Well, everyone. Today. Today I was that white woman.
May 11, 2017 7:48 PM Subscribe
The devil almost got me for some goddamn rosebushes and a built-in china cabinet. Author Olivia A. Cole tells a story about viewing an apartment with her husband (twitter thread)
Related:
Eddie Murphy--Haunted Houses
The Untold Truth About Black People in Scary Movies
Stuff Black People Dig #63 Not Being Haunted By Ghosts
White Fright; Or, Why Are There No Black People In Haunted House Movies
Related:
Eddie Murphy--Haunted Houses
The Untold Truth About Black People in Scary Movies
Stuff Black People Dig #63 Not Being Haunted By Ghosts
White Fright; Or, Why Are There No Black People In Haunted House Movies
There's no resolution because when you leave a murder basement, you don't go back to find out more.
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:09 PM on May 11, 2017 [24 favorites]
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:09 PM on May 11, 2017 [24 favorites]
We need a nice white family with 2.5 kids to move in and find out what's behind the door.
posted by Deoridhe at 8:10 PM on May 11, 2017 [7 favorites]
posted by Deoridhe at 8:10 PM on May 11, 2017 [7 favorites]
I have a mighty need to know what is behind that locked door. It's just like this one, where I'm really annoyed to have even found out about it (despite loving this sort of thing) because I know I'll never find out what's going on...
I can't really conceive of a reason that that door would be locked and inoperable, BUT they want tenants? I mean, if it was trafficking, or dogfighting, or a drug growing operation, wouldn't they not want tenants? It's just so confusing and weird.
posted by gloriouslyincandescent at 8:17 PM on May 11, 2017 [3 favorites]
I can't really conceive of a reason that that door would be locked and inoperable, BUT they want tenants? I mean, if it was trafficking, or dogfighting, or a drug growing operation, wouldn't they not want tenants? It's just so confusing and weird.
posted by gloriouslyincandescent at 8:17 PM on May 11, 2017 [3 favorites]
A heartwarming story about looking for an apartment, finding assorted doors, and then furiously compiling gifs for a twitter post.
posted by Bistle at 8:24 PM on May 11, 2017 [34 favorites]
posted by Bistle at 8:24 PM on May 11, 2017 [34 favorites]
I'm voting for a closet with really extensive water or termite or some other kind of damage of the sort that might turn off potential tenants. But I'm in the process of buying a house, so foundation issues are way scarier to me than ghosts.
I am looking up houses to make sure nothing terrible happened there. I don't think I care, but it can affect resale value.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:26 PM on May 11, 2017 [6 favorites]
I am looking up houses to make sure nothing terrible happened there. I don't think I care, but it can affect resale value.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:26 PM on May 11, 2017 [6 favorites]
I actually have encountered rental homes where the owners still keep some of their shit locked up in a storage room in the basement. (The detached garage in the house we rented in Maryland was like fucking American Pickers.) But it's weird that the agent was just like IDK????? :D
I get it, tho. Pittsburgh has some creepy ass houses too and I have noped out of many and marveled at many more on Zillow.
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:29 PM on May 11, 2017 [3 favorites]
I get it, tho. Pittsburgh has some creepy ass houses too and I have noped out of many and marveled at many more on Zillow.
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:29 PM on May 11, 2017 [3 favorites]
Turns out that the guy living upstairs is just some artist who fell on hard times. Honestly, there's almost certainly a very good (or at least OK) reason for just about everything out there. Hell - I owned and occasionally lived in a house with a total murder basement. A neighbor even passed me a second hand ghost story about it. But if the place was haunted by anything except mold and moldering dreams (quite a few of them mine), I saw now evidence of it.
posted by wotsac at 8:30 PM on May 11, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by wotsac at 8:30 PM on May 11, 2017 [2 favorites]
Well, I hope that whoever rented the place got a boltcutter and found out that the Mystery Door was either a) some storage space that the former owner or renter wanted to keep extra secure for some reason, or b) was an unused door to the outside that they first padlocked for security, then plastered and painted over on the outside.
Old houses often have weird and sometimes nigh-inexplicable features like that. I once co-owned a house in Memphis where some of the wiring in the basement was still knob-and-tube. There was a small brass plate in the dining room floor that obviously once had a foot-activated switch; the switch itself was long gone, but the plate still had a low-voltage live wire attached to it, and we finally figured out that the switch was to summon the help without doing something as ostentatious as ringing a bell.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:34 PM on May 11, 2017 [7 favorites]
Old houses often have weird and sometimes nigh-inexplicable features like that. I once co-owned a house in Memphis where some of the wiring in the basement was still knob-and-tube. There was a small brass plate in the dining room floor that obviously once had a foot-activated switch; the switch itself was long gone, but the plate still had a low-voltage live wire attached to it, and we finally figured out that the switch was to summon the help without doing something as ostentatious as ringing a bell.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:34 PM on May 11, 2017 [7 favorites]
A friend recently rented a house and when I was poking around she was like "...and I could make that a cheese cellar!" and I was like, "Uh, clearly that is where you dismember the bodies, I don't know why you're talking about cheese."
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:35 PM on May 11, 2017 [11 favorites]
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:35 PM on May 11, 2017 [11 favorites]
I totally have an acquaintance who bought a house recently which had a dungeon. She was talking about the lovely, unusual landscaping, and then she mentioned the dungeon casually-- oh, it has a hard-core tornado shelter in the basement, only the door has a bolt on the outside, ha ha hah. And all I could say was, have you DUG UP those flowerbeds?
posted by steady-state strawberry at 8:40 PM on May 11, 2017 [9 favorites]
posted by steady-state strawberry at 8:40 PM on May 11, 2017 [9 favorites]
I owned and occasionally lived in a house with a total murder basement.
