I want to live in a murder house.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Inspired by this thread , in which I stated my practical preferences.

But my fantasy house would be a big, rambling, dark Victorian with a scandalous, infamous history. Something with old-time appliances and contraptions (like a dumbwaiter!), lots of dark wood, and a great big octopus furnace in the basement. Something incredibly creepy. And what better to make a house creepy than to know that it’s a murder house? Especially if it was a famous crime. Especially if there were still bulletholes in the woodwork.

I think this house, which was in my home town, is my ideal (sorry, I couldn’t find a picture, but there’s a description). Too bad it burned down, killing my fantasy.

What a great story to tell visitors! What fun to get a chill up your spine with every creak of a floorboard!

I know this probably sounds really sick and disrespectful, but I truly don’t mean it that way. Does this sound totally messed up, or do other people want to live in a murder house or a house associated with scandal?

2

Can I rent one of the bedrooms? The bathrooms have to have the old fashioned pedestal sinks and claw-foot bathtubs!

3

Ever since I laid eyes on the H. H. Richardson complex in Buffalo, NY, I’ve thought it would be a great place to live. It used to be the state mental hospital, so it’s got the potential for some pretty freaky history. My bf says it looks like a Scooby-Doo house.

Unfortunately, it’s been in disrepair for many years now. The city has cordoned it off and deemed it too dangerous to enter. They’re talking about renovating it and makign it a museum or a school. Can you imagine going to school in an old asylum? :cool:

4

What? No secret passageways?

pffft. I’ll pass. :smiley:

5

Sounds crazy? Not at all. Sounds like fun, actually.

My wife and I lived in a big, rambling 130-year-old Victorian for a few years. It was a great place to live, and while I’m unaware that there was any scandal attached to it, it had a fascinating history anyway.

Built in 1870 or so for a prominent family in the small town where it was located, it didn’t remain a single-family house for long. It was, in its turn, a home for unmarried female teachers (can’t have those young ladies living on their own in 1910, after all), and at some later point, a home for unwed mothers. I don’t know if there was a correlation between the unmarried teachers and the unwed mothers or not, but we used to joke about it. At any rate, there were plenty of rooms to house the teachers and mothers, so it was a good use. Sometime later, the house was further carved up into private apartments, and had been like that ever since.

My wife and I lived on the third floor–the servants’ quarters for the first owner of the house. We had no definable living room, bedroom, or dining area; and the refrigerator was in the front hall, since there was no room for it in the kitchen. Heck, the kitchen was so small, we couldn’t both be in it at the same time. Dormer windows and sloping ceilings were common in our place, and standing to use the toilet meant tilting your head to one side so you didn’t bump it on the ceiling. Beautiful wood trim surrounded the windows, doors, and baseboards; and stained glass crowned the house’s windows.

As I said, I’m unaware of any scandal that occurred there throughout the house’s history, but given that there were a few enclosed spaces the resulted from the carving up into apartments, there could well have been. Through the hole in the wall of the closet that was on the landing between the first and second floors, for example, you could see part of a bathroom that had been closed off at some point . The basement was dark and dreary if the lights were off (not that it was terribly cheery if they were on, of course), and did have a convenient stairway to the back yard, to allow for an escape to a getaway horse or car, as the time period dictated, so who can be sure? There were a few rumours circulating about scandals in the town’s early history…

:wink:

6

Since I have a sneaking desire to live in University College of the University of Toronto (after transforming it into a mansion and kicking out all the students and teachers and stuff, naturally) I don’t think a murder house is too much of a problem for me. :wink:

7

I’ll settle for the Glensheen Mansion.

8

They’ve got the roof fixed and the main building sealed up from the weather. Now there is squabbling about where to get the money to finish the job. Or what job, still 101 ideas about what to do with it.

9

With one tap for cold and the other for hot.

I will be adding secret passageways if there aren’t any already. My favorite Nancy Drew mystery was “The Hidden Staircase.” In the first edition (before revision), there were narrow staircases in the walls of the mystery house, and a secret room! Oh, right, we will also have a secret room.

I’ll definitely be renting rooms. Otherwise, I won’t be able to pay the mortgage or the renovation bills. I’m guessing that stairwells inside the walls probably cost dearly.

I think an axe murder house would be the coolest.

10

Although not a ‘murder house’, you might want to look into the Winchester mansion…

I hear it has secret passages galore!

11

Plus, it’s so confusing that you could easily get lost in your own house!

That would be a great excuse for being late to work on Monday: “Sorry, it took me three hours just to find the front door.”

12

Are you sure people didn’t die there? I thought a couple of workers kicked the bucket on the job. Also, I believe the initial inspiration for all the building was that the Winchester woman’s husband invented a weapon that killed so many people…she was driven partially by guilt to keep building. Doesn’t that count as murder?

13

Oh, I loved that book! There will be a huge, old library, right? Tons of dusty old tomes?

~gets her old-fashioned trunk out and dons little white gloves~ Are we ready yet?

14

I’m with Red Stilettos. A place lilke that would be awesome to live in!

15

What if I told you I have spent many, many nights at Camp Crystal Lake as a wee lad?

Makes you wonder why I like hockey so much, don’t it?

Tripler
Ch ch ch ah ah ah . . .

16

Rod (or Tod): Look mommy, I’m a TORSO!

17

My mom and dad live in a former home-for-juvenile-delinquent-girls in the wilds of Idaho near Yellowstone and are slowly remodeling it. Built in 1910 in the Greek revival style, it has four vast floors, sweeping staircase, massive pillars and some really, really creepy leftovers from less-enlightened eras of mental health care (ankle chains in the attic, which was used for isolation punishment.)

Some of the kids (inmates) who died from the 1918 flu, the 1925 bubonic plague outbreak in the area and various and sundry other illnesses and “accidents” of over-discipline and botched medical care are buried in the field behind with sad little markers on their graves.

One of the outbuildings is the old infirmary. Though largely ruined by the tough weather, someone could still make a mint salvaging the parquet flooring and Italian tile. Its best features, though, are the ancient black x-ray machine and surgical table in the basement. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Some odd things happen in the house – self-locking doors, presences, garbled singing or talking heard through the vents when you know you’re alone in the house, etc. Most of the main living space (first floor) that my parent’s work and love have made happy and light feel okay but the floors above are not somewhere you want to spend a lot of time alone or at night (I tried.)

If you’re interested in seeing a photo let me know (and tell me how to attach it.)

18

Shoot me an e-mail (on my profile). I’m interested in hearing the story. . .

Tripler
It’s like the Blair Witch, but better . . .

19

I’d like to hear about it/see it also. My e-mail’s YouCrazyDiamond15 at hotmail dot com

20

I didn’t grow up in a murder house per se, but one of the houses I lived in was this great old house in the Hancock Park section of L.A.

It had a staircase that led nowhere and lots of secret passages and rooms. My brother and I were not allowed to explore these for fear that we would get lost or trapped, since these rooms had not been used in decades.

In fact, when my parents decided to remodel their bedroom, the workmen who knocked down a wall found a secret hidey-hole with bottles of Prohibition-era bootleg liquor. It seems that the owner of the house was active in the Temperance movement, but his old man was brewing hooch in the basement and hiding it in these secret spaces. After my parents found the liquor, a neighborhood newspaper did a story on us.

I miss that house.

Robin