February 8, 2025 • 41 mins
A SCARYCAST EXCLUSIVE!!! Devin Tait of Sacremento, California, discusses the haunting of Hollywood Legend Raymond Burr's house (Burr starred in Godzilla - the original movie, TV's Perry Mason and Ironsides). This is the first of a series of interviews from the upcoming book FAMILY GHOST by John LeMay and Dr. John Stamey.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Good afternoon in live from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. This
is doctor John Stamy, and I want to welcome everybody
to Scary Cast. Today we have a very special guest.
This is a gentleman who helped me start this show
and was my co host for three years. He's from California.
(00:24):
He was an interesting investigator. He's an interesting person, done
a lot of great things. This is Devin Tate. He
is Now. You're now in Sacramento, aren't you.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
I am the capitol of California. We're up here in
northern California, about ninety minutes away from San Francisco.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Oh okay, well that's great. I know it's beautiful up there.
It really is. And glad you're up there doing well.
And we're as I told you, we're at about episode
number fourteen hundred of Scary Cast. It's hard to believe
how far we've come in all these years because you
(01:02):
started with us a long, long time ago.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
And that's incredible.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
It really is. And now I never thought that I
would say something like that, but anyway, it's great. We're
glad to have you here today on this special episode.
I am in the process of putting together a book
with the noted paranormal author John LeMay from Roswell, New Mexico,
and it's called Family Ghost. It's an interesting topic. It's interesting.
(01:34):
It's about a lot of famous people that we know
about and their involvement in the paranormal. And I remembered
that you came up with one of the greatest episodes
that we had back in the day. You were doing
a little bit of paranormal investigation. Are you still doing
any of that now, Devin, I.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Have not done any for a while, but it's definitely
something I haven't forgot about and planned to do again
when I have the opportunity.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Well, that's great. Yeah, And what you said, and you
just took me by surprise, you said, John, I know
where the Raymond Burr house is. Now, of course, the
question is who is Raymond Burr. Raymond Burr is one
of the most famous actors that ever appeared on television.
He was the star of the great show Perry Mason
(02:23):
that ran seven years from the late fifties to the
early sixties. My mother wouldn't miss Perry Mason. You couldn't.
You couldn't make that happen. And he was also the
star of the NBC series Iron Signs for a lot
of younger, younger television viewers, but he also has the
distinction of starring. This was one of his first, one
(02:47):
of his first acting gigs. He was the star of
the movie Godzilla, the original toe Ho Films Godzilla. And
what they did is they reshot all of the scenes
with the lead actor and put Raymond Burr in there
speaking English. And I mean, as we know, Godzilla was
(03:10):
a giant hit. It was actually nominated for an Academy
Award in nineteen fifty four, and he was nominated for
Best Actor. But unfortunately, the political climate did not allow
any of that to happen. And now that is a
private story that was told to me by Harry Medvid,
(03:31):
who was at one point the president of the Screen
Actors Guild. And I don't know if that story's ever
gotten out or not, but it's a fact. Godzilla was
nominated for an Academy Award, but it was too close
to the end of World War Two and they decided
that the climate was not right. I don't know, had
you ever heard of that.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
I had not heard that, but it definitely sounds like
it's probably true.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Right, it was and I was surprised because, you know,
Harry Edvard and his brother wrote a couple of great
books about horror films and conspiracy theories, and I just
loved him and I got very fortunate that I found him.
This is before the Internet was so big and it
was not always easy to find people, and I found
(04:21):
him and he consented to an interview. I didn't tape it,
but it was it was a grand interview. I learned
a lot about the movie business, and I learned that particular,
that particular fact. So if it's true or not, I
don't know, but I believe I remember that's what Harry
Medmond said. So anyway, that's how all this kind of
(04:43):
got started. I was enamored with Godzilla, I know, and
I would bet that you have seen that movie as well, right.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
I have, yes, And I really enjoyed the more recent
god Still a movie that came out a year or
two ago, right.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
It Just the mythos of Godzilla is incredible and Raymond
Burr's performance. If any of you who are listening ever
get a chance to see the original to Ho Films
version of Godzilla, please watch it. It is really a
good film. It is a great dramatic film, great acting
(05:22):
by one of the most seasoned now television actors. He's
passed away, But as he was getting into the Perry
Mason role, the Earl Stanley Gardner character, I mean, you know,
there was probably nobody better on television as an actor
than Raymond Burr. And so I was just so pleased
(05:42):
when you told me that you had a line on this.
So I'm going to open it up and let you
tell us how you got to the perrymate to Raymond
Burr house and what all did you do, and let's
talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Okay, sure, Well, I actually have a couple stories that
I have typed up, so I have my story about it,
and then I have a story from my friend who
actually lived in the house, so I can kind of
set the scene and then jump into the story and
stop here and there to see if you have any
questions or comments.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
So that sounds great, thank you.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yeah. So, like you mentioned, you know, Raymond Berg was
very well known for playing Perry Mason on television, and
then in nineteen sixty seven he starred in the show
Ironside that you mentioned, and so he was in that
show from nineteen sixty seven until nineteen seventy five, so
right towards the end of the run of that show,
(06:42):
in nineteen seventy three, he purchased this home on Hillside
Drive in the Hollywood Hills. It was originally built in
the early nineteen hundred, so I'm sure I had gone
through a lot of changes by the time he bought it.
But this is where he lived for essentially about ten
or eleven years of his life at the end of
his kind of television career, and he had a lot
(07:05):
of conflicting things in his story about his life. All
his biographical details, a lot of them were contradictory. A
lot of it was fabricated, most likely by the Hollywood
agent system, and most of it was fabricated to hide
the fact that he was a homosexual. So he had
even married a woman. But by this time when he
(07:26):
lived in Hillside House, he had a male partner, Robert Bennavetti's,
and they lived together here. It was a very private estate.
You couldn't really see into it from anywhere else, big
walls around it, particularly around the swimming pool. If you
were not on the property and you hadn't been allowed entry,
you would not even know that there was a swimming
(07:47):
pool in there, so while he lived there, he also
he and his partner had greenhouses where they grew orchids,
and they actually originated quite a few new species of
orkids right there on the property.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Really, that's that's that's amazing. Are there any that we
could now purchase? Is are they out in use? I
don't know what you call it, but are they something
that we could buy now?
Speaker 2 (08:18):
I'm sure they are. Some of them must have survived,
because I've seen upwards of a thousand, you know, even
closer to three thousands supposedly of new orchids that he
and his partner and their business created. So I'm sure
some of those definitely are still going strong today.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Okay, And that's so funny. And I'm just now starting
to grow grape hyacinths and some things like that out
on my porch because I have a condo. And just
think Raymond Burr did all that agriculture, that's just pure agriculture.
It would just start and create new species of plants.
So that's that's an amazing thing. I'll have to do
(08:59):
some research on that. See if I can buy me
a Raymond some one of the Raymond Burr orchids. I
think that would be really interesting.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Definitely. Well, I gonna here's my story, So I'm going
to start this. I call the Red Light and Hillside House.
So Hillside House, set high above Hollywood, a fortress of
history and secrecy. It had been many things, a private escape,
a place of reinvention, a sanctuary. Before the towering Andalusian
style homes sprawled at the bottom of the property's four
(09:30):
point five acres, long before the recording studio, before the
legend of Raymond Burr, had been the lonely residents of
William A. Rapp and his daughter Ernestine. When Rap built
the home in nineteen oh six, his lot was the
highest on Sierra Bonita, set apart from the city below,
no neighbors within one hundred feet. I came to know
(09:50):
this house through my friend Jason, who was employed by
its latest owner to keep it occupied. You know, these
big houses in the Hollywood Hills, you got to make
sure somebody's in the all the time, or they can
get broken into and people can squat in there, and
then when you get squatters, it's hard to get them out.
