It's Halloween time. Time for something creepy. I'm sure everyone has a creepy tale in their experience, so here's mine. I haven't written about this before. If it ever appears in a novel, it will be highly embellished. What follows here are the bare facts without embellishment.
When we bought the home we currently live in, our real estate agent disclosed that a tragedy had occurred there. A previous owner, prior to the owners from whom we bought, had committed suicide. The knowledge didn't deter us from buying the house. We did not believe the house was infected with bad juju. If there was such a thing, it had not affected the family from whom we were buying. How long does the juju stay? Does it skip owners? It all seemed pretty silly. So we went ahead with the purchase and didn't inquire into the circumstances.
The first indication we had of what had happened was when we hired a steam cleaning service to clean our carpets. The technician said, "I remember this house. I cleaned it after the suicide."
The victim had slit his wrists so there was a lot of blood to clean up.
The creepy part was the shadow. We'd been in the house about a year when we became aware of a shadow on the bedroom wall that never seemed to go away. It was like a smudge that wouldn't wash off. In fact, it seemed to grow and take on more definition over time. I don't know if it actually became more distinct or if our eyes simply became more attuned to it, but eventually my son asked about the heart on the wall. Sure enough, we looked at it closely and were able to distinguish a crude heart followed by a quite distinct letter "U." Both were preceded by a messy spot that we came to realize was the letter "I."
"I heart U." The victim's final message written on the wall in his own blood.
We have since redecorated that room twice and covered the wall with several coats of paint, so the message is no longer visible. If and when I use the incident in a story, you can bet that no coat of paint will keep that message hidden. It will probably reveal itself in smoke and flame like the writing on the ark of the covenant box in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Do you have any creepy stories in your house?
Mark Troy
Hawaiian Eye Blog
http://www.marktroy.net
6 comments:
My husband designed a book cover for my latest children's mystery, GHOST OF CRIMSON DAWN, from a picture I had taken of people standing around a bon fire at a summer solstice festival where a woman artist (who is said to haunt the area) once lived. When he reversed the photo for the spine and back cover, a column of spooky faces appeared on the spine where the fire edges came together. A day later, I discovered a website of the artist's work and one of the paintings was of a ghostly face that closely resembled one of the faces on the book's spine. (I've got goosebumps just thinking about it.) But that's not the rest of the story: The following day when I stepped on our electronic scale the word "YES" appeared instead of my weight. Needless to say, my husband redesigned the spine and the back cover.
That gives me goosebumps, too, Jean.
I can't beat that. You're right. Your house is creepy.
Morgan Mandel
Your article promoted me to write the full story of my own creepy experience with Ghost of Crimson Dawn. It will be appearing tomorrow at: http://murderousmusings.blogspot.com/ (Friday, Nov. 4)
I will hop right over to look for it, Jean.
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