Why do some places just feel 'off'
January 30, 2021 4:28 PM Subscribe
I'm house-hunting. I saw a place last weekend which was perfect for me, technically, and yet, something about it felt off to me. I just couldn't put my finger on it as to what. It made me curious. Why do certain places not feel 'right' to you, and should you trust that feeling?
Please note: not looking for advice with regards to this specific place, just more generally when one is house-hunting.
The apartment was literally perfect in terms of size and location and amenities... It was everything I was looking for and yet something about it bothered me.
The previous owner had lived there for 15 years and died... I don't know if he died in the flat or not. I am not saying I thought it was haunted or anything, but it did feel very much like someone's home, with rather dated, fusty decor. Some of it would have been easy to change, e.g. by changing the carpet and repainting the walls. But some of it was a bit less easy to pinpoint. The layout felt a bit strange, with the living room being a weird sort of L-shape that made it difficult for me to imagine how the furniture would be oriented (the place was unfurnished). The place had a good amount of natural sunlight, but I guess... didn't feel cheerful? But then how do you define cheerfulness in a home?
The whole experience made me curious about how places make you feel a particular way and how, particularly when you are house-hunting, you can step into a space and feel like "this is it!" or you can step into a space and be like "nope". But it's happened to me in other situations as well - when travelling, I'm never comfortable in hilly areas - I feel safer when a location is flat.
But going back to homes: Are there certain things that spaces or spatial layouts can do to you psychologically like make you feel uneasy without exactly knowing why?
Please note: not looking for advice with regards to this specific place, just more generally when one is house-hunting.
The apartment was literally perfect in terms of size and location and amenities... It was everything I was looking for and yet something about it bothered me.
The previous owner had lived there for 15 years and died... I don't know if he died in the flat or not. I am not saying I thought it was haunted or anything, but it did feel very much like someone's home, with rather dated, fusty decor. Some of it would have been easy to change, e.g. by changing the carpet and repainting the walls. But some of it was a bit less easy to pinpoint. The layout felt a bit strange, with the living room being a weird sort of L-shape that made it difficult for me to imagine how the furniture would be oriented (the place was unfurnished). The place had a good amount of natural sunlight, but I guess... didn't feel cheerful? But then how do you define cheerfulness in a home?
The whole experience made me curious about how places make you feel a particular way and how, particularly when you are house-hunting, you can step into a space and feel like "this is it!" or you can step into a space and be like "nope". But it's happened to me in other situations as well - when travelling, I'm never comfortable in hilly areas - I feel safer when a location is flat.
But going back to homes: Are there certain things that spaces or spatial layouts can do to you psychologically like make you feel uneasy without exactly knowing why?
For me I think this can happen in places that are: Damp; dirty; lacking direct sunlight; have small windows; have low ceilings. They can feel weird without me necessarily noticing any of those things consciously. I guess partly because they feel generally uncosy and unwelcoming, and partly because some of them speak to a kind of neglect that's a little unsettling to imagine people living in. I think dated decor is also a factor - it makes you very aware that this is someone else's home, with decades of a very different life from yours lived in it, at a time when you're trying to imagine a clean, new slate for yourself.
I know exactly what you mean, though. I stayed overnight in a place about 30 years ago that still gives me the shivers to think about. It was damp and kind of neglected, and small and cold. The piece de resistance was an abandoned 1960s slimming machine just inside the bedroom door at the top of the stairs - the kind of thing I'd only ever seen in old comics, where a woman would stand on a platform and put a wide belt around her waist and it would shake her. It must have been there for decades, it was rusty, and the strap was thick and yellowed and just hanging there, and.... *shudders*.
posted by penguin pie at 4:54 PM on January 30, 2021 [11 favorites]
I know exactly what you mean, though. I stayed overnight in a place about 30 years ago that still gives me the shivers to think about. It was damp and kind of neglected, and small and cold. The piece de resistance was an abandoned 1960s slimming machine just inside the bedroom door at the top of the stairs - the kind of thing I'd only ever seen in old comics, where a woman would stand on a platform and put a wide belt around her waist and it would shake her. It must have been there for decades, it was rusty, and the strap was thick and yellowed and just hanging there, and.... *shudders*.
posted by penguin pie at 4:54 PM on January 30, 2021 [11 favorites]
There's so many tiny things that can give an "off" feel to a place. I think a lot of people know to be mindful that paint is cheap and most decor doesn't come with the place, but I think one of the subtle things that gets people is a layout that is a vague reminder of somewhere else they've been that either wasn't great or is maybe too familiar but with all the wrong things in it.
