Haunted Buildings

Memories of Seventh Street

2008-01-24T22:27:00.000-08:00

Years ago I was walking on Seventh Street near downtown Los Angeles as my mind reeled and my soul churned. Aggressive, ominpresent drug dealers and severely drug-addicted prostitutes lined this block near Witmer. They eyed all the passersby. The only people returning their gazes were those seeking heroin or sex. All the rest of us looked into the grey distance or down at the sidewalk. Gazing at the ground connotes a sense of discomfort, possibly trepidation, but it had always worked well enough for me. It conveyed my disinterest in purchasing drugs. I aimed my scrutiny, though not my awareness, at the concrete beneath my feet as I headed for the Mayfair Hotel (see above pic). All at once it seemed that someone was looking up at me. Everyone on the sidewalk seemed to stop. The world seemed to stop. I looked back at the man who in actuality was standing at least 20 feet ahead of me. He was leaning on crutches and he was hunched over like a horseshoe. That condition seems to occur in very elderly people although I do not know the name of it. The gentleman was gesturing animatedly at me and seemed to have something of an encouraging - perhaps pleading - smile on his face. People hurried past him on either side, eager to get off Seventh Street and arrive at their destinations. A drug dealer and some blank-faced young teenagers lingered near the man, but this gentleman was staring straight into my face. I began rushing towards him and realized that he had dropped some magazines that he had been carrying. He was too crippled to pick them up. It seemed that an odd yellow light surrounded him. I bent to pick up his magazines and he seemed very pleased by my behavior. He said something to me, but I don’t think he was speaking English. Exultation filled me as I handed him his magazines and I felt so happy to have the opportunity to help someone out. It made me feel human. I did not have to block out the world during those moments when I came to his aid.

It was as if he had been waiting for me or had seen me coming. He knew I’d do it. Did he think no one else would? No one else had. Something about the whole incident seemed surreal at the time and does even now. Seventh Street is not so desperate and decayed a place anymore, but I remember it well. I left there long ago although sometimes I used to wonder if I ever would or could. Back then I spent horrible, self-doubting moments surrounded by squalor. During those times I would reflect on the hunched-over man and wonder if his presence on that blighted street might have been some type of sign. It gave me tremendous hope for reasons that I cannot entirely explain.

The episode still seems otherworldly.

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Yvonne

2008-01-03T22:52:00.000-08:00

I have written about Yvonne Dillon a number of times. Guess it's time to tell part 3 of the story although I have not yet written it. Yvonne sent me an e-mail yesterday. It was one of the ostensibly spam e-mails containing links to a porn site that landed in my bulk folder. I often scan the contents of my bulk folder because important stuff occasionally ends up in there. Yvonne's name appeared as the sender of one of the e-mails. I got the hint - it's hard to miss a sign when it jumps right out at you in black letters.

Yvonne Dillon: Part 3 took place at a hotel in San Diego. I have not yet composed the story, but it will be simple enough to tell what happened. Tonight I need some sleep so I'll work on it in the morning.

- XO Tanya

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Merry Christmas!

2007-12-25T08:15:00.000-08:00

Grinch Jewell Marceau tried to steal Christmas but I did not let her.

Merry Christmas!

- XXOO Tanya

***

Legal ramifications of a haunted house

2007-10-19T20:06:00.001-07:00

Check this out:

http://www.legalzoom.com/legal-articles/home-seller-paranormal-activity-disclosure.html?WT.mc_id=EM_NWS_OCT07_BUS_IP_B&WT.mc_ev=EmailOpen&spMailingID=1148846&spUserID=NDE3MTM5MzUyOQS2&spJobID=34389547&spReportId=MzQzODk1NDcS1

- XXOO Tanya

***

Abduction

2007-08-15T08:55:00.000-07:00

A while ago I was reading a true crime book written by celebrity District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi. There never should have been such a person as a "celebrity District Attorney," but the book is still pretty interesting nonetheless. It is about a man and a woman whom he prosecuted for their involvement in the murder of the woman's husband in the 1960s. Bugliosi presumed that they offed him so she could collect a fairly substantial insurance settlement. In the book Bugliosi takes an in-depth look at the sociopathic personalities and backgrounds of both individuals. The man was a former cop who had been kicked out of the LAPD for his role in helping a young woman find someone to illegally abort her unborn child in the "no choice" era of the 1950s. Among the other revelations about his background was the murderer's own admission that he became sexually aroused while watching two women fight. Evidently he had witnessed two young girls fighting over him when he was at a pivotal age. He had been at the home of a fat girl who liked him and he had unintentionally started paying more attention to her thinner friend. The fat girl had become enraged, stripped her girlfriend naked, and begun beating her while the future murderer watched in amazement. Bugliosi ties the killer's sexual interest in female fighting to his penchant for commiting extreme acts of violence. I found that a bit amusing.

