Neighbors Talk & Curses
This is pretty famous house.....can you guess? leave in the comments.
Gossip, Dish, Dirt, Scandal, whatever you call, neighbors can dish it out and most can take it. We love our neighborhood dearly and after 7 years we gotten know or become close with most of close neighbors. But, like all neighborhoods their is that one house. That one house that’s always a problem, that one house that has history or that one house that’s pulls your property value down. For us that one house is like a bad reality TV show right that can be viewed right in our kitchen window. Thankfully we done with bath time at the kitchen sink, so my gawking days are coming to a close. Although when you come and go all day, it’s pretty hard to not notice the saga unfolding on our street.
We love our neighbors dearly, we really hit the house buying jackpot with this house. It was truly perfect the first 7 years, not so much now with 3 kids and only 3 bedrooms. We are slowly busting this house out of it’s seams. Thankfully the neighborhood saw an influx of new couples when we first arrived. Which meant over the past 7 years, we have seen a stream of new kids coming in to the neighborhood, creating a bigger family oriented community. We have BBQ’s now and then and share holiday and birthdays moments from family to family.
Of coarse we talk, we talk to keep everyone in the loop and protected. You hear about the odd and bad things happening and it’s always a constant stream of information. Of coarse each neighborhood has that one or two houses that provide a plethora of juicy stories. In our community, it’s simply just one house! A rental of coarse, most rentals are a great source drama. Recently we have realized that this rental is truly cursed.
In the 8 years we have lived in our house, this rental has seen some real lows. In talking to several original owners still living on the street, this particular house has been rental since the early 80’s. In our 8 years on the street this house has had 5 renters, a pretty rapid turnover. All have their scary or sad story to tell. The curse has plagued two families with Divorce, one family moved in and then mysteriously moved back out 48 hours later.
Another family was torn apart after a stepfather harmed a minor stepchild in the family. I’ve never seen so many police cars at one house in all my life at that point. With that renter also came a 80 year old man that everyone was on high alert because, he drove around in a beat up 70‘s van, everything screamed kidnapper. Clem and another neighbor confronted the man and the man turned out to be a cousin to the renter and his weathered appearance was due to his terminal cancer he was living with. Man did we feel like crap after approaching him about who and why was he lurking around the neighborhood.
Then there were you 20 something girls who moved into the house for less than a year. You would think the house would have been party central, we could have lived with ragers. Instead one of the girls had a stalker who liked to stand in the front of her window, naked! (sadly the window was in the front of the house). The cops never believed her and she staged a two night stake out to catch him in the act. Of coarse she did this stakeout from our property, hiding behind the hedges we use to have on the side of the property one night. The next night I parked our car along the side street and she camped out in it. Not sure if she ever caught him, because by the next week the girls were gone.
The current renters is a large family and they are raising the bar! I am not going into details right now, out respect they still live in the home. The one thing I can say is that because of the parents lack of parenting, puts other families in an awkward situation of sheltering their children from learning the renter kids bad or dangerous habits. As a result most of the families don’t let their kids play outside anymore, unless the renter kids are not home. I am guilty of this choice, the children at the renter house wander freely around the neighborhood and are so young they don’t understand safety. On a daily basis these children run into street and are almost hit by a car on a regular basis. Almost everyone on the street has addressed this dangerous habit and the parents do nothing to stop it.
I was talking to the original owner who recently sold a house nearby and she’s laid witness the ugliness that happens in that house for over 50 years. After a recent incident this year, we talked a few days later about the event and I told her about neighbors joking the house was cursed. She scoffed at the notion saying “the original owners were a really nice family”, then the light bulb went off. She followed up with “Their son was killed in freak accident”. She then recounted all the previous tenants from 2005 back to the early 70’s and all had some shady or unfortunate outcome in the house. We hope one day this house will be sold and the revolving door of renters come to an end. I think the house just needs to be cleansed.
But how do you explain to a new home buyer that their house needs be cleansed!