I See Dead People

Okay, so it's Halloween and I have no salacious photos to post of me as a skank-ass ho or Wally as a sadistic Santa Claus. I happen to have an allergy that has affected both of my eyes and therefore I could not wear the required face paint for picking up tricks. Halloween is the only time I can make any good money, seriously, I am a little bummed out. I did consider going out as a plastic surgery disaster, with my eyelids being so inflamed, but then I thought that might be cruel to people like, that lion lady.

So instead, I will tell you some scary stuff. When I was little, I was so scared of my Grandfather's ghost, I would hide under my Grandma's kitchen table when she went out to feed the chickens. I would hold my breath so he would not hear me, and so I could hear him coming down the old, creaky staircase. Not that there had ever been a sighting of my Grandfather's apparition, but the fear of this possibility would bring me to tears.

I have had a few weird things happen to me since. Unexplained instances of electronics turning on by themselves in the middle of the night. Something scratching furiously at the door of a closet, that when opened, revealed no living creature, or explanation.

But then there was that house on Magnolia.

Two years ago, I started checking the real estate section for potential fixer-uppers. While randomly searching the internet one day, I came across a home for sale on a double lot, loaded with all things vintage - original stained-glass windows, hand-carved staircase, intricately tiled entry ways and fireplace mantels, original hardware. It was so perfect, I could not make an appointment to see it any faster.

A couple days later, Wally and I were walking down the sidewalk looking at this old and worn Dutch Revival home. Inside, we were blown away by the beautiful little details - but, confused by the general condition of the home. While the stained glass windows and glass tile fireplaces were intact, the walls of the home were exposed to the studs. It was dark and foreboding, but I shrugged that off as the impending dread of such a large scale project. Before we could even inquire as to the reason of the bare bone walls, the realtor explained that ten years prior, there had been a fire and the walls and roof had to be rebuilt. The house had been empty all of those ten years. All of a sudden the uneasiness I felt was stronger. And I had questions. But again, I pushed these thoughts aside and decided to do a little investigating of my own.

I was able to find out that the original owner (a Free Mason, known as the "Corn King" after making his fortune in the corn pits of Chicago's Board of Trade in the early 1900s) commissioned an architect named William G. Weigh to build the house in 1896, when the Uptown neighborhood still had open fields. The house had won a prestigious award for design from the American Institute of Architecture. The Corn King had died in the house, as did his son, both of natural causes.

It wasn't that I felt these men were haunting the house. There was something much darker, a presence more sinister and angry. I started having your garden-variety Amityville nightmares.

More searching went on. The current owner had moved in with his new wife who lived a few doors down the block. This was after an undisclosed illness had taken the life of his first wife. Did she die in the fire? I tried to get this answer from the realtor, who admitted she was a smoker, but that to the "best of" his "knowledge", he was unaware if she accidentally started the fire or if anyone died in the fire. This was despite the fact that the realtor had told us that he was good friends with the owner of the property. So why didn't he know?

I could not find any record of the fire in the mid-1990s, nor could I find if anyone died in the fire.

Wally and I were discussing the possibility of putting an offer in, but my nightmares continued. We looked at the house again, and I spent some time by myself in it, but I couldn't shake the feelings of something evil. As much as I tried to rationalize my feelings, it came down to the fact that I would not be able to live in the house without being scared to be alone. We let the opportunity pass.

And then one day, I was going through old files and came upon the photos I had taken that initial showing. I laughed to myself about whether or not the place was really haunted. But then, as I stared at the very first photo I took that day, I noticed something in the window.

If you look closely, you can see a woman in the middle of the bottom pane,
looking forlornly downward, while above her to the bottom right corner
is a devil face...yikes!!!