Mummies, Monsters and a Jovial ‘Forry’

In the hills above Los Feliz stands the Ackermansion, wherein reside Forrest J. Ackerman, dozens of Draculas and Frankensteins and a ghoulish army of mummies and monsters. Just your ordinary neighbors.

Ackerman--”Forry” to his friends--isn’t a bit scary. A jovial man of 75 with trim mustache and horn-rimmed glasses, he has methodically amassed the world’s largest private collection of treasures from horror and sci-fi films.

At his gate, a large black spider has spun a web. “Don’t step on it,” Ackerman warns. “It might be Lon Chaney.” (A nice thought, though Ackerman admits that, while he believes in extraterrestrials, he thinks reincarnation is bunk.)

In a labyrinth of basement rooms--”Grizzyland”--are such treasures as the cape worn by Bela Lugosi and the aforementioned Mr. Chaney’s teeth from “Man of a Thousand Faces.”

As we poke about, Ackerman points to a ghastly green Frankenstein head wearing horn-rims. “Here I am in the morning, before my first cup of coffee.”

His obsession began with doting grandparents who indulged little Forrest with back-to-back kiddie matinees.

Today, the lad’s consuming fascination with robots, ghosts and dinosaurs might land him in psychoanalysis. But he was encouraged: Grandpa drew pictures of men from Mars, Grandma read him ghost stories.

He was 9 when his all-time favorite film, Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis,” came out. Ackerman has seen it 80 times, intends to see it 20 more.

Horror movies are big box-office now. Ackerman admires some but thinks most of today’s fantasy films drown in their own special effects: “It’s sort of the tail wagging the werewolf.”

He knew Karloff, Lugosi, Lorre, Price . . . He’s even done cameos in 42 films. In “Amazon Women on the Moon” he was President, a role he’ll reprise in “Turkies From Outer Space.”

In real life, Ackerman is a literary agent whose early clients included Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov. A widower, he lives alone in an 18-room Spanish-style house once owned by movie muscleman Jon Hall (“Cobra Woman”).

Ackerman is slowly dismantling “mummery lane” for shipment to a museum to open in Berlin in 1995. He delights in mentioning that he’s getting $2 million for his collection. For years, he says, he tried to give it to the city of Los Angeles. He may hold on to the leaf he plucked from the tomb of Mary Shelley, who gave the world “Frankenstein.”

With a sweep of his hands--hands that wear Lugosi’s “Dracula” ring and Karloff’s from “The Mummy”--he says, “With $2 million, I can start filling the place up again.”

The Quake Within

The turnout for the first “Wake Up L.A.” was less than Earth-shattering. Not the hoped-for thousands, but perhaps 175--counting dogs, kids and speakers--flocked to Elysian Park on a Sunday to talk about joy, love and fending off earthquakes.

Organizer Susan Drew, a New Age psychotherapist, was philosophical about the numbers. “We expected seismic activity before this, to be honest with you.” She’d been counting on it to boost the fright factor.

Those who did come spread blankets on the grass and settled in for a long afternoon of politically correct music and other worldly tips from messengers who included an Earth healer/karmic galactic astrologer.

JacQuaeline, a spiritual counselor, did have good news: “I’ve seen the future, and Los Angeles is still here.”

The basic idea here is that, if we treat Mother Earth more gently, she won’t shake, rattle and roll quite so furiously to get our attention.

Drew, for one, believes that earthquakes begin within people, something about “psychological pollution” of the planet. If we achieve inner peace, the Earth won’t need to explode to get us to rethink our lives.

Is she perhaps onto something that’s eluded the folks over at Caltech with their fancy seismographs? Well, she says, they overlook the human factor, which may be why they can’t predict earthquakes.

Obeying her inner spirit, Drew moved to L.A. from Santa Fe, N.M., arriving in time for the June 28 quake or, as she prefers, the day the Earth expressed its need to be heard.

Drew plans another “Wake Up L.A.” Meanwhile, she suggests healing herbs and crystals to shoo away the viruses in our lives.

But, just in case, she did get herself an earthquake-preparedness kit.

Holding His Ground

In an interview on KPCC-FM during a recent L.A. visit, Noah Adams, co-host of National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered,” revealed that, among perhaps 10,000 interviews, one stands out:

A man wrote from Brooklyn, saying he had figured out how to make coffee grounds stick together so he could actually make things. He sent pictures of coffee-grounds lamps and coffee-grounds ashtrays.

Adams called him and they talked about how the neighbors on the whole block saved their coffee grounds for him, how they piled up in his apartment.

Finally, Adams recalled, “I said, ‘Well, now it’s time for you to tell us how you get the coffee grounds to stick together.’ . . . And then there was this long pause. And he said, ‘I ain’t gonna tell you that.’ I said, ‘You understand you’re sharing, you sent this letter . . . ‘

“And he said, ‘No, no. That idea’s worth a million dollars. The big coffee companies want that idea and they’re trying to get it from me and I’m not gonna tell ‘em. I’m holdin’ out for more money.’ ”