But B - if you walk around your property and inhale really, really deeply -- can you still kinda/sorta catch a buzz?

;-D

LOL, they used your garage, but they used our BEDROOM!

Yup, more than a few years ago, when this house was rented, the bedroom windows upstairs in the room that is now hubby's and my bedroom were covered with foil and 2 side-by-side holes drilled in the door--just large enough to run 2 garden hoses through. After hubby bought it, he said that he took a 55 gallon barrel of potting soil out of that room before he fixed it up. Gee, whaddya suppose they were doing? ;)

Inhabitants prior to that? Most notably a justice-of-the-peace.....

Vivian - LOL! JOP! That's pretty funny!

Jen - nope...no buzz goin' on around here anymore...but if you like skunk, we get that pleasant perfume a little more than we'd like!

Here's another interesting one:

I worked for the Buffalo Philharmonic many moons ago. The office was housed in a mansion. The history is interesting: at one time it was part of the Underground Railroad - I think the last safehouse before crossing over to Canada; during another period of time it was a bordello and at one point, an orphanage. Just before I arrived, some of the employees invited a psychic from Lilydale (NY). Lilydale is famous for being a "spiritualist community". The psychic arrived and after a few minutes into the "session" freaked out & said she could not bear the evil emanating from the walls. She left pretty quickly. Months later, we found out that a couple of murders had taken place there - one was in one of the 2nd floor bathrooms...I hated going into that bathroom - I always felt like someone was watching me. Someone supposedly drowned in the tub. A few children had also died in the house.

My dog hated that place. I brought her with me to work one night (needed to get some extra stuff done) & she fought like crazy as I dragged her into the house. I'd never seen her like that - whining, growling, running around in circles - generally freaking out. Weird to see my normally calm Lab going nuts! It got to the point where she ran to the front door & started clawing to get out. I ran after her & when I got to the door to admonish her, she was shaking, looking past me & whimpering. I felt a breath of cold air over my right shoulder - that was all it took. I ran out of there - left all the lights on, the door unlocked. Never worked at night in that house again!

I love the tales you learn from visitors to your front door!So far I've had antique merchants here wanting to sell truck loads of antiques not knowing the PO had moved, former renters from the 70's appaeared on my doorstep wanting to visit with the PO they told me this place when it was a very active antique shop, this guy and another rented rooms for almost nothing in return for doing some physical labor which the male head of the house could no longer due because of a bad heart...appaernetly this place was a big success in the 60's and 70's...grey haired ladies in limos use to come here to shop and fight over treasures.
I've also been told that the PO's hubby tried to kill himself in the dining room....that explains the bullet hole in the floor.
I could and may some day write a book on this house and it's history. It's only had five families ever live in it and it's 170 some yrs old.

Mine was shown, by mistake, as a youth hostel on a map in a widely published book. Not exactly mine, but I had the closest house to the address (which, if it had existed, would have been in the middle of a freeway behind my place).

I had a lot of misguided Europeans knocking on my door looking for the place, and they were not happy to find out it was 2 miles to the east.

***********
bins -
I remember seeing a vanful of SWAT cops sitting next ot my house, waiting for the signal to swoop south a couple of blocks for a drug bust, and watching (cautiously) the DEA and local cops raid the hour on the diagonal corner.

It's become almost boring recently. :)

Lazygardens - wow...that's pretty exciting with a SWAT team being next to your house. And LOL - you know that you'd get plenty of business should you ever decide to open a youth hostel!

Carol - have you unearthed any antiques that might have been left behind by accident?

binsb - What a scary story! That totally freaked me out!
Diane

We have a log cabin on our property that 2 men had a counterfeit coin operation going on.They went to a store dropped a coin on counter .It didnt sound right.They were both arrested.We call it the mint.

I've found a few things that the PO left from days when the place was an antique shop..mostly old salt shakers....unfortunately none of the lovely furniture that I heard they dealt in.

