• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

So You've Just Bought A House Where Somebody Got Murdered...

AgProv

AgProv

Doctor of Disorientation Studies, UnseenUniversity
Joined
Apr 6, 2014
Messages
1,340
Location
too North to be Midlands, too south to be North
This is an interesting article from yesterday's Guardian (Sat 19th Nov 2022).

It's a very Fortean question: if you buy a house, or move into a property, with a troubled past and a violent murder having happened there - what happens next? How do you react, what might you feel, do you have any legal redress if you weren't told, and how do you live with it? How should you live with it? Real-life accounts from the Guardian.

Apologies if this has been posted here already and feel free to do an Admin tidying if it has.

So you've bought a "haunted house"
 
A slight tangent, but what about suicide houses? Suicide is ten times more common than murder, so you're ten times more likely to find yourself in a suicide house than a murder house.

And on the Stone Tape theory or some variant of it, the prolonged gloom, despair, and loss of hope, that precedes a suicide, might be more likely to affect the psychic atmosphere of the building.

I lived in a suicide house for a while. I didn't know it when I moved in, but I felt that one of the back bedrooms was a bit 'off' and only ever used it as a sort of lumber room. It was only quite a while later that I was told that a previous resident had ended his life in that room.

The rest of the house was fine, though, and there was no haunting. In fact I have some good memories of that time. Whatever the effect was, it was confined to that one small spot.
 
And what about houses where violence (not ending in death) occurred? I've always thought that violence ought to impact the atmosphere of a place almost more than death, especially if that death was sudden and not protracted. Almost everyone who lives in a house that's older than about fifty years, will be living in a house where death happened, of whatever kind, and we may never know.
 
We had a thread on this, wherein I described a friend's experience of changing her mind about buying a house after learning that it had been the site of a locally famous murder. A woman had been killed by her husband with a shotgun in the master bedroom.

My friend decided against the purchase because she believed the murder would lower the house's market value.
I told her I'd've gone ahead but asked for a discount!
 
My (French) brother-in-law and his then wife bought a Breton-style farmhouse and land at a remarkably low price in rural Mayenne.
The first time we visited, we realised that it needed a fair bit of renovation, but nothing prepared us quite for when he told us that the previous owner had hanged himself from the beam in the middle of the living room ceiling.
He indicated the precise space the hanging cadaver would have occupied over aperitifs if I recall.
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
My (French) brother-in-law and his then wife bought a Breton-style farmhouse and land at a remarkably low price in rural Mayenne.
The first time we visited, we realised that it needed a fair bit of renovation, but nothing prepared us quite for when he told us that the previous owner had hanged himself from the beam in the middle of the living room ceiling.
He indicated the precise space the hanging cadaver would have occupied over aperitifs if I recall.
Click to expand...
So... not “ Dun Roamin’”... more like “ Dun Dangling”, perhaps?
 
Frankly, it wouldn't bother me in the slightest. As Scargy said, you could claim a discount.
Thing is, unless it's a new build, many residential homes are ... old. And many people would've died in that property, either naturally, by suicide or by a killing.
But it does depend on the attitude of those who live there.
I can imagine someone involved in a murder not wanting to live there - unhappy memories etc. - but a complete stranger?
 
Stormkhan said:
Frankly, it wouldn't bother me in the slightest. As Scargy said, you could claim a discount.
Thing is, unless it's a new build, many residential homes are ... old. And many people would've died in that property, either naturally, by suicide or by a killing.
But it does depend on the attitude of those who live there.
I can imagine someone involved in a murder not wanting to live there - unhappy memories etc. - but a complete stranger?
Click to expand...
This is my point. Most older houses will have experienced death. What makes a house where someone died as a murder victim any worse than a house where someone died a long and painful death of, say, tuberculosis? And any house could have had suicides in, but if it was more than about twenty years ago you may never know or find out.
 
catseye said:
This is my point. Most older houses will have experienced death. What makes a house where someone died as a murder victim any worse than a house where someone died a long and painful death of, say, tuberculosis? And any house could have had suicides in, but if it was more than about twenty years ago you may never know or find out.
Click to expand...
Yup, one of the houses adjoining ours was occupied by an elderly couple when I moved in. The husband died in hospital after a year or so of coming and going.
The wife, whom I never met because she was a recluse, died on the sofa in the front room which she apparently hadn't left for many years.
A family live there now and I dunno if they've heard about the previous tenants.
They wouldn't care anyway. As you say, it's bound to happen.