So essentially his job was just to keep it occupied.
He didn't have too many other tasks to do other than,
(10:12):
you know, occasionally walking the perimeter and just making sure
nothing was going awry. So while he lived there, I
spent as much time as I could there, drawn by
the weight of its past, the story's embedded in its walls.
The house had been altered so much over the years
that only the lower level, the original ground floor, remained
as it had been during Burr's time. It was also
(10:34):
the least u space now, as Jason really only ever
went down there to use the kitchen in the laundry room,
but there was a whole floor's worth of other rooms there,
and this was also the coldest part of the house.
So can you kind of picture this, this kind of
giant house set into a hillside up above Hollywood?
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Sure? Can? I mean, do you have an estimate of
how many square feet it was?
Speaker 2 (11:00):
I do. I actually found that somewhere. Let me see
if I can find it. It was. It's a lot,
and we don't know how many of those were there
when Raymond Burr had it, because it was added on
to later by the next owner. I will have to
(11:20):
get you that, because I did have it somewhere. It's
it's very big though, very very large homes road about
three levels. So there was the original ground floor, which
we're talking about in the story I'm seeing here. It's
eight it's about eighty seven hundred square feet.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
About nine thousand square feet. That is a huge residence there,
really is.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Yeah. So I believe when Raymond Burr led there, it
was two stories, and then at some point the next
owner added a whole third story on the top of it.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Wow, that's amazing.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Yeah. So one night we were exploring and we were
down in this lower level and we found a kind
of a hidden passageway. There was sort of a cabinet
door in the kitchen that was kind of a bigger
cabinet door, and so you open it up and there's
kind of a you know, room for like a broom
and some you know, mops and things like that. But
then at the back of this little closet you can
(12:19):
kind of see another door, and you realize the back
of the closet is actually a door that goes into
this kind of hidden passageway that wasn't finished. It had dirt,
kind of dirt walls on one side earth and then
the other side was kind of the you know, interior
of the of the living room and staircase wall. So
we were kind of sneaking back into this passageway to
(12:42):
see what was back there is very narrow and dark,
as it meant to be forgotten. And then when I
was about halfway through, I saw a red light and
it was faint bleeding through a crack in the wall
somewhere beyond. I figured it must have been from the
living room, because that's you know, we see to be
behind the living room. So I stepped out of the passage,
(13:06):
or I was going to go back through the kitchen
because I wanted to get back to the living room,
and right as I stepped out of the passageway, I
just hit this cold spot, thick and unmoving, like walking
through water. And the house had always felt strange, but
this was different. It was like something was watching me.
So then I kind of see another flash of red
light and I go into the living room, but when
(13:28):
I look for the source, there was nothing. There's no electronics,
there's no reflections, there's basically nothing in this empty living room.
So at that exact moment, I heard footsteps, not like
casual movement or like the house just settling it was
definitely sounded like footsteps running up the stairs, so Jason
(13:51):
and I rushed upstairs. We actually had a friend, Cassie,
who was up there. She was just kind of sitting
on a couch reading a book, and we asked if
she had been moving around, and she just stared at us.
She said no, She'd been on the couch for probably
half hour. She hadn't heard anything. No one else had
been in the house. So I decided I had to
figure this out. So I downloaded every ghost hunting app
(14:14):
I could find onto my phone, trying to make sense
of what had just happened. So all these apps that
I used, they kind of confirmed what I already knew,
but didn't want to admit that something was there in
the house and it wasn't happy, So, like I said,
Raymond berg A bought this house in nineteen seventy two
and lived there for over a decade. He was a
man who prized discretion. He kept his private life just
(14:36):
that private, and when he sold the home in nineteen
eighty three, it was purchased by Miles Copeland, who was
a music producer and manager. His brother was in the band.
The police was sting everybody knows them, So.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
His brother would have been Stuart Copeland.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Yes, Stuart Copeland. So I'm sure he spent a lot
of time in this home too, because when Miles Copeland
bought it, he kind of gutted it. He reshaped it,
added whole new rooms. He put these big sphinx statues
at almost every entrance, and he built this recording studio
kind of under the lawn, so it kind of had
a secret entrance that you had to know where it
(15:17):
was to find it. So by the time that Miles
Copeland did all this change, Raymond Burr was in a
wheelchair by this point, so we always kind of wondered
did he resent all these changes that were made to
his home? And after doing this whole experience, we wondered,
was he still there wandering the lowest level, the only
(15:37):
part of the house left untouched. So maybe he was
confused and angry that the world had kind of moved
on without him, And it never really got my answer.
Access to the house became more restricted after that because
the current owner was a film producer and they actually
shot a film called Discarnate in that house, and so
(15:58):
you can actually see that movie. It's streaming on Amazon Prime.
It's hard to put it together when you watch the movie,
but it was completely filmed in and around the house,
so it's actually kind of a cool movie to watch
to see the home. But I've never forgotten that red light,
the cold spot, and the running footsteps, And I just
wonder if somewhere in the dark corners of Hillside House,
(16:21):
Raymond Burr still lingers, unseen, unheard except for those brief,
unsettling moments when he makes his presence known.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
That is really interesting. So can you describe that red light?
I mean, was it a pinpoint, was it kind of large,
was it very debt defined or exactly what was that
red light? What did it look like?
Speaker 2 (16:45):
It was kind of similar to if you if you've
ever been around like a police car an ambulance, how
they have the red lights that kind of go around
and kind of flash, you know, intermittently. So you know,
at first I kind of thought, is there a cop
car outside? Because there but there couldn't really have been
because on that lower level there's just kind of an old,
really narrow driveway that was probably the original driveway of
(17:08):
the home, but as things got built up around it,
this driveway was not accessible by vehicle anymore. You could walk,
you could kind of walk through it, but there was
a fence that had been built right on the edge
of it, and it was really too narrow, and the
fence was a giant, you know, eight foot fence. So
even if there was a cop carn ambulance on the
other side of it, you wouldn't have seen that light.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Okay, And about how long of a period of time
did you see this red light?
Speaker 2 (17:40):
So it happened about three times. It happened about twice
when we were in the passageway, and we were probably
in there for maybe five five minutes. It felt like
a lot longer, but I'm sure it probably was really
only a few minutes. And then when I came out
and was going around the corner towards the living room,
I saw the brightest. It was almost like the whole
(18:02):
living room had had lit up in red. But just
for a second.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Really, where where did the light seem to emanate from?
Speaker 2 (18:14):
You know, we couldn't when we're in the passageway. It
kind of spilled through like a crack in the wall.
There's almost like a it's almost like a spy hole
where you could kind of look through the wall. You
couldn't really see it on the other side of the
wall because it's that wood paneling that kind of disguised,
you know, anything like that. So I thought maybe it
was like, okay, maybe it was like a smoke detector
(18:36):
or something like that. But this room didn't have anything
like that. There was no devices, no alarm systems, nothing
that would that would flash red, and certainly not to
the volume of the red light that I saw right
before I entered the room.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Okay, now if we see that movie now, please remind
me again the name of the movie that has Raymond
Burr's house in it. What was it named.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
It's called Discarnate.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Discarnate was that horror film, by the way, or a
murder mystery or what?
Speaker 2 (19:09):
It's a horror film. And so I remember when they
were first filming it, we still got to hang out
there a little bit, and they had dressed the whole
house to look like it was decaying. And so one
time we were there and one of our friends was like, Jason,
you need to report this and have them look at
the ceiling. It looks like there's black mold growing all over.
(19:31):
But we got to laugh because that was painted on
there to make it look like it was black mold,
but it was actually paint.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Right now, Who do we know who starred in that film? Discarnate?
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Let me see. It was not any big star, but
I do know that the main person was He was French.
