MASON COURT APARTMENTS
Location: The Mason Court Apartment House is a reconstructed mansion at 1660 Mason Court Place overlooking the bay at the corner of Green Avenue in St. Francisco, California.
Description of Place: The four-story apartment house features hardwood floors, fireplaces, bay windows, interior heating and cooling and a laundry room. The location is adjacent to the local trolley car transportation system. The alleged haunting phenomenon was limited to Apartment 9, the only residence with access to the roof.
Ghostly Manifestations: For much of May 2005, a landscape architect named David Abbott rented Apartment 9 at the Mason Court Apartment House in San Francisco, California. A widower, David believes he was haunted by the spirit of a young woman, but the next tenant, Dr. Elizabeth Masterson, has not allowed any supernatural investigation in the apartment. For clarity, here is a transcript of David's on-line conversation through the Collinsport Ghost Society website with field manager, William Collins:
Dabbott: "So, you guys hunt ghosts, huh?"
Thor2000: "Sometimes we take them singing and dancing, but they're not really good company, being dead and all."
Dabbott: "How'd you get into that undead stuff?"
Thor2000: "I got into it through my Uncle David. You see, my family estate is Collinwood in Maine, and its got its reputation of ghosts too. When the time came for my uncle to inherit the estate, he left it to my Aunt Carolyn instead to focus full time into the exploration of haunted houses. Apparently, long before I was born, he'd been seeing and hearing stuff in the houses on the estate (see the bio for Collinwood on the site for more on that). My Uncle Quentin shared on lot of the estate's history with me and got me fascinated in the science of it. By the way, ghosts aren't the dead or the undead, they're supposed to be the spirits of the dead. Big difference."
Dabbott: "Cool. Well, like I said, I think I have a ghost."
Thor2000: "What have you experienced?"
Dabbott: "Stuff... I was just sitting round the other night drinking a beer and this crazy blonde came up to me out of no where and started yelling at me to get out because it was her place. She looked real. You know, and I started thinking we had both been conned or something, but when I got up to face her, she walked out of the room and vanished. After a few more appearances like that, I kind of felt she had to be a ghost."
Thor2000: "How many beers had you had at that point?"
Dabbott: "One... A few, maybe, but I wasn't drunk. She seemed so real and I'm positive she wasn't a dream."
Thor2000: "Okay, describe her."
Dabbott: "The ghost? Uh, short, blonde, kind of thin, dressed in black, kind of cute, sort of resembled that chick from the Legally Blonde movies. Looked like a real person, I always thought all ghosts looked like Casper or some floating sheet."
Thor2000: "Hollywood came up with that. Ghosts can take numerous shapes and appearances. Looking like a flesh and blood person is not unusual. It happens from time to time. A tourist at the Hampton Plantation in Maryland was given a guide by a black man who never appeared again. A plumber at the Drumm Barracks in LA was approached by a guy in a Civil War uniform asking for water. Like I said, ghosts can appear to look normal, but it's rare. How many times have you seen her?"
Dabbott: "The next morning I think; she popped up with an attitude in my mirror the next morning while I was brushing my teeth, but there was no one behind me. I thought ghosts didn't have reflections."
Thor2000: "That's vampires."
Dabbott: "There's a difference? Okay, well, anyway, all this time she's popping up, I'm thinking she's just a real person slipping out and in. I had extra locks put it, but that night as I'm trying to sleep, she appears standing over me in bed and screaming at me to get out. One track mind this one. Her squeaky cartoon voice was annoying!!"
Thor2000: "And she always appears in the corporeal sense? This sounds like a very interestingly active and lively apparition."
Dabbott: "Yeah, well she walked out fading away into nothing. That's when I realized Little Miss Stick-Up-Her-Ass had to be something... dare I say it, out of the mind of Stephen King. So I started suspecting something was up, and got a lot of books on the occult from some stoner at the bookstore. A lot of them are full of crap. Playing on Little Miss Perfect Obsessive Controlling Disorder, I did a test and placed a beer on the table without a coaster to tick her off. It was good and wet. Next thing I know, she's back! It worked!!!"
Thor2000: "You're kidding, right? I've never heard of any similar case where anyone could remotely force a ghost to appear."