Wow, those stories are pretty wild. All I know is that a previous family held a wake in my living room when the house owner - the father of the family - died. Many "old timers" in town told me that.

i found 2 sets of the original blue prints of my house in the basement rafters. i have a 1927 four square. it was designed by a local architect which i found strange because the style is pretty basic. a copy of the prints is on display at our neighborhood historical society. the society said there is only one other house in our district that they know of which has the original blue prints. this was extra special for me since i minored in drafting in college..........

lazygardens-

The house I rented in college (1910 Foursquare) was the exact same style and color as the homeless shelter down the street...I can't tell you how many times poor souls would come to my door asking for a blanket. I politely sent them off in the right direction but on a few occasions I had to step/jump over a few who had passed out on my doorstep.

Barbara in Hollywood

I was told there was a bomb scare in my house before. Apparently a few owners ago partied alot and were druggies or just "bad people" I guess there was a bust here or something at one point and the cops found what was at the time thought to be a live grenade, so they evacuated the neighboring houses. Turned out to be a dummy grenade, but still interesting.

bas157, a friend of mine found all kinds of chemicals and nitrate film (is that what it's called?) in her garage when she moved into her older house. She had to call the city bomb squad to come and remove it!

I used to live in a rented half-flat in the upper floor of an old craftsman style home in South Berkeley.

After I moved in I learned that it was smack dab in the middle of one of the two most radical blocks in the city.

The landlord, a quiet old Japanese man, told me of how he once had these tenants in the late 60's. He said they were very well dressed and groomed in the interview. But after they moved in, they changed completely and were discovered to be storing weapons and bombs in the attic. Turns out they were probably connected with the SLA (symbionese liberation army, of Patty Hearst fame).

My curiosity was peaked, so I peeked in the attic. I found an old pair of shoes that fit me. Since I was a broke student, I wore them until they wore out. Who knows whose they were?

Oddly, a couple of years before, I had lived on the same block as Patty Hearst. I had moved out before she was kidnapped, but one day I came back to see if I had any mail to pick up. I noticed a lot of police cars on the block, and bullet holes in the trunk of a parked car. The new tenants in my old home didn't want to answer the door. When I got home, I learned of the fracas.

In my current home, which I purchased in an probate sale as is, I found an old hunting rifle stashed away in a garage. Fully functional, too. Also a little jar of paint that claims it has one ounce of 24 karat gold in it. I'm still looking for the buried treasure in the back yard :-)

The most interesting discovery I made was is in the old barn. It has a hidden room inside another room. When we bought this place 12 years ago there was a lock on the door. We eventually broke the lock off and the room seemed to be full of clothes piled all over the place. I kept thinking I would go in and rummage thru the stuff to find out if there was anything else. Guess what, I forgot all about it for a long time. Every now and then I remember it, but to this day, I still haven't gone in that room to find out what is there! I'm afraid I'll run into rats and/or snakes or maybe something worse!

I found out serching deeds that A Col.George Himes in the civil war of Gettysburg owned our home in 1822.I have the deed with his signature on it.We thought home was 1800 circa we hired a guy to reserch it and we did some .We also found date 1775 in barn up near peak.

The surprise of our house was that it turned out to have been originally constructed by and been the home of my husband's distant cousins in the mid-19th century. Since we are not from this area, this was completely unexpected. It was apparently fated that we should find and buy it almost a 150 years later!

When I was gutting out the original plaster of my 1926 schoolhouse, I found written on the bracing between the studs " Hello Harry, old dear how is your liver anyway?" I assume there was a little tippling going on amongst the builders during construction. Thankfully, it didn't seem to affect their ability to build sqare and level!
I found an entrance into the original cement front stairs from the basement. Unfortunately, all that it contained was a couple of inkwells, a glue bottle and the top of an old music stand.....and a lot of rat holes.
Anne-Marie

These stories are great! Keep 'em coming!

