Would you live in a house with a tragic/dark history?

[Bramblies]

I've just gone down a rabbit hole thanks to a book I'm reading and found this. It's a lovely little flat in a great location and for the time, a brilliant price. But would I want to live there? I don't know. I'm not given to woo and I'm quite level-headed but I'm not sure I'd fancy it tbh.

Would you live in a house that had a dark history? Particularly if you could get it for a knock down price?

No. You'd always get creepy tragedy vultures mooching around your house.

I grew up in a house that had previously been used as a retirement home. There’s no escaping the fact that lots of people died there.

It was a lovely and happy home, it had a lot going for it, beautiful features and grand rooms. No bad vibes.

My flat is part of a block that was built in the 1880s. I have no idea what happened here but it doesn't concern me at all. Apart from it apparently being haunted by a ghost that likes pens, as I'm always losing them.

My previous apartment was part of what had been an asylum. My daughter regularly saw a young girl in a nightgown walking in the passage. My daughter just shrugged and said....she's smaller than me.
Im not bothered either. When we buy a property now we get our priest to come over and bless it. Gets all the woo out.

I don’t think I could in that flat. I’m not “woo” so not because I think it would be haunted or anything, just don’t think I could relax in bed knowing what had happened in that bedroom. It would play on my mind too much.
I have lived in an old cottage where people probably died and that thought doesn’t bother me at all. Maybe I would live somewhere a murder had happened, just would depend on the specific circumstances.

No way

In the book I'm reading the author interviews the occupants of Nilsen's other flat, in Cricklewood - the one where he began killing, and kept bodies under the floorboards before burning them in the garden. That's the one that's been converted - they bought Nilsen's old flat initially then the upstairs flat too. And they absolutely love it there, and say there's no strange atmosphere or anything whatsoever.

The Killer Who Lived Here by Matt Blake. Was 99p on Kindle so I thought I'd give it a go, not my usual thing but actually really interesting.

That's different though, a care home is full of elderly people who will die of natural causes and probably had a long and happy(ish) life, but this flat had dimembered bodies shoved everywhere, there were heads in the fridge I believe, and the blocked drains stunk with rotting corpses. eugh no, natural death I could cope with but not gruesome murders of recent history

It wouldn't bother me and I struggle to understand why it would bother so many people so much. We have no idea how many people have died or been murdered in older houses.

What would bother me is the grief tourists, the insta lot, posing for photos outside the house, sitting on the wall, parking up outside, stealing things from the garden etc. Dickheads.

I did once have a job in what had been the mortuary for a workhouse. The atmosphere was brooding and unpleasant but that was down to the company I was working for, not the premises.

We live close to a house where the dad murdered his entire family of 5 then killed himself in the early 2000’s. The house sold quite quickly after and has been lived in ever since. Not quite sure I could live in a home where 5 murders and a suicide happened.

No. Plenty better out there.

When i was house hunting, a house came up in an area that i was interested in at a price that was 20% under the market value of similar houses. The estate agent told me the previous owner had shot himself in the kitchen and house had been empty/untouched ever since. The kitchen was intact with just a few cupboards removed and some of the flooring replaced. It just felt odd whilst you were stood in there. I actually found the news article from the gentleman’s inquest and he had recently separated from his wife, found out she was happy in a new relationship and he was so heartbroken, he had ended his life.

It was a firm NO from me but my husband wasn’t phased at all. He was quite eager to get a bargain!

I've lived in lots of old houses in which people had obviously died, but nothing notorious.

That said, my next door neighbour when I first moved into my current home was a VERY notorious murderer - not while he lived next door, but a few years after he moved out. One of the photos of him used widely in the media was taken in his old living room next to his window and the view outside is exactly the same as mine. Also a photo with his child taken on the path outside my house. He had been in the local newspaper with a story about his child while he lived next door, and the photos were used everywhere after he committed his crimes.

I'm not particularly religious but I think I would ask a priest to visit and sprinkle holy water around if I decided to buy it x

I’m not woo at all but I’m not sure I could be happy in a place where there had been murders. I would be thinking about what had occurred a lot which would make me feel uneasy and unsettled. Normal deaths would be fine but pain and suffering inflicted on others would be a no.

No, I don’t think I could if I knew beforehand. I think it would prey on my mind too much.

Back in the early 80’s when I was about 7 I visited some family friends who lived in a ground floor flat in London. The flat above them, which had a shared hallway access, had been empty for years because the woman occupant had drowned in the bath. She was only found when water started to seep under the door and down the hallway stairs and through the ceiling. Apparently no one would rent the property once they heard the story, so I do wonder how many people are truly put off my hearing about a property’s history.

My grandad bought his house outright when he was young. Borrowed the money from his DF. He did want a different house that was a little more than the one he ended up with, but my gran felt uneasy about it.
Turns out, the garden had loads of remains of babies in it. Not one... several. From what I was told, the previous occupants would "adopt" new born babies from unwed mothers.

My local library allows you to book a PC and have access to really old newspaper articles, so at some point I will have a look for the article on it.

I don’t believe in ghosts etc, but I would just be so sad thinking about the events that took place there.

so a hard no for me.

A colleague lived in a house where there had been a family annihilation. We all knew but she wasn't from the area and nobody dared tell her.

Not to derail the thread, but I was pen pals with Dennis Nilsen for many years, and whilst we never spoke of crimes committed there, he did have fond memories of that part of London, in a normal person kind of way

Wow @winterpaws how did that come about?

I would mostly be concerned about the resale value. I would only buy if I was confident that the discount I got would be more than the discount the next buyer would demand from me. I would only be worried about the murders if Dennis Nilsen was likely to pop round for tea!

But I score ridiculously highly on “pragmatism” of personality quizzes and very poorly on the “imagination” areas.

@sodthesalami I read a book about him, and thought he was really interesting, took a chance and wrote to him, he wrote back and it continued for many years, never spoke about crimes at all, I was sad when he died
obviously his crimes were horrific, no getting away from that at all
I still have all of the letters, you would never in a million years guess who they were from if you didn’t know