Lightning Doesn't Usually Strike Twice

Posted by E

Thursday, January 15, 2009

There was a time a decade or so ago, that I actually considered buying a home down here. For me this is a fairly big deal, not so much from the "Ooh, he's buying a house, what an investment!" standpoint, but more from the, "Oh my god, he's actually planning on sticking around" point of view.

It's not that I'm exceptionally transient, or that I live the life of a vagabond, it's just that I've never been fond of putting down roots, as it were. I like the freedom to be able to say, "That's it! I'm moving to Winnipeg!" at a moment's breath, even if it's incredibly unlikely that I'd ever do so.

But at the time the mania had burrowed its way into my brain and I actually went and surveyed a few homes before ultimately deciding that apartment life better suited my style. (Let's face it, I've lived in the same place for 3 years and still haven't decorated it.)

Being the type that doesn't generally consider my home to be anything more than 4 walls surrounding my meager possessions, I didn't put a whole lot of concern into the neighborhoods that I looked at. Don't get me wrong, if I rolled up and two dudes were smoking rocks while a guy with a Burger King bag offered to fellate me for two bucks, there's a high likelihood that I wouldn't put an offer on that particular place.

But I'm definitely a man who doesn't want to spend boatloads of money on what is essentially a box with a door, so I opted to look at some of the HUD homes available in my area.

From my understanding at the time, HUD homes are the government owned "Housing and Urban Development" homes, generally fix 'r up type houses that you can buy on the cheap and probably turn over for a quick profit if you're the slumlord type. I have since come to the understanding that HUD homes are generally dens of filth that the government hopes to pawn off on some unlucky bastard.

The beauty of HUD homes was that they were generally rather affordable. Whereas most homes in my area were in the $120-150,000 range, I was able to track down a couple of HUD homes in the low to mid $70's. I certainly wasn't going to pass up on such a good offer, so I went to check out a few of them.

One in particular stands out in my memory.

The realtor was already a bit put off from having to deal with me. I'm a nice enough guy and probably look relatively harmless, but I do have a habit of letting my mouth say whatever my mind is thinking and that can sometimes lead to trouble when communicating with my fellow man. For instance; realtors do not like to be asked "if there's any crawlspace or any other area appropriate for storing 'the bodies'". In general, they seem to lack humor in that area.

I walk into the home, a standard little ranch styled affair, doing a quick rundown of the layout and obvious flaws. The living room seems rather nice, spacious but not extremely large. The two bedrooms are perfectly acceptable, nice closets, carpet looks clean for the most part. I'm wandering this house wondering why the price point is so low. Granted, the neighborhood isn't the nicest, but it's not really a slum either. When we get to the kitchen I can see the answer laid bare before me.

The kitchen joins the dining room and the garage, sort of an abutment between the two. The door to the garage seems slightly askew at first glance. A more thorough inspection reveals that it is pretty much hanging off its frame. Oh, and it's been ripped into two pieces, as if smashed or chopped apart with an axe.

Then there's the dining room, a small affair with a chandelier hanging in the middle. A chandelier (and ceiling!) with a spray of blood washed across it, droplets flecking the ceiling and rivulets of coagulated brown snaking their way down.

Okay, so maybe the house has a minor flaw.

But really, you have to think about these things realistically. So I asked the realtor the most obvious question about this setup that I could.

"Did whoever did this know the people who lived here?"

Unfortunately she couldn't answer that question. Sorry Holmes, no sale.

It seems pretty simple to me. Had this been a random act of extreme violence, some guy just snapping and running up off the street to split the skulls of everybody in that dining room...had it been that, I might have bought it.

My fear was that this was no random encounter, that this gentleman had it in for the people who occupied this home. Perhaps he was merely the facade for a more sinister cabal of ne'er do wells and malcontents intent on destroying the occupants of that home due to some ancient feud. If so, do you think they knew the old tenants had left? (Or died, for that matter?) Might they come back to finish the job?

Personally, I felt a lot more comfort in the random encounter thought, as what are the odds of a crazed individual smashing down a door to murder all the occupants in a house MORE THAN ONCE? Seems like a whole lightning never strikes twice thing to me.

Oh well, I never did buy the place. I've always wondered if they had to clean up the blood before they managed to sell it.