A California couple who moved into a 132-year-old home discovered a labyrinth of hidden rooms and creepy artifacts - before being inundated with cryptic letters.
Courtney Weil and her husband Matt bought the Los Angeles County property in late 2022 for nearly $1.38 million, spending $250,000 over more than a year renovating it before finally moving in last January.
Almost immediately after the purchase, the couple received a stream of handwritten notes from an elderly woman claiming to be the last surviving member of the family who lived there for decades.
But those first letters were only the beginning. Not long after moving into the Victorian home, the couple's two-year-old son began pointing around the house and repeating a single word: 'Ghost.'
'He says it constantly,' Weil told the Daily Mail. 'He'll point to the trees outside or an empty room and say, "ghost". I don't detect anything but it's definitely weird.'
As part of her interview with the Daily Mail, Weil exclusively shared a detailed 35-page dossier charting the home's entire history.
She engaged a building biographer to do the research, which includes newspaper clippings, 19th-century maps, obituaries, architectural records and long-hidden ownership documents, soon after the letters and weird discoveries, such as secret rooms and a 'coffin-sized' music box dating back to the 1800s, began.
'You crank it and it plays the wedding march - "Here Comes the Bride,"' she added, calling it 'horror-movie material'.
Her husband screamed for her to come upstairs when he found it beneath old trunks. 'I instinctively started recording because I had no idea what he was about to show me,' Weil said. 'I've never seen anything like it.'
Courtney and Matt Weil, who document their historic home's renovation on TikTok, said they never expected it to come with hidden rooms and bizarre letters from a stranger claiming to know every corner.
The couple have also uncovered hidden rooms and strange artifacts since moving in last January.
The first anonymous letter addressed to 'The Purchaser,' was sent with a cryptic return address and no sender's name, and referenced hidden compartments in the home.
Weil, a mom-of-three and talent scout for reality TV who has been documenting the home's renovation on TikTok, describes herself as a skeptic.
Several contractors on the property were less composed. One plumber, working alone in the basement, texted her asking if anyone was upstairs.
When she said no, he insisted that he could hear footsteps overhead. Security footage shows him moving uneasily through the house before abruptly packing up for the day. 'He said, "I’m done - this is creeping me out,"' she recalled.
She grew up in a 1918 historic home in Oklahoma City, and said she fell in love with the Victorian property the moment she saw the listing.
'I called my realtor immediately,' Weil said.' I just wanted to see it, even as a looky-loo. But the second I walked inside, I was completely obsessed. The woodwork, the wallpaper, the drama.'
The couple put in an offer 'almost as a joke' but their success was only the beginning of a series of unexpected twists and turns.
Shortly after the sale went through, an anonymous letter appeared in their mailbox addressed only to 'The Purchaser,' with what turned out to be a cryptic return address.
Inside, an elderly woman claimed she had grown up in the house as part of the Madison family, which had lived there for generations, and warned the couple about hidden compartments throughout the home.
The 1893 Victorian home in Southern California has passed through multiple preservation-minded owners for more than a century.
A concealed chamber behind a mirrored fireplace panel contained vintage alcohol dating from the 1980s and earlier.
Artists from Hattas Studios working on a custom mural incorporating historic references to the property and its former orange grove surroundings.
Matt, who helps produce TV remodeling and cooking programs, had never received a letter like it, and was 'immediately freaked out'.
Weil, though, used to strangers stopping by her childhood home hoping for a tour, felt differently.
'Growing up in a historic home, strangers would drive by and ask my mom if they could come in and see the house again,' she said. 'But Matt was like, "Who is watching us and how did they know we moved in?"'
Despite the unease, the couple eventually wrote back. Weil was hesitant to admit that they were posting about the house online. 'But I thought, if she doesn't live locally, maybe she'd like to see it again on TikTok,' she said.
Since that first exchange, more than a dozen letters have arrived - each stranger than the last.
'She changes her name every time,' Weil said. 'And the return addresses are always different - but they're always famous places.'
One letter was sent from the Munsters' house, the fictional family of monsters from the 1960s sitcom of the same name. Another from Wrigley Field, the historic baseball stadium in Chicago. 'She's having fun with it,' Weil said.
Some letters contain riddles; others include what appear to be her own police records.
The fireplace compartment contained bottles from the Madison family, who lived in the home for decades.
Water damage in the dining room caused by a misplaced tarp during a storm, resulting in the loss of original wallpaper.
One envelope included a photograph of an obscure alarm-testing device called a 'Peter meter,' along with a story about being arrested in the South and breaking out of a facility.
'That one freaked my husband out,' Weil admitted. 'We don't know which of her claims are true.'
She has spoken to the woman only once in a 15-minute phone call three years ago, and believes she is in her 70s and now living in Canada.
