In looking to buy a house earlier this year, I toured a small handful of properties. It's funny how you immediately can get a sense of a place after spending just a moment in the front entranceway. However, while it may just be a house to us, it really represents someone's home. They have memories associated with their lives and their families in every nook and corner. Every mark on the wall and stain on the floor has a potential story behind it. Some folks have told me that they can still hear the echos of laughter of their loved ones ringing through the hallways of their homes long after their children have grown up and moved on. Yeah ... but what about the screams?My realtor, my daughter, and I met at a house that I had asked him to show me. We were told that the house would be vacant for our tour and that we should feel free to look around wherever we wanted. At the front door, our agent used his realtor powers to extract a key from a magic box and open the front door. We walked in and he called out to be sure that we were not intruding. Hello? HELLO? ... No answer. We proceeded in to commence our look around. As we walked down the front hallway and entered into the first room, we recognized it as a sort of home office. Suddenly an old man walks out from behind an open cabinet door. His sudden and unexpected appearance kind of startled us, and we all jumped backwards. The man greeted us warmly and told us to feel free to explore. We continued on our journey, but we now felt a bit unnerved. We knew we were not alone!
After a quick tour of the house, we found a set of stairs leading upstairs to a "bonus" room located above the garage, so we went up to check it out. In the corner was a nice Japanese painted screen. Oh how charming. We walked closer to get a look. As we turned toward the back side of the screen, we came face to face with an old woman knitting in a rocking chair. Her sudden and unexpected appearance caused everyone in our group to audibly gasp and yelp. We were so freaked out by Grandma Itt that we ran as fast as our legs could carry us out to our car and got the heck out of there. The tour was over. Who knew how many other old people they had tucked away in that place. Good thing we didn't check the attic. I didn't bring a change of underbritches with me!
