Fictional Dog: the old mansion on the hill

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

the old mansion on the hill




The big old house up on the hill, over-looking the city not far from where i live, just on the other side. To this day it still remains, perched up there in all its glory. This house was a very large building that was more of a Mansion.
Its gates were of wrought iron and the property was completely closed in and off limits to all. We used to call it the old mansion on the hill. It was built and owned by Max Senit of Max Senit Movie Studios located on Glendale Blvd. just below the mansion. This is where alot of old keystone cops, lil rascals, and a few others were filmed if not at the other nearby Hal Roach Studios.

I met an old lady once,
a teacher from my elementary school who told me all about its dark haunting history and about the murders that took place on that hill one night. It was a big story that somehow got swept under the rug for the sake of the studios being closed and hurting an early Hollywood Studio Empire and all it envolved.
The old lady went on to tell about the night it happened being on Holloween.

It was on a Holloween night many many years later that we were to go up. As a dare we all made with nervous hesitation but a dare we knew we would have to now fulfill. It was to be a night none of us would ever forget...

It was as if it were made just for haunting . The moon was no where to be found and when it finally rose it was late into the early morning.

It would begin with a very cold chill in the air. The wind was blowing hard at times and there were no lights other than our flashlights to see anything as we went up.

We were soon going to find out if it was true about the voices, the whispers in this big dark place. The old lady told of the three dead bodies found. One of the bodies was separated from its head, apparently cut off by a sword from a collection on the wall. The other was a young woman who had been killed by being pushed out the second story window landing on the spear pointed gates below. The murderer had committed suicide by putting a knife in his heart.

The legend of the murders had since been secretely spoken of
and how it was rumored as a lovers passion and madness that caused him to kill...

This night nine of us went up to this big and very dark mansion after
squeezing through an opening on the back side of the property. We were 4 guys and 5 girls but 2 of the girls were too afraid to go in.
I have to admit it was pretty dark that cold windy night and only two of us had flashlights.

We slowly began to walk up towards the house which had been abandoned for many years. Some say that every once in awhile you could see a light of some sort passing either by the window or around the building.
I didn't
believe it at all and now wanted to go see for myself. The others were willing too. Well this night we were gonna be in for something we could not really ever explain. To this day i still think someone or something was up there following behind every step we took, we all felt it and heard footsteps.

We quietly and cautiously aproached the front door, which was locked so we went to the back door and it was locked too, but as we passed by the side of the house we found that a long tall window had been broken but
strangely the glass was all around the outside. Someone was trying to get out and couldn't find or open the doors or windows for some reason, or so it seemed...

We all looked at eachother, then as to say; whos got the nerve to look inside? No one wanted to but one of the guys who wanted to act tough in front of the girls said he would put his head in to take a look. We gave him the flashlight, propped him up high enough to look in and asked him to tell us what he saw. One of the girls noticed a jagged piece of glass hanging from the top corner of the old window and said to be very careful not to move too much while he hung there loolking in. One wrong move...

There were lots of old worthless furniture all covered with tarps or something like that, he said.
One of the girls said in a nervous kinda voice, ok get your head out of there now, its dark! Instead he thought he would climb in and really show everyone how he wasn't scared. As he did one of the girls grabed his shirt to try to pull him out but as she did he said he could feel something pulling him in even harder.

Now he was really scared, as he had already fallen in and dropped his flashlight, which now wasn't on. We still had one more and shined it inside where he was at and to find the other light... it just wouldn't work anymore. We told him to get out of there but someone said go open the back door first.

He didn't want to but he had no choice now so he was given the only flashlight left and he disappeared into the dark, we heard his footsteps fading. It was only a minute when he appeared at the back door and was able to unlock it with no problem.We still couldn't figure out why someone didn't just go out the same door and not through the old glass window? So we all slowly stepped in and shined the light around to see what it looked like and in that area which looked to be the service porch leading into a kitchen. There were a maze of doors and passages leading throughout the house to who knows where.

The girls were tightly squeezing the guys hands and i don't even think they noticed.
We all started to take little steps toward the doorway leading (we guessed) to the front, the way to there that window was. This place was hugh and it was pitch black. Someone saw a couple dusty old candles on a shelf, so
they lit them but this only made it look so much more spookier now with shadows cast in every direction, on every wall.

We continued on now and then someone kept saying;stop it, stop doing that, as he turned to see whoever was behind him yet he found no one there. It freaked him out but we sorta ignored it....til it soon happened again to someone else! We quietly entered the main room. The stairway was beautiful the way it streamed up to the second floor but no one was planning on going up there, down here was as far as we would go, maybe explore a room or two if we were brave enough then maybe later we might go up. It didn't take as long as i thought cause by now we were all feeling a lil braver, all except for one guy who was kinda jumpy.

