Would you buy this house? (crime scene)

[uk_dave]

People are, indeed, strange......

Contractors will begin work on Monday to demolish completely the Cromwell Street home of serial killers Frederick and Rosemary West and a derelict neighbouring building.

The street will be sealed off to traffic and a police guard mounted to stop ghoulish souvenir-hunters plundering the house and garden for relics of where Fred West buried nine of the couple's victims.

Gloucester City Council announced yesterday that it had bought the property, where the Wests lived for two decades, for £40,000 and the neighbouring building for an undisclosed sum.

Contractors will work or 15 days until the last vestiges of the building have gone - the bricks will be removed one by one; the timbers burned, and the fittings melted down. The bricks and mortar are to be crushed, mixed with other general waste, and then used to fill prepared holes in undisclosed parts of the giant council waste tip at Hempsted, and immediately covered over. At the end of the demolition an inches-thick concrete "cap" will cover the cleared site. The city council said that the strategy of complete destruction was decided on because of the "sensitive nature of the site".

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/fred-west-house-to-be-demolished-1356745.html


.....though in this and other cases it may not be people having superstitious revulsion at inanimate objects but rather bizarre curiosity about them.

 

[Aepervius]

You may be familiar with the psychology professor who asked a full room of students if they could participate in an experiment. All he needed was one student to wear this sweater.

(SNIP)

I will snap it and buy it. I would even try to maybe negotiate the commission down if I am sure I am alone.

I would also have worn the sweater. I would even have worn it is the wool was collected by staline, knitted by hitler, worn by bundy, and used as a flag for infant satanical sacrifice.

It is an inanimate object.

 

[chillzero]

I wouldn't have an issue with possessing anything associated with a crime/supposed ghost / etc. They are just things.

I wonder however if the sweater experiment is entirely fair. I wonder, for example, if some people would have considered putting up their hands but felt a social pressure not to appear to be morbidly weird in actively seeking to be associated with such an item.

 

[Aepervius]

People are, indeed, strange......



http://www.independent.co.uk/news/fred-west-house-to-be-demolished-1356745.html


.....though in this and other cases it may not be people having superstitious revulsion at inanimate objects but rather bizarre curiosity about them.

It is probably more of a case of the local council not wanting to have souvenir hunter come in for the plunder than real superstition. Furthermore don#t forget they are elected by the superstitious people. So they probably cater to them by so destroying the house.

 

[Wrathernaut]

Now I'm not superstitious, but when I was offered to buy the car my uncle died in, which had faulty brakes, failed airbags, broken seatbelts, exposed wires running through the gas tank and decorative pointy bits of rusty metal on the dash, I passed. That car is cursed.

 

[Cuddles]

I wouldn't buy it unless I was almost certain I would live in it until I died, as the attractive price I bought it for would become a very unattractive price when I came to sell it.

I think that would likely work exactly the other way around. Worst case scenario is that you buy it cheap, then sell it cheap, so you end up in exactly the same position as if you'd bought it expensive and then sold it expensive. More likely is you buy it cheap, then over the next few years everyone forgets about the crime and you can sell it for much closer to the actual value.

As some of you know, a very close friend of mine was in a mudslide some years back. Lost her house, many of her possessions, and her mother. Her father was badly injured, but is fine today. Now, the hill where the slide occurred has been made safe by several anti-mudslide measures, the damage and rubble has long since cleaned up, and a new row of houses has been built.

I wouldn't move there if you paid me. The mere thought gives me chills. Sure, it's safe today. Sure, the houses are probably wonderful, and wouldn't it be cool to rent/own not only a free house, but one in which you get paid for residing. But no. The whole neighbourhood is "tainted" to me and I don't even like to within its immediate distance. It doesn't even have anything to do with superstition, it's the association with the horrors that they're "connected" to.

Sure, this is more of a "first-hand" deal and I'd have less of a problem living in, say, a house in New Orleans on the site of an old house that got destroyed in a flood in which one of its occupants died... but I have no problem understanding people who shun articles and properties associated with death or evil.

I think this is a rather different situation. In the case of the house in the OP, the house itself really has nothing to do with anything. If those people had lived elsewhere, the crime would have happened elsewhere, and now that the crime has happened, there is no higher chance of another crime happening in the same place. In your example, however, there is a real danger. A mudslide happened that could not have happened elsewhere. While safety measures may be in place, there are plenty of examples where safety measures have failed, so there is still no guarantee that it is safe now.

There's a big difference between erroneously associating an item with something just because it happened to be in the vicinity, and associating an item with something that was only a problem because it was in the vicinity.

