apparently he was balls deep into the occult, he did a bunch of weird rituals with L Ron Hubbard with the direction of Aleister Crowley called Babalon Working
they tired to summon a woman (divine feminine called Babalon) to partake in sex magik to conceive some bastard demon child. they met a woman who fit the bill and performed some rituals but failed ultimately
L Ron ended up running away with Jacks wife and stealing a bunch money off him. (needed some funds to start scientology i guess)
Then a couple years later Jack blew himself up in some weird lab accident.
Wasn't Jack one of the students at Caltech who accidentally blew up their dorm room? Caltech moved them to a barn and said carry on.
Caltech Old House rooms basically had (and have) concrete walls with plaster and a burlap overcoat. These have been updated but, yeah, off to a barn. Pre-1970s you could do nearly anything at Tech and not get kicked out. Now it is totally locked down and nothing but a training ground for corporate and govt slave scientists.
Anecdote: decades ago a student in my house put an unopened large can of beef stew in a toaster oven in an upstairs kitchenette then went and fell asleep. We were downstairs in the lounge when there was a massive bang upstairs. We ran up and found the kitchenette painted with beef stew and the toaster oven kind of atomized. The power of a steam explosion can be high and we were lucky no one had been killed.
Some number of Techers do have fascination with blowing things up. Ricketts House had a four foot diameter marble pot in its courtyard until someone basically filled it with explosives and blew it to hell because they liked fire. These days the administration is completely left liberal authoritarian and does not tolerate the experimental mind anymore. Also, now half the student body is female and none of them are into explosives so there will never be another Parsons there.
Thought so. Love this country! Not much to love anymore.