I remember because they flew him over and he was
like a puppet. He was a puppeteer because there was
a lot of kind of puppetry involved in the film,
for like a creature. So I think Thomas Kretschman is
(20:08):
listed as the top build actor in the film, but
I have never seen him in anything else.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Had you ever heard of the Red Light Specter? I
guess that's what we will call it. Had you ever
heard of the Red Light Specter from anybody regarding this house?
Speaker 2 (20:28):
I had not. We did not know a lot of
people who knew much of the history of the home.
The current owners weren't really you know, they just basically
employed my friend to live there. They didn't really give
him a lot of details. But I did take somebody,
a friend of mine who knew quite a bit of
Hollywood history, into the house because I knew he would
(20:49):
want to see it, and so, you know, he kind
of said, oh, you know this, this pool probably had
some wild pool parties when Raymond Burr lived there, So
I don't know if he had heard any stories about that,
but that was pretty much all he really said.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Right now, when a properly, you know, in terms of
the timeline, what year were you in there when you
saw the red light? And how does that fit with
when Raymond Burr lived there?
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Yeah, so this would have been around twenty fourteen. Okay,
so he sold in eighty three, so oh sorry, this
would have been you know, a good twenty twenty years
after well actually thirty years after he had lived there.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Right, Wow, that was you know. I live in a
one bedroom condo and mister Mansfield owned this condo before
he died in a car wreck. And I was fortunate
enough to find this. My attorney found it and he said,
you need a place, and said absolutely. It's a beautiful location.
(22:02):
It's in an area called Myrtle Greens, right next to
Conway Memorial Hospital, and it's very essentially located in Conway,
South Carolina, which is kind of a bustling town right
outside of Myrtle Beach. And whenever I clean the kitchen,
I mean, I'm not a messy dirty guy. But I
(22:23):
do a once a week good clean of the kid.
I mean, I keep it straightened up, but I don't
do the thorough cleaning. But once a week, you know
what I mean. And whenever I do, and then I
fix a drink and go sit on the couch in
the living room. I normally hear somebody banging around in
(22:45):
the kitchen, and I'm guessing that that's mister Mansfield, and
then he's happy. I mean, he wouldn't be happy right
now because I was cooking all afternoon. But I'll probably
do the cleaning tonight, and I'll probably make a drink
and sit down and I don't know, maybe maybe my
guest or my visitor will show up. I think it's
(23:05):
really interesting. So many houses I have come to find
are blessed with a ghost or with a guest, not
necessarily a ghost, but a guest. Have you ever lived
in a house or apartment that was blessed with a guest?
Speaker 2 (23:28):
You know, I lived in the same one bedroom apartment
for about fourteen years in la and we know that
the previous tenant, who was the only other tenant that
lived in that apartment before us, had died in the
home and he was a rabbi, so every once in
a while we kind of felt a little bit of
(23:48):
a presence from him, I mean just by the fact
that he lived there a long time and he died
in the home. But we always went to great lengths
to be respectful of him. We would have never said
anything disrespectful, you know, about him or his religion. And
we left the I think you call it masusa. There's
like a little scroll within like a container that they
(24:10):
angle on the doorway of the home. So there was
one of those on the main front entrance, and there
was one on the exterior door that went to a balcony.
And they asked us if we wanted those removed, and
we said, no, we don't want those removed. We want
just leave it how it was. I don't want to upset,
you know, if there is potential any ghost of the rabbi,
(24:31):
we want him to know he's still welcome here. So
we never really had anything negative happened, but there are
definitely times when we have that feeling like, Okay, it
feels like he's here right now, or maybe a door
opened or a light turned off with no explanation.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Really, no, that's extremely interesting. Yeah, I haven't had any
of that happen, although I don't know. Maybe in the bathroom,
because I have one bathroom. There have been times when
I knew I left the light on and it's off,
so I don't know, you know, previous guess, previous residents
(25:10):
will put it that way sometimes show up, and I
believe they do. It's very it's very interesting. Well, that's
a really cool story about what happened with you in
the Raymond Burr house. I've got to check out that
movie so I can maybe maybe draw the area and
(25:36):
that passageway if I look at the movie and try
to guess as to how it was configured. Can you
look at it and help me get it right so
that we could kind of put that because as I
told you, this is going to be a chapter in
the book Family Ghost, and so i'd like to I'd
(25:57):
like to do that. Also, get a little bit of
background about Raymond Burr. I mean, I know, we know
Raymond Burr made a lot of money, yea, because he
was in essentially two series that played for seven years
a piece on television, and that is the recipe to
fill your bank account.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
Yes, and he had been working a lot before those two.
He even worked in radio back before he was in
motion pictures and then ultimately television. So he had been
working for many years making probably a decent amount of money,
even though he was, you know, a little lower profile
up until he was on television.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Right, and then he came to Perry Mason and was
the gigantic success. Right. As I said, my mother would
not miss Perry Mason. She would not He was absolutely
one of her favorites. And my dad liked the show too.
I remember it was on at seven back when Primetime
(26:58):
started at seven pm. It was on from seven to
eight on Saturday night, and that was a huge time first.
That was a really premire kind of time to be
on there, and he was a great actor. Those I
still watched some of those. Fact I started watching more
of them when you said that you'd like to be
(27:20):
on the show, and so, yeah, I just love Perry Mason.
Was it was a great show. And now did you
say that you had a couple of other stories that
you could relate to us.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Yeah, well I have one more. This is actually from
my friend who lived in the house, so I asked
him to share any stories, and I remember this story
when it happened, but he typed it up and sent
it over to me, so I can can tell you
this story too. So this is Jason's story. So he says,
I was outside working on my truck when I heard it,
(27:54):
a hissing sound, not from the truck, but somewhere beyond.
It almost blended with the wind through the tree, except
there was no wind. The noise came from the pool,
a pool that had no water. Walking over, I saw
the sprinklers running, soaking the ground. They hadn't been on yesterday.
Had someone turned them on? I shut them off and
texted the gardener no answer. Something felt off. I checked
(28:18):
the property, moving quietly and listening. At the top of
the hill, I found a section of a fence pushed down,
barbed wire bent aside, old rust, new disturbance. Had someone
been here recently or had I just not noticed this
on the previous perimeter checks. Back near the house, I
searched some of the outbuildings. There are a couple of
greenhouses that used to house numerous orchids, some new varieties
(28:41):
that originated right here. Out of the corner of my eye,
I thought I saw something move further down, so I
checked the abandoned gardener's office, a running fridge, A kitchen
knife that was sharp. I took it just in case.
Then a misstep. Thorny vines lashed my ankle, drawing blood.
I had never seen these vines before. I limped towards
(29:01):
the old recording studio. Its door always padlocked, stood ajar.
The lock dangled uselessly. My instincts had run, but I
stepped inside. Nothing no sign of entry, just the weight
of something unseen. Watching back inside the house, I searched
every room, every shadow. The wind had picked up, floorboards
(29:22):
grown beneath me. Acorns hit the roof like slow, deliberate knocks.
I looked up, sat down and breathed. Then I remembered
Raymond Burr had once lived here, a man who played ghosts, detectives,
men with secrets. The sprinklers, the open door, the sense
of being watched. Was it an intruder or had Perry
Mason finally come home?
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Wow, that's amazing. Did your friend just write that recently?
Speaker 2 (29:51):
I think he had typed it out a while ago.
I think he just sent it to me. He's an
actor as well, so when I first read it, I
thought this must be a scene that he did for something.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
That's amazing, very dramatic, and yes, maybe Perry Mason finally
came home. About what time frame do you think he
wrote that? Was it like in the last ten years,
or it would.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Have been about years ago, would have been about twenty fifteen.
He lived there from about twenty fourteen to twenty fifteen,
and then on and off towards the end of it.
Like I said, that movie, they started filming the movie
there and then one of the people that was working
on the movie moved in. So after a while it
was kind of they didn't really need both of them
(30:40):
to live there anymore. So my friend Jason moved out.
