SPIRIT TALES AND MAGIC
Our host; Dr.G had his first paranormal experience at only eight years old. With over five decades of storytelling, magic and paranormal story collection he is an award winning story teller on a mission to revive firelight and the telling of stories!
SPIRIT TALES AND MAGIC
From Salem's Spells to Hollywood's Haunts
Have you ever felt the eerie touch of the unseen world, nudging you with whispers and premonitions? Join us as we recount our haunting adventures from Salem’s spirited festivities, where the air is thick with history and mystical allure. Our journey begins with a cautionary tale likening the vibrant energy of Salem’s Halloween to Mardi Gras, sharing my spine-tingling experience at a séance. We unravel the mysteries behind the Harlow Byrne House in Benedict Canyon, a place stained by tragedy and spectral whispers. From the chilling fates of its past residents, including Paul Byrne and Jay Sebring, to actress Sharon Tate's haunting premonition, we explore how these spectral warnings tie the past to the present.
As we gear up for our Rhode Island road trip, we promise to bring you tales from our travels, hoping to share both the thrills and lessons learned from our adventures. Offering practical advice for fellow wanderers, we prepare you for Salem’s bustling Halloween atmosphere, filled with costumes and ghost stories. Embrace the spooky spirit, join us in our journey, and stay tuned for more haunted tales and travel insights. Whether you’re a seasoned traveler or a ghost story enthusiast, this episode invites you to explore the shadows of history with curiosity and open ears.
There is indeed a world unseen, a world that exists all around us all the time and every now and again, for whatever the reason, we catch a glimpse of it and the dead get in. Good afternoon everybody. It's Dr G, spirit, tales and Magic. I hope your afternoon is going well and if you're amongst a few thousand of our best friends who are attending Salem for the next few nights or you may even be there now be careful, be aware of your CDL. There are pickpockets in the crowd, just like at New Orleans when Mardi Gras happens. So if you haven't been to Salem at this time of year, there's a huge influx of people. It's like Mardi Gras with witches, if you will. We were in Salem a couple of times already. We were at a seance, and this is not the type of seance where they try and specifically target a person, like we're not going to attempt to bring back your dead uncle, pete the sailor with one arm, that kind of thing. It's more like a cold reading where the medium, who was a practicing witch, will go and in my case, I have a message for you. Is it your mom that's passed? So she gives you the message and she goes on.
Speaker 1:Being a somewhat perceptive guy. I got some ideas of my own and toward the end of this day on site, I was able to. She was kind enough to allow me the floor for just a few moments and I added some things that I felt Afterwards. People were talking a lot about premonitions. Are premonitions always a warning? If you have a dream that you're going to stub your toe at 4.30 on Friday, does that actually mean that that event will occur? I've had a lot of premonitions in my life. Some came true, some did not. I do believe that some of them were warnings. Some of them were warnings and while I didn't alter the course of my life tragically because of any of them, it did make me pay attention to what was going on around me, perhaps a little bit more. And you know how they say the show writes itself. So I was thinking back on premonitions and what's going to come in the future, that sort of thing. There's a story and some of this I have written down on old, torn up scraps of paper and some of it comes out of my head. So if it gets a little stumbly, I'll apologize for that. This. If it gets a little stumbly, I'll apologize for that this.
Speaker 1:They call this one of Hollywood's most haunted houses. It's up in the hills above Los Angeles and it's in Benedict Canyon. It's a 1930 craftsman-style house that was once home to one of Hollywood's biggest stars. From the outside it's got stone stairways and some honeycomb glass big towering turret Kind of makes the house look like it was plucked from a fairy tale or maybe even a movie script. But it's commonly referred to as the Harlow Byrne House. I believe that sits at 9820 Easton Drive and it might look like a fairy tale castle, but it's kind of just the opposite of that.