Light is another thing I think that can really affect the vibe of a place, either the artificial kind or window light. This time of year, it's a little unfair to judge by outside light, and the light from a dingy or dated fixture can really make a place feel skeevy but be fixed for a small price.
Smell can do it too. It doesn't have to be really obvious - cigarette smoke, greasy cooking, wet dog - but just...something.
I find that taking some video of my walkthrough can help me, by going back and looking at the footage when I'm back in my own space or neutral ground. Make sure to get some footage out all the windows
I don't think all those gut feelings should be shrugged off, though. Some places ring quiet but serious alarm bells - building security feels off, the amenities you prioritize aren't nearby, there's an environmental noise or smell factor. Or...yeah, sometimes places do feel awful and if you can't put a finger on it even after being analytical and reviewing the footage, maybe it's not a good place for you.
posted by Lyn Never at 5:03 PM on January 30, 2021 [7 favorites]
Light is another thing I think that can really affect the vibe of a place, either the artificial kind or window light. This time of year, it's a little unfair to judge by outside light, and the light from a dingy or dated fixture can really make a place feel skeevy but be fixed for a small price.
Smell can do it too. It doesn't have to be really obvious - cigarette smoke, greasy cooking, wet dog - but just...something.
I find that taking some video of my walkthrough can help me, by going back and looking at the footage when I'm back in my own space or neutral ground. Make sure to get some footage out all the windows
I don't think all those gut feelings should be shrugged off, though. Some places ring quiet but serious alarm bells - building security feels off, the amenities you prioritize aren't nearby, there's an environmental noise or smell factor. Or...yeah, sometimes places do feel awful and if you can't put a finger on it even after being analytical and reviewing the footage, maybe it's not a good place for you.
posted by Lyn Never at 5:03 PM on January 30, 2021 [7 favorites]
I am a firm believer in ghosts and energy, and have always been able to tell immediately upon entering a home whether it’s haunted or not. I think a lot of people sense this but talk themselves out of it or look for rational reasons why a place (house or even land) feels off.
Sometimes haunted is ok and you can cohabitate! This is the case for us right now, where one of our bedrooms feels like it belongs to someone else, if you know what I mean. We’ve painted and cleaned and smudged but whatever energy is in there isn’t leaving. So we just use that bedroom as the office; I would never sleep there.
There are other houses I’ve looked at where the entire place feels wrong, and I would trust your gut and just walk away in those cases. You won’t get any respite and it will never feel right.
posted by stellaluna at 5:24 PM on January 30, 2021 [14 favorites]
Sometimes haunted is ok and you can cohabitate! This is the case for us right now, where one of our bedrooms feels like it belongs to someone else, if you know what I mean. We’ve painted and cleaned and smudged but whatever energy is in there isn’t leaving. So we just use that bedroom as the office; I would never sleep there.
There are other houses I’ve looked at where the entire place feels wrong, and I would trust your gut and just walk away in those cases. You won’t get any respite and it will never feel right.
posted by stellaluna at 5:24 PM on January 30, 2021 [14 favorites]
I don't know with regards to specifically house shopping because I've never done it, but sometimes you just have a vibe about something or someone, or you don't have one, and it might be good or bad.
I suspect there's something about the house that was wrong for you, and had you decided to buy it, you would have figured out later what it was. Maybe the plumbing is bad or there's secretly rot or the neighbor is an asshole or one of the rooms is too small and you would never get over being bothered by the size, but there's some reason why the "perfect" house isn't for you. It sounds like the "L" shape might have bothered you in the long run and somehow the lighting in the house was just a downer. As for ah, haunting, if you believe in that, maybe the owner was still hanging around and in "Mine!" mode rather than willing to share, for all I know. One could look into sage-ing the house and purging the weird energy if they wanted to. But overall? It's not your house, so don't worry about it. Hopefully you will have a good feeling about the right house. "But then how do you define cheerfulness in a home?" I assume that you actually enjoy the space and want to be in it!
My version of this can be people, with a "like" right off the bat or the occasional "dislike" off the bat. Like we had a new temp coworker move in and I thought "I don't like her" right off the bat, and I don't normally do that and was trying to fight the urge since I was going to be spending lots of quality time with her every day for six months. Well, she bailed on the job after three days and another coworker said she'd dealt with this one before and she was bad. So, that worked out.
