Can houses really be evil? Ryan Reynolds in The Amityville Horror, nearly beheaded his girlfriend’s son’s head because an evil spirit whispers repeatedly- Ketch them, kill them . While the remake of the movie was as scary as the original , the idea of a bad house set me thinking.

There have been a number of times that I would enter into peoples’ homes and wouldn’t feel comfortable. There was one home where despite the repeated insistence of the host and his wife, I couldn’t bring myself to enter. I made all kinds of excuses that sounded lame even to the owners and walked back to the car at a pace that stopped just short of running.

Homes are like sponges that soak up energies of the past and present owners. They reflect the life condition of the owners. Some homes are happy homes where one is instantly at ease and others where one’s eyes are always on the door, looking for a quick escape.

And some homes are even worse-they bring bad luck- the house opposite my parents’ home was one such place. While it was being built, three construction workers died when the newly built roof caved in and squashed them, the owners of the house bickered constantly and one family member had even knifed her own brother in the middle of a fight.

Ironically, the house’s name was Shanti Sadan ( House of Peace ). I was five when I was shown the pool of blood by my grandma (which if you ask me was a crazy thing for her to do but she was an iron lady who had seen the Partition of India along with her little kids so thought nothing of exposing me to it).

The owners would come out into the street and abuse each other in a language so colorful that my mom at one point wanted to change rooms with us to ensure that our vocabulary wasn’t further enriched nor did she want us to see adult sibling rivalry at its worst . But we girls wouldnt have it - it was as if we had the front seats to the circus and the lions roared words we had never heard before. The cacophony of screams and bellowing shouts were like music to our ears.

We enjoyed the excitement that seeped into the otherwise peaceful neighbourhood once the fights started and strangely enough they always fought late in the night. My father along with other men of the community would always try to break up the fights and then later go back home and discuss it with each other over the phone, while we, kids, would have an excuse to sit up late on a school night and eavesdrop on all the gory details.

The neighbourhood had agreed that like its owners the house was unlucky. When it was finally sold, the house lay barren for about five years. Kids would break into the house, throw stones on the windows, pigeons nested there yet surprisingly none of the stray cats made it their home and there were numerous strays living around our commuity.

The house changed hands after a few years and just as the new owner began to demolish the house he suffered a massive heart attack and died. His family, by then had heard, the rumors about the house and were devasted. The house lay in in shambles for another ten years till a cop bought the house.

Nothing much happened when he had the house demolished and built a new one on the ruins of the old. The new house looked grand and yet at the house warming I somehow did not warm up to the house. It still felt strange and even though we liked our new neighbours, I still did not like spending time within those walls.

There was something creepy, maybe it were the memories of the past that I still remembered or was the land itself bad?

Nothing untowards has happened to the current owners of the house. The neighbours believed since the new oners were deeply religious, they were protected.

The owners know the history of the house and they pooh pooh it and yet none of their pets survived beyond three years of keeping.

Are they bad pet owners or is the house working it’s evil at a slow yet sure pace