There’s no shortage of ghost stories when it comes to Hollywood. Whether it’s the Knickerbocker or Roosevelt Hotels or the infamous Chateau Marmont, Tinseltown has its fair share of allegedly haunted locales to titillate the curious. So when I read about a couple fleeing their home “on notorious L.A. land where screen goddess Katharine Hepburn once escaped her ‘haunted’ house” and learned that the house was once owned by Boris Karloff—one of my heroes—I just had to know more!
I first heard of the story from an article in The Sun tabloid published on October 30, 2020, titled “House of Horrors, Terrifying Moment ‘Poltergeist Shakes Lamp’ As Couple Flee Home Where Katharine Hepburn Once Escaped ‘Haunted’ House.” The “exclusive footage obtained by The Sun,” shows the lamp in question flicker on and off before one half of the couple, Amanda Michaels, walks over to investigate. As she approaches the lamp, it begins “shaking vigorously with nobody else around.” At this point, Amanda appears to calmly walk back over to the spot where she was sitting, pick up her cell phone and dog, and leave the room.
What immediately caught my attention was that the lamp didn’t shake (vigorously or otherwise) so much as it moved. I had seen objects move in much this same way in demonstrations on YouTube carried out by investigator and CSI Fellow Kenny Biddle using fishing line. I reached out to Kenny to ask his opinion of the video clip, and he agreed to review the video with me. As we watched it, Kenny explained that the lamp in the video has an adjustable upper arm that allows the height of the lamp to be adjusted up or down. The arm is under tension to remain in place once the owner gets it into the desired position. Otherwise, the lamp would either return to its original position or fall to the lowest possible position. Often these types of lamps need to be moved beyond the desired position due to some “spring back,” when older lamps tend to lose proper tension. If a hidden line were being used to move the lamp down, the likely attachment point would be just under the lightbulb socket. This allows the line to pull the lamp straight down, taking advantage of how the lamp was engineered to move. The lamp is displaying the “spring back” motion mentioned above, which is why it moves back up each time it is pulled down.
At the thirty-eight-second mark, the lamp actually moves with such force that you can see the base lift up. This is an important clue as to what direction the force acting on the lamp is coming from. One side of the base lifts up because force is being exerted on the opposite side. Biddle told me: “And since its only being moved in one direction … its most likely fishing line.” Judging from which side of the base lifted up, assuming that something like fishing line was used to move the lamp, we can determine that the force was being exerted from across the room. In the video we can see something like a tray that wraps around the arm of the couch that’s in the foreground, which would provide a perfect cover if a line were being used to pull the lamp. Because I wasn’t there, I can’t say for sure whether or not what we see in the video is the lamp being moved by fishing line or genuine poltergeist activity. However, considering there are many videos online demonstrating just how easily and effectively fishing line can be used to achieve a similar effect, it seems more likely than the alternative that what we’re seeing is the lamp being moved by a ghost.
By far the most interesting claim related to the house was the story that actress Katharine Hepburn sincerely believed it was haunted. Specifically, the Sun article states that Hepburn “fled her luxury mansion—convinced the multi-million-dollar property was haunted.” That’s a fascinating story if true. However, there was no indication of where this story came from. Most biographical information I read about Hepburn failed to mention the story. Also, it wasn’t clear to me whether the house shown in the video was in fact previously owned by both Katharine Hepburn and Boris Karloff. The article claims that “The couple live in Coldwater Canyon, on the same site where Hollywood actress Hepburn fled her luxury mansion—convinced the multi-million-dollar property was haunted,” as well as claiming that “the couple live next door to a famous home previously owned by Hollywood actor Boris Karloff.” I decided this story could actually be broken down into several smaller mysteries: first, whether or not it was true that both Hepburn and Karloff owned the same house, and whether or not this was the same house that the Michaels lived in. Second, whether Katharine Hepburn actually believed the house was haunted. Third, whether Katharine Hepburn “fled her luxury mansion” and “escaped” from her “haunted” house” because she believed it was haunted.
Fortunately, details about the property Hepburn and Karloff previously owned are publicly available and easily accessible. According to an article in Harper’s Bazaar, the house in question is at 2320 Bowmont Drive, Beverly Hills. According to Zillow, the house was built in 1927 and previous inhabitants “included Katharine Hepburn and Boris Karloff.” This confirms that both Katharine Hepburn and Boris Karloff indeed owned the same house. However, the question still remains whether or not that house is the same one the Michaels currently live in.