To date I still have not finished the book because I temporarily lost interest in the second part of it. Part 2 covers all the details, (and I mean all of them), of the courtroom proceedings which ultimately lead to the convictions of the murdering pair. Eventually I'll read it but last month I put it to the side of my nighttable for awhile. Coincidentally I got booked for a catfight shoot right around that time. I had not done one in many months and this shoot would be for a new company. Oddly, the location was a house in San Bernardino. I was willing to go there even though it was a long distance away because I could use some extra money. When I confirmed the directions on MapQuest.com I noticed that the place was on an isolated road way off the main highway. Oh, whatever. These people would be paying me generously and they had mentioned the names of several models I knew as references. Plus, I would be working with Stacy Burke. It appeared that everything was on the up and up.

On the appointed morning I drove out there and arrived at the location a bit late. I did not see Stacy's car anywhere. Numerous other vehicles lined the driveway leading up to the secluded house. The accumulated dirt and rust coating their surfaces indicated that they had not moved for a long time. I stepped up to the door and rang the doorbell. No one answered so I tried knocking and then rang the doorbell again. Maybe I was at the wrong place. The dwelling itself looked so ramshackle that it was possible that no one lived there at all. When I pulled out my cellphone to call the man who had booked me for the shoot I found that I could not get a signal.

Just then I heard a footstep behind me. Momentarily startled, I whipped around to face a disheveled looking man with a friendly smile on his face. It turned out to be Pete, the guy who had arranged the shoot. He picked up my bag and ushered me inside. For some reason a bit of nervousness was welling up inside me and I asked if Stacy had arrived. He said "no" and gestured for me to sit at the rickety wooden table in the center of the room. There was a single lightbulb with no enclosure suspended from the ceiling above it. We sat in silence for a minute and then I began making polite conversation to fill the dead air. Pete was a master of one-word responses, but I gleaned that he'd been a fan of catfight entertainment for some time and had finally decided to start shooting his own material for an Internet site. We lapsed into another prolonged silence. Where in the world was Stacy? Could she have gotten lost on the winding roads that lead up to Pete's house? I started chatting again to ease my own tension. For some reason I found myself mentioning the Bugliosi book and the murderer who enjoyed watching women fight. The emotionless expression on Pete's face began to morph into one of sinister fascination. He quickly became so enrapt in my discussion of the book that it started to creep me out. Abruptly I stopped talking. A minute ticked by as he stared at me and watched me try to stifle my rising sense of unease. There was a sadistic glint in his eye when at last he said:

"You really should have checked with the other models I named as references. I've never met any of them. At least you could have called Stacy to find out if she really was booked for a shoot today. I can tell you that she's not booked for one here, but I am still very eager to see how hard you can fight."

I sat frozen in my chair paralyzed with panic. Oh, Lord help me- what was this psycho going to do to me?!

Perhaps it's better that I don't remember much of what happened after that. I wish I could forget all of it, but the memory of his rough, calloused hands jerking me out of the chair and forcing me into the woods behind his shack is etched into my mind forever. A week after the incident I received the pictures below in a large manila envelope that came to my mailbox. The return address provided on the package named a street in San Bernardino that does not exist.

These disturbing photos are now inside The Bondage Room at www.TanyaDanielle.com .

- XXOO Tanya

***
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Elinor's House

2007-08-05T05:04:00.001-07:00

A few days ago I went for a walk after I'd been sitting at my desk too long. Lost in thought I trudged down the sidewalk until I noticed a couple with a baby carriage coming at me from the opposite direction. I made a right turn because I did not feel like engaging in any cursory interaction, even if it was as simple as just nodding my head in greeting. Staying home alone all day renders me kind of phobic around strangers. It's as if the shyness and awkwardness of my grade-school years has returned full force. I seemed a lot more normal when I was still dancing in bars because the job required me to interact with others. Now I often go days without speaking a single word. After veering right I passed a sign that said "No Outlet" so I realized I was walking down a cul-de-sac. It turned out to be a remarkably long cul-de-sac. Towards the end of it I noticed a house with a "For Sale by Owner" sign planted on its front lawn. The small sign languished near the porch and its coloration made it very hard to notice. I doubted that I would have even seen it if I had been driving. After crossing the street I read the hand-lettered description which informed me that the property was a three bedroom, two bathroom house with an 800-square-foot garage. I glanced up and noticed that something about the garage pulled my attention to right away although I was not sure why. The sign also proclaimed that the owner would "review all offers" and provided a phone number with an Orange County prefix. I walked away after staring at the dwelling for a few long minutes. Within five seconds I nearly strode right past a steep, wooden staircase leading from this street to the one below it. This neighborhood has many such pedestrian walkways that the original planners included when they designed the layout of the subdivision. I'd lived in the area for nearly nine months and still regularly came across new pedestrian thoroughfares that I had not yet encountered in my daily jogs or walks. It always kind of tripped me out when I found a new one. I decided to go down this staircase and counted about 39 steps as I descended. It deposited me onto a street that I did not immediately recognize, but after strolling for a few minutes I saw my friend Tim's Chevy Blazer parked in front of his house. I smiled as I reflected on the oddity of this little community in the hills. The twisting streets curved around so much that it was very easy to get disoriented. Here I was two blocks from home and yet I'd felt a bit lost just moments earlier. I went back up the staircase and walked home.

Yesterday my friends Tim and Raul came over to my place. I mentioned the house for sale because Raul is looking for a house. Tim grew up in this area so he knew the street I was talking about and described the location to Raul.

"Did you get the number of the owner?" Raul asked.

