For instance, if there had been a murder at the house, or child abuse, or domestic violence, or the house had been haunted, or been a brothel, or housed a terrorist (or even been a bomb factory). I wouldn't want anything like that hanging over my head.
There's a derelict house not far from here, Kincora House, that was the centre of a child sexual abuse ring in the nineteen seventies. Nobody wanted to live there after that discovery and it's due to be replaced by a new apartment block.
Of course you might not know of any such goings-on unless it had been all over the media, or unless a nieghbour told you. You might only find out after you've moved in, or you might never find out if it's been successfully hushed up. Somehow I doubt the estate agent would tell you.
But a lot of people aren't bothered by such associations and can happily ignore them. Abigail Dengate lives in a house at Margate, Essex, where a serial killer buried two bodies. She says "People have had a lot to say about this house and its history but to us it's just a home. I wasn't thinking about who once lived here and what he did."
Well, perhaps I have an over-active imagination, but I'm sure I would think of the murderer pottering around the house, working out how he would kill his victims and what he would do with the bodies. I would think of the victims screaming or pleading for their lives.
It would certainly put me off my cornflakes.
Pic: Kincora House, Belfast
Whatever you do, Nick, do not take the plaster off the walls of your current abode; don't lift floorboards and let's hope you don't have a cellar. As to the loft - don't go there.
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Ursula: No cellar, no loft. But who knows what might lurk under the patio?
DeleteIt is too late for me to even ponder over the matter but, if ever I had to buy a new home, I would rather buy a brand new one than one that had been occupied by someone else before. My current one was brand new and I made alterations to it to suit our convenience.
ReplyDeleteRamana: Well, a new house certainly doesn't have any historic horrors attached to it.
DeleteEvery state here has their own disclosure policies regarding any death in a house. Usually, the seller doesn’t have to disclose it. Our last home had 7 previous owners in 23 years and we had heard some strange stories, but nothing grisly.
ReplyDeleteBijoux: Interesting that there are disclosure policies re any death in the house. That doesn't apply in the UK. You have to disclose if you've had any neighbour disputes but that's as far as it goes.
DeleteThat is darn scary. We've lived in normal houses, except for one in Victorville, CA. A poltergeist throwing things, a two ghosts. Reciting the Lord's Prayer is the way to calm ourselves down.
ReplyDeleteSusan: I'd be scared stiff by a poltergeist. I think I'd have to move out.
DeleteI'll take a low intensity, ordinary house.
ReplyDeleteJoanne: Agreed. I've lived in 13 different homes and luckily none of them had any creepy associations.
DeleteHow do you deal with those feelings when outside ? As you know our streets are covered with invisible blood.I live in a house built in 1887 and certainly many good and bad things happened there.
ReplyDeleteI am more impressed when being outside. When I visited Hiroshima I was in a strange mood and I will not tell you what happened in Auschwitz.
Hannah
Hannah: Places outside that have nasty associations don't bother me so much, as I'm only in that place for a short time. But it was weird hearing about the massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand, just a few weeks after we visited the city.
DeleteHannah: When Jenny and I were in Berlin, we noticed some of the stolpersteine, the reminders of victims of the Nazis, set into the pavement. A very good way of remembering the "invisible blood".
DeleteIn front of my home are many Stolpersteine. I clean them regularily., I live in Berlin my birth town, many tourists step on these without knowing what they mean and when I see it I often stop them to explain.
DeleteYour town Belfast has also a very sad history. It's difficult to face some tragic events and unfortunately it seems that we have not learnt of the World's history.
Hannah
I can understand being put off by those things.
ReplyDeleteMary: As I said, I think my imagination would run away with me if I lived in a house where there had been, say, multiple murders or child sexual abuse. I couldn't just act as though it had never happened.
DeleteI would not like to live where a horrific crime had occurred. It's enough to know that it happened. I liked what a man did with the serial killer Jeffrey Dalmer's possessions. He purchased them all and had them burned. My kind of hero.
ReplyDeleteAnn: I like what he did too. Removing all physical traces of a mass murderer.
DeleteI wouldn't want to live in such a house either.
ReplyDeleteJoared: It would be pretty creepy, wouldn't it?
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