Dabbott: "Anyway, I started to try and get her to go into the light, but she wouldn't do it. I was actually able to push her through the wall and out of the building, but she popped up behind me again. If she was solid enough that I could touch her, why did she still go through the wall?"
Thor2000: "Maybe you surprised her. Ghost tap into ectoplasm, a theoretical psychokinetic substance created by by the psychic energies of human beings which ghosts uses to gain substance or to become visible, otherwise they're pretty intangible and invisible all the time. Maybe each time she appeared to you corresponded to how long she could build up enough energy to make herself known. At the Stoddard House in Illinois, a female phantom was able to appear many times over in size."
Dabbott: "You really understand this stuff, don't you?"
Thor2000: "Most of it is based on my theories, but the fact that she seems so ticked off suggests she wants you out."
Dabbott: "But it's my apartment!"
Thor2000: "True, but to her, she was there first and you're the invader. It happens a lot. You won't believe how many cases I've been to where ghosts are stirred up because of restoration or renovation. Have you done anything else to tick her off? You haven't tried exorcising her have you?"
Dabbott: "I had a few people in. Some Chinese ladies used incense to try and drive her off, but they set off the smoke detectors. There was some ghost-busting guys, but they didn't seem professional or realistic. They focused on some energy in an ashtray on the coffee table, but she just seemed to appear in the hallway laughing her head off. All the priest did was scream at the wall, and he didn't even stay long enough to mop up his mess."
Thor2000: "I'd be careful of the majority of psychics and so-called ghost-hunters. Some of them are crackpots or religious nuts without any indication of what they're truly getting into. Jason Hawes of TAPS and I discussed this at length in a radio interview in Chicago."
Dabbott: "So, what can I do? I want her out or at least to stop harassing me."
Thor2000: "The usual thing most people do is try to "make a deal" with the ghosts to be able to live together. I highly recommend it because you can get used to the behavior. My family has been living with spirits for several generations. Some people resort to exorcism when manifestations are especially active, but I don't encourage it because it can and will make things worse in the long run. I think its because the portal between worlds is like a revolving door. I knew an Ohio case where a peaceful spirit was sent into the afterlife and a previously unknown violent spirit stayed behind. In the rare cases where the spirits are violent. Exorcism is the only way and MUST be done by sanctioned members of the Catholic Church, but there's been cases of the ritual being done by Tao priests and even Native American shamans and medicine men. To tell the truth, just from what you've told me, she seems more "alive" than anything else I've heard about. She could be linked to you. Could she possibly be a visual hallucination than a ghost? Has anyone else seen her?"
Thor2000: "David?"
Dabbott: "Whoa, when I was reading your last message, her reflection popped up behind me on my monitor as if she was reading over my shoulder. I just looked round, but nothing's there. Her reflection vanished too."
History: Not much is known about the location, but it is generally believed the apartment house was built on the surviving portion of a mansion left over from the 1907 earthquake.
Identity of Ghosts: David had no success in identifying the spirit.
Investigations: During an examination of poltergeist activity in the Chill Grill Restaurant in San Francisco, William Collins met and talked with David Abbott and his fiancée, Dr. Elizabeth Masterson in person about the alleged haunting. They both confirmed that "the ghost was out of the building," but housing records indicates that Masterson was the original owner of the apartment that David was renting. Masterson also candidly mentioned in passing that she was recovering from a car accident while David was living in her space. Given her resemblance to the "ghost," is it possible that her spirit was returning to her apartment while she was convalescing? It is far more likelier that David was having illusions of Elizabeth as part of his concern for her, and he just did not recognize her; his antipathy toward her accident fueling his frustration to her condition. However, it has been also brought to light that David had not met or began dating Elizabeth until AFTER her hospital release despite contradictory claims prior to the fact so it is quite obvious that some aspects of this case will continue to remain unresolved.
Source/Comments: Just Like Heaven (2005), Activity and testimony based almost entirely on the movie except for the aforementioned cases.
Actress Dina Waters (Abby Masterson-Brody) also appeared in "The Haunted Mansion (2003)."
Chill Grill Restaurant from "That's So Raven" Walt Disney Productions
Collinwood, Carolyn Stoddard-Loomis, David Collins and Quentin Collins from "Dark Shadows," Dan Curtis Productions
"the Drumm Barracks in Los Angeles, California" was once featured in a segment on "Unsolved Mysteries," Cosgrove-Meurer Productions