Thursday, May 25, 2006

Amityville?

Soooo, I was fine with the concept that we were buying an old building with 100's of unknowns... And for reasons kinda personal this was a unique opportunity to invest at a level we normally wouldn't invest at. But I expected to find out things like the wiring was old and not up to code... What I found out is slightly more disturbing.

The place was a mortuary before it was a church. Yikes. I am trying to be level headed about this... But I am getting more and more distressed about it. I am afraid that by the time we move I will be downright freaked out. Is that crazy? I am a grown adult, and I don't even believe in ghosts (as in disembodied human spirits) but I do believe quite strongly in menacing jinn. And doesn't a mortuary seem like a perfect place for bad jinn to hang? Now DH insists that the buildings years as a church must negate all that... But I don't know.

And in the realm of the known... I just called for the utility history from last year and the gas bill for the church and the house in the back combined was $750 on the colder months. Now keeping in mind that the church was empty at the time, that's a huge bill. Does home-ownership get easier?

Well, I'm going to try to research the history of the property a little more with public records here in town... Am I being obsessive about this? Should I just let sleeping dogs lie?

6 comments:

mamaspeak said...

I'd really be worried more about environmental issues --- lead paint, of course, but who knows what could be hanging around from all those incredibly toxic mortuary chemicals. That stuff can stay around for decades, leech into the flooring, into the dirt and earth around the building...ick.

mamaspeak said...

PS- Regarding the whole jinn issue, there are hadith that say something to the affect that each time you pray in your home, one thousand angels come into it. I'd imagine that a few thousand angels could run them off after a while inshallah :)

UmmZaynab said...

I worry about electrical wiring too. The house we rent now was built circa 1965. I hear that a lot of house fires are caused by overloaded electrical wires that fray and then start fires in the walls. Of course we are overloading them with masses of electricity from stuff that electricians in 1965 (or earlier) would never have imagined.

We're trying to buy a house right now. That's why I haven't been in touch. It's a LOT of work and VERY intimidating! Please make du`aa' for us!

Anonymous said...

Oh wow that's so creepy! But i'm kind of confused.. how can you live in something that used to be a church, let alone a mortuary. Can you convert something like that to a house?

Regardless, a mortuary is not a cemetary right? If it has a cemetary under it i would be freaked but if it is just a place where they washed the dead then that's nothing to be scared of.

The Jinn only come around those that actively think about them. That's why i will never read about the jinn so that i can easily forget about them. Yes i believe in them but i don't want to think about it or worry about it, which is hard to do if you read the details about them.

UmmLayla said...

OK, so spell check is not working and I know tere are some mistakes... Hope it's still readable;)

Melanie,
I had never even tought about that... But I would think that would be more of an issue if the place was on a septic system, which alhamdulilah it's not. I will definatly check into it though... I was already going to have someone check the paint and make sure we are good with all that.

UmmZ,
Yeah, we sat on the oppertunity to get a loan on terms we could accept from a family member for 2 years because we couldn't find something that suited us. There can be issues with plumbling and wiring and all that in a house this age. But, alhamdulilah, someone already upgraded all that. Now we just have to do the things we want to make it work. There were just so many reasons we had to jump at this one is spite of all the unknowns, it makes all the other things we looked at seem like a bad idea.

Mona,
Oh yeah, for the right doller amount you can convert anything. The only restriction in some places is zoning... But here that is not an issue. There are even people who have made firehouses or old factorys into homes. You just have to have a good contractor and some imagination;)

Unknown said...

subhanAllah, recite Ayat-al Kursi .. Muslim Jinn have no need to come around us, and bad Jinn do not like listening to Quran. Know that Allah is the Protector and ask Him to make this home filled with blessings.