He actually went and lived in another abandoned house in
the Hollywood Hills. And so since that time we have
not been back there. But you can kind of see
it if you're at Wattles Park, which is a park
in Hollywood that goes up into the hills and there's
trails you can walk up, and it kind of meets
(31:01):
with Running Canyon, which is a very popular place where
people go to run, walk, work out, walk their dogs.
So it kind of sits in between these two parks,
and just recently a few weeks ago, you probably heard
there was a lot of wildfires in Los Angeles and
Runyon Canyon was one of those fires. That was the
(31:22):
one that came closest to Hollywood. And initially we had
heard that this house burnt down because it's right on
the edge, right next to Runyan Canyon essentially. But luckily,
once you know, the dust cleared, the smoke cleared, and
we were able to confirm it, it turned out that
the house was safe. It's still there, still standing right.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Well, that sounds great, and that is in Hollywood, the hollywoods.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Yeah, and at the time it was built back in
nineteen oh six, it would have kind of been the
outskirts of Hollywood. In fact, I don't think it was
technically part of Hollywood at that time. I think it
was considered kind of outside of the boundary of the city.
But of course, as we know since then, it's developed
and built up, and so now there's houses all around it,
(32:09):
except for there's no houses north of this home because
this property goes all the way up into the hills
and above it is the convergence of those two parks
running in Wattles, so there's no construction up above it.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
Okay, well, Devin, this has been an amazing story. It's
an amazing ghost story in the home of an incredibly
famous man, Raymond Burke, who riveted us for at least
fourteen years on television. Seven years is Perry Mason, and
seven years or so as Ironside. And I was lucky
(32:50):
enough I've seen a lot of those.
Speaker 3 (32:53):
I know that our television stations near us in Morganton,
North Carolina, we didn't always have Prime Town and so
we would have a lot of old reruns that I've
seen a number of.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Them, and you know, and I've also as I was
looking around for more Perry Mason, I found a number
of movies that were done. Are you familiar with them
that Raymond Burr was in as Perry Mason?
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Yeah, oh yeah, definitely, yeah, yeah. I mean he has
a huge filmography, but yeah, definitely Perry Mason. I think
he revisited Godzilla in the eighties. He was in another
Godzilla movie. He actually got a NOMNI for Worst Supporting
Actor for that Godzilla in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Or Worst Supporting Actor. Yeah, it couldn't have been.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
He was really good.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
He was a fine actor for let's say he was
perfect to be a detective or to be an attorney.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
He definitely was.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
Yeah, he was really good at that. Maybe he might
not have been so good in a situation comedy or whatever,
but he was certainly the man, especially when it came
to being an attorney. I know, I have a number
of friends that are attorneys, and they are a different breed,
I'll tell you that. And I always I've been enjoying
watching some Perry Mason's since we first started talking about
(34:26):
you being on the show. And yeah, and I'm certain
that there are a number of homes in Hollywood that
are known to be haunted. Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (34:38):
There definitely are. I would say this one was a
little unique and the fact that a lot of it,
especially that ground floor that I mentioned, was very undisturbed
from probably the time when he lived there. A lot
of times these houses get if not you know, completely
bulldozed and rebuilt. They you know, sometimes leave one wall standing,
(34:59):
you know, and then kind of remodel everything else. But
on the ground floor, this home, but it still had
that feeling like a classic old, you know, old Hollywood home.
And then when you went up to the middle level
it started to get a little more modern feeling, and
then that top third floor, which I believe Miles Copeland
added later, but I'm not sure. That was just a
(35:21):
wacky post modern, really tacky art everywhere. So I can
imagine if you're Raymond Burr and you've returned to your home,
you know, you probably would be shocked to see this
place that you didn't recognize until you went down to
the lowest level. And then there's where he probably felt
more at home.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Right, Well, I'm sure we'll talk again about the red
light in Raymond Burr's house. Do you remember the actual
address of that home. I do.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
It was eighteen thirty Norse Sea, Ara of Bonita.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Eighteen thirty North Sierra Bonita. Yeah, okay, well that's great. Well,
we will be writing this up, adding a few more things,
a few more historical items about Raymond burg and I'll
be consulting with you about doing a downstairs map of
the premises so that we can see exactly where you
(36:25):
saw that red light. And I think this will be
a marvelous chapter in the book Family Ghost. And I
want to say thank you so much for being on tonight.
It was good having you, and I hope it will
be nearly as long. It's been years since you've been
on a show with me.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
I know. Yeah, it's great to be talking with you again.
So thank you so much for thinking of.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
Me right, And I would like you do remember that
you did a film short in Los Angeles about and
the subject was about the potential underground lizard people. Yes,
(37:10):
do you still have a copy of that?
Speaker 2 (37:13):
I sure do.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
Maybe sometime in the next month or two or three.
Would you be up for getting together on Scary Cast
and talking about that.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Yeah, I'd be happy to. And then there's also a
lot of really cool ghost stories here in Sacramento. This
is you know, Sacramento is one of the older gold
Rush cities here in California, found in eighteen forty nine,
and there's a lot of ghost stories around Old Sacramento,
which is right by the river. There's some floods that
wiped everything out, so they raised everything up one level,
(37:48):
so there's a series of tunnels underground under Old Sacramento.
And then we still have one of the most notorious
serial killers lived here, Dorothya Puente. So if you look
into Dorothia Puente, she was an older woman, but she
made herself look even older than she was. In order
(38:10):
to appear as this philanthropist who was helping all these unfortunate,
needy individuals, many of whom were homeless men who were
mentally disturbed, and she would offer them a place to
stay and a meal, and she would rent rooms to them.
But it turns out she was murdering them and then
(38:31):
continuing to cash their social Security checks or any other
type of payments that they were receiving. And she got
away with it for many, many years.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
Wow, do you know how she happened to get caught.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
She got caught because one of the individuals who she
had murdered, there was a social worker who had been
looking for him, and she had been trying to find
him and track him down to living at Dorothea Puente's
boarding house. And Dorothea, I don't think, had expected somebody
to come looking for this gentleman, so she kind of
(39:09):
told a series of you know, lies about where this
person went that did not make sense to the social worker.
And eventually one of the other tenants of the house
slipped a note to her and the police one day
that said look in the backyard. So they got a
they got a warrant, or you know, they got the
(39:32):
form to go dig up this yard, and sure enough,
they didn't have to dig very far before they found
the first of I believe eight human bodies that they
recovered from her backyard.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
Oh my lord, that's really frightening. Now, she that is
not a name that I'm familiar with, but I'm guessing
in California that's a well known serial killer, right.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
She is very well known local serial killer here. The
house is still there. The current owners have a great
sense of humor about it, and they have signs and
decorations up all over the house, so it does get
a lot of people stopping by it to look at it,
and they don't mind if you look and take pictures
from the street. But it is private property, so you're
(40:16):
not to set foot within the gates of the home.
But they at least have a really good sense of
humor about it. Well that's great.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Well, you know, this sounds like my next trip out
there to California will be filled with catching as much
as I can of the Raymond Burr House and maybe
this house and some other things, because I know you
kind of enjoy the paranormal like I do, don't you?
Speaker 2 (40:40):
Definitely?
Speaker 1 (40:41):
All right, Well, Devin Thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen.
Devin Tate from Sacramento, California, the initial co host of
Mine of Scary Cast, fourteen hundred episodes ago. And we're
still going, still going pretty strong, and we've got eight
paranormal conferences. I'm on books six and seven and this
(41:06):
I think Family Ghost is going to be very interesting.
And thank you for being with us today and sharing
the story with us. And I will be speaking to you.
I'll give you a quick call like I always do.
I try to do a call around at the end
of the show. So thanks a lot, Devin.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
Well, thank you, I appreciate it being here.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
Bright good and we'll see you soon on the one
and the only, live from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Scary Cast.