Oh check it. When I lived in Southern Maine I had a beautiful little apartment in a Cape Cottage. a door in the kitchen led down a set of hand-built wooden stairs to the basement. The basement between floor and the floor joists that constituted the "ceiling" was about 4.5" high, and it had crumbling stone walls, and a dirt floor. It was very The Lovely Bones up in there. I had to traverse this under the length of the house to reach the laundry room, and there was only one light bulb along the way, which I had to walk up to and locate in the dark in order to pull the stubby little chain. Every time I did laundy I was convinced it was my last. When my partner moved in with me he pretty much refused to go down there, ever. Laundry became my chore as long as we lived there, because of my blissful oblivious whiteness-type insistence that it was so cool and old-fashioned and quaint and New Englandy to have an earth basement!
posted by Miko at 8:56 PM on May 11, 2017 [11 favorites]
Oh check it. When I lived in Southern Maine I had a beautiful little apartment in a Cape Cottage. a door in the kitchen led down a set of hand-built wooden stairs to the basement. The basement between floor and the floor joists that constituted the "ceiling" was about 4.5" high, and it had crumbling stone walls, and a dirt floor. It was very The Lovely Bones up in there. I had to traverse this under the length of the house to reach the laundry room, and there was only one light bulb along the way, which I had to walk up to and locate in the dark in order to pull the stubby little chain. Every time I did laundy I was convinced it was my last. When my partner moved in with me he pretty much refused to go down there, ever. Laundry became my chore as long as we lived there, because of my blissful oblivious whiteness-type insistence that it was so cool and old-fashioned and quaint and New Englandy to have an earth basement!
posted by Miko at 8:56 PM on May 11, 2017 [11 favorites]
The entire continents of North and South America were the sites of massive intentional and unintentional acts of genocide. So if you want to avoid ghosts, maybe pick a different continent?
This reminds me of the other thing that happened a lot during my 20 years in New England: walking tourists around some 18th century historic house or admiring the houses in a historic neighborhood until that moment where they turn to you and say "I wonder if anyone died in there?" Sister, that shit is three hundred years old. TONS of people died in there.
posted by Miko at 9:00 PM on May 11, 2017 [20 favorites]
This reminds me of the other thing that happened a lot during my 20 years in New England: walking tourists around some 18th century historic house or admiring the houses in a historic neighborhood until that moment where they turn to you and say "I wonder if anyone died in there?" Sister, that shit is three hundred years old. TONS of people died in there.
posted by Miko at 9:00 PM on May 11, 2017 [20 favorites]
b1tr0t (and everyone else who can't see the whole thing): To see the entire thread, follow the solid green vertical line on the left side downward until it turns into a dot-dot-dot, then click the 'X more replies' link next to the dot-dot-dot.
posted by BiggerJ at 9:04 PM on May 11, 2017
posted by BiggerJ at 9:04 PM on May 11, 2017
Ha! That was a great story.
posted by turbid dahlia at 9:07 PM on May 11, 2017
posted by turbid dahlia at 9:07 PM on May 11, 2017
I'm definitely the twelve billion locks on the basement door with no outside exit has more to do with the landlord storing a ton of junk there and being convinced their tenants are all secretly thieves who want to steal their 37-year-old child's long-since water-damaged class projects than murder, which I actually find funnier.
I have lived in places with cold air returns that looked pretty evil but were mostly evil because they ate all the cat toys. Someday my old landlord is going to have furnace work done and like 300 pompoms are going to fall out of the duct work.
posted by Sequence at 9:24 PM on May 11, 2017 [29 favorites]
I have lived in places with cold air returns that looked pretty evil but were mostly evil because they ate all the cat toys. Someday my old landlord is going to have furnace work done and like 300 pompoms are going to fall out of the duct work.
posted by Sequence at 9:24 PM on May 11, 2017 [29 favorites]
Absolutely. My bet for what's behind the locked door is rusty lawn furniture and the band's old PA system.
posted by Miko at 9:29 PM on May 11, 2017 [6 favorites]
posted by Miko at 9:29 PM on May 11, 2017 [6 favorites]
I am super confused as to why any of this is weird. (Yes, my neighborhood is all turn of the century rowhouses, why do you ask?)
posted by desuetude at 9:44 PM on May 11, 2017 [7 favorites]
posted by desuetude at 9:44 PM on May 11, 2017 [7 favorites]
Little doors into little cubbies inside closets were a 1920s-1930s thing. I don't really understand the compulsion to squeeze in a tiny extra bit of storage space and then put a door in front of it, but I've seen enough of it to find it commonplace, if quirky and old fashioned.
posted by desuetude at 9:50 PM on May 11, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by desuetude at 9:50 PM on May 11, 2017 [4 favorites]
I once lived in a huge cut up Queen Mary monstrosity of a house that had turrets and windowless rooms and SECRET DOORS.
The only ting keeping it from being a murder castle was the four families living in it simultaneously.
(We found a really weird closet in our latest place. They kept making new hooks for ties or whatever by hammering blunted nails into the door so while innocent, the inside had a very strong tool music video/Manhattan iron maiden torture vibe
posted by The Whelk at 9:56 PM on May 11, 2017 [10 favorites]
The only ting keeping it from being a murder castle was the four families living in it simultaneously.
(We found a really weird closet in our latest place. They kept making new hooks for ties or whatever by hammering blunted nails into the door so while innocent, the inside had a very strong tool music video/Manhattan iron maiden torture vibe
posted by The Whelk at 9:56 PM on May 11, 2017 [10 favorites]
There was a small brass plate in the dining room floor that obviously once had a foot-activated switch; the switch itself was long gone, but the plate still had a low-voltage live wire attached to it, and we finally figured out that the switch was to summon the help without doing something as ostentatious as ringing a bell.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:34 PM on May 11
...and not some Spiritualism-craze, séance-related unscrupulousness? Well, dang.
posted by Iris Gambol at 10:07 PM on May 11, 2017 [8 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:34 PM on May 11
...and not some Spiritualism-craze, séance-related unscrupulousness? Well, dang.
posted by Iris Gambol at 10:07 PM on May 11, 2017 [8 favorites]
...and not some Spiritualism-craze, séance-related unscrupulousness? Well, dang.
Crap. Didn't think of that at the time, and the ex would probably not be keen on contacting the descendants of the original owners to ascertain whether or not they did some Walford Bodie-style grifting.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:14 PM on May 11, 2017 [2 favorites]
Crap. Didn't think of that at the time, and the ex would probably not be keen on contacting the descendants of the original owners to ascertain whether or not they did some Walford Bodie-style grifting.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:14 PM on May 11, 2017 [2 favorites]
I've seen a lot of weird cubby things and tiny doors and creepy crawl spaces in older houses and I've always figured that they came from a combination of more prevalent angles in architecture (steep roofs, gables, oddly shaped rooms) and a desire to recoup some of that inevitable dead space (so to speak), because houses in general were considerably smaller and extra space is extra space. So you get those creepy little doors into small storage areas tucked into angles or behind stairs or whatever. More modern construction makes better use of space due to boxier designs and friendlier angles, and bigger houses in general mean it's not a big deal if we just block off minimally-useful spaces completely.
But that theory leaves very little room for quadruple-locked basement doors with no apparent corresponding exits and I would have noped right on out of there.
