The Kerland House

For years atop that hill sat the Kerland House.


 It was made longer ago than anyone can remember, but official town records dates the age of the Kerland House at somewhere between the 1840s-1870s, made by the architect John H. Kerland for which it takes its name. Back in its day it was a fairly good looking mansion – a lovely 3 story wooden house with a fireplace, marble counter-tops, and acres of fields. However at this time in writing the house has almost completely rotted down; marble destroyed, fields dead, and the only thing left of a fireplace is a few rocks that caved in the entrance of the chimney. Based on what I know about the Kerland House, this is its history.

Shortly after John H. Kerland had constructed the plans for the house he came to love a short-skirted damsel by the name of Madeline Mourtney. Now not much came out of this relationship and it ended only a few weeks before the Kerland House was finished in its construction, but I bring it up now because it will play an important part later in the story.

When the house was finally finished people looked up to it in awe, yet the fact that the house was so well made lead to it being highly expensive, and the fact that it was highly expensive lead to the fact that the only person in the town who could even afford living it in was Mr.Kerland himself. Kerland bought the house, and still in a depression because of his failed relationship with Madeline he fell into a state of suicidal thoughts until he met another girl by the name of Heather Chekenspiel. Heather was an aspiring architect herself and came to the town to see Kerland's work. After she found he was living in the house, she came by and they talked a great deal. Things lead to other things and eventually the two got married.

There was a time of great peace and prosperity in the Kerland house until Madeline came back to the town to see how things went with Mr. Kerland. Naturally, when she found Kerland married to Chekenspiel she was enraged, and only a few days after finding out broke into the mansion, stabbed both members of the house to death before jumping off the third floor balcony to her demise.

This dark tale made many draw away from the house up until 1906, when the Mitchell-Ryan Real Estate group saw great promise in the building. Through a set of lies and exaggerations they were finally able to sell the house to the McNamara family, consisting of husband and wife Jordan and Michelle McNamara and their children, Samantha and Harrison.

Many of the citizens in town attempted to warn the McNamara's of what the Mitchell-Ryan group refused to tell them, yet both Jordan and Michelle were firm they wished to stay in the house due to its still magnificent condition; which is why it was morbidly ironic when the 6 year old Harrison McNamara found a stash of matches and ended up causing the house to burn to its foundations. No one of the McNamara family survived.

The house fell back into obscurity during the first world war and the depression, with no one even giving it a second glance until WWII when the state considered tearing the house apart for the war effort. The local government made a stand, still seeing the house as an important part of an otherwise dull town history, and eventually the locals won and the house was converted into some sort of state monument.

That is, until it fell into obscurity yet again and reached its final owner in 1978. This is where things got interesting.

Gordon Mercer was a writer and poet who got most of his money through inheritance. He saw the house's dark history and instead of making it a reason not to buy it he saw it as a source of inspiration and showed his intentions on buying the house. The state gladly accepted, as the house was rarely cared for and all it seemed to do was cost money that could be saved. And so on March 12^th of the year previously mentioned Mercer acquired the Kerland House for a mere $3,000 (remember that the house still had significant burn damage, as well as plenty of vandalism from the era between the 1910s to the 1940s).

A short while after buying it, Mercer moved into the house, and at that point was when he spent most of his time either writing or working on the house itself. Not much is known past this point except the fact that the house was in one of its finest conditions since the McNamara fire. It was only 6 months after moving in however, that Mercer ended up hiring a therapist.

Mercer complained about hearing various things inside the house. At first it was small things, like the creaking and croaking of the house – yet as time grew on Mercer began to hear cries of children. The psychologist of course diagnosed him as hallucinating, possibly because of a placebo formed from knowing the houses history.

Despite the therapists attempt at helping though, Mercer continued to hear the noises until it got to the point where he simply couldn't stand it. He could no longer write because of the constant sounds he continued to hear. Eventually one session Mercer came in with cut up arms to which the psychologist found incredibly worrying and asked for a police team to come to the house later that night. Yet by the time they got there, it was simply too late; police dogs found Mercer's body hanging off the same balcony that Madeline had jumped off almost a century before.

After Mercer's death, no one bothered even coming close to the house. A few “ghost-hunt” teams had come to the house in hopes of filming something television worthy, but they found nothing and due to the houses decaying condition thought it not even worth faking anything.

So, are there ghosts in the Kerland House, or did Gordon Mercer just go mad? The people in this town don't really think about the house too much, but I can say for one thing that I don't believe in ghosts.


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