Transcription
Tonight at 11:00, the LAPD swarmed a Hollywood Hills mansion after reports of a woman screaming. Responding officers found the hillside mansion completely trashed, walls and windows covered in graffiti, and the filthy swimming pool filled with furniture.
In the heart of Hollywood Hills, there lies a mansion forgotten by time, now overrun by squatters. The son of a billionaire, John Powers Middleton, was the last owner of this sprawling $1 million home. John, a TV and film producer who worked on films such as "The Lego Movie" and "Up," left the home around 2013 and listed it for approximately $15 million. The problem was that it didn't sell. The more the home sat, the more it began to decay, and in a couple of years, curious explorers and squatters began to find a way inside. With time, the home soon had unexpected owners who would throw wild parties with their homeless friends.
Police are called to a multi-million dollar Hollywood Hills estate after neighbors hear screams coming from inside the lavish home, fearing someone inside was being hurt. But what they found instead was a group of squatters who had been illegally living inside the home that has been abandoned and now trashed. The illegal squatting got so bad that in 2022, a man armed with a shotgun shot at somebody within the home. Soon, there was a standoff with LAPD's SWAT team. After numerous complaints, we were told the property was secured. However, in 2024, the mansion appears to still be abandoned, albeit more decayed. The man and the two women were cited for trespassing and then released, two of them telling us it was just a misunderstanding.
So guys, this mansion here is like from the top of this mountain all the way to the bottom. There's parking on the roof, and there's parking all the way at the bottom. So this like kind of wraps around this road, kind of wraps around this mansion, and, um, it, uh, it's pretty large, guys. We're going to go to the bottom and walk through the front door. Yeah, guys, this place is towering. There's other people around, but they're workers. Oh, there's workers. Perfect view. Screw it, we'll go in. Vacated building. So there's workers over there. All right, we're going to try to make it in. You can hear their music. Oh, they're down there. All right, let's go, let's go. Come on, come on. Lock, lock out. Yeah, it's locked.
So right as you walk in, you're greeted with a fountain, stairs going up the house, a garage, and an elevator. This place is absolutely insane. I can't wait to show you guys. I mean, first off, there are so many water fountains, pools all over this house. This is just one of them. I mean, this is, um, an incredible thing to just walk into right as you walk inside the house. It's just insane how like homeless people all got in here. Look at this, guys. We got a huge chandelier, beautiful, looks modern. And here's a garage. Now, there's very little inside the actual garage, but there's definitely water damage. So this place has been really sitting abandoned. Now, anyways, without further ado, let's go up these stairs. But I mean, just take a look at the stairs going up. I mean, there's nothing else on the first level. It's just these stairs and the garage. So I mean, this is all we have to to go is up. But I mean, the amount of detail in these stairs, you're going to see soon. So many parts of this house have incredible detail all over the place. There's caution tape here as if there was like a crime scene. I mean, there's been standoffs with police in here, homeless people with shotguns, all this crazy stuff, guys. And just standing back here, you can get a view of what it looks like going down.
So right off the bat, we have two rooms here. These are just guest rooms. We'll check out a little bit later, but we want to go to the main attraction first. You can see, um, some of these stairs back here. People dropped heavy items down here and destroyed some of this expensive. They destroyed some of this expensive marble. But here we are, guys. Now we're getting into the main part of the house, and I mean, there's so much furniture left behind, so many items here. Can't even begin to to talk about it. But let's start here with this fireplace. Look at the detail that went into this thing. It's insane. This must have cost a fortune itself. And you can see homeless people have set up chairs to, um, hang out here, just, um, when it's cold at night, cuz out here in Cali, it gets pretty cold. They even put tape on the window on a broken window to keep the wind from, uh, keep the wind out. But anyways, guys, there is a crazy view I'm about to show you. Here we are. This house is a maze. I mean, there's so much stuff here. There's like workers below, so I'm not going to walk out here, um, until later. But let me, let me show you guys back inside the actual home.