Some of us Just Know.
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:55 PM on January 30, 2021 [8 favorites]
I suspect there's something about the house that was wrong for you, and had you decided to buy it, you would have figured out later what it was. Maybe the plumbing is bad or there's secretly rot or the neighbor is an asshole or one of the rooms is too small and you would never get over being bothered by the size, but there's some reason why the "perfect" house isn't for you. It sounds like the "L" shape might have bothered you in the long run and somehow the lighting in the house was just a downer. As for ah, haunting, if you believe in that, maybe the owner was still hanging around and in "Mine!" mode rather than willing to share, for all I know. One could look into sage-ing the house and purging the weird energy if they wanted to. But overall? It's not your house, so don't worry about it. Hopefully you will have a good feeling about the right house. "But then how do you define cheerfulness in a home?" I assume that you actually enjoy the space and want to be in it!
My version of this can be people, with a "like" right off the bat or the occasional "dislike" off the bat. Like we had a new temp coworker move in and I thought "I don't like her" right off the bat, and I don't normally do that and was trying to fight the urge since I was going to be spending lots of quality time with her every day for six months. Well, she bailed on the job after three days and another coworker said she'd dealt with this one before and she was bad. So, that worked out.
Some of us Just Know.
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:55 PM on January 30, 2021 [8 favorites]
This seems sort of the inverse of 'staging,' no? It's claimed to be a pretty well-known thing that there are a bunch of quite small changes/tweaks that can pretty significantly change whether people find a house desirable.
posted by kickingtheground at 6:02 PM on January 30, 2021 [8 favorites]
posted by kickingtheground at 6:02 PM on January 30, 2021 [8 favorites]
When we were house shopping, there were a few that had the same feel. Some were more obvious, like signs of damage, but often it was things like odd layouts, awkward flow caused by ill planned remodels, or materials used in uncommon ways, like carpet in a bathroom or outdoor siding used an interior space.
To some extent I think part of it is the part of our brains that do pattern recognition notice that something doesn't fit and signals us to pay attention, like it does with threats. This might trigger a feeling of unease. For example, a house that is proportionally small might not be to our liking, but won't cause the "off" feeling because everything fits our model and doesn't require extra attention. In comparison, a normal sized house that is abnormally narrow or short in places breaks the pattern and we become aware of it in a different way, making us feel a bit uncomfortable when our brain throws the switch from "everything's normal" to "pay attention"
posted by nalyd at 6:20 PM on January 30, 2021 [14 favorites]
To some extent I think part of it is the part of our brains that do pattern recognition notice that something doesn't fit and signals us to pay attention, like it does with threats. This might trigger a feeling of unease. For example, a house that is proportionally small might not be to our liking, but won't cause the "off" feeling because everything fits our model and doesn't require extra attention. In comparison, a normal sized house that is abnormally narrow or short in places breaks the pattern and we become aware of it in a different way, making us feel a bit uncomfortable when our brain throws the switch from "everything's normal" to "pay attention"
posted by nalyd at 6:20 PM on January 30, 2021 [14 favorites]
Yes, along the lines of what nalyd describes, I once toured a house that was in a fantastic location and nominally hit all of our check-boxes, but I kept feeling compelled to walk back and forth on each floor feeling how they slanted and I eventually followed that intuition down to the basement, where behind some junk in the corresponding area to where I'd been pacing above was a giant crack running from below the concrete floor all the way up the wall. Later that year someone else bought the house and demolished it entirely.
On a much less practical front, some places absolutely are just weird. I tried living in a place that didn't seem right once, and never felt good there no matter how much rearranging and redecorating I did. I think of it as having been dim with low ceilings but that's objectively untrue, it's just how I felt in that space, and no amount of rationalization about its good points or amenities improved things.
posted by teremala at 6:45 PM on January 30, 2021 [5 favorites]
On a much less practical front, some places absolutely are just weird. I tried living in a place that didn't seem right once, and never felt good there no matter how much rearranging and redecorating I did. I think of it as having been dim with low ceilings but that's objectively untrue, it's just how I felt in that space, and no amount of rationalization about its good points or amenities improved things.
posted by teremala at 6:45 PM on January 30, 2021 [5 favorites]
Maybe a stretch, but infrasound is said to subconsciously give people a sense of dread, and can end up happening in places with the right acoustics.
posted by condour75 at 7:02 PM on January 30, 2021 [8 favorites]
posted by condour75 at 7:02 PM on January 30, 2021 [8 favorites]
When we were house hunting, there were places that just didn't "click".
