Many people here on the Straight Dope are very strict rationalists who don’t believe in ‘silly superstitions’ like supernatural entities, paranormal phenomena, and intelligent design… To a large degree, I consider myself one of those people. Yet, despite my rational outlook, I wonder how tightly rationalists hold on to this mentality when heinousness, creepiness, and vividness come into the picture. For example, I would feel much more uneasy about sleeping in the same room with a dead body than one with a complete stranger-- even though the stranger could kill me and the dead body couldn’t do anything to me. Likewise, I would never want to live in a house where a grisly triple murder had been committed. There’s obviously no reason to fear this house, yet I would feel very uneasy there even if I knew that no further violence would take place there. So I ask you, rationalists:
How comfortable would you be sleeping in a room with the dead body of a stranger?
How comfortable would you be living in a house where a triple murder had occurred?
Does admitting to feeling uneasy about these situations imply anything about your self-proclaimed rationality?
Not at all comfortable. I haven’t even seen a dead body in years and can’t imagine sleeping in the same room with one. There would have to be some really unusual circumstances for that to even come up as a possibility.
No problem at all. As long as the investigation is over and the place has been well scrubbed out, it’s just a house.
I would not be comfortable at all sleeping near a dead body or in the same room as a triple murder had occurred. The dead body - well, if you’ve ever seen one, they look very close to waking, depending upon how long they’ve been dead. I could do and have slept near a mummy, but not a recently deceased, just-put-in-the-casket-for-viewing type body.
As for the triple murder room? I consider myself a rational person, but I do get uneasy about things that go bump in the night, even as I tell myself (and sometimes my son if he wakes up from a nightmare) that it’s no big deal, there’s nothing there. It has to do with the lighting, the toilets that flush themselves and the doors often open and close themselves in our house. It’s caused by bad plumbing, the heating vents and how the doors swell and contract in summer and winter, but it still creeps me out. I imagine that the noises any house makes, combined with the knowledge of a murder having occurred in the room I’d be sleeping in would make me feel vulnerable and uneasy. That probably makes me a wuss or at least less rational than I proclaim myself to be, but that’s just the way I feel.
I’d be uneasy in both cases, even though I like to think of myself as pretty rational.
FWIW, the house behind my father’s, the owner committed suicide in the house. After all relevant matters were settled and the house was on the market, it was something that the realtors had to disclose. Apparently it did put a lot of people off.
I’ve read that some realtors specialize in these problem properties and that cops are more likely to buy them than people in other professions. The logic being that cops are more likely to encounter dead bodies in the course of work than other people and so tend to be less bothered by them. I don’t have a source for that though, so it may be incorrect.
Not sure about the dead body in the same room. Might need a night light.
The triple murder? As long as the killer was not a random stranger still on the loose, and the room had been properly cleaned, I don’t see why not.
Of course, in both cases, if I found myself losing sleep, I’d be willing to perform a number of meaningless rituals to convince the reptilian part of my brain to knock it off and go to sleep, already.
Dead body - recently dead? Nope. I’d rather not. Mummy? No problem.
The room? That doesn’t bother me at all. If you think about it, the chances that someone or something died either where you are at any given moment, or close to you, are pretty good. Put another way, there are so many things and people who have traveled around the landscape for so many centuries, my WAG is that something violent happened just about anywhere you care to be.
And just to clarify, I’m not limiting that scenario to human beings. I’m including wolves preying on rabbits, or whatever wolves eat. Bears killing and eating salmon in a river, etc. in addition to something like the Ronald DeFeo murders at the Amitiville non-Horror house.
I have an affinity for creepy houses and dead bodies. My house was built before 1760 and, not after we bought it and started to restore it, people started showing up at our door to show us 100 year old pictures and to tell us stories. Plenty of people died there over the centuries and the room that later became my daughter’s room once housed as many as 13 girls at a time and some of them died in it. I want one of those really creepy, gigantic, Victorians on a hill someday.
However, I cannot stand embalmed bodies or open casket funerals. They screw me up big time. I have dissected medical cadavers and looked at all kinds grisly displays and photos with no problem but I can’t take it when they are all dolled up and carefully positioned on plush little pillows. If the body in question was something that happened during an emergency, it wouldn’t be that bad. However, don’t invite me to your wake. That is uber-creepy.
not the least. I wouldn’t say it’s a rationality issue as much as a cleanliness and sanitation issue. The body needs to be removed, the police need to have completed their investigation, CSI (or whatever) needs to have done their analysis, and then the crime scene cleaners need to strip everything and bleach it all to heaven and back.