So here we have another room. Here's some of the original things left behind from the owners, some phones and, uh, tapes. As you can see, more people have gotten in here and and trashed the place. There's things that shouldn't be here that are here, but obviously all this furniture, all this stuff here was original. Even these books here. In fact, it looks like there's some writing here. It says, "To whom this may concern, first and foremost, 18th Street gang members came in with sledgehammers, all drunks of them. They burned in the piano pod. $25,000 worth of damage. Montana's girlfriend." I don't know what this is about. So it looks like it's this note is kind of talking about how somebody was maybe trying to keep watch of the place and somebody, people were destroying it, and some homeless person was trying to keep it nice, maybe. Yo, wow. This place is absolutely beautiful. I'm still trying to figure out where to start my video. I'm looking at every detail. It's all beautiful, and like everything is left behind, too. That's what makes this place cool. There's clothes, shoes, furniture, everything is left, dude. Yeah, this is insane. Yeah, this place is incredible, man. I can't believe they just left all this stuff, too, man. For sure. It's a shame how like ravaged it's gotten. Yeah. I mean, what it looks beautiful without the graffiti and all that. Mhm. Absolutely. It's really a shame, really. Yeah. There's even a plant here. Might be still alive. Oh, it's fake. I mean, there's just a ton of stuff. There must have been like a really expensive painting here. No longer. Somebody drew on that wall.
So continuing over here, it just keeps getting better and better. Starting off with this room right here. Check out the marble on these walls. This is one expensive bathroom, guys. Look at this. Every inch of this house, as you'll soon see, is like ultra expensive. This, this chair was probably original, like left behind too. There's a couple things homeless people brought in, but you can kind of tell what homeless people brought in and what was originally left here. It's still such a stunning mansion. I mean, right over here, it looks like this is like, um, some sort of like sauna or shower. So as we get higher, guys, you're going to love the views that come with this place. I mean, it's just going to get better and better. There's all this stuff, though, guys. Look, there's there's clothes. There's kind of, uh, some trash here. It's absolutely unbelievable to see like a mansion like this of this size with like all these features just abandoned. All these, all this furniture, too. I mean, those left. There's so much stuff here. There's posters on the wall that might have been original to the to the to the house, for all I know. You can see here they had blinds that went down to cover the building windows when, uh, the owner didn't want to be seen. But just look at all this furniture. I mean, it's expensive. It's modern, too. Wow, guys, check this bathroom out too. Look at all this detail here. I mean, even if stuff is, um, modern, I still think it's incredibly beautiful. Some of the stuff that's made today. Look at the ceiling here, how it goes down and it arches to like a giant shower and bath. Look at this, guys. This is like a bathtub and it rains water down on you from up here. That is crazy. This is a tall room, too, mind you. People just completely destroyed it, but you can still get, you know, a semblance of what this used to be like. You'd see people really use this, um, as their own hangout spot. It's truly a shame what squatters have done to this, but I mean, every aspect of this house is so nice. There's still a couple things, you know, from when it used to be lived in. There's a bidet here and a toilet with clothes. That's really nasty. Check this out. Do not enter. Don't risk your life. Black mold. [Music] Mhm. This place is pretty ventilated. I kind of have a rule about this, so I think we're fine.
Oh, guys, you know how I said this place is like a maze? We'll just get ready. We got more stuff, just like hallways going underground into the mountain. Here's like somebody's like sleeping spot. They they like lived here. It's pretty disgusting, honestly. I really don't want to be by that. I would not live in here just because of the condition it's in. So here's the other side of this bed. You can see there's like stuff here. Actually, there's another note. Thing I have away with these vandals tagging. So whoever wrote, who's like, whoever's writing this stuff is like mad about the vandals destroying this place. And hey, good for them, to be honest. Look at that, though. What the heck was going on here? This is so strange. What is that? That's a light bulb. Anyways, guys, I mean, I didn't even realize this, but this is a walk-in closet, and it's huge. Huge closet, guys. It just keeps going. Look at this. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. It's still going, by the way. There is so many spots here to put your clothes. We even have a mirror here that's pretty intact, honestly. This place isn't that destroyed. It's not that destroyed. It's crazy, though, that one person needed all this space just for a closet.