We had a checklist of "must haves" we would fill out for each listing, but some places, even empty, just had a pallor about them even if they checked all the boxes.
posted by nickggully at 7:14 PM on January 30, 2021
We had a checklist of "must haves" we would fill out for each listing, but some places, even empty, just had a pallor about them even if they checked all the boxes.
posted by nickggully at 7:14 PM on January 30, 2021
Un-level floors. A degree or two makes me feel uncomfortable, anything that would make a regular office chair rotate slowly while sitting in it without putting your feet down. Old buildings sometimes have this naturally due to settling, sometimes though it indicates a structural malfunction.
posted by mrgoat at 8:09 PM on January 30, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by mrgoat at 8:09 PM on January 30, 2021 [2 favorites]
I am not a woowoo ghost energy person by any stretch of the imagination, but I was a Realtor in a previous life and went through literally hundreds of houses. Not related to amenities or price range, some of them were just ... off. Maybe not for someone else, but for me. I'd never move into an off place, and never regret not moving in no matter how good the bargain.
posted by cyndigo at 8:19 PM on January 30, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by cyndigo at 8:19 PM on January 30, 2021 [3 favorites]
For me, the most "off" feeling was "too rich for my blood." Vault ceilings, for example. All I can think is "who's got the money to heat this place?!"
I live in a small house (that I own about 2/3 of) and except for the ridiculous bathroom I love it.
posted by humbug at 8:47 PM on January 30, 2021
I live in a small house (that I own about 2/3 of) and except for the ridiculous bathroom I love it.
posted by humbug at 8:47 PM on January 30, 2021
For me, the biggest clunker are efforts to get extra space cheaply. I have more use for a garage than I do for some sort of oddball "living space" in a former garage. Unfinished basements carved into a warrens of weird rooms with cheap surfaces, ultra-low ceilings and a perpetual feeling of slight damp. Closed-in porches which are now cold, small rooms. (I feel this way about GIGANTIC rooms, too.)
Basically, any room where you stand there and wonder "what did they use this for?" takes the energy out of a place, unless it is otherwise exceptional.
I know it can all be fixed and I'm not a believer in any sort of spirit world, but when the half-hearted cheap stuff is out in the open, you know that the stuff you can't see is 50x worse. I think even inexperienced home owners or folks without building skills can recognize this at some level.
posted by maxwelton at 10:22 PM on January 30, 2021 [4 favorites]
Basically, any room where you stand there and wonder "what did they use this for?" takes the energy out of a place, unless it is otherwise exceptional.
I know it can all be fixed and I'm not a believer in any sort of spirit world, but when the half-hearted cheap stuff is out in the open, you know that the stuff you can't see is 50x worse. I think even inexperienced home owners or folks without building skills can recognize this at some level.
posted by maxwelton at 10:22 PM on January 30, 2021 [4 favorites]
I have just been through this! Saw a place that ticked all the boxes - beautiful layout and finishings, but something felt off.
Took longer than I had anticipated to put an offer on as I had all kinds of comms issues with my email only to have the agent say it had sold - I immediately felt relieved!
No idea why - on paper, it was an amazing place; it just felt really off.
And, yes, I’ve had this feeling about people before and it’s always unearthed some unbelievably extraordinary things down the track, so I should trust it more - I now feel very lucky that the agent said it had sold - the thing that I struggle with is why no one else seems to pick it up, but I do think I need to listen to it more - there is a reason for it, even if I don’t really know why at the time.
posted by heyjude at 10:27 PM on January 30, 2021 [4 favorites]
Took longer than I had anticipated to put an offer on as I had all kinds of comms issues with my email only to have the agent say it had sold - I immediately felt relieved!
No idea why - on paper, it was an amazing place; it just felt really off.
