Photo by Sarah Lockwood
My family loves taking me to haunted houses and Halloween attractions. I’m a screamer. As in, unexpectedly tap my shoulder, and I jump. They think it’s hilarious. My sister will tell the scarers my name unbeknownst to me, so they can creepily single me out. It’s terrifying.
And yet I still go. Even though I get physically queasy at the thought of entering through the green-lit creaky doors, I do, clinging to my loved ones. And I scream. At the end, I skip out the doors, with adrenaline — and a strange sense of accomplishment — pulsing through my veins.
What is it about being scared that entices us so? Is it the risk? The promise of reward? There have certainly been some scares in my few years of home ownership. Here are some moments that had me biting my nails and how I peeked through my fingers and got to the other side.
The Mysterious Tank Graveyard
After a few weeks spent installing a fence around my new backyard, I came across a hole. Not a rodent-home kind of hole, but a deep, cavernous path to an unknown underworld. I poked around and heard stick hit metal. Cue the ominous music. A quick Google search had me wondering whether it might be an underground oil tank, and the lack of records indicating it had been properly decommissioned worried me. But I called in an expert for a free inspection and learned that a septic tank had been buried there before my house was connected to the city’s sewer system. To me, nothing’s scarier than the threat of spending thousands of dollars on something underground.
Voices in the Night
Before I had roommates or a live-in boyfriend, my dog Merlin was my only comfort when I heard mysterious sounds. One night, I awoke to Merlin growling fiercely. This was not completely unusual; perhaps someone was walking down our street or a cat was lounging on our walkway. Then, light flashed into my window. Not just any window — one that overlooked the fenced-in backyard. I jumped to the floor and crouched, steeling myself to peer over the window sill. Merlin’s low protective grumble continued as he sidled up to me. There were figures with flashlights yelling and talking loudly. Strange, I thought. If these people were doing something shady, surely they’d be quieter. Still, I rushed to the doors and confirmed the deadbolts and chain locks.
To this day I’m not sure why I didn’t call the police. I’d reasoned that they’d probably lost their dog or were harmless revelers finding their way home. I didn't want to be seen as hysterical or illogical. I called my brother, whom I knew would be up late after working a restaurant shift. He drove over and slept on my couch, much to my comfort. When I spoke to neighbors and the non-emergency police line the following day, I learned that a power line that ran through my backyard had gone down and the loud, flashlit figures were utility workers. My local sergeant called me to follow up and encouraged me to call 911 in the future. Her encouragement has always reassured me that in similar situations, I can call the police to check out suspicious sounds. And that thought alone has helped me sleep better at night.
The Curse of Indecision
My dad and I finished most of my kitchen renovation a year before we laid new flooring. We tore down wallpaper, built new cabinets, painted everything and installed the subway-tile backsplash. But the yellow, paint-stained linoleum floor remained. For months, I picked up and ordered samples. By the time all was said and done, I had placed 17 tiles and planks on that floor and thought, Is this it? about each of them. I looked at picture after picture of light-colored floors, which I had decided would best hide Merlin’s light-colored hair. I performed cost analyses and made all the spreadsheets. It turns out I was afraid of the wrong thing. The floor I picked, a cork-backed, wide-plank laminate in “Glacier,” was gorgeous. It mimicked the white and grey pattern in my marble-look countertops. I was beside myself. I had picked correctly.
Narrator (deep, threatening voice): OR SO SHE THOUGHT.
What I should have feared is the dirt. DUN. DUN. DAAAAAAA. These floors cower at a mere whiff of dirt. They are the girl who runs up the stairs in a scary movie instead of out the front door. They die first. Their clean whiteness is subject to the wrath of every speck of dirt.
So perhaps my indecision was misdirected. I should have read more reviews. I should have feared the embossed grain pattern that would lock in dirt and require hands-and-knees scrubbing to clean.
But if a little extra cleaning is the scariest thing about my house, I guess you could say I’ve dodged the chainsaw zombies and conquered the corn maze. We may tremble at the beginning of a home-buying journey, grab a hand to brave the fog of a bathroom renovation or dread the unknown repair costs waiting for us in dark subfloors, but more often than not, we are rewarded by conquering our worst house-related fears.
