The House
Title
The House
Creator
Sam Paz
Date
10/9/23
Text
The house was abandoned for four years or so, and the story goes that before my Aunt Mady bought it in 2007, it was a dilapidated eyesore from the 70’s. The first time I saw it, I found that hard to believe. After two years of renovations, the two-story home was a manicured picture right out of a magazine. To my ten-year-old eyes, it might as well have been a castle. The very first day she moved in, she invited all of our family and cousins over to see it. She led us around the newly furnished hallways, talking to us about the renovation process and glowing with pride. “En Cuba no hay casas como esta,” she said; “There are no houses like this in Cuba.”
The historic neighborhood of Overtown, where the house stood, had seen a lot of change around that time. The house was one of many in the neighborhood that had been totally overhauled and built over. Almost none of the original houses (or their occupants) were left, and in their place stood bigger, more modern homes with smaller yards. I remember Papi complaining about these huge new houses in being made of cheap materials and driving out locals who’d lived in Miami for years, but my aunt wouldn’t hear of it. I don’t think anything could’ve talked her out of moving into that flashy house.
Then one day, it happened. I was over at her house with her kids, my cousins Aurelio and Maria, when we heard a crash from the laundry room in the back of the house. This wasn’t immediately concerning to us. We knew that Mady was home (albeit sleeping downstairs just five minutes prior), and assumed she was the source of the noise. We carried on with our game of Uno, paying no mind to the crash. We played a few more rounds, told a few stories, and just generally carried on the way kids do. Then at some point in our game, Aurelio held up a hand and gave us an inquisitive look. It only took a second for us to hear what he was listening for: from across the house, we heard the distinct sounds of someone rummaging around in the laundry room.
It shouldn’t have been unsettling. After all, we knew Mady was home. That was surely her in the other room, tidying up the mess we heard her make minutes earlier. There was also the matter of this being an old house; when they were building Aunt Mady’s house, they did not demolish the entirety of the house that previously stood in its location. Instead, construction was done around it. Part of the house (including the laundry room) was used to build the new house; creaks and groans here were par for the course.
But we all felt it, and I saw it on Aurelio’s face— something about this wasn’t right.
Aurelio was three years older than Maria and I, so we listened when he told us to wait a second and he’d be right back. The atmosphere was strange. It was like we were all perturbed by something, but unwilling and unable to verbalize what it was.
I sat with Maria until Aurelio came back, and when he did, it seemed like the worry had evaporated off of him. “Window’s open, the air knocked over the laundry baskets.”
I shared a look with Maria and the tension left us both. That was all it took to get us happily playing cards again.
The incident didn’t come up again until three days later, when Aurelio called me. He was talking a mile a minute as soon as I picked up the phone, he didn’t even spare a second for a greeting. He was going on about ghosts and Santeria. I didn’t immediately grasp what he was getting at. It wasn’t until I caught the words “laundry room” that I realized what this was about. In that phone call, Aurelio told me that he had told Mady about what we heard that day in the house, and she essentially freaked out. She told him that she had been sleeping downstairs the whole time. That nobody went into that room.
Aurelio tried to dismiss the incident as the wind, but it was fruitless. From that point on, my aunt was a woman possessed. She called Papi on the phone on numerous occasions, reporting several more incidents of things moving around, food disappearing, and noises in the laundry room. The police were called to her home twice, both times because she believed she heard an intruder in the laundry room. Both searches turned up nothing, and the police began to dismiss her concerns as superstition. She became convinced that something was cursing her, a result of “mal de ojo”, or “evil eye”. She suspected her family and neighbors of secretly performing Santeria rituals with the intent to bring her harm. At one point, she even became convinced that perhaps someone had died in the home before it was refurbished, and was now a ghost walking the halls of her new dream home. On the rare occasion that I was able to see Aurelio, he had tired rings around his eyes. He told me that they had been spending a lot of time at church.
The next time I saw my cousins, it had been weeks since I’d spoken to them on the phone, and months since I last saw them in person. I was flipping through TV channels in the early morning, and there they were on the local news. They were barely in the shot, standing in the background on their neighbor’s lawn, but I spotted them before anything else on the screen. Only then did I begin to take in the scene, and my eyes landed on the stranger being led out of their house in handcuffs.
This man was identified as the previous occupant of the house now owned and inhabited by my aunt.
I barely remember the details of that newscast, but I vividly remember my Mami explaining it to me later that day. What happened was this:
Before my aunt’s home was owned by her, this man “Bubba” had lived there for twenty years. Like more than 50% Overtown’s inhabitants, Bubba was living in poverty. When developers began the razing and redevelopment of the neighborhood, he could no longer afford to remain in his home. He told police that he never meant to cause anyone harm; he simply had nowhere else to go.
Aunt Mady was in a frenzy the whole time the police were sweeping the house, insistent that they not leave a single nook or cranny unchecked. She wanted to know how the hell he was getting in and out of the house without triggering her alarm system, and maybe some part of her still thought they’d find evidence of Santeria.