And, yes, I’ve had this feeling about people before and it’s always unearthed some unbelievably extraordinary things down the track, so I should trust it more - I now feel very lucky that the agent said it had sold - the thing that I struggle with is why no one else seems to pick it up, but I do think I need to listen to it more - there is a reason for it, even if I don’t really know why at the time.
posted by heyjude at 10:27 PM on January 30, 2021 [4 favorites]
You should read Chapter 2 of the Haunting of Hill House, where the protagonist arrives at the house and it is described. I don't think it explains why a house can feel off, but it is a great evocation of that feeling, thanks to great lines like “chillingly wrong in all dimensions, so that the walls seemed always in one direction a fraction longer than the eye could endure, and in another direction a fraction less than the barest possible tolerable length”.
posted by caek at 10:32 PM on January 30, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by caek at 10:32 PM on January 30, 2021 [4 favorites]
Don’t know the secret but David Lynch does. I watched Twin Peaks too young and to this day suburban homes with blush colors like the Palmer house make me deeply uneasy. Yes, it’s dated and fussy but even when the decor was not so dated, the Palmer living room was one of the scariest characters in the show.
posted by kapers at 11:18 PM on January 30, 2021 [4 favorites]
posted by kapers at 11:18 PM on January 30, 2021 [4 favorites]
Even more woo than ghosts, but a lot of people in Poland believe in "veins" of bad energy, usually corresponding to underground water flows and in modern times, bigger sources of electricity (transformer boxes especially). Not exactly feng shui, but reading on feng shui felt very familiar, up to and including ways of dispelling the "bad luck". Usually these are small spots, say a line a metre wide, unless there's a particularly bad congregation of several. The folk way of detecting them is through hanging a ring on some thread from your fingers and seeing if it draws circles (good) or a pendulum line (bad), which is thought to be an amplification of that unconscious feeling. I lucked out into being sensitive enough to it that I literally feel faint in some of the bad places - as a child I used to throw utter fits at one shop re: not wanting to go in there. Woo, yes, but I've seen people get headaches and generally feel worse from sleeping or sitting for a long time in places with bad energy that they didn't know about. And the first thing I do before furnishing a room is walk around slowly and see what spots feel Good.
posted by I claim sanctuary at 12:32 AM on January 31, 2021 [6 favorites]
posted by I claim sanctuary at 12:32 AM on January 31, 2021 [6 favorites]
If I remember correctly, Malcolm Gladwell wrote in one of this books (forgot which one) something to the effect of "intuition is just your brain reaching a decision based on your senses before your logic caught up."
So you somehow already knew that this wasn't right for you. But you can't articulate the reason just yet, because your logical thinking brain hadn't made the connection yet, so that you can articulate the reasoning before it.
posted by kschang at 1:34 AM on January 31, 2021 [7 favorites]
So you somehow already knew that this wasn't right for you. But you can't articulate the reason just yet, because your logical thinking brain hadn't made the connection yet, so that you can articulate the reasoning before it.
posted by kschang at 1:34 AM on January 31, 2021 [7 favorites]
I 100% trust that feeling. It is probably one of my most woo beliefs, but it hasn't steered me wrong.
One time we looked at a house that hit all our boxes but I felt like I was going to throw up the whole time touring it. It was adjacent to this house (and I had no idea at that time, it predated that article by 7 years). I really believe there was just a nexus of evil. I know how whack that is.
Conversely, we bought a house that I loved that was, objectively, a complete fixer upper nightmare and although I don't regret selling it 7 years later, I swear that it lay on really fertile ground - I experienced so much joy living there in a way that's hard to describe, and plants all went nuts both inside and outside the house. There was also, unfortunately, an underground water issue that would flood the basement annually if everything was not perfectly diverted, but I think if there hadn't been a house it would have been a spring in a forest - you know?
We used to frame it as the house lying on a ley line. I don't know that I believe it's a scientific thing at all, more a part of the human interior narrative - experience of life kind of thing - but there's a lot of human writing/storytelling about "good places" and "bad places" and hallowed ground and cursed ground that I believe expresses a part of how we perceive our habitat.
I feel it, myself, a lot, when I choose to. It's just a feeling. But home is also a feeling and I encourage you, if you have the luxury of listening to it, to listen to it.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:24 AM on January 31, 2021 [8 favorites]
One time we looked at a house that hit all our boxes but I felt like I was going to throw up the whole time touring it. It was adjacent to this house (and I had no idea at that time, it predated that article by 7 years). I really believe there was just a nexus of evil. I know how whack that is.
Conversely, we bought a house that I loved that was, objectively, a complete fixer upper nightmare and although I don't regret selling it 7 years later, I swear that it lay on really fertile ground - I experienced so much joy living there in a way that's hard to describe, and plants all went nuts both inside and outside the house. There was also, unfortunately, an underground water issue that would flood the basement annually if everything was not perfectly diverted, but I think if there hadn't been a house it would have been a spring in a forest - you know?