 

[Bluegill]

In recent years, my skeptical thought has made more and more allowance for irrational emotional reaction.

I would be interested in the house, but I’d also be concerned. I don’t believe in spiritual taint or evil auras or ghosts, but I’d have to recognize my own negative emotional reactions and the reactions of others, even if they don’t make any intellectual sense.

Would I, personally, feel comfortable in the house? I think that after moving in and getting settled, I’d stop thinking about it much. However, what if other people kept reminding me of it?

I don’t like being reminded of that sort of thing. I know terrible crimes happen, and I read news stories about them, but sometimes I have to tune them out and avoid those kinds of things because of the stress that merely knowing about them can generate.

This is especially true now that I am a father. I hate new stories about crimes committed against children, or children suffering, because they are even more painful to hear about now than they were a few years ago. Could I feel comfortable raising kids in a house in which I knew a horrible crime against a child took place? Would I be constantly reminded?

I’m not superstitious, but that is the kind of thing that makes me realize the psychological value of ritual and spiritual cleansing. I’d feel extra-obliged to look for ways to fill the house with love and joy, and maybe take some of the money I’d saved on getting such a good deal on the house and donate it to an appropriate charity. I’d have to feel like I was counteracting the (purely imaginary) residual evil.

 

[uk_dave]

Now I'm not superstitious, but when I was offered to buy the car my uncle died in, which had faulty brakes, failed airbags, broken seatbelts, exposed wires running through the gas tank and decorative pointy bits of rusty metal on the dash, I passed. That car is cursed.

I bet he'd called it Christine.

 

[Cainkane1]

You may be familiar with the psychology professor who asked a full room of students if they could participate in an experiment. All he needed was one student to wear this sweater.
Several students raised their hands.
'This sweater used to belong to serial killer Ted Bundy, who killed over thirty young women'.
All hands went down.
'I see there are no volunteers. I can assure you the sweater has been dry-cleaned'.
Still no volunteers.
'I'm sorry, this was actually the experiment. I wanted to see how many people would be willing to wear a sweater that had belonged to a serial killer. I made it all up, the sweater actually belongs to me. Now will anybody volunteer to wear the sweater?'
No volunteers.


Silly reaction of the students, right? It's not like evil will stick to a garment.

Now with that in mind. Here is a piece of real estate for sale at a very attractive price.
It is the house where this guy raped and killed a twelve year old girl.

Let's suppose that the house was to your liking (it's ugly IMHO), would you seize the opportunity to buy it for half the price it should be worth?

Could you reason away your emotional reaction to what took place there?

I'm curious how fellow skeptics see this.

Its superstitious nonsense but this happens all the time. I know a seller who says houses where people have died are very hard to sell sometimes. Just down the street from me a man died in his easy chair alone in his home. he was dead for three wekks before he was discovered and it took over a year to get the house fumigated and refurbished.

It took three years for his family to sell the house.

 

[Bluegill]

Its superstitious nonsense but this happens all the time. I know a seller who says houses where people have died are very hard to sell sometimes. Just down the street from me a man died in his easy chair alone in his home. he was dead for three wekks before he was discovered and it took over a year to get the house fumigated and refurbished.

It took three years for his family to sell the house.

See, I can understand that. Now,when I smell a bad smell at home, I think,
"Oh, I guess I better get the garbage out." In that house, though, I'd think, "I hope that's the garbage and not a left-over dead guy smell coming from the walls."

 

[HansMustermann]

Hmm... methinks some unwarranted generalizations may be involved.

For a start, while I can imagine that _some_ people keep thing for some good/evil-by-association reasons, presenting it as _the_ reason for hoarding seems to be highly suspect. I know two compulsive hoarders and arguably I might be somewhat borderline myself. I haven't sold or thrown away a computer game in ten years, though everything else is fair game. The reason invariably is "but I might need it again at some point in the future", rather than some weird association to who touched it.

Ditto for the house. Reducing it to basically your just knowing what people think and why they don't buy it, is IMHO kinda silly. There are all sorts of valid reasons ranging from actual details of the city, bus connections, etc (I assure you there are a bunch of empty houses down here where nobody was ever killed), to basically guessing what price you'd get if you ever need to sell it. You don't even need much belief in some evil contagion to get basically a feedback loop of "I'm not buying it because I couldn't sell it."

(You can see such feedback loops in how economic bubbles rise and fall.)

Ditto for the sweater experiment, for that reason. The major flaw I see there is the group setting. A lot of people would lower their hands just out of thinking that that's what the others expect of them. A lot would lower their hands just because they saw their friend or the girl they're wooing or the most popular guy or gal in class lowering their hands. Past a point some would just follow the majority. (See the conformism experiment.) Etc.