A younger sister of my mother's died at age 4 in the 1930s and was laid out in the family's front room. I'm told that she was so beautiful in death, people came from miles away to visit the grieving family and view her angelic features.

(I've seen many photos of such scenes, usually Victorian, but my mother's family were too poor to afford a photo even had they wanted one, which I'll never know.
As it turned out, there was only ever one photo of Joyce, taken when she sneaked into shot as her older siblings were being snapped for some commemoration event. The photo was mounted in glass and treasured by my grandmother. I ended up with it and eventually posted it off to a cousin in Australia.)
 
escargot said:
Yup, one of the houses adjoining ours was occupied by an elderly couple when I moved in. The husband died in hospital after a year or so of coming and going.
The wife, whom I never met because she was a recluse, died on the sofa in the front room which she apparently hadn't left for many years.
A family live there now and I dunno if they've heard about the previous tenants.
They wouldn't care anyway. As you say, it's bound to happen.

A younger sister of my mother's died at age 4 in the 1930s and was laid out in the family's front room. I'm told that she was so beautiful in death, people came from miles away to visit the grieving family and view her angelic features.

(I've seen many photos of such scenes, usually Victorian, but my mother's family were too poor to afford a photo even had they wanted one, which I'll never know.
As it turned out, there was only ever one photo of Joyce, taken when she sneaked into shot as her older siblings were being snapped for some commemoration event. The photo was mounted in glass and treasured by my grandmother. I ended up with it and eventually posted it off to a cousin in Australia.)
Click to expand...
Both my mum and my dad died at home, in the same house, which had been our family home for nearly 60 years. It was bought by a builder and turned into student accommodation (as has just about every other house in Exeter as far as I can tell). It's been modernised and extended a wee bit, but not radically changed, and I often wonder if the students living there know that an elderly man died in the bathroom and an even more elderly woman died in the back bedroom...
 
One of the things Caitlin from Ask A Mortician points out that home funerals, where the body lays in state in a room, the family deal with the body preparation etc. declined since the foundation of the funeral directors.
 
It's a big thing in Hong Kong, I think I've written previously on a thread about it. 'Ghost houses' (murder or suicide houses) bring down the property values in three dimensions around them (consider that Hong Kong is built very vertically). They're of enough concern to renters that property websites list them. I knew a foreign couple who lived in a famous murder house and experienced no hauntings, just cheap rent for the area.
 
I don't think a murder house per se would deter me. It would be more how famous was the murder? People showing up to gawp at a house in droves would definitely stop me from living there.

I know of two homes in which a suicide was committed.
 
A girlfriend of mine years ago lived in a semi detached house with a reclusive elderly lady next door. She was found to have died in the bedroom on the other side of the wall to my girlfriends bedroom and wasn't found for a week, which did understandably creep her out for a while!
 
This interests me, in so far as to why some places will be supposedly haunted and some places where the same thing happened have no reports

Could it be it's all to do with the observer having more physic abilities than your average person? Or could it be once you know your mind puts together a story so every little incident becomes part of the story (if you didn't know you would just brush off the creaking floorboards etc)

On the subject of graveyards, why would they be more haunted than anywhere else? They are only repositories of flesh and bone the only connection the occupants have with the place is that there mortal body is interred there
 
Robbrent said:
On the subject of graveyards, why would they be more haunted than anywhere else? They are only repositories of flesh and bone the only connection the occupants have with the place is that there mortal body is interred there
Click to expand...
To tell the truth, I haven't come across many believable reports of haunted graveyards, but plenty of believable reports of haunted houses and roads etc.
 
When my wife and I first married, we lived in different apartments or flats and I don’t even want to know what went on before us moving in.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top