San Diego — 'Downtown, Open Sunday, 2-5, 3 story, 3 fireplaces, Old Mansion, needs restoration, 3450 sf house. $249,000." -- ad in the San Diego Union-Tribune.

"Boy, if these walls could talk." -- woman at open house.

I used to live in an oozing-oodles-of-charm Spanish guest house on Torrance Street in south Mission Hills. One of the living room walls was covered with faux-brick, painted white. Someone, I forget who, told me that there was a lewd mural behind that brick façade, a remnant of the days when the guest house, its sister structure, and the main house on the ridge above served as a brothel during WWII. We got the tenants of the main house to show us around and saw that the master bedroom had been painted a deep, glossy red, sort of like nail polish -- further evidence of a naughty past. (We never did peek behind the brick.)

I found it fascinating to think what houses go through. Here I was, settling down and starting a family in rooms where servicemen had once been serviced. Extraordinary.

When the house on Washington that housed the Crypt -- Leather, Erotica, and a Whole Lot More! -- went up for sale, I tried picturing an average family moving in from the Midwest, setting up house, and then one day finding unsettling artifacts -- a harness in the attic, manacles in the closet.

"That old place has a lot of stories, but I've tried to forget them all and go on with life," says Ed, a growly, throaty-voiced former resident of the Old Mansion. "I got out of there as fast as I could after Jack bought it and everything else -- it went to hell fast." Jack, the current owner, bought the place in 1967 for around $25,000 cash.

When Ed and his wife moved in, sometime during the early '60s, the house had already been converted from a stately single-family dwelling to a boarding house. "For $50 a month, they were just rooms. The bathroom was at the end of the hall. There were seven rooms upstairs." Ed lived in one-half of the ground floor. One tenant "...hanged himself in the kitchen. Just lonesome and tired of living, I guess. He was probably in his late 60s. Most everybody was older."

I asked what Ed meant by "went to hell fast." "I tried to stay away from all that stuff. I worked all the time, and so did my wife. We didn't mix in with any of that stuff over there at all." But you knew about it? "Oh, yeah. Yeah, sure, couldn't miss it, you know." Before I could ask what "it" was, he concluded, "So, I don't really know anything. He started butchering up the place."

He also started hiding it. Despite its size, the house is easy to miss, because it is almost entirely shrouded behind a thick stand of trees, planted by Jack. Looking at it from across the street, the only signs of the hand of man are the black iron fence, the bright red "For Sale" sign, and the crumbling concrete steps, painted an oddly vibrant cornflower blue, receding into the green darkness. As you look more closely, you notice the pile of junk off to the side -- couches, tables, chairs, broken windows -- and a corner of the first floor, the siding a dull mint.

Walking along the side, you begin to understand the cornflower steps: a barred window is trimmed with bright orange, a portion of wooden fence is half-aqua, half-orange, as if the painter ran out of one color or changed his mind halfway through. An addition on the back of the house is entirely orange. Everything is overgrown; ivy sprawls along the walls.

Inside, the house presents a series of disconcerting contrasts. The redwood arches, the huge sliding doors between two downstairs rooms, the majestic staircase making sharp left turns as it marches up to the second floor, all in contrast to the makeshift flimsiness of plywood walls and two-by-four shelves that serve to make kitchens distinct and bathrooms private. (The house is licensed for six units; Jack managed to squeeze in nine, most with at least a tiny battered sink, some with a small stove.)

The staid elegance of large, dim rooms (a dimness deepened by the vegetation that chokes whatever light attempts to sneak through the windows) wars against the crazy color scheme: the front hall sports royal blue walls, in places spotted with lime-green, midnight blue walls, orange walls, and an aqua doorjamb and door. The kitchen is a throbbing alternation between orange and red; the dining room, mostly orange, though in places the handsome heavy brown wainscotting and faded textured wallpaper still testify to former elegance. In one upstairs room, red, mint green, royal blue, and chartreuse collide in a single corner.

