When a 'Bad' House Joins the Cast of Suspects

Without giving away my next mystery plot, I can reveal that a strange old house is going to figure among the murder "suspects." I'll be drawing in part on memories of an old Victorian home that my parents rented briefly when I was a teen. The "gray elephant," as they dubbed it, had many unsettling quirks. For example, my bedroom was upstairs at the back and was pierced by four doors: a door from the upstairs hall, a door to the servants' stair from the kitchen below, a door to a cavernous closet under the eaves, and a door to narrow steps up to the attic. At precisely 2 a.m each night, all those doors, if not firmly closed, would open together on their own, with eerily groaning hinges and sighs of musty air from their black portals! It was definitely scary, and it became my nightly ritual to carefully check that every door was tightly shut before climbing into bed. There was probably a logical explanation, but it was natural to suspect unseen, hostile forces. And like most old places, the house had its share of unhappy past occupants and deaths. Many people believe houses can develop a "negative energy," whether paranormal entities or the lingering aura of past residents. Just witness the success of modern "paranormal investigators," feng shui planners, and the "space clearing" services featured in a June article in the elite New York Times. I don't believe the old "gray elephant" was haunted in the usual sense, but it did seem to have the sort of dark magnetism that would repulse positive, upbeat buyers and so favor unhappy histories. I will leave it to future readers to decide whether my fictional house is the cause or the result of unpleasant human energies. Have you ever experienced a "bad vibe" house? If so, for a rather tongue-in-cheek NYT article on space clearing, see http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/06/garden/scrubbing-the-house-right-down-to-the-vibes.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0