Agnes Nicholson-Berger: The Cat Lady Lawyer of Sunset Strip

Back in the golden age of Hollywood, it was not uncommon to see Mrs Nicholson-Berger walking her leashed black cat Butchie Boy to and from her office on La Cienega Boulevard.

Ever a practical woman, Nicholson-Berger actually owned four succesive cats named Butchie Boy, each one promptly replaced upon its demise. Due to a favor she once did for George Cukor, each version of Butchie Boy appeared in several films, including My Fair Lady, Adam's Rib, and most noticeably, alongside Vincent Price and Peter Lorre in their segment from the 1961 horror vignette film, Tales of Terror.

Of Butchie Boy's silver screen fame, Mrs. Nicholson-Berger remarked, "What do I know from movies? I just take the checks."

More fun than really playing

The Seven Christmas Ghosts of the Abacus Hotel

It's a well known fact that non-living entities adore the Christmas season and tend to ramp up their haunting during the holidays. There's a lot of speculation as to why this is. Did Dickens’ classic tale fold its way into the zeitgeist of the supernatural community? Is it a holdover from the worship of the ever living/ever dead Celtic vegetation gods? Or perhaps it's related to the solstice from which the myths of those ancient gods sprang?

Whatever the case, nowhere more embodies the curious relationship between ghosts and Christmas than the Abacus Hotel, the most “Christmas-haunted” building in America. Located on State Street in the old Dutch colonial town of Grick’s Hook, New York, the Abacus was built in 1896, and was instantly overrun with an alarming array of specters, spooks, and goblins.

During the Christmas season, there are seven active ghosts in the hotel:

1. The Moss Maiden: The upper floor of the Abacus’s tower is home to this ghost, named after her green flowing gown. The Maiden paces past the western windows on moonlit nights, awaiting the return of her fiance, a ferryman who drowned on Christmas Eve.

2. Angie from Yonkers: Newspaper research has revealed that Angie was a flapper who broke her neck after a night out at the local speakeasy. She generally lurks about the hallway of room 302, and will sometimes ask patrons if they know what time the bus for Yonkers leaves.

3. The Lamenting Cuckold: This sad-eyed spirit is often observed standing at the foot of the bed in room 204. He smokes a pipe, and whispers, “this is where my dreams were undone. Oh, my poor, foolish wife. Woe. Oh, helpless, horrible woe.”

4. The Quantum Ghost: In 1927, during a lecture in the Abacus’s drawing room, the renowned physicist Edward Shoenbach conducted a thought experiment in which he attempted to prove that certain subatomic particles are imbued with personalities, that is to say, they have souls. Shoenbach hoped to show that by their very nature quantum particles change states when they are observed, so if we view a living soul-infused wave function, it automatically becomes a dead particle, and vice versa. Other scientists considered Shoenbach’s gedankenexperiment to be boozy drivel, but nevertheless, it is said if you practice “seeing but not looking” in the Abacus drawing room, you can witness the fluttering subatomic ghost that the professor willed into nominal quantum existence.

5. Ian Fleming: It is uncertain why the spirit of the famous novelist lurks in the second floor taproom of the Abacus, as he had no known association with the hotel in life.

6. Mr. Sheffield: Some say the second owner of the Abacus slipped on a patch of black ice while trying to dance the Chesterfield, other say his wife smashed his head in with a brick. It was all very hush hush at the time.

7. The Beatnik. A pale, shaggy haired specter haunts the third floor tower during the holidays, reciting poetry of dubious merit. His most overheard line of verse is “her breast was and is a quiver, like Cagney’s lips in White Heat.”

The Servants of the Open Ear & the Cocked Head: A Fable

When we consider the obscure religious sect “The Servants of the Open Ear and the Cocked Head,” whose members we now see lingering on the outskirts of our city’s dog runs and kennels, “blessing” our pets and handing us pamphlets about the Holy Howl and the Righteous Water Dish, it’s interesting to consider the curious origins of the movement.

