GARTHE MANOR
Location: Garthe Manor is a part of the Garthe Botanical Park and Gardens at 1325 Kimberly Drive near Redlands, California, six miles south of San Bernardino, California east of Los Angeles.
Description of Place: Resting on six acres of paths, gardens and lily ponds around a French Renaissance veranda, Garthe Manor is a 7,000 square foot three story chateau of Victorian architecture two miles outside of Redlands. Its most unique features include a French-revival parlor with period furniture, damask wall coverings, parquet floors and a grand staircase. Virtually untouched since it was built, there is gas fixtures, no electricity and no telephones. Surrounded by a wrought-iron fence, the location is adequately cooled by a series of caves, tunnels and rooms under the foundation.
Ghostly Manifestations: Upon a visit to Garthe Manor, one does not think of the darker history of the location. It's a palatial estate befitting the wealthy and elite, surrounded by gardens, a labyrinth of hedges, paths around and over ponds, and a home for flamingos, peacocks, ducks, frogs, goldfish and even the odd crow or wandering albatross. Guests can get their pictures taken on the vast estate and grounds overlooking beautiful colorful gardens or even finagle an overnight stay in one of the grand rooms on site. However, few guests are quick to discuss their experiences when night creeps over the area, shadows creep over darkened corridors and the only sound to be heard is the screech of the exotic birds.
That is, if it is indeed the birds.
Garthe Manor has a darker more bloodstained past filled with stories of murder, elegance, pride, vengeance and even loss of innocence. Samantha Barton is the head of extra-curricular activities for the house; she's the one to find for booking the house or grounds for weddings, family reunions, proms or even a Halloween ghost story session. Often joined by Daphne Blair, her assistant, she has been witness to incidents of "unique or uncommon happenstance" that lack explanation. She has felt the cold chill on her neck, the odd touch of fingers to her waist and had the sensation of being touched. Candles she has blown out sometimes relight themselves. Priceless objects on display turn up in odd places. Objects like I-pods and cellular phones vanish and are never recovered. One visitor calling her errant cell phone heard it ringing somewhere under the house before it stopped altogether and answered by a "skittish and nervous" female echo.
"Do I think the place is haunted?" Blair shifts and postures with a toss of long red hair. "I never grew up believing in that stuff, but here... Things happen for which I can't find answers."
For a better array of ghost stories from the site, one only needs to locate the groundskeeper, Walt Van Patten. Retired military with twenty years of landscaping experience, he heads a staff of eighteen men covering and cleaning the six acres, but every once in a while he counts an inexplicable nineteen figure whose identity has so far eluded him.
"On occasion..." The heavy set African-American wipes his bald head. "I'll be laying sod or trimming hedges and I'll see this gray figure passing beyond the gardens. I think it's female because guys don't move like that. She glides up there over the portico, looks over and then pulls back to the house. I wouldn't say she looks real, she looks real enough, but just... off, as if the air around her is out of whack."
The female apparition has been more often heard but not felt from the second and third floor. Samantha Barton was making wedding preparations in the parlor in June of 2005 when she and several guests all heard together the sound of footsteps upstairs along with a random scratching and prodding noise, such as a person with a crutch. She sent two employees to find who was roaming around unattended, but they returned without anyone with them. Less than ten minutes later, the sounds started up again, coming back along the same path and started coming to the staircase. Samantha stood on the bottom landing and waited, but no one came into view.
"The female apparition has been seen several times on the second floor, sometimes even heard hobbling the top landing with some sort of crutch." Daphne Blair reports on the hauntings. "One Halloween, we had a film crew here doing recreations of the murders for a Halloween special and the young lady playing Margaret was so unnerved by sounds in her vicinity that she missed her cue. Afterward, the crew reported they had to cut out almost seventy percent of their footage because of odd sounds on the audio. I kind of wonder thinking back that the ghosts took offense of their tragedies being recreated on camera for entertainment values."
"In 1998, Jenny Neumann was the head of extra-curricular activities here before Samantha..." Blair continues. "She believed in ghosts and claimed to be just a bit sensitive as well. Well, shortly before she departed, she was leading a tour down the back stairs and she and the six people with her came down and came face to face with a strange girl in a long gray dress leaning on the bottom rail and staring straight up at them. According to Jenny, she seemed just as scared of her and the guests as she was, as if they were the invaders or something. This girl just faded away from in front of them, but Jenny lead the guests back the way they had come and down the front stairs.
"Besides the ghosts, we have portraits of several Garthe family patriarchs in the grand hall." She points to the grand hall to the top of the stairs. "Several people looking upon the portrait of Raymond Garthe claim to have seen the expression of his face change. He looks like a fierce and sinister character in the painting, but several guests report his expression lightens up and becomes more tragic, like a man haunted by the sins of his past.
"What's weird about that is we've had several female guests suddenly break down and start sobbing in the parlor for no apparent reason. If you're not familiar with the story of the hauntings, the parlor was where Raymond Garthe posed and left his family before he committed suicide.
