Burn After Reading
How a middle-of-the-night house fire opened my eyes and the haunted lady who started it. Plus, Rock Hudson and the gay brothel's of Hollywood in the 1960's.
It was the kind of house parents would warn their children about, crossing the street while trick-or-treating to avoid the place we all knew was haunted.
Distressed teal, two stories and full of secrets, the vine-clad porte cochere welcomed distinguished guests for decades prior to the events of that morning. Built in 1914 by Ernest H. Bogusch, Rock Hudson found himself wandering these halls one too many times before Universal Studios eventually banned him from the premises under threat of cancelling his contract. The quintessential craftsman had become a gay brothel in the 1960’s and Mr. Hudson was not publicly homosexual. Prior to that, the Hell’s Angels had commandeered the property in the 1950’s before it was eventually sold to the Creshman family in the early 1970’s. They sold the property to a developer in 2022. In 2023, an explosion in the butler’s pantry began what took seventy firefighters nearly two hours to extinguish.
“My first home in Hollywood” written on a picture taken by Ernest H. Bogusch of the home he built in 1914.
Fire has an incredible ability to reset things, of cleansing. As my neighbors and I watched the flames engulf the spook house in our pajamas at 4 o’clock in the morning, there were morning-breath murmurs of difficult real estate developers and their plan to avoid the historical society’s regulations by starting the fire. I knew better though. I knew it was because of her.
Above: the original owner’s daughter (14) next to what would become the large tree on the left (below)
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