Renting a Serial Killer's House

Drawing of a serial killer John Wayne Gacy (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Imagine that you are searching for a place to live and you find a house for rent that seems too good to be true. It is in a nice area, seems well maintained, and the rent is surprisingly affordable. In fact, you could rent this house for a fraction of what nearby apartments would cost you and have much more space. What's the catch? It turns out that a former resident of this house was a serial killer who tortured and murdered victims inside. What do you do?

As described in a recent post by Sharon Hill (Doubtful News), something similar to this happened in St. Louis. The critical difference was that a woman rented this house without being informed about the previous resident. She found out when she saw her house on an A&E documentary about serial killers. That seems like a problem because the woman was not given all the facts before making her decision to sign the lease.

My question involves a different scenario - one where you are informed about the house's history before signing anything. Knowing about the history, would you consider renting such a location if the price was right?

My primary concern here would not involve ghosts, demons, spirits, or other supernatural entities in which I do not believe. I wouldn't worry about bumps in the night, apparitions, cold spots, or any similar nonsense. I find the notion of bad acts somehow poisoning the location at which they occur to be silly, and I don't accept the reality of haunted houses.

No, my concern here would involve living, breathing humans of the sort who might be curious enough to trespass or attempt to conduct "paranormal investigations" of some sort over my objections. I have seen one too many reports of such "investigators" deciding that the history of what is now a private residence entitles them to break in that I'd be reluctant to put myself in such a situation if I could reasonably avoid it.

In my experience, real live humans pose far more of a danger than the apparitions, monsters, or gods they invent.