Description of Place: Originally, the structure was a huge sprawling white and black two-story American wood frame house obscured behind trees and a long stonewall around the property. Today, the property is now a series of homes with a stone and adobe house featuring a classic American interior rests on the site. The garage on the property was converted from the old servant’s cottage on the lot.

Ghostly Manifestations: Barry and Maureen Macintyre were once familiar inhabitants of Westport, California for over thirty years. Numerous friends and acquaintances used to point out with pride their beautifully spacious and maintained home with a tree-filled front yard. Many said it looked as if the family was hiding from the world, but no one ever knew what they were hiding.

“I started working for the family in 1952.” Anna Browne-Davis, the family housekeeper and cook, told her experiences in a 1965 Halloween article. A short, devoutly religious woman, she worked for the Macintyres for only four years before she quit. “I tell you, a lot of weird things happened in that house. I heard strange noises in the night, sometimes the sound of chains rattling, lights often went on or off and then there would be the voices. Eerie voices calling you from empty rooms and even sometimes………… beckoning you to come into the cellar.

“I remember the back light that lit up the back yard sometimes didn’t work.” She recalls. “It would work for several days and then refuse to come on. We’d replace the bulb and eventually the whole fixture, but it still wouldn’t come on when it was supposed to. I recall five to eight different electricians looked at it, but as soon as they arrived, it would be working fine, but at night when we tried to turn it on, it didn’t want to come on, and we really wanted that light on at night because we were constantly seeing dark shadows flitting through the property. It’s almost as if something didn’t want us getting a good look at them.”

During the time they lived there, the Macintyre children were forbidden to speak of the occurrences that happened in the house. Mrs. Browne-Davis, however, told all her friends and colleagues trying to get their opinions on what was going on. Many of them jokingly answered the house was haunted, but after a while the most ludicrous answer gradually began to become the truth. Meanwhile, the children grew up, became adults and moved out, but after their father died in 1980, and then their mother in 1993, the majority of the children rushed and banded together to publish a book of their experiences.

“What I remember most….” Eve Macintyre wrote. “…. was the door to my room. One night, my sisters and I woke up and watched it opening and closing back and forth, back and forth, by itself for almost a whole minute. We watched in shock as it continued happened unable to do anything but cling to our beds as if something was underneath to grab at our feet, but then it closed one last time and our father stormed in behind it screaming at us trying to figure out what we were doing. Now, of course, we didn’t do it, but he refused to believe us. He didn’t believe in ghosts and wasn’t about to so we just lied so we could eventually get back to bed.”

“We got the most grief over the screaming.” Chris Macintyre remarked on his dad. “We’d hear these long shrill cries of someone screaming their heads off in the basement and dad would blame them on whoever was closest to the basement at the time. I mean, I remember one time Junior and I were both down there looking for something or another, I think it was his football jersey in the laundry, and dad stormed down trying to find out why we were calling him and we hadn’t really called him or heard a single thing. Eventually, we all got more scared of the dad than we did of the ghosts because we never saw them.”

Often called Junior, the eldest son, Barry Macintyre Jr., was first of the kids to move out and get to go to college. Eve got his attic room next and stayed in there for only a week complaining that the room was too cold which was actually true. Susan, the middle girl, was in the room once helping her sew a comforter and they remarked on how they could both see their breath despite the fact it was the middle of summer. On Eve’s eighth night in the room, she screamed her head off and ran to her parent’s room screaming that something had tried to get in bed with her. Her experience dismissed as a dream, Eve moved back into the room with her two younger sisters.

Barry Jr. however still came home from time to time and stayed in his room without a problem. However, one day he came home unannounced and found himself locked out of the house while everyone was gone. He went around to the back to try and get through the dining room and looked through and saw Eve in the living room sitting in a chair.

“I screamed, yelled, pounded and shook the door, but she just ignored me as if I wasn’t there.” Junior recalled for the book. “She just rose from the sofa and walked toward me without looking up and disappeared down the steps to the basement. I pounded on the doors for another minute and then dad pulled up the driveway in the station wagon with everyone else - including Eve! Needless to say, I quickly shut up and didn’t tell anyone about this until we started the book.”

As if the thought of each other being impersonated wasn’t bad enough, Chris recalled an incident with Jennifer, the youngest of the three girls that he had never thought about before hearing Junior’s experience. It suddenly reminded him of another incident he didn’t think involved the ghosts until he heard Junior’s story.

