Free Spirits Are Kings of This Century-Old Castle

The eccentric society that inhabits monstrous, century-old Castle Green includes every type of free spirit, not all of them living.

Tales of ghosts that linger in certain corners are a subject of endless back-and-forth, sometimes during moonlit barbecues on the roof. Don’t count Kimberly Mehu among the skeptics. Having once rented No. 607--a unit so notorious the hauntings are noted in real estate disclaimers--Mehu is a believer. She talks of nights when the faucets would turn on, full blast, all by themselves.

“Water would splatter on the kitchen table,” she recalls, from the relative calm of her newly bought condo two floors down. “And the door handles used to jiggle.”

The stories might seem to gain credence from the three coffins canted against a wall of the basement, but that is deceiving--they are merely old movie props, left over from one of the countless shoots done over the years. The notion that the basement is haunted, too--well, that comes only from a few skittish individuals, like Mike Salazar. He is grinning but seemingly sincere when he reports feeling the touch of an unseen hand down in the laundry room.

The castle is a forbidding monolith more suited to the mists of a Transylvanian night than to a busy street in Pasadena, a block south of Colorado Boulevard. Moorish, Spanish and Victorian influences shaped the architecture--the mustard-colored facades, cylindrical towers, tile roofs, loggias and wrought-iron balconies. The building features one screwball appendage that has surely caused decades of baffled stares: an enclosed, truncated pedestrian bridge, which once crossed Raymond Avenue but now ends high above the sidewalk.

Inside, it’s just as unusual. The overall effect is a mystique you can practically bottle, an ambience that affects some people like a drug. Jan Cady is only one of many who felt overpowered by it. She first saw the place 20 years ago.

“I kept driving by: ‘What’s in there?’ ” she remembers. It nagged her until she finally rapped on the door and was greeted by a stooped old elevator operator who made her think of Igor, from the Frankenstein movie.

The castle had no dishwashers, no garbage disposals, no air conditioners, not even a pool, but Cady became obsessed: She would end up waiting more than 15 years to claim one of the few units reserved for renters.

“All this time . . . I’ve got a husband who’s going, ‘You’re not going to live in that mausoleum, are you?’ He thought I was crazy--so I divorced him.” Cady laughs. It wasn’t exactly like that, but the marriage did end, and she called Castle Green.

Musicians, artists, writers--all types of creative people are similarly drawn to the building, despite the lousy water pressure. Filmmaker Tim Burton once lived here. David Lynch used it for scenes in “Wild at Heart.”

Ruby Olson, who says she’s a descendant of Russian aristocracy, occupies a ground-floor unit and believes it was her destiny. Her cousin foretold it in Armenia, two months before he was tragically electrocuted.

Handing her a videotape, her cousin said, “You will live in that kind of place,” Olson remembers. It seemed ridiculous--she had already emigrated to Los Angeles. But when she answered an ad and entered the castle, “I had no doubts.”

Residents party, gossip and collectively govern their own tightknit community.

Eleanor Dorsey celebrated her 90th birthday on New Year’s Eve, and the whole castle took part--with about 80 people staging a “progressive dinner” that moved from floor to floor. Long tables were set up in the dim old hallways. Salazar says hors d’oeuvres were served on the sixth floor, salad on the third, soup on the fourth, a main course on the fifth. Dorsey sliced the birthday cake down on the first.

The revelry eventually moved outside with an attempt to emulate the ball drop in New York’s Times Square.

“We got a big Japanese lantern, and I rigged it with lights,” Salazar says. “Then we got some fishing wire and tied it from the penthouse down to the pond. At midnight . . . we slid it down.”

Partying has been a tradition at the castle from Day One. When it opened in 1898, the seven-story structure was an annex of the storied Hotel Green, a colossal mecca for wealthy Easterners frolicking in the warm Los Angeles area winters. Over the years, the hotel’s three buildings--designed by architect Frederick L. Roehrig--became a playground for presidents and tycoons and headquarters for the Tournament of Roses.

The main building fell into neglect by the end of the 1950s and was demolished. The north building, which shares a common wall with Castle Green, was largely gutted and is now used for low-income housing. Halls that once connected the two wings are closed by steel bulkheads with thick bars and bizarre weights and pulleys. Castle manager Sophie Lafferty calls them the “Frankenstein doors.”

Ornate black wrought iron graces the castle’s main elevator, still operated by uniformed attendants. A long and beloved line of colorful characters have worked the elevators while fueling the flow of gossip. Several are now dead; in small ceremonies, tenants have named koi in their honor.

An ex-Franciscan monk--and former Studio 54 bartender--named Robert, who prefers not to disclose his full identity, is still here and alive despite three strokes and two heart attacks. He is best known for the exorcism he organized after Kimberly Mehu moved out of 607.

Robert read a blessing and moved through the halls and rooms sprinkling holy water, followed by a knot of some 15 faithful. That was about a year ago, and it is unclear whether any, or all, of the spirits have departed. Sepulchral music is known to waft through the halls late at night, but the source is only Eduardo Delgado, the classical pianist who keeps two matching Steinways in his living room.

“Once in a while, you’ll hear voices,” says elevator man Aaron Gallardo, who on rare occasions works the graveyard shift. “You never know if it’s somebody on [another] floor. By the time I get up there, there’s nobody.”

It could be ghosts, or pranksters, or simply the way such a place affects the mind. “Once you enter that door,” says Gallardo, nodding toward the foyer and the massive green hearth beyond, “it’s like time stopped here.”

Check it out: The wall clock in the lobby does not move. Down the vaulted main hallways--past the ballroom where a psychic claimed to see spirits dancing--is another example, the headquarters of the Thomas Paine Society. A former tenant named Gary Holtz--who died in May--organized the society in honor of the Revolutionary War-era pamphleteer, a crusader for free speech.

The society has existed for years--but, as far as anyone can guess, there was no membership roll, and no one ever held a meeting.