Disturbing Abandoned House Horror Stories
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What led the narrator to buy the abandoned house?
This happened when I was 27, right after I bought my first house. I know that sounds like the start of a boring adult story, but I promise it is not. I had spent most of my 20s renting small apartments, moving whenever the rent went up, and telling myself that one day I'd own something, even if it was ugly and half falling apart. I wasn't making great money, but I had a steady job doing commercial HVAC, and because of that, I wasn't afraid of old houses the way a lot of people are. Bad wiring, busted ductwork, mold, bad insulation, old plumbing, none of that scared me. I looked at that kind of stuff as sweat equity. So when a little one-story house came up at a county auction for way less than anything else in the area, I convinced myself I had found the deal everybody else was too nervous to touch.
The house sat on the edge of a small town in western Kentucky, on a narrow road with older homes spread far apart. It had been empty for almost five years, according to the auction paperwork. The previous owner had died, the family fought over it, taxes piled up, and eventually the county took it. It was the kind of place most people drove past without even looking at. Gray siding, sagging porch, waist-high weeds in the yard, one cracked front window covered from the inside with yellowed newspaper. It looked sad more than scary. I walked through it twice before bidding. Both times were during the day, and both times I went with the county guy and another bidder, so I never felt uneasy.
What unusual discoveries were made during the house cleanup?
It smelled like old wood, dust, mouse droppings, and that sour, closed-up smell houses get when nobody has lived in them for years. There was some water staining in the kitchen ceiling, a soft spot in the hallway, and a bedroom where raccoons had clearly gotten in at some point. But the foundation looked okay from the outside, the roof wasn't caved in, and the floor joists I could see through a broken vent looked solid enough. It needed work, but it was not beyond saving. The only thing I didn't inspect was the crawlspace. There was an access panel in the back utility room, near where the washer and dryer would have been. It had been covered with a sheet of plywood and nailed shut with big framing nails.
The county guy told me not to mess with it because they didn't want anyone getting hurt during the showing. He said old crawl spaces were full of snakes, raccoons, insulation, and sometimes old wells or open pits. I remember joking that as long as the house didn't come with a body underneath it, I'd be fine. Nobody laughed very hard. I ended up winning the house for less than the price of a new truck. That should have been the first warning, but when you are 27 and think you're finally getting ahead, you ignore a lot. I got the keys about a month later. I wasn't planning on moving in right away.
What happened when the narrator heard a cough in the house?
My idea was to spend evenings and weekends cleaning it out, gutting the worst rooms, getting utilities checked, and then hiring a contractor for anything outside my skill set. I still had my apartment for three more months, so there was no rush. The first weekend I went over alone, I brought trash bags, gloves, a crowbar, a respirator, a shop vac, bottled water, and one of those big battery-powered work lights. It was a cold Saturday morning in late February. The kind of cold that makes everything feel quiet and brittle. The yard was dead and brown. The porch steps bowed under my weight. The whole place had that hollow, empty feel when I unlocked the door. At first it was normal old house cleanup. Gross, but normal.
I hauled out stained curtains, broken blinds, old newspapers, ruined particle board furniture, and piles of junk that animals had torn apart. I found mouse nests in drawers, bird feathers in the fireplace, and a dead possum behind the refrigerator. That was probably the worst smell I had ever dealt with in my life, and I had worked inside restaurant ceilings in August. By mid-afternoon, I had made decent progress. I had the front room mostly cleared, the kitchen swept, and a path opened to the back utility room.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What led the narrator to buy the abandoned house?
0:22–1:58
2
What unusual discoveries were made during the house cleanup?
1:58–3:16
3
What happened when the narrator heard a cough in the house?
3:16–4:37
4
How did the narrator's friend react to the strange events?
4:37–5:29
5
What shocking findings were discovered in the crawlspace?
5:29–6:34
6
What did the police uncover about the previous occupant?
6:34–7:19
7
How did the situation escalate during the stormy night?
7:19–7:56
8
What were the final revelations about the man living under the house?
7:56–1:04:47
Speakers
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