Mystery Location No. 69: October 8, 2017

This is the Carolands Chateau, a 98 room mansion, located at 565 Remillard Dr, Hillsborough, CA 94010 and known by locals as the “haunted house on the hill”. Around 1912, Harriett Pullman Carolan, heiress to the Pullman railroad car fortune (the daughter of George Pullman, creator of the Pullman Company) decided to build a grand estate. One of the wealthiest women in the nation, she hired a French architect to build this home, inspired by a French chateau that served as the prototype for the Palace of Versailles.

While in construction, the Carolans ran into money problems and eventually, she and her husband separated and closed the home. He died, she remarried and eventually, sold the home to someone who ended up subdividing it and selling it. Finally, a countess, Countess Lillian Remillard Dandini purchased the chateau in 1950 and saved it from demolition. Unfortunately, like Ms. Pullman, money ran dry and the chateau was once again at risk of demolition. It was vandalized, passed hands often, and fell into decline. Damage from an earthquake didn’t help any (ironically, the countess was an heiress of a fortune made from supplying bricks for rebuilding San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake).

In 1985, David Allen Raley, a security guard at Carolands Chateau, tricked two high school students onto the property where he sexually assaulted and stabbed them. He abandoned them in a ravine thinking they were dead but they were not, although one of them ended up dying from her wounds the very next day. The chateau was eventually saved from demolition and restored when it was purchased by a couple, who donated it to a newly created foundation. It is now used for charitable fundraisers and tours, but over the years, people, including neighbors, have claimed the mansion is haunted.

Groundhog Day is February 2nd.  It was on February 2nd, 1985 that the two young women encountered the security guard that later assaulted them and stabbed them, leaving them for dead.  Anyone interested in reading the account of the sole survivor can do so at this link:

www.mercurynews.com/2014/09/16/carolands-mansion-murder-survivor-laurie-mckenna-speaks-20-years-later/