The late 1980s were not a great time for Joan Rivers. To begin with, that was when the comedy icon was fired from her short-lived late-night talk show, which had already caused a permanent rift between her and her long-time friend, Johnny Carson, for existing in the first place (Carson had boosted her career significantly by frequently booking her on The Tonight Show). As if that all wasn’t bad enough, Rivers’s husband, Edgar Rosenberg, committed suicide in 1987. Eager to leave Los Angeles behind, Rivers decided to go apartment hunting in New York.
At the suggestion of a friend, Rivers went to check out a triplex penthouse on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The place had seen better days, and nobody wanted to buy it, but she liked what she saw and quickly snatched it off the market. After having everything renovated, Rivers would go on to live in the apartment for the rest of her life. Little did she know then, however, that she would be sharing her new home with an otherworldly roommate—or so she believed.
This Comedy Icon Once Believed J.P. Morgan’s Niece Was Haunting Their Home
Rivers got her first hint that something wasn’t right when her dog refused to enter the apartment. He was barking and carrying on, but she couldn’t manage to get him through the door. As Rivers left the building that night, she mentioned the incident to the elevator operator, who told her, “I guess Mrs. Spencer is back.” Evidently, Mrs. Spencer was the niece of financier J.P. Morgan, and had died in the building years earlier. Once Rivers moved in, she noticed that the rooms would get freezing cold, even in the summer, and the electricity never seemed to work properly. She also learned that all of her neighbors had stories about encountering ghosts.
Eventually, Rivers reached out to a voodoo priestess named Sallie Ann Glassman to help her rid the place of its supposed spirit. “I used a form of ceremonial magic that, without getting too technical, involves a banishing sword and a lot of screaming at the top of your lungs,” Glassman explained in a 2012 interview. Rivers later claimed to have found a portrait of Mrs. Spencer in the basement, which she ended up hanging in the building’s lobby. Glassman reportedly called Rivers afterward to thank her on Mrs. Spencer’s behalf, and Rivers and her ghostly houseguest were apparently able to co-exist peacefully from that point forward.
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