Haunted houses

[kelliem]

keelywolfe linked to a fictional story about an unnatural house in her journal. The story reminds me a bit of an odd thing I experienced about 20 years ago.

I was housesitting for a friend who lived in an older neighborhood while she was away for 3 weeks. I always drove the same route to and from there from work, and one evening something struck me as ‘off’ but it took me a few minutes to realize what it was. There was a house I always saw on my drive that I *hadn’t* seen. I didn’t think much about it, I just figured that I’d been looking elsewhere as I passed that block. The house was an ordinary one-story bungalow like most of the others in the neighborhood, painted a light gray.

The next night as I drove home from work I looked for it, and there it was as usual. Then a few days later, it wasn’t there again. I actually pulled over to look because it was so strange– it wasn’t like it had been demolished, it simply wasn’t there. Where it usually sat was a flat, green lawn like a one-lot park, and I could see the back of the house behind it, which I had never seen before. I finally drove on, convinced I was either nuts, or had mis-remembered where the house was. The next day I deliberately drove past it, and the house was there. I took note of the street and block. For several days I watched carefully and the house was always there. Until the night before my friend came back from her trip, when once more it was gone, replaced by a lawn. By this point I was sure I was losing it. Houses don’t just disappear and reappear.

After she got back, we went out to dinner with some friends and at one point in the conversation I remembered about the house and I said "You know, Susan, I noticed something kind of odd as I was driving to and from your house while you were gone. There’s this one house..." And she interrupted me there and said "You mean the one that sometimes isn’t there?"

Needless to say my jaw dropped. :-) She said she’d had the exact same experience, many times. I rarely go to that part of town Susan moved away, but whenever I do, I look for the house. Since then it seems to have been there all the time, but I always wonder if it still does its disappearing act, and if so, what on earth happens to the people inside it when it does that.

Comments

[brynwulf]

That is truly bizarre. I think I would have had to stop and knock on their door and ask, "Do you know your house sometimes goes away?"

[kelliem.livejournal.com]

I think I was half afraid to. :)

[shiningmoon.livejournal.com]

Whoa.

(Did you ever read House of Leaves?)

[kelliem.livejournal.com]

No, I haven't, this is the first I have ever heard of it. I did, though, read Marion Zimmer Bradley's "House Between Worlds" some years later.

[fazia.livejournal.com]

Whoa!

[the-haunt.livejournal.com]

And she interrupted me there and said "You mean the one that sometimes isn’t there?"

That is so strange – I love stories/experiences like that! I've vowed to check in to a haunted hotel at some point in my lifetime, just to see if anything would happen on my watch...

[raveninthewind.livejournal.com]

That is extrememly eerie. *shivers*