'I honestly think she's trolling our followers more than she's trolling us,' Weil said, laughing about her hunch that the letter-writer knows there are 400,000 social media users keeping a close eye on the latest revelations across the couple's social media platforms. 'People get so fired up.'
But it wasn't long before the couple realized that the mysterious letters contained accurate information.
Behind a mirrored panel in the grand fireplace, they discovered a hidden chamber packed with old alcohol - every bottle dating back to the 1980s or earlier, when the letter-writer’s family still lived in the home.
Weil believes the sellers had no idea that the compartment existed. Another secret space behind the upstairs bathroom wall that once housed an old air-handling system has become her makeshift closet.
They also uncovered a vertical shaft running two floors beside the fireplace, likely a former dumbwaiter.
A concealed room behind an upstairs bathroom wall now serves as Weil's makeshift closet.
Another hidden space discovered upstairs, believed to have once held an air-handling system, has been repurposed by the couple.
They kept it intact and redesigned the paneling so it now functions as another hidden compartment.
'We don't know what we'll put in there yet,' Weil joked. 'Maybe something scary.'
The entire basement remains filled with boxes of belongings from previous owners.
'We still haven't opened everything,' she said. 'Every drawer, every cabinet - filled to the brim.'
The remodeling project hit a major snag when a neglected tarp during a rainy weekend caused extensive water damage, with the dining room taking the brunt.
Faced with blank walls from the loss of original wallpaper, Weil sensed an opportunity for something truly special and began searching for artists who specialized in custom murals and historical detailing.
That led her to Hattas Studios, a Los Angeles decorative-arts firm known for incorporating local heritage into its designs.
After connecting with founder Jeanine Hattas and her team, Weil tasked them with extracting details from the house's biography, including its history in local orange groves, into a bespoke artwork for the space.
'The resulting mural was an absolute, "no notes" tribute to the home's past, turning the damaged room into a space we now cherish and choose to live in every day,' she said.
Hattas Studios had made great use of the dossier that Weil had commissioned.
It begins with the home's origin in 1893, when a local newspaper announced that Harry Ridgway, one of the area's earliest professional architects who was known for schools, commercial buildings and many of the region's first residential properties, had designed a two-story home for retired orange grove rancher and civic activist James Hanford Cambell Sr.
A 1894 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map shows the house and its next-door companion exactly where they stand today.
The file includes biographies of the Cambells, including an obituary for Mrs Carrie Cambell, who died in the home in 1894, less than a year after moving in.
The dossier then traces the property's subsequent owners - CC Converse, Minnie Morrison, wealthy tea and cigar merchant Charles E Miner, newspaper publisher George Cross and his daughter Lucille - before it was sold to Fitzhugh and Mabel Spalding in 1939.
From there, it underwent decades of mid-century renovations documented through original permits.
A major portion of the dossier focuses on Clyde and Bernice Madison, who purchased the home in 1971 and lived there for decades - the same family that the letter-writer claims to descend from.
It includes the obituary of Roger Lewis Madison, the couple’s son, a preservationist and local heritage advocate known for his love of ragtime music and old homes, who died at the age of 38 in 1989.
At the time of Clyde’s death three years later, two conflicting wills triggered a lengthy legal battle before a preservation nonprofit ultimately inherited the home in 1993.
When the organization received it, the house was still filled with decades of the Madisons’ possessions, explaining why Weil keeps finding untouched boxes and antique objects tucked into closets and drawers.
The file also notes that the home served as a filming location for Goodbye Norma Jean, the 1975 low-budget biopic about Marilyn Monroe’s early life, and contains photographs, historic surveys and preservation documents establishing it as an official contributing property within a landmark district.
- The study includes original hardwood floors and wood casing, with large windows overlooking the historic neighborhood.
- A vertical shaft running two floors beside the fireplace, believed to be the remains of a former dumbwaiter system.
- The home's updated bathrooms retains its original roof pitch while incorporating a skylit ceiling, glass shower enclosure, and freestanding tub.
- A main-floor living room retains original wood trim and large windows, furnished with a mix of restored antiques and mid-century pieces.
The elderly letter-writer seems to know even more about what still lies hidden.
'She definitely hinted there's more we haven't found,' Weil said. 'And based on what we've discovered so far she's probably right.'
Weil said the more the couple read and restore, the more they sense the presence of the people who lived there before them.
'This house has always been passed to preservation-minded people. We weren't the highest bidder - in fact, we were the lowest - but the nonprofit trusted us to restore it thoughtfully.
'That's how it's survived when so many Victorian homes were torn down for being "dated." What's considered outdated today often becomes historic tomorrow. People are gutting 1970s and 1980s homes now, but in 100 years those styles will be rare. It takes a certain mindset to value older features when they're not trendy.'
'I'm glad so much of our house was retained; we intend to do the same. At first I think our letter-writer was testing us - now she says "the house has chosen us." Creepy sure; but maybe she's right.'