Villa Montezuma Museum

This guide to the Villa Montezuma Museum in San Diego opens on the redwood carvings, gold leaf and stained glass a pair of cattle-ranching brothers, William and John High, paid for entirely themselves in eighteen eighty-six, all to bribe a touring pianist and self-styled mystic named Jesse Shepard into staying and putting the city on the map. It follows the architects and glassmakers they hired, including the studio that made the composer portraits in the windows around you, and Shepard's own conviction that his piano playing could summon the dead in this room. Listen for how long a stranger stayed in a mansion built purely to flatter him into staying.