Drawing a conclusion without trying to isolate the other influences, seems to me suspect.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

Yeah, I would buy it.

There's lots of crimes and atrocities that have happened at many of the streets, avenues and intersections we've been through. I know someone would argue this isn't the same as living in a place where something bad happened (as opposed to just walking by it), but the shock factor of "Ohh something horrible happened here" doesn't get me.

The only way it probably would is if it was an incident to which I was personally connected. So if I had ended up a relationship really badly at some house, I probably wouldn't want to stay in that house, where everything would remind me of her.

 

[sthomson]

Hmm... methinks some unwarranted generalizations may be involved.

For a start, while I can imagine that _some_ people keep thing for some good/evil-by-association reasons, presenting it as _the_ reason for hoarding seems to be highly suspect. I know two compulsive hoarders and arguably I might be somewhat borderline myself. I haven't sold or thrown away a computer game in ten years, though everything else is fair game. The reason invariably is "but I might need it again at some point in the future", rather than some weird association to who touched it.

I didn't indend to present anything as THE reason for hoarding, and re-reading my comment I can't see how it was interpreted that way.

Please do pick up a copy of Stuff at your local library if you are interested in a surprisingly complex examination (for a lay science book) of people who hoard and their self-reported rationalizations for their behavior. It ranges from "I may need it again" to "clutter makes me feel safe" to "throwing things away makes me feel like I've lost part of myself". I was only addressing the very last issue, NOT the entire phenomenon of hoarding behavior.

 

[leon_heller]

People are, indeed, strange......



http://www.independent.co.uk/news/fred-west-house-to-be-demolished-1356745.html


.....though in this and other cases it may not be people having superstitious revulsion at inanimate objects but rather bizarre curiosity about them.

I was brought up quite close to Rillington Place in N. Kensington, London, where John Christie committed his murders, and put three corpses behind a false wall. The street was renamed Ruston Close after Christie was executed, but I think that the house was still occupied. The whole area on that side of Ladbroke Grove was subsequently redeveloped.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Christie_(murderer)

 

[Eddie Dane]

OK, quite few people here would be very rational about it.

I don't know if I would feel very good about sleeping in that bedroom, or barbequeing in the garden (where he buried the body).

This house in my home town was unoccupied for many, many years.
It seems to be inhabited since a couple of years. it was the Gestapo headquarters during WWII.

Again, I would not want to live there. Even without knowing if people where tortured there.

My reasons have nothing to do with superstition, but with association.

I think I just read that someone payed a fortune for John Lennon's toilet bowl at an auction. It's the same phenomenon in reverse I suppose.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

Its superstitious nonsense but this happens all the time. I know a seller who says houses where people have died are very hard to sell sometimes. Just down the street from me a man died in his easy chair alone in his home. he was dead for three wekks before he was discovered and it took over a year to get the house fumigated and refurbished.

It took three years for his family to sell the house.

They shouldn't have told anyone about it.

 

[sthomson]

They shouldn't have told anyone about it.

In the United States, it may be illegal not to reveal this sort of information to a prospective buyer. My in-laws recently sold their house and had to construct a very detailed inventory of all work done and why.

 

[drkitten]

In the United States, it may be illegal not to reveal this sort of information to a prospective buyer. My in-laws recently sold their house and had to construct a very detailed inventory of all work done and why.

May vary by state. I just sold my house, and while I had to fill out a very detailed questionnaire. ("Has your roof ever leaked? Has your basement ever leaked? Has your toilet ever leaked? Has your toilet ever leaked into the basement?"), it didn't include questions on "has your house ever served as the local headquarters for a fascist dictator?" or "has your house ever been the site of an abduction-murder?" or "did someone die in your house only to be found six months later?"

 

[korenyx]

Park City (a Wichita suburb) decided to solve the problem of anyone wanting to buy BTK's house by tearing it down and making a new park entrance.
The owner of a local strip club wanted to buy it and give the money to Rader's family but everything would have to be spilt between the victims families.
Big legal mess so the city just tore it down.

 

[sthomson]

I always thought it was part of the Realtor's Code of Ethics or something, that a well-known death in the residence had to be revealed, but I can't find anything concrete... maybe I picked this up from a movie?

Anyway, here's a WP article on Stigmatized Property. Like everything in the US, laws vary by region. But it does state

Murder/Suicide stigma: Most jurisdictions require realtors to reveal if murder or suicide occurred in the house.