House of Wax
A couple years ago we started looking for a new house, preferably one on the water. Looking online we found what looked to be a great buy. A house on the water that was about $50,000 less than any other comparable house in our area. So we called up our friend who's a realtor to find out why it was so cheap and she told us that the house was a little odd, but we could could still take a look. We were about to find out just how "odd" the house was.
When we pulled up to the house I immediately felt like someone was staring at me. I looked up and could see the outline of a person behind the curtains in an upstairs window. I was a little creeped out, but I figured it was probably just the owner checking to see who had driven up.
So we walked through the front door and the first thing I saw was a mannequin that's dressed to the nines (i.e. really dressed up). I thought okay that's a little strange, but maybe the owner is a fashion designer. We walked into the first bedroom and there was another mannequin standing next to the bed, and through the bathroom door I saw a naked mannequin in a tub filled with marbles. I was officially freaked out at that point!
It turned out that there was a mannequin in every room of the house, including a female mannequin looking out the upstairs window (which I saw when we drove up) and a homeless woman mannequin with a shopping cart in the garage. In the basement there was a walk-in closet filled with clothes, jewelry and other accessories...all for the mannequins. I learned that the owner was an artist, that each of the mannequins had names and back stories, and that their clothes were changed on a regular basis. So now I understood what our realtor friend meant by "odd"!
Even after seeing all that I was still considering buying the house (after all it was a great buy), but then my imagination started to work overtime:
Scenario 1: The mannequins represented the people the owner had killed and then buried in the back yard.
Scenario 2: The mannequins were the people the owner had killed, who had been encased in wax or plastic.
Scenario 3: Even if the other two scenarios weren't true, my wife would somehow find a way to scare the crap out of me, if we bought this house!
See my wife knows all too well that I have very vivid dreams. Well into my twenties I was still sleepwalking and even today I have intermittent night terrors. My personal favorite is the time I looked up at the ceiling fan in our bedroom and saw angry monkeys coming through the ceiling! (analyze that Carl Jung!) Usually when I have one of these night terrors I jump out of bed and turn on the lights, which of course really ticks off my wife.
So I figured if we bought the house my wife would exact her revenge on me for waking her up so many times over the years. She'd wait until I went to sleep, place mannequins around the bed and then go sleep in the other room. Then she'd wait for the screaming when I woke from a dream and saw mannequins surrounding my bed! That is if I didn't die from fright before I started screaming!
For obvious reasons we ended up not buying the house...
When we pulled up to the house I immediately felt like someone was staring at me. I looked up and could see the outline of a person behind the curtains in an upstairs window. I was a little creeped out, but I figured it was probably just the owner checking to see who had driven up.
So we walked through the front door and the first thing I saw was a mannequin that's dressed to the nines (i.e. really dressed up). I thought okay that's a little strange, but maybe the owner is a fashion designer. We walked into the first bedroom and there was another mannequin standing next to the bed, and through the bathroom door I saw a naked mannequin in a tub filled with marbles. I was officially freaked out at that point!
It turned out that there was a mannequin in every room of the house, including a female mannequin looking out the upstairs window (which I saw when we drove up) and a homeless woman mannequin with a shopping cart in the garage. In the basement there was a walk-in closet filled with clothes, jewelry and other accessories...all for the mannequins. I learned that the owner was an artist, that each of the mannequins had names and back stories, and that their clothes were changed on a regular basis. So now I understood what our realtor friend meant by "odd"!
Even after seeing all that I was still considering buying the house (after all it was a great buy), but then my imagination started to work overtime:
Scenario 1: The mannequins represented the people the owner had killed and then buried in the back yard.
Scenario 2: The mannequins were the people the owner had killed, who had been encased in wax or plastic.
Scenario 3: Even if the other two scenarios weren't true, my wife would somehow find a way to scare the crap out of me, if we bought this house!
See my wife knows all too well that I have very vivid dreams. Well into my twenties I was still sleepwalking and even today I have intermittent night terrors. My personal favorite is the time I looked up at the ceiling fan in our bedroom and saw angry monkeys coming through the ceiling! (analyze that Carl Jung!) Usually when I have one of these night terrors I jump out of bed and turn on the lights, which of course really ticks off my wife.
So I figured if we bought the house my wife would exact her revenge on me for waking her up so many times over the years. She'd wait until I went to sleep, place mannequins around the bed and then go sleep in the other room. Then she'd wait for the screaming when I woke from a dream and saw mannequins surrounding my bed! That is if I didn't die from fright before I started screaming!
For obvious reasons we ended up not buying the house...
