Description Of Place: Warner Brother Studios is a massive lot of numerous structures over 6,000 to 32,000 square feet including thirty-five sound stages, ranging in size from 6,000 to 32,000 square feet along with numerous facilities, office buildings, prop warehouses, a commissary, sound stages, craft shops and back-lot sets ranging from a Midwest town center to a jungle lagoon on the Studio’s back lot. One of the tallest sets the world, Stage 16 is equipped with a 2,000,000 gallon water tank, which was raised to its current height for the feature “Cain and Mabel” in 1935 and is now one of the favorite stages for large audience shows such as “The Voice.” At any time, there are almost forty soundstages in constant use, and the sheer size of the property practically requires carts used for the lots employees to traverse the property. The studio also provides 2-hour, 15-minute tours for tourists who visit the grounds, peer behind the scenes of movies and TV shows and even spot a random celebrity on the property.

Ghostly Manifestations: Hollywood is considered the land of make-believe, and the denizens that live as part of its imagination factories are well aware of the odd politics and strange bureaucracies that lurk behind the scenes creating our most iconic movies and cherished television realities. So it should come as no surprise that the city is often plagued by the ghosts and phantoms of individuals who both died at the heights of prosperous careers or took their lives after having their dreams crushed by movie producers and overpaid studio officials. Hollywood is not just sowed by the tears of struggling artists but by the blood and sweat of the indigenous people who lived here before Westerners came here in search of gold, political freedom and even to escape the restraints of the law. Is it no wonder that Los Angeles is considered as haunted as Savannah, Charleston or New Orleans of the South.

Several of the local area movie studios are reputed to be haunted by ghosts as much as they are trafficked by actors and actresses. Horror movie maven Lon Chaney Jr. is believed to still visit Stage 28 at Universal Studios where he filmed "The Phantom of the Opera," quite possibly the greatest hit of his career. Famed filmmaker and producer, Thomas Ince, the founder of Culver Studios, is believed to haunt Culver Studios hoping for justice in his mysterious death. The former Desilu Studios at the Paramount lot are also believed haunted, but this is just a very miniscule sample of the hauntings of the area which includes studio hands, forgotten actors, lost lives, members of staff and even former local land-holders.

"On the record..." Security guard Wyatt Colantino mentions. "The staff and personnel are not supposed to talk about the ghosts, but even God knows its hard to keep a secret on this property."

Much of the stories about the Warner Brothers lot have been collected by local film historian and movie buff Rose Doherty, a former child actress from the Late Seventies, who has dabbled in collecting the stories of actors and celebs who have experienced ghosts or lived in the haunted mansions of the Hollywood Hills.

"Both Demi Lovato and Mena Suvari have told me about ghosts from their childhoods." Doherty shines. "During a movie in 2003, actor Charles Shaughnessy shared ghost stories from his haunted estate in England, and after going public with her own haunted house, even entertainer Paula Abdul gave me a tour of her haunted house. Hollywood has a lot of haunted houses, and not all of them are private homes. Several of them you can actually visit."

Case in point, even the grounds of Paramount Studios, the site of several recognizable TV facades and a prominent studio tour, is considered haunted. Doherty believes it has more than its fair share of ghosts due to its proximity to the Hollywood Memorial Park Cemetery. People claim to see a large number of ghosts in the buildings nearest to the cemetery. There are also people who have heard someone knocking on the wall or walking around the building when the building is actually empty. In addition a number of people have experienced equipment malfunctions, especially in Stage 29, 30, 31, and 32.

There are tales told of the entrance at Paramount Studios located on Lemon Grove Avenue nearest to the cemetery. This is where night guards claim to have seen the ghost of legendary actor Rudolph Valentino actually walking out of the cemetery and back onto the Paramount Lot, reporting for work. His apparition is described as looking "very normal, very physical" as he enters the gates, once even asking a guard for a light to his cigarette in the Sixties until vanishing into nothingness. Others have also seen what looks like flesh and blood humans walk right off the lot and disappear into the wall of the cemetery. Some of them look both physical and non-physical. In 1978, actor Peter Vincent drove off the lot after filming scenes for a TV Series, looked to his backseat and discovered a phantom young lady sitting there in Forties attire. Hitting the brake and looking again, he noticed she had vanished, leaving behind a scent of perfume. She had no legs or lower body from the hips down. 

"I truly believe the Hollywood Hills are haunted." Peter told us during an interview about Mammoth Studios. "You can't discount all the stories because there's just so many of them, and new ones being told every day." 

Another story is told about the Hart Building on the Paramount Lot. According to local stories there's a female ghost in this building that some people have actually seen, though she only appears to men and not women. People claim she makes her presence known by a rose scented perfume and isn't above moving things around to get attention.

