The rental service had come up a few weeks before when I was needing travel arrangements for a conference over in Western Illinois. I didn't use it--I booked into a B & B in another town--but I'd bookmarked the website. When we decided to do a long weekend/family vacation I called there because they'd advertised vacation rentals along the Mississippi River Road. I called the service, gave them a credit card number, and it was all the usual business of renting a place to stay. We picked up the key to the property and went to the house. Nothing was said by anybody about the property other than to describe it as a little yellow vic that sat at the corner of some street I've since forgotten and the river road.
I've posted about this here at DU before, and if you want to search it to verify--feel free--the posts were mostly in the ASAH forum. I know it has been talked about here in the Lounge a time or two--espcecially around Halloween. When it happened, and I kid you not, I didn't even ask the property owner about it because I was worried SHE was gonna be offended. It was only a couple of years AFTER we'd stayed there that I was back here in my own office working and a couple came in from that town. I noticed the town name and commented that we'd taken a family trip there a couple of years before and how pretty I'd thought the town was. It was the really basic small talk that you make with people in a business type setting--ya know? Right away they had to ask where we'd stayed when we'd visited, and I said we'd used that rental service and stayed in a rental on the River Road. They told me that the owner had lost all her rental houses to bankruptcy earlier that year, and I made the comment that it was sad to hear it--REALLY casual small talk--ya know?
It was while we were having that chat that they made the comment that the house I'd stayed in had gone unsold and was sitting there under bank ownership--that nobody in town would buy it. I said I was surprised because it was a pretty nice little vic and it was in fairly good shape for its age. I told them that it was probably just a matter of the bank being determined to recoup as much as they could and it would probably sell once the bank reduced the price on it. That is when, out of the blue, they tell me that the house wasn't selling because everybody in town "knows" it's haunted. I can't argue with the locals--I think it is too.
I consider this--if you owned a vacation rental that had the reputation of being haunted wouldn't you MARKET it that way? I sure as hell would. I'd open that bad boy up to Ghost Hunters or any of the other TV shows about that kind of stuff, and I bet I could keep that puppy rented out just to the curious folks out there. I've since wondered what happened to the house but have never followed up.
Laura
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