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 10:22 PM on May 11, 2017 [2 favorites]
But that theory leaves very little room for quadruple-locked basement doors with no apparent corresponding exits and I would have noped right on out of there.
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 10:22 PM on May 11, 2017 [2 favorites]
maybe pick a different continent?
Which ones are you certifying free of genocidal history? Antarctica?
posted by Segundus at 10:30 PM on May 11, 2017 [26 favorites]
Which ones are you certifying free of genocidal history? Antarctica?
posted by Segundus at 10:30 PM on May 11, 2017 [26 favorites]
Our house is a bit like that. There's a closet that has something like 1000 screws screwed into the inside back wall in a weird ritualistic-looking pattern. There's a bedroom that had a lockable bolt on the outside of the door. There's a padlocked mini door to the dark space underneath of the house that we didn't have a key to when we moved in. The pebbled floor of the shower kind of climbs up the wall in a vaguely menacing fashion.
We like it.
posted by lollusc at 11:52 PM on May 11, 2017 [3 favorites]
We like it.
posted by lollusc at 11:52 PM on May 11, 2017 [3 favorites]
the compulsion to squeeze in a tiny extra bit of storage space and then put a door in front of it
Chez Clanger is a recently (2009) renovated town house, converted from a row of 19th-century houses that had been knocked together into workshops. Four floors, but not especially wide or deep, and with lots of staircase. Sure enough we have an understairs storage area with trapezoidal door, and another cupboard that has a full, room-size door but is six inches deep. (It houses the circuit breaker box, and we keep stacked-up bags of kitty litter there.)
It's in the DNA of British builders not to waste potential storage space. Heck, even country houses had priest holes.
posted by Major Clanger at 12:27 AM on May 12, 2017 [3 favorites]
Chez Clanger is a recently (2009) renovated town house, converted from a row of 19th-century houses that had been knocked together into workshops. Four floors, but not especially wide or deep, and with lots of staircase. Sure enough we have an understairs storage area with trapezoidal door, and another cupboard that has a full, room-size door but is six inches deep. (It houses the circuit breaker box, and we keep stacked-up bags of kitty litter there.)
It's in the DNA of British builders not to waste potential storage space. Heck, even country houses had priest holes.
posted by Major Clanger at 12:27 AM on May 12, 2017 [3 favorites]
Asians would have headed for the hills.
"And basically Asians are like, hey bodoh (stupid)! You didn't hear what the housing agent said, ah? Boy! Slaughter family! Possess devil! AARRGHHH Why do you want to go look at the house?!??"
posted by micketymoc at 1:23 AM on May 12, 2017 [5 favorites]
"And basically Asians are like, hey bodoh (stupid)! You didn't hear what the housing agent said, ah? Boy! Slaughter family! Possess devil! AARRGHHH Why do you want to go look at the house?!??"
posted by micketymoc at 1:23 AM on May 12, 2017 [5 favorites]
My friend's dad is Moroccan, wildly OCD, and really into fixing things. We always joked that his house was a total murder house.
For example, it's a pretty common Moroccan thing to cover the door with a tapestry, but he had it rigged up so that the tapestry opened and closed with the door on some kind of rod-based contraption. The tapestry was backed by heavy plastic to save on energy costs, and everything fit flush into the doorway, so basically, when it closed behind you there was just this tapestry that didn't look like a door at all.
This meant that if you weren't familiar with the house, you wouldn't be able to find the way out. It happened to me. It happened to all of us. Also, he unscrewed the light bulbs in the hall to save on energy, so just picture trying to leave this house at 2 in the morning, in a dark hallway where you can't find the door, and also you're stoned. I mean, it wasn't pitch black, but it wasn't brightly lit either. The door that looked like the exit actually led to the living room, which was just used for storing all the garden equipment and various other machinery he had either fixed himself or built out of other machines (he was actually kind of a mechanical genius -- he built his own weedwhacker with a lawnmower motor and some metal tubing and stuff). The living room was also kept dark to save on energy, and there was heavy plastic sheeting over the windows to stop drafts. All you could really make out was plastic over the windows and the silhouettes of chainsaws and lawnmowers and stuff.
In fact, there was heavy plastic on all the windows. But like, the really heavy kind that you can't really see through very well.
One time my friend was like "you think the house is scary, wait till you see the basement." I only saw it once, but it was literally just open wood frames covered with heavy plastic sheeting instead of drywall, with no lighting, and, I'm not kidding, piles of caustic chemicals like lime and fertilizer and stuff. So you could dimly make out one big dark room with plastic sheeting hanging all over the place, piles of lime, and some random machine parts.
So anyway, that was my best friend's dad's scary house. My friend's room and the kitchen, TV room, etc. were fine. Just, you know, the other half of the house was a creepy murder house. Also the dark hallway with the hidden exit.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 2:58 AM on May 12, 2017 [19 favorites]
For example, it's a pretty common Moroccan thing to cover the door with a tapestry, but he had it rigged up so that the tapestry opened and closed with the door on some kind of rod-based contraption. The tapestry was backed by heavy plastic to save on energy costs, and everything fit flush into the doorway, so basically, when it closed behind you there was just this tapestry that didn't look like a door at all.
This meant that if you weren't familiar with the house, you wouldn't be able to find the way out. It happened to me. It happened to all of us. Also, he unscrewed the light bulbs in the hall to save on energy, so just picture trying to leave this house at 2 in the morning, in a dark hallway where you can't find the door, and also you're stoned. I mean, it wasn't pitch black, but it wasn't brightly lit either. The door that looked like the exit actually led to the living room, which was just used for storing all the garden equipment and various other machinery he had either fixed himself or built out of other machines (he was actually kind of a mechanical genius -- he built his own weedwhacker with a lawnmower motor and some metal tubing and stuff). The living room was also kept dark to save on energy, and there was heavy plastic sheeting over the windows to stop drafts. All you could really make out was plastic over the windows and the silhouettes of chainsaws and lawnmowers and stuff.
In fact, there was heavy plastic on all the windows. But like, the really heavy kind that you can't really see through very well.
One time my friend was like "you think the house is scary, wait till you see the basement." I only saw it once, but it was literally just open wood frames covered with heavy plastic sheeting instead of drywall, with no lighting, and, I'm not kidding, piles of caustic chemicals like lime and fertilizer and stuff. So you could dimly make out one big dark room with plastic sheeting hanging all over the place, piles of lime, and some random machine parts.
