So Much Sadness

I work for a real estate agency in Indiana. This story was related to me, by a co-worker, a very down to earth woman, not prone to exaggeration or fairy tales. Therefore I totally believe what she says happened, did indeed happen.

I live just down the street from an old Civil War era home, that was in the process of being restored, after many years of standing empty.

My friend was the real estate agent, who was in charge of trying to sell this particular house. The house is a very large 2 1/2 story home, sitting up on a raised plat, right on a busy street, in the oldest part of our town. It has a front entrance off this street, which has a large window on the second floor, over the main entrance. From the street, you can see part of the landing on the stairs, where it turns into the second floor. Around this stairs is a wooden railing.

I apologize for going into such detail, but it is relevant to the story.

I was always overcome by a feeling of sadness each time I would pass this house, and my eyes would instinctively be drawn to the window on the second floor landing. I never knew why, except that I had a strong feeling that something had happened in this house, to make no one want to live in it for so many years.

Anyway, on to what happened there. I was mentioning this house to my co-worker, when she got a very strange look on her face. I asked her what was wrong and this is what she told me, in her own words:

"I was showing the house to a couple of possible buyers from Ohio. A middle-aged man and woman. We entered the house from the main street entrance, and at once, the woman appeared to be getting very agitated and upset. She would keep putting her hand around her neck and say, "So much Sadness....oh my...so much sadness here". As the couple walked up the stairs towards the second floor landing, she looked over the railing and started to become hysterical..crying and wailing and still shouting those foreboding words, while clutching her neck.

The woman's husband turned to me, while ushering his hysterical wife out the door and said "we could never live here, this house would break my wife's heart".

I went back to work and related this strange incident to another woman who worked there, who told me "but don't you know what happened in that house"?. I said "no, I don't". She told me that in the early part of the century, a man and his son lived in that house, and the man, who was overwrought at the untimely death of his wife, hung himself from the railing on the second floor landing. His son came home from work and found his father hanging in the front entrance, the rope tied to the railing on the second floor."

(Me speaking here) My co-worker was so shocked, she never mentioned this to anyone, except me, because we are close and she knew I would not mock her. But I remember the look on her face when she told me this, it was one one of sheer terror.

And now I know why I always felt a strangeness near that house, and why it could never sell. The people who bought it to renovate, still haven't moved into it and all work seems to have stopped.

Perhaps they feel "So much sadness" also?