The Cursed Mansion Where No One Lives

Have you ever ridden Disney's Tower of Terror? The que line whined through the abandoned lobby of the fictional Hollywood Tower hotel. Designed in a nineteen thirty style, The lobby is filled with unchecked luggage, wilting, and unwatered plants, even an unfinished chess game. It looks as if the hotel has been frozen in time, except for the dust and cobwebs that cover everything. All of that to show that no one has been living around for a long time, at least no one that is living. The Tower of Terror, of course, is only an attraction. The story of the ride that the hotel patrons and staff vanished under mysterious circumstances and left everything behind is only that. The story everything inside of this quote hotel is designed to give writers a good scare, and that's about it. And even though you know it isn't real, walking through the Tower of Terror line is creepy because the idea of an abandoned lobby with everything so still in place is unsettling. It's a place that's meant to be lived in, but instead it just sits there, forgotten forever. There's something off about a place like that, and high above the city of Los Angeles and the Hollywood Hills, they'll find the neighborhood of Los Felis, home to the Los Felas Murder Mansion, which is a real, live tower of terror. It sits abandoned but with everything still in place. According to legend, on Christmas Eve nineteen fifty nine, doctor Harold Perilson snapped and attacked his wife and eldest daughter in their beds, and then killed himself. The following year, the house was sold, with all of its furniture and with the Perilsons belonging still inside, including unopened presence and a still decorated Christmas tree. But how much of this legend is true? And what other horrors are in the Los Felis Murder Mansion Right now? My name is Edwin, and here's a horror story. The land of Los Felis was established in seventeen ninety five when the government gifted the land to Josevi sent de Felice, one of the first Spanish settlers of California. Back then, it was known as Rancho Los Felie. It's one of the oldest areas of Los Angeles, and since then it's been pronounced Los Felis. It's full of history, and it's now home to Griffith Park, the famous Hollywood side, and it's also said to be cursed for years. Rancholos Pelie remained in the family until Don Antonio Felis died of smallpox in eighteen sixty three. He was on his deathbed when his business partner, Don Antonio de Coronelle and a lawyer visited him. Don Antonio de Coronelle and the lawyer drew up will and Don Antonio Felie was so sick he could do nothing to object. Two men attached to stick to the back of the on Antonio's head to force him to nod in agreement. On Antonio Felice's niece, Betteraniga, was supposed to inherit the land, but instead she was cut out of the will. So legend has it that she placed a curse on Los Felis. Cattle and fields will become diseased and die. No one will profit from this land. She also swore that the men who stole her land will die soon, one from an untimely death and the other in a violent manner. Since eighteen sixty three, when the curse was placed, there have been several alarming deaths on this land. The lawyer who was with on Antonio that Coronell was shot and killed. The judge who oversaw the will met an untimely death as well. Coronell's family all died over the years, and when he passed away, his wife lost the rights to the land. A man named C. V. Howard then became the owner of Los Felis but not for long. He sold it for a profit, though he never got to enjoy the money he made from the sale because while he was celebrating, he was shot and killed at a local saloon. Leon Lucky Baldwin owned the land after C. V. Howard, but this went wrong too. Lucky tried starting a dairy farm, but his luck seemed to have run out. His cattle kept dying and grasshoppers kept ruining his crops. He went bankrupt and was forced to sell the land. The next owner didn't have it for long and quickly sold it to Griffith J. Griffith. Griffith was a savvy businessman, and he let Frank Burkett start an ostrich farm in his newly purchased Los phelis Land. He was trying to attract people to the area, but this, like everything else in Los Felis, didn't last long. The storm destroyed the area and killed a lot of the ostriches. Griffith closed down the farm, but the misfortune did it stop there. Frank Burkett, the ostrich farmer, tried to kill Griffith for closing down his farm, but Griffith survived. Frank, unaware that Griffith didn't die, killed himself due to the guilt overshooting him. Griffith believed that all this was happening because of Petronia's curse. This didn't work, and things only got worse for Griffith. After donating the land, Griffith held a dinner to celebrate. He was having dinner with guests. It was going fine when suddenly the ghost of Don Antonio Felice appeared in the seat Griffith normally sat in the spirit of Don Antonio said, I come to invite you to dine with me in Hell in your great honor. I brought an escort of demons. No one waited for these demons. Every guest fled in a hurry. Griffith began to lose his mind after this night. He started to believe his wife was planning to poison him to steal his money. He shot his wife during a stay at the Arcadia Hotel. She fled through a window and survived. He only spent two years in jail, but his reputation took a big hit. He died of liver disease thirteen years after his release from jail in nineteen nineteen. His death didn't seem to be the end of the curse, though, thirteen years after he died in nineteen thirty two, actress peg and Twistle also found misfortune in Los Felis. She died after jumping off the age of the famous Hollywood Sign. The