Andrew found the Odd Fellows House online, during one of our many late night Redfin/Zillow/Trulia mega search parties (which had admittedly gotten less fun around the 4th contract that fell apart). The agent explained that she would love to show it to us, but there were some things about it she needed to tell us:
"It is next to a cemetery," I sensed her hesitating, I suppose, waiting for me to say, "HOW DARE YOU TRY TO SELL ME A HOUSE NEXT TO A CEMETERY, YOU DEVIL WORSHIPER" or to just hang up on her. "And?"
"The stairs are very old and creaky."
It sounds awesome, I thought, but reigned it in and said that I looked forward to seeing it the next day.
Little did our realtor know that she was showing the house, with its creepy attic and basement that looked like it was from one of the SAW movies to a couple who, when a tour guide asked quietly if we'd like to see the slave quarters of the Wallace House at the Dutch Parsonage, Andrew and I answered, of course! It was almost 5 full years earlier that we climbed what the guide called stairs, and I would call a broken ladder, onto a landing about the size of a coffin. We loved telling that story, about the winding staircase, about how certain we were that we were about to be eaten by the tour guide, about how the walls of that whole house seemed eager to tell us its stories.
From that point on, we sought out the historical and the strange, staying in a DC bed and breakfast because it featured "The Lincoln Room" with the same furniture as the Lincoln Bedroom in the White House, spending a frozen day in 2010 celebrating our anniversary at Gettysburg watching "The Professor" tell stories of the Civil War, while eating what Union soldiers would have been fed while seeking respite from the fighting.
So when Andrew and I climbed the creaking stairs of the Odd Fellows House, we knew we would answer "of course!" when the agent asked if we wanted to put in an offer.
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