Halloween
brings out the creepies, ghosts, and goblins!
Haunted houses have us paying to be scared senseless. But as I was
driving to a listing appointment yesterday, I had to laugh about a memory of a
creepy house that a client wanted to see, years ago, before I moved to Georgia.
As a
brand newly licensed Realtor® in the State of Tennessee, I was eager to please
my clients, willing to go the extra mile in order to find them a perfect, new
home. Little did I know, the “extra
mile” was going to take me on a 10-county house-hunting expedition!
While I
was an agent in Tennessee, my keypad gave me access to every lock box in the
state---I had no limits to where I could sell properties, as long as I was
willing to make the drive. I lived in
Knoxville, but if someone wanted to see a property in Memphis, I could show it
to them. Now, of course, I wouln't go
to that extreme-I would simply refer a client to a Memphis agent. But you get the idea. The advantage was that if we had clients that
wanted to see properties in outlying counties, it wasn’t a problem.
I was
working with my second client as a Realtor®, and I was ready to impress them
with my knowledge of the area and newly-learned skills I had gotten in the
classroom. I was ready to give them a
tour of Knoxville, but they wanted to see properties in remote locations, as
well. They weren’t particular about what
county they lived; they just wanted it to be rural, with privacy and acreage. They were fine with a house that needed some
repairs: They were cash buyers, so my
search required no limits as to whether the house was a fixer-upper or not. I went to work searching for properties in
their price-range, with the minimum required acreage and house that was
suitable for the needs of their family.
In order to have several properties for them to consider, they asked me
not to limit the search by county. The
search ended up with properties expanding across 10-counties: Knox, Blount, Anderson, Morgan, Sevier,
Roane, Grainger, Union, Loudon and Jefferson counties.
Now, in
the life of a real estate professional, you never know what each new day will
bring, which is one of the things most appealing about being in the
business. It is also one of the things
that causes the most anxiety….but can make for some great stories! So, here goes:
We
traveled through Knox County. We searched high and low in Loudon County, and a
few places in Blount County with elevations that made our ears pop. We drove up
hills in Sevier County that made my brakes rebel and smoke on the way back
down. In spite of the miles racking up
on the odometer, I was still good with it.
I was driving a Ford Expedition that was going through gas like water,
but I was bound and determined to make sure my clients were well taken care
of. (I even had a cooler of bottled
water and a basket of snacks in the back seat in case anyone needed refreshment!)
The day
was coming to an end, and they wanted to see one more…..The one they thought for
sure was, “The One.” It was located in an unincorporated town in
Morgan County called, Petros. (Pronounced
Pee-Tross.) Petros, at
one time, was a coal mining town, and the home of Brushy Mountain State
Penitentiary (which closed in 2009). The
movie, October Sky, filmed several
coal mine and town scenes in Petros.
To give you a little history and
to set the stage for the showing that night…..Brushy Mountain State
Penitentiary is an old prison that opened in 1896. The original prison was a wooden structure,
but was later replaced in the 1920s with a castle-like building constructed
from stone mined by prisoners from a rock quarry on the property. As of 2008 Brushy Mountain was the oldest
operating prison in Tennessee.
The prison is almost completely
surrounded by rugged wooded terrain in a remote section of the Cumberland
Plateau. Escape attempts were infrequent and almost always unsuccessful. The best-known
escape attempt occurred on June 10, 1977, when James Earl Ray, the assassin of
Martin Luther King Jr., escaped by climbing over a fence, along with six other
inmates. Ray was captured less than two
days later in a rugged mountain terrain less than three miles from the prison.
In its final years of operation,
Brushy Mountain had a capacity of 584 inmates, of all custody levels. It kept a maximum security designation due to
the ninety six bed maximum security annex within the prison walls. These ninety
six beds were used to house the states most troublesome inmates.
So this is where the house was
that my clients wanted to see: In Petros,
TN. They were ready to buy, and I was ready to write an offer! So setting aside all sense fear and anxiety
and putting on a confident face, we headed up to Morgan County to find that the
house had no electricity turned on, and the sun was well on its way down behind
the hills. We were soon to be in the
dark…..In Morgan County…..Where James Earl Ray had escaped from the pen back in
the day. No problem. I can do this.
These being my earlier, less experienced days, I didn’t have a “tool kit” put
together that held all the tools of the trade I now keep in my car, such as a
flashlight. But since it was dusk, we
could still see a bit from the outside.
The INSIDE of the house was another story. For some reason, all the windows in the house
were covered with wrapping paper, so no light was able to come through the
windows. The walls were paneled
throughout the house, adding to the darkness of the building. We pretty much had to feel our way through the
house as our eyes adjusted to the lack of light. I kept telling myself, “It’s fine…What are
you expecting to find? A dead body?
Perhaps an escaped convict?” Come
on! I can DO this! We headed to the back of the house to check
out the last bedroom at the end of the hall.
Ready to point out the closet features of the home, I opened the closet
door and had to jump out of the way of SOMETHING falling out of the attic space
in the top of the closet! I turned
around and bolted out of the house, most likely screaming some absurd,
high-pitched squeal that did nothing to add to the professional image I was
trying so hard to maintain!
Back in the car, heart pounding,
and sure a dead body had just fallen through the ceiling, I realized I had left
my clients in the house. Catching my
breath and trying to get my heart rate back to a comfortable pace, I looked up
to see that they were on the way out of the house and headed toward the
car. They got in the car with a chuckle
(and I am sure a big eye-roll), and stated, “Now THAT was one deadly foam
mattress pad!”
I didn’t get nominated for
Realtor of the Year that year.
But, I did sell them a
house. Just not in Petros.
No comments:
Post a Comment