Have a good one, Devin, Bye bye,
Good afternoon in live from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. This
is doctor John Stamy, and I want to welcome everybody
to Scary Cast. Today we have a very special guest.
This is a gentleman who helped me start this show
and was my co host for three years. He's from California.
(00:24):
He was an interesting investigator. He's an interesting person, done
a lot of great things. This is Devin Tate. He
is Now. You're now in Sacramento, aren't you.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
I am the capitol of California. We're up here in
northern California, about ninety minutes away from San Francisco.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Oh okay, well that's great. I know it's beautiful up there.
It really is. And glad you're up there doing well.
And we're as I told you, we're at about episode
number fourteen hundred of Scary Cast. It's hard to believe
how far we've come in all these years because you
(01:02):
started with us a long, long time ago.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
And that's incredible.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
It really is. And now I never thought that I
would say something like that, but anyway, it's great. We're
glad to have you here today on this special episode.
I am in the process of putting together a book
with the noted paranormal author John LeMay from Roswell, New Mexico,
and it's called Family Ghost. It's an interesting topic. It's interesting.
(01:34):
It's about a lot of famous people that we know
about and their involvement in the paranormal. And I remembered
that you came up with one of the greatest episodes
that we had back in the day. You were doing
a little bit of paranormal investigation. Are you still doing
any of that now, Devin, I.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Have not done any for a while, but it's definitely
something I haven't forgot about and planned to do again
when I have the opportunity.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Well, that's great. Yeah, And what you said, and you
just took me by surprise, you said, John, I know
where the Raymond Burr house is. Now, of course, the
question is who is Raymond Burr. Raymond Burr is one
of the most famous actors that ever appeared on television.
He was the star of the great show Perry Mason
(02:23):
that ran seven years from the late fifties to the
early sixties. My mother wouldn't miss Perry Mason. You couldn't.
You couldn't make that happen. And he was also the
star of the NBC series Iron Signs for a lot
of younger, younger television viewers, but he also has the
distinction of starring. This was one of his first, one
(02:47):
of his first acting gigs. He was the star of
the movie Godzilla, the original toe Ho Films Godzilla. And
what they did is they reshot all of the scenes
with the lead actor and put Raymond Burr in there
speaking English. And I mean, as we know, Godzilla was
(03:10):
a giant hit. It was actually nominated for an Academy
Award in nineteen fifty four, and he was nominated for
Best Actor. But unfortunately, the political climate did not allow
any of that to happen. And now that is a
private story that was told to me by Harry Medvid,
(03:31):
who was at one point the president of the Screen
Actors Guild. And I don't know if that story's ever
gotten out or not, but it's a fact. Godzilla was
nominated for an Academy Award, but it was too close
to the end of World War Two and they decided
that the climate was not right. I don't know, had
you ever heard of that.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
I had not heard that, but it definitely sounds like
it's probably true.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Right, it was and I was surprised because, you know,
Harry Edvard and his brother wrote a couple of great
books about horror films and conspiracy theories, and I just
loved him and I got very fortunate that I found him.
This is before the Internet was so big and it
was not always easy to find people, and I found
(04:21):
him and he consented to an interview. I didn't tape it,
but it was it was a grand interview. I learned
a lot about the movie business, and I learned that particular,
that particular fact. So if it's true or not, I
don't know, but I believe I remember that's what Harry
Medmond said. So anyway, that's how all this kind of
(04:43):
got started. I was enamored with Godzilla, I know, and
I would bet that you have seen that movie as well, right.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
I have, yes, And I really enjoyed the more recent
god Still a movie that came out a year or
two ago, right.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
It Just the mythos of Godzilla is incredible and Raymond
Burr's performance. If any of you who are listening ever
get a chance to see the original to Ho Films
version of Godzilla, please watch it. It is really a
good film. It is a great dramatic film, great acting
(05:22):
by one of the most seasoned now television actors. He's
passed away, But as he was getting into the Perry
Mason role, the Earl Stanley Gardner character, I mean, you know,
there was probably nobody better on television as an actor
than Raymond Burr. And so I was just so pleased
(05:42):
when you told me that you had a line on this.
So I'm going to open it up and let you
tell us how you got to the perrymate to Raymond
Burr house and what all did you do, and let's
talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Okay, sure, Well, I actually have a couple stories that
I have typed up, so I have my story about it,
and then I have a story from my friend who
actually lived in the house, so I can kind of
set the scene and then jump into the story and
stop here and there to see if you have any
questions or comments.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
So that sounds great, thank you.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yeah. So, like you mentioned, you know, Raymond Berg was
very well known for playing Perry Mason on television, and
then in nineteen sixty seven he starred in the show
Ironside that you mentioned, and so he was in that
show from nineteen sixty seven until nineteen seventy five, so
right towards the end of the run of that show,
(06:42):
in nineteen seventy three, he purchased this home on Hillside
Drive in the Hollywood Hills. It was originally built in
the early nineteen hundred, so I'm sure I had gone
through a lot of changes by the time he bought it.
But this is where he lived for essentially about ten
or eleven years of his life at the end of
his kind of television career, and he had a lot
(07:05):
of conflicting things in his story about his life. All
his biographical details, a lot of them were contradictory. A
lot of it was fabricated, most likely by the Hollywood
agent system, and most of it was fabricated to hide
the fact that he was a homosexual. So he had
even married a woman. But by this time when he
(07:26):
lived in Hillside House, he had a male partner, Robert Bennavetti's,
and they lived together here. It was a very private estate.
You couldn't really see into it from anywhere else, big
walls around it, particularly around the swimming pool. If you
were not on the property and you hadn't been allowed entry,
you would not even know that there was a swimming
(07:47):
pool in there, so while he lived there, he also
he and his partner had greenhouses where they grew orchids,
and they actually originated quite a few new species of
orkids right there on the property.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Really, that's that's that's amazing. Are there any that we
could now purchase? Is are they out in use? I
don't know what you call it, but are they something
that we could buy now?
Speaker 2 (08:18):
I'm sure they are. Some of them must have survived,
because I've seen upwards of a thousand, you know, even
closer to three thousands supposedly of new orchids that he
and his partner and their business created. So I'm sure
some of those definitely are still going strong today.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Okay, And that's so funny. And I'm just now starting
to grow grape hyacinths and some things like that out
on my porch because I have a condo. And just
think Raymond Burr did all that agriculture, that's just pure agriculture.
It would just start and create new species of plants.
So that's that's an amazing thing. I'll have to do
(08:59):
some research on that. See if I can buy me
a Raymond some one of the Raymond Burr orchids. I
think that would be really interesting.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Definitely. Well, I gonna here's my story, So I'm going
to start this. I call the Red Light and Hillside House.
So Hillside House, set high above Hollywood, a fortress of
history and secrecy. It had been many things, a private escape,
a place of reinvention, a sanctuary. Before the towering Andalusian
style homes sprawled at the bottom of the property's four
(09:30):
point five acres, long before the recording studio, before the
legend of Raymond Burr, had been the lonely residents of
William A. Rapp and his daughter Ernestine. When Rap built
the home in nineteen oh six, his lot was the
highest on Sierra Bonita, set apart from the city below,
no neighbors within one hundred feet. I came to know
(09:50):
this house through my friend Jason, who was employed by
its latest owner to keep it occupied. You know, these
big houses in the Hollywood Hills, you got to make
sure somebody's in the all the time, or they can
get broken into and people can squat in there, and
then when you get squatters, it's hard to get them out.
So essentially his job was just to keep it occupied.
He didn't have too many other tasks to do other than,
(10:12):
you know, occasionally walking the perimeter and just making sure
nothing was going awry. So while he lived there, I
spent as much time as I could there, drawn by
the weight of its past, the story's embedded in its walls.
