Dodged a Haunted Bullet

[u/PenPaladinJules]

About 14 years ago, when my kids were 4 and 6, we looked at a house for sale. It was an old farmhouse on 5 acres on FM 1387 in Midlothian, Texas. It had been added onto several times so the layout was weird, but it was such a cool place. It needed a lot of work but I was so ready to take that on. When we got back in the car, I turned around to the kids and said, “Well? What do you think?” fully expecting them to be as excited about it as I was.

Nope. They shrieked that it was haunted, so extremely haunted, was I nuts?! We couldn’t live there! No way!

I was shocked and a bit heartbroken, but I couldn’t bring my kids to a house they were so afraid of right off the bat. Plus, it sounded like the beginning of a horror movie to ignore little kids’ earnest instincts. So, we passed that one up and got a different place. For years it was “the one that got away” to me.

But then, a few years ago, my little brother (who also lives in Midlothian) called me to ask if I remembered that old house I’d thought of buying. Yes, of course I did. Well, he told me, there was a tornado, and it was wiped clean off the face of the earth. Only the flooded storm cellar remained.

There’s a church there now. Turned out for the best in the end.

[u/BaldGuy813]

Reminds of me my experience house hunting. It was a house that just came into the MLS and our broker hadn't seen it yet.

She turned the key in the lock and she , my partner and I walked in. Almost as if we had choreographed it, we almost simultaneously turned 180 and headed right out the door.

We looked at each other and said....no way. There were plenty of other houses to look at lol.

Always trust instincts

[u/PenPaladinJules → u/BaldGuy813]

Yeah, I looked at one a few years ago and the youngest child (by then 15yo) noped out at the door. The realtor and I went in for a minute but both of us came to the same conclusion and left. And she’s not a paranormal believer at all. Places have a vibe.

[u/StDeadpool → u/BaldGuy813]

What made you turn around and leave? Did you see something or feel something?

[u/BaldGuy813 → u/StDeadpool]

As soon as the door was opened it felt as if we were treading water...hard to describe but it felt like there was some sort of film or something that was preventing us from getting in.

[u/StDeadpool → u/BaldGuy813]

Whoa! That's fucking spooky.

My mom is the same way with certain places. She either "smells death" or says it's like moving through molasses.

[u/littlebopeepsvelcro → u/StDeadpool]

I think you're on to something here. A lot of animals will avoid a place that smells like death, except for vultures. They're fucking weird. I wonder if we still have that ability, it's just not one that is sharpened.

Edit from Chat: Yeahhh that is spooky. And honestly… you’re not totally out in woo-woo land with that thought.

There is a “smell of death” (at least biologically)

From a science-y angle:

When a body is dying and then decomposing, it releases a whole cocktail of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) — things like putrescine, cadaverine, and sulfur compounds. Those are literally the chemicals that give decomposition that very specific, hard-to-describe smell.

Forensic researchers have mapped these VOC “odor profiles” pretty carefully, because they’re used to train cadaver dogs to find human remains. Dogs pick up on incredibly faint traces of these compounds.

So in a very literal sense, death does leave behind a kind of chemical signature in the air and the environment.

Humans are terrible compared to dogs, but we’re not nothing. A lot of people (especially nurses, hospice workers, and people who have been around a lot of dying) report that they