So anyway, that was my best friend's dad's scary house. My friend's room and the kitchen, TV room, etc. were fine. Just, you know, the other half of the house was a creepy murder house. Also the dark hallway with the hidden exit.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 2:58 AM on May 12, 2017 [19 favorites]
Sister, that shit is three hundred years old. TONS of people died in there.
We know that at least two people died in our 150 year old house, probably in the bedroom that I'm in as I type this. Rich folks didn't go to the hospital in the 19th century, the doctor came to their house.
Also creepy murder basements are pretty much standard features around here.
posted by octothorpe at 3:52 AM on May 12, 2017 [2 favorites]
We know that at least two people died in our 150 year old house, probably in the bedroom that I'm in as I type this. Rich folks didn't go to the hospital in the 19th century, the doctor came to their house.
Also creepy murder basements are pretty much standard features around here.
posted by octothorpe at 3:52 AM on May 12, 2017 [2 favorites]
Obviously all of those cubbies are where Pipes lives.
A friend recently rented a house and when I was poking around she was like "...and I could make that a cheese cellar!" and I was like, "Uh, clearly that is where you dismember the bodies, I don't know why you're talking about cheese."
I'm just envious of your friend for having/going through enough cheese to need a separate cellar for it.
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:06 AM on May 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
A friend recently rented a house and when I was poking around she was like "...and I could make that a cheese cellar!" and I was like, "Uh, clearly that is where you dismember the bodies, I don't know why you're talking about cheese."
I'm just envious of your friend for having/going through enough cheese to need a separate cellar for it.
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:06 AM on May 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
I got to the third reaction gif and I was all like
posted by signal at 4:14 AM on May 12, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by signal at 4:14 AM on May 12, 2017 [4 favorites]
Future HGTV show: Converting Your Kill Room into a Wine & Cheese Cellar, Ganja Laboratory, or a nice Holodeck for the little ones.
posted by Chitownfats at 4:45 AM on May 12, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by Chitownfats at 4:45 AM on May 12, 2017 [3 favorites]
My aunt owned a bootlegger's house in Delaware. That place had at least three secret rooms, ladders behind cabinet doors, closets behind closets, the whole deal. They got the place cheap because all the secret rooms were structural and you couldn't renovate them out without doing some major demolition work.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 4:51 AM on May 12, 2017 [8 favorites]
posted by robocop is bleeding at 4:51 AM on May 12, 2017 [8 favorites]
Which ones are you certifying free of genocidal history? Antarctica?
That's where the shoggoths are.
posted by Faint of Butt at 4:55 AM on May 12, 2017 [7 favorites]
That's where the shoggoths are.
posted by Faint of Butt at 4:55 AM on May 12, 2017 [7 favorites]
They got the place cheap because all the secret rooms were structural and you couldn't renovate them out without doing some major demolition work.
Why in the heck would you ever want to?!?!
That's like getting a house cheap because it comes with a magical ice cream fountain!
posted by winna at 5:07 AM on May 12, 2017 [27 favorites]
Why in the heck would you ever want to?!?!
That's like getting a house cheap because it comes with a magical ice cream fountain!
posted by winna at 5:07 AM on May 12, 2017 [27 favorites]
HGTV is a hell of a drug.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 5:22 AM on May 12, 2017 [7 favorites]
posted by robocop is bleeding at 5:22 AM on May 12, 2017 [7 favorites]
I just started running through a mental checklist, and yup, my house is also a murder-house.
* 40-inch tall door leading to closet running the entire length of a wall.
* Wrought-iron AC return vent covers that look like gaping maws of hell
* Every basement entrance locks... from the outside
* Room in basement that I immediately repurposed as a wine cellar because it had a door that looked like it could withstand a siege, and that shit insulates well, yo
* ...and, come to think of it, that room has some funny stains on the floor
Anyway, I'm going to send this thread, and my thoughts about our own house, to my lovely wife, who is currently home nursing a tiny infant, and point out her helpless-white-lady-in-the-murder-house status. I'm sure she'll chuckle heartily.
posted by Mayor West at 5:31 AM on May 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
* 40-inch tall door leading to closet running the entire length of a wall.
* Wrought-iron AC return vent covers that look like gaping maws of hell
* Every basement entrance locks... from the outside
* Room in basement that I immediately repurposed as a wine cellar because it had a door that looked like it could withstand a siege, and that shit insulates well, yo
* ...and, come to think of it, that room has some funny stains on the floor
Anyway, I'm going to send this thread, and my thoughts about our own house, to my lovely wife, who is currently home nursing a tiny infant, and point out her helpless-white-lady-in-the-murder-house status. I'm sure she'll chuckle heartily.
posted by Mayor West at 5:31 AM on May 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
My great grandma lived in a small house with a dirt floor basement. One time my brother and I were digging down there (?) and I unearthed a 3 inch tall porcelain doll. It was super creepy, but also cool, like some other little girl had held a doll funeral, or something. I have long since lost the doll, which I really regret.
posted by Malla at 5:43 AM on May 12, 2017 [6 favorites]
posted by Malla at 5:43 AM on May 12, 2017 [6 favorites]
I have long since lost the doll ...
Yeah, that's obviously what the doll wants you to think.
posted by sour cream at 6:10 AM on May 12, 2017 [30 favorites]
Yeah, that's obviously what the doll wants you to think.
posted by sour cream at 6:10 AM on May 12, 2017 [30 favorites]
This story sounds like many of the homes we looked at here in Louisville. In fact our 1930s era bungalow has oddball looking heating grates and an odd door in the basement. This is because when the house was built it had a coal-fired furnace. The door leads to a small room which was originally a coal bin, and is now a great place to store wine. The old-timey coal furnaces did not have fans that pushed air through the house. Instead, they relied on air convection, thus the weird grates. Many times when the heating systems were modernized to natural gas the new ducts were attached to the old grates.
And Miko’s New England story above reminds me of when we lived in Maine and were house hunting. There’s quite an inventory of old homes with stone foundations and dirt cellar (AKA basement) floors in that part of the country. We went to an open house in Freeport one rainy day, and while touring the cellar noticed there was a bit of a stream running through it. Oddly enough this feature didn’t seem to warrant disclosure.
posted by SteveInMaine at 6:23 AM on May 12, 2017 [2 favorites]
And Miko’s New England story above reminds me of when we lived in Maine and were house hunting. There’s quite an inventory of old homes with stone foundations and dirt cellar (AKA basement) floors in that part of the country. We went to an open house in Freeport one rainy day, and while touring the cellar noticed there was a bit of a stream running through it. Oddly enough this feature didn’t seem to warrant disclosure.
posted by SteveInMaine at 6:23 AM on May 12, 2017 [2 favorites]
When I was in the market to buy a house, my wife and I and our realtor looked at some weird houses, not because we were interested in buying them, just because we were curious.
