Some people swore that the house was haunted. They were of course talking about the fact that the house was the site of an ancient Indian meth lab. It was also the host for six murder-suicides, satanic rituals and four “Toddler and Tiaras” episodes. But you see the difference between me and my neighbors is my mom actually cut the umbilical cord when I was born. So they can step off and stop sending me crucifixes and holy water for Christmas every year.

This house, despite all of its hanging wires and health hazards has certain…charm. I mean how could I resist a house that my grandfather grew up in? He and his first wife, Annabel. Their love was brief, like anything worth keeping was taken and their passion enervated both them and anyone around them. It ended partially because my grandfather could not keep his hands clean and partially because Annabel Lee couldn’t keep her hands empty.

My grandfather counterfeited like a maniac, creating thousands in his basement. No one was lead on by his wealth because his last name was Rockefeller and he looked a look like the Monopoly man with the monocle and white mustache, so people assumed he was unfathomably wealthy. But his counterfeit ways were often interrupted by Annabel’s picky fix for the smooth taste of pure alcohol. She was beyond control wasting more money than there, but her Sibyl moods and attitudes were what he fell for. As he created thousands, she spent millions. Eventually he would be arrested in broad daylight at home. Annabel would be so knocked-out she wouldn’t have noticed for three days he was in jail.

My thoughtful reader, this was in the twenties. Her five martinis at nine in the morning were no different than stealing infants in their yes. They wanted her. “We’ll give you two years on probation for her.”

My grandfather couldn’t do it. “Never.” She could’ve been throwing kitten into volcanoes and he would be stone-faced. He served ten years for her, while she remained free.

During that time, she would die of the consumption, alone in their house. My grandfather would find out in jail and be able to do nothing. Her funeral’s sole attendance was his brother, whom he begged to go as his surrogate.

After prison, my grandfather was dead for more than twenty-six more years. In his death, he’d sell his house to a local Italian, and would suffer day in and day out as the new husband to Olivia Dunn, my grandmother and chronic-nag.

This house would lament this sorrow and forever curse those who lived in it with self-loathing and court orders affidavits. I work as an Athletic Director for Penn State, so this is nothing new.

Nonetheless, my house is my family’s legacy. My grandfather with a woman who could’ve very well been my grandmother, besotted off of each other’s criminal ways. But alas, this vengeful house would be their only heir for then they were gone and nothing was ever the same again after that.