By Don Hall

From Slate:

Q: My husband and I are looking to purchase a new home. We’ve seen probably a dozen houses in the last couple of weeks, and only two have really felt immediately like they could be “home.” We lost out on the first to another buyer, but the second is still a possibility. Then we learned that the house was the site of an extremely grisly murder—a husband dismembered his wife there. We would be the next occupants. We’ve lived in a few other houses with a “past,” and haven’t felt uncomfortable. But I’m taken aback by the strong negative reaction from members of our extended family. Their biggest concern, and ours too, is our kids, who are in junior high and high school, who we haven’t told about the house. Thanks to the Internet, we know all the horrific details of the case, and that information will be just as easily accessible to them. Are we crazy to think that one bad night in a house’s 100-year history is simply that, one bad night? My husband is a pastor and I am a mortician, so who better to buy this place?

Dear Morticia --

The movies are fiction. Most of us know and accept this. While they are fiction, many can be instructive in our own non-fiction lives:

Hereditary can teach us a lot of things but chief among them is to never stick your head out the window of a moving car.

Midsomer can clue bad boyfriends to avoid traveling to some rando Nordic colony with the girlfriend you've been ghosting.

Child's Play instructs me to avoid purchasing a toy that seems even the least bit creepy.

Children of the Corn solidifies that children without adult supervision are fucking evil.

Everything from Frankenstein to Jurassic Park hammers home that we should not try to play god with science and Pet Sematary reminds us to leave the dead dead.

As for your specific situation, before you sign the closing documents, may I recommend a family movie night:

The Amityville Horror (1979)
Poltergeist
The Conjuring
The Legend of Hell House
The Changeling
and
The Shining

If you still want to buy the house, go for it but at least you were warned.