OLD MACINTYRE HOUSE
Location: The Old Macintyre House was once located at 1164 Clinton Court in Westport, California, a suburb of Los Angeles on Laurel Canyon Drive five miles from Sherman Oaks on Interstate 101.
Description: Originally, the structure was a huge sprawling white and black two-story American wood frame house obscured behind trees and a long stone wall around the property. Today, a stone and adobe house with a classic American interior rests on the site. The garage on the property was converted from the old servant’s cottage on the lot.
Ghostly Manifestations: Barry and Maureen Macintyre were once familiar
inhabitants of Westport, California for over thirty years. Numerous friends and
acquaintances used to point out with pride their beautifully spacious and
maintained home with a tree-filled front yard. Many said it looked as if the
family was hiding from the world, but no one ever knew what they were hiding.
“I
started working for the family in 1952.” Anna Browne-Davis, the family cook and
housekeeper, told her experiences in a 1965 Halloween article. A short,
devoutly religious woman, she worked for the Macintyres for only four years
before she quit. “I tell you, a lot of weird things happened in that house. I
heard strange noises in the night, sometimes the sound of chains rattling,
lights often went on or off and then there would be the voices. Eerie voices
calling you from empty rooms and even sometimes………… beckoning you to come into
the cellar.
“I remember the back light that lit up the
back yard sometimes didn’t work.” She recalls. “It would work for several days
and then refuse to come on. We’d replace the bulb and eventually the whole
fixture, but it still wouldn’t come on when it was supposed to. I recall five
to eight different electricians looked at it, but as soon as they arrived it
would be working fine, but at night when we tried to turn it on, it didn’t want
to come on, and we really wanted that light on at night because we were
constantly seeing dark shadows flitting through the property. It’s almost as if
something didn’t want us getting a good look at them.”
During the time they lived there, the
Macintyre children were forbidden to speak of the occurrences that happened in
the house. Mrs. Browne-Davis, however, told all her friends and colleagues
trying to get their opinions on what was going on. Many of them jokingly
answered the house was haunted, but after a while the most ludicrous answer
gradually began to become the truth. Meanwhile, the children grew up, became
adults and moved out, but after their father died in 1980, and then their
mother in 1993, the majority of the children rushed and banded together to
publish a book of their experiences.
“What I remember most….” Eve Macintyre wrote.
“…. Was the door to my room. One night, my sisters and I woke up and watched it
opening and closing back and forth, back and forth, by itself for almost a
whole minute. We watched in shock as it continued happened unable to do
anything but cling to our beds as if something was underneath to grab at our
feet, but then it closed one last time and our father stormed in behind it
screaming at us trying to figure out what we were doing. Now, of course, we
didn’t do it, but he refused to believe us. He didn’t believe in ghosts and
wasn’t about to so we just lied so we could eventually get back to bed.”
“We got the most grief over the screaming.”
Chris Macintyre remarked on his dad. “We’d hear these long shrill cries of
someone screaming their heads off in the basement and dad would blame them on
whoever was closest to the basement at the time. I mean, I remember one time Junior
and I were both down there looking for something or another, I think it was his
football jersey in the laundry, and dad stormed down trying to find out why we
were calling him and we hadn’t really called him or heard a single thing.
Eventually, we all got more scared of dad than we did of the ghosts because
we never saw them.”
Often called Junior, the eldest son, Barry Macintyre
Jr., was first of the kids to move out and get to go to college. Eve got his
room next and stayed in there for only a week complaining that the room was too
cold which was actually true. Susan, the middle girl, was in the room once
helping her sew a comforter and they remarked on how they could both see their
breath despite the fact it was the middle of summer. On Eve’s eighth night in
the room, she screamed her head off and ran to her parent’s room screaming that
something had tried to get in bed with her. Her experience dismissed as a dream,
Eve moved back into the room with her two younger sisters.
Barry Jr. however still came home from time
to time and stayed in his room without a problem. However, one day he came home
unannounced and found himself locked out of the house while everyone was gone. He
went around to the back to try and get through the dining room and looked
through and saw Eve in the living room sitting in a chair.
“I screamed, yelled, pounded and shook the
door, but she just ignored me as if I wasn’t there.” Junior recalled for the
book. “She just rose from the sofa and walked toward me without looking up and
disappeared down the steps to the basement. I pounded on the doors for another
minute and then dad pulled up the driveway in the station wagon with everyone
else including Eve. Needless to say, I quickly shut up and didn’t tell anyone
until we started the book.”
