Image by Bernd from Pixabay

Back in the mid 1970’s, my husband and I enlisted the aid of a realtor to help us find a larger home. Our realtor whose name was Elke was a young and attractive Austrian born woman who had a witty personality with intelligence to match. Elke loved to share her varied experiences from the world of real estate and one day I asked her if she ever had any dealings with haunted houses. The story that Elke relayed to me still makes the hair stand up on my arms every time I retell it. Here it is…

The listing was for a beautiful custom designed home in a wealthy upscale neighborhood with many amenities. It had been occupied by a husband and wife with no children.  The husband had a special climate controlled cedar lined closet built off the master bedroom for the wife’s fur coats. Fur coats were not the only things that occupied the closet for the wife who was extremely depressed due to an unhappy marriage tied a rope around the beams and committed suicide by hanging herself in that closet. The husband moved out of the house shortly thereafter and put it up for sale.

The listing fell into Elke’s lap mainly because most of the other realtors in her office would not handle it for one reason or another. So, on a lovely spring afternoon, Elke ventured out to the house and property to look it over so she could prepare her sales “pitch.” After walking the property, Elke went to the back door, unlocked it and walked in through the kitchen. She placed her purse, paperwork and the house key on the kitchen counter near the back door.

Elke walked through the house and as she did, she began to feel somewhat uneasy. When she reached the master bedroom her uneasiness began to mount. She opened the door to the fur closet and was met by a cold blast so she closed the door without going inside of the closet. Elke was a very determined woman and she was not going to let her nerves or her imagination take control of her better sense so she continued her tour of the house.

Finally it came time to inspect the basement. The basement was very dark and even with the lights on the view was dim and the air felt thick. Elke made it about halfway through the basement when she stopped or was stopped dead her tracks. Her feet felt glued to the floor and she could not move. Suddenly something unseen that felt like a rope began to coil around her ankles. She was totally terrified because she could not see or discern anything but definitely felt it. The longer she stood there, the tighter the rope seemed to coil and constrict her legs. Elke knew she would have to overcome her fear and somehow she managed to break the unseen grip. She quickly fled up the stairs slamming the basement door behind her.

Once back upstairs she was able to maintain her emotions and clam down. She felt that this was enough drama for one day so she headed back to the kitchen to gather her things and leave. Everything was where she left it except the house key. Elke checked her pockets, purse and belongings, the counters, and the kitchen floor but could not find the key.

Thinking she might have mistakenly dropped it on the door mat she went outside to look around but found absolutely nothing. She inspected the grass surrounding the area and still found nothing. She headed back to the door to fetch her belongings and there was the key sitting squarely on the doormat. As calmly as she could, Elke retrieved the key and went back inside the house to collect her belongings. She wasted no time in leaving once she got back to her car.

Elke was a very psychic individual in her own right and felt that in good conscience she could not sell the house until a professional paranormal investigator investigated the house and property. She set an appointment to have this done but in the meantime she asked a personal friend of hers who was a professional psychic to check out the house. A few days later they drove out to the house together. It was mid afternoon and the sun was shining and all appeared to serene.

They parked the car in the driveway and stepped out. The psychic took a few steps from the car and stopped refusing to go any further. She was silent for a while… just standing there “tuning in.” She then turned to Elke and told her there was no reason to go any further. The house, she said was “evil” and that there were many negative things that had happened in the house and many terrible things that happened on the property over the years some of which predated the building of the house.

The psychic said that she was sure that a paranormal investigation would yield a good deal of information particularly about its history but, she felt it was more important to have the house exorcised and that the house should not be sold until that was executed. She told Elke to stay out of the house until a cleansing was accomplished.

Of her own volition Elke took the necessary steps to get the house cleansed which was not an easy task to accomplish in the 70’s. During the entire time that Elke was our acting realtor the house never sold and because I lost contact with her after purchasing my own home I never found out why evil chose to dwell on the property.