A Lesson On Tension

I love it when a reporter becomes a character. It adds tension to Michelle O'Donnell's A Haunted House, Clinging To Secrets: Every winter, when the trees drop their leaves, a certain house in Laurelton, Queens, comes into full view. It is a decrepit Victorian on a cul-de-sac at 141-36 222nd Street, a structure whose condition has made it known as "the haunted house."

To say the condition of 141-36 is woeful seems, well, woefully inadequate. Its siding is weathered to the marrow, and most of its windows are boarded over. An "X" painted on the cupola warns of weak floorboards. A locked chain-link fence seals it off from society. A small armada of boats lies beached in the yard under a sea of blue tarp.

Three yellow traffic signs posted at the corner announce, with a Cassandra-like quality, "Dead end," "End," "Dead end."