So back into this room, I just wanted to point out, guys, look at the floor. Incredible. There's so many features here, and we're just like on the second floor, I believe. Just wait till you see what else we have here. So there's a couple things I'm kind of looking over here. So it appears this this was kind of the work room here, as you can see, there's there's like a setup, nice woodwork. But here we go, guys. We have a, uh, a little bit from the previous owner here. John Burl, Middle School, class of '04. Guys, it's about to get cool. So I showed you kind of this room a little bit. Could see all the garden furniture here. But do you see that? That outside is a pool in the middle of the house with a, you know, you can see everything from here. I mean, this was some kind of party house, obviously, or something. It's crazy. A pool, and and that's not the only pool. There's like three or four. Here's like the kitchen. Oh my gosh, did you guys see that? I just saw a rat. Oh my gosh, there's a rat in this house. I'm not surprised. This is LA. There's a bunch of trash here, but can you believe this? Look, look at this nice house. Look at the pillars here. There's just all this garbage here. I can't believe it. This house has been really overturned. I mean, everything. There's mold here. Oh yeah, there's mold. But I mean, just the details on every part of this house. Look at this, just on the counter. I this is all like nice. It's not gutted or nothing. It's this was like almost vacated. Somebody stole that. Good for them, I guess. But the amount of cupboards here. Look at all this. And this is new, too. This is modern stuff, just abandoned.
All right, guys, we're going to the pool now, and look at that. That pool is just black. It's not green, it's not blue, it's black. This place is messed up, guys. Imagine just like what kind of parties went on here, man. It's so black. You can see the reflection in the sun. I mean, this is just bad. This is real bad. But this is like insane luxury here. I think it was only like $5 million, which is pretty darn cheap for a house like this with this much detail. And it just keeps going up, guys. So we're going to head up here. You see how much it opens up now. This place is awesome. Got some pots here with some dead trees, some garbage. And here we got to kind of be careful here, but look at all these houses. I mean, what was this? This was like some kind of like this was like a a place to hang out, like a I'm sure there was tables here, and looks like there's a bar back there. So this is like the top four kind of party spot here. So yeah, look at this. They had a bar here or maybe a kitchen to serve people, and this is just out for the outside kind of parties they would have here. And guys, there's still like wine glasses still left behind inside these cupboards. We got plates left behind. And I mean, this, this is crazy, guys. And the view of the city is starting to open up here. You can see it now. This is something incredible. I honestly don't know how people get away with destroying this place for so long. I mean, so far, we've had no issues with people. Um, we did see people looking out the window at us, but no real, no real issues. Nobody's came here, nobody's bothered us. I mean, this is LA. I mean, there's some crazy people out here, so I think people think it's normal. There's crazy people here like us.
All right, we're taking these stairs up here. Look at this. Look at this view, guys. These pillars. When I get back here and kind of get away from everybody. Oh my gosh. Look. So this was a looks like a hot tub. So they got another hot tub in this house, and it's like surrounded by glass. Absolutely beautiful. They had lion's heads probably dispersing water out. This is crazy how many clues they have here. This is insane. I've probably said that enough times, but you get the idea. Every aspect of this house is like modern. It's really interesting to see that something like this abandoned, and this is like the richest kind of modern abandoned mansion I think I've ever explored. We got these two bathrooms here. These were for the probably the hot tub back there, but it just keeps going. And this room might be one of the craziest ones we're going to. One of the tallest rooms here, and just look at the bar here. Just by looking at the bar, I mean, can you can you imagine how much this costed? Just just the marble alone, just the woodwork alone. I mean, this was so expensive, so expensive. And like people just hung out here, homeless people just hung out here. Look at this. This is like the meeting room in like a movie, overlooking the city, mind you. Look at this. All right, we'll get a better look, uh, without that graffiti. This is why I don't like graffiti. People, they just really look at this. They ruin this spot. They ruin this beautiful view. It's entirely blocked now. Anyways, I'm ranting, but here we go. We can still get a look. Look at this, guys. Oh my gosh. How is this building abandoned? And it's like badly abandoned. Look, look at how badly this stuff is rusting. Oh my gosh, this is so cool. I can't believe this. This will probably happen more, too. But anyways, guys, these chairs, so they're all kind of set up at a certain angle here. Looks like a meeting room, but, um, you actually, you look up here, it starts to make sense what this room actually is. It's a movie theater. You could see there's like a bunch of cables back there. These movie theaters are not easy to operate. And actually, the walls I'm leaning on right now, this stuff is this stuff is all like fuzzy, so it's still like blackout, noise. And the movie theater, somebody stole this. No, but yeah, I mean, the screen would have been here. Can actually hear people outside now. So supposedly homeless people come here at night, and it's starting to get pretty late. But I mean, what luxury is this, guys? A movie theater. You pull it up when the movie's over, and you see the entire city. Oh my goodness, that is something else.