What they did find was far more grim than some chicken bones. In the laundry room walls, where the old house met the new construction, they found a hidden crawl space. Inside, there was no altar, no animal bones, and certainly no ghost. Instead, they found the food Aunt Mady had been missing, some books, some personal photos, a sleeping bag, and a makeshift toilet. Bubba hadn’t broken into her home at all.
He simply never left.
The historic neighborhood of Overtown, where the house stood, had seen a lot of change around that time. The house was one of many in the neighborhood that had been totally overhauled and built over. Almost none of the original houses (or their occupants) were left, and in their place stood bigger, more modern homes with smaller yards. I remember Papi complaining about these huge new houses in being made of cheap materials and driving out locals who’d lived in Miami for years, but my aunt wouldn’t hear of it. I don’t think anything could’ve talked her out of moving into that flashy house.
Then one day, it happened. I was over at her house with her kids, my cousins Aurelio and Maria, when we heard a crash from the laundry room in the back of the house. This wasn’t immediately concerning to us. We knew that Mady was home (albeit sleeping downstairs just five minutes prior), and assumed she was the source of the noise. We carried on with our game of Uno, paying no mind to the crash. We played a few more rounds, told a few stories, and just generally carried on the way kids do. Then at some point in our game, Aurelio held up a hand and gave us an inquisitive look. It only took a second for us to hear what he was listening for: from across the house, we heard the distinct sounds of someone rummaging around in the laundry room.
It shouldn’t have been unsettling. After all, we knew Mady was home. That was surely her in the other room, tidying up the mess we heard her make minutes earlier. There was also the matter of this being an old house; when they were building Aunt Mady’s house, they did not demolish the entirety of the house that previously stood in its location. Instead, construction was done around it. Part of the house (including the laundry room) was used to build the new house; creaks and groans here were par for the course.
But we all felt it, and I saw it on Aurelio’s face— something about this wasn’t right.
Aurelio was three years older than Maria and I, so we listened when he told us to wait a second and he’d be right back. The atmosphere was strange. It was like we were all perturbed by something, but unwilling and unable to verbalize what it was.
I sat with Maria until Aurelio came back, and when he did, it seemed like the worry had evaporated off of him. “Window’s open, the air knocked over the laundry baskets.”
I shared a look with Maria and the tension left us both. That was all it took to get us happily playing cards again.
The incident didn’t come up again until three days later, when Aurelio called me. He was talking a mile a minute as soon as I picked up the phone, he didn’t even spare a second for a greeting. He was going on about ghosts and Santeria. I didn’t immediately grasp what he was getting at. It wasn’t until I caught the words “laundry room” that I realized what this was about. In that phone call, Aurelio told me that he had told Mady about what we heard that day in the house, and she essentially freaked out. She told him that she had been sleeping downstairs the whole time. That nobody went into that room.
Aurelio tried to dismiss the incident as the wind, but it was fruitless. From that point on, my aunt was a woman possessed. She called Papi on the phone on numerous occasions, reporting several more incidents of things moving around, food disappearing, and noises in the laundry room. The police were called to her home twice, both times because she believed she heard an intruder in the laundry room. Both searches turned up nothing, and the police began to dismiss her concerns as superstition. She became convinced that something was cursing her, a result of “mal de ojo”, or “evil eye”. She suspected her family and neighbors of secretly performing Santeria rituals with the intent to bring her harm. At one point, she even became convinced that perhaps someone had died in the home before it was refurbished, and was now a ghost walking the halls of her new dream home. On the rare occasion that I was able to see Aurelio, he had tired rings around his eyes. He told me that they had been spending a lot of time at church.
The next time I saw my cousins, it had been weeks since I’d spoken to them on the phone, and months since I last saw them in person. I was flipping through TV channels in the early morning, and there they were on the local news. They were barely in the shot, standing in the background on their neighbor’s lawn, but I spotted them before anything else on the screen. Only then did I begin to take in the scene, and my eyes landed on the stranger being led out of their house in handcuffs.
This man was identified as the previous occupant of the house now owned and inhabited by my aunt.
I barely remember the details of that newscast, but I vividly remember my Mami explaining it to me later that day. What happened was this:
Before my aunt’s home was owned by her, this man “Bubba” had lived there for twenty years. Like more than 50% Overtown’s inhabitants, Bubba was living in poverty. When developers began the razing and redevelopment of the neighborhood, he could no longer afford to remain in his home. He told police that he never meant to cause anyone harm; he simply had nowhere else to go.
Aunt Mady was in a frenzy the whole time the police were sweeping the house, insistent that they not leave a single nook or cranny unchecked. She wanted to know how the hell he was getting in and out of the house without triggering her alarm system, and maybe some part of her still thought they’d find evidence of Santeria.
What they did find was far more grim than some chicken bones. In the laundry room walls, where the old house met the new construction, they found a hidden crawl space. Inside, there was no altar, no animal bones, and certainly no ghost. Instead, they found the food Aunt Mady had been missing, some books, some personal photos, a sleeping bag, and a makeshift toilet. Bubba hadn’t broken into her home at all.
He simply never left.
Citation
QuothSam, “The House,” Everything Speaks To Me , accessed September 18, 2026, https://everythingspeakstome.com/items/show/322.