Micheal's Foreverland: Dark Secrets of His Final Home
Source: thedailybeast.com
Michael Jackson’s final home, as of Thursday, is even stranger than his Thriller video, sitting atop 13 stories of secret catacombs housing Satanists and gypsies.
Diane Dimond tours the tomb.
There are fewer places more beautiful than Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California. It’s a park-like 300 acres of rolling hills, massive trees, majestic marble statuary and soothing water features. Hubert Eaton, a devout Christian, took over an existing graveyard in the early 1900s, and designed it to mark a new and glorious beginning, rather than the end of something.Michael Jackson will lie in repose over no fewer than 13 subterranean floors, each holding intriguing secrets. As one cemetery insider told me, ”It’s sort of the opposite of the stairway to heaven.”
But this otherwise majestic place sits atop some dark secrets, ones that, as of this Thursday, Michael Joseph Jackson will rest upon as well. I was able to glimpse an advance peek at the King of Pop’s eternal throne, and the reality is stranger than his Thriller video, sitting atop more than a dozen floors of secret subterranean burial sections housing the remains of ancient devil worshippers and Gypsies, sacrificial fonts and crypts decorated with pentagrams and a secreted area with shelves housing at least a thousand abandoned urns containing the ashes of souls no one claimed.
My recent behind-the-scenes tour of the cemetery was conducted by a man who had worked there for several years in a job that had him into the bowels of every single building, the entire breadth of the grounds, and he knew the place like the back of his hand.
“There’s Spencer Tracy’s plot -- and over here Errol Flynn’s,” says my guide, pointing to the appropriate places. After rounding a corner of one elaborate building, he motioned toward an out-of-the-way flower bed, pulled back a low hanging palm frond and said, “Hardly anyone has ever seen this.” He pointed to a plaque which read: Walter Elias Disney. Engraved underneath: “Ashes scattered in paradise.” Resting below, at the foot of a Little Mermaid statue, was a small stuffed Mickey Mouse.
Inside the mammoth Freedom Mausoleum, my guide points to a low marble bench and then up to the wall where a side-by-side crypt held the remains of Gracie Allen (1902-1964) and George Burns (1896-1996). He explains that every Tuesday for decades, Burns would sit on that bench and visit with his departed soulmate. The simple legend on their crypt reads: “Together Again.”
Nat King Cole’s crypt is above and to the right.
Downstairs in this particular building, down into more marble walls holding the remains of members of the Three Stooges and the Marx Brothers, Alan Ladd, Dorothy Dandridge, Clara Bow and many others, my chest tightens. It was like breathing in a heavy dose of musty mold - a rotting suffocating smell that forces staffers to leave open opposing doors so the breeze can carry at least some of the smell away. This smell of death cropped up randomly, in various buildings, throughout our excursion.
The talk of workers on the property today is of exactly where Michael Jackson will spend eternity after his final family memorial service, scheduled for Thursday at Forest Lawn’s Great Mausoleum, inside the elaborate Memorial Court of Honor. In that hall Jackson’s casket is scheduled to be staged under a stunning stained glass rendition of Leonardo da Vinci’s "Last Supper" masterpiece. It occupies one entire wall.
This location likely would have met with Michael’s approval.
He once commissioned his own special Last Supper painting and for years it hung directly over his bed at Neverland Ranch. In Jackson’s version he occupies the center space where Jesus is usually seen and instead of the disciples there are some of Jackson’s heroes painted in, among them Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Charlie Chaplin, Elvis Presley and Little Richard.
After the hoopla surrounding Jackson’s death dies down, maybe in a year or more, cemetery workers speculate that Jackson will be permanently buried in the uber-expensive “Golden Key” section of Forest Lawn, which is outlined with a prohibitively tall brick wall. Only family members in possession of a special key can enter this rarified space where the likes of Mary Pickford, Sammy Davis Jr. and Humphrey Bogart are interred. It’s a vast and lavish area of the cemetery surrounded with glittering marble statues and elaborate sarcophaguses.
But for now, sources tell me, Michael Jackson will be stored in a crypt almost directly underneath the Last Supper masterpiece.
To get to that spot my guide showed me a wide marble staircase, roped off to keep the public out, but clearly visible as going down. The first sunken level is where it’s expected Jackson will be held. Standing at the top of these stairs is like standing on the top floor of an apartment building and being able to see all the levels of staircases. It has an eerie feeling to it and, according to multiple sources, this is the route to the secret underground catacombs.
Michael Jackson will lie in repose over no fewer than 13 subterranean floors, each holding intriguing secrets, some could date as far back to the late 1800’s. As one cemetery insider told me, ”It’s sort of the opposite of the stairway to heaven.”
When asked to confirm these areas a Forest Lawn spokesperson denied they exist.
But my sources, including another ex-Forest Lawn maintenance man and a mutual acquaintance of both employees to whom they gave contemporaneous accounts over the years, give descriptions that are rich with detail.
“There is a level where devil worshippers were once interred,” my guide tells me. “It’s complete with devil statues, pentagrams and an area where worshippers conducted weird services.”
Continuing down there is another level said to be dedicated to some of Los Angeles’ original and very wealthy industrialists and their families. They rest down behind ancient hardcore steel gates off to each side of a long main corridor. These are the departed rich who wanted to spend eternity away from the prying eyes of common citizens. Families with names like Williamson and Wilkinson and Miller. According to my sources, the Miller family, of Miller beer, has ancestors interred in these underground spaces.