We used to frame it as the house lying on a ley line. I don't know that I believe it's a scientific thing at all, more a part of the human interior narrative - experience of life kind of thing - but there's a lot of human writing/storytelling about "good places" and "bad places" and hallowed ground and cursed ground that I believe expresses a part of how we perceive our habitat.
I feel it, myself, a lot, when I choose to. It's just a feeling. But home is also a feeling and I encourage you, if you have the luxury of listening to it, to listen to it.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:24 AM on January 31, 2021 [8 favorites]
Oh I have at least a partial answer to this! You might be interested in A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander.
Alexander is an architect who documented 253 patterns for how people around the world like to live. The pattern I always remember best is is "light on two sides," which found that whenever people have a choice, we avoid rooms with light that comes from only one direction in favour of rooms with light coming from two or more directions. Other patterns include "intimacy gradient," which argues that we feel the most comfortable in living spaces in which the most-private rooms are the most interior (like, when you need to pass through more-public rooms to get to more-private rooms), "window place," which argues that everybody likes sitting in comfortable chairs near big windows that have low sills, and "sleeping to the east," which argues that generally people are happiest when our sleeping area faces the east, so that we wake up with the sun and the light.
My guess is you didn't like the house you saw because it broke a bunch of the Pattern Language rules. The datedness and fustyness you understood, but the stuff that just felt "off," where you didn't know why it made you uncomfortable, was likely Pattern Language violations.
If you are interested in this stuff it is totally worth buying the book. I return to it constantly, and have found it super-useful in a thousand situations, like house-buying, renovating, figuring out furniture placement or what to buy, etc.
posted by Susan PG at 7:26 AM on January 31, 2021 [24 favorites]
Alexander is an architect who documented 253 patterns for how people around the world like to live. The pattern I always remember best is is "light on two sides," which found that whenever people have a choice, we avoid rooms with light that comes from only one direction in favour of rooms with light coming from two or more directions. Other patterns include "intimacy gradient," which argues that we feel the most comfortable in living spaces in which the most-private rooms are the most interior (like, when you need to pass through more-public rooms to get to more-private rooms), "window place," which argues that everybody likes sitting in comfortable chairs near big windows that have low sills, and "sleeping to the east," which argues that generally people are happiest when our sleeping area faces the east, so that we wake up with the sun and the light.
My guess is you didn't like the house you saw because it broke a bunch of the Pattern Language rules. The datedness and fustyness you understood, but the stuff that just felt "off," where you didn't know why it made you uncomfortable, was likely Pattern Language violations.
If you are interested in this stuff it is totally worth buying the book. I return to it constantly, and have found it super-useful in a thousand situations, like house-buying, renovating, figuring out furniture placement or what to buy, etc.
posted by Susan PG at 7:26 AM on January 31, 2021 [24 favorites]
I don't really have any personal insight into this phenomenon (aside to agree that it's definitely real), but the excellent book Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places by Colin Dickey talks at length about what makes a place feel haunted or just wrong and might be worth checking out!
posted by LadyNibbler at 7:29 AM on January 31, 2021
posted by LadyNibbler at 7:29 AM on January 31, 2021
Give me some soft pink incandescent lightbulbs in some yellow/red toned indirect lighting fixtures, a good rug, some gold mirrors, and some interesting textiles/fabrics to hang around strategically, and I bet I can make any of those off-feeling spaces feel amazing. As others have mentioned, I think people are mostly reading the aesthetics/cool-toned or dark light quality and not realizing the profound effect that all has on people. Unless there is dampness or an environmental toxin that people are registering without noticing. But ghosts/remnants of bad history? I think freaking not.
posted by thegreatfleecircus at 7:31 AM on January 31, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by thegreatfleecircus at 7:31 AM on January 31, 2021 [3 favorites]
But ghosts/remnants of bad history? I think freaking not.
I tend to agree with you but also, if a place feels creepy...you can give it a try to warm it up and it may indeed warm up quite a bit. But, it also might not, especially if the "creepy" is an amalgam of issues - location and size of windows, dampness, poor materials, etc.. And if the solution is new big windows in different locations and replacing crud work with better craft then you need to carefully consider whether you're up for the task. So, it may not be *spirits* but the issues may be sticky enough that they might as well be evidence of haunting.