So right here, it says Villa Alegra. So that's the name of this place, probably. You can actually see on the floor, um, how much people have scrapped this place. Here's like an air conditioning unit. It's probably like on the side of the house. This right here leads to, um, the outside. There's stairs going all the way to the bottom here, but you see all this like stuff on the ceiling. Oh my gosh, it's so much, so much detail just for a small room, you know, and such a large house. And I mean, most of the house has detail like this. It's it's really something. So this here, okay, this looks like like the wine room. This was definitely a wine room. They have like a lock here, and okay, I see what this is now. Actually looks like it looks like a fireplace, but I think that's a cooler, maybe. Appears to be a cooler. So we can take a look back here. The strange thing is this, uh, room has like a padlock on it. I wonder what I wonder what was going on here. Uh, it looks to be the bathroom again. So much, so much detail. It's chipped away and destroyed. And this stuff was probably put here less, not less than 10 years ago. I mean, oh my goodness. Yeah, this is the bathroom for the movie theater. You know, usually see underground movie theaters in in mansions. This one's above ground. Feels like I'm on a penthouse right now, almost. Really feels like this is like some executive stuff. I'm sure everybody can see me, but I'm sure they've dealt with this before. Oh yeah, guys, and there's yet another pool. A giant pool at that. Really giant pool. Look, it it goes all the way back there. Obviously, the water has evaporated. But here it is. And this is like, sure, the trees weren't as high, so this would have been kind of overlooking the streets. Pretty awesome, actually. Right here, there's an abandoned mansion being built, and they kind of stopped building it, so it's an abandoned construction site. He just got a pool there. So not much there, but yeah, what a view. Really, guys, look at this. Incredible. This has to be my favorite room in the whole [Music] house. Here we go. Jesus is King. This, uh, this floor is all tile. It's really nice, too.
Okay, guys, there's stairs going up even higher, but you guys might be a little bit disappointed. Let me show you what I'm talking about. These stairs are crazy, though. Yep, it's all boarded, but this is like a mall entrance. And look at the flowers on the railing with this like beautiful skylight seeping sunlight, natural light into this house. You got a curved door. So this is the top floor where you would have parked, and, uh, yeah, it's just abandoned. So we can't get down here, but there, there's a really cool view out here, let me tell you. It's too bad this is locked, and it's not even keeping people out. And there's, there's security cameras all over the house, but they don't work. There's no more power. I think it's like so crazy how they put so much work into this just for it to be completely abandoned, unsalvageable. And there's really, I don't know what's going to happen to it. It's going to be have to be completely gutted. I mean, really, it's it's something. It's something else. This room right here has to be one of my favorite rooms in this whole mansion, guys. What do you guys think though? And not to mention, we still have more to check out. So let's get through everything, and then you can decide.