"No, I didn't." I said. "I wasn't sure if you'd want to see it or not."

Raul and I decided to drive over to the house while Tim headed home. We drove right past it because I did not spot the place until we had gone too far. Raul put the car in reverse and stopped in front of it. I copied the number off the sign while he gazed at the home with genuine interest.

"It has bars on some of the windows." he commented. "Isn't that strange for this neighborhood?"

I agreed that it was odd and we both swivelled in our seats to look at the surrounding houses. None of them had iron security bars. Raul asked me to call the seller for him since he hates talking on the phone even more than I do. He dropped me off at home so he could go back to his office. Fifteen minutes later I was speaking with the seller on the phone and he gave me a bunch of information about the property. Evidently his aunt and uncle had lived there since 1960. No, he would not consider a lease option agreement because the home had been placed in a trust and he wanted to sell it quickly. He told me that the cracks in the garage and in the pavement were not as bad as they looked and that he had some type of geological survey attesting to the fact that the residence was not sliding backwards down the hill upon which it sat. Of course warning bells went off in my head. He paused and waited for me to end the phone call but I didn't. Encouraged, he went on to tell me where one of the neighbors left the keys during the daytime so prospective buyers could look it over. Finally he gave me his name, I gave him mine, and then we hung up.

Twenty minutes later I was entering the house. Raul was too busy to stop by but Tim had said he would come look at it. After all, he only had to get to the pedestrian walkway and go up the wooden staircase to join me. It was taking him longer than I had expected so I decided to go in without him. I fumbled with the keys. One of them had a white, circular tag that said "Elinor's house" and the other bore a white, circular tag that said "Elinor's garage". I fit the appropriate key into the lock on the iron doorscreen and walked into Elinor's house. Somebody had died in there. I just felt it. Ostensibly it was an elderly person who had lived out his or her declining days in these rooms. I wandered around the rooms and then outside into the backyard. After a few moments I entered the garage. Someone had clearly been using it for a lot of business recently. I wanted to get out of there.

After locking all the doors I exited the premises and replaced the keys in their hiding spot. Tim still had not arrived so I went to the wooden staircase. Sure enough, Tim was heading up the pedestrian walkway.

"Sorry I'm late." he apologized.

"I already went in there." I told him. "It's pretty interesting. Come check it out."

He followed me and we let ourselves into the place. I purposely had withheld my thoughts about the property so I could watch his reaction. He wandered around the rooms.

"This is strange." he said. "This layout just doesn't make sense."

I nodded although he could not see me from where he was standing.

"I've gotta use the bathroom." he called from across the house. "Hopefully the water is still on."

I decided to walk out to the garage and headed to the back door. Once there I realized that it was not the same back door I'd used the last time. To my right was a doorway leading into a room I had not even noticed during my last tour. I pushed it open and then recoiled in horror.

"Tim!" I called out.

I heard a toilet flush and realized that he probably had not heard me. The bathroom door opened and his footsteps fell across the floor.

"Hey.. check this out." I said with a touch of alarm.

He found my voice and then came to where I was standing. He looked where I was looking.

"Oh, my God.. " he exclaimed.

An overwhelming stench emanated from the dank little room. Indescribable layers of mold covered every surface: ceiling, walls, and floor. It was absolutely nauseating and Tim walked in there. I didn't.

"What is this place?" he wondered aloud. "Or what was it? It must have been the laundry room."

I said: "No, the hook-ups are in that other room."

Simultaneously Tim said: "But there are no hook-ups in here."

Our sentences clanged together and we both wore repulsed expressions on our faces as we surveyed the horrible little room with fungus coating its every dimension.

"We shouldn't even be breathing this." I said.

Tim snapped back into reality.

"No, we really shouldn't." he said as he stepped quickly out of there.

We went outside and around the side of the house where we encountered a large shed of sorts that was built into a brick wall. Upon opening it we discovered the same grisly type of mold covering every one of its surfaces too. We both recoiled yet again and neither of us had any desire to examine the interior too closely. Tim quickly shut and fastened the door.

Next we ventured into the garage.

"Wow." was all Tim said at first.

"I wonder what they did in here." he mused out loud a few minutes later after surveying the place

We both noted the huge air conditioner connected to the ceiling and another large one mounted to a wall. Five ladders led up to a loft-type area above our heads. There were numerous electrical outlets around the place and, inexplicably, a bunch of what looked like seatbelt straps hanging down from the loft area. We stared at all of it and then went into a bathroom that had been built into the garage. It contained a toilet, sink, and shower. Before leaving Tim found a safe built into the concrete floor of the structure and we played around with that, hastily stopping when we heard a car pull up. We exited the garage and I heard Tim mumbling something about "paranoia" as we walked back in the house. He seemed to be speaking about the former occupants' modification of the place rather than our quick abandonment of the safe when we had heard the car. I noticed that he was looking at some of the iron bars.

After locking up and replacing the keys we took the wooden staircase to Tim's house. We discussed the other property at length.

"That place was like a dungeon." he said more than once. "It was just like a dungeon."

That night I did not sleep well. My nightmares were filled with images that belonged in a dungeon..

