You know those kinds of memories where you're not really sure whether it is a real memory, or a memory of watching yourself in a home video, or even a memory of how you imagined a story someone told you?
Well, I recall going on a hike with my sister soon after she moved to Montecito, when I was about 14, and that the trail, which she had found with a friend on a previous hike, took us right up to the backyard of an abandoned mansion.
I remember peering through bushes for glimpses of the mansion in its slightly decaying glory and my sister telling me that there were rumors that one of the descendants of the former owner still lived in there and tried to keep it up, as evidenced by the still-pruned shrubs and other such details. Supposedly sometimes hikers (trespassers) spotted someone swimming in the pool, but neighbors never saw cars come or go.
She also told me that in the 1920s, when the house was in its heyday, the owner often held glamorous days-long parties for celebrities up from LA and East Coast polo players who vacationed in Santa Barbara.
I asked her years later where that hike was, and she didn't have any recollection of it, and said the story I described didn't ring any bells. That is sounded somewhat like Val Verde, but that Val Verde was run by a foundation and that there's no way some squatter lived in there.
Love the stripes above. The clock propped on the floor makes this shot perfectly eery.
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