The house had been altered so much over the years
that only the lower level, the original ground floor, remained
as it had been during Burr's time. It was also
(10:34):
the least u space now, as Jason really only ever
went down there to use the kitchen in the laundry room,
but there was a whole floor's worth of other rooms there,
and this was also the coldest part of the house.
So can you kind of picture this, this kind of
giant house set into a hillside up above Hollywood?
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Sure? Can? I mean, do you have an estimate of
how many square feet it was?
Speaker 2 (11:00):
I do. I actually found that somewhere. Let me see
if I can find it. It was. It's a lot,
and we don't know how many of those were there
when Raymond Burr had it, because it was added on
to later by the next owner. I will have to
(11:20):
get you that, because I did have it somewhere. It's
it's very big though, very very large homes road about
three levels. So there was the original ground floor, which
we're talking about in the story I'm seeing here. It's
eight it's about eighty seven hundred square feet.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
About nine thousand square feet. That is a huge residence there,
really is.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Yeah. So I believe when Raymond Burr led there, it
was two stories, and then at some point the next
owner added a whole third story on the top of it.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Wow, that's amazing.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Yeah. So one night we were exploring and we were
down in this lower level and we found a kind
of a hidden passageway. There was sort of a cabinet
door in the kitchen that was kind of a bigger
cabinet door, and so you open it up and there's
kind of a you know, room for like a broom
and some you know, mops and things like that. But
then at the back of this little closet you can
(12:19):
kind of see another door, and you realize the back
of the closet is actually a door that goes into
this kind of hidden passageway that wasn't finished. It had dirt,
kind of dirt walls on one side earth and then
the other side was kind of the you know, interior
of the of the living room and staircase wall. So
we were kind of sneaking back into this passageway to
(12:42):
see what was back there is very narrow and dark,
as it meant to be forgotten. And then when I
was about halfway through, I saw a red light and
it was faint bleeding through a crack in the wall
somewhere beyond. I figured it must have been from the
living room, because that's you know, we see to be
behind the living room. So I stepped out of the passage,
(13:06):
or I was going to go back through the kitchen
because I wanted to get back to the living room,
and right as I stepped out of the passageway, I
just hit this cold spot, thick and unmoving, like walking
through water. And the house had always felt strange, but
this was different. It was like something was watching me.
So then I kind of see another flash of red
light and I go into the living room, but when
(13:28):
I look for the source, there was nothing. There's no electronics,
there's no reflections, there's basically nothing in this empty living room.
So at that exact moment, I heard footsteps, not like
casual movement or like the house just settling it was
definitely sounded like footsteps running up the stairs, so Jason
(13:51):
and I rushed upstairs. We actually had a friend, Cassie,
who was up there. She was just kind of sitting
on a couch reading a book, and we asked if
she had been moving around, and she just stared at us.
She said no, She'd been on the couch for probably
half hour. She hadn't heard anything. No one else had
been in the house. So I decided I had to
figure this out. So I downloaded every ghost hunting app
(14:14):
I could find onto my phone, trying to make sense
of what had just happened. So all these apps that
I used, they kind of confirmed what I already knew,
but didn't want to admit that something was there in
the house and it wasn't happy, So, like I said,
Raymond berg A bought this house in nineteen seventy two
and lived there for over a decade. He was a
man who prized discretion. He kept his private life just
(14:36):
that private, and when he sold the home in nineteen
eighty three, it was purchased by Miles Copeland, who was
a music producer and manager. His brother was in the band.
The police was sting everybody knows them, So.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
His brother would have been Stuart Copeland.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Yes, Stuart Copeland. So I'm sure he spent a lot
of time in this home too, because when Miles Copeland
bought it, he kind of gutted it. He reshaped it,
added whole new rooms. He put these big sphinx statues
at almost every entrance, and he built this recording studio
kind of under the lawn, so it kind of had
a secret entrance that you had to know where it
(15:17):
was to find it. So by the time that Miles
Copeland did all this change, Raymond Burr was in a
wheelchair by this point, so we always kind of wondered
did he resent all these changes that were made to
his home? And after doing this whole experience, we wondered,
was he still there wandering the lowest level, the only
(15:37):
part of the house left untouched. So maybe he was
confused and angry that the world had kind of moved
on without him, And it never really got my answer.
Access to the house became more restricted after that because
the current owner was a film producer and they actually
shot a film called Discarnate in that house, and so
(15:58):
you can actually see that movie. It's streaming on Amazon Prime.
It's hard to put it together when you watch the movie,
but it was completely filmed in and around the house,
so it's actually kind of a cool movie to watch
to see the home. But I've never forgotten that red light,
the cold spot, and the running footsteps, And I just
wonder if somewhere in the dark corners of Hillside House,
(16:21):
Raymond Burr still lingers, unseen, unheard except for those brief,
unsettling moments when he makes his presence known.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
That is really interesting. So can you describe that red light?
I mean, was it a pinpoint, was it kind of large,
was it very debt defined or exactly what was that
red light? What did it look like?
Speaker 2 (16:45):
It was kind of similar to if you if you've
ever been around like a police car an ambulance, how
they have the red lights that kind of go around
and kind of flash, you know, intermittently. So you know,
at first I kind of thought, is there a cop
car outside? Because there but there couldn't really have been
because on that lower level there's just kind of an old,
really narrow driveway that was probably the original driveway of
(17:08):
the home, but as things got built up around it,
this driveway was not accessible by vehicle anymore. You could walk,
you could kind of walk through it, but there was
a fence that had been built right on the edge
of it, and it was really too narrow, and the
fence was a giant, you know, eight foot fence. So
even if there was a cop carn ambulance on the
other side of it, you wouldn't have seen that light.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Okay, And about how long of a period of time
did you see this red light?
Speaker 2 (17:40):
So it happened about three times. It happened about twice
when we were in the passageway, and we were probably
in there for maybe five five minutes. It felt like
a lot longer, but I'm sure it probably was really
only a few minutes. And then when I came out
and was going around the corner towards the living room,
I saw the brightest. It was almost like the whole
(18:02):
living room had had lit up in red. But just
for a second.
Speaker 1 (18:09):
Really, where where did the light seem to emanate from?
Speaker 2 (18:14):
You know, we couldn't when we're in the passageway. It
kind of spilled through like a crack in the wall.
There's almost like a it's almost like a spy hole
where you could kind of look through the wall. You
couldn't really see it on the other side of the
wall because it's that wood paneling that kind of disguised,
you know, anything like that. So I thought maybe it
was like, okay, maybe it was like a smoke detector
(18:36):
or something like that. But this room didn't have anything
like that. There was no devices, no alarm systems, nothing
that would that would flash red, and certainly not to
the volume of the red light that I saw right
before I entered the room.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Okay, now if we see that movie now, please remind
me again the name of the movie that has Raymond
Burr's house in it. What was it named.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
It's called Discarnate.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Discarnate was that horror film, by the way, or a
murder mystery or what?
Speaker 2 (19:09):
It's a horror film. And so I remember when they
were first filming it, we still got to hang out
there a little bit, and they had dressed the whole
house to look like it was decaying. And so one
time we were there and one of our friends was like, Jason,
you need to report this and have them look at
the ceiling. It looks like there's black mold growing all over.
(19:31):
But we got to laugh because that was painted on
there to make it look like it was black mold,
but it was actually paint.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Right now, Who do we know who starred in that film? Discarnate?
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Let me see. It was not any big star, but
I do know that the main person was He was French.
I remember because they flew him over and he was
like a puppet. He was a puppeteer because there was
a lot of kind of puppetry involved in the film,
for like a creature. So I think Thomas Kretschman is
(20:08):
listed as the top build actor in the film, but
I have never seen him in anything else.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Had you ever heard of the Red Light Specter? I
guess that's what we will call it. Had you ever
heard of the Red Light Specter from anybody regarding this house?