(to be continued.. )

***

2007-07-13T09:23:00.001-07:00

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Yvonne Dillon: Part 2

2007-07-13T08:29:00.000-07:00

From April 5, 2007:

Earlier today I was writing about an incident that happened in Venice years ago. After I finished expunging it from my gut I felt the impulse to go back to the precise spot where the episode had occurred. I drove over there around noon and parked in a lot across the street from the same apartment building in which I used to live. It felt kind of trippy to lock my car and trudge down the street to go to the boardwalk. I had followed that exact path so many hundreds of times years ago. Back then I would go jogging each day and some afternoons I would walk to the beach again just to lie in the sun. The familiar surroundings brought back so many memories of my teenage years: lying in bed listening to the sounds of gunfire at night, watching drug deals through my kitchen window, becoming a stripper, dropping out of UCLA, trying crystal meth for the first time, dealing with a bout of chicken pox while I was broke, getting a boob job, walking up the cement steps each night to my cheap studio apartment.

Today my former apartment building looked just about as it did back then. A small, older black SUV sat in my old parking spot and pots of dying plants decorated my old balcony. Many of the surrounding dwellings looked about the same as they did then too. The houses at the end of the block, which faced each other from opposite sides of the street, seemed simultaneously inhabited yet unoccupied. Years ago it had appeared that someone or something lived in each of them, but that no one ever came home. Or maybe some entity was always home and never left. I had never once seen anyone exiting or entering either of the premises in all the time that I lived in the vicinity. Both houses were probably built before 1920 and they looked mildly neglected, but not abandoned. One day I had seen a large box with a delivery notice sitting on the porch belonging to the one on the South side of the street. The box was gone by the next afternoon. That was the most activity involving either of those properties of which I had any awareness. Today I still felt the same conflicted vibrations as I meandered past them: the houses seemed inhabited yet unoccupied. Who or what was inside them?

I crossed Pacific Avenue with the green light and began walking very slowly through this last block which lead to the boardwalk fronting the beach. Many of the structures lining its sidewalks had not changed at all. Other examples of mass-produced, characterless construction had sprung up around the older ones. Of course there were two ubiquitous "loft" developments interspersed among the rest of the places. More memories flooded over me because that familiar block had retained much of its same character in spite of the new construction. In another ten years that time-honored, rough-hewn spirit will probably vanish altogether. Waves of gentrification are washing over Venice and I often find myself lamenting the loss of its former squalor. I like debauchery. Yuppies and trendy people bother me more than they should. I don't rail against them - I just try to avoid being where they congregate. It's getting much harder to do that in Los Angeles and I suspect that I may end up living either in Detroit or a rough section of Miami in the near future.

When I reached the boardwalk I noticed an amazing blue and white structure at the end of the Rose Avenue. I didn't remember ever having seen it before, but I must have. Clearly the building had inhabited the spot since the 1920s. The building materials used in its construction and its Art Deco facade attested to that fact. They don't build them like they used to.

All of a sudden I began feeling a bit ill, the type of mild nausea that generally is a precursor to a panic attack or some type of revelation. I stared down at the ground and felt my body turn hot. The heat came in flashes and the world started spinning. I felt glad I was in Venice because no one would bother me when I sank to the sidewalk and leaned against the building behind me. Venice has already become hip and fashionable, but homeless people still abound in the region. I would probably just look like another one of them dotting the landscape. As I slid down the wall I pulled the hood of my sweatshirt over my head. I dropped my head between my knees as I sat there on the ground and willed the heat and queasiness to go away. My pulse rate had gone up dramatically and I was having trouble controlling my breathing. I started counting to five over and over while I attempted to synchronize my breathing with the rhythmic counting. A voice intruded:

"Are you OK?"

My body tensed even more and I felt frozen. I kept my eyes shut and my head facing steadfastly downward, hoping the woman would go away.

"Hey.." the voice said again.

Maybe I'd gone unconscious for a period of time. Maybe I was lying in the middle of the street in front of a car. Maybe a group of people had gathered around me. Maybe I was at the police station. Maybe I was in the hospital. Reality had become too warped - I had no idea what reality was at this point. I lifted my head up. A beautiful blonde woman was squatting next to me and I peered at her from beneath the grey hood of my sweatshirt. It was Yvonne.

Yvonne did not look all that concerned.

"I think you need a drink." she said.

That was a strange thing to say. I stared at her. Where had she come from? What was she doing here? Her sparkling green eyes gazed back at me with amusement. I had never before seen Yvonne outside of the Cooper Arms. All this time I had just assumed she lived there, or whatever you want to call it. She seemed to read my thoughts.

"I still go out and party." she informed me with a laugh. "The ship came in last night - they brought Canadian Whiskey."

She said the last two words with relish and grabbed my hand to pull me to my feet. I hopped up off the asphalt. The hot flashes and nausea had vanished and the world was no longer spinning.

"Let's go to the Towne House." she said. "They pulled in crates and crates of the stuff last night through the tunnel. I think they even have some beer too."