woman was hiking near the sign when she came across a woman's shoe, a purse, and a jacket. The woman opened the purse and found a note that read, I am afraid, I am a coward. I am sorry for everything. If I had done this a long time ago, it would have saved a lot of pain. The woman looked down, and that's when she saw the body of Pegentwistle at the bottom of the mountain. Just over a year after the death of Pegentwistle in October nineteen thirty three, misfortune found its way into Los Pheleas again. A tragic fire in Griffith Park took the lives of at least twenty nine men, though some say the death toll could have been as high as fifty eight. It was the deadliest fire in Los Angeles history. But that's not it either, though. There's another house in Los Felas neighborhood that is tied to an infamous murder. If you're in the true crime and paranormal space like myself, there's no doubt you've heard of the Black Dahlia Murder. This is the brutal murder of Elizabeth Short, which happened in nineteen forty seven. She was found severed into two pieces in another neighborhood of Los Angeles, Limet Park. There were different suspects and theories, but it remains unsolved today. One of those theories involved the sodenhow in Los Felis. From nineteen forty five to nineteen fifty, doctor George Hotel owned the home and he was a prime suspect in the murder of Elizabeth Short. His own son, Steve Hodel, argued in his book Black Dahlia Avenger that his father, George Hotel, was the one who tortured, murdered, and dissected Elizabeth short All in the basement of the Soden House in Los Felis. It seems that tragedy and misfortune is running free in Los Felis. Did the curse effect twenty four to seventy five Glen Dower Place two, the infamous Los Felis murder Manchin The mansion is a three story Spanish Revival style home built by architect Harry Werner. The house sits on top of a hill with fifty one steps leading to its front door. The first owners of twenty four to seventy five Glendauer Place were a married couple, Harry and Florence Schuman. They moved into the house in nineteen twenty five and lived there for three years, but like many in Los Felis, their happiness did not last. Three years after the house was built, Flora Schumacher died in the home. She died of a bacterial infection in her heart, and it happened quickly. The doctor was called for her symptoms on June twenty seventh, and three days later she was dead. Twenty seven days after Florence Harry Schumacher died of pneumonia again inside the house. After their death, the house was sold on December sixth, nineteen thirty two, a date that would come up again at the Los Felis murder House. Harry's brother, Orlando, was a Schumacher's estate executor. This meant that he was in charge of selling the house and it was a struggle for him. Even after offering it as fully furnished with the his brother's valuable furniture, no one wanted to buy it. In August nineteen twenty eight, Orlando moved into the house with his wife and son to act as a caretaker for the property until he could rent or sell it, and just like his brother and sister in law, they would meet misfortune as well. Not long after moving into the house, his son got really sick. The family's doctor told Orlando and his wife that the illness was because of the house. The doctor called it an unhealthy place. The family moved out in May of nineteen twenty nine. After the Schumachers, a series of celebrity renters lived in twenty four to seventy five Glennauer Place. Director producer Fredrick Zelnich and his actress wife Leah Marra rented the house from November nineteen twenty nine through August of nineteen thirty. Their lease was supposed to go for a full year, but for some unknown reason, they left the whole four months Early that same month, film critic Welford Beaton and his wife Sarah Luise moved in and lived there until July of the following year, and just like the Schumachers, Welford and Sarah would meet tragedy in their home. Their twenty year old son Donald lived with them during that time, and in May of nineteen thirty one, Donald died at that house. He died of a fungal infection from a tennis injury just before his twenty first birthday. The last renters were film stars George and Florence Arlis, who stayed a mere six months from December of nineteen thirty one to May of nineteen thirty two. The house was then sold to John and Beverly Stauffer, and unlike the rest of the inhabitants of this House on the Hill, there were no tragedies. The Staffers lived happily in their home for twenty years. In nineteen fifty four, the Staffers donated their home to Whittier College, who owned it until nineteen fifty six. The house sat vacant for those two years until Harold and Lilian Pearlson bought it. Through every measure, Harold and Lillian Pearlson were living in the American dream. He was a child of immigrant parents and she was a granddaughter of immigrants. Harold's parents, Henry and Molly, fled Eastern Europe to New York. Harold was the eldest of four siblings, all raised in Queen's New York. Like most children of immigrant parents, Harold sought to make his parents proud. He did just that. When he graduated from medical school, he left New York for Sunny la where he started to work as a doctor in Englewood. He was successful in every way, a published doctor and a professor at the US School of Medicine. He met his wife, Lilian Silver, and they had three children, Judy, Joel, and Debbie. All that was left for them to do was to find their forever home, a place where the kids could grow and play. They found this home at twenty four seventy five Glennauer Place in the hills of the Los Feless neighborhood. They purchased a home for sixty thousand