Another subterranean area, according to the guide, was set aside as the final spot for wealthy gypsy families, the figurines on their crypts otherworldly, and as recently as the 1960s, my sources say, their families would stage elaborate get-togethers to honor their dead relatives.
Many doors remain padlocked deep within this labyrinth but when two workers opened one they discovered a room lined with shelves holding crematory urns for military men, police officers, nurses and city workers who were cremated gratis and held all these years because there were no families to claim them.
Both men told me when their duties required them to be in these underground spaces they often felt the eerie presence of some of the forgotten occupants.
“I’m not a supernatural, ghost-y kind of guy,” the guide told me as we continued our tour, “but more than once when I was down in those places I felt cold and clammy fingers brush against the back of my neck. I knew I was alone down there – but I wasn’t really alone, you know?”
Sounds like a real life Thriller location -- and one whose history would likely delight Michael Jackson.
Article from: TheDailyBeast.com
Forest Lawn Glendale
From: Seeing-Stars.com
There are more major Hollywood stars buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park
than at any other spot in the world.
It's a place that must be seen to be believed.
The park's sheer size is overwhelming, a seemingly endless vista of rolling green hills; over 300 acres dotted with white sculptures and quaint English chapels.
And it is unique.
Unlike any other cemetery, Forest Lawn attracts over a million visitors per year. Over 60,000 people have actually been married there (including Ronald Reagan, who tied the knot with Jane Wyman at the "Wee Kirk 'o the Heather" chapel back in 1940). Regis Philbin was also married at Forest Lawn.
Why? Well, Forest Lawn isn't your ordinary, run-of-the-mill cemetery. Far more than just a memorial park, it's also a museum, an art gallery, an architectural showcase, a Hollywood tourist trap, and a religious retreat. Even Pope John Paul II stopped here, during his visit to Los Angeles.
Where else can you see the final resting places of multiple movie stars, visit a replica of Rudyard Kipling's church, watch white swans glide across a lake, see a mosaic of "The Signing of the Declaration of Independence," view the world's largest religious painting in a state-of-the-art theater, and discover replicas of all of Michelangelo's major works in one place?
Forest Lawn was born in 1917 when Dr. Hubert Eaton, a firm believer in a joyous life after death, became convinced that most current cemeteries were "unsightly, depressing stoneyards," and pledged to create one that would reflect his optimistic beliefs, a cemetery that would be as unlike other cemeteries "as sunlight is unlike darkness, as eternal life is unlike death." Forest Lawn was designed to captivate visitors, and it does so quite well.
The "Golden Age" Hollywood stars buried here include some of the biggest names in the history of Hollywood: Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, Jimmy Stewart, Jean Harlow, Humphrey Bogart, Mary Pickford, Errol Flynn, Spencer Tracy...
No other cemetery can match the sheer number of superstars that you'll find buried here at Forest Lawn Glendale.
That includes George Burns & Gracie Allen, W.C. Fields, Tom Mix, Sammy Davis Jr.,
Walt Disney, Red Skelton, Robert Young, Lon Chaney, Ethel Waters, Alan Ladd,
Dick Powell, Robert Taylor, Wallace Beery, Ted Knight, Sam Cooke, Joe E. Brown, Sydney Greenstreet, Nat King Cole, Jack Oakie, Ed Wynn, Jack Carson, Norma Shearer, Chico Marx, Dorothy Dandridge, Robert Cummings, Sid Grauman, Dan Daily, William Boyd ("Hopalong Cassidy"), Marie Dressler ("Tugboat Annie"), Irving Thalberg, Casey Stengel, Larry Fine, Aimee Semple McPherson, Edward Everett Horton and Jean Hersholt, plus authors Louis L'Amour, Theodore Dreiser and L. Frank Baum.
But there's a catch. (Isn't there always?)
Because of the sheer size of the park, sightseeing here for the casual visitor interested in visiting their favorite stars' grave can be an exercise in frustration.
The grounds are so enormous that finding any particular grave without a map is like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack . To get an idea of just how large this Glendale park is, consider that over a quarter of a million people have been buried here. Even with a map, trying to locate a star's grave here can be difficult.
And to make matters worse, for some reason the cemetery refuses to give out any advice or directions when it comes to locating celebrities.
Forest Lawn certainly does not encourage sightseeing by movie fans. In fact, they can be downright hostile at times. I actually saw a female employee at the entrance to the Great Mausoleum confiscate a visitor's copy of a reference book about stars' graves!
Worse, many of the stars' tombs here at Forest Lawn Glendale are private or semi-private. Some, such as Bogart's and Pickford's, are hidden away in private gardens, behind locked walls, with no possible entry for the public.
Others, such as Gable & Lombard's crypts, are supposed to be off-limits to the public, but are located in hallways which can be easily reached by anyone willing to simply bypass a chain rope. (Let me make it clear that I don't recommend this tactic, though; it could be considered trespassing by some overzealous employee and might get you arrested.)
The park's aversion to loyal fans who wish to visit the final resting place of their favorite star is particularly surprising coming from a cemetery that is often the butt of jokes for its own flamboyant style. And while their intentions may be noble, in my opinion, Forest Lawn's "no-tell" policy is a true disservice to the memory of the celebrities buried here. Most of these actors toiled all of their lives to be famous, to become something special, to earn the love and admiration of the public. Yet Forest Lawn's restrictive policy means that in death, these immortal stars simply disappear into a vast, anonymous sea of gravestones...
Article from: Seeing-Stars.com
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