The rooms were all the same...sparsely covered furniture and walls stripped bare with the exception of a thing or two hanging on them. It was time to go up and see what was there, but something just didn't feel right...

There was this feeling, hard to explain but a very strange erie kinda feeling.
It was as if we were all off-balance or something, like a strange sensation or light-headed, just weird! There was a long hallway upstairs with many doorways, some closed some opened. It was just too creepy!

The girls were really on edge now, not to mention the rest of us. The candles were starting to shorten and our flashlight seemed to still be bright but in one moment it began to flicker a little and when he tapped it...it went out! ...only for a minute, one long minute!
The
candles only gave us a dim light but a gust of wind managed to cause one to go out.
That was strange...There was no wind inside the house so why did we all feel it? What
was it? there, all around us in this place?

As we walked very very very slowly down the hall a shadow was cast which appeared to look like a mans figure walking by. It had to be our imagination nothing more, probably one of ours.
Then it happened again and this time when the flashlight was shined in that direction it was even more real...it was a mans shadow coming from out of one of the rooms with the door open going down the hallway at the other end.

One of the other guys turned around to look behind as he felt something..... but again there was nothing! Ok, I think its time to go now, we definately seen enough. We all agreed and started to move back towards the top of the stairway to head back down and as we were nearing it the flashlight completely quit on us!

The candles were still ok but the shadows we were seeing were now becoming closer. It seemed like the closer they got the candles would start to flicker. We made our way down the staircase holding tightly to the rail and once we were all on the first floor there seemed to be a light or glow or something moving around upstairs. I asked if anyone left a candle burning up there but they
said...are you kidding??

I still don't know what that light was or where it came from but as we were standing there one of the candles went out. That was it ...we were out of there!! We all took a couple steps when the second one went out.
We were now in total darkness except for the faint light of the late raising moon reflecting off a window. It was very dark and now it was scarier than ever!

We all held on to eachother and slowly made our way in the direction of the door we came in through. We couldn't find it in the dark and the girls were starting to really freak!
Another breeze blew past and it was sooo cold the hair on the back of our necks were curling up with fear! The silence was defening and then it started.....

At first it was in the distance but it grew louder and closer....whispering...a women's whisper and then at times a man whispering. I wish i knew what they were whispering but i was too scared to care at the time! And besides, we just couldn't make it all out...faint whisperings.The air felt so thick and heavy, an old musty odor lingered and it was hard to breath as we continued to stumble in the darkness towards what we were hoping was the back porch area and door.

Still feeling light-headed as we made our way to who knows where. One of the girls almost fell into this old hole or something by a wall but she was holding on tight to someone...everyone jumped when she screamed.

When we finally found our way there, the whispering was now be fading in and out and a brief flash of light would appear in another room or ? We were now at the door and as someone tried to open it.. they said it seemed now locked or stuck or something. I tried it, then someone else tried too but it wouldn't budge! We couldn't open the door! Now we're all freaked out! In the dark, hearing voices or something and seeing a light here and there, feeling a heaviness in the air one minute then a cold chill down our backs or something touching us...

What were we gonna do now?? The flashlight was dead and we were now locked in this big dark house. The only thing we can do, someone said, was to go out through that broken window...
So each one made their way through the dark, back through the long doorway into the front room til we found the window. We were gonna put the girls through first but they wanted one of us out there first so i went.

It wasn't easy climbing out. These windows were perched high and far off the ground and that made it hard to then jump down. Once i was out, the girls followed one by one till it was now the guys turn. As the next guy was climbing out he said he saw someone run behind us outside real quick in the shadows. We told the rest of them to hurry up so we could get out of there!
The last guy was starting to climb out but got his shirt caught on something and couldn't get it undone. Then he started to yell that he was being pulled in and he knew no one was left inside behind him...he really started to panic but we told him to be quiet and not yell.

Two of us tried to grab him and pull him out but it was as if there was a strong hold on him or something...
We kept pulling then the others grabbed him by his arms and we all just pulled as hard as we could. He broke free of whatever it was and we all fell back. We got up and quickly headed down the way we came. As we made our way through the fence we realized that we had left the flashlights behind. The one was on the floor inside and the other by the window outside.
As we walked away and thinking about what just happened, one of the girls stopped to look back up at the mansion and then said LOOK! There are lights coming from the house! She was right, there were lights moving around in different directions and passed the windows and we knew those flashlights didn't work so what were they?

I didn't know then and i don't know now, but i do know none of us ever stepped foot inside those gates again. Apparently years later someone did, and on the ground on the outside of the otherside of the house is where they found a body that went through a plate glass window from the second floor.They said it looked as if he just ran right through it! As for this body, whoever he was?
The most bizarre thing mentioned was that his head had been cleanly sliced off by a big piece of glass that broke off and came crashing down on him.
What makes this even stranger?

That window he jumped (?) out of was in the room where that sword collection once was, at one time.

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