Anyone who’s ever bought a home knows how much of a hassle house hunting can be. Not only is it physically exhausting, you also need to actually remember what each one looked like and whether it’s within your price range. Anyone who says it’s easy is obviously lying.
Well, I guess there’s always an exception to the rule — here’s a house for sale in California that might be a little easier to remember…because it’s so darned haunted!
Welcome to your new home in Dunsmuir, California!
This breathtaking Victorian has a long history of restless spirits and actually served as the inspiration for Maralee Lowder’s best-selling novel The Mortician’s Wife.
The history of the house begins with its construction back in the early 1900s by the Young family.
After they moved in, they decided to turn the home into the town’s mortuary. As bodies came and went, naturally a few spirits decided to take up permanent residence there. According to local historians, it’s said that Mr. Young died at the breakfast table one morning. His distraught wife locked herself in their room and left him out to rot for weeks. When officials finally broke down the doors and discovered the body, Mrs. Young told them she had locked herself away to keep safe from all the spirits.
Since the Youngs, the home has been bought and sold several times. The current owners, the Warners, purchased the home in 2010 and turned it into a “dead and breakfast.”
During their remodel of the home, the Warners left much of the basement, where all the embalming took place, intact.
But just because the home was turned into a bed and breakfast, doesn’t mean the spirits have decided to move on. Far from it, in fact.
Not long after the Warners bought the place, they had their first terrifying encounter with the spirits who also call the place home. One friend of the Warners described the bone-chilling event:
The[y] readily admit to experiencing quite a variety of spiritual activities. As an example let me tell you about the very first night they stayed in their newly acquired home. They had brought all of their furniture in, but had not set up their bed yet. So, they placed their mattress on the main floor, in the living room. There was a roaring fire going in the fireplace, they had the lights turned on and were watching a DVD on their computer. Suddenly, everything went off—the lights, the computer…and the fireplace!
Brad spoke into the darkness, “We are going to be living here…this is our home now. We are not going to try to make you leave. All we want is to live here in harmony with you.” At that moment everything came back on. The lights turned on. The computer came back on. And, yes, the fire in the fireplace suddenly relit itself.
So how much is this genuinely haunted home going to cost you?
Starting at just $899,000, you get three floors and almost 9,000 square feet of creepiness to call your own. That includes seven bedrooms, six bathrooms, and the mortuary, along with a casket in the basement that currently houses the skeleton of a 17-year-old girl.
(via Cult of Weird)
Well, honestly, that sounds like a bargain to me. I know if I was house hunting right now I’d be paying the ol’ mortuary a visit. Just think of the money you could make by running a haunted house around Halloween. Interested in buying? Check out the real estate listing here.