my haunted house the third time

Time flew by and we went on living there., once a friend's girlfriend asked to do laundry i took her down stairs and not ten minutes later she was back in hysterics, "you didn't tell me you have a ghost!!" evidently she had gotten pushed over like i had, i helped her finish the laundry but she never came back to visit

in our 3 year there, we had our third child, and a note from the city council stating our house was an eyesore and threatening us with fines if we didn't paint it. after we talked and planned, we went all out.

as the house had been built in 1885 we copied the style from that era and recreated our own painted lady, with the old yellow turned to hyacinth purple with black trim and brass accents. we took the sliding front wall and made a concrete retaining wall to hold up our raised bed vegetable and herb garden. complete with mini stonehenge and sundial made from found rocks around the yard.

Inside we carried the black trim victorian motif to all the rooms ripping up the grey 70s carpet to revel the cherry wood and inlay floors. yup we went all out. trading in our current furniture to get period correct pieces. even reglazing and replacing the windows on the sunporch. including the not closing one. we had great fun dressing up the house and making a wonderful artwork of it.

my husband was at this time becoming involved with the city council and i asked around for volunteer work to help out in the community. with my background in anthropology and office work i found myself typing for the historical society .

after many months i caught up with the backlog and updating files and asked if there was more work available. i was told to speak to Mr G the man who was the town historian and was working on the book of the history.

well i called the aged gent and got along quite well, he asked me where i lived and i told him the address "oh thats Murphy the murderers house." i choked! almost dropped the phone, as he continued on to tell me the sad story.

Ernest Murphy a decorated fireman had come home one day to find his handicapped child had fallen from the upper story window on the sun porch and his wife was drunk down stairs in the basement laundry room and he had beaten her to death. now i knew, and i was so sad.

As time went on i checked the data, I found the commendations for bravery that Ernest performed, rescuing not only children but an injured brother fireman while he himself was injured. i found Ernest and Lillian Murphy had lived in my house in 1928 by the census but there were no other records, that's right, no newspapers for the 5 month period no microfiche nothing, as if for 5 months when the tragedy had taken place the town had gone off the map.

I decided to ask my neighbor who had been raised in the house next door, Ray and Cecile had retired to Texas but they came back to spend time in her childhood home every summer.

Ray had been the city surveyor for many years after his service as a decorated Air Force Test Pilot . He loved telling my boys war stories, His wife had kept her childhood home even after her father had passed away. As we were sitting outside I asked her if there had been anything weird that had happened there, and she gave me a prim look and said, "we don't talk about what happened there before." and that unfortunately was the end of that subject of conversation with them.

it may have been a closed issue to her, but things kept going on. and on

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