A dear friend of mine just bought a big 150 year old house in a mountain town here in Colorado. It was last owned by a judge.
It’s been empty for a few years.
I’m taking some air mattresses and sleeping bags and am going to stay with her for the first night.
It feels like I’m walking into a B movie. 
(well this IS MPSIMS)
Well, sounds like fun. Water and electricity on? Heating source? Lighting?
Actually I once did something sort of like that - the people who bought the family pile had moved to Pittsburg and rented it out for about 5 years, but it had sat empty all winter and my friend Ed and I volunteered to be at the house for the town water people to turn on, and meet up with the electric and gas company for them to turn on everything and make sure the furnace and water heater were safe and running, then spend the rest of the week hanging out until the trucks could get there with furniture. There was a mild smell of empty house, with a touch of dust and chill. The walls had chilled down to outside ambient, and the whole place was mildly damp, so it felt chillier than it actually was. We went to the convenience store and bought a couple bundles of firewood, and decided to camp in the library and kept the fire going for a couple days which drove the chill and damp out nicely. We had 2 camp cots and an old torchier resurrected from my mom’s basement, and a couple chairs and a card table. I had some of my camping stuff and we cooked in a spider [the tall version but with a lid], on a gridiron and used the gridiron to hold a kettle for tea, and we had an absolute blast.
Make sure to take one flashlight, of the fragile variety.
Just remember the basics:
Blow the conch shell you find in the cellar.
When you run away through the forest, make sure to look behind you a lot so that you trip up on apparently nothing, then just scream a lot covering your face, rather than get up and keep running.
It will just be the old caretaker in a mask.
Was the former owner a hanging judge? The house may be haunted by the ghosts of the people he condemned.
If you hear any strange noises, immediately investigate armed with nothing more lethal than a flash-light. “You come one step closer I’ll switch it on!”
Ruh-Roh!!
Make sure the TVs are all turned off, and that any clown dolls are out of the house. If the kitchen chairs start sliding across the floor, get out immediately.
Don’t do anything just because she offers you a Scooby Snack.
If you find a book - DO NOT READ FROM IT -
If the house tells you to get out or flies start congregating on the windows and walls, heed the warnings and exit immediately.
Yes, yes and yes. But it was otherwise empty.
And it was fun. Quite a cool old house in Central City Colorado. One of our gambling towns here in Colorado.
We toasted to the house with champagne. And had some beers. We found a working CD player so we did have a little music.
Practice saying, *“Mr. Feeney!” *
Or whatever the name of the caretaker is.
What, no satchels of Confederate cash? No veins of gold in the root cellar? Tch. The Association of Masked Caretakers must have fallen on hard times if members have been reduced to trying to scare people away from CD players.
If you’re below the age of 30, DO NOT HAVE SEX!
You have to say “Biggie Smalls” three times in front of a mirror. Er, I mean don’t do that. That would be bad.