Speaker 2 (20:28):
I had not. We did not know a lot of
people who knew much of the history of the home.
The current owners weren't really you know, they just basically
employed my friend to live there. They didn't really give
him a lot of details. But I did take somebody,
a friend of mine who knew quite a bit of
Hollywood history, into the house because I knew he would
(20:49):
want to see it, and so, you know, he kind
of said, oh, you know this, this pool probably had
some wild pool parties when Raymond Burr lived there, So
I don't know if he had heard any stories about that,
but that was pretty much all he really said.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Right now, when a properly, you know, in terms of
the timeline, what year were you in there when you
saw the red light? And how does that fit with
when Raymond Burr lived there?
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Yeah, so this would have been around twenty fourteen. Okay,
so he sold in eighty three, so oh sorry, this
would have been you know, a good twenty twenty years
after well actually thirty years after he had lived there.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Right, Wow, that was you know. I live in a
one bedroom condo and mister Mansfield owned this condo before
he died in a car wreck. And I was fortunate
enough to find this. My attorney found it and he said,
you need a place, and said absolutely. It's a beautiful location.
(22:02):
It's in an area called Myrtle Greens, right next to
Conway Memorial Hospital, and it's very essentially located in Conway,
South Carolina, which is kind of a bustling town right
outside of Myrtle Beach. And whenever I clean the kitchen,
I mean, I'm not a messy dirty guy. But I
(22:23):
do a once a week good clean of the kid.
I mean, I keep it straightened up, but I don't
do the thorough cleaning. But once a week, you know
what I mean. And whenever I do, and then I
fix a drink and go sit on the couch in
the living room. I normally hear somebody banging around in
(22:45):
the kitchen, and I'm guessing that that's mister Mansfield, and
then he's happy. I mean, he wouldn't be happy right
now because I was cooking all afternoon. But I'll probably
do the cleaning tonight, and I'll probably make a drink
and sit down and I don't know, maybe maybe my
guest or my visitor will show up. I think it's
(23:05):
really interesting. So many houses I have come to find
are blessed with a ghost or with a guest, not
necessarily a ghost, but a guest. Have you ever lived
in a house or apartment that was blessed with a guest?
Speaker 2 (23:28):
You know, I lived in the same one bedroom apartment
for about fourteen years in la and we know that
the previous tenant, who was the only other tenant that
lived in that apartment before us, had died in the
home and he was a rabbi, so every once in
a while we kind of felt a little bit of
(23:48):
a presence from him, I mean just by the fact
that he lived there a long time and he died
in the home. But we always went to great lengths
to be respectful of him. We would have never said
anything disrespectful, you know, about him or his religion. And
we left the I think you call it masusa. There's
like a little scroll within like a container that they
(24:10):
angle on the doorway of the home. So there was
one of those on the main front entrance, and there
was one on the exterior door that went to a balcony.
And they asked us if we wanted those removed, and
we said, no, we don't want those removed. We want
just leave it how it was. I don't want to upset,
you know, if there is potential any ghost of the rabbi,
(24:31):
we want him to know he's still welcome here. So
we never really had anything negative happened, but there are
definitely times when we have that feeling like, Okay, it
feels like he's here right now, or maybe a door
opened or a light turned off with no explanation.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Really, no, that's extremely interesting. Yeah, I haven't had any
of that happen, although I don't know. Maybe in the bathroom,
because I have one bathroom. There have been times when
I knew I left the light on and it's off,
so I don't know, you know, previous guess, previous residents
(25:10):
will put it that way sometimes show up, and I
believe they do. It's very it's very interesting. Well, that's
a really cool story about what happened with you in
the Raymond Burr house. I've got to check out that
movie so I can maybe maybe draw the area and
(25:36):
that passageway if I look at the movie and try
to guess as to how it was configured. Can you
look at it and help me get it right so
that we could kind of put that because as I
told you, this is going to be a chapter in
the book Family Ghost, and so i'd like to I'd
(25:57):
like to do that. Also, get a little bit of
background about Raymond Burr. I mean, I know, we know
Raymond Burr made a lot of money, yea, because he
was in essentially two series that played for seven years
a piece on television, and that is the recipe to
fill your bank account.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
Yes, and he had been working a lot before those two.
He even worked in radio back before he was in
motion pictures and then ultimately television. So he had been
working for many years making probably a decent amount of money,
even though he was, you know, a little lower profile
up until he was on television.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Right, and then he came to Perry Mason and was
the gigantic success. Right. As I said, my mother would
not miss Perry Mason. She would not He was absolutely
one of her favorites. And my dad liked the show too.
I remember it was on at seven back when Primetime
(26:58):
started at seven pm. It was on from seven to
eight on Saturday night, and that was a huge time first.
That was a really premire kind of time to be
on there, and he was a great actor. Those I
still watched some of those. Fact I started watching more
of them when you said that you'd like to be
(27:20):
on the show, and so, yeah, I just love Perry Mason.
Was it was a great show. And now did you
say that you had a couple of other stories that
you could relate to us.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
Yeah, well I have one more. This is actually from
my friend who lived in the house, so I asked
him to share any stories, and I remember this story
when it happened, but he typed it up and sent
it over to me, so I can can tell you
this story too. So this is Jason's story. So he says,
I was outside working on my truck when I heard it,
(27:54):
a hissing sound, not from the truck, but somewhere beyond.
It almost blended with the wind through the tree, except
there was no wind. The noise came from the pool,
a pool that had no water. Walking over, I saw
the sprinklers running, soaking the ground. They hadn't been on yesterday.
Had someone turned them on? I shut them off and
texted the gardener no answer. Something felt off. I checked
(28:18):
the property, moving quietly and listening. At the top of
the hill, I found a section of a fence pushed down,
barbed wire bent aside, old rust, new disturbance. Had someone
been here recently or had I just not noticed this
on the previous perimeter checks. Back near the house, I
searched some of the outbuildings. There are a couple of
greenhouses that used to house numerous orchids, some new varieties
(28:41):
that originated right here. Out of the corner of my eye,
I thought I saw something move further down, so I
checked the abandoned gardener's office, a running fridge, A kitchen
knife that was sharp. I took it just in case.
Then a misstep. Thorny vines lashed my ankle, drawing blood.
I had never seen these vines before. I limped towards
(29:01):
the old recording studio. Its door always padlocked, stood ajar.
The lock dangled uselessly. My instincts had run, but I
stepped inside. Nothing no sign of entry, just the weight
of something unseen. Watching back inside the house, I searched
every room, every shadow. The wind had picked up, floorboards
(29:22):
grown beneath me. Acorns hit the roof like slow, deliberate knocks.
I looked up, sat down and breathed. Then I remembered
Raymond Burr had once lived here, a man who played ghosts, detectives,
men with secrets. The sprinklers, the open door, the sense
of being watched. Was it an intruder or had Perry
Mason finally come home?
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Wow, that's amazing. Did your friend just write that recently?
Speaker 2 (29:51):
I think he had typed it out a while ago.
I think he just sent it to me. He's an
actor as well, so when I first read it, I
thought this must be a scene that he did for something.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
That's amazing, very dramatic, and yes, maybe Perry Mason finally
came home. About what time frame do you think he
wrote that? Was it like in the last ten years,
or it would.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
Have been about years ago, would have been about twenty fifteen.
He lived there from about twenty fourteen to twenty fifteen,
and then on and off towards the end of it.
Like I said, that movie, they started filming the movie
there and then one of the people that was working
on the movie moved in. So after a while it
was kind of they didn't really need both of them
(30:40):
to live there anymore. So my friend Jason moved out.
