Our Home.

Our beautiful home.

What a blessing, what a burden.

Our house is probably one of the oldest domiciles in the neighbourhood and because of this is steeped in rumour and neighbourhood legend. The house is now over 100 years old and still sports many of its original fittings and charm.

We nicknamed it “The Haunt” because it’s said to have spirits roaming the halls. I can say “the halls” because yes, it is that big. The Haunt is rumoured to have been the dwelling of everyone from the mayor to a mining magnate. It’s walls are all double cavity, internal and external, and the floors are wooden. The house is built on a double stand and sports an entrance hall, four bedrooms (one part of the house but accessed from outside), one and a half bathrooms (toilet outhouse part of main structure but accessed from outside), lounge, dining room, kitchen, store room (which used to be the kitchen – remember that the slaves did the cooking and brought the food in), a coal cellar, a walk in cellar and crawl space for the rest of the house.

On the property we have a cottage with bedroom, lounge, kitchen and bathroom which used to be the coach house and is still labelled as such on the original plan. I’ve often imagined the four wheeler buggy standing in there, waiting for the Sunday trip to church.

One of the ghosts that haunt the place is rumoured to be a lady who was shot in the cottage by her estranged husband. The neighbours remember him piling her body into the car, wracked with remorse after the fact, and rushing her to hospital - too late.

There’s a ghost who arbitrarily presses a key on the piano every so often. It’s A# to the left of middle C. The room will be empty and the note will sound. Always when your back is turned to the piano, of course. The first time it happened I whipped my head around; lo and behold there was nothing visible there.

The ghost has also closed a tap for me. I was home alone and filling the dogs bowl in the kitchen and left the tap running while I rummaged in the fridge for ingredients for a sandwich. It’s a big tub of a bowl – enough water for two Rottweilers and a Labrador. I suddenly hear the water stop running and look over my shoulder thinking “Oh damn, the municipality must be working on the water again.

I went over to have a look and close the tap. I didn’t want the water suddenly turned on again by the municipality and have the tap running full ball with no-one noticing until a lot of water had been wasted.

The tap was already closed and had it run much longer the bowl would have been over-full.

As creepy as this sounds, the ghost…or ghosts have been quite amenable. There has been no rattling of chains, tearing of sheets or other horror movie type incidents. They don’t do things very often and as in the last incident have been helpful!

I’ll miss The Haunt, even though I kind of resent the place now. Had The Haunt been in a better part of town, just two blocks up, we could have sold it for over a million and I think a lot quicker.

There have been a few signed (and we thought sealed) deals on The Haunt, each of which has fallen apart because of reasons out of our control. It’s been very disheartening and frustrating standing at the starting blocks, hearing the gun go off and leaping forward for the race then moments later hearing another shot indicating a false start. Everything stops and returns to the beginning again. This must’ve happened about four times already – I’ve lost count. I now expect more of the same – great start and then return to the beginning. I don’t like being optimistic and having my hopes beaten around the head every time.

I accept and believe there’s a bigger plan (God knows what he’s doing) and I’m behaving like an impertinent child who can’t get his way. I try not to but I can’t help it.

I have no choice but to bide my time and be patient. We will move forward when we are permitted to: When the time is right. Even though I want to leave now! *stomp-stomp*

Waiting patiently impatient.

Ciao for now.