One recent kitchen remodel in a 1902 farmhouse/victorian turned a space which had been remodeled and altered several times with a range of quality and tastes into one that brighter and lined up major elements of the house in a way that felt more natural. We also restored an archway that was a major element dividing the kitchen from the dining area and had either been cut off at some point or maybe never had a matching shoulder (think curved arch on one side, straight into the wall on the other). It just feels like you can breathe easier in there and that's something that is hard to understand unless you've lived in both versions. The old kitchen space was fighting the house and us. The new kitchen space fits better and feels more cheerful. But, these folks have lived there for 15 years before they tackled the kitchen and they definitely think their house has spirits.
posted by amanda at 9:01 AM on January 31, 2021 [2 favorites]
I tend to agree with you but also, if a place feels creepy...you can give it a try to warm it up and it may indeed warm up quite a bit. But, it also might not, especially if the "creepy" is an amalgam of issues - location and size of windows, dampness, poor materials, etc.. And if the solution is new big windows in different locations and replacing crud work with better craft then you need to carefully consider whether you're up for the task. So, it may not be *spirits* but the issues may be sticky enough that they might as well be evidence of haunting.
One recent kitchen remodel in a 1902 farmhouse/victorian turned a space which had been remodeled and altered several times with a range of quality and tastes into one that brighter and lined up major elements of the house in a way that felt more natural. We also restored an archway that was a major element dividing the kitchen from the dining area and had either been cut off at some point or maybe never had a matching shoulder (think curved arch on one side, straight into the wall on the other). It just feels like you can breathe easier in there and that's something that is hard to understand unless you've lived in both versions. The old kitchen space was fighting the house and us. The new kitchen space fits better and feels more cheerful. But, these folks have lived there for 15 years before they tackled the kitchen and they definitely think their house has spirits.
posted by amanda at 9:01 AM on January 31, 2021 [2 favorites]
My experience when house hunting was that odor played a big part. One house was right on all fronts, but for a strange unpleasant smell that the homeowner swore up and down came from the plants out front. I didn't believe her and didn't buy the place. Others used perfume to mask bad smells which also was an instant turn-off. Yet another was wrong on all fronts, but felt "right" to me because it smelled like my childhood home (didn't buy that one either). Then there are the smells we don't immediately notice, along with what is going on inside our own heads, which to me makes for a far more logical explanation for liking or not liking a space than ghosts. I don't discount the possibility of ghosts, only feel that encountering them is unlikely, at least, more unlikely than encountering one's own subconscious likes and dislikes, experiences, etc, when confronted with an unfamiliar space.
posted by Armed Only With Hubris at 11:10 AM on January 31, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Armed Only With Hubris at 11:10 AM on January 31, 2021 [1 favorite]
I had sort of the reverse experience. When I first walked through my house, my sense was "OMG! GET THESE PEOPLE OUT!" The previous owners had shown no sign of respect or care for the house, and I guess I picked up on this. My house and I have gotten along pretty well since then (well, after I replaced the bathroom and kitchen floors, and repainted everything).
I kind of love my house now. We've been together for 40 years and I think we do all right together.
posted by SPrintF at 12:12 PM on January 31, 2021 [1 favorite]
I kind of love my house now. We've been together for 40 years and I think we do all right together.
posted by SPrintF at 12:12 PM on January 31, 2021 [1 favorite]
You might be interested in feng shui, which is all about the harmonizing of energies between people and places. Some might find it a bit "woo" but its concepts and principles have been in use for thousands of years. I'm sadly not too knowledgeable about it as a Canadian-born Chinese, but my parents gave me a very, very basic crash course when my partner and I started shopping for our first house, and I came to appreciate its emphasis on flow and how the physical state of a house can both reflect and influence a less-than-ideal mental state.
If a room is laid out such that any arrangement of furniture would be awkward, that absolutely does create a mental burden, one that you would face every single time you walk into the room. If an entire floor plan is laid out badly, then every day that you're unable to "flow" through your home without having to maneuver around an awkwardly placed kitchen island or a too tight turn in the hallway, it could all eventually take a toll. Things like doorways or windows that are "off" can cause an instinctual discomfort with your surroundings, which is why feng shui emphasizes placing your bed and seating such that you have a sightline to the door, but aren't facing out the door directly. Rooms that are too long and narrow and without a door or large window toward the end can feel like traps.