dollars, and that would be about a million dollars today. The American dream for a first generation son of Polish immigrants was coming true. This dream, though, was nothing but a fragile illusion that would soon break. A series of financial misfortunes struck the family. Harold was trying to create a special medical needle and entered a verbal agreement with Edward Shustack. Edward was supposed to take the medical needle idea and make it happen, and they agreed to split the profits. Both Harold and Lilian sunk money into the project. They had spent twenty four thousand dollars with nothing to show for it. Harold tried suing Edward for one hundred thousand dollars, but was only awarded a four of that amount. Three years after that, in November of nineteen fifty seven, Judy Pearlson was driving Harold's nineteen fifty two Oldsmobile with her siblings. They got in a pretty bad car accident. Harold sued the other driver. He demanded twenty thousand dollars for his daughters and ten thousand dollars for his son, and he won. But that's not what he received. He was awarded just enough to cover their medical bills. Harold and Lillian bought the Inglewood Medical Clinic and it ended up being a huge financial strain on the family. The cost of the clinic was forty one thousand dollars and they paid ten thousand dollars as a down payment. On top of that, they also owed the clinic's previous owner, Max Barr, two hundred dollars a month with four percent interest. On January first, nineteen sixty, that rate was due to increase to one thousand dollars a month. On top of all those money problems, Lily And and Judy both love to shop. Their son Joel, also went to an expensive military school. The family owed payments for their three fancy cars as well. On paper, though they had it all, it was something to be jealous of. The American dream was all a facade and it was getting difficult for Harold to keep up the lie. Harold began having health issues during his stay at a hospital. He was prescribed thorazine, and this was the first antipsychotic drug on the market. This medication is also used to reduce violent behavior. Harold might have had a pre existing condition that made him more inclined to violence and self harm. Financial pressure and mental health problems could have led Harold to commit horrific acts of violence. On December sixth, nineteen fifty nine, at four thirty am, Harold Pearlson stood next to his bed while Lilian slept. He was holding a ballpen hammer. He raised it and struck his sleeping wife. He hit her so hard he created an an inch wide hole on the back of her head. The blood soaked her pillow, and Lilian drowned that night, her lungs filling up with blood. The attack didn't wake anyone else up. After killing his wife, Harold went into eighteen year old Judy's room. He approached her bed, raised his ball peen hammer and hit her too. The blow wasn't fatal, and she woke up screaming. Her father told her to stay quiet and stay in her room, but she didn't. Instead, Judy ran to her parents' room and found her mother dead, and so she ran for help. The first neighbor's door she tried did not answer, so she ran to the next house, where Marshall Ross lived, and luckily he did answer his door. She told him about the attack and they called the police together, and then Marshall went to the Pearlson home to confront Harold. While Judy was gone, the younger Pearls and children woke up and they saw their father in the hallway full of blood stains, and he told her him go back to bed. This is a nightmare. When Marshall Ross arrived at the house, Harold told Marshall go home, leave me alone. Marshall could only stare at Harold as he went into the bathroom and took some pills. He went back to Judy's room and collapsed in her bed. Marshall grabbed the younger Pearlson kids and went back to his house where Judy was and they waited for the police. At five point fifteen am, police found Harold on the floor next to Judy's bed. He was still breathing, but he died before an ambulance could get there. There were still two pill pieces in the bathroom sink. There were also crushed fill pieces around the room. There were bloodstains all over the house. Next to Harold, in Lilian's bed and on his nightstand, police found something unsettling. It was a copy of The Divine Comedy and it was open to a page that read, Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost. The pills Herold took were yellow jackets, slang for nambutah, something thus prescribed to treat anxiety and sleep disorders. Thirty one tablets were found in Herold's Pearlson's stomach during the toxicology report. There were bloodstains all over him, as well as scratches. Judy and her two younger siblings survived their father's attack. They were eleven and thirteen when it happened. They lost it all. In order to pay off their parents debts. All the Pearson's assets were liquidated, all the money in Harold and Ilian's bank accounts, life insurance, three cars, the equipment at the Inklewood Medical Clinic, and the house. Even the belongings in their homes stayed there. It was included with the sale. Within a year, the house was sold at around seventy five thousand dollars. This wouldn't be enough to pay off their parents' debt. They were still four thousand dollars short. Harold and Lillian's deads mounted to about seventy nine thousand dollars, and surprisingly Max Barr settled for twenty eight thousand, eight hundred, a little over half of the original amount the persons owed him. Now the estate was valued at about twenty thousand dollars, which was divided evenly between Judy, Joel, and Debbie. Having lost her home and parents, the kids ended up staying as far away from the infamous murder, and no one really knows what