I bought my dream home the year my father died.
For as long as I can remember one of my dreams was to restore a historic stone home in Northern Spain. I never thought it would happen, but through a series of unexpected events, I found myself the owner of a dilapidated 260-year-old stone home in the region of Galicia the same year my father passed away.
My father had always wanted to do the same, but circumstances had prevented him from achieving his dream. Instead, it was me carrying on his dream for him. Coincidentally the house was only a short walk from the village where he was born. I like to imagine that being from the merchant class, he knew the home and the family and, where ever he was, he had moved the levers that brought me into the possession of the house.
When I first walked through the door it was love at first sight. Granite block walls, chestnut floor and beams, the enormous wooden doors, the gardens. I couldn’t believe no one had bought it. It was a time capsule for how people had lived almost 300 years ago!
This is what I had always wanted and here it was staring me in the face. Being one to think more with my heart than with my head, I put in an offer which the owners accepted the next day.
Bringing this place back from its state of abandonment was a huge undertaking, one made more complicated by the fact that I lived and worked in Canada. This meant that I could only be on site for 3 weeks out of the year. I had to make the most out of the time there, which meant exhausting 12-hour days cleaning, demolishing, planning and organizing the work.
The first task after we had cleaned out all of the trash that had been left behind was to re-roof the house. The old clay tile roof, while beautifully patinated was past its prime, as was the structure holding it up. When it rained, water filtered in through a dozen or more places and moss grew where ever it could find a damp spot.
Installing the new roof meant having to tear down the rooms in the attic. I had never particularly liked being up in the attic. It was a sad, dreary space that contained several cramped, cell-like bedrooms that had enough room for a single bed and not much else.
While tearing down the old plaster and lathe walls, the workers found several items belonging to the previous inhabitants behind the walls. Most of it was old furniture, the only thing that really stood out was a rather large iron candelabra that had long since rusted out, the writing on the front no longer being legible.
Thinking it a curious find, and with the thought of restoring it, I had the workmen drag it down to one of the ground floor storage rooms. With so much going on with the house, I didn’t give it any further thought.
Fast forward 2 years. At this point, the house finally had a brand new red clay tile roof, and a dry attic. It was exciting to finally see progress on the house after so long.
I booked a 2-week vacation to fly out and finish working on the attic space. Since this was the newest part of the house I decided to turn it into a loft where I could stay while work was being done on the rest of the house. Until that point, I had been couch-surfing at a friend’s house. Having the attic finished would be incredibly welcome.
Arriving on a Thursday I decided to get a good night’s rest and start work fresh the following day. I spent the next day at the house going over what had been done and talking to the trades about what needed to be done during the time I was there.
Everything seemed to be well with the house; it always welcomed me with the particular smell of mustiness and humidity which were normal for a home that spends most of the year shuttered, and which has a natural spring mine running under it. They were my smells, and I grew accustomed to them.
On Saturday with an abundance of energy and ready to dig into painting the attic walls, I was dropped off at the house. I opened the large doors and walked into the dark entry hall. I immediately noticed a strong smell which I didn’t identify right away. The mustiness was there, but this was something far stronger and not unpleasant but, out of place. It finally came to me what the smell was. Incense! I ‘m not talking about the cheap dollar store incense you buy to cover up the smell of last night’s reefer party. This was industrial strength incense used in religious ceremonies.
If you’ve ever experienced Holy Week in Spain (or any Roman Catholic country) or visited a major Cathedral, like Santiago de Compostela, you’ll know the smell of incense that I’m referring to. It was once used to mask the smell of pilgrims arriving to worship at important Holy sites or to mask the smell of the dead.
It wasn’t Holy Week and my home, however grand and Castle-like, wasn’t a Cathedral. I couldn’t pinpoint the source of the smell. It wasn’t coming from the street; I would have noticed it as soon as I got out of the car. It was inside the house.
The ground floor of the house is built from large granite blocks and wooden beams. It’s rather medieval looking and imposing. It was built to impress with its wealth and to store goods and stable animals. These days, with its wealth diminished, it was just used to store everything that I couldn’t find a place for upstairs, tools, ladders, old furniture, etc.
The smell seemed to be strongest near what used to be the old salting room. Curious, I cautiously opened the door and peered into the gloom, my hand searching for the light switch. With the light on, all I could see was exactly what should be there, ladders, last years Christmas decorations, and a few wooden pallets. As I walked further into the room the smell grew much stronger. It didn’t make any sense, but the hair on the back of my neck and the goosebumps said otherwise.
As I turned around to leave I noticed the old Candelabra tucked away in a corner. Since the workmen had found it, I hadn’t thought of it. As I got closer to it the smell of incense grew stronger. The smell was centered on the Candelabra. In the two years it had been sitting there neither the house nor the Candelabra had ever smelled like anything other than must and damp.
Disconcerted, I backed out of the room and closed the door.