"I knew a certain young director in 1973, who had approached me about starring in a movie about the life of Nicola Tesla, the obscure inventor." Vincent told the CGS. "We were having a discussion upstairs about the script and how we wanted to do it, when he suddenly realized how late it was and went off to find a phone to call his wife. Now, I was alone for several minutes, maybe no longer than twenty minutes, and I never saw a thing, but he returns and asks me, "Who was that young lady I was talking with?" I said, "What lady?" He goes on to tell me that as he was coming back that he heard voices of people in discussion and as he got closer to the room I was in, which is a large employee break room used for script read-throughs and sometimes impromptu rehearsals and auditions, that he saw this young lady come drifting out in period-dress, maybe Late Forties to Early-Fifties, glance at him then turn away down the corner, and I had never seen such a person much less talked to one. I was just here smoking my pipe, deep in thought and jotting ideas to bring up for the film, and he comes in asking who the young lady was. He described her as a very attractive young doe-eyed blonde lady, which is a shame because I would really have liked to to see her for myself."

Ironically, the Hart Building is named for old Silent Film Western star William S. Hart, a prominent actor in the Twenties and Thirties well-known for his Westerns of the time. Hart's ghost has been seen several times in the living room of his old house, now part of the William S. Hart Park and Museum in Santa Clarita, where he has been seen sitting and smoking while reading the newspaper. He has also been seen sitting on his bed there and pulling off his boots. Rudolph Valentino's spirit has been seen and felt at all of his old homes as well as near his grave at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Marilyn Monroe is also entombed in her mausoleum here while her spirit returns to her old house on Wedgewood Drive and even to relive happier memories at both the Hollywood Roosevelt and Knickerbocker Hotels.

Over at Warner Brothers Studios, the ghosts seem to be a more darker menagerie of spirits seemingly content to terrify the living. Even Vincent calls them a darker lot, "not as distant as the ghosts of the Paramount lot or as playful as the spirits at Universal."

"At Warner Brothers Studios, " Doherty reveals. "They have some of the largest prop warehouses in the area full of every conceivable object one might need for a movie, and it is in my opinion that several of these objects are still retaining links with their former owners. The objects have been collected from other studios, old museums, personal donations or collected from private individuals. A few assistants have told me they have been terrified to be in there by themselves. Shadows flit through the shelves, faces watch from overhead and voices whisper from the shadows. People have felt watched in there, and one actress in 1957 looking for a costume fled after seeing a body hanging from a staircase."

Peter Vincent adds: "But then, you can't count the number of tragedies on the property. For a sheer number of activity, you can't ignore Stage 9."

Over the years, Stage 9 has been used to film several popular to notorious horror movies, from "The Black Cat" in 1927 to "The Inheritance" in 2005. Several studio employees and production assistants tend to believe that Stage 9 is the most haunted structure on the lot, pointing to a high count of casualties and accidents there as proof. Rumor has it that people have felt watched here and seeing figures appearing and disappearing on the sidelines of the structure. Back in the days of Silent Movies, the old electric lights used in film-making could get extremely hot and at least three times in the Thirties, fires started here and nearly took over the entire property in flames. The worst was on May 11, 1933 when a fire broke out back stage during the filming of "The Iron Sheik" and took the set, all the costumes, seven lives and critically injured almost twenty people. Attracted to sulfurous powder used to create smoke, it soon spread beyond the soundstage to Stages 8 and 10 where it took part of the set from "The War Between The States," a Civil War movie. The fire was eventually contained and put out, but "The Iron Sheik" was shelved and never finished. For years later, other motion pictures shot in the restored building reported finding extras where no one should be, voices for help from no where and the faint shadows of people vanishing into no where. A disconnected phone in the building is known to ring, but no one is ever on the line.  Even security guard, Gore Madison, doesn't like making rounds in the building, instead sending in novice guards new on the job to walk the structure and check the doors.

"I get the feeling of being watched in there." Madison adds. "It's like you go in expecting to see someone loitering around the corner, but then you turn round and no one's there but the feeling someone is still there won't go away."

Despite the stories and odd reports, Stage 9 still remains active and has been used to shoot scenes for numerous movies and projects, including the "Hell Hazers" trilogy. In April 2007, during the filming of "Hell Hazers II: The Reckoning" filmed inside the building, there were rumors that the cabin sets were haunted by several apparitions. Part of the reason for the hauntings may have been that the movie script contained several actual Latin texts taken from actual tomes on occult rituals.

"I often wonder if the ghosts on the lot take offense at the stories of the occult being filmed here." Screen writer Walt Dixon wonders out loud. "Or because they're former actors, they could they still be trying to get into the business."