I just followed her. Her excitement felt a little bit contagious even though I generally don't get too charged up over the possibility of drinking whiskey or a beer. We walked towards Windward Avenue. Every man we passed turned to gaze at Yvonne. She looked radiant and beautiful with her flowing blonde hair and amazing figure. I felt invisible and wondered if I was. Everybody at the Towne House knew Yvonne when we arrived there. They immediately ushered us through the door and numerous rough-looking men gazed at Yvonne with longing as she strode past them. Various people sat scattered around the large wooden bar, a few of them were kids. I did not see any bottles of liquor at all. A plate of hardboiled eggs and a few other mundane food items sat in trays around the room. Nobody was really eating.

"C'mon!" I heard Yvonne calling out to me with impatience. She was standing at the top of a staircase that looked like it must lead into the bowels of the building. Burly men were guarding it. I rushed to follow her as she began descending down the steps. The pitch of the staircase seemed way too steep and I could not fathom how Yvonne even managed to navigate down it in her high heels. She seemed to have the practiced assurance of someone who had ventured down the path many times before. I heard piano music playing as I gripped the railing and followed her. It got louder as we reached the bottom and I also began hearing the hum of voices and laughter. We entered a room with a low ceiling and incredible, hand-painted murals on the walls. All the dimly illuminated decor seemed to be black, red, and brown. A man in a tuxedo played the piano and several bartenders were pouring drinks in the far corner of the room. My eyes adjusted to the low, shadowy lighting and I saw a number of langorous female figures decorating velvet couches. They were beautiful and they were mostly naked. Here and there people engaged in sexual acts on the furniture and up against the walls: men with women, women with women, two men with one woman, three men with one woman. Was this real? I watched the beautiful women, the drunk men, and the stony faces of large, gun-toting men who must have been guards. Yvonne got us some whiskey. The scene was amazingly sexy and unbelievably decadent. At last I realized that I was standing inside a speakeasy in the 1920s, a particularly orgiastic speakeasy at that. It was Prohibition and the stockmarket had not yet crashed. Yvonne had pulled me back in time yet again.

I felt aroused and amazed by the spectacle in front of me. Then I had an unbidden, hazy thought about people partying in ancient Rome as the city burned. None of these people, many centuries later, had any inkling of what lay ahead of them..

You can view the entire "Double Your Pleasure" gallery inside www.TanyaDanielle.com now.

- XXOO Tanya

***

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Yvonne Dillon: Part 1

2007-07-13T08:26:00.000-07:00

During my time at the Cooper Arms apartment house in the summer of 2005 I began having recurring dreams of a beautiful blonde woman named Yvonne Dillon. The dreams were often disturbing. Eventually I came to accept the fact the Yvonne would visit me whenever she felt like it. I'm not sure why she chose me. I would have found out if I had stayed in the building longer, but my lease expired in September, 2005. At the time I knew I should have tried to stay, but I just wanted to get away from the place. Sometimes the spirits in the building were just too overwhelming. Yvonne wasn't the only one there.

That particular summer I had gone to a shoot with an executive of a major music label. He had a passion for photography, or perhaps he just wanted to meet naked models, and he had booked me for some combined photo and video work. He shot me for a number of photos and videos that would be offered to cellphone users in the UK. My behavior at that shoot had been initially appalling. I had arrived at his home in the Hollywod Hills and had realized immediately that the residence had been built in the 1920s. Something about the vibe of the place just got to me. I have a passion for the architecture of the 1920s and I am also very susceptible to the pathos of that era. The Americans of that decade were drinking as Rome was falling. They just knew that something bad was to follow their explorations of gluttony and excess. Of course they were correct and the travails of the Great Depression encompassed the 1930s. The Cooper Arms apartment house where I was living that summer had been built in 1923. Furthermore, the previous resident of my unit had commited suicide by jumping off his (my) balcony in April, 2005. The remainder of his soul infected me with its unresolved torment.

So there I was for a shoot at this home of the music executive in the Hollywood Hills. I behaved like a complete idiot. I have never acted that way before or since. His assistant greeted me outside and I stamped my feet, wrung my hands, twisted my face into an expression of displeasure, and said something halfway rude. His assistant made the best of it while I behaved like a moron and I suggested that maybe I should just go home. The patient assistant encouraged me to just come inside. I could see that he was hoping that I would somehow straighten my head out and get the shoot over with. I could not seem to do it. What the fuck was wrong with me? I felt like I was watching myself from a distance, not even knowing myself. The assistant told me kindly that there was a large dog inside and that she was very sweet. My heart immediately softened even though the fog did not lift from my brain. I walked inside to encounter a huge love of a dog and I sat there for a long time petting her. Presumably the assistant walked upstairs to inform the photographer/music executive that I was mentally disturbed.

At some point we began shooting, I regained my composure, and I told the photographer that I was living in a building from the 1920s where the previous occupant of my unit had killed himself several months before. Somewhat hesitantly I revealed that I'd been going crazy ever since I'd been living there. Oddly, my words seemed to strike a chord with the photographer. He and I began discussing his own 1920s home where we were now shooting. There was some history there. More than he knew about.

