A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Heaven by Corey Taylor Page A

proposition of mystique . . . and a sweet pool.
    The confusion does not stop there. Some people claim Errol Flynn lived in the Mansion in the thirties, but others claim his only real home in the area was at Mulholland Farm. Then again, if you read the book Errol Flynn Slept Here, he crashed at a lot of places over the years. So maybe that one has a glimmer of merit. I do not think he lived there per se, but he might have gotten his swashbuckling groove on. I think I read somewhere that he liked to make fuck with his socks on—either he had bad circulation or he just had a penchant for sexing in snowdrifts.
    Sorry—that had dick and balls to do with here, there or anywhere . . .
    What is true finally is that the Mansion burned down with everything else in the area in 1959, when fire ravaged the hills. From what I have been able to research, a woman named Fania Pearson eventually purchased the properties on all four corners of Laurel Canyon and Lookout Mountain and owned them from the sixties to the mid-nineties. These included the “real” Houdini House, the Tom Mix/Frank Zappa Cabin, and the Mansion. To this day there are people who live in the canyon who doubt Houdini ever even visited there. But by then the legend had taken on a life and purpose of its own. Never mind all the evidence and documentation—that does not stop people from seeing his “ghost” walking the grounds and frightening children. Nor does it keep groups from trying to hold séances somewhere on the property to contact the Great Houdini. The Master of Magic is making the rounds more frequently in death than in life.
    The residents in the canyon have legends that have nothing to do with Houdini and his immortal coil, like how the Mansion was a squat in the heady decades of rock, roll, and the Sunset Strip. There was even a rumor that Vasquez’s gold (huh?) was supposedly hidden beneath some of the foliage on the trails that run up the back of the house. One tale features a mentally deranged gentleman who was convinced he was Robin Hood reborn, and the canyon was Sherwood Forest; children going to and from Wonderland Elementary had to beware of “arrows” and old English. Most believe this is who people truly saw when they claimed it was Houdini back from beyond the grave. I may not be a rocket scientist, but I think I can spot the difference between a spirit and a crazy fucker.
    You might be asking yourself if I am defeating the purpose of this book by debunking this house and its charm. What am I doing answering questions that no one wants to ask? I am merely setting the tone for my experiences by setting the record straight on the whole Houdini thing; none of my stories have anything to do with the King of Cuffs and Cards. From what I can tell, there is no need for his presence. Tales run rampant of inhabitants being murdered or committing suicide in the Mansion. People allegedly overdosed or were assaulted at punk parties during the seventies and eighties. One story has the son of a well-to-do furniture maker pushing a scorned lover to her death from one of the balconies. Another involves finding the body of a man dressed in a tuxedo hanging from the ceiling in one of the bedrooms when the place was vacant; this was apparently in response to a rebuked proposal. I do not know what would possess a man dressed as Archibald Leach to kill himself in a vacant property, but if Homo sapiens have a defining characteristic, it is the one in which they reach for the highest and brightest example of bat-shit crazy.
    Remember the one about Tuxedo Man—it will have more meaning later.
    My time in the Mansion begins in 2003 when I moved in with the rest of Slipknot to begin the recording of what would be Vol. 3: The Subliminal Verses. The funny thing is that I did not even stay there that first night; I went out on the town and passed out at a stranger’s house. That was par for the course during the first month of making that album—crashing at someone