“I was out in the driveway fixing the chain in my bike and Jennifer said she couldn’t find her doll.” Chris remembered years later as Jennifer listened to the story. “She couldn’t find it and I didn’t know where it was, but then she said that Michael must have hidden it in the basement. It sounded like my little brother so I followed her into the house and down the steps, but as soon as I got down there, she vanished on me. I didn’t see her anywhere and I didn’t think there were many places to hide anything down there. At the time, I think I warned her something about trying to drag me down there to scare me and I came back upstairs.”

“Looking back now,” Chris thinks back. “I wonder what I would have discovered had I stayed.”

“I remember you asking me about that.” Jennifer recalls. “That was the day you found me and asked if I had found my doll yet, but actually, it was never Bobby who hid it. It just vanished one day when we’d returned home from school. I think mom and I searched the entire house for it and it never did turn up.”

Jennifer was the youngest member of the family. Now a police officer, she credits the strange incidents in the house for being one of the forces that strengthened her. She actually recalls that she and Michael both actually avoided the basement unless they were with someone.

“Looking back now,” Jennifer continues. “It was just the most creepy part of the house. Both Mike and I would run up the stairs because we thought there was something under the stairs wanting to grab at our feet as we went up.”

“That’s not entirely true.” Susan was reminded of a memory. “She and Michael were scared of the basement. She once told me that after Barry (Junior) moved out that she often heard voices coming up the stairs. After Susan moved into Barry’s old room, and Jennifer got our room all to herself, she was afraid something was going to come up and get her. I don’t know if I believed her at the time, but I recall hearing something down there too.”

“Little childlike voices going, ‘Susan, Susan………Susan, come here.’ Sometimes they sounded like Eve or like mom………. But somehow I always knew better.”

“I think our parents experienced a lot too, but just chose to ignore them or try and come up with logical explanations.” Barry Macintyre Jr. adds. “I remember hearing footsteps across the top landing or hearing water running somewhere and mom would just sit there or dad would just keep working. They took their ignorance to the max and refused to believe that the place was haunted even as things occurred around them.”

Years after their old house was knocked down in 1985, the six Macintyre kids still talk about the ghosts. As their book was going to press, Chris Macintyre, the youngest of the brothers, added an addendum as it went to press. As a new house was being built on the lot, he had become friends with one of the crew and even got to revisit the old family home once more as walls were being ripped down around him.

“Bob was an old high school friend of mine.” He remarks. “He told me that one morning after laying varnish to the floors of the new house the night before, they found a series of dusty footsteps over the living room floor. No footsteps, just dust. There was no trace of a footprint except for the dust and that could be dusted right off without a mark.”

“They did have a problem when they tore down our house though.” He adds. “They had just begun excavating the basement when a shrill scream went through the place. Bob said he was the first one up the stairs with everyone else behind him and it took a court order to get the company to complete the job. The contractor claimed that the scream came from a busted water pipe. The problem is that there was no water running through the house at the time. It had been shut off.”

“It leaves you to wonder…” Chris asks. “What was in the house doing the screaming?”

History: The house was built at or about the turn of the century and has occupied several families such as the Reeds, Hendersons, Williamses and the McCormicks who sold the house to their old neighbors from Texas, the Macintyres. Barry and Maureen Macintyre and their six kids lived in the house for thirty years beginning in 1926 and ending in 1956 when Plumb Realty purchased the house. The rumor that the Macintyres moved out because of the ghosts is part of a rumor passed down as stories were repeated. The simple fact is that Barry Sr. wanted a smaller home for his wife after the kids moved on. The Olsen Housing Development took over the property from them when the chance came to divide up the area into several smaller homes and yards. The new house was finished in 1987 and was first owned by Bob and Florence Lookinland. Neither them nor the current owners, Wallace and Marcia Logan have reported anything paranormal happen.

Identity of Ghosts: No one knows for sure who the ghosts were but theories spread over years have claimed to a grisly murder or a cemetery under the foundation. If anything, the presences were very interested in haunting the Macintyres.

“Our family tree is actually connected to another haunted house in Texas.” Barry Macintyre Jr. reveals. “Much of our furniture and antiques came from that house and some of it was left behind when our parents moved out. As weird as it sounds, maybe the ghosts came with the furnishings. I asked a ghost-hunter about it once and he said that, yeah, similar things like that have occurred. I think it’s the most likely explanation.”

Comments: The Brady Bunch (Episode: “To Move or Not To Move” - mentioned only) - Hauntings based on the Grant Corner Inn in Santa Fe, New Mexico and the Snedeker House in Southington, Connecticut.