After an hour of taking pictures the photographer requested that I change my outfit. I started walking to the room where I had put my bag of wardrobe. As I walked past the staircase I saw something unexplainable. It did not seem real. I stopped in my tracks. At that moment I wanted to rub my eyes and make sure that they were not deceiving me, but I was at a job and I was wearing too much heavy makeup to be willing to indulge myself. I turned my head away and then looked back to where I had seen the inconceivable spectacle. My eyes had not fooled me: the dead body of a woman was lying on the floor below the landing on which I was standing. I tottered in my high heels and grabbed the railing for balance. The whole world was reeling. It was just spinning so fast. Nausea rose inside me. I could not think and I could not scream.

I will never know how long that I was passed out cold in the music executive's home. Afterwards it occurred to me that the dead woman I'd seen on the landing had just been merely unconscious, not dead, and I tried to cling to that hope for some period of time. To this day no one else has ever made any mention of her. That afternoon had concluded with the photographer calling my agent who in turn had sent someone to pick me up because I was too shaken to drive.

I never want to go back to that house even though I realize that I had merely been looking through a window into the past. A woman had died there. Later on that evening, the same day as the shoot, Yvonne came to me in a dream as I slept in my bed inside the Cooper Arms.

"That's what happens to us." she said "That's what happens to us. You had better be careful."

Within a week I saw a picture of the dead woman on my site. She is not actually dead. In fact, she is one of the most beautiful, vibrant creatures I have ever seen. She is full of life. Even my webmaster knows her. Still, I know a woman died in that house in the Hollywood Hills. The vision was a warning. Yvonne's words were a warning: "That's what happens to us- that is what will happen to you if you are not careful."

The entire "Zdenka" gallery is inside the "Girlfriends" section at www.TanyaDanielle.com now.

- XXOO Tanya

***
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Cooper Arms: Part 3

2007-07-13T08:23:00.000-07:00

The dreams of Yvonne Dillon haunt me. They began when I lived in the Cooper Arms apartment house in Long Beach, CA during the summer of 2005. Yvonne would come to the door of my unit and lead me away to a different dimension. It's impossible to describe it better than that even though I've tried. At some point Yvonne must have inhabited the Cooper Arms during her lifetime. Her life is now over but her ghost still seems to roam the hallways there at night. She walks those corridors and then always ends up back in Room 731 where she waits to come out again.

The Cooper Arms only has seventeen units on the seventh floor, numbered from 701 to 717. Room 731 is buried in some netherworld inside the building. Its very existence defies credulity but I've been there in my dreams. Yvonne lured me inside of it. I have known many beautiful women, but Yvonne stands out among them because of some type of deep, tormented passion simmering within her. It radiates out of her eyeballs and sucks you in. Often I feel Yvonne's presence lurking near me at unexpected moments. She is calling me back to Room 731. I can't count the number of times I've looked over my shoulder thinking that someone is really there. I now reside elsewhere but I know it is time for me to revisit the Cooper Arms.

The photo above was taken when I awoke from another peculiar dream about Yvonne. You can see the full "White Exposure" gallery at www.TanyaDanielle.com now.

- XXOO Tanya

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Cooper Arms: Part 2

2007-07-13T08:16:00.000-07:00

Last summer I rented a unit in an old apartment house, The Cooper Arms, in Long Beach. A few weeks after my arrival my elderly neighbor Jim informed me of the existence of a haunted room inside the building. Jim’s tone had become very grave when he looked at me and said that he hoped I would never encounter room 731. I remember asking him if apartment 731 in The Cooper Arms was the same place as “room 731.” The answer to the question was seemingly obvious but something had made me pose it to him anyways. Jim had not responded on that day as we sat there and stared at the sunlight shimmering on the ocean. We were drinking stingers on the balcony of his twelfth floor apartment which overlooked the Long Beach recreational harbor. The unanswered question hung in the air and neither of us spoke for a long time after I asked it.

Cars whizzed down Ocean Boulevard below us and a chill crept into the air as the sun began going down on the water. Jim and I often sat in silence for significant lengths of time, but as this afternoon turned into evening I could sense that he was troubled about something. He had appeared cheerful before he had mentioned the mysterious room 731. Afterwards he had seemed to degenerate into a morose, pensive state. I sensed that perhaps he wanted to be alone with his thoughts so I finished my drink and told him I’d probably stop by again later.

Out in the hallway I began wondering about his abrupt change in mood. Jim hardly struck me as the type to worry about such an odd, fanciful notion as a haunted room, but the subject clearly had affected him. Why? It seemed kind of silly. Jim was a retired sailor and sailors are often prone to superstition, but the notion of a haunted room in the Cooper Arms seemed kind of foolish for some reason. I decided to walk past apartment 731 so I descended 5 flights of stairs to locate the unit. Quickly I discovered that the seventh floor contained only seventeen units and they were predictably numbered from “701” to “717”. Apartment 731 did not exist. I smiled to myself and shook my head at my own naivete. Jim was a wonderful man in his eighties, but he did consume an overabundance of liquor. His conversation often contained extraordinary insights and pithy observations about life and society in general, but he did tend to ramble when he had consumed one stinger too many. His statements about “room 731” must have been the product of some disjointed thoughts and his inebriated state of mind. It amused me that I had given them any credence at all, but there I stood at the furthest end of the hallway on floor seven. I had been looking for an apartment that had never been built. I shook my head again and hoped that Jim would not have too bad of a hangover in the morning. Clearly he had been drinking quite a bit before I happened to stop by that afternoon.

