Sometimes places bring out the worst than people. My dad always used to say.

Now then I'm older, I realized he had it backwards.

Sometimes it's people that bring out the worst in places.

The old Baker house was one such place.

It was this spring of 69 when we moved there, and from the minute we passed through the gated

entrance, I knew there was something I didn't like about the property.

My brother, Stanley, just eight at the time, put it best.

This place gives me the creeps, he said.

And creepy it was.

A great marble statue, perhaps a couple centuries old watched us as we pulled up to the front of the manner.

The sculpture was of a man, perhaps an old caretaker.

Whoever it was, he was dressed in a dashing suit with a rackish hat rested on his head.

He had the luck of an old military colonel, and I realized that once upon a time, this mansion must have been a site to behold.

The hands of time had not been kind to this place, though.

Here and there, boards covered up the windows, evidently broken by vandals throughout the years.

Vines twisted their way into every crevice and weaved over the surface like spiders webs.

Dankare, heavy and wet, covered everything, rotting away wood and peeling back the last

remaining wisps of paint.

Only a few stray beams of light could penetrate the army of oak trees which hung over every square inch of the

sprawling grounds.

It needs some work, my father remarked, but this is home now.

To be sure, it was an unsettling place at times, but there couldn't be a more perfect place

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