He actually went and lived in another abandoned house in
the Hollywood Hills. And so since that time we have
not been back there. But you can kind of see
it if you're at Wattles Park, which is a park
in Hollywood that goes up into the hills and there's
trails you can walk up, and it kind of meets
(31:01):
with Running Canyon, which is a very popular place where
people go to run, walk, work out, walk their dogs.
So it kind of sits in between these two parks,
and just recently a few weeks ago, you probably heard
there was a lot of wildfires in Los Angeles and
Runyon Canyon was one of those fires. That was the
(31:22):
one that came closest to Hollywood. And initially we had
heard that this house burnt down because it's right on
the edge, right next to Runyan Canyon essentially. But luckily,
once you know, the dust cleared, the smoke cleared, and
we were able to confirm it, it turned out that
the house was safe. It's still there, still standing right.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Well, that sounds great, and that is in Hollywood, the hollywoods.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Yeah, and at the time it was built back in
nineteen oh six, it would have kind of been the
outskirts of Hollywood. In fact, I don't think it was
technically part of Hollywood at that time. I think it
was considered kind of outside of the boundary of the city.
But of course, as we know since then, it's developed
and built up, and so now there's houses all around it,
(32:09):
except for there's no houses north of this home because
this property goes all the way up into the hills
and above it is the convergence of those two parks
running in Wattles, so there's no construction up above it.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
Okay, well, Devin, this has been an amazing story. It's
an amazing ghost story in the home of an incredibly
famous man, Raymond Burke, who riveted us for at least
fourteen years on television. Seven years is Perry Mason, and
seven years or so as Ironside. And I was lucky
(32:50):
enough I've seen a lot of those.
Speaker 3 (32:53):
I know that our television stations near us in Morganton,
North Carolina, we didn't always have Prime Town and so
we would have a lot of old reruns that I've
seen a number of.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Them, and you know, and I've also as I was
looking around for more Perry Mason, I found a number
of movies that were done. Are you familiar with them
that Raymond Burr was in as Perry Mason?
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Yeah, oh yeah, definitely, yeah, yeah. I mean he has
a huge filmography, but yeah, definitely Perry Mason. I think
he revisited Godzilla in the eighties. He was in another
Godzilla movie. He actually got a NOMNI for Worst Supporting
Actor for that Godzilla in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Or Worst Supporting Actor. Yeah, it couldn't have been.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
He was really good.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
He was a fine actor for let's say he was
perfect to be a detective or to be an attorney.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
He definitely was.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
Yeah, he was really good at that. Maybe he might
not have been so good in a situation comedy or whatever,
but he was certainly the man, especially when it came
to being an attorney. I know, I have a number
of friends that are attorneys, and they are a different breed,
I'll tell you that. And I always I've been enjoying
watching some Perry Mason's since we first started talking about
(34:26):
you being on the show. And yeah, and I'm certain
that there are a number of homes in Hollywood that
are known to be haunted. Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (34:38):
There definitely are. I would say this one was a
little unique and the fact that a lot of it,
especially that ground floor that I mentioned, was very undisturbed
from probably the time when he lived there. A lot
of times these houses get if not you know, completely
bulldozed and rebuilt. They you know, sometimes leave one wall standing,
(34:59):
you know, and then kind of remodel everything else. But
on the ground floor, this home, but it still had
that feeling like a classic old, you know, old Hollywood home.
And then when you went up to the middle level
it started to get a little more modern feeling, and
then that top third floor, which I believe Miles Copeland
added later, but I'm not sure. That was just a
(35:21):
wacky post modern, really tacky art everywhere. So I can
imagine if you're Raymond Burr and you've returned to your home,
you know, you probably would be shocked to see this
place that you didn't recognize until you went down to
the lowest level. And then there's where he probably felt
more at home.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Right, Well, I'm sure we'll talk again about the red
light in Raymond Burr's house. Do you remember the actual
address of that home. I do.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
It was eighteen thirty Norse Sea, Ara of Bonita.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Eighteen thirty North Sierra Bonita. Yeah, okay, well that's great. Well,
we will be writing this up, adding a few more things,
a few more historical items about Raymond burg and I'll
be consulting with you about doing a downstairs map of
the premises so that we can see exactly where you
(36:25):
saw that red light. And I think this will be
a marvelous chapter in the book Family Ghost. And I
want to say thank you so much for being on tonight.
It was good having you, and I hope it will
be nearly as long. It's been years since you've been
on a show with me.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
I know. Yeah, it's great to be talking with you again.
So thank you so much for thinking of.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
Me right, And I would like you do remember that
you did a film short in Los Angeles about and
the subject was about the potential underground lizard people. Yes,
(37:10):
do you still have a copy of that?
Speaker 2 (37:13):
I sure do.
Speaker 1 (37:16):
Maybe sometime in the next month or two or three.
Would you be up for getting together on Scary Cast
and talking about that.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Yeah, I'd be happy to. And then there's also a
lot of really cool ghost stories here in Sacramento. This
is you know, Sacramento is one of the older gold
Rush cities here in California, found in eighteen forty nine,
and there's a lot of ghost stories around Old Sacramento,
which is right by the river. There's some floods that
wiped everything out, so they raised everything up one level,
(37:48):
so there's a series of tunnels underground under Old Sacramento.
And then we still have one of the most notorious
serial killers lived here, Dorothya Puente. So if you look
into Dorothia Puente, she was an older woman, but she
made herself look even older than she was. In order
(38:10):
to appear as this philanthropist who was helping all these unfortunate,
needy individuals, many of whom were homeless men who were
mentally disturbed, and she would offer them a place to
stay and a meal, and she would rent rooms to them.
But it turns out she was murdering them and then
(38:31):
continuing to cash their social Security checks or any other
type of payments that they were receiving. And she got
away with it for many, many years.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
Wow, do you know how she happened to get caught.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
She got caught because one of the individuals who she
had murdered, there was a social worker who had been
looking for him, and she had been trying to find
him and track him down to living at Dorothea Puente's
boarding house. And Dorothea, I don't think, had expected somebody
to come looking for this gentleman, so she kind of
(39:09):
told a series of you know, lies about where this
person went that did not make sense to the social worker.
And eventually one of the other tenants of the house
slipped a note to her and the police one day
that said look in the backyard. So they got a
they got a warrant, or you know, they got the
(39:32):
form to go dig up this yard, and sure enough,
they didn't have to dig very far before they found
the first of I believe eight human bodies that they
recovered from her backyard.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
Oh my lord, that's really frightening. Now, she that is
not a name that I'm familiar with, but I'm guessing
in California that's a well known serial killer, right.
Speaker 2 (39:56):
She is very well known local serial killer here. The
house is still there. The current owners have a great
sense of humor about it, and they have signs and
decorations up all over the house, so it does get
a lot of people stopping by it to look at it,
and they don't mind if you look and take pictures
from the street. But it is private property, so you're
(40:16):
not to set foot within the gates of the home.
But they at least have a really good sense of
humor about it. Well that's great.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
Well, you know, this sounds like my next trip out
there to California will be filled with catching as much
as I can of the Raymond Burr House and maybe
this house and some other things, because I know you
kind of enjoy the paranormal like I do, don't you?
Speaker 2 (40:40):
Definitely?
Speaker 1 (40:41):
All right, Well, Devin Thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen.
Devin Tate from Sacramento, California, the initial co host of
Mine of Scary Cast, fourteen hundred episodes ago. And we're
still going, still going pretty strong, and we've got eight
paranormal conferences. I'm on books six and seven and this
(41:06):
I think Family Ghost is going to be very interesting.
And thank you for being with us today and sharing
the story with us. And I will be speaking to you.
I'll give you a quick call like I always do.
I try to do a call around at the end
of the show. So thanks a lot, Devin.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
Well, thank you, I appreciate it being here.
Speaker 1 (41:25):
Bright good and we'll see you soon on the one
and the only, live from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Scary Cast.
Have a good one, Devin, Bye bye,
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