There is a house near Fayetteville in Cumberland County, North Carolina that has been empty since World War II. The owners have done what they could to rent out the house, but it seems likely that the house will stay empty forever. Let’s hope that it does. Because each of the tenants of this house have paid a terrible price.
Built in 1910, the house was a mere shell when the contractor disappeared. The owner tried to find him to pay him for the work he’d done, but never saw him again. Eventually the owner found a new person to complete the job and as soon as the house was ready, a tenant was found. However, within six months the tenant was found dead. Hanging from a rafter in the attic. The reason for his suicide is unknown.
It was then that the house began it’s reputation for being a ‘death house’ and for several weeks the house stood empty. Then a family from Virginia took a liking to the house on first sight. And the low rent sealed the deal. They moved in a few days later. It was only six weeks later that the new renter was found dead. Hanging from a rope at the same spot on the same rafter.
Now I’m not saying I’m superstitious, but if I knew that two people had died it that house in the same year hanging from the exact same place, I’d stay clear. And that’s just what the people in Cumberland County did. The house stood empty for 35 years. It was only until WWII that the house gained a new occupant.
The influx of people into the Fayetteville area during the war was incredible. Housing was hard to come by so in July of 1945 the house was rented by a Boston born soldier and his new wife. The deal was the rent was free so long as the couple maintained the house. The first night was when the trouble began. Alarm clocks began going off at the wrong hour, doors they were sure they’d locked were open the next morning and books were rearranged on the shelves. They joked to their friends about what was going on.
Soon, both friends and strangers began stopping by to see the ghost house. The stories of the former occupants made their way back to the wife and the soldier. Both of them were painfully shy, so the attention they were getting weighed on their minds. They stopped answering the door, they began to bicker with the husband telling his wife that he was on the verge of a breakdown.
The military chalked it up to a soldier who couldn’t transition from civilian to military life. The coroner ruled it a suicide. It was his wife who had found him swinging from a rafter in the attic. It was said he’d must’ve been there a while because the rope had made an indention in the wood…
