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Samara and I had been planning to run around Chapel Hill and check out abandoned houses for a long time, last week we finally got to it. The plan was to do a photo-essay, we'd take loads of pictures and then write about our expieriences.

We went to six or seven houses-most of them falling apart. Some had been squatted in, others had been left untouched since the maybe the 40's. Some we had to climb through the windows to get in, others we walked through the front door. We found all sorts of stuff-the kind of stuff you leave behind when you leave a house-paint cans, appliances, tires-and other shit -children's books, the severed heads of stuffed animals, old tires and loads of empty beer cans. Most of it fit a formula: the house had been abandoned, people had partied in there, people had squatted in there and then the place had been left to rot.

Some of the houses seemed made to freak you out-weird profanity scrawled all over the house with red paint splattered across the ceiling. Others looked like they had been cleaned up and lived in neatly. The last two houses were in plain site of the highway by my house. The first one shortly after we had entered we heard the scraping and moaning sound of an animal-Sam ran for the door and I found a dying gauzling-so thin we both almost mistook it for a piece of dust waving in the wind. Around it were Spanish phrases scrawled in red ink, remarkably good drawings of people dancing and torn up furniture and strewn bottles. It was one of the more bizarre scenes of the afternoon.

On the way out of this house I saw another house back in the woods that looked nothing like the others that we had gone to. This house was clearly built later than the others-it had the look of a quaint house built in the 60's-with maroon paint and a shingled roof, half-way covered with vines. The stuff that we found there didn't fit the formula-no one had squatted here. Whole dishes and decent paintings were left behind. Someone had left there in a hurry, is the conclusion that we came to. As I walked in (I often had to go first) I didn't get a yard in before the floor started sinking like rotted flesh. The inside of the house was dark-darker than any of the other houses.

I'm a big beleiver in vibes. I think people's natural reactions to things are often the correct reactions, especially in strange situations. This house had bad vibes. VERY bad vibes Sam and I left the house convinced that someone had been killed inside. While we had nothing to back that up we had gone to about 6 or 7 houses that day and never felt a quarter this uneasy. The house seemed to suck in light and it was a bright, hot summer day.

That night I had half-asleep visions about the house, with a mother and a daughter with dirty-blonde hair named Cynthia and Caroline. Sam had waking dreams too, she had the scenes of the house and of a mother with long blonde hair holding a child in front of a fire.

Now of course at this point this is turning into a very cliche horror story, but nothing happened after that. Sam went to college in Oregon and I'm busy taking community college classes in CH. I went by the house to try to get the adress and was about as freaked out as I was the first time, but didn't have any dreams about it. I've tried to look up information about it online, but haven't found anything. We agreed we'll go back at some point to poke around some more, and perhaps die tragic, unexplainable deaths in an extremely cliche manner.

Anyone have any idea where I should start looking for information about the house, and why it was condemned? Would that be the department of public safety or what? Is this the kind of house where the walls bleed or just the kind of house where mysterious things kill you?