Founded in 1923 as a humane women's asylum, Rockhaven housed Marilyn Monroe's mother and is now reportedly visited by serene, restless residents
2713 Honolulu Ave, Glendale, CA 91020
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Guided tours offered by Friends of Rockhaven; check website for availability as gates are sometimes closed
Access
Limited Access
Landscaped grounds with pathways; some uneven terrain around historic buildings
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1923 · National Register of Historic Places (2016) · Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument · Pioneer women's mental health institution · First humane psychiatric facility founded by a woman in the United States
Agnes Richards had worked in state-run asylums across Nebraska, Iowa, and at Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino before she decided to build something different. What she witnessed — physical abuse, starvation, institutional neglect — led her to open Rockhaven Sanitarium in 1923 on a 3.4-acre parcel at 2713 Honolulu Avenue in the Crescenta Valley neighborhood that straddles Glendale and Montrose.
Her patients were never called patients. They were residents, or simply 'the ladies.' The grounds were designed around the idea that a pleasant, domestic environment with gardens could aid recovery where institutional confinement had failed. Most staff were women. Richards treated patients across social classes, but the institution developed a reputation as the 'Screen Actors' Sanitarium' as Hollywood connected women found their way there.
Gladys Pearl Baker — Marilyn Monroe's mother — lived at Rockhaven from 1952 to 1966. Billie Burke, best known for playing Glinda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz, was a long-term resident. Peggy Fears, a Ziegfeld Follies performer, died there in 1994. Josephine Dillon, acting coach and Clark Gable's first wife, died on the grounds in 1971.
Richards operated Rockhaven until 1967, when her granddaughter took over management. Earthquake damage in 1971 contributed to the facility's eventual decline. After it closed in the early 2000s, the City of Glendale purchased the property in 2008 for $8.25 million to prevent demolition. The property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in June 2016. In 2021, the state of California allocated $8 million toward converting the site into a mental health history museum.
Sources
The accounts from Rockhaven are unusual in the paranormal landscape for their consistent tone: whatever is reported here is described as serene. Caretakers who maintained the property after it closed in the early 2000s described lights activating in rooms they had just left, alarm clocks triggering in empty spaces, and mild sounds — whispers, laughter, piano notes — coming from unoccupied areas of the wards.
A piano is cited in multiple accounts as the strangest physical anomaly. Caretakers claimed to find it in a different room from where they had left it — not just moved a few feet, but genuinely relocated. These accounts are anecdotal and unverified, but they come from people who worked the building regularly rather than visitors primed for a ghost experience.
Tour visitors have described seeing full-body figures in period nursing dress moving through hallways, and hearing footsteps echoing in empty corridors. A 'Lady in White' apparition — a translucent female figure moving through the garden — is the most commonly described visual experience.
The non-threatening character of the reported hauntings fits an unusual narrative for the site: unlike most asylum-related haunted claims, which focus on suffering and confinement, the Rockhaven accounts tend to describe something closer to continuation — as if the ladies simply never entirely left the place Agnes Richards built for them.
Notable Entities
Friends of Rockhaven volunteers conduct guided tours of the 3.4-acre grounds and surviving structures — fifteen buildings erected between 1920 and 1972 in Spanish Colonial Revival style. Tours cover the institution's founding by Agnes Richards, the treatment philosophy, notable residents, and the preservation effort. Access is intermittent; check the Friends of Rockhaven website before visiting as the gates are periodically closed.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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