SPOILERS BELOW - SPOILERS BELOW
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The
Opening 1921- Thursday,September 9 – The investigators
begin their investigation of the house at 113 Flint St. on behalf of Mortimer
Styles, real estate agent.
Madness
in Clarendon Heights 8/23/21
Manion James
Family of Five
Insane
Neighbors were roused yesterday morning, for the second time in as many
weeks, by insane screaming from the house at 113 Flint Street. The voices of Vittorrio Macario and his wife Gabriella
could be heard a block away, shrieking at the top of their lungs.
Police Sergeant Colin Murphy was the first policeman to arrive at the
scene. Sergeant Murphy reports "The woman was gibbering incoherently.
Babbling about burning eyes and then going off in Italian... Spirito!
Diavolo!... It was awful. The little boys had been sent out of the house and
were with a neighbor, terrified half out of their minds."
Murphy continues "We searched the house and found only signs of
hasty packing... And everywhere there were crucifixes and images of the Virgin
Mary. The room of the children was a shambles with the most awful crayon
drawings scattered all over the floor. It was like a mad house."
There is a history of such occurrences at this address.
The Hull family first rented the
house in 1902 after the demise of its longtime owner Charles Drood. It was in
1905 that the Hull family, after a series of disturbances, fled the house in
the middle of the night, never to be heard from again.
In the year following the Great Earthquake the Rock Hill Camp was
erected around the house at 113 Flint Street but when the camp was disbanded
and the house once again rented, tragedy struck again.
The LeClerque family was nearly wiped out by a series of seeming
accidents in 1912, which culminated in the three children leaping from a window
and suffering crippling injuries on the same night that their parents were
killed in a bizarre tumble down the basement stairs onto a jumble of garden
tools.
During the Panama Pacific International Exposition the house was rented
to a series of short-term tenants, none of whom would abide long under it's
malign roof. The house was damaged and run down by 1916 when the last renter
left, in haste.
The Property was purchased and restored in 1919 and the most recent
horror ensued within a year.
Library
research – from the Hall of Records to the Main Library establishes a lot of
background on the house and Mr. Charles Aaron Drood, the owner for half a
century…
The house at the address 113
Flint Street was built in 1854 by Don Julio de Vasquez on lands deeded to him
by Don Jose Noe.
1854 - House returns to the
ownership of Don Jose on the death of Julio de Vasquez.
1855 - House and surrounding land
sold to Charles Aaron Drood.
The Main
Library has very old newspaper and other records relating to the Noe and
Velasquez families. Don Julio built the house on what was subsequently known as
Red Rock Hill, especially for his bride-to-be in 1854.
Amalia de Santana Noe: Tragic death due to
sudden illness on the morning of her wedding to Don Julio Vasquez. Don Julio
died the next day from the accidental discharge of a firearm, in the house.
There is
an elaborated version of the story in a book:
Rancho Days in Old Yerba Buena by Allison J. Morgan - Golden
Gate Press 1905
This is
the gist of it, without the flowery prose:
Don
Jose Noe, past Alcalde and owner of Rancho San Miguel, built a house on Red
Rock Hill for his son in law, Don Julio de Vasquez, and his daughter Amalia.
When the bride died of a sudden fever on the morning of her wedding to Don
Julio, the groom, overwhelmed with grief, shot himself in the master bedroom of
the house. Shortly afterward Don Jose Noe sold the house, and the hill upon
which it stood, to a dour Englishman named Charles Aaron Drood, who lived there
until his death in 1901.
By 1855 the ownership of rancho
lands was under legal attack and most of the land was sold very cheaply or lost
in court.
From
1859 on, portions of the land around Red Rock Hill were sold by Drood to
various parties.
1878
–Early November - Civil Suit brought by property owners on 16th st. Records
indicate "disturbing sounds and lights causing false alarms of
fire..." Further information indicates bonfires high on the East slope of
the hill on certain nights”.
1879
– Arrest of Charles Drood for the murder of Leonard Williams with a shotgun.- Civil
suit (upon failure of criminal case) against Charles Drood for the wrongful
death of Leonard Williams. Case decided in favor of the defendant. Leonard
Williams, age 13, was in the act of unlawful trespass upon the property of the
defendant at the time of his injury. – Further perusal of the records indicated
that Drood was somewhat annoyed at being brought to court since he had used
birdshot and hadn’t expected to kill the boy…
1882
– The greater part of Red Rock Hill was sold by Drood to the Gray Brothers -
for use as a quarry and for the erection of a brick works.
1885
–Mid February - Lawsuit by neighbors on
Corona Hill against Drood "To cease and desist or else leave the
area." -"Sanity of the property owner in question due to rooftop
disturbances, pyrotechnic displays and yelling or singing.” The case was
apparently resolved with some small cost to Mr. Drood. There are also
references to bonfires near the crest of the hill.
Sept
7 1885 – Editorial with a picture of the house – “Good Neighbor- Bad Neighbor” -
This week two very different San
Francisco property owners have demonstrated their attitude towards the
community in which they both live.
Adolph Sutro, “King of the Comstock” and noted local philanthropist, has
opened his magnificent garden estate near Lands End to the public. The new
park, open to all for a nominal fee, is destined to be a jewel in the crown of
our great city.
Meanwhile, squatting atop Red Rock Hill, overlooking the corner of
Market and Castro Streets, a different sort of man altogether, Charles Aaron
Drood has repeatedly threatened any who trespass on his squalid estate.
The act of selling parcels of his land along 16th street and along the
other edges of the hill in the last decade has brought neighbors perilously
close to the house of this infamous man. Even with the recent sale of the bulk
of his hill to the proprietors of the Gray Bro.s Brick works,
Mr. Drood has long been
known
to those living nearby as solitary man with a short temper and a taste for
wicked or cruel jests. He has, in fact, been brought to court twice in the last
decade for injuries wrought upon the persons of his most unfortunate neighbors
for the act of walking upon his lands, which still make up most of the lower eastern portion of the hill
upon which his decaying house broods.
1901 (Nov. 1) Charles Drood died
of natural causes. (Death certificate certified by Dr. Quentin Halley) Burial
at the Laurel Hill mausoleum of The Chapel of Contemplation occurred the next
day.
A trip to the
hill is made and the house is viewed… from outside. It is on this trip that the
general layout of the hill is noted.
The house is
on a dead-end street with newly constructed houses across from it. There is a
cottage at the corner which looks newer than the Drood house.
Along the
intersecting street, which peters out into a rutted track a hundred yards on,
is the massive complex of the Gray Brothers Brick works, which is no longer
operating.
Uphill, via
dirt tracks, the investigators note what they recognize as “hobo signs” chalked
by the trails. Nearer the summit are the decaying remnants of what appears to
be older brick works and quarrying operations.
A man walking
a dog – He knows a story about the “gibbering tramp” “most of two years ago”…
“Used to be one of that sort turned up crazed by bad liquor or dead of some
cause every couple of years… long as I been living here.” (Bought the house
back in 1905). “Hadn’t nothing of the sort happened the last few years.”
There’s also
a shack along the street about half way between the Drood House and the big
brick factory… That is identified by the dog walker as the house of a crazy old
Mexican and his enormous son… Neither of whom he likes.
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