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?

See this wouldn’t bother me and I’d see it as a bargain too, but Nilsen’s flat is a different matter

I lived in a flat in a converted 300 year old house. In one previous incarnation the house had been a hospital and my bedroom, in the basement, had been the mortuary. I felt an atmosphere when I first viewed the place but was short of choices and thought it would be ok. It wasn't ok. Visitors would all say the bedroom felt like it belonged somewhere else and had a strange atmosphere. I decorated, moved furniture around, changed the lighting but I never felt comfortable, warm or alone there. I left in the end after a few years of trying to get used to it.

Now I live in a cottage that is actually in a graveyard. It was the gate house years ago and I look out of every window onto graves. When I first viewed it I was nervous after my previous experience but it felt welcoming and happy from the outset and is a lovely home.

There's a big difference between an old house that has seen the common tragedies of ordinary lives, and this level of pathology. I wouldn't want it.

My house dates back to the 14th century and I’m sure there have been a few deaths and tragedies over the years. Despite this, I have never felt any wooo wooo shudders or ghostly goings on. I think some people are more prone or hypersensitive and let their imagination dwell on a house’s possible history whereas I just worry about the roof.

Totally agree @MrsKateColumbo I looked after a lovely lady back in the early nineties when she went mute from losing her husband and children in a house fire. She was working at the time and it was an electrical fault. She never recovered and all the years i was nursing this really affected me.
I wouldnt never move into a house if children had died.

Surely it’s not about ghosts as such ( and I’m not a dis-believer), but the circumstances surrounding what he did with the bodies

Exactly this. I have lived in very old houses and currently live in a 200-year-old house. In one of my previous houses the elderly resident had accidentally set the house on fire. They then unfortunately collapsed and died of a heart attack in the hallway. It was a lovely house. No awful atmosphere at all. There were lots of really nice plants in the garden so whoever had lived there was a keen gardener. I was very happy there.

@XenoBitch That sounds really disturbing - those poor babies.

I couldn’t move into a house with a murder let alone a serial killer.
Any other type of death I would consider but if I discovered that it had been a while before the deceased had been found then that to me would be a tragedy & I don’t know that even blessings, sage, etc could take aware the sadness.
I would be happy to live next to a graveyard.

I don’t know if any of you watched NCIS but one of the characters, Anthony DiNozzo, lived in a beautiful flat that was totally out of his price range.
It turns out that something gruesome had happened there & the apartment just wasn’t selling so he was able to negotiate a price he could afford.
I’m not sure if he had it blessed but given his job and the death & destruction that he saw on a daily basis meant living there with its history didn’t bother him.

I live in Bristol and regularly walk past the house where Becky Watts was murdered - as far as I know her family still live there. I'm not sure I'd want to keep living in the house where a family member had been killed.

Yeah there's a massive difference between a natural death in a house to bodies being stored under the floorboards and flushed down the loo, DHs bedroom at his parents house is old and one of the previous owners died in his bedroom, it's never bothered him at all or us when we go back there, but gruesome murders? Absolutely not.

I suppose I meant that a) unless we actively go looking for the information, we won't know, and b) we can probably assume that there's a likelihood something would have happened in any given house at some point. How do we define 'dark'? Is decades of domestic violence in this category? Child abuse? Acute mental illness? All things which go on secretly behind closed doors, or only fatalities or publicised crime? It is interesting.

I have lived in my street for a very long time. I know that something very tragic happened in a house a couple of doors down soon after I moved here. That house has since changed hands a few times, and I am now quite friendly with the most recent owner. I am almost certain she does not know what happened in her house, and just like I've never brought it up with previous owners, I don't plan to tell my neighbour either; she loves her house.

I saw the thread title and thought as long as its not Fred West it should be fine and worth a look bearing in mind the price. I then saw what had happened in the flat and NO WAY! I am not normally like this but bloody hell...

It wouldn't bother me in the slightest. It's just a building.

The things that happened there are not part of it.

Surely it’s not about ghosts as such ( and I’m not a dis-believer), but the circumstances surrounding what he did with the bodies

Why, though? The bodies aren't still there.

Maybe she just isn’t bothered? I know all about the murder in my house but it doesn’t cost me a second thought. I’m not superstitious.

Why was my post deleted? I questioned why a poster was pen pals with a serial killer? And as their first post proves with the disingenuous: ‘sorry don’t want to derail the thread, but I was pen pals with….’ it’s done for attention and to make them seem more interesting. How sad that you need to latch onto a murderer to gain some social capital.

Same. My imagination is far too rampant.

I would just feel extremely strange/uncomfortable about it.

Not quite sure how you’ve jumped to me “latching on to a murderer for social capital”
as I said, not to derail the thread, just an interesting viewpoint, I sadly didn’t see your original deleted post, maybe it’s offensive?
but to answer your question, I was pen pals with a person who I found to be interesting. He didn’t come for Christmas dinner or anything.

But given that all you knew about him was that he was a jailed serial killer when you wrote to him, it’s a strange, repellent reason to find someone ‘interesting’.

Well we’re all different I guess.

No, I know I wouldn’t as I found the perfect house but it turned out the owner had hung himself in the lounge and that was enough to put me off, was a lovely house as well.

I’ve lived in very old houses so I’m sure lots have gone on so that aspect doesn’t bother me so much.

what I was wondering if there’s any letting agents amongst us? Would it be declared to a potential tenant?

No. I could never live there. I'm sure it would send shivers and tingles down my spine.

Why would it be?

Wouldn’t bother me a house is a house I don’t think they hold “feelings”. There’s probably so many people living in houses where tragic things happened and they have no idea cause it was a long time ago