I became extremely distraught during a bondage shoot (see above pic). The photographer noticed my angst and asked me to explain. After her husband removed my gag I hesitantly told her that some type of negative energy was emanating from the house next door. She lowered her camera and looked at me for a long moment.
"It's empty." she said. "No one has lived there for years."
The silence dragged on for a few more tense beats, but the photographer did not raise her camera to start shooting. She seemed to be deciding what to say and her glance flicked over to the house next door. Finally she said:
"Well, I can tie you up facing the opposite direction so you don't have to look at it. Would that ameliorate anything or is it a useless idea?"
"That will probably help." I responded with a small, relieved smile.
Of course it did not help even after I was untied and then retied facing the opposite direction. I knew there were tortured spirits in that abandoned home and I could not shut off my awareness of them merely because I was looking the other way. The photographer realized it as well as I did even though we continued to shoot. Slowly she and her husband began revealing what information they knew about the people that used to live there. As it turned out a Japanese family had occupied the house for many years. The father and three daughters subjected the mother of the household, Kathy, to emotional and physical abuse throughout the decades that they occupied the place. Nobody outside of the family knew why they hated and humiliated her but acquaintances believed that the hideous behavior was occurring at the behest of the father, a professional gardener. At some point Kathy's mother came from Japan to live in the troubled home and abused Kathy also. Many people in the community were horrified by the depravity they suspected was occurring within the home. Time passed and Kathy began roaming the streets with a group of homeless drug addicts, mostly men. Eventually the three daughters grew up and moved out of the house. Their father died. Somehow the title to the house passed to one of the daughters while Kathy split her time between a board and care facility for the mentally ill and the local band of transient drug users.
I have never met Kathy, but I felt the pathos surrounding her former home that day during my shoot. Her tragic soul affected me deeply. It still does. Evidently the daughter who inherited the house paid a very significant amount of money to a contractor so he would renovate the home, but the daughter made the cardinal mistake of giving him the money before he even started the work. The contractor vanished without ever completing the job. Weeds now surround the empty property and tortured spirits cry out from the place. Kathy's story is not over yet. I felt her crying out for understanding as I cringed in a kneeling position in the yard next door, my mouth gagged tightly with an orange scarf and my hands bound to metal railings with yellow rope..
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