Jim had been very welcoming from the time I had moved into the Cooper Arms. I enjoyed our conversations about the history and people of Long Beach and had even started to develop a bit of a taste for his favorite drink, the stinger. I had never heard of a “stinger” before I met Jim. In actuality it is a pretty nauseating combination of such ingredients as crème de menthe and whiskey, but it kind of grows on you. Jim and I often reclined on his balcony and gazed at the harbor while we drank our cocktails. He would sit in his wheelchair and I would relax on a wooden rocking chair that he had crafted many years before. We would lose track of the number of stingers we threw back as we chatted. Something about life in The Cooper Arms made heavy drinking seem very natural.

The weeks drifted into each other and I really was enjoying my summer by the ocean. Sometimes the power would go out in my unit, but that was the only drawback to living there. I would be working on my laptop and all of a sudden my computer would shut off and I would be blanketed in blackness. It always happened at night. Either I would light candles and read or just go to sleep. On one particular evening a power outage occurred as I was checking my banking account online. I just sighed and shut my laptop. Evidently I would need to wait until morning to see if that particular check had cleared. I decided to call it a day and go to bed.

That night I fell asleep almost immediately which is extremely unusual for me. Hours later some soft but insistent knocking at my door interrupted my deep slumber. The power was still out so I climbed out of bed and felt my way to the door. Still disoriented I peered through one of the two peepholes and saw a gorgeous, scantily clad blonde woman looking back at me. How could she see me through her side of the peephole? There was no way that she could, but it really felt like she was staring right into my face. I opened the door.

“Jim needs you.” she said.

“What? What happened? Is he OK? Who are you?” I asked. My brain was too cloudy too make any sense of this.

“Jim needs you.” she said with more urgency. “I am Yvonne.” she added as an afterthought.

She grabbed my hand and pulled me into the hallway. I felt myself following her. My confusion and anxiety began to mount, but I did not ask any questions. I just followed her. What happened next defied any of my later rationalizations. She led me to a room on the seventh floor and pulled rather than pushed open the door. A man in a sailor uniform sat in a barren room on a cloth-covered couch. His pants were around his ankles and one of his hands cradled his large erection. Yvonne pulled me to him and then down to my knees. My memory is of beautiful Yvonne and I taking turns pleasuring the unidentified sailor. I felt like I had to do it. I also felt her fear.

None of it could have happened. I awoke in my own bed the following morning. The memories of Yvonne and the anonymous sailor were excruciatingly vivid. The whole episode had been quite an amazing, harrowing dream. Normally I don’t even remember my dreams. Of course I never mentioned it to anyone.

A few weeks later I logged on to my own website and saw that my webmaster had updated the site with a black and white gallery of a busty, blonde, steely-eyed beauty. It was Yvonne. It was not just someone who looked like her: it was Yvonne. Shock ran through me and I felt weak. Nothing made any sense. Where had these photos come from? Did Yvonne actually exist? I walked away from the computer without turning it off. I felt Yvonne's eyes watching me from the monitor. My pulse began to race and a light sweat broke out all over my body. It took quite a while for me to control my breathing. Finally I was able to approach the computer and shut it down.

Days later I mustered the courage to phone my webmaster and find out where he had acquired the photos. He was nonplussed by my queries.

“You gave them to me.” he said. “They were in that last package of content that you sent me.”

Something akin to fear coursed through my system. I had not sent him these photos. The first and only time I had ever seen Yvonne had been in my dreams.

Who is she??

The full "Black & White" gallery of Yvonne is inside my Playhouse at www.TanyaDanielle.com .

- XXOO Tanya

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Cooper Arms: Part 1

2007-07-13T08:10:00.000-07:00

I believe that dwellings contain the spirits of their former inhabitants. Sometimes the distress of those old occupants is almost palpable if they experienced a great deal of angst while living there. I've known this for a long time, but in the summer of 2005 the notion became very relevant to my life once again. That summer I found a unit in an old apartment house, the Cooper Arms, where I could enjoy the warm weather and ocean breezes right across the street from the beach. A noted architect named Claude Beelman had designed the building in 1923. The rent on the place was remarkably low, but my commute to work would be very long on the days I had shoots scheduled. Most porn and fetish work is shot in the San Fernando Valley and that is much further North than this beach town where I wanted to stay. I decided to lease the apartment for the summer anyways.

On the day I signed the rental agreement my friend Tyson and I went to the Italian deli that occupied the ground floor of the building. The owner of the deli happened to engage us in conversation and I mentioned that I'd be living upstairs for a short while. He asked me the number of the apartment and I told him. I remember him also inquiring if I knew anyone else who had lived there. It seemed that he was watching me carefully as I shrugged and told him that I didn't. He commented that there were a lot of "characters" who stayed at the Cooper Arms. Later in the conversation it came up that someone had commited suicide a few months earlier by jumping from upstairs. The deli owner mentioned only that the individual had been a nice guy and had caved in the top of a police car with his body as his downward spiral through life had ended. It was a peculiar story and Tyson and I discussed it later that evening while I filled some suitcases with clothes at the old warehouse where I usually live. At some point Tyson disappeared into the room next door so he could avoid helping me pack.

