Haunted House

If you look at pictures of haunted houses, they are generally in disrepair.

I don't think MIL's old house is haunted, but who knows. Really, I would think that MIL's and FIL's spirits would be too lazy to come back and haunt someone.

When I approached MIL's house after she died, I had not been there for 5 years.

Here is what I saw before I entered.

Windows out upstairs -- or maybe you would just call them redneck windows. Formerly clear (but now cloudy) plastic and duct tape upstairs. Many of the existing glass windows are cracked.

Siding in bad shape. Moldy and some of it falling off.

Cinder block steps to one door chipped

Side porch replaced with rickety deck which has a ramp instead of steps. It isn't exactly a handicapped ramp, too steep and not strong enough.

Sliding glass door removed. Replaced with plywood filler with a regular door in it.

Inside:
A shower had been installed in the kitchen. The only privacy for that shower is a shower curtain.

The orange textured carpets had not been cleaned in the 23 years I have been visiting. They were already worn out when I started visiting.

I am told that all of the fixtures were torn out of the upstairs bathroom to fix a plumbing leak and never replaced.

The house was build stupid too. The ceilings are lower than normal. The stairs are bad at the bottom and the top and the steps themselves. At the bottom they deadend to a blank wall with only a couple feet of clearance in front and none to the left. The steps are a little shorter than normal steps so it feels strange going up them. And the top step is even shorter. And of course, the rail is rickety.

The house does not have central heat or AC. There is not any clearance to add duct work -- esp with the low ceilings. An AC window unit was added to one room. To prevent blocking a window, a hole was cut in the side of the house. The hole is bigger than the unit, so the gap was filled in with the plasticy-type spray insulation.

The downstairs is old worn out paneling.

Sister in law is thinking of selling her house and fixing up this house to live in. Hubbie says it's better than his nieces home as well. How bad can their homes be, considering the condition of this one. Frankly, I have a hard time believing that the land that it sits on is worth as much as it would cost to bulldoze the place.

But the point of this blog post is that even though there are not any ghosts hanging around the house, from the outside it can appear to be like a haunted house. Of course, if her broom was still parked in the driveway, it would help the appearance of that!