A house this large, this grand, should proceed from glory to glory. The third story should be a revelation, that after the grandeur of the first floor, the spaciousness of the second floor, there should be more -- a wondrous plenitude! Instead, the sheer quantity of crowbarred-in patchwork rooms and bizarre coloring produces an overwhelming mishmash -- it becomes difficult to keep track of space, to maintain a sense of place. It would take a trained eye to see what was, what could be again, without a blueprint.

An admiration for old magnificence, a sense of injustice arising from what should be and what is, makes me want to see this house restored. It also makes me wonder, like the woman at the open house, how this came to pass.

A neighbor who has lived nearby for many years says there were rumors about the house, that it was a drop-off for illegal immigrants, and that there were "spooky relationships" there. But, she says, "everything was very discreet, under the cover of darkness. If you want the general opinion of the neighborhood, it was always felt that it was a weird house, with all those trees, that weird things were going on.

"To me, it's a symbol of political neglect on the part of our council members. If it were on First Avenue, or above Laurel, this wouldn't have happened. The fire department or Neighborhood Code Compliance [would have done something]."

Another former resident, Randy, now 75 and living nearby, tells me the "calypso colors" are Jack's handiwork and that Jack "wrecked it up. He tried to work each room into a studio, and little by little he was tearing up the rooms and fixing the rooms himself."

Randy also draws some connection between the immigrant rumors and the "spooky relationships." "I never did see him with a woman," Randy recalls. "I never did hear him talk about a woman, wanting to see a woman, wanting to take her to a show or dancing, or go out.

"He had guys there. [Once], he was going downtown for something, and I was, too. He says, 'I'll walk with you guys.' As I was walking, the other guy we were with said, 'Isn't that beautiful? Isn't it gorgeous?' Jack says, 'Yeah, that's right.' I said, 'Where?' All I saw was a guy walking! I said, 'Where's the woman?' There wasn't any woman! It was another guy! I said, 'Goddamn, kiss my grits.'

"He had the habit of having wetbacks in there. It was known that whoever lived there, a wetback, he would pass the word, Being that they were young, he would give them room and board and a little money and whatever they had to do, that was it; they were comfortable with it. It was obvious. I didn't see it, but it was obvious. He was a good guy to know, but I didn't like the way he was living -- his social companionship." (Jack declined to be interviewed for this story.)

Randy suspects that Jack's "habit of having wetbacks" is what got his brother killed. "I used to warn him, I said, 'Jack, one of these days, someone's going to hurt you bad.' A couple of times, they cut his throat a little bit." In 1987, someone did more than that. According to a story in the San Diego Union, Jack went to his brother Juan's taco shop downtown to find the place ransacked and deserted. Upon returning to the house, he found his brother in the shower, still wearing his robe. The water was still running. He had been beaten to death. Randy figures the killer returned to Mexico after robbing the store.

On another occasion, according to Randy, Jack answered the door, and the men who had knocked threw acid in his face. It cost him an eye. "They were always trying to break into his house," says Randy. "That's why he got bars around his windows." Along with the bars, he installed security doors at the base of each staircase, framed in by two-by-fours. No tenants lived in the house after 1990.

Randy tried to call to see if he was okay, but Jack stopped answering his phone. According to the realtor, Ken Bourke, Jack spent much of his time in a ground-floor front room, watching TV, while the house slowly went to pieces around him. The floor of the room is littered with empty bottles of calcium supplements. "Men ugli" is written on one wall, and Ken says this reflected Jack's outlook. "Something happened," said Ken, "that made him start barricading himself in." Twice, his sister attempted to have him committed to a mental institution; twice, she failed. He has since moved out.

As of this writing, the top bid stands at $200,000. Demolition estimates are from $40,000 to $50,000. But, says Ken, "the demolition man told me it would probably be very expensive to build another redwood house like this one." Ed still lives next door to the magnificent wreck. "Every Halloween, kids come by. They ask, 'Is that house haunted?'

" 'Oh, yeah,' I say, 'it's haunted.' "

(Some names in this story have been changed.)