The above photo is a picture of THE BASEMENT of my parent’s home. If you have been reading any of my blog, then you know that for years, the only setting of a nightmare would be my parents house, with particular emphasis on THE BASEMENT. This photo shows the portion of the basement that was directly under the kitchen and had once been my brothers room. The huge crack in the foundation afforded my family the luxury of running water 24/7 in our home. Mother nature’s version of a water feature. Drain tile would channel the water to a sump pump and then out of the basement. (Of course, the sump pump used to channel all our little rodent pets that escaped their cages out of the basement as well.)
Rumor has it that this crack was the result of a repair done on my parent’s foundation when it was first being built, with the story being that a piece of heavy construction equipment had gone out of control and smashed through the wall. There is still some question as to whether or not there was a fatality involved in that incident, but I can tell you that both of my sisters and I hate to be in that house alone and won’t go near the basement by ourselves.
The next photo is of an additional crack, just to the left of the one above, presumably the other side of the damage that the vehicle had inflicted. To the left of that is a bathroom and you can see my sisters converted player piano there. We had to leave that when we sold the house. Sadly, the basement flooded so many time that the piano was ruined. Imagine, living at the TOP of a large hill and yet every time it would rain, you would have to get out the shop vac and clean up a flood. Our house was built on red clay, so when the water came pouring in, clay and silt would come with it, staining everything.
Our basement used to be finished, and in the early part of the house’s life, was fairly sealed, but as age and ground shifts occurred, its baseline faults became more and more obvious. After my father died, my mother tore up all the carpeting and ripped off the paneling to see if she could get the damage repaired and to be able to clean up the floods a bit easier.
This photo is of the front portion of the house, under the living room, and where we had our family room. Although it doesn’t look like it, this was the more severe of the 4 major cracks in my parents foundation. (4 children in the family, 4 cracks in the foundation) This crack was not only vertical, but had also begun to move horizontally, meaning the foundation was on the move and making the house condemnable.
The last major crack is just to the right of the one above, basically directly across from the other one on the other side of the basement. At the time of her death, this is how my moms basement looked.
I used to sit on the steps, about half way down, and stare at the paneling, trying to will myself to go further down into the gaping black maw of the basement. An irrational fear would ride up my spine and I remember thinking that one of the knots in the wood paneling was a gigantic black eye, watching me. It was while sitting on the steps one evening, watching my brother play in the basement, that a suction cup dart he was playing with ricocheted off that part of the paneling and shot me in my right eye. It stuck there and my parents had to rush me to the hospital, where I spent the next few days after having the rubber suction cup removed from my eye.
My brother would beg me to come downstairs to play… and I really wanted to hang out with him…so I did. Frequently, we would play cops and robbers and he would tie me to one of the support poles in the storage area of the basement. He would shut off the lights and shut the door and run off upstairs. I was a big weenie and would get frightened very easily in that basement. It didn’t help that he would go up to the metal ductwork upstairs and lay down at a register and begin to make eerie noises…”wooooooooo…..woooooOOOOOOoooo” I still remember tugging on the ropes and freaking out. Once he got the response he was looking for, he knew that I was going to be fun to toy with, and he got my older sister in on the game as well.
My mom would send me to the basement to get items from the storage area, usually from the freezer or the pantry area. I had to be asked multiple times to go, but when I went it seemed my brother would be somewhere making noises, or I’d open the door to the storage area to see my doll babies hung from various body parts. (My brother wasn’t/isn’t a sicko, he was just a boy and my brother)
Sometimes I wonder if my intense dislike of the basement, ok, hatred, was due to this or something else entirely. Is it the negative energy of the wound it received while being built? Was it the possible fatality that occurred there? Was it the tormenting of siblings? If it was the latter, then why are my sisters leery of the basement, too?
Strange how, after my mom died, I ended up being the one to clear out most of the basement.
Ever since I sold the house, bad dreams occur less and less frequently at my parent’s house. In fact, the last bad dream I had occurred on the sidewalk across the street from that house. Kinda odd.
I was going through some stuff I had in my basement – a place I rarely visit although there are no bad vibes down there- and found these photos hiding behind a picture of my son. I decided I’d post them and then burn them. I’m done the postin’ part… now where are those matches.
Snippets and Tidbits 