by Hans Holzer
“Identical?”
“Practically. In his version, the hand didn’t, wither, but he saw the sparks coming out of it. I went into the bathroom and decided to call in an electrician. He took out the outdated switch. He said, ‘Did you know this is outlawed? If anybody had been in the tub and reached up and touched the switch, he would have been electrocuted!’ We moved the switch so the only way you can turn the switch on is before you go into the bathroom. You can no longer reach it from the tub. Whoever helped me with this—I’m terribly grateful to her.”
“Is there anything else of this kind you would care to tell me?”
“I have smelled perfume in the upstairs children’s bedroom, a very strong perfume. I walked into the room. My little daughter who sleeps there doesn’t have perfume. That’s the only place I smell it, my little girl’s bedroom.”
“Has any visitor ever come to this house without knowledge of the phenomena and complained about anything unusual?”
“A friend named Betty sat in the kitchen and said, ‘My gosh, I wish you’d close the windows. There’s such a draft in here.’ But everything was shut tight.”
“Has your husband observed anything unusual except for the dream?”
“One evening in the bedroom he said, ‘Boy, there’s a draft in here!’ I said there couldn’t be. All the windows were closed.”
“What about the children?”
“My youngest daughter, Jenny, has complained she hears a party in her upstairs closet. She says that people are having a party in it. She can hear them.”
“When was the house built?”
“I believe in 1929.”
“Was it built to order for anyone?”
“No. It was just built like many houses in this area, and then put up for sale.”
“Who was the first tenant here?”
“It was during the Depression. There were several successive tenants.”
“How did Jean Harlow get involved with the house?”
“She was living in a small home, but the studio told her she should live in a better area. She rented this house in the early ’30s and moved into it with her parents.”
“How long did she live here?”
“About four years. She paid the rent on it longer, however, because after she married, her folks stayed in this house. I believe she married her agent.”
“How did she die?”
“She died, I understand, as the result of a beating given to her by her husband which damaged her kidneys. The story goes that on the second night, after their honeymoon, he beat her. She came back to this house, took her mother into the bathroom and showed her what he had done to her. She was covered with bruises. She tried to make up with him, but to no avail. The night he killed himself, she was in this house. There was a rumor that he was impotent or a latent homosexual. He shot himself. When she heard the news, she was in her upstairs bedroom. She tried to commit suicide, because she thought she was the reason. She took an overdose of sleeping pills.”
“Did she succeed?”
“She did not. Her parents put pressure on her to move out of this house. She built another one and subsequently died of a kidney disease.”
“Not immediately after the beating?”
“No—a few years later. Her parents were Christian Scientists, and she didn’t have ordinary medical help at the time.”
“Then what took place in this house, emotionally speaking? The marriage to Paul Bern, the news of his suicide, and her own attempt to commit suicide upstairs. Which rooms were particularly connected with these events?”
“The living room. She was married there. And the bathroom upstairs. I left it as it was.”
“Do you have any feelings about it?”
“I have a feeling about the bathroom. I know she’s been in that bathroom many times. I don’t know if she tried to commit suicide in the bathroom or if she took the pills in the bedroom.”
“Where did the actual beating take place?”
“They say it was in the bathroom downstairs.”
“Which is the bathroom you have such a weird feeling in, the downstairs or the upstairs?”
“Downstairs.”
“Anything pertaining to the front or the outside of the house?”
“There are knocks at our front door when there is nobody there; visitors would say, ‘There’s someone at your door,’ and there wasn’t…. It happens all the time.”
“Are you sure other people hear the knocks too?”
“Yes.”
“Somebody couldn’t have done it and run away in a hurry?”
“No: It’s a funny knock. Kind of gentle. It isn’t like a ‘let-me-in’ type knock. Flesh-and-blood people wouldn’t knock on a door that way.”
“When was the last time you had any feeling of a presence in this house?”
“Maybe two or three months ago.”
“Do you feel she’s still around?”
“Yes. Also, I feel she was very upset at the way she was portrayed as a kind of loose woman without morals. Her biography presents her as something she was not.”
“Do you think she’s trying to express herself through you?”
“No, but I think it’s terrible what they’ve done to her reputation. They had no right to do that.”
“Do you feel that she’s trying to set the record straight?”
“I would imagine. I can only put myself in her place. If I were to cross over under those circumstances, I would be very unhappy. I hope some day somebody will write another book about Harlow and go into it with a sensitive, loving attitude instead of sensationalism as a way to make a fast buck.”
I thanked Mrs. H. and prepared to leave the house that had once been Jean Harlow’s. Perhaps the lady of the house was merely reliving the more emotional aspects of the late screen star’s life, the way an old film is rerun from time to time on television. Was she picking up these vibrations from the past through psychometry? Or was there perhaps something of the substance of Jean Harlow still present in the atmosphere of this house? As I walked out the front door into the still-warm late afternoon, I looked back at Mrs. H., who stood in the doorway waving me good-bye. Her blonde hair was framed by the shadow cast by the door itself. For a fleeting moment, some of the blonde glamor of the late Jean Harlow seemed to have impressed itself upon her face. Perhaps it was only my imagination, but all of a sudden I felt that Jean Harlow hadn’t really left the house where so much of her emotional life had taken place.