The photographs of the house at 2320 Bowmont Drive listed by both Harper’s Bazaar and Zillow didn’t match those of the Michaels’ house in the Sun article. That presents a bit of a problem if the claim is that the house is “on the same site” as the house previously owned by Katharine Hepburn. Because the article also claims that the Michaels’ “live next door to a famous home previously owned by Hollywood actor Boris Karloff,” I decided to look at the houses neighboring 2320 Bowmont Drive. After checking all the adjacent properties, I was able to find several photographs from Redfin.com that matched both the interior and exterior layout of the Michaels’ property as depicted in the Sun article, revealing that their house is actually located at 2350 Bowmont Drive. Additionally, according to the real estate information listed on Redfin.com, the house at 2350 was built in 1956. Therefore, it is indeed next door to the home of Boris Karloff. However, the claim that it was also the house previously owned by Katharine Hepburn is inaccurate. Not only is it a completely different house, but it was built several decades after the house both Hepburn and Karloff owned.
But the question remains as to whether or not Katharine Hepburn did believe the house she occupied, located at 2320 Bowmont Drive—not 2350—was haunted. I reached out to Stephen Jacobs, author of Boris Karloff: More Than a Monster, the biography authorized by the Karloff estate, and Mr. Jacobs was gracious enough to confirm that Karloff purchased the house at 2320 Bowmont Drive from Virginia Barnard, a friend of his wife, Dorothy, on March 31, 1934. When I asked Mr. Jacobs if he was familiar with the story that Katharine Hepburn had believed the house was haunted, he said yes and showed me a copy of Modern Screen, a fan magazine from 1936, in which a story ran that:
Katharine Hepburn once lived in a house which, according to rumors, was haunted. One room was said to be so filed with moans and sighs that the Hepburn dogs would not venture across its threshold. Eventually La Hepburn moved out, and today the house is occupied by guess whom? No fooling, it’s inhabited by Boris Karloff and rumor has it that when he moved in the ghosts walked out. After the first night they were convinced the house was haunted!
A similar story also ran in the February 22, 1936, edition of the Tulsa Daily World:
Ghosts in Hollywood. Well, I’ve heard everything. Boris Karloff, who now lives in the house formerly occupied by Katherine Hepburn, and which she told all of her friends was haunted, is waiting for the ghosts. Katie said one room was so filled with groans and shrieks and moans that a dog wouldn’t cross the threshold, and it is in this room that Boris sleeps. So far, the ghosts are apparently his friends and haven’t bothered him in the least” (Parsons 1936)
This confirms that the rumors about the house are at least not a modern invention but were circulating around the time that Katharine Hepburn had already moved out and Boris Karloff had moved in. A more detailed account of the rumor is found in Gregory William Mank’s Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff: The Expanded Story of a Haunting Collaboration. Discussing the year 1935, Mank says:
For Karloff, home was his Mexican farmhouse—a bizarre aerie, high amidst the oak trees and honeysuckle of Coldwater Canyon, in the mountains above Beverly Hills. Twenty-three twenty Bowmont Drive, with its pool and beautiful, rambling gardens, previously had been the address of Katharine Hepburn. The actress sincerely believed a ghost haunted the house, moving the furniture, jiggling the latch on Ms. Hepburn’s bedroom door and looming over the guest bed—so terrifying Hepburn’s brother Richard that he couldn’t sleep “one single night” during his visit. After “Kate’s” friend Laura Harding tried to have her dogs ferret out the ghost—to no avail—Hepburn vacated, and Boris and Dorothy had moved into the haunted hacienda in the spring of 1934. (Mank 2009, 227)
I reached out to Mr. Mank asking him for clarification as to where he had gotten this information from. Mr. Mank kindly responded that he had first read about the “ghost” in Charle’s Higham’s biography, Kate. By far, Higham’s biography contained the most detailed account of the story I have been able to find. According to Higham, Kate’s maid, Joanna, began to notice furniture in the unoccupied and locked guest apartment having been moved during the summer of 1933. Actress Eve March, whom Higham describes as a “close-friend and stand in … had seen the latch on Kate’s bedroom door moving for no apparent reason” (Higham 1975, 49). Both Kate and Eve found no one on the other side of the door and, terrified, Kate called her friend Laura Harding. It will be important later to note that when Katharine Hepburn moved into the house at Coldwater Canyon, she was living there with Laura, but during this particular event, Laura was staying with her family in New England. When Laura suggested they call the police, Kate allegedly refused, not wanting to attract the publicity.
Laura did eventually come back to Coldwater Canyon and brought her dogs to try and flush out the supposed ghost. No intruder, spectral or otherwise, was found. When Kate’s brother, Richard, came to visit, Kate put him up in the guest room. After a week, Richard allegedly told Kate, “There’s something the matter with this house. I haven’t slept one single night since I’ve been here. I’ve had the feeling someone is standing at the foot of the bed looking down at me” (Higham, 1975, 50). After Karloff bought the house, Higham quotes Laura directly as saying, “We felt rather sorry for the ghost.”
