activity.
Gerard Goodin, a factory worker at Harvey Hubbell Inc., purchased the four-room bungalow in the northern section of the city in 1960. He and his wife, Laura, were new parents at the time; their son, Gerard Jr., suffered from cerebral palsy. Gerard Jr. died in the fall of 1967. He was only 6. Less than a year later the family adopted a 4-year-old Canadian girl named Marcia.
Five years after their son died, as Bridgeport native William J. Hall notes in his 2014 book The World’s Most Haunted House: The True Story of the Bridgeport Poltergeist on Lindley Street, the Goodins called the police to report strange noises. Gerard was more annoyed than frightened by the rhythmic, nighttime knocking; he suspected pranks by neighborhood kids. The fire department inspected the foundation of the single-family home. Gas lines and plumbing were checked as well. The source of the noise, however, was never discovered. Gerard wondered if the mysterious sounds had something to do with the proposal to build condominiums next door — a proposal he had vocally opposed. Were developers making noises to force people to sell their homes? Were they making noises to get back at Gerard?
Unlikely.
The noises, you see, appeared to originate from inside the home. Officials checked piping and ductwork in the basement. The Goodins even replaced the furnace. The old furnace was gone, but the noises remained and, during the last weekend of November 1974, they would attract worldwide attention.
In the fall of 1974, Marcia was in fifth grade, and she was bullied more frequently — and more severely — than your average fifth-grader. Marcia’s classmates picked on her because of her heritage. (She was a member of the Iroquois Indian tribe.) Marcia was injured in October when a boy in her class kicked her in the back. Gerard and Lydia removed their daughter from school, and Marcia, forced to wear a back brace, received in-home tutoring.
The Goodins were having dinner in their living room with a neighbor on Nov. 21 when they heard the sound of breaking glass. A lower pane of the master bedroom window had shattered — from the inside. A day later the family was watching TV in the living room when they heard sounds coming from the master bedroom. The curtains of a closed window had fallen to the floor. They put the curtains back, but before they could leave the room, it happened again. They left the curtains down and returned to the living room. Thirty minutes later, the curtains were lying on the kitchen floor. The mystery and unease grew when a knocking sound, gentle and slow at first, built to a rapid pounding. It stopped after a few minutes, and the family went to bed.
When the Goodins returned home the following evening after a day trip to see relatives in Dover Plains, New York, Gerard saw Marcia’s TV on her bed, screen down. In the kitchen he found “dishes rising out of the sink and flying across the room,” according to The World’s Most Haunted House. The knife block, screwed to the wall, freed itself. The kitchen table flipped over, spilling groceries all over the floor. The refrigerator started to slide and rise, hovering six inches off the ground. A 23-inch TV near the sink fell on Laura’s foot, bloodying her toes.
Things quieted down — but not for long. After dinner, Gerard felt a presence in the kitchen, and towels and toiletries flew around the bathroom while Marcia was in there. Despite the strange happenings, the Goodins managed to get to bed around 3 a.m. They would be w-i-d-e awake the next day…
When he went to make breakfast on Nov. 24, Gerard found the kitchen table flipped over, even though he hadn’t heard any noises at night. The refrigerator was inexplicably blocking the kitchen door that led to the outside. Gerard went to the bedroom to tell Laura, at which point a crucifix and picture of Jesus pulled from the wall and crashed to the floor. Another crucifix, this one above the door in Marcia’s bedroom, fell, breaking into pieces. Living room chairs tipped back and forth — while the rest of the room remained still. The frequency and intensity of the events were increasing, and the Goodins were beginning to feel threatened. They went outside the house and spotted the teen daughter of John Holsworth, a cop who lived across the street, walking her dog. They asked her to summon her father.
Holsworth arrived a few minutes later. “Help us!” Gerard said. “Something evil is wrecking our house!” Holsworth ventured inside and saw a house that looked like it had been robbed. While he was there, the living room TV rotated 35 degrees, recliners shook and the fridge slid across the floor, making no sound and leaving no marks. He searched for a reasonable explanation for what he was witnessing but couldn’t find one. Holsworth, who later reported “he felt sure he was witnessing something supernatural,” called for backup.
Two officers on patrol nearby arrived first, followed by a second patrol car. When four policemen were in the kitchen, the fridge floated about six inches off the floor without making a sound. All this time, Marcia watched cartoons in the living room, showing no fright, no hysterics. Was she accustomed to the commotion? Was she the mastermind behind a hoax, a frustrated, lonely girl seeking attention?
Evidence didn’t support the latter hypothesis, because things happened in one room while the parents and Marcia were with an officer in a different room. A bureau fell in Marcia’s room even though nobody was in the room at the time. A wooden cross on the wall began swinging like a pendulum — slowly at first, then faster — before pulling away from the wall, nail and all, and hitting one of the officers in the chest.
When 10 firemen, traveling in three units, arrived, along with the firehouse chaplain, the 738-square-foot house was brimming with people — and chaos. Chairs moved. Dishes rattled. Shelves shook. An officer swore he heard the Goodin’s cat, Sam, talk. The priest reported a heaviness overtaking him. He attempted to perform a house blessing, but a vial of holy water tipped over when he reached for it — twice.
