A trio of $6 million apartments on San Francisco’s steep and winding Lombard Street has a morbid past – the mansion that houses them was said to be cursed by an irate Tarot card reader who brought tragedy to it for years.
It started in the 1960s, when local celebrity Patricia Montandon, a glamorous host of parties at 1000 Lombard Street attended by Andy Warhol and Frank Sinatra, somehow incurred the wrath of the card reader, SFGate reported.
“Quivering with rage, he directed a stream of abuse at me,” Montandon wrote in her 1975 book “The Intruders.” “As he stormed out with his entourage, he yelled, `I lay a curse upon you and this house. I do not forget and I do not forgive.’”
In the weeks that followed, Montandon’s apartment was burglarized and a chill spread throughout, to the point that Montandon and her assistant, Mary Louise Ward, donned coats inside even after setting the thermostat to 90 degrees, SFGate reported. Her dog, named Dog, barked incessantly in the middle of the night and chewed at his own fur, forcing Montandon to find a new home for him.
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Then Montandon was violently attacked at the home when a man she’d previously dated tried to kidnap her. She stopped throwing parties, and after coming down with a respiratory illness she claims was brought on by an “amorphous presence” in the house, she felt compelled to leave.
Worse lay ahead. In June of 1969, first responders called to a report of a blaze found Ward’s body face down on her bed. The fire had started in the bedroom and appeared to be caused by a cigarette – although Ward didn’t smoke and an autopsy showed she was dead before the flames got to her.
Montandon looked into the history of the 1909 home and found a long history of suicides, alcoholics and unhappily married couples. She also said it was built on what was once a Russian cemetery and site of public hangings.
Montandon, 93, lives in Beverly Hills and hosts roundtable luncheons to this day.
[SFG] — Victoria Pruitt