I forgot to mention that I have some information from a local history book that there is a time capsule behind the cornerstone of my school. I have gutted that room from the inside and found nothing but assume now that I'll have to take the cornerstone out of the outside wall to find it. I've put it off up til now because I'm afraid of damaging the cornerstone which has the date and school number on it. There has been a school on this property since 1900-the orginal one burnt in '26 and mine is the rebuild. I hope to find some cool stuff in there someday!
Anne-Marie

Anne-Marie, you're killin' me! You lucky dog. Ha!

The house we owned in England was built n 1912 and the land was the dowry given by the local vicar for his daughters marriage. It was the first house on the village green. We were the third couple to own the house and were given the original land plats and deeds etc. When we sold the new owners didn;t want the papers so I kept them. Pretty interesting reading.

The 1763 house I grew up in had a few surprises (actually, I'm sure there are still a few more in store, too!). The most exciting (and first) discovery came when my father knocked on the back wall of a kitchen cabinet and discovered that there was hollow space back there. This was a truly 50s kitchen remodel, by the way. The cabinets were torn down by the end of the day to reveal a wallsized cooking fireplace with a bread oven and all. It was missing its mantel, which was conveniently located nailed to a beam in the attic. It has now been fully restored, including the original stone hearth that was underneath 5 layers of flooring.
There is a hidden staircase in the basement behind a brick pillar that is a continuation of the first floor back staircase. We think since many houses on the street have tunnels linking them to each other for the Underground Railroad that this might have been an additional hiding place.
Also, when my parents were stripping wallpaper in a back bedroom they uncovered the remains of a large mural on the wall which was unfortunately damaged by the wallpaper glue. Truly heartbreaking. Even at the tender age of 8 I knew how incredibly sad that was.

Man... I feel so boring now that we only had drug dealers :) Mind after we found out we had to go through all the vents in the house.. seems that is where they were keeping their stash.. and who knows where else. We are actually adding intrigue to the house by adding two hidden doors and pass throughs.. also a few false floor panels for the kids to hide treasures :)

Peel, I can imagine your Father's surprise when he found that fireplace!! Now, that is one surprising discovery, your story gave me goose-bumps.

We used to rent part of a two-flat from my DSs gramma. We found a little cubby-hole under the stairs, and part of a "still" from the prohibition days. Cicero, (the town where we lived) was Al Capone's place in those days.

When we first moved in we found beer cans everywhere, (from the kids partying here) a pair of old pants practically shredded ( nothing in the pockets) lol, an A&P supermarket cart in the basement my dear hubby uses to move stuff around with, Old old liquor bottles in the wine cellar, dishes, clothes, rugs, bedpan, old victorian bed frame in the attic with featherbed, old marbles. I traced the history all the way back on our house -1890's Victorian, we had a baker live here, a carpenter, someone who worked for the brass co., and most interesting of all the house was built by Isaac Coe( local tycoon) for his coachman. I found a thoroughbred horseshoe nailed to a beam and painted gold. Strangest things I found out was our house was moved,- We had Twister ball players renting out the attic and last week we got a letter from a lawyer asking if we knew where a certain person was - they were trying to locate him. (Never heard of the name in my life)Hope he's not homeless living in the nearby park!!!! I think he rented here. Neighbors have told us they were glad we bought the place because the son had wild parties and the police were here a lot!!!! It seems each year we find out another funny story about this house- it never ends.........I save old pictures i found etc and plan to make a scrap book when we get a little bit ahead of all the projects. Thanks for the laughs!!!!!

Thought I would add my story, it is about our cabin. It was built in the 1930's by Kidd Kann, the head of the Minneapolis gangsters at the time. He used it as a hide out. The inner portion of the cabin is bullet proff with lead lined doors. My parents bought it in the mid 60's, while cleaning out the underbrush around it we found lots of old liquor bottles, some still had the original contents. We keep wondering what may be buried somewhere on the property. Being the "good" businessman that he was I really doubt that he left anything behind, but then again?