The 100 Year Old Pyramid

Leslie Brand and Glendale (Spooky Edition)

I grew up in Glendale, California—back when the Brand Library was still a secret treasure trove for nerdy kids like me who thought Bach was punk rock and a good Saturday meant hiking the Verdugos with a peanut butter sandwich and a copy of Dune. Nestled in the hills above our quiet little city is El Miradero, the exotic and slightly eccentric mansion-turned-library built by Glendale’s founding father, Leslie Brand. And behind that mansion? A private cemetery with a pyramid. Yes. A literal pyramid. Because why not?

As a child, I wandered those hills endlessly, inventing ghost stories with friends, then later, returning solo in adolescence and adulthood to sort through real-life ghosts—heartbreaks, stress, the crushing realization that I was more of a “glasses fog up during cardio” kind of hiker. Through it all, the pyramid stood like a question mark at the end of a sentence nobody was brave enough to ask.

And El Miradero—the mansion itself—was equally mysterious. Long before digital playlists and Spotify algorithms, the Brand Library had a record collection. A vinyl record collection. Classical music—symphonies, operas, quartets—played on listening stations with headphones the size of soup bowls. I’d sit for hours, letting Mahler or Tchaikovsky swirl around me, while just down the hill, traffic honked and people argued over lattes.

But back to the pyramid.

Leslie Brand, the man himself, was buried under it in 1925, and ever since, strange things have been whispered. A cold breeze on a windless day. A moan from the shadows near the obelisk. That awkward moment when you're alone by the pyramid and realize your earbuds are out but someone is definitely humming Schubert.

Some say Brand haunts the hill because he didn’t actually want to be buried there—others think he was too attached to his estate and wanted a front-row seat to watch Glendale grow. Still others believe he’s annoyed no one appreciates his architectural tastes. ("Everyone builds Spanish-style houses and I bring a pyramid? Where’s the respect?")

There’s even a theory that Brand wasn’t buried alone. That another figure—a woman—joins him in the tomb. Someone whispered about in family lore but left out of the history books. Some say her presence is why visitors near the graveyard report hearing dual voices. A duet in the dark.

The Bloodline Twist: Ghosts with a Side of DNA

And just when you thought things couldn’t get weirder, science showed up with a plot twist worthy of Days of Our Afterlives.

For decades, Brand was thought to have died childless—a local legend whose wealth and legacy passed to the city, not a family. But in the 2000s, distant relatives in Missouri started whispering that Leslie might not have been so alone after all. Enter: DNA testing. Swabs were taken. Family trees were consulted. Eyebrows were raised.

Long story short: it seems Brand may have fathered a child out of wedlock. Possibly more than one. The evidence is compelling. Suddenly, his “private life” doesn’t seem so private. What was once a solitary pyramid might be less of a monument to legacy and more of a hiding place for secrets.

And here’s where the ghosts get gossipy.

Visitors now report hearing children’s laughter—where before, only wind rustled the pines. One hiker claimed she saw a boy in old-fashioned clothes running near the cemetery, only to vanish behind the monument. Another swears he heard an argument in the air—a man and a woman bickering in early-20th-century syntax (“You promised me respectability, Leslie!”).

Maybe it’s the spirits of heirs denied. Or perhaps it’s just the psychic static left behind when a man tries to bury a secret... in a pyramid.

Brand Library, the cemetery, the trails—these aren’t just landmarks. They’re narrative threads in a sprawling ghost story that might be more fact than fiction. And the plot thickens every year, especially when science digs up what Glendale thought it had already buried.

So the next time you visit Brand Park, don’t just bring a water bottle. Bring your curiosity. And maybe a paternity test. You never know what (or who) might still be haunting the hills.