TheMapesHotel
Thread
I posted this before but a friend recommended here as well, this is the true story of the night I went into my serial killer neighbor's super creepy house.
In 2011 my next door neighbor was arrested for the murders of 4 young women. He was on parole and during a routine check his PO found a store of weapons (which felons are not to own). Upon further searching the PO found the photos (my neighbor had been a travelling photographer) and journals detailing the murders of at least ten different young women. He is currently on death row. The prosecution was able to match up two more women to his evidence leading to a conviction on six of the ten murders he committed. His MO also matches the murders of 8-10 more women in the New York area so he may have killed as many as 20 young girls.
In December of 2013 I was contacted by a man that owns and operates a murderbilia site (yes this is a thing, he sells mementoes and artifacts from famous killers/crimes). He had seen me on the news and was curious if I had anything from my neighbor as he was interested in buying. That was the first time I had considered going in the house which has sat untouched since his arrest.
Fast forward to May of 2014 and my husband finally talks me into going inside. The things I saw inside that house haunt me to this day and are far scarier than any horror film, because they are real. I will try to explain the house in as clear of detail as possible, but please bare with me as I am no writer.
It is difficult to describe the layout of the house originally as my neighbor, from here on referred to as J.N. had completely remodeled the inside with fake walls, fake flooring, and a substantial attic crawl space. Between the old walls and new walls there were 4-6 inch gaps. The flooring did not match (it was a mixture of different carpet types and cheap vinyl) so we curiously peeled up part of it so reveal a fake floor raised 6 inches above the old floor. We were not brave enough to enter the attic. There were large holes punches in the fake flooring, walls, and ceiling, most likely from police.
The first room we entered was a small five by six space with no windows as it had been formed by the new walls. The door had a large, steel, slide lock on the outside, so as to lock someone INTO the room. Against the left hand wall was a futon mattress with a pile of soiled (dark brown stains that could have been anything) flowered blankets. There were also children's sheets (Spiderman, transformers, etc). Against the right hand wall was a long and low dresser. The back of the room had a door leading into the bathroom but 6 4x4s had been bolted over it so no one was getting in or out of that room. Also against the right hand wall above the dresser was a row of industrial outdoor track spotlights. Make of that what you will. Inside the dresser were many pairs of women's panties and panty hos. There was also a large roll of twine rope, bottles of shaving cream, and various sizes and shapes of rusty saw blades. Some the round types that would go in a table saw, some the long ones with the handle you use to saw through things. There were also several bloody razor blades.
The next door had a bare bed in it, another dresser, and six large black trash bags. There was also a closet. Inside the closet we found a medium size freezer Ziploc bag with drug paraphilia. The outside of the bag had a poem written on it in lovely black scrawling cursive: One for me, For every two of them, Three promises lie, At the end of every fourth trip.
Inside the dresser of this room were various children's items. Little stuffed bears, street chalk, Tonka Toys and Hot Wheels, etc. I did not look in the large plastic bags. The last bedroom also formed by the false walls had nothing in it but ten large, long dead, stinking potted plants. The odor in that room was atrocious.
The bathroom offered nothing of interest except a large selection of expired pain and sleeping pills, some dirty rags under the sink, and a nefarious looking dark ring around the tub.
The living room and kitchen area were joined together in a style I believe they call open floor plan. The two areas contained 11 stand alone freezers. The type that are long and low. Some were very very large. We did not open any of them.
The kitchen was odd. Dirty dishes and pans were still on the stove right along side long rotted piles of food and spices as if a meal had just finished being cooked. The only thing that gave the scene any age was the undisturbed dust layer. J.N. had covered an entire wall in the kitchen with shelving which were full of jars common to people that pickle and can their own food. Except the jars contained things that did not look like food, at least that I have never seen eaten. Strange slabs of whitish meat, large knotted vegetables that looked like tree roots, a mixture that looked like solidified bits of plastic in jelly... The areas around the living room and kitchen were covered in religious wall hangings. Pictures of Christ, wood slates with Palms burned into them, crosses. Most of the Palms focused on themes of forgiveness and women being submissive to men.
All the windows and the front door had large wooden boards bolted over them. The door was ceiling to floor 4x4s, the same ones barring the bathroom in the first room. Absolutely no one was coming in or out of that house through the front.
There was one set of 4x4s that went around the entire living room, kitchen, and parts of the second bedroom area that had large hooks driven into it. These are large hooks like that would be used to support something heavy. I stopped counting at two hundred of them. It occurred to me later as I was thinking about them that I know what the hooks were for. There was one photo entered into evidence from inside the house showing J.N.'s dolls.
He had ten large sized dolls and manikins, all dressed in ladies evening wear and lingerie and wearing full makeup inside the house. (He also had suitcases full of manikin limbs and \$130,000 in cash taped behind his stove, though I never saw those, just read about them in the trial notes.) Some of the dolls were wearing ball gags, others were tied up with S & M style ropes. But they all had large nooses tied around their necks. I went back through some of the reports and was able to locate the photo of all ten dolls. The prosecution had entered it as evidence of J.N.'s deteriorated state of mind and because each doll may have represented a victim. Sure enough, the dolls were hanging from a series of hooks located on the back of the front door. We believe there are so many hooks around the house so he could move the dolls around with him as he went room to room.
At this point we had had enough and decided to leave. Passing back through the house my husband called out to me to turn off my flashlight. I did but the light didn't disappear.
It was then that we noticed the LED lantern. It was on the floor of the kitchen, underneath the table. It was flickering weakly but still on three years later. The research I have done on that model of lamp says it would be impossible for the batteries to last that long.
Of all the things we saw in that house that lamp was the most terrifying. Everything else I could write off as a bad dream, or a shitty treatment for a horror film, but that lamp made my skin crawl and still does as I sit here writing this for you.
Glancing out my living room windows I can see the darkened house next door but I can't see through the boards on the windows to know it that lamps has died yet or if it is still there flickering weakly.