became of them. This is where the legends come in. I'll tell you all about it up next. Stay with him. The legend of the Los Felas House tells the story of the mad doctor who killed his family on Christmas Eve. The legend began circulating in the year two thousand when a construction worker named Steve Kelloopsi spotted a Christmas tree through the window of the mansion. He started bringing his friends to twenty four to seventy five Glynnauer Place and telling them the story of the Pearlsins. He exaggerated what he saw, adding that the murder suicide happened on Christmas Eve and that the tree had wrapped presents under it. The tree, the date, and the presence become less likely when you start reading about the real case. Steve admitted to lying about the last two parts, but he insists that he really did see a Christmas tree. There's still one piece of the legend, the decades long vacancy that resulted in a perfectly preserved nineteen fifty's dream home doubling as a crime scene. The Los Phelas murder mansion was sold at a court auction in nineteen sixty to Julian and Emilia Driquez. They were well off despite living in the neighborhood of Lincoln Heights. Emilia came from money, and she and her husband owned and operated an auto repair shop. The Nricuses never moved in. They bought the house for their only son, Rudy, and until he inherited it in nineteen ninety six, they only used it for storage. Julian and Amelia were both Mexican immigrants, and Los Felis was in nineteen sixty and all white neighborhood. If the murder suicide hadn't made national news and selling wasn't extremely difficult, the Enricuses might have not had the chance to even buy the house. It's very possible that Julian and Amelia simply didn't feel comfortable living in Los Felis and preferred to stay at their property in Lincoln Heights. Her mansion in the Hollywood Hills didn't fit with Rudy's lifestyle, so he never lived there either. At the same time, he felt it would be disrespectful to his parents to sell it, so he used it for storage as well. The famous Christmas tree, the one brought up when people tell the urban legend, actually belonged to Rudy Enricus, and there is some evidence that points to the house being entirely empty. A journal belonging to Rudy has an entry dated from nineteen seventy six and it mentions Philippe living in the house. There are also water and electricity bills for that same place dated between nineteen eighty two and nineteen eighty nine. However, several neighbors report the house being vacant under the Henricuses ownership. In any case, the house went back on sale in twenty sixteen, again at court auction. This time the house was cleared of all furniture and personal belongings of any previous owners. The days of sneaking up to the Los Phelas murdered mansion to catch a glimpse of a lived in looking but completely empty house. We're over. Lawyer Lisa Bloom and her husband Breiden Pollock bid for the house and they won, spending two point three million dollars on their extremely expensive fixer upper. Lisa and Brayden wanted to renovate the house before living in it, but unfortunately they were never able to The renovation plans never happened, and they sold it in twenty twenty, again for two point three million dollars without ever living in the house. A real estate investor bought it and had plans, but those fell through as well. As of July twenty twenty two, the Los Felis murder mansion is still on the market. Throughout the years, as the house sat empty, neighbors reported strange things. The home's alarm system would go off, but no one was ever inside. Lights could be seen going on and off, but again no one was inside the house. Some heard screams in the middle of the night. These screams were so loud it would wake up and make nearby neighbors sit up on their beds. This could have just been people exploring the house, but many believe it is haunted and cursed. The Los Feelings Murder Mansion has amed past independent of the legend that haunts it. Some call the house cursed after all, five people, including Harold and Lillian Pearlson, died there. The house was unlived in for over half a century. Of course, all that death could just be a coincidence, but there isn't a reason for us to associate the house itself with misfortune. After all, the house is just the house. This one house just happens to be the common factor in the five deaths. In an interview, Lisa Bloom, the most recent owner of the Los Peleus Murder Mansion, said, I always found it very strange that people attach a tragedy that happened in the house to the house itself. The house is innocent. The house did not murder anyone. She even used an analogy of a hospital, a building in which people die and all the time, and yet we don't accuse hospitals of being cursed on that simple fact alone. For me, though, there's something fundamentally different about a house and a hospital. Hospitals are built for healing, and we know that further injury or even death can take place once you walk through those doors. Houses, on the other hand, are built for living. Life has been repeatedly rejected at twenty four to seventy five Glynnauer place, There's something unsettling about a house where, for the most part, life is nowhere to be found. This episode of Horror Story was written by Tess Redman, with production by Christina Lumachi and myself, Edwin kow Arrubias. You can support the show by trying out Scary Plus. You get ad free and early episodes. You can look for the link to try it out for free. You can find me over on Instagram and TikTok as a document the process of starting a YouTube channel. My user name is Edwin Coe. That's e d wn CoV. Anyway, thank you very much for listening, See you soon.