So we live in the oldest house in our neighborhood in Baltimore. It was built in 1897. The basement is terrifying. And today I realized something that freaks me out a little. Story.

So the basement is more a cellar than a basement. There’s no access from inside the house. It’s got stone foundations and stairs that go nowhere, and frankly it’s kind of creepy.

When I first saw the basement, there was this one room that was particularly strange. It was set up like a chapel, except that the pews were bails of hay. And on the wall was this framed picture.

So obviously I never went down there if I didn’t have to, and many years went by. Then, about five years after we bought the house, my wife mentioned the weird picture on the wall to our neighbors.

They told us a story about how the housekeeper for the previous-by-two owner was very superstitious. And she been convinced that the house was haunted. So she had hung the picture (posted above in the thread above) by herself, in order to ward off evil spirits.

This seemed like a pretty reasonable explanation and so I generally just forgot about it.

Shortly after this conversation with our neighbors — and this was my understanding — the housekeeper herself had come by. And she had politely asked if she could have the picture back. My wife actually said no, on the theory that “if it isn’t broken, don’t mess with it.”

What I learned tonight was that, no, in fact, this is not exactly what happened. What actually happened was that the previous *owner of the house* herself was the one who dropped by. Out of the blue.

To ask us to please give back the creepy ass picture that, allegedly, her housekeeper from 12 years prior had installed in our basement to ward off ghosts.

So I guess the summary is that, in retrospect, exactly no part of this story makes any sense to me. And I’m starting to come to the conclusion that the previous owners of this house did some weird ass things in our basement.