The Real Story Behind the Neighborhood Haunted House

It had been 20 years since Old Man Jones left the house in an ambulance and never returned. Some people said he had a heart attack and died at the hospital. Others said that he died at home and that his spirit stayed around and never left.

Whatever actually happened may never be known to the residents of Stonybrook Lane. All that they knew was that it had been over a decade since any of the neighbors had seen anyone go anywhere near the run-down property that the neighborhood kids affectionately called the Haunted Fortress. Parents forbade their kids from going onto the property or even walking the street in front of the property. The property was an eyesore and a safety hazard – the yard was overgrown and filled with trash and debris. The structure was falling apart and often served as a homebase for criminal activity in the neighborhood. Everybody considered it a shame that Old Man Jones’s family let the house get to that point.

To make matters worse, the local government dragged their feet to do anything about the property. It seemed that as long as somebody kept paying the taxes, the government was happy to let the place rot. 

But it wasn’t always this way. Old man Jones – Nelson Jones was his real name – purchased the large, beautiful home on Stonybrook Lane back in 1989 with his wife, Evelyn.  They moved in with their five children and spent many happy years in their home. The house was their pride and joy. Mr. Jones seemed to be working in the yard every chance he had, and Mrs. Jones loved maintaining a flower garden out front. More than once the property had been voted the yard of the month and they often had a contractor at the house making some sort of improvements to the inside of the house.

Things changed very quickly, however, after Mrs. Jones died. Mr. Jones suffered a stroke soon after, and the Jones’s youngest daughter moved in with her young daughter to help take care of her father. At least that was her story, and it might have been true, but her siblings thought that she had come upon hard times and was taking advantage of a chance to move back home and live rent free.

Whatever her intentions were, she didn’t want to move out after Mr. Jones died two years later. Her siblings agreed that she could continue living in the house, but they insisted that she pay them something for rent. Eventually she moved out and left the state. Nobody but the oldest son has heard anything from her since. 

Mr. Jones, nor his wife, had left the will or trust to provide any instructions as to what should happen with the house. Each of the children had their own version of what their parents would’ve wanted. If you took a poll of the kids, you would have gotten five different responses. 

You had the youngest daughter who wanted to keep living in the house. Another daughter wanted to keep the house for sentimental reasons, but they didn’t really have any other ideas about what to do with it. A son wanted to rent it out. And another one wanted to sell it because “nobody else wanted to live there and they might as well try to get some money from it.” And the oldest daughter, well, she just wanted to be in charge and disagreed with any idea that didn’t come from them.

They never came to any agreement about the house, so as the years went on, the house remained unoccupied, and the house just continued to fall apart. And now, here we have it. A once beautiful home, filled with love, now an abandoned shell that is not only unsightly, but also presents a danger and contributes to blight in what was once a thriving neighborhood.

If only Mr. and Mrs. Jones had hired a lawyer to put an estate plan in place before they died. Or, if only the children had hired a lawyer to handle the probate of their parents’ estates. Perhaps at least a couple hundred thousand dollars of wealth would’ve been preserved and used for the benefit of the Jones Family. Generational wealth that could have been leveraged to help fund a grandchild’s college education. Or perhaps those funds could have been used to help a family member start a business. This could have been a very happy ending, but what we’ve ended up with is a horror story. Unfortunately, this horror story plays out every day with families, but it doesn’t have to be this way. A conversation with a lawyer and the preparation of an estate plan could have provided this family with everything they needed to properly steward their valuable family asset. 

How about your family? Is your family on track to end up like the Jones’s, or do you have a solid will or trust-based estate plan in place. If you don’t have one, you can take action today to get one started. You can either register for one of my upcoming webinars or you can give us a call to schedule a Getting Started Call. My team and I are eager to help you to rewrite your story so that it has a happy ending.