Want to buy this house? Over my dead body!

Bonniepurple

Smalltownhypocrite said:

Bonniepurple said:

There was a house close to where I grew up where the former owner had been convicted of his wife’s murder but her body hadn’t been discovered by the time the house was sold. I do wonder what the new owners thought when the guy confessed to the location of the burial and the police turned up to dig in the garden!

Not remotely related but makes me think of a famous old mystery. 

There was a lady who had traveled and performed back in the Victorian era, no husband or children and eventually retired to a little thatched cottage in a English village. She was a bit of a hermit who kept to herself and only popped out for necessaries, then one day she vanished. 

The local publican raised the alarm after a few weeks as she stopped coming in to buy cigarettes and the police investigated. Her house looked like she just vanished, mid dinner (still on the table half eaten) book still open to the page she was reading but no signs of struggle or foul play.

They searched the house but she wasn't there, the house then stood empty for years but was searched many more times by police and friends. No suicide note, no signs of struggle, no theft, nothing criminal ever found. They swear they searched everywhere in the small cottage. They then found some money transactions that where large and strange and assume she just took the money and fled her life for some reason (in her youth she never stayed in one place).

The house stood abandoned exactly as it was as she still owned it (not declared dead) and many years later the thatched roof was damaged in a storm so they went to check on the property, and they found her skeleton... on the bed, in plain sight, next to a bottle of poison but it hadn't been there in any of the previous searches.

To this day its still a mystery as to how? The most common theory is that maybe mid dinner she had spotted a rat or squirrel in the rafters (open beam, no attic space) and went to set a poison trap and got stuck and died and then the collapsing roof dislodged her body which fell on the bed below... but with no attic just open rafters how could she not be visible in all those searches?

Imagine if the house had been sold on and you bought the house and then a skeleton of the previous owner fell from your roof after a few years though.

That sounds to me like someone else was involved and took advantage of the storm to stage her body and the poison bottle.  Either that, or she took her own life and was tucked away behind a chimney stack until the storm blew her down.  I’m surprised nobody noticed a smell though.

Murphybear

It’s not a million years, it’s nearer 300,000 years 

fourmarks

Ah, they didn't have freezers in those days.

Skiddaw1

Smalltownhypocrite said:

Bonniepurple said:

There was a house close to where I grew up where the former owner had been convicted of his wife’s murder but her body hadn’t been discovered by the time the house was sold. I do wonder what the new owners thought when the guy confessed to the location of the burial and the police turned up to dig in the garden!

Not remotely related but makes me think of a famous old mystery. 

There was a lady who had traveled and performed back in the Victorian era, no husband or children and eventually retired to a little thatched cottage in a English village. She was a bit of a hermit who kept to herself and only popped out for necessaries, then one day she vanished. 

The local publican raised the alarm after a few weeks as she stopped coming in to buy cigarettes and the police investigated. Her house looked like she just vanished, mid dinner (still on the table half eaten) book still open to the page she was reading but no signs of struggle or foul play.

They searched the house but she wasn't there, the house then stood empty for years but was searched many more times by police and friends. No suicide note, no signs of struggle, no theft, nothing criminal ever found. They swear they searched everywhere in the small cottage. They then found some money transactions that where large and strange and assume she just took the money and fled her life for some reason (in her youth she never stayed in one place).

The house stood abandoned exactly as it was as she still owned it (not declared dead) and many years later the thatched roof was damaged in a storm so they went to check on the property, and they found her skeleton... on the bed, in plain sight, next to a bottle of poison but it hadn't been there in any of the previous searches.

To this day its still a mystery as to how? The most common theory is that maybe mid dinner she had spotted a rat or squirrel in the rafters (open beam, no attic space) and went to set a poison trap and got stuck and died and then the collapsing roof dislodged her body which fell on the bed below... but with no attic just open rafters how could she not be visible in all those searches?

Imagine if the house had been sold on and you bought the house and then a skeleton of the previous owner fell from your roof after a few years though.

Woaaahhhh!!! That's bizarre. One of those 'ought to be an urban myth but probably isn't' stories.