Your True
Tales
April 2004
– Page
18
The Bad
House
by Gabe
My mother met my stepfather in 1993. From that moment on, I rarely saw my mother again. She had quickly agreed to move in to his place, and when I finally saw the property, I could understand why she loved it there. It was originally a stone lodge built by a wealthy shoe factory owner, and my stepfather had landscaped and added onto it making it one large estate on the top of a hill. Although I knew my mother liked it, I was more apprehensive about leaving our cozy townhouse to go live in a stone fortress out in the boondocks.
The day my mother moved in, I got the impression that something was as unhappy about the move as I was. A string of shattering events was to follow. Literally. Glasses in the cupboard shattered for no apparent reason. A glass shelf broke in the curio cabinet. As my mother was walking through the large stone living room, the glass globe from one of the chandeliers broke over her head. The whole place was as eerie as you could get. We had met the previous owner of the house while out antiquing one day. She then related to us the unfortunate events that surrounded the house and it's owners. One owner hung himself. A couple of different owners went bankrupt. One couple who owned the property died in a plane crash. Apparently, anyone who owned the house either became destitute or died. The house was either evil incarnate, or just a really bizarre money pit. My stepfather was no exception to the rule either. The house had taken it's toll on his health, his sanity, and his pocketbook, leaving him bankrupt and threatening to kill him.
While I lived there, I tried to stay in the newest part of the property. This is where the bedrooms and bathrooms were. I had every intention of rarely, if ever, setting foot into the old lodge part of the house which included the kitchen, dining room, and living room. On one particular summer's day, I awoke to the sound of a man and woman chattering away. It sounded like a regular morning talk program with the casual bantering between hosts. Although I couldn't pinpoint exactly where the voices were coming from, I made my rounds of the house looking for whatever radio had been left on. I checked the upper level where my room and the spare rooms were, I then checked the lower level with the master bedroom and both bathrooms. I checked the kitchen, dining room, living room, and even walked outside. Thinking that I had missed something, I called both my mother and stepfather to ask if either of them had left a radio on, or if they knew where the sounds were coming from. Absolutely nothing had been left on, or missed by me. As a matter of fact, it dawned on me that the only part of the house I could hear the sounds, were from my room. I went back to my bedroom and opened the window thinking that maybe atmospheric conditions were right, and I was hearing a conversation from neighbors. I leaned with my ear as close to the screen as possible and heard nothing from outside. However, the voices within the space of my little room continued on. Male and female... laughing and chattering away about who knows what. Disgusted, and completely freaked out, I decided to take myself to the kitchen. At that point, I had the strangest feeling as if something terrible had happened. It was a shock when I saw a police car heading up the driveway and pulling in front of the house. Within minutes, the front yard was swarming with police and canine units. I ran outside, fearing the worst and asked an officer what had happened. As it turns out, a couple of girls from the other side of the hill had gone missing. They had gone to get the morning paper and hours later, still hadn't returned. My stepfather's estate stretched way back into the woods and down the hill, so the police naturally selected our driveway to do the meet and greet with the canine unit.
A few hours later, the cops were packing it up and hitting the road. I asked one of the officers what had happened and he told me that the girls returned home... with the paper... and hadn't even realized they were gone so long. As he put it. "They thought they were gone 20 minutes". After everyone left, I headed back to my own realm of the weird and noticed that the chattering was gone. That was the first and last time I ever heard from the voices in my bedroom. I have no idea whether or not it had anything to do with the missing girls, but that day had been bizarre enough to make me consider moving out ASAP.
Odd things still happened in the house even after I moved out. It had gotten so bad that my mother convinced my stepfather to let the house revert back to the bank and just move back to her townhouse. A year later, they drove up to the old property again and found that it had deteriorated so bad, there was nothing left of the gardens and someone had pulled all the usable timber from the Tudor side of the property.
I personally think that the house enjoyed being depressing and foreboding.
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