This happened when I was 27, right after I bought my first house.

I know that sounds like the start of a boring adult story, but I promise it is not.

I had spent most of my 20s renting small apartments, moving whenever the rent went up,

and telling myself

that one day I'd owned something, even if it was ugly and half falling apart.

I wasn't making great money, but I had a steady job doing commercial HVAC, and because of that,

I wasn't afraid of old houses the way a lot of people are.

Bad wiring, busted ductwork, mold, bad insulation,

old plumbing, none of that scared me. I looked at that kind of stuff as sweat equity. So when a

little one-story house came up at a county auction for way less than anything else in the area,

I convinced myself I had found the deal everybody else was

too nervous to touch. The house sat on the edge of a small town in western Kentucky, on a narrow

road with older homes spread far apart. It had been empty for almost five years, according to the

auction paperwork. The previous owner had died, the family fought over it, taxes piled up, and eventually the county took it.

It was the kind of place most people drove past without even looking at.

Gray siding, sagging porch, waist-high weeds in the yard.

One cracked front window covered from the inside with yellowed newspaper.

It looked sad more than scary. I walked through it twice before bidding. Both times were

during the day, and both times I went with the county guy and another bidder, so I never

felt uneasy. It smelled like old wood, dust, mouse droppings, and that sour closed-up

smellhouses get when nobody has lived in them for years.

There was some water staining in the kitchen ceiling, a soft spot in the hallway, and a bedroom

...