So yeah, there's actually stairs going down. Keep saying this is a maze, and you'll see what I'm talking about. There's even more rooms. I think we haven't seen before. Yep, this is just a long hallway. The glass here has been totally shattered. There's, uh, chairs. And look at this fancy bathroom. I would kill to have one of these for free, and it's just sitting here abandoned. You know, when I buy a house, all this stuff, man, just imagining it going to waste, it's absurd. And whoa, guys, we have a really cool bedroom here. Take a look at this. So the bed is gone here, unfortunately, but man, if they kept it, that would have been nice. But imagine you're sleeping here. Look, they had a TV as well. Sorry, I'm getting sidetracked. Here's the view I'm talking about. You're sleeping here, and this is your view, guys. Oh my gosh. I can't imagine that. This is like a whole another world. And these, uh, this bed here is like really expensive, too. I'm sure it's been totally destroyed. Some weird graffiti here, but yeah, you'd be sleeping, and this is what you'd see. So cool. Let's go further down here. I'm not sure what to expect. Oh my gosh, this is a walk-in closet. Hey, yo, yo, where you at? Are you just working your way up? Uh, I'm, I'm like checking out. It's like a maze, dude. Yeah, it is. There's so many floors, and there's like a lot of half floors, too. Yeah, dude, this, this is a secret room right here. I think this was a living room, and then through those doors is the a bedroom. That's pretty sick. This was a living room, I think it was, and that was the bedroom right there, I think. Oh, you're right. It's so trash down there. Really? Yeah, in that room, there's a lot of stuff. There's stuff, but it's pretty trash. Really? A shoot. This is unreal, though. I mean, looking past the graffiti, it's a 10 spot. 10 out of 10. 100%. 100% beautiful. This might be one of my favorite places so far. No doubt. Good luck. Yeah, you too, man. As you can see, this a little secret spot that you can kind of overlook the living room, and this kind of goes to, I think, nothing, just like maintenance. Yeah, couple like pieces of wood back here, random window. So this is where people were scrapping, clearly. Another insane closet here, just absolutely massive. Yeah, the amount of stuff, shoes, clothes that would have been in here. Can you imagine? Back we go down the hallway now. It's just littered with furniture. Oh my gosh, this was another bathroom. Really nice one. The mirrors are still intact. Whoa, look at this, uh, sink. It's made of like solid, uh, rock, and there's mirrors all around this. We'll turn that off. This is just all mirrors. Another like, look like some kind of rock, uh, bath. There's so many baths in this house, guys. And just imagine you're taking a bath, and this is your view. Look at this. This is trash, guys. Man, there's people working down there. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. I can't believe it. This is insane. But yeah, this is something else. Look how trash this bathroom is. That is so disgusting. Keep walking through what, uh, nasty things might have happened throughout here.
All right, guys, so now it's all starting to connect here. We got some more parts that have been, uh, stuff has been dropped on. But yeah, the the br's allw starting to connect now. The maze is kind of over. We still have the outside to check out. I still am not over this place. It's so incredible. There's like security everywhere on every part of this house, too. It's kind of funny. See, I mean, everywhere they had security, and since the power got shut off, none of that matters anymore. So I'm just going to say screw it and kind of walk out here. I'm sure people have seen me already. We got some more crime scene tape here, probably from the standoff. But here we go, guys. Oh my gosh, we got more rooms, I think. But here's the pool. Here's the beginning of the pool. The pool is huge, huge. We got more stuff down here. What's up, yo? This view is breathtaking. So yeah, um, look how much garbage was just dumped in this pool, first off. A lot. But yep, there's more rooms. No, no kidding. So these rooms here were probably another level of party rooms. There's like multiple levels of party rooms here. So this was, uh, for the pool, obviously. You hang out here and, um, you would, uh, I don't know, get dressed, go to the bathroom, whatever. This is where the mold's kind of bad in here, but that's all right. You got, uh, what is that? Like a saw shower, something like that. Man, two pool rooms and pool houses on top of your mansion is so crazy. Of course, that's a clear sign that the mansion is abandoned. Is the fire alarm going off like that? It's a pretty good way to tell. More stuff here, probably homeless people's stuff in there, that toothpaste