"Another thing about this place," Blair replies in her tour. "Cameras don't work inside. You can take decent pictures anywhere on side on the grounds, but once you get inside Garthe Manor, things happen. I'd advised this to out patrons who want weddings in the mansion, but every time its the same thing. Photos come out washed out or obscured by shapes and floating masses of light or strange masses of colors. The batteries in handheld cameras quickly go dead. I don't get it."
In August of 2007, there was a big wedding in the courtyard between the hedge maze and the gardens. There was over three hundred people, caterers, attendants, photographers and assorted guests. Jimmy Byron, who chronicles the photographic history of events as Garth Manor was snapping pictures and working a small digital camera. As he later reviewed his video footage, he noticed a male figure standing at the entrance to the hedge maze, but in a quick pan back over, the figure was gone, vanishing in a splinter of a second. He checked the footage several times, but there was not enough time for a figure to vanish.
"His look, his built, his appearance..." Burton replies having seen the footage. "They all match up with Peter Bennett, the Alpha Sigma Rho president in 1981 who was responsible for the new wave of murders."
History: Behind the grand home and extraordinary grounds, the Garthe family had a side that never reached the knowledge of the world beyond the front gates. Descendants of Virgil Garthe, the man who built the house in 1850, Raymond Garthe married his first cousin, Lillian Garthe, on the advice of his father to keep the family fortune in the family. She had four children, Morris, Suzanne, Margaret and Andrew, all in various stages of Down's syndrome and mental retardation. Embarrassed by his progeny, Raymond withdrew his family from the eyes of the world, living with them for fourteen years. In 1969, he snapped from the strain and lashed out violently. Forensic evidence revealed he attacked Lillian first, strangling her to death and then beating Morris over the head with the fire place poker and impaling deaf, mute and blind Suzanne with the same poker. He then took Margaret and slit her throat. Whether he spared Andrew by chance or had used up his strength to kill him is unknown. What is known is that in a moment of clarity over what he did, he posed all the bodies in the parlor then confessed his deeds in a note proclaiming his guilt and sins before ascending the staircase and hanging himself from the top landing. Oddly, when police examined the scene, neither Andrew nor Morris were anywhere to be found. Possibly, Andrew discovered his brother still alive and nursed him to life in one of the hidden rooms under the house. Left alone to their own thoughts, they fended by living off animals they trapped and caught on the property, but they managed to stay hidden for several years. meanwhile, the lurid rumors and legends of the house and built up a bit of a reputation around the house. Alpha Sigma Rho fraternity at nearby Redlands State College, under fraternity president Peter Bennett, began using the location for annual hazing rituals on the anniversary of the murders. Although having managed to elude Morris and Andrew for several years, in 1981, the brothers lashed out violently, killing all but one of the co-eds. Morris was shot and killed by a random shotgun blast into the darkness by a scared pledge and Andrew was later found impaled on the fence while holding on to the car of the fleeing survivor. New searches on the estate for the dead students discovered the disinterred bodies of the long dead Garthe family in the catacombs under the house where they were reposed.
Three years after the renewed police investigation, Garthe Manor was in the news again as developers wanted to raze the house for developing, but members of the San Bernardino County Preservation Society resisted. Chief opposition came from the relatives of the murdered students. The house eventually fell under the custody of the state park department when nearby Prospect Park extended its borders. The rest of the land was sold to developers.
Today, Garthe Manor hosts as many as fifty weddings, two hundred private parties and over twenty-five hundred guests a year as well as serving as a random location shoot for TV and the motion pictures. Most guests enjoy its paths, gardens and grounds while hearing the aspects of its more lurid and dark past.
Identity of Ghosts: Instead of one female ghosts with two different characteristics, it seems possible that witnesses are seeing revenants of both Margaret and Suzanne Garthe. According to records, Suzanne was born with one twisted leg a bit short than the other and despite often dressed in her finest attire, she used a wood brace to help expedite her movement through the house. Unlike Margaret, she was partially literate, though she never regressed further than the intelligence of an five-year old child, as according to Sondra Foxworthy, one of the few surviving Garthe relatives. Her sister, Crystal Engvall, a financial consultant in nearby Marlowe, California, has all the Garthe family genealogy records and archives.
As far as the male figure, Peter Bennett was the Alpha Sigma Rho president who locked the pledges into the estate back in 1981 using keys belonging to mother, Sabrina Bennett, whose realty company owned the property. He later returned with May Garland and Scott Flannigan, two other accomplices with battery-powered special effects, to meet the same fate as the pledges. May's spirit has been reported in the study. A figure resembling Scott has been seen peeking inside a second floor window. There is no ledge up there for a person to stand.
Source/Comments: Hell Night (1981) Locale architecture based on Kimberly House in Redlands, California where the movie was filmed. Hauntings based on the Vineyard House in Coloma, California, the Stanley House in Garden Grove, California and Los Angeles County Arboretum in Arcadia, California.
Marlowe, California (fictional city) from "Out of This World" (1987-1991)