Has it been long enough ago that I won’t get any mourners? Were the people non-famous enough that I won’t end up on any walking tours where my house gets pointed out as “The site of the murder of _________”? I value my privacy. If the only things likely to bother me are the ghosts that I don’t believe in, then sure, why not?
Dead body in the room with me? No, I wouldn’t want to do that. It just seems sort of gross. At what point do dead bodies start smelling? I wouldn’t be scared of it, though.
Triple murder house? No problem. In fact, my husband and I are planning to buy a house soon and I mentioned to him that we should find one where a crime happened, because we could probably get a good deal. I was joking around, but I wouldn’t have a problem with a house like that at all, presuming the mess had been cleaned up.
The dead body … I wouldn’t want to do this, but it’s hard because I can’t think of any situation I would just happen to find myself in that would involve the dead body of a stranger. As a general rule of thumb, by the time you get to the point where you are sleeping with the dead body of a stranger, things are probably already messed up.
The triple murder … this doesn’t bother me very much at all. Maybe because I love old houses, and in all that time, surely all sorts of bad things happened. Also lots of good things. Cosmically I imagine they all balance out in the end. Now, I would have a hard time staying in a house if it were the triple murder of three people I knew, it would be a constant reminder of a personal tragedy. But my sense from the OP was more like buying a house where a murder had taken place in the past … right?
I am pretty sure that if the situation ever arose that I would find myself in a bedroom with the dead body of a stranger, sleeping would be one of the last things on my mind. That being said, it would gross me the hell out, but I would probably be able to do so if I had to/had no other choice.
This wouldn’t bother me in the least, unless it were a situation of the place itself being in question – what I mean to say, if the murder were a crime of convenience, I might be a little wary of living in the house if circumstances led me to believe that it might happen again. If the murder were a specific crime against specific people – wouldn’t bother me in the least to live there.
1 - I’d be very uncomfortable. I can’t imagine a situation where that would happen though, outside of something drastic, in which case what choice might one have? I mean, if it were a matter of being offered some sort of bet where I had to sleep in the same room as a fresh corpse for one night, I’m sure I could pull it off, but I’d still be uncomfortable.
2 - Wouldn’t bother me at all. In fact, it would hold some fascination for me. I’m a bit of a fan of serial killers, if you will (not that I cheer for them, but that I’m fascinated by them, scholarly speaking). I think that if I were thinking of buying a house and was informed that the price is a little lower because a family had been slaughtered by Leatherface in it last year, I’d be doubly interested – not the least of which because I could probably play the “ooh that’s creepy – how’s about knocking a few more thousand of dollars off” card as well.
As noted above, I can’t imagine sharing a room with a body just because of the sanitation and law enforcement issues. However, extrapolating out into some kind of, “Taking a nap in a funeral home,” scenario: No problem at all.
Again, no problem at all so long as I wasn’t likely to be bothered by mourners or the morbidly curious. Big NO TRESSPASSING signs would be in order, but you could probably get the place at a heck of a discount.
I used to rent a house and I always got a creepy feeling in one corner of the kitchen. When I went into that corner of the kitchen, it’s like I’d get a flash in my head of a woman cringing as she is being beaten.
It makes no sense and is totally irrational, but it happened everytime I had to cook, and it bothered me greatly.
I have no idea if a woman was actually ever beaten in that kitchen, but I was very eager to move out of that place.
I couldn’t bear to live in a place when there had been a murder. Totally irrational, but there it is.
Sleeping in the same room with a dead body? Hell no. I could probably stand to be in the room, but sleeping is definitely out of the question. No, it’s not rational or sensible, but there it is.
Living in a house where people were murdered is a different story. So long as there wasn’t still blood splattered over the walls, I don’t think I’d have a problem. They aren’t there now, so what does it matter to me?
One of my TAs in college lived in this very situation (the second one, although it was a double murder, not a triple, that had occurred in the apartment he was renting before he moved in).
Once or twice detectives had to return to the scene to check something out but it didn’t seem to bother him - he got reduced rent because of it.
Sleeping with a dead body? Why sure! My ex girl-fri… ummm… not what you’re looking for, huh? I’d have no problem sleeping in a room with a dead body… as long as, (1) I’m not breaking the law, (2) the killer of the dead body isn’t still around, (3) that the dead body isn’t stinking up the place.
As for a triple murder scene, as long as it’s cleaned up.