An hour later he came bursting through the door with the previous month's issue of Adult Video News Magazine in his hand. "You aren't going to believe this!" he exclaimed excitedly. It was obvious that he had a good story to tell and his eyes were bright with wonder. He thrust the magazine under my chin and I looked down at it. Busty, blonde Taylor Wane glowered seductively up at me from the page he indicated. I communicated my lack of comprehension by raising my eyebrows and making the universal palms-upward gesture of befuddlement. Tyson stabbed his finger at a photo of a man that appeared on the page below Taylor's picture. For some reason the guy looked like a male stripper, but I can't remember why I thought that at the time. I read the brief paragraphs of text that accompanied his photo. Oh, wow. I no longer recall whether the actual name of the apartment building was mentioned, but the other details contained in the article were sufficient to make me realize that this was an obituary for the very guy who had commited suicide by jumping from the Cooper Arms. It turned out that he was a porn actor called Rex who had also worked as an agent in the business. Somehow I just knew that he used to reside in the exact unit in which I'd be living. I just knew. No wonder that great little place had been vacant. Now it all made sense why the landlords had been asking for so little rent and had been willing to accept a short-term tenant. I felt a bit of a chill as I contemplated the odd coincidence of another porn person living in that unlikely building so far from the hub of the industry.

After moving into unit 1103 at the Cooper Arms I spent hours sitting on the balcony reading and staring at the ocean. Something mysterious was always niggling at my senses although it remained out of the reach of my rational mind. I knew the feeling was connected to Rex's untimely death and I felt compelled to start finding out more information about him. One of my neighbors reluctantly confirmed that Rex had indeed occupied unit #1103. I don't know why I bothered getting that fact validated because I had already known in my soul that that was the case. After further (very casual) investigation I discovered that talent scout Rex had brought notorious pornstar Savannah into the industry. Savannah was platinum blonde, busty and beautiful. In 1992 she was named "Best New Starlet of the Year" by Adult Video News. She commited suicide in 1994 by shooting herself in the head.

Obviously there was a chain of suicide that linked at least two people, but I felt positive that there were others in that chain that I did not yet know about. Here and there, as I enjoyed my summer by the ocean, I would feel Rex's lingering torment around me. Sitting on the balcony was usually a pleasure at any time of the day, but occasionally I had fleeting but powerful impulses to throw myself over the pale green railing. That sounds really bizarre but that is what I experienced. I could usually shake off those twisted notions in the space of a few seconds. It was if an evil spirit would quickly invade my body only to discover that it was not inside a vulnerable enough venue. Then it would just leave. There was only one occasion when I capitulated to the sinister sensations. I had walked out onto the balcony and thenjust sunk trembling to the concrete floor as panic and madness washed over me. Inexplicably I felt unable to take the chance of standing upright because I felt that I might go over the side and fall 11 floors to the street below. I sat there gripping the vertical bars of the balcony railing until the terror subsided and my confidence returned. It was just that one time that it happened. Now I think it was probably a warning for what was about to come.

Two days after that episode I was drinking coffee in my kitchen and enjoying the view out the window. There was a knock at the door. It surprised me but I answered it anyways. Two men that looked like male dancers from a cheesy movie stood there. One looked me up and down, smiled lecherously, and then turned to look at his friend. I followed his gaze to his friend's face and then I felt someone's hand shove me roughly back into my apartment although I could not tell who did it.

"You're one of Rex's girls, aren't you?" the taller one demanded. He was wearing a blue bandanna tied over his dark hair.

"N-no," I stuttered. "No."

Those were the last words I spoke that day. The man in the bandanna grabbed me by my hair and then propelled me further into the room. Both men stood between me and my front door. My only chance of escape was to run for the balcony. An image of my body hurtling over the pale green railing of the balcony to the sidewalk below kept my feet rooted to the floor. I was both petrified and paralyzed.

"You're going to behave, aren't you?" the bandanna-head guy said with certainty as he practically pulled me off the floor by my hair. His companion, who was about 5'11 and very muscular, produced a ballgag from out of his pocket and forced it into my mouth as pain shot through my jaw.

"You'll do. You'll do just fine." the musclehead said softly as he buckled the gag tightly at the base of my skull.

Something impelled me to cooperate with these two intruders and not offer any resistance. I had always thought that I'd fight to the death in a nearly unimaginable situation like this. The dark-haired guy observed the terror in my eyes and my resigned, submissive posture for a few long moments. He and his friend exchanged glances. It seemed to please them that I was being so compliant. Perhaps that's why the bandanna guy decided to offer the following explanation to me:

"You see," he said calmly, "Rex stiffed us on a shoot. We paid him for a girl and we never got to shoot any of the footage. We can't let that type of thing happen. And you'll be just fine for our purposes. Even better than we expected. Everything will be fine as long as you do exactly what we tell you to do."

They stripped me naked and I did exactly what they wanted. The photo above is one of those that they shot in my apartment that day. It wasn't until several months ago, a full year after the incident, that I came across it on a severe bondage site on the Internet..

You can see the extent of the debauchery in the Machined gallery which is now inside The Bondage Room of my Playhouse at www.TanyaDanielle.com .

- XXOO Tanya

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