We looked at one in a rough neighborhood where my first thought was not "I wonder how many people died here" but "I wonder how many crimes were committed here."
We looked at another, just a block away from where I had been living, that had started out as a cute bungalow in the 1930s, but had been added onto perhaps 3 times over its history, resulting in a metastasizing monstrosity with 9 bedrooms and two kitchens. Staircases would go up 4 steps and then right back down for no apparent reason. Carpet and trim were motley, reflecting the house's mongrelized history. One bedroom had a wall completely covered with giant barn doors, which opened to reveal a display case for ancient sports memorabilia. A sense of gloom hung over that house like a disused sanitarium.
Houses around here don't have basements, just crawlspaces, which cuts down on the opportunities for creepiness.
posted by adamrice at 6:27 AM on May 12, 2017
We looked at one in a rough neighborhood where my first thought was not "I wonder how many people died here" but "I wonder how many crimes were committed here."
We looked at another, just a block away from where I had been living, that had started out as a cute bungalow in the 1930s, but had been added onto perhaps 3 times over its history, resulting in a metastasizing monstrosity with 9 bedrooms and two kitchens. Staircases would go up 4 steps and then right back down for no apparent reason. Carpet and trim were motley, reflecting the house's mongrelized history. One bedroom had a wall completely covered with giant barn doors, which opened to reveal a display case for ancient sports memorabilia. A sense of gloom hung over that house like a disused sanitarium.
Houses around here don't have basements, just crawlspaces, which cuts down on the opportunities for creepiness.
posted by adamrice at 6:27 AM on May 12, 2017
The entire continents of North and South America were the sites of massive intentional and unintentional acts of genocide. So if you want to avoid ghosts, maybe pick a different continent?
Given the history of humanity pretty much everywhere, you might want to wait for that one-way mission to Mars then.
posted by acb at 6:35 AM on May 12, 2017
Given the history of humanity pretty much everywhere, you might want to wait for that one-way mission to Mars then.
posted by acb at 6:35 AM on May 12, 2017
My brother once rented a house that was a historic landmark and had (former) slave quarters. IDK, as a non-believer I would have been all over this place. Seeing a ghost would be a bonus, honestly.
posted by codacorolla at 6:52 AM on May 12, 2017
posted by codacorolla at 6:52 AM on May 12, 2017
There's no resolution because when you leave a murder basement, you don't go back to find out more.
When we were looking for apartments in Philadelphia I put one of the agents in my phone as "Murder Basement" because of the completely horrifying place she showed us, which consisted of a staged living room w/ flickering fluorescent light on the first floor, in the corner of which was a black wrought iron spiral staircase which led in to a weird, windowless dungeon.
And then there was the house we looked at in West New York with the agent who laughed inappropriately at everything and took us into the labyrinthine basement to show us around. At one point he gets to this narrow door, opens it, and announces that it is the bathroom. I look in and it consists of about 10 feet of dimly lit, 2.5-foot-wide hallway, at the end of which was a toilet, sink and shower. He then has the temerity to ask if I want to take a look inside, to which we replied thanks but no thanks, not interested in being the inspiration for Saw XVII.
Murder basements! They are totally a thing.
posted by grumpybear69 at 7:04 AM on May 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
When we were looking for apartments in Philadelphia I put one of the agents in my phone as "Murder Basement" because of the completely horrifying place she showed us, which consisted of a staged living room w/ flickering fluorescent light on the first floor, in the corner of which was a black wrought iron spiral staircase which led in to a weird, windowless dungeon.
And then there was the house we looked at in West New York with the agent who laughed inappropriately at everything and took us into the labyrinthine basement to show us around. At one point he gets to this narrow door, opens it, and announces that it is the bathroom. I look in and it consists of about 10 feet of dimly lit, 2.5-foot-wide hallway, at the end of which was a toilet, sink and shower. He then has the temerity to ask if I want to take a look inside, to which we replied thanks but no thanks, not interested in being the inspiration for Saw XVII.
Murder basements! They are totally a thing.
posted by grumpybear69 at 7:04 AM on May 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
When I moved into the house I currently live in (a 1930s bungalow), I painted my bedroom, and discovered that someone had scratched the name HARRY into the paint in the middle of one wall. This was weird, but easily painted over. It got much creepier when I found another name scratched into the next wall. It was only when I got to the third wall, which was marked ZAYN, that I determined that the previous tenant had been a preteen girl and nothing alarming was happening.
(also the upstairs has 4 giant closets tucked under the eaves. 3 of them just have normal doors that open onto the whole closet; the 4th opens onto what looks like a normal-size closet until you stick your head in and see that there is no wall on the right-hand side. you have to go in and around the corner to access the rest of the closet, and you can't access the light switch until you're in there.)
posted by nonasuch at 7:15 AM on May 12, 2017 [10 favorites]
(also the upstairs has 4 giant closets tucked under the eaves. 3 of them just have normal doors that open onto the whole closet; the 4th opens onto what looks like a normal-size closet until you stick your head in and see that there is no wall on the right-hand side. you have to go in and around the corner to access the rest of the closet, and you can't access the light switch until you're in there.)
posted by nonasuch at 7:15 AM on May 12, 2017 [10 favorites]
We looked at one in a rough neighborhood where my first thought was not "I wonder how many people died here" but "I wonder how many crimes were committed here."
I would wonder this about houses in quiet, super-white suburban areas.
posted by bile and syntax at 7:21 AM on May 12, 2017 [4 favorites]
I would wonder this about houses in quiet, super-white suburban areas.
posted by bile and syntax at 7:21 AM on May 12, 2017 [4 favorites]
In our kitchen, one of the cabinet doors was written on in red marker by a previous owner's kid. We painted it and forgot about it until the marker started bleeding through the paint, giving a remarkable impression of ghostly letters written in blood materializing over time.
posted by BeeDo at 7:27 AM on May 12, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by BeeDo at 7:27 AM on May 12, 2017 [2 favorites]
Oh man! I get to share my scary house story.
So roughly 4 years ago my wife and I were house shopping. Our budget had us looking at a lot of foreclosures and fixer uppers. One such foreclosure we looked at was a Victorian built in the late 1890's. We arrive to the house, and it was rough looking. For some reason someone had decided to stucco over the entire exterior in a fake coquina type pattern.