Dixon reveals that during the filming of  "Hell Hazers II: The Reckoning" in April of 2007 that there was a high level of "phantom chicanery" occurring on the set. Lights went out, video cameras malfunctioned, an entire set piece came crashing down nearly on top of former soap star Tara Benchley, sections of film came out having caught a strange mist filling the scene.... One shot seemed to show a a young boy in the back ground, echoing the famous "Three Men And A Baby" urban myth. The studio tried shutting down production twice, but studio executive Brad Redding parlayed the activity into publicity for the movie.

"I don't believe in ghosts." Redding told TMZ.. "Never have, never will, but make me five million dollars, and I'll believe in Santa Claus."

What Redding didn't spin to the tabloids was the fact that he was terrified by a spectral young woman in the back stage area. According to Tara Benchley: "During breaks in filming, Redding was often wandering around backstage or in adjacent sets talking on his cell phone. While producer Jay Wiley was giving us instructions, we heard screaming from behind the cabin set and everyone rushed back there to find Redding on the ground, white as a ghost, pardon the pun, and clutching his chest. He's screaming, "Did you see her? Did you see her?" but there's no one around, and we didn't see anyone leave the room. A few seconds of embarrassed surprise later, and he's back up on his feet, fixing his hair, chuckling nervously and looking around for his phone. No one knows what he saw, but he's making jokes about it and nervously looking around."

Doherty believes Redding might have met "Lily," a hauntingly beautiful female specter who has been wandering back stage of Stage 9 since the 1940s. She tends to be attracted to men, coming up to them to get their attention and then viciously trying to strike them. According to rumors, she also tries accepting rides from strangers over to Cahuenga Drive, but no one ever makes the trip. Over time, three actors have had strange accidents near the Riverside Drive intersection after leaving the studio. 

Producer Jay Wiley also encountered activity in Studio 19. According to Tara, he heard voices and whispering sounds when he thought he was alone and watched the studio lights going on and off out of sequence. Tara remarks that this was unusually since they were all on a system of switches and only come on in unison. They can't come on individually. Wiley also described seeing the big fans used on set kick on by themselves, and as he was hurrying off set, he passed a figure staring blankly to the rafters.

"He was dressed in a period outfit, overalls and small t-shirt, like the stagehands from the Thirties and Forties." Wiley adds. "But the side of his head was chopped up and mangled as if he'd been in a car accident. He looked real except he appeared completely disconnected and unaware that I was there."

After "Hell Razers 2," the sets in Stage 9 were torn down and replaced with stage dressing for the short-lived Joey Tribbiani detective drama, "Cleveland Heat." A few months after production wrapped, Tribbiani was on "Celebrity Ghost Stories" telling his experiences.

"The voice of a woman gasping in my ear..." He spoke flatly and spooked. "An invisible hand clutching me by the arm... Having heard the stories of Stage 9, I turned my head this way, and I asked, "Lily?" And when I did, the mirror in my dressing room cracked by itself. I was no where near it, but yet, it shattered by itself."

Between 1997 and 2010, Stage 17 was the home of the day-time drama, "Edge Of Tomorrow," and several of its actors over the years described hearing strange sounds and noises from the set as well as phantom assistants that came and disappeared. As Tribbiani recalls from his month on the series:

"I shared a dressing room with like seventeen other extras and temporary series regulars, and we were constantly seeing this guy in the far chair just sitting and staring into the mirror in the dark." He reports. "We tried chatting it up with this guy, but he never moved, never responded... Eventually, we just figured he was one of those method guys and let him go. You know how they are. Finally, toward my last week on the series, I pulled aside Duke Williams who played my uncle on the show, and asked him, "Hey, what's with this guy in the suit on the far end? What's his deal?" Well, Duke looked at me a bit odd, kind of confused and took me aside and told me about this guy who once worked on the lot in the Sixties. He was supposed to be getting made up for a love scene in a movie with actress Jennifer Farrell. but while he's in the chair, he up and dies of a stroke without making a noise. To this day, he still appears in the chair getting ready for his role and the make-up team keeps that station and chair empty for him, appearing to guys destined for long acting careers... or so I'm told."

History: Warner Brothers Studios were founded in 1918 by the brothers Albert, Harry, Samuel and Jack Warner (Wonskolaser) the sons of Jewish parents who had emigrated to the United States after the subjugation of Poland to the Russian Empire in the 1890s. The three elder brothers had started their careers in the movie theatre business, acquiring a movie projector with which they showed films in the mining towns of Pennsylvania and Ohio. Sam and Albert Warner invested the money to promote the films, "The Life of an American Fireman" and "The Great Train Robbery," opening their first theater, the Cascade, in New Castle, Pennsylvania in 1903.

