My sister and I have always enjoyed exploring abandoned houses. Anytime we were driving somewhere, or driving aimlessly, or driving home to sleep off those wake-up pills we took that one time (Jessie Spano anyone?), we always stopped when we saw those give away boarded up windows and un-mowed tall grasses.
It was always so exciting and scary to me to walk through the door for the first time. There was a feeling of anxiety (will I get caught?), expectation (what will I find?) and most importantly mystery (why is it left empty and uncared for?). For some reason, or maybe because of my morbidity, I always imagined that death is the reason why a house, a home, is left to decay and let nature take it's course of renewing it's place in the world. It was always so much more scary when glass would be smashed, or if there was graffiti on the walls, and if you really COULD smell dead things. Like that raccoon that Krista tried to lift up with a stick and THOUSANDS of maggots spilled out of it. Picture Wil Wheaton and River Pheonix shooting off a gun in front of the Tupper babe, shouting "JESUS!" and taking off in Stand By Me. Yeah, that was us that day.
It really is the mystery of it all that draws us to abandoned houses. The meaning of the word abandon is to "leave completely and finally; forsake utterly, desert" (Dictionary.com). Doesn't that invoke creepiness? It gives me the shivers. We would walk through the rooms that almost seemed to hold on to the entities of the people that used to live there and make stories up or speculate as to why the building was left to rot. When I was 11, my parents moved us into a house that had been abandoned for a few years and had the former owners stuff still in it. Including what looked like bullet holes in the walls (oh the stories that stemmed from a few holes!) and pickled octopi in the scary cellar.
Another story that comes to mind is a house on Broadway in the town where my parents live currently, near a place called Brown's Farm. It was a legendary house that ALL the kids at the time talked about. The story behind it (at least the story that was told when I was present some 18 years ago) is that a family who lived there discovered their baby boy had drowned in the creek that ran beside the house, and that he now haunted the house (along with the spirit of an angry bear? Honestly, this is what was floating around among those crazy teenagers!). What made this story believable was that there was a creek, and the house was away and down from the main road, so it was always shrouded in darkness, and the house was left in a shambles. There was mail and bills from the bank strewn everywhere, all with the same family name on all of them. I am talking the floor was littered with papers. Beds were in rooms that still had the original wallpaper that was curling up towards the ceiling from all the times it had been lit on fire by ruffians (ahem, me). It was in this house that a couple of my friends coaxed me into the cellar, which still had tons of canned goods in it, clothes, and who knew what else? This cellar was the kind that was accessed through a trapdoor in the floor, and they PROMISED me they would not close the door on me. So I went down there. And they closed the trapdoor on me and I was engulfed in darkness. Needless to say, I was NOT impressed and I am pretty sure that the five minutes I spent down there screaming was the start of my crazy claustrophobia and fear of enclosed spaces.
Does anyone else have fun stories about abandoned houses and the stuff that you would imagine about them? I would love to read comments about those people who did. And I think that the best comment would make me want to have that person as a guest writer on my blog where they could tell their story in detail!! How fun and creepy for this lovely month of October, and Halloween? Be brave and write to me people! Make it anonymous if you want! Let's get creative.
If anyone wants to see an AWESOME, and I am talking awesome site that I discovered around 5 years ago detailing a a lot of abandoned houses and sites around the U.S, it is called Lost Destinations. I highly recommend it!!
Looking forward to those comments!