* 29
Do The Barrymores Still Live Here?
PAULA DAVIDSON IS A charming, introspective woman from Cleveland, Ohio, who decided that a career in the entertainment field could be best achieved by moving to Los Angeles. In 1969 she arrived in Beverly Hills and took a job with a major advertising agency. The job was fine, but there was something peculiar about the house into which she had moved. In the first place, it was far too large to be a one-family home, and yet she had been told that it once belonged to one family—the family of Lionel Barrymore. Perched high in the Hollywood hills, the house gives a deceptive impression if one approaches it from the street. From that side it presents only two stories, but the rear of the house looks down into a deep ravine, perhaps as much as five or six stories deep. There is even a private cable car, no longer in use. The once-beautiful gardens have long since fallen into disrepair and now present a picture of sad neglect.
On the whole, the house was and is the kind of palatial mansion a Barrymore would have felt at home in. Although the gardens have been neglected for years, the house itself is still bright, having been painted recently, and its Spanish decor adds to the mystique of its background. When Paula Davidson took up residence there, the owner had been forced to sublet part of the house in order to hold on to the house itself. One of the rooms in what used to be the former servants’ quarters was rented to Heidi, a composer who wrote musical scores for films. She was in the habit of practicing her music in the music room on the first level. S
ince the house was quiet during the daytime, everyone having gone off to work, Heidi liked to practice during that part of the day. In the stillness of the empty house she would frequently hear footsteps approaching as if someone unseen were listening to her playing. On one occasion she clearly heard a baby cry when there was no baby in the house.
I promised Paula to look into the matter, and on May 31, 1969, she picked me up at the Continental Hotel to take me to the Barrymore mansion. With us was another friend named Jill Taggart. Jill had worked with me before. A writer and parttime model, Jill had displayed ESP talents at an early age and shown amazing abilities with clairvoyance and psychometry. It occurred to me that taking her to a place she knew nothing about, without of course telling her where we were going and why, might yield some interesting results. Consequently I avoided discussing anything connected with the purpose of our visit.
When we arrived at the mansion, the owner of the house greeted us cordially. Paula, Heidi, the owner and I started out following Jill around the house as my psychic friend tried to get her bearings. Unfortunately, however, we had picked an evening when some of the other tenants in the house were having a party. What greeted us on our arrival was not the serene stillness of a night in the Hollywood hills but the overly loud blaring of a jukebox and the stamping of many feet in one of the basement rooms.
I have never worked under worse conditions. Under the circumstances, however, we had no choice but to try to get whatever we could. Even before we entered the house Jill remarked that she felt two people, a man and a woman, hanging on in the atmosphere, and she had the feeling that someone was watching us. Then she added, “She died a long time after he did.” I questioned her further about the entities she felt present. “She’s old; he’s young. He must have been in his thirties; she is considerably older. I get the feeling of him as a memory. Perhaps only her memory of him, but whichever one of the entities is here, it is madder than hell at the moment.” With the noise of the music going on downstairs I couldn’t rightly blame the ghost for being mad. Jill then pointed at a corner of the house and said, “I keep seeing the corner of the house up there.”
I later discovered that the top room was a kind of ballroom with a balcony. In it Heidi frequently heard a telephone ring, but that was not the only part of the house where an invisible telephone kept ringing. “I used to be down in the bottom room, the one right next to where the noise is now,” Heidi explained, “practicing my music, but I’d constantly have to stop, thinking I heard the telephone ring. Of course there was no telephone.” I took Heidi aside so that Jill could not hear her remarks. Jill would not have been interested anyway, for she was engrossed in her study of the house now, walking up and down the stairs, peering into rooms with a quizzical expression on her face.
“Tell me,” I asked Heidi, “what else did you experience in this house?”
“Frequently when I was down in that room playing the piano I would hear people walking on the stairs; this happened at all times of the day, and there was never anyone up there.”
Jill was passing by us now. “I picked up a name,” she said. “Grace—and then there is something that sounds like Hugen.” I looked at the owner of the house. Jill was out of earshot again. “The party who had the house before us was Arty Erin,” the owner said, shrugging.
“Did anyone ever die of violence in this house?” I asked.
“I’ve heard rumors, something having to do with the cable car, but I don’t know for sure.”
We all walked over to the cable car, covered with rust and dirt and long out of commission. Jill placed her hands on it to see if she could get any psychometric impression from it. “This cable car has been much loved, I should say, and much enjoyed.” Then her facial expression changed to one of absolute horror. Quickly she took her hands off the cable car.
“What is it, Jill?” I asked.
“Someone came down violently, down the hill in the cable car. Later he wound up here near the pulley.”