This information immediately cast doubt, in my mind, on the claim that Katharine Hepburn “fled” from the house because it was haunted. If Hepburn sincerely believed her house was haunted and that furniture within the guest room was moving on its own—and this bothered her enough that she would eventually move out of the house—why would she have put her brother up in that very same room? It would seem more likely that, perhaps some things did happen that Kate and Laura interpreted as being strange that they believed could be due to the activities of a poltergeist, but their belief in their house being haunted never escalated to the point of their feeling unsafe within the house.
Curiously, despite claiming in his book’s acknowledgments that he “talked not only to Kate herself, but … her friends and colleagues” (Higham, 1975, ix), Higham does not quote Hepburn herself talking about her house having been haunted. That being the case, I believe it’s reasonable to assume that the information Higham relates regarding the story didn’t come from Hepburn herself. In fact, the only person Higham quotes directly is Laura, which leads me to believe that she was the person who provided the details. Fortunately, Katharine Hepburn did in fact have something to say about the matter. In the autobiography Me: Stories of My Life, Hepburn described what it was like living at Coldwater Canyon with Laura and her boyfriend at the time, Leland Hayward:
We—Laura and I—had moved from a house in Franklin Canyon to a house in Coldwater Canyon. This one had a swimming pool and a tennis court. Quite a lot of property. With Leland about, the house was a bit crowded but fun. We always thought it was haunted. My brother Dick came out to visit us and said he felt that someone would come and stand at the foot of his bed and watch him. There were strange noises. It was an odd house built up the side of a hill, so that although the master bedroom was up the hill from the living room, it was also on the ground floor. (Hepburn 1991, 185)
After a brief digression, Hepburn tells us “Then later in 1934, Laura and I moved into the Fred Niblo house on the top of Angelo Drive above Benedict Canyon.”
Hepburn confirmed the story that her brother, Richard, stayed briefly at the house and believed that someone was watching him from the foot of his bed. She also confirmed that both she and Laura believed the house was haunted. All that remains is the question of whether or not Katharine Hepburn moved out of the house because of her belief that it was haunted. Hepburn’s version of events in Me is lacking in the more sensational details found in both Modern Screen and Higham’s biography. One would think, if her experiences in the house at Coldwater Canyon had been as remarkable as the rumors, they would’ve left more of an impression. Most importantly, Hepburn writes of her moving out in a relaxed and casual tone. One does not get the sense there was any urgency on her part to leave. This is further corroborated in the biography Katharine Hepburn by Sheridan Morley and Barbara Leaming, where they relate that:
Kate once told John Ford that in Los Angeles she preferred to live with no one at her back. Quinta Nirvana, her old place in Coldwater Canyon, had been too small for three people, so she rented a much larger house, perched at the top of Angelo Drive in Beverly Hills; at night the city spread out in the distance like many thousands of fireflies. To reach the property, you ascended a long, steep, narrow, treacherous road, with many sharp turns, off Benedict Canyon. (Leaming and Morley 1995, 297)
The Michaels have stated they plan to invite paranormal investigators into their home before having both a séance and a blessing performed on the house. I wish them the best of luck and am curious to see whether anything further transpires. Whatever experiences they have in the house certainly have nothing to do with either Katharine Hepburn or Boris Karloff because neither of them ever lived in or owned the house. As for the story regarding Katharine Hepburn, the most likely, reasonable, and prosaic explanation as to why she moved out of the house at 2320 Bowmont Drive, which then became Boris Karloff’s home, is that it simply wasn’t big enough for herself, her best friend, and her beau at the time to all live together. Considering that none of the articles, biographies, or Laura Harding, or even Hepburn herself claimed that the reason they moved out of the house was due to it being haunted, I believe it’s safe to say that the claim that Katharine Hepburn “escaped” or “fled” from her house in Coldwater Canyon simply isn’t true.
References
- Parsons, L. 1936. Ghosts in Hollywood. Tulsa Daily World (February 22).
- Mank, G. 2009. Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff: The Expanded Story of a Haunting Collaboration. North Carolina. McFarland & Company.
- Higham, C. 1975. Kate: The Life of Katharine Hepburn. New York. W.W. Norton & Company.
- Hepburn, K. 1991. Me: Stories of My Life. New York. The Random House Publishing Group.
- Leaming, B., and S. Morley. 1995. Katharine Hepburn. New York. Crown Publishers.