As if the thought of each other being
impersonated wasn’t bad enough, Chris recalled an incident with Jennifer, the
youngest of the three girls that he had never thought about before hearing that
story. It suddenly reminded him of another incident he didn’t think involved the
ghosts until he heard Junior’s story.
“I was out in the driveway fixing the chain
in my bike and Jennifer said she couldn’t find her doll.” Chris remembered
years later as Jennifer listened to the story. “She couldn’t find it and I didn’t
know where it was, but then she said that Michael must have hidden it in the
basement. It sounded like my little sister so I followed her into the house
and down the steps, but as soon as I got down there, she vanished on me. I didn’t
see her anywhere and I didn’t think there were many places to hide anything
down there. I think I warned her something about trying to drag me down there
to scare me and came back upstairs.”
“Looking back now,” Chris thinks back. “I
wonder what I would have discovered had I stayed.”
“I remember you asking me about that.”
Jennifer recalls. “That was the day you found me and asked if I had found my
doll yet, but actually, it was never Bobby who hid it. It just vanished one day
when we’d returned home from school. I think mom and I searched the entire
house for it and it never did turn up.”
Jennifer was the youngest member of the
family. Now a police officer, she credits the strange incidents in the house
for being one of the forces that strengthened her. She actually recalls that
she and Michael both actually avoided the basement unless they were with
someone.
“Looking back now,” Jennifer continues. “It
was just the most creepy part of the house. Both Mike and I would run up the
stairs because we thought there was something under the stairs wanting to grab
at our feet as we went up.”
“That’s not entirely true.” Susan was
reminded of a memory. “She and Michael were scared of the basement. She once
told me that after Barry (Junior) moved out that she often heard voices coming
up the stairs. After Susan moved into Barry’s old room, and Jennifer got our
room all to herself, she was afraid something was going to come up and get her.
I don’t know if I believed her at the time, but I recall hearing something down
there too.”
“Little childlike voices going, ‘Susan, Susan………Susan
come here.’ Sometimes they sounded like Eve or like mom………. But somehow I
always knew better.”
“I think our parents experienced a lot too,
but just chose to ignore or try and come up with logical explanations.” Barry Macintyre
Jr. adds. “I remember hearing footsteps across the top landing or hearing water
running somewhere and mom would just sit there or dad would just keep working.
They took their ignorance to the max and refused to believe that the place was
haunted even as things occurred around them.”
Years after their old house was knocked down
in 1985, the six Macintyre kids still talk about the ghosts. As their book was
going to press, Chris Macintyre, the youngest of the brothers, added an
addendum as it went to press. As a new house was being built on the lot, he had
become friends with one of the crew and even got to revisit the old family home
once more as walls were being ripped down around him.
“Bob was an old high school friend of mine.”
He remarks. “He told me that one morning after laying varnish to the floors of
the new house the night before, they found a series of dusty footsteps over the
living room floor. No footsteps, just dust. There was no trace of a footprint
except for the dust and that could be dusted right off without a mark.”
“They did have a problem when they tore down our house though.” He adds. “They had just begun excavating the basement when a shrill scream went through the place. Bob said he was the first one up the stairs with everyone else behind him and it took a court order to get the company to complete the job. The contractor claimed that the scream came from a busted water pipe. The problem is that there was no water running through the house at the time.”
History: The house was built at or about the turn of the century and has occupied several families such as the Reeds, Hendersons, Williamses and the McCormicks who sold the house to their old neighbors from Texas, the Macintyres. Barry and Maureen Macintyre and their six kids lived in the house for thirty years beginning in 1926 and ending in 1956 when Plumb Realty purchased the house. The rumor that the Macintyres moved out because of the ghosts is part of a rumor passed down as stories were repeated. The simple fact is that Barry Sr. wanted a smaller home for his wife after the kids moved on. The Olsen Housing Development took over the property from them when the chance came to divide up the area into several smaller homes and yards. The new house was finished in 1987 and was first owned by Bob and Florence Lookinland. Neither them nor the current owners, Wallace and Marcia Logan have reported anything paranormal happen.
Identity of Ghosts: No one knows for sure who the ghosts were but theories
spread over years have claimed to a grisly murder or a cemetery under the
foundation. If anything, the presences were very interested in haunting the
Macintyres.
“Our family tree is actually connected to another haunted house in Texas.” Barry Macintyre Jr. reveals. “Much of our furniture and antiques came from that house and some of it was left behind when our parents moved out. As weird as it sounds, maybe the ghosts came with the furnishings. I asked a ghost-hunter about it once and he said that, yeah, similar things like that have occurred. I think it’s the most likely explanation.”
Comments: Brady Bunch, Episode “To Move or Not To Move.” Hauntings based on the
Grant Corner Inn in