![]() ![]() ![]() She had recently suffered a stroke and was unable to get out on her own. ![]() In the late 80s early 90s there was a fire in the "Steinway Mansion, and my daughter's nanny and I pulled Fania out through a second story window onto a roof top when that home caught fire in the middle of the night. Well, ummm yeah, ether has the propensity to do that! Tom Mix's horse Tony was buried under the bowling alley in the Log Cabin. Every time they thought they had it contained, there would be a huge explosion and it would once again go up in flames. The firefighters said it was the most difficult fire they had ever tried to put out. The Log Cabin burned to the ground when her nephew was making PCP in the basement. Fania Pearson also owned the Log Cabin, the supposed Steinway mansion and a couple of other large homes in the canyon. I bought my home across the canyon, from his former wife Betty Hatton. He then would go down to the Sunset Strip, pick up young women and bring them up to the acreage, where he was living in a cave, and attempt to rape them. The first thing he did was to go to the DMV and change his name to Robin Hood, purchase a cape and feathered hat. Sometime later he was released as no longer a threat to society. Instead of going to prison he was declared insane. (I've lost his last name) He was in an insane asylum for murdering his grandmother at the dinner table when she intervened during a knife fight between John and his Grandfather. The man who lived in the caves was John F. I used to have a cloth panel removed from the living room of the mansion. ( Some sources say she bought it, but she was caretaker for the elderly man who bequeathed it to her.) After the fire, I used to visit Ron and Nan Batzdorf when they lived in the caretaker's/chauffeur's quarters above the garage, and they frequently allowed us into the burnt out house. My father used to visit 2400 Laurel Canyon before Fania Pearson inherited it from the man who owned it. it is between the Tom Mix/Bessie Love Log Cabin/Frank Zappa's home and a house known as the Steinway Mansion, (because someone found 2 piano crates stamped "Steinway", in the basement), rumor has it that WC Fields once owned the mansion. Today there are only 3 caissons or pillars left, the house having been destroyed during the Laurel Canyon fire. After Houdini's death Bess lived across the street on the west side of Laurel Canyon, just north of Lookout Mountain. corner of Willow Glen and Laurel Canyon Blvd. Sharmagne of Hollywood, CA on said: The "legendary" Houdini Mansion is located at 2400 Laurel Canyon Blvd. Lastly, Laurel Canyon Boulevard apparently hides a cave where the notorious bandit Tiburcio Vasquez hid all his gold, just waiting for intrepid teenagers to find! It's no wonder that with all the stories about the location, that Houdini obviously lived there too. ![]() The crazy vagabond apparently thought he was Robin Hood and spoke in old English using Laurel Canyon as his Sherwood Forest. Also according to local school children in the sixties and seventies, a crazy homeless man apparently resided in the area of the burnt down mansion. Besides the scandalous murder of the son's lover, there are also stories that before the mansion was burnt down, the location was used to hang bandits from the trees at the street intersection. And, of course, local children propagated ghost stories about Houdini along with other tall tales. She did hold séances but not in any guest house on Laurel Canyon Boulevard. The stories go on to say that Bess Houdini, Harry's wife, held séances in the guest house across the street of the burnt down mansion. There was an elevator which took passengers down through the solid rock to a tunnel that went under Laurel Canyon Boulevard and came up in the gatehouse of the Walker mansion." According to the website Houdini's Ghost, the guesthouse "was built on solid rock and the hills around it were honeycombed with caves, some natural, some man-made. There's no solid evidence for this, but there is lots of solid evidence that Bess lived at 2435 after Harry's death. Houdini scholars are pretty sure that in 1919 the Houdinis actually stayed in the four-bedroom guesthouse at 2435 Laurel Canyon (across the street, on a knoll). In 1959, the mansion at 2398 (now 2400) Laurel Canyon burnt down, and all the papers referred to the fire at the old Houdini mansion however, that house actually belonged to Ralf Walker, a department store owner and friend of Houdini's. Here's a nice mysterious Halloween tale about Harry Houdini, who died on October 31, 1926: It's believed that Houdini and his wife Bess were living in Laurel Canyon in 1919 (while Houdini filmed for Famous Players-Lasky), but there's been a lot of confusion about the exact house. ![]()
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