Tags
buying a home, Charles Dickens, House, House of the Seven Gables, Murder–suicide, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Real estate broker, Superior Court
There’s No Place Like Home
Would you buy this house if you knew something bad happened inside? (Photo credit: james.thompson)
A Pennsylvania woman, who bought a $610,000 home, is suing the sellers for failing to disclose the murder-suicide that occurred in the home in 2006. You can read the article here; she lost in Superior Court and at the Court of Appeals so she has brought her case to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. She wants to rescind the contract and get her money back.
I really hope she wins because for me, a murder-suicide is a material defect that needs to be disclosed by the sellers of the home. That just ain’t cool.
Several years ago, Mr. LT and I contemplated moving to Washington State and so we went house hunting. We arrived at this one open house and right away, we could sense that something was definitely off. Later we learned that a murder occurred in the garage.
Houses have a definite character about them; they can impart good feelings or bad ju-ju. Otherwise, why would we have so many titles with the word house in them?
- The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe
- Bleak House by Charles Dickens
- The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
- Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
- Crooked House by Agatha Christie
- The House on Pooh Corner by A.A Milne
- The Cider House Rules by John Irving
- The Painted House by John Grisham
- The House of the Dead by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
- The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
Do you have other books to add to my list? Do you think houses have characters and can that character be changed by the current inhabitants? Or do you think there are certain things about a house that will not go away despite a change in ownership?
Related articles
- Murder-suicide and the new homeowner (lawprofessors.typepad.com)
- Pa. Homeowner Sues Seller Over Home’s Bloody Past (abcnews.go.com)
That’s so interesting that you felt something was wrong with the house you visited during the open house and then it turned out the garage was the site of a murder. I wonder if we can ‘feel’ these things in a house, as you say, as if they were characters themselves. I’ve only ‘felt’ good feelings about a house which I’ve always attributed to architectural flow, etc. but now you’ve got me thinking in terms of narrative characters!
I kind of think along the same lines you do — that a house can be a character in and of itself.
don’t think I have any “psychic” abilities or anything like that, but sometimes the house’s decor, it’s architecture, the paint and landscaping … that gives off clues. Just like when you get the feeling that someone is “off” by way of verbal and nonverbal communication, I think houses can be the same way.
OMG I would have wanted to recind the house offer too. I do not thnk I could ever live in a place with such a horrible history. At least I do not think I could. That is just creepy to me. I mean, someone dying there …accident, health issue, old age…that is one thing. But a murder-suicide? Ack,
As for your experience, how did you find out what had happened?
And now….
House Rules by Jodi Picuolt
The House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus
Noble House by James Clavell
Slaughter House Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Madeline At the White House (I don’t know the author…but tis the chidlren’s book)
I totally agree. It is creepy. I want a house where the owner won the best garden contest 5 years in a row or something. I like happy things.
About that house we looked at, we found out from the realtor a few days later in an email. I should also say that the inhabitants of the house were around when we visited, and they were odd too. So maybe the “off” feeling was equally from the inhabitants and the house. Ha!
And good additions to the booklist!
Oh…the inhabitants were there???? Was the person in the garage who died …ack…I do not want to know!
Hah! No. I mean the current inhabitants who were alive were at the open house. I wasn’t talking about any ghosts or anything.
Come to think of it, I don’t know whether the current owners were at all connected with the murder in the garage.
LOL….that is what I was wondering …were they connected to the murder? Eeps.
Eeps is right! I don’t think they were.
Being a ‘sensitive’ brought me a lot of limitations such as; not being able to be anywhere where a negative situation had occurred (at least, not for a prolonged period of time). I found the same applied to people. Being around odd or strange/negative individuals would fill me with the most awful feelings; I’d have to vamoose rather quickly. I had to learn to ‘shut-down’ this aspect of myself else it limit me so much that life would be too small to be of any use.
Today I only open this aspect if I’m inspired to. I can now be where negative energies exist without being ‘lost’ in them…. Probably doesn’t make a lot of sense.. however, that was life for me.
I still wouldn’t want to live in a house where obvious nastiness existed. And yes, I believe all things carry energies; either good or (so called) not good, and everything in-between…
I love being around genuinely happy people, too.
Thanks so much for stopping by and commenting, Carolyn. I enjoy your insight.
I was feeling all proud of myself because I thought of “House of Sand and Fog” and then saw that someone else had already listed it! But this has given me some great ideas for my 13 in ’13 Reading Challenge, so it all worked out
Oh, I’m so glad I could be of assistance for your new Reading Challenge. I’m so bad at those . . . Reading Challenges, I mean. But they sure sound fun!
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