Speaker 1:The home gets its name from the original owners. That would be actress Jean Harlow and her husband, movie producer Paul Byrne. Those two were married just two months before tragedy struck On. I believe it was September 5th 1932, paul was found dead, single gunshot wound to his head and a .38 caliber revolver in his hand. His body was discovered by the housekeeping staff so instead of calling the police immediately, they called the executives at MGM Studios, which is where Paul worked at the time. Now, his death was ultimately ruled a suicide, but some of the colleagues that he had in the film industry believed that he was actually murdered and that the studio covered it up to save Harlow's career. I can't say either way. Of course I wasn't there. But whichever the case, byrne would not be the last owner of the home to suffer such an untimely
Speaker 1:death. In 1963, the house was sold to celebrity hairstylist Jay Sebring. If you saw a little movie called Shampoo, the character in that movie was based on Jay Sebring, who a year later began dating actress Sharon Tate. Though the couple eventually split, they remained extremely close friends until, tragically, on the night of August, the 8th of 1969, they were murdered by members of the Manson family cult. Sebring, along with coffee heiress Abigail Folger and her boyfriend, had been staying with Tate and her boyfriend had been staying with Tate, who at the time was eight months pregnant, at the 1500 Silo Drive, or Silo Drive, however you want to pronounce it. I don't know if you've heard of it. Either way, that was the home that her and her husband, roland Polanski were renting at the
Speaker 1:time. While these horrific events did not take place at the Harlow Byrne house, an alleged interview with Tate from one year before her death suggests, or may suggest, a chilling connection to the home. I believe it was 1970, fate magazine published an article, and the article was titled Sharon Tate's Preview of Murder, which included an interview between Tate and I believe the journalist's name was Dick Kleiner. In the interview, tate recalls the eerie encounter that she had while she was staying at the Sebring's house. According to Tate, she was awakened in the middle of the night and saw a strange little man in her bedroom. Frightened, she ran out of the room and ran down the stairs where she allegedly saw a figure tied to the stairs with his or her throat
Speaker 1:slit. There's been a lot of speculations that the encounter wasn't a dream, but actually a premonition predicting her and Sebring's heartbreaking fate. Predicting her and Sebring's heartbreaking fate. Though Tate's family and friends vehemently deny that she ever had any such premonition, the article has led many to believe that perhaps the ghost of Paul Byrne returned to the home to try and give a warning of things to happen. To try and give a warning of things to happen and the current owners of the home, who bought the house from Sebring's parents in 1970,. The man there claims that he and his wife have never had any paranormal experiences while living there. But the creepy coincidences are just a little bit impossible to ignore, don't you think? In addition to the unexpected deaths of Byrne and Sebring, and their partners Harlow and Tate, two actresses who captivated Hollywood, both died at the age of 26. Of 26. It's the eerie details like these that really make you wonder. Is this a coincidence, or could the home be
Speaker 1:cursed? Do you have a premonition that you would like to share with us? I can tell you that several years ago, katya Palets and I were going to the world's greatest bar. That was in the Old World Trade Center in New York City. It was my favorite bar on the planet. It was a bar and restaurant, but you could get a window seat and literally you're sitting in the window. The piece of floor beneath your feet is glass and to your right is glass. You're just hanging out there looking at the city. It's an incredible view, so we're going to do that. It's a very popular place, even with reservations. You are going to wait, so we're waiting for the elevator, and the elevator is crammed full of
Speaker 1:people. Now, I don't have a fear of elevators. What I have is a big dislike for being sandwiched into a bunch of people that I don't know and sharing their space so tightly that you feel like it's a group hug. Not that there's anything wrong with a group hug if that's what you're looking for. So we decided to hang out and wait for the next elevator. A man from four or five people behind us screams hold that door. And he's running. And as he runs by me, all the hair on my body stands up. All the hair on my body stands up and I see him as just a kind of a blob of blackness as he dives into the elevator and the door
Speaker 1:closes. Kathy is, how rude is that? And I'm going on about that. I'm like quiet, quiet, quiet. There was a security guard there and I'm like can you recall that elevator? Can you get it back down here? No, and why would I want to do that? There's something wrong with that guy. He's going to do something very bad up there. We need to get up there. So he keys another elevator and we start up the elevator. And we start up, the door opens just in time for us to hear a gunshot. As well as being one of those people who have the right to remain silent but never have the capability, I am one of those people who tend to run toward the gunfire sometimes. Kiss amber wishes. I didn't do that. I'm trying, trying to break that, but it's just not working.
Speaker 1:Now. The details of that entire story are going to be another podcast, so we're not going to spend another hour talking about it, but I'll give you the Reader's Digest version. Nobody was hurt, except a man who shot the gun. His injuries were from being tackled by myself, the security guard and one other guy and being set on by all of us until NYPD got. But that was a premonition. I knew 100% that he was going up there to do something very bad. People have experienced premonitions in many different ways. Let's take my buddy the Mothman. Let's take my buddy the Mothman. Some people say he's a cryptid. Some people say he's some kind of interdimensional being. But a lot of people claim that he appears before a tragedy to try and scare people away, to warn them of said tragedy. So what's your premonition story? Go out to the site. There are several ways that you can share that with us and you know we would just love to hear
Speaker 1:it. Cassandra and I will be traveling to Rhode Island tomorrow and then we'll be back here. We're not going into the details of how we got here and the places we stayed and everything we've done on the road, yet that will be a podcast when Doctober's over and we're back in the office, and some of that will be strictly to warn our fellow travelers so they don't make some of the same mistakes that we made. And we're going to run back to Salem here for just a minute for public service. We have a lot of new friends in Salem, public service. We have a lot of new friends in Salem. And if you haven't been to Salem in the Halloween time of the year, think of Mardi Gras and very crowded streets and you will see a lot of interesting sights. Some of the costumes that I've seen so far have been positively stellar. So if you don't mind big crowds of people and waiting a long time to eat and doing things like that, you'd want to check that
Speaker 1:out. Thank you everybody for listening, for sharing, for sending in your stories and you know we'll talk tomorrow. But hey, get a group of friends. And if you're going to Salem, grab a bunch of people when you get there and say, hey, let's tell a ghost story. You will get people who are interested. I'll guarantee it. Tell a ghost story, it's good for you. Good afternoon my friends from just outside of Boston. Dr G, we'll talk tomorrow.
