Every neighborhood has one of these. The house that all the kids give a wide berth when they trek to and from school. Sometimes, it’s the house with the cars parked in the lawn, all abandoned and rusting. Or, it could be the tall slender Victorian with the shades drawn and no one ever seen coming and going. Maybe it’s the house that remained empty for a long period of time.
Why do you suppose every neighborhood has to have a house like that? My guess is that neighborhoods are like families. You have the “perfect” house, the “party” house, the “neat and orderly” house and the “scapegoat” house. That scapegoat becomes all that’s wrong and as long as the rest focus on that house, their own houses go under the radar.
Lots of movies have portrayed these kinds of homes. My personal favorite is “The Burbs.” If you haven't seen that movie, it's really quite a must. Tom Hanks was awesome and Bruce Dern as the hyper military Vietnam Vet neighbor. I laughed so hard when I watched it because it was really close to the truth. New neighbors move in. You don't see or hear from them at all. They come and go at night. You don't so much as see their car...
We've had a lot of those neighbors here because the houses on both sides of us are rentals. We had one very bizarre family we called the "Klopek's" (from "The Burbs") who were never seen, but their dog repeatedly let himself out the front door and wandered around all day coming and going out the open front door. For a time, we wondered if perhaps the dog had rented the house.
One time, I'd had enough of the dog being loose. I was worried about him, so I went and peeked into the front door. No furnishings. An empty dog dish. I worried someone had robbed them or something. I called the cops. They said it was animal control's issues. Animal control said it was the cop's issue, so I called back the cops and said, "look, I don't know if they've been robbed or what, but the house is empty from what I can see. I'm not going to trespass." So, they did check it out, locked the dog inside again (he unlocked it again later and got out). I still to this day wonder who the Klopek's were. Or even if they existed.
Of course, “Halloween,” had the scene with the neighborhood kids daring each other at the house of a murder scene. That's another reason a house becomes a pariah. The old "I dare you to knock on the door" routine must have been exploited by every pre-adolescent. I admit to having done it myself a few times.
“The Ghost and Mr. Chicken” is the most adorable favorite of that genre. The scary house, the site of a murder is believed to be haunted. The haunted house always gets the bad rap. I have to admit, I lived in a big scary mansion on a hill in the middle of sprawling suburbs. TV crews came and did seances for shows and reports wrote about the ghosts often. It was about as "I'm not going near it with a 10-foot pole" as you can get. You'd think the kid with the huge yard and big house would be popular. Not so.
I remember on Thursday nights calling every girl in my class to find one brave enough to spend the night and sure enough by Friday afternoon, she'd have an excuse. Even their parents were scared to have them stay there.
I was relieved in sixth grade when we took an embarrassing field trip to my home. Yeah, who ever gets a school field trip to their own home? It was both embarrassing and in the long run a relief. Curious mothers came in tow to see the place. My mother graciously put on a good southern spread, toured the house, showed the blood stains from when it was a Civil War field hospital, explained the contents of the huge display case of relics we'd dug up, and then proceeded to let the kids play in the yard to their hearts content. I showed them how to use the metal detector and suddenly my world wasn't so weird anymore.
I'd love to hear about the scapegoat house in your neighborhood today or when you were a kid.