Last month I began my research into the house in Hell, Michigan and zeroed in on a few old newspapers that had been digitized. Turns out the Geblüt family had lived in the mansion since the 1950s when it was built by the great grandmother—Esselte Geblüt—who immigrated to America from some barren region of the Harz Mountains, the highest Northern mountain range in Germany. She was a well-known figure from a highborn family who suddenly left the Harz Mountains to move to a remote part of Michigan (Hell, no less) for reasons unknown. One of the meanings of the word hell in German is “pale” translated into English.
When I saw a photo of Esselte Geblüt in the newspaper, she fit the definition to a T. With her hair pulled back, stark white skin, pointy ears, and full lips there was a vampiric quality about the woman.
Esselte found a husband (Victor) in Michigan and they apparently had four children who all passed away at young ages from a strange “disorder of the neurological system.” It was almost like the couple was incompatible; like they were from different species that were not meant to intermix. The papers in Hell were spotty at that time. I learned that Esselte’s husband died in the seventies, but there was nothing about Esselte. What’s more, people had been disappearing in the woods surrounding the mansion for a couple decades. Kids! By connecting all the headlines I found in the digitized papers, the numbers reached into the double digits. Since the disappearances were spread out over decades and at different times in the year, investigators had not found a common thread that sewed together any of them.
The really crazy part is the local rumor that Esselte was a vampire! Geblüt is one spelling of “blood” in German! I wish I hadn’t looked that up. When she moved in all kinds of wooden crates arrived from the Harz Mountains with German words stamped across them. A local contractor claimed to have opened one and all there was was dirt inside. The general contractor demanded that they use it for the foundation of the mansion. When they were building the mansion the GC made them use every scrap of wood from the crates in the walls of the house. Some were even used for shelves. It all had to be used.
I am known to enjoy a well-done vampire story here and there, but I've never believed any of them. I am a modern man of legal education and reason, after all. My real estate agent/friend M_____ (funny how the placement of those titles changed so quickly) said he thought that the executors of the mansion—he had yet to track them down—had been keeping the place up all these years (though doing a poor job of it) and had run out of money. The blood trust fund had gone dry, I guess. He tells me the Geblüt Mansion is going to be auctioned “soon.”
“Like how soon is ‘soon’?” I questioned.
“Saturday. Absolute auction.”
“What do you think it will go for?”
“Thirty . . . fifty tops for this 6800 square feet mansion, with five bedrooms, arched stairs, and three fireplaces on forty wooded acres.”
“First, you talk way too much like a real estate agent,” I told him. “Second, there is no way I can come up with that much cash that quickly.”
“Don’t worry, Drew. I’ll front the cash. If I get it in that price range you’ll be the first to know. If you don’t want it, one of my other clients will pick it up in a hurry.”
“Deal,” I said. That was two weeks ago and I'll finish this story tomorrow.
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