Hollywood (Jan - Oct 1934)

What was the sinister menace that drove Pert Kelton terror-stricken from her home to escape the eerie groans and ghastly scraping of unseen fingers that made her nights hideous? by DOROTHY SPENSLEY Ghosts She Doesn't mind — much. It was the nocturnal groans, the eerie thumpings from the cellar, the ghastly scraping of unseen fingers on plaster walls, that finally drove Pert Kelton out of her eight-room Italian villa. She didn't mind — much, when the electric light switch, with no human aid, clickety-clacked three or four times in the guest chamber, and no light issued from the bulb. In fact, the clickety-clack of the spirit-controlled light switch (she never, pressing the wall device with her own wellmanicured finger, could get a gleam of light from the bulb) became a staccato accompaniment to a witches' festival of strange sound and occurrence. It was only when, at four one dark morning, unearthly groans were thrown up from the cellar, that Pert called the radio police. "I'm not easily frightened, and I'm not any more superstitious than any other person who has been on the stage all her life," said Pert, now snug in her new Hollywood apartment, surrounded on right and left by neighbors, "but I've never had a more horrible time than in the four months that I lived in that perfectly charming house. "All of my life I have wanted a home, and when I saw that stunning house I said to myself 'Here's heaven. Here's what I have always been looking for!' It was lovely. Tall trees— eucalyptus and peppers, all swaying in the wind, and the house standing alone in the center of them. Too much alone. There wasn't a neighbor that I could yell at when it became apparent the place was haunted by ghosts. JUNE, 1934 • "Maybe it was my imagination — but I doubt it. The night of the last earthquake, I lay in bed reading the latest jungle book. I had just reached the part where a leopard and a monkey tangle in a death battle, when the bed started to churn, the furniture began to dance and the walls shook. I was down the hall in two seconds flat, with the sheets and bed clothes draped around me. But that was a natural occurrence, the earthquake. I was convinced that the noises I heard in my lovely villa were supernatural. "The unnatural feeling about the house got on my nerves. I wasn't sleeping at all at night. I got so I'd lie in bed waiting to hear the next sound. Sometimes there would be a groan from deep within the house. Our two bedrooms were on the upper floor, fortunately. But you never caught me with a flashlight in hand peeping around cellar braces to surprise a ghost. "The living rooms and the giant reception hall were filled with authentic Italian antiques. How do I know but what one of the hand-carved credenzas might have been the wedding chest of a Borgia? Perhaps it came from the palace of a political enemy of one of the great poisoners. Perhaps its owner had swallowed a poison administered by a Borgia, had writhed in agony to his eternal grave, and had commanded his immortal soul to haunt the very piece of furniture, elaborately carved and beautifully made, that decorated the living room of my Italian villa. "I don't know, but I do know that mother and I stood four months of ghostly torment and then we packed our trunks and left. But not before our house guest, my cousin June Please turn to pnee seventy-three 31