A neighbor with knowledge of poltergeists knew of a theory in which children served as unconscious “agents” for the activity. Could Marcia, a shy girl overprotected by her mother and picked on by her peers, be acting as a gateway for a poltergeist?
The same neighbor phoned famous paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, who arrived with a priest and a 21-year-old seminary student. (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga portrayed the Warrens in The Conjuring, a 2013 movie based on a true story about a haunted house in Rhode Island.) The Warrens were present when the recliner in the living room started to rise — with Marcia in it — and flipped in midair, dropping the young girl to the floor.
By 4 a.m. reporters from New Haven and New York stations began to arrive. The events at the humble home built in 1923 were soon nationwide, courtesy of the Associated Press. Perhaps piqued by the demonic movie The Exorcist, which had come out less than a year before, a crowd on the relatively quiet two-lane street swelled to more than 2,000. Some people hurled questions at the police. An enterprising few sold snacks. Others threw garlic toward the front steps. Many in the crowd said they saw a pair of concrete swan planters on the front stoop slowly turn toward each other. [Editor’s note – the photograph below, from a 1974 edition of The Bridgeport Post, shows the swarms of people gathered outside the Goodin home.]
Later that day, with the crowd growing even larger, the Warrens returned, making their way through the police barricades. Lorraine became nauseous, especially in Marcia’s room, and got a burn on her left hand that formed a blister. People in the house noticed a sulfur smell coming from Marcia’s room, though no one could explain it. Ed was convinced the events were caused by “poltergeist activity” through Marcia. The Warrens felt an exorcism was necessary, and they headed home to arrange it.
According to The World’s Most Haunted House, the air in the tiny home became “heavy” before a force revealed itself. It “resembled a large, cohesive assemblage of smoky yellowish-white ‘gauzy’ mist” and separated into four entities. One entity picked up Marcia and threw her. Everyone in the house went onto the front lawn in a cold, November rain. The Warrens returned around 9 p.m.
Back inside, tables moved and chairs reclined. Marcia was pulled through the air in the kitchen and slammed into the wall. Occupants felt a cold sensation, though there were no drafts in the house. Coats moved. Desk drawers opened. The TV pivoted. Marcia … confessed?
One of the officers claimed that during questioning Marcia had admitted to banging on walls and floors, pushing the TV with her feet, knocking a crucifix to the floor, throwing pictures, making Sam talk and causing other unusual things to happen. Still, some people who had witnessed the strange events firsthand refused to believe that a 10-year-old girl could pull off such a hoax. Some suspected that the Warrens played a part, as a means to build their reputation, and may have even paid the Goodins to play along. (Lorraine, they surmised, put her hand under hot water to get the blister.) The Goodins, appalled at the notion that the Warrens may have exaggerated the incident to bolster their career, told the paranormal investigators to leave and never return.
Police superintendent Joseph A. Walsh told the press that “the incidents have been officially classified as a hoax and the case has been closed.” He added that Marcia was being referred for psychiatric help, and that everything that occurred in the house had a rational explanation. Witnesses “were victims of the power of suggestion,” Walsh said.
The Goodins denied perpetrating a hoax. How could their 10-year-old girl, who a month earlier had been injured, budge heavy furniture or move objects nowhere near her? They claimed the occurrences were classified as a hoax to abate hysteria and disperse crowds.
Closing the case failed to diminish the crowds; curious onlookers continued to gather outside 966 Lindley Street, hoping to catch a glimpse of something from another realm. Gerard smelled smoke after returning from his brother’s house on Thanksgiving. An officer working crowd control found a small fire that had been started near the foundation. That night, two men seen running through woods behind the house were charged with arson. They claimed they were trying to rid the home of evil.
Police continued to patrol outside the house into December, though by that time crowds had dwindled. Despite the ongoing police presence, the Goodins couldn’t escape the disruptive notoriety. Their home was egged and their windows were broken. Their car tires were slashed, too. The Goodins wanted to get away, so on Jan. 10, 1975, they put the house up for sale for $21,500. Unable to sell the small bungalow after a year on the market, Gerard painted it white and removed the recognizable swan planters. [Editor’s note – Owen found the below image online. It was taken in 1974 by Boyce Batey, who was part of a scientific team that investigated the house at the time. Notice the infamous swan planters flanking the front door.]
The house never sold. Gerard and Laura remained on Lindley Street — and remained mum on the events that transpired in the mid-’70s — for the rest of their lives. They were still living there in 1987, when the condos that Gerard opposed in 1972 were built. Laura died at 68 in a 1993 car crash. Gerard died of natural causes four years later. He was 78.
Marcia was not mentioned in either obituary.
For more stalking fun, follow Lindsay on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.
For some grammar fun (is that an oxymoron?), check out my blog, When Write Is Wrong.
Big THANK YOU to Lindsay for allowing me to partake in her annual Haunted Hollywood postings. [Editor’s note – You’re welcome! And a big THANK YOU to you for the riveting article!
I’m heading to Amazon right now to order The World’s Most Haunted House!]
Until next time, Happy Stalking!
Stalk It: “The world’s most haunted house” is located at 966 Lindley Street in Bridgeport, Connecticut. If you stalk this location and see anything otherworldly, run!