In 1904, the Warners founded the Pittsburgh-based Duquesne Amusement & Supply Company for the distribution films, but by World War I, they were already producing their own films, eventually opening the Warner Brothers Studio on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood in 1918. Sam and Jack produced the pictures with Harry and Albert Warner and a man named Paul Chase as their auditor who handled finance and distribution in New York City. Their first nationally-syndicated film was "My Four Years in Germany," based on a popular book by former American Ambassador James W. Gerard.

Through the Twenties and the Thirties, Warner Brothers was built up into one of the most prominent motion picture studios of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Directors like Darryl F. Zanuck helped to build the studio's prestige in the area, especially with top actors of the time such as John Barrymore, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and Errol Flynn, and a gradual conversion from silent films to movies with sound. Their movie, "The Jazz Singer," starring Al Jolson, signaled the beginning of the era of "talking pictures" and the twilight of the silent era. However, after the death of Sam Warner, Jack became sole head of production, and in the years to come, he ran the studio with an iron fist, often firing actors, talent and studio employees. Under his control, the studio expanded by acquiring other properties, such as the Stanley Corporation, a major theater chain, and partial and eventual complete shares in rival First National Pictures. Harry's son, Lewis, became manager of Warner Brothers Music, built from Brunswick Records. Today, the studio has expanded into a massive billion dollar company branched out into TV, Cable and Magazine industries all under the Time/Warner Corporation.

Over the years, Warner Brothers Studios developed a broad spectrum of films including musicals, gangster movies, westerns and horror films. They also developed the highly successful Warner Brothers cartoons, which featured iconic characters such as Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck to rival Mickey Mouse and Daffy Duck at Disney Studios. The studio was also a fore-runner in the television industry with stars like Milton Berle and numerous Western-themed and detective TV shows. Concurrently running both motion picture and television projects, like "Lois & Clark" and "Gilmore Girls," the studio became a giant in the entertainment industry, stretching the lot to include several out-door sets and soundstages accessible for tours available to the public. Today, the studio employs over five thousand employees and staff, producing somewhere between two hundred projects in various stages at a time.

Identity Of Ghosts: The ghost of "Lily" is rumored to be the ghost of Elise Drummond, a silent film actress. Born in 1900, Drummond had been born in Elgin, Nebraska and traveled to Hollywood in 1918 to become an actress. Starring in just over a dozen movies in both credited and uncredited roles, she was let off her contract so that the studio could focus on younger actresses, but it was also rumored that was dallying with director Francis Adams (nee Abergnale), who dismissed her. Considered old at thirty-two, Elise hung herself in Stage 9 on January 5, 1932, her body discovered the next day by stagehands. The studio reportedly paid for her burial at Hollywood Memorial Cemetery (now Hollywood Forever Cemetery). She has been seen fleetingly on the premises ever since her death, sometimes in the background of movies and TV shows, using the stage and in the mirrors of the make-up tables, often in a long white dress and with bruising around her neck left over from her hanging. In 2007, her burial site was found desecrated by unidentified vandals. 

Another reputed apparition is the mangled ghost of William "Willie" Beard, a set electrician who was killed in an accident in Stage 9 in 1966. As an electrician, he was replacing the worn circuitry in a wind machine when someone accidentally turned on the power with the lights. The fan blade chopped up the side of of his head and neck when it activated, and by time it was turned off, he was already dead. Witnesses for months after his death thought they saw Willie's spirit loitering in the area where he lost his life, staring down from the cat walks or wandering the hall down alongside the dressing rooms.

Other ghosts include a number of apparitions in period attire from the Forties, and young kids seen running through the long alleys between sets, possibly a hold over from the "Kiddie Comedy" shorts of the Thirties. Voices and strange sounds occur more often than apparitions and shadows. Several witnesses have described poltergeist activity. 

Source/Comments: Supernatural (Episode: Hollywood Babylon) - History and activity based on the actual Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank, California and expanded with cases from Universal Studios, Paramount Studios, Desilu Studios and Occidental Studios in Los Angeles, California.

• Peter Vincent from the movie, Fright Night (1985)
• Joey Tribbiani from Friends (1999-2004)
• Celebrity Ghost Stories (2009-Recent)
• Duke Williams and Ginger Grant from Gilligan's Island (1963-1967)
• Alex Lambert from I'm With Her (2003 to 2004) 
• Jennifer Farrell from Jennifer Slept Here (1983-1984)
• Victoria Chase from Hot In Cleveland (2010-Recent)