It began at SUNY New Amsterdam’s School of Mammalian Behavioral Sciences in the Binglam Building on East 83rd Street. This was back in the fallow years. Flared trousers and failing infrastructures, disco demolition nights and Mr. October. Long lines at the gas pumps and Charles Bronson mumbling out white fright on the silver screen. In this financially shaky atmosphere, the maintenance costs on the Upper East Side embassy of the Southeast Asian island kingdom of Binglam, with its neocolonial facades of gleaming marble, its jade-floored tea room, and its sunlit inner courtyard in which grew an ancient and quite holy durian tree, proved too dear for a nation that was then waging wars against two CIA-funded juntas and a homegrown religious insurgency.

So the Binglam diplomatic mission uprooted itself for more humble offices further downtown, and left their former home vacant; a decaying architectural oddity on a block of luxurious townhouses. After a few years, SUNY New Amsterdam stepped in and purchased the building for a song. The peeling plaster was replaced, the rats were shooed out, industrial lighting was installed, and the carcass of the durian tree--done in by a virulent fungus--was hauled out to the landfill. The School of Mammalian Behavioral Sciences moved in.

Just across the hall from the jade floors of the third floor tea room, Dr. Aldo Herdofleur (or “Doc Heretofore” as giggling undergrads called him) and his students began an immersive study into understanding what he called in his early lectures, “the magisterial power of canine loyalty. What is it,” he asked, “in the relationship between man and dog that will force the dutiful canine to often disobey its own survival instincts in service to its loyalty to humans, and what, if I may dip my toe into the social sciences, can we learn from this act of bravery, faith, and friendship?”

To be sure, the ASPCA would have had a field day with Dr. Herdofleur’s experiments. Dogs came in, went up to floor three, and never came out. Students joked that old Doc Heretofore was running a Chinese restaurant up there. 

But then, three semesters in to Herdofleur’s reign, there was a sudden shift. Almost overnight, the ceaseless canine slaughter stopped. Dogs roamed the halls of the Binglam building, barking, sniffing, humping, rolling in shit in the courtyard. other professors raised hell. One sunny day in October, Dr. Herdofleur and his team of students commandeered the remainder of the building and expelled the other researchers from their offices. They boarded the doors shut, occupying what they said was a holy space. They threw their cardiograms and paperwork out the window. Empty animal cages rained down on to the pavement. The howls of dog packs in the courtyard kept the neighbors awake. The police were called in.

Herdofleur issued a statement. He printed 1,000 photostats from the basement copy machine. In time, this statement became the first gospel of the Servants of the Open Ear. “History has not awarded the dog his proper place in pantheon of moral will. Cowards are said to lie down like dogs, to be a mangy cur is to be filthy and ill-bred, we associate dogs with beggars or brutes. In our insults, however, we forget that the canine, in its noblest form, has achieved a sublime state--he has taken certain invaluable human attributes and brought them closer to god. Loyalty, faith, and friendship. Within that trinity lies our own path to salvation. The dog never questions its own commitment, never doubts or does disservice to its friendships, quite simply, a dog will believe in the face of human doubt and human fear. Loyalty, faith, and friendship, these are impulses and emotions we humans so easily set aside and make needlessly complex. And yet in spite of our sins against those tenets, we value our friends, we honor loyalty, and we cherish steadfast faith. Because in our hearts, we know therein lies the joy and truth of our brief mortal experience. Let us learn from the canine and hold true to these tenets. Let us be true friends. Let us have faith. Let us trust in loyalty.”

The original photostat “gospels” were thrown from the windows during Herdofleur’s and his followers occupation of the Binglam Building. Herdofleur wanted his message to "spread down the avenues and to the people." Despite the sensational aspect of the story, it got very little traction from journalists. A reporter at the time commented on the “gospel,” calling it “damned interesting, but frankly, not that sexy.”

Buildings, Burgers, Boats

That's three things I'll be painting next week at Cakeshop, by request, for anybody who buys a copy of my latest book, How to Hang a Picture. Details on the event here.