anonymous - December 24th, 2007
This is great seeing all these comments. When I tell people of Munchkin Mansion, they always think I am pulling their leg. It sounds like such crap! But it's not. Most of what I've read here jives with my memories ( Get rid of the Gillespie one,, it IS total crap). Here's what I can tell ya.
I went a few times back in the early 80 when I was a new teenager. My friends and I would have our parents drop us off at the Theater, back when it was Northwest 10, then we would hike it on over to the Mansion.
When I first went there, it was still relatively intact. It was just the roof that had been burnt away. Rumor had it that the fire was started by some stoners on accident. And it is true that everything seemed built for midgets, tiny stairs, tiny toilets, short door knobs, even, and this doesn't make a lot of sense but it's true, I remember the garage door being really, really short, like for a midget mobile. The garage opened to the basement, that was really dark and creepy. I remember the elevator shaft was about the only source of light as the shaft went all the way up to the burnt out roof ( I don't think it was a dummy waiter. It was pretty big). I remember the pool was almost totally empty 'cept for a few feet of sludge. The steps there too were really tiny. There was no furniture anywhere in the house. It was only a few weeks later, maybe a few months, that the place was on the news for satanic sacrifice of animals, cats I think it was. I remember the images on the TV, the satanic spray paint etc. I remember clearly some expert saying that the whoever did this did not really know what they were doing, and were probably not real satanists. The bad press was enough for the city though. Shortly after they demolished the place. I went back a couple of times, but by then it was just a foundation and a memory, a really, really cool memory. There just aren't any places like that anymore.
Mario Foxbaker |