We walked down to the bottom of the ravine, where there was a magnificent swimming pool. The pool itself was still in operating condition, and there was a pool house on the other side of it. Down here the sound of the music was largely muted, and one could hear one’s voice again. Jill obviously had strong impressions now, and I asked her what she felt about the place.
“I feel that a very vicious man lived here once, but I don’t think he is connected with the name Grace I got before. This may have been at a different time. Oh, he had some dogs, kind of like mastiffs. I think there were two and possibly three. They were vicious dogs, trained to be vicious.”
“What did this man do?”
“I see him as a sportsman, quick with words. There were also two young people connected with this man, a boy and a girl. I see them laughing and romping about and having a wonderful time here as teenagers. He seems not to like it at all but is tolerating it. But the dogs seemed to have played a very big part in his life. Nobody would dare enter his property without his permission because of those dogs. Permission, I feel, was rarely given except with a purpose in mind. He has exerted the strongest influence on this house, but I don’t think he was the first owner.”
“Do you feel that anyone well-known was connected with this house?”
“Yes. More than one well-known person, in fact.” I asked Jill to describe the personality that she felt was strongest in the atmosphere of the house.
“I see this man with a small moustache, dark thinning hair, exceedingly vain, with a hawklike nose. He has brownish eyes; they have dark circles under them. He doesn’t look dissipated by an excess of drink or food, but he does look dissipated through his own excesses. That is, his own mind’s excesses. He prides himself on having the eye of the eagle and so affects an eagle-eyed look. I also suspect that he is nearsighted. I see him wearing a lot of smoking jackets. One in particular of maroon color.”
The description sounded more and more fascinating. What profession did she think the man followed?
“I see him with a microphone in his hand, also a cigarette and a glass. He might be an actor or he might be a director.”
I asked Jill whether this man owned the house or was merely a visitor.
The question seemed to puzzle her. “He might be a visitor, but I see him down here so much he might be staying here. The young people I described before might belong to the owner of the house.”
I wondered if the man in the maroon jacket was one of the disturbing entities in the house.”
Jill nodded. “I think this man is as well aware now of what he does as when he was alive. I think he is still here.”
“Can you get an indication of his name?”
“I get the letter S, but that’s because he reminds me so much of Salvador Dali.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes, there is an L connected with him. The L stands for a name like Lay or Lee or Leigh, something like that. Oh, and there is something else. A Royal typewriter is important. I don’t know if it’s important to him because he writes letters or what, but Royal is important.”
I was about to turn to the owner of the house when Jill’s arm shot up, pointing to the balcony. “That woman up there—she acts very much the owner of the house. I imagine it’s Grace.” Since none of us could see the woman, I asked Jill for description of what she saw.
“She’s a woman in her sixties, with gray or white hair. And it’s very neat. She is very statuesque—slender and tall—and she wears a long flowing dress that has pleats all over. She seems to be raising her hand always, very dramatically, like an actress.”
I thanked Jill for her work and turned to Marie, the owner of the house. How did all this information stack up with the knowledge she had of the background of her house—for instance, the business of telephones ringing incessantly when there were no telephones about?
“At one time this house was owned by a group of gamblers. They had a whole bunch of telephones all over the house. This goes back several y
ears.”
“What about this Grace?”
“The name rings a bell with me, but I can’t place it.”
“And the baby Heidi keeps hearing?”
“Well, of course, the house used to belong to actor Lionel Barrymore. He and his wife had two babies who died in a fire, although it was not in this house.”
Apparently Lionel Barrymore had owned this house, while his brother John lived not far away on Tower Road. Thus John was in a very good position to visit the house frequently. Jill had spoken of a man she saw clairvoyantly as reminding her of Salvador Dali. That, we all agreed, was a pretty good description of the late John Barrymore. Jill had also mentioned the name Lee or Leigh or something like it. Perhaps she was reaching for Lionel.
The mention of the word Royal I found particularly fascinating. On the one hand, the Barrymores were often referred to as the royal family of the theater. On the other hand, if a typewriter was meant, one must keep in mind that John Barrymore had been hard at work on his autobiography in his later years, though he had never completed it. Yet the matter of finishing it had been very much on his mind. As for the teenagers Jill felt around the premises, the two children, Diana and John, Jr., had been at the house a great deal when they were teenagers. John Barrymore, however, didn’t like children at all; he merely tolerated them.
I asked Marie (who had been here for more than a year prior to our visit) if she had ever seen or heard anything uncanny.
“No, but I can feel a presence.”
The house has twelve rooms altogether, but according to local tradition, the three bottom rooms were added on somewhat later. “Has anything tragic ever occurred in this house, to your knowledge?”
“A man fell down those stairs head first and was killed. But it was an accident.”
Obviously the house had been lived in for many years both before and after the Barrymore tenancy. It seems only natural that other emotional events would leave their mark in the atmosphere of the old house. Despite all this, Jill was able to pick up the personalities of both John and Lionel Barrymore and perhaps even of sister Ethel, if she was the lady in the gray robe. We left the house with a firm promise to dig into the Hall of Records for further verification.