Over the next few days, the smell persisted, just as powerful as the first day. Every morning I was greeted by the overpowering smell of religious incense. I learned to ignore it, but hastily walked past the storage room every time and I never went in.
One day arriving to work at the house, I walked upstairs loaded with tools and camera gear. I placed my tools on the floor and my camera bag on a large box in what used to be the old dining room. I unshuttered the windows, unbolted the doors to let in the light and went to work painting in the attic.
It was a beautiful day outside, the sun was shining in through the skylights. I was admiring the room when I heard a loud crash. I didn’t think much of it; Sometimes the doors to the garden will slam with a gust of wind. Thinking that was the cause of the noise, I continued my work.
At midday I went down to the old dining room to have something to eat when I noticed that my camera was on the floor, and the garden doors closed. It hadn’t been the doors but my camera hitting the ground. Picking it up to make sure it still worked, I was confounded because it was impossible for such a heavy camera to have fallen from the middle of a large box onto the ground.
This was starting to get weird, but being the stoic, I put it to the back of my mind and forged ahead with my tasks for the day.
The following day I was back at it again. I was almost finished with the painting when at about midday, I decided that I had had enough of being on the ladder and stepped down to go for a bite to eat. That’s when I noticed the dust pan sitting in the middle of the doorway. I thought it was very odd because I hadn’t brought it up. It should have been down in the old stables but there it was. Starting to think I was either going crazy or I had an invisible guest, I jokingly said “ not today. I don’t feel like sweeping” and put it aside.
As I sat in the garden eating, I couldn’t help but think that the strange occurrences were connected, that something was making its presence known. The house was built in 1754 and it had seen its share of people being born, living and dying between its walls. Maybe one of them was still here? What if I had done something to displease them in some way? But why now? in the two years previous nothing strange had happened. I started to feel very unsettled about being in the house alone.
The following day had been calm at the house. I kept steeling myself for something to occur but I made it through the day with out incident.
It was dusk and I was in the middle of closing the house so I could leave. I had just finished shuttering the windows and bolting the doors in the old livingroom when I heard the door bell ring (thank God for wireless door bells. Hearing the knocker would have given me a heart attack at this point)
It was a friend of a friend who stopped by to see how the work on the house was going.
This is a very small town and that a foreigner was restoring the old house was the current topic of conversation among the local inhabitants. Apparently, it had been the home of a famous and wealthy family which made it all the more gossip worthy.
I quickly showed him around the house and went home for the evening.
The following day I arrived looking forward to the fact that the electrician and plumber would be there to put install the plumbing for the bathroom and wire the lights. For the first time in 2 years, I would have a working toilet in the house and lighting in the attic!
Walking up the staircase I could see light coming from the dining room. There shouldn’t be any light in the dining room. We had removed the wiring when we gutted the space a year ago and, with the windows shuttered it was always dark.
Arriving at the top of the staircase, I could see that the doors to the garden were wide open! I thought, this isn’t possible, I shuttered them all last night. I distinctly remember because the doors and windows are all held fast by heavy iron bars and I had shown our friend this part of the house with a flashlight, as I had shuttered this room before he arrived.
As I mentioned, this is an old house. Almost everything that was in use in 1754 was still in use when I bought it, even the security system. The “security system” as I call it, consists of heavy iron bars on all the exterior facing doors, shutters and windows. Once the bars are in place, they can only be opened from the inside, and it makes opening the door or window impossible. You would have to shatter heavy chestnut to gain entry. But here they were, opened to the garden, the heavy bars lying against the wall.
A visual search of the room and found nothing out of the ordinary. Searching the other rooms revealed the same. Nothing had been moved, or taken.
Something had removed the iron bar and opened the doors. That same thing had tossed a heavy camera onto the floor and moved a dust pan up two flights of steps and left it in the attic. Whatever it was, was also the source of the smell of incense.
The visible I can deal with, the invisible I find much harder to cope with. And with my nerves already on edge from the reno, this was one more stress that I didn’t need. Unnerved I yelled “ What do you want? I’m here busting my ass to rebuild this house, which your family had all but abandoned”
I’ve watched a lot of horror films in the past and thinking back, I don’t think yelling at whoever was here was the wisest of strategies, at least not in movies.
During the following days, nothing else happened at the house, even when I decided that the attic was finally at the point where I could finally stay there overnight. They were tense nights but without incident.
I say that nothing further happened at the house, but that week and a few days since the smell of incense appeared, two people in the village passed away: the old Barber and the father of an acquaintance.
What about the old Candelabra in the storeroom that started this? The smell of incense started to weaken soon after. Afterward, I discovered that the Candelabra was used in vigils for the deceased at a time when the deceased were kept at home until respects had been paid and, it was time to bury them.
Who was causing the strange occurrences? Was it someone who used to live in the house? or was it a portent of coming death?
With my working vacation over, I closed up and said goodbye to the house until I return. The Candelabra is still sitting in the storeroom waiting for me to decide what to do with it.