The realtor was struggling with the keybox, so I decided to walk around to the back, and the first thing I noticed walking down the driveway was that someone had cut into the fence between this house and it's neighbors and install a screen door. Ok, weird. I get to the backyard and someone has built this large, weird structure out back. It's this odd multi-room layout that looked like it was intentionally built without a roof.
At this point the realtor has opened the keybox and is struggling to try to get a door open with the keys provided. At this point I notice that near the back door, there's a little metal portico with another screen door at ground level. I ask the realtor about it, and she finds a key that fits it and opens it up. It opens up to reveal stairs leading down under the house (a very weird thing for a home built in Florida). We can't see how far it is because of a lack of light. So I fire up the flashlight on my phone and see that it leads to what appears to be an earthen root cellar. I decide to venture down, the realtor behind me, and my wife bringing up the rear.
As I reached the bottom I could hear the screen door make that slow creaking sound you hear in movies. My wife flips out, and runs out of the cellar screaming about how she doesn't want to be trapped in there. We poke around the cellar and find stairs leading up into the house, but the door is locked. So we exited the cellar.
The realtor eventually finds the keys to the backdoor, and we start looking at the house. It had obviously been foreclosed on in the middle of a renovation since it didn't have a functional kitchen. It did have a downstairs bathroom, with a unique feature-- a door leading down into a root cellar.
We continued to poke around, eventually making our way upstairs. We're going room to room, opening up doors and checking out the closet space. I open a door expecting a hall closet, but to my surprise it's a set of stairs leading upwards. So I go up the stairs and when I get to the landing halfway up I notice that there is a rusty brown handprint smeared down the wall, almost as if someone had stumbled and braced themselves. It elicits a 'Hmm' from me at this point, but nothing more as I continue up the stairs which open up to a huge semi-finished attic. A huge semi-finished attic whose only feature was a giant two vessel antique resting on sawhorses. Dangling above the sink from the rafters were some chains and a hook.
We didn't buy this house, mainly because we didn't think we could get permission from the Historic Planning Comission to change the exterior walls from stucco to siding.
posted by nulledge at 7:57 AM on May 12, 2017 [13 favorites]
So roughly 4 years ago my wife and I were house shopping. Our budget had us looking at a lot of foreclosures and fixer uppers. One such foreclosure we looked at was a Victorian built in the late 1890's. We arrive to the house, and it was rough looking. For some reason someone had decided to stucco over the entire exterior in a fake coquina type pattern.
The realtor was struggling with the keybox, so I decided to walk around to the back, and the first thing I noticed walking down the driveway was that someone had cut into the fence between this house and it's neighbors and install a screen door. Ok, weird. I get to the backyard and someone has built this large, weird structure out back. It's this odd multi-room layout that looked like it was intentionally built without a roof.
At this point the realtor has opened the keybox and is struggling to try to get a door open with the keys provided. At this point I notice that near the back door, there's a little metal portico with another screen door at ground level. I ask the realtor about it, and she finds a key that fits it and opens it up. It opens up to reveal stairs leading down under the house (a very weird thing for a home built in Florida). We can't see how far it is because of a lack of light. So I fire up the flashlight on my phone and see that it leads to what appears to be an earthen root cellar. I decide to venture down, the realtor behind me, and my wife bringing up the rear.
As I reached the bottom I could hear the screen door make that slow creaking sound you hear in movies. My wife flips out, and runs out of the cellar screaming about how she doesn't want to be trapped in there. We poke around the cellar and find stairs leading up into the house, but the door is locked. So we exited the cellar.
The realtor eventually finds the keys to the backdoor, and we start looking at the house. It had obviously been foreclosed on in the middle of a renovation since it didn't have a functional kitchen. It did have a downstairs bathroom, with a unique feature-- a door leading down into a root cellar.
We continued to poke around, eventually making our way upstairs. We're going room to room, opening up doors and checking out the closet space. I open a door expecting a hall closet, but to my surprise it's a set of stairs leading upwards. So I go up the stairs and when I get to the landing halfway up I notice that there is a rusty brown handprint smeared down the wall, almost as if someone had stumbled and braced themselves. It elicits a 'Hmm' from me at this point, but nothing more as I continue up the stairs which open up to a huge semi-finished attic. A huge semi-finished attic whose only feature was a giant two vessel antique resting on sawhorses. Dangling above the sink from the rafters were some chains and a hook.
We didn't buy this house, mainly because we didn't think we could get permission from the Historic Planning Comission to change the exterior walls from stucco to siding.
posted by nulledge at 7:57 AM on May 12, 2017 [13 favorites]
nulledge I love that last twist in your story. "The murder house was cool and all but the stucco was a bridge too far!"
posted by winna at 8:31 AM on May 12, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by winna at 8:31 AM on May 12, 2017 [4 favorites]
Heh. We live on the middle floor of a triplex that was once a single-family home that got chopped up sometime in (I'm guessing) the 1970s. Our unit and the one above it are spacious and sunny, with decks that have a lovely view of the city skyline. The apartment below us, well...
One night we had a couple of friends over for drinks. We were all sitting out on the deck when the downstairs neighbor came home from walking her dog. We invited her up. She greeted our friends with, "Hi, I'm Tiffany! I lurk in the crawl space."
posted by BitterOldPunk at 8:40 AM on May 12, 2017 [7 favorites]
One night we had a couple of friends over for drinks. We were all sitting out on the deck when the downstairs neighbor came home from walking her dog. We invited her up. She greeted our friends with, "Hi, I'm Tiffany! I lurk in the crawl space."
posted by BitterOldPunk at 8:40 AM on May 12, 2017 [7 favorites]
"Uh, clearly that is where you dismember the bodies, I don't know why you're talking about cheese."
I mean, you need to get your rennet from somewhere.
Little doors into little cubbies inside closets were a 1920s-1930s thing. I don't really understand the compulsion to squeeze in a tiny extra bit of storage space and then put a door in front of it, but I've seen enough of it to find it commonplace, if quirky and old fashioned.
Bootlegger houses? My place in Maine was built in the early 1900s (the inspection report says 1900 even, but I think that's an estimate), and it has a couple of those on the second floor. There are a couple of little nooks where you would have plausible deniability about dead space in the house due to the shape of the roof. We put a twin bed in one of them, but we haven't figured out what we want to store in the others yet.
posted by tobascodagama at 8:45 AM on May 12, 2017
I mean, you need to get your rennet from somewhere.