and all that. And yeah, kind of ends at this toilet here, but we get another shower as [Applause] well. Totally wild. So I'm assuming I might even find more rooms at this point, cuz I just keep finding them. You would have probably had here, uh, maybe some, uh, swim trunks or towels. This is kind of the area to kind of dry off from the pool, I would say. Just imagine what went on here, both, uh, before it was abandoned and after. It really is a crazy idea. So we're just going to kind of walk out here on the pool. It's all dried up, of course, but there were definitely parties. There were definitely parties thrown in this mansion. This is in such bad shape, too. I can't believe this. Like, this is something. This is something incredible. Imagine hanging out here. I'm like standing, it'd be up to my head right now, probably, the pool water, and it just gets deeper. I mean, it'd be so much fun had here. Yeah, I've been, I'm in pretty good view of people. Nobody's came so far, though. This is so nice. And look at that. Got another view out there. The whole city. Well, you get to swim in your pool. Pretty dope. So I had to be real careful walking out there because that literally drops all the way down. So if you're like drunk in this pool, you went back there, you're falling off all the way to the ground. Imagine just someone's just driving and a person falls, that'd be crazy. Look how many, look how many view people I'm in view of right now. I think they're like so used to this. There's been LAPD helicopters over here. I'll try to pull up the footage if I can. I can't believe, uh, can't believe that like homeless man with a shotgun apparently like barricaded himself in here, and it's still open. No problems. He supposedly secured it, but LAPD has so much to deal with that they just don't care.
Anyways, guys, here's what I was talking about about the stairs going up. This is so, this is what that is. Um, I could technically go up to the very top, but I don't know if I want to. It's too much work, and I actually, I've I did it twice already. My hands, my arms are like all scratched up, but, um, it's just like a view on the top, a little parking garage on the top. So I don't know. It's all right. So I think we've hit every single room here. There's, uh, two more downstairs that aren't that interesting. I'll show it anyways, but what do you guys think your like favorite room here is? I mean, there's so many aspects of this house that are so unique and something I'm just not used to seeing. I think it's just, it's something, it's something that, you know, I needed to see, I guess, and I wanted to show you guys. I think it's really cool. But yeah, I mean, the fact that there's like furniture and other items left behind before, uh, squatters even got here is is pretty crazy, especially like an LA mansion like this that's overlooking the city. It's so crazy to me. I've said crazy probably a lot of times, but I really do mean it. I mean, this was really an experience to check this out and check out California in general. So, um, yeah, let's go check out those last two rooms.
Anyways, guys, going back to the, uh, first or second floor, I guess, um, I wanted to show you guys these last two rooms just because. So yeah, we're right here if, uh, if you remember, but, uh, yeah, so these rooms here are like kind of unfinished here. You can tell. Actually, the floor is nice, okay, so, but I don't know, there's a bunch of trash in here and the windows are broken. So I'm going to be more quiet, but I don't know what these rooms might have been. Maybe maybe guest bedrooms, I would say, because there's bathrooms here. I'm not sure, but as soon as you walk in, there's like these two bedrooms here. So I guess that's what this was. There's like construction material, I think that's what that is, or it's garbage, more likely garbage from homeless people, to be honest. And then, yeah, there's another one here. So let's take a look at this. Actually, this one is a bit nice. It is open. That window right there is open, but this was probably another guest bedroom by the looks of it. I would say pretty nice, though. You can take a look at this bathroom here. There's a was that shampoo, poo shower, and actually a pretty nice, uh, bathtub. That is, yeah, that is pretty nice, man. Like every part of this house, even the the guest bedrooms are like super luxury, you know? It's cool. Pretty cool.
So anyways, guys, thanks for watching the video. I hope you liked the video. Leave a like if you haven't already, and subscribe if you haven't already. There'll be a lot more content like this, a lot more crazy places. It just gets crazier, guys. Just stay tuned to what I'll be posting. I'm always trying to show you guys the coolest spots. So thanks for watching, guys. Take it easy. Oh, shoot.