I’ve added one more selection to the audio library on the Tales Told When the Windows Rattle page. It’s “Dark and Dirty Corners,” a tale found in Help for the Haunted: A Decade of Vera Van Slyke Ghostly Mysteries. This adventure takes Vera and Lucille to a very odd — and a very real — house located in Bull Valley, Illinois. Stickney House was built in 1936, possibly 1849, maybe even 1865. More importantly, it was built with no corners. Well, no sharp right angles in the corners. They’re rounded.
Local legend holds that the reason behind these weird corners was to facilitate Spiritualist séances conducted by Mrs. Stickney. If we go on the premise that the Stickneys’ house was built in 1849 (or earlier), this becomes a problem — as Vera explains in the story. There are other explanations for the house’s odd architecture, but these aren’t nearly as interesting, and the séance explanation has become firmly fixed in accounts of the house’s history. I would love it to be true, but so far as I know, there’s no firsthand evidence to support it. Hearsay can be mighty powerful.
But all of this is better explained in the story — and it comes with a sad and spooky ghost! Please enjoy my reading of “Dark and Dirty Corners.”
UPDATE: This reading has become part of Tales Told when the windows rattle, and will be posted here.
— Tim