posted by keep it under cover at 1:56 PM on January 31, 2021 [3 favorites]
If a room is laid out such that any arrangement of furniture would be awkward, that absolutely does create a mental burden, one that you would face every single time you walk into the room. If an entire floor plan is laid out badly, then every day that you're unable to "flow" through your home without having to maneuver around an awkwardly placed kitchen island or a too tight turn in the hallway, it could all eventually take a toll. Things like doorways or windows that are "off" can cause an instinctual discomfort with your surroundings, which is why feng shui emphasizes placing your bed and seating such that you have a sightline to the door, but aren't facing out the door directly. Rooms that are too long and narrow and without a door or large window toward the end can feel like traps.
posted by keep it under cover at 1:56 PM on January 31, 2021 [3 favorites]
I am in my 4th owned house now, and have come to believe that sometimes a house chooses its new owner - will fend off an unacceptable occupant. This comes from my first house, which was known by the entire neighborhood to be haunted by a kid who had died there. (No one told me until the day I moved in, of course.) But I had loved the house at first sight despite some obvious layout and other flaws. When I sold it, I watched prospective buyers come and go - people loved it but it went for months before a young couple with a baby boy went through. I really think the house chose them.
posted by mmiddle at 7:44 PM on January 31, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by mmiddle at 7:44 PM on January 31, 2021 [5 favorites]
Response by poster: Thanks so much for the interesting answers!
Still on the fence re: ghosts, but I wrote to the estate agent today confirming that I wouldn't be going forward with the apartment, and feel zero regrets.
posted by unicorn chaser at 4:26 AM on February 1, 2021
Still on the fence re: ghosts, but I wrote to the estate agent today confirming that I wouldn't be going forward with the apartment, and feel zero regrets.
posted by unicorn chaser at 4:26 AM on February 1, 2021
I remember walking into a house and getting weepy because it ticked all the boxes but it didn’t suit me. I was worried sick that my husband would want it and I would end up living there.
Sloped land was too steep.
Out of town was too far out of town.
Well maintained was too gorgeous and in someone else’s style.
Etc.
Fortunately, he didn’t like it either and we never had to hash anything out. When we found our new home we both knew it. We identified the same benefits and talked about the same problems and made a quick offer on it. We’ve been happy here for several years now.
Definitely walk away from something that doesn’t feel right for you.
posted by SLC Mom at 11:05 AM on February 1, 2021
Sloped land was too steep.
Out of town was too far out of town.
Well maintained was too gorgeous and in someone else’s style.
Etc.
Fortunately, he didn’t like it either and we never had to hash anything out. When we found our new home we both knew it. We identified the same benefits and talked about the same problems and made a quick offer on it. We’ve been happy here for several years now.
Definitely walk away from something that doesn’t feel right for you.
posted by SLC Mom at 11:05 AM on February 1, 2021
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I toured one home that was a kind of fixer-upper. Great neighborhood but the house was pretty beat up and the homeowner had died there. There was a huge weird stain on the hardwood floor that the realtor assured me was not related to the homeowner death but, whatever, it was weird. And you could tell that whoever lived there had smoked at one point indoors and that there had been lots of stuff cleared out. There were little lines and shadows on the wall where there were stacks of who-knows-what for years, perhaps. Other lines of wear on the floor that were clearly between furniture elements. And it was a gray day but also the foliage outside was overgrown and...it just felt depressing and bleh. Other homes nearby were much taller and situated a little higher up so that gave a feeling, too, of being the "little guy" on the block. It felt like a big investment in time and energy would be necessary before it would sparkle even a bit. I didn't have the energy for it even though on paper it checked all the major boxes.
I design home remodels so I see all kinds of things that are "off" usually due to a remodel or addition that was less thoughtfully done than one would like. Trim that wasn't executed well. Things here and there that aren't aligned. Awkward flow that feels like it maybe made sense with someone else's stuff or needs but no longer makes sense. There's a house I'm working on now that some prior owner made some untrimmed new entryways that just look bad. Not egregiously bad but something isn't right about them. I'm going to put those on the fix list even though they could technically all remain because they make the whole room feel oddly unfinished and off.
We are remarkably attuned to how things flow and fit and are or aren't straight even if we can't put our finger on it. For homeownership, while smart finance folks would say that it's all about the money and whether all that makes sense, I think you have to fall in love with the place a little bit. Even with a rental, if at all possible. You have to live there and fit your life into that place. If you can take a second look, try sitting where you'd put a couch and opening a window and see if it feels any different.
posted by amanda at 4:53 PM on January 30, 2021 [12 favorites]