Little doors into little cubbies inside closets were a 1920s-1930s thing. I don't really understand the compulsion to squeeze in a tiny extra bit of storage space and then put a door in front of it, but I've seen enough of it to find it commonplace, if quirky and old fashioned.
Bootlegger houses? My place in Maine was built in the early 1900s (the inspection report says 1900 even, but I think that's an estimate), and it has a couple of those on the second floor. There are a couple of little nooks where you would have plausible deniability about dead space in the house due to the shape of the roof. We put a twin bed in one of them, but we haven't figured out what we want to store in the others yet.
posted by tobascodagama at 8:45 AM on May 12, 2017
My murderhouse story is tame compared to some, but here it goes...
I'm a first-time home buyer, and we're looking at townhouses in a subdivision in Gaithersburg. Not that old; built in the 80s, at a guess. Not much character, no walkability to anything, the kind of blandsuburbia that gives me the hives but I'm exploring anyway, just to have seen everything.
The unit we're looking at is a split level. You enter, and half a staircase up is the dining room and kitchen looking at the back, level up, bedrooms looking at the front, up, bedrooms looking back. Or you enter, and half a staircase down is the living room looking front, down, sunroom opening to the yard in the back, down, laundry room, now underground so no windows, but it's up against the front wall of the house...
…next to the washer, in that front wall, is a three-foot-high door.
I open it, thinking that it's plumbing access.
There are steps descending directly on to the floor of a room, fully as big as the front living room above, except if you've been following along with the geometry, this is now under the front yard. No windows. Fluorescent light. Concrete walls, concrete floor.
I looked at my agent. She looked at me. Without saying a word, we went back upstairs, left, and headed out of the subdivision.
(I ended up in a single-story single-family house with a crawlspace in semi-suburbia.)
posted by seyirci at 8:52 AM on May 12, 2017
I'm a first-time home buyer, and we're looking at townhouses in a subdivision in Gaithersburg. Not that old; built in the 80s, at a guess. Not much character, no walkability to anything, the kind of blandsuburbia that gives me the hives but I'm exploring anyway, just to have seen everything.
The unit we're looking at is a split level. You enter, and half a staircase up is the dining room and kitchen looking at the back, level up, bedrooms looking at the front, up, bedrooms looking back. Or you enter, and half a staircase down is the living room looking front, down, sunroom opening to the yard in the back, down, laundry room, now underground so no windows, but it's up against the front wall of the house...
…next to the washer, in that front wall, is a three-foot-high door.
I open it, thinking that it's plumbing access.
There are steps descending directly on to the floor of a room, fully as big as the front living room above, except if you've been following along with the geometry, this is now under the front yard. No windows. Fluorescent light. Concrete walls, concrete floor.
I looked at my agent. She looked at me. Without saying a word, we went back upstairs, left, and headed out of the subdivision.
(I ended up in a single-story single-family house with a crawlspace in semi-suburbia.)
posted by seyirci at 8:52 AM on May 12, 2017
Am I the only one who thought not "murder" but "here's where the dealer kept his stash?"
posted by praemunire at 9:47 AM on May 12, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by praemunire at 9:47 AM on May 12, 2017 [2 favorites]
I was just baffled about what being a white woman had to do with any of it.
(But yes, I thought grow room.)
posted by bink at 9:50 AM on May 12, 2017 [4 favorites]
(But yes, I thought grow room.)
posted by bink at 9:50 AM on May 12, 2017 [4 favorites]
I have lived in a lot of weird homes myself, but I think my best murder house story is when I (and I do not remember the circumstances of how I got there at all, so presume that substance use was involved) found myself visiting the McCook Estate on Millionaire's Row in Pittsburgh, late one night.
That picture is from after there was a fire and it was boarded up (it has since been restored and turned into a boutique hotel), but prior to that fire it was apartments. The mansion had been chopped up and turned into the fucking weirdest apartments of all time, and rented out to college kids (CMU and Pitt are a couple blocks away--it was mostly CMU students when I was there). Like, we're not talking "Let's turn this historic home into lofts for Google employees" we're talking, "I guess we could shove some college kids in there and make a few hundred bucks a month out of this moldering albatross."
So, you walk in, and you're in the Great Hall. This is what it looks like in the daytime (Or looked--I suspect this picture is post-fire, during the preliminary phases of renovation, so assume that this picture reflects many dozens of hours of clean-up and remediation.) In the middle of the night, with no lights because the landlords were like fuck lightbulbs, college kids don't need lights, it was pretty much Dracula's castle.
I was hanging out with someone who lived there, so we went to their apartment, which was basically a random 300 sq foot chunk of the house drywalled off with some plumbing shoved in for a kitchenette and toilet. I'm pretty sure the bedroom was actually originally a hallway. Stairs went up and disappeared into walls, or went up two steps then inexplicably back down again, rooms were weird shapes, nothing met at a right angle, there were locked doors that none of the tenants could figure out where they went to. Electrical fixtures were hung bare-bulbed from ceilings in random areas. I was like holy fucking shit how do you live here and not get night terrors every night??? And they were like, "Oh ha ha yeah there's a room you can see from the outside (clearly identifiable from stained glass windows) that no one has ever been able to find the entrance to. Probably a chapel." A MURDER CHAPEL, YOU MEAN???? In case you are wondering, yes, there was a chapel in the building. My visit there was all pre-internet though, so there wasn't much way for random college kids to research the building.
I'd love to spend a night in the restored building now, but it's way too rich for my blood. Also their website copy is gross, I am now noticing.
posted by soren_lorensen at 9:59 AM on May 12, 2017
That picture is from after there was a fire and it was boarded up (it has since been restored and turned into a boutique hotel), but prior to that fire it was apartments. The mansion had been chopped up and turned into the fucking weirdest apartments of all time, and rented out to college kids (CMU and Pitt are a couple blocks away--it was mostly CMU students when I was there). Like, we're not talking "Let's turn this historic home into lofts for Google employees" we're talking, "I guess we could shove some college kids in there and make a few hundred bucks a month out of this moldering albatross."
So, you walk in, and you're in the Great Hall. This is what it looks like in the daytime (Or looked--I suspect this picture is post-fire, during the preliminary phases of renovation, so assume that this picture reflects many dozens of hours of clean-up and remediation.) In the middle of the night, with no lights because the landlords were like fuck lightbulbs, college kids don't need lights, it was pretty much Dracula's castle.
