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I don't any more but I used to.
The one that comes to mind was an elderly lady who got into some kind of finch-type bird (canaries maybe) instead of cats. She had obviously been letting them breed because there was flock of about 40 of them in the house, all flying together from one piece of furniture to the next.
I found it pretty alarming to begin with but after half an hour or so I could appreciate the beauty of it.
Plenty of bird shit in places though.
I found it pretty alarming to begin with but after half an hour or so I could appreciate the beauty of it.
Unexpected wholesome twist. I was expecting floors rotted through with shit or dead ones in corners.
Did she have a procedure for dealing with people coming in and out of doors? I’d be terrified one would make a run for it!
I don't remember... They might have been institutionalised and afraid of the outside world anyway though! We had that with some chickens once after they spent a long time in an enclosure. All the baby ones came out flapping their wings and running around but the grownup ones were scared to come out.
I used to do HVAC work. About twenty years ago, I had to fix something in an attic, and the only entrance to that attic was through a large, messy room that obviously belonged to a teenage boy. At first, it seemed normal. Eventually, though, I realized everything in that boy’s room was kinda outdated. The CDs and magazines lying around had all come out a few years before, for example.
After finishing the job, I asked my boss about it. He told me that the kid had died a few years before from autoerotic asphyxiation (he accidentally strangled himself to death while jerking off), and his mother had found his body. She insisted that his room remain just as it was. She maintained it as some kind of shrine, unmade bed, jeans on the floor and all.
I couldn’t even imagine the emotional toll that must have taken on the family. Every. Single. Day. She refused to let them heal and move on. I only met the mother briefly, before I knew the whole story. I never met the husband or sister. I’m glad. Even if I was bribed to go back in that house, you couldn’t pay me enough to go upstairs. That kid’s room was, without exaggeration, the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen.
Wow. That is really sad.
Yeah. So sad that I didn’t like writing about it, but HAD to get it right, ya know?
The daughter’s room was way at the end of the hallway, so she had to walk past it every day. She was the younger of the two, but had become older than her brother was when he died. In fact, she was ready for college. I hope she got out of there and lived on campus.
I'm not getting it. Creepy how?
Creepy in the sense that keeping the room intact was a monument to pain, and handling that pain in an incredibly unhealthy way. It’s just too sad.
If they just moved on and cleaned the room out, it would be fine. I’m not talking about ghosts or any crap like that.
You know, I don't really see the harm. How is this not just a scaled up version of keeping pictures?
Scale is not unimportant
It's not, but if a sudden change in acceptability happens do to a continuous change in scale, I feel very comfortable asking why.
It’s an awkward situation for sure. I’m trying to imagine what could be done with the room if they cleaned it out. All I can think is that they could never convert it into a room that they would want to spend time in, and the only alternative seems to be storage which almost seems disrespectful to the memory.
Yeah. I mostly just thought this was a sweet memorial. It doesn't necessarily mean they're in denial or anything, they just want to keep a piece of him there like most grieving people do.
To me personally, it's a difference in the function of a room versus photos. Photos were always intended to capture memories, whereas a room was meant to be used and lived in. The idea of keeping the room as it was, permanently, feels like stagnation to me. I worry once it stopped being a comforting space, I still couldn't bring myself to do anything with it because it would reopen the wound, so I'd just ignore it and live around it, and the feeling of stagnation would grow heavier.
But also everyone grieves differently, and I've never lost a child, so I can only guess how I'd grieve based on how I've grieved other relationships. It's possible no one in that family feels the way I described. That's just my best answer for why it sounds creepy to a bunch of us.
Thank you. I've never lost a child either, and I'm not a therapist. This isn't the first time I've heard of this happening, though, so I was surprised at the reaction.
Ah okay, thanks for the extra context
Glad to help! It could be read as the setup for a cheesy horror story.
I once had to fix someone's heater. Went up a stairs around some corners and this apartment was just.. so different from anything I had ever seen before. It was like entering a movie set.
I am talking pink fluffy walls and crystal beads hanging in the doorway. Like just imagine the gayest possible and multiply by 10.
The craziest part was that this is in a tiny village, very conservative and religious even compared to the area it's in. We are talking bible belt in the bible belt kind of territory. We had a freakin polio outbreak! Because vaccine bad. During corona a corona tent was burned down.
This guy just didn't give a fuck and I love him for it.
There seems to be two responses if you're weird in the backwoods. Push it down inside or... this.
I know a guy who has pride flags everywhere and no-shit dresses like he's a prospector straight out of the gold rush.
Not exactly op's scenario but I had a client once who was a landlord. I was delivering some papers for him to sign off on some stuff, and he had me come into his kitchen to go over them. On his dining room table was piles of cash, like a foot tall, at least 200 stacks. Had to be hundreds of thousands of dollars. He casually walks past the table and throws a sheet over the money like "nothing to see here." Years later I read he got busted with several hundred pounds of drugs and illegal guns, so guy was into some pretty bad shit.
I wonder which was his original business.
Well, probably not what you're looking for but I used to work yard maintenance for a property management company.
I was sent to rake and tidy up the back yard of some house. In the back, there was an entrance to a root cellar that was separate from the house and had crappy wooden doors covering it. I was told to open it up and sweep the steps leading down to the cellar.
I don't have a problem with dark places, or bugs. But that was the first time I'd seen camel crickets. They were big, hump backed and striped. And there were dozens of them. I dutifully swept the steps, from the dead center of them, my eyes darting around constantly trying to gauge whether or not the weird ass bugs were about to launch themselves onto me. They didn't. They were super chill.
I told my dad about it later and he laughed at me for not knowing what the crickets were because they were so common. I've only seen a few more since then, and they still kinda weird me out.
As a teenager, my parents would only let me have a PC if it was situated outside of my room, so naturally, I put my setup in my basement. I was excited to play games in the coolest (temp-wise) room in the house, up until the day a camel cricket decided to jump up my pants and continue to work its way up until I smashed it against myself.
Yuck.
Oof, that sucks.
I kept expecting one to jump from the walls above me as I went downstairs, get into the back of my shirt, and get squished as I try to get it out. It's happened with house centipedes, and it's not fun. Especially when their legs keep moving after their dead.
I've only ever seen camel crickets in one location, a house we moved into when I was around 12 or 13. None of us had ever seen one before. We called them spider crickets because at a glance they look very spidery.
You got lucky. Their mode of defense is actually to launch themselves directly at the threat. So we used to have to mentally prepare ourselves before walking into the basement because there would always be at least one spider cricket jumping right at us.
Holy moly, that sounds like a very unpleasant basement to have to deal with.
"Whelp, time to do laundry. The fun part is when the creepy mutant spider cricket launches itself at my face, yay!"
Clearly I was very lucky. I highly doubt the tenants ever used the place either. It just belonged to the crickets.
Fortunately, the laundry was in the kitchen, so we just used it for storage for things we didn't use much, like Christmas decorations.
They are one of few bugs that freak me out. Too many times did I have them jumping from all directions....
Too many times did I have them jumping from all directions....
Yikes. Well, at least is was mostly just a fun holiday tradition 😬
Installing a set of patio doors a decade and a half ago I saw a LARGE indoor grow tent in the client's garage. This was before my state had medical so I didn't bother to ask.
High pressure sodium ballasts and a very redundant air filtration system told me everything I wanted to know.