I was hanging out with someone who lived there, so we went to their apartment, which was basically a random 300 sq foot chunk of the house drywalled off with some plumbing shoved in for a kitchenette and toilet. I'm pretty sure the bedroom was actually originally a hallway. Stairs went up and disappeared into walls, or went up two steps then inexplicably back down again, rooms were weird shapes, nothing met at a right angle, there were locked doors that none of the tenants could figure out where they went to. Electrical fixtures were hung bare-bulbed from ceilings in random areas. I was like holy fucking shit how do you live here and not get night terrors every night??? And they were like, "Oh ha ha yeah there's a room you can see from the outside (clearly identifiable from stained glass windows) that no one has ever been able to find the entrance to. Probably a chapel." A MURDER CHAPEL, YOU MEAN???? In case you are wondering, yes, there was a chapel in the building. My visit there was all pre-internet though, so there wasn't much way for random college kids to research the building.
I'd love to spend a night in the restored building now, but it's way too rich for my blood. Also their website copy is gross, I am now noticing.
posted by soren_lorensen at 9:59 AM on May 12, 2017
Metafilter: creepy murder basements are pretty much standard features around here.
posted by triage_lazarus at 10:31 AM on May 12, 2017 [2 favorites]
posted by triage_lazarus at 10:31 AM on May 12, 2017 [2 favorites]
I would venture to say that most old houses (built before, say, the 1920s) have dirt-floored basements, because why not? The dirt's already there, and why bother covering it with something else when you're building the whole damn house by hand?
To me, this whole thread represents why old houses are so inarguably superior to new ones. People died there, people were born there, people went off to declared wars, someone pondered whether it was worth the trouble to install one of these newfangled "telephone" things--it's history, people!
posted by scratch at 10:44 AM on May 12, 2017 [4 favorites]
To me, this whole thread represents why old houses are so inarguably superior to new ones. People died there, people were born there, people went off to declared wars, someone pondered whether it was worth the trouble to install one of these newfangled "telephone" things--it's history, people!
posted by scratch at 10:44 AM on May 12, 2017 [4 favorites]
I was just baffled about what being a white woman had to do with any of it.I think the below-the-fold links get into that. Haunted house movies are almost always about white people, more so than other horror and suspense movies. Haunted house movies frequently feature people who ignore warning signs that are obvious to the audience. That's how those movies work up suspense, and unlike the characters, the audience has the benefit of knowing that they're watching a haunted house movie, but it makes the characters seem really oblivious. So among POC, there's apparently a trope of "clueless white people who don't realize that this house is obviously super haunted," and she's amused that she, a white woman married to a black man, apparently played right into that stereotype.
And with that, I run afoul of the "jokes aren't funny once you explain them" rule.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 11:22 AM on May 12, 2017 [8 favorites]
Among the murder-house features in my own rowhome in Philly, it's our third floor that wins the day.
The window at the top of the stairs is neatly stuccoed-over from the outside. NBD, pretty common, actually. On the inside, however, the window space has been filled in so sloppily with concrete that the natural first thought is "I bet there's a skeleton in there."
The door to the third floor has sliding locks on the outside. The closets in the third floor rooms have sliding locks on the inside.
posted by desuetude at 11:24 AM on May 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
The window at the top of the stairs is neatly stuccoed-over from the outside. NBD, pretty common, actually. On the inside, however, the window space has been filled in so sloppily with concrete that the natural first thought is "I bet there's a skeleton in there."
The door to the third floor has sliding locks on the outside. The closets in the third floor rooms have sliding locks on the inside.
posted by desuetude at 11:24 AM on May 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
I was once looking for a house and the realtor, who with hindsight I suspect was just sick of me and wanted to end our relationship, took me to one house and said she'd sit in the car while I looked.
I walked up the front steps and looked to the right on the porch. There was a glass ten-gallon aquarium with the skeleton of a hamster lying in it.
People were living in that house with a rodent corpse right by the front door that had clearly been there long enough for all the soft tissue to decompose.
I did not go inside.
posted by winna at 11:39 AM on May 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
I walked up the front steps and looked to the right on the porch. There was a glass ten-gallon aquarium with the skeleton of a hamster lying in it.
People were living in that house with a rodent corpse right by the front door that had clearly been there long enough for all the soft tissue to decompose.
I did not go inside.
posted by winna at 11:39 AM on May 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
I live in a village with a lot of 19th-c. houses, some antebellum, and the oldest ones have either a) uneven rocky floors or b) scary dirt basements. A colleague who owns one of the older properties told me that she regarded the basement with terror. Although I've only owned mid-20th c. houses in the area (despite being a Victorianist, I find that nineteenth-century architecture frequently doesn't accommodate thousands of books very comfortably...), I once toured one of the mansions-turned-apartment buildings and saw the basement...which was completely black with what I suspect was mold. I felt a yearning to exit, pursued by a (spore-shaped) bear.
posted by thomas j wise at 4:39 PM on May 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by thomas j wise at 4:39 PM on May 12, 2017 [1 favorite]
filled in so sloppily with concrete that the natural first thought is "I bet there's a skeleton in there
What no that's where the best amontillado is.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 6:01 PM on May 12, 2017 [8 favorites]
What no that's where the best amontillado is.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 6:01 PM on May 12, 2017 [8 favorites]
Does anyone else want a house made up of all the rooms in the stories from this thread? I dream about houses like that all the time, with weird secret rooms and odd, disconcerting spaces, closets with closets in them, secret subbasements, all of it.
I swear I do not want this house for murder reasons*. I just think it would suit me, being the Weird Lady in the Creepy House that scares the children.
*Mostly.
posted by louche mustachio at 6:48 PM on May 12, 2017 [8 favorites]
I swear I do not want this house for murder reasons*. I just think it would suit me, being the Weird Lady in the Creepy House that scares the children.
*Mostly.
posted by louche mustachio at 6:48 PM on May 12, 2017 [8 favorites]
> There’s quite an inventory of old homes with stone foundations and dirt cellar (AKA basement) floors in that part of the country
My triple decker in Boston had a dirt floor in the basement.
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:57 PM on May 13, 2017
My triple decker in Boston had a dirt floor in the basement.
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:57 PM on May 13, 2017
There's only a crawlspace beneath my kitchen, and it has a dirt floor. We have an actual basement below the rest of the house with a cement floor. It connects to the crawlspace via a couple of jagged openings punched into the top half of the back basement wall, which also comes off pretty creepy to people, apparently.
posted by desuetude at 11:21 AM on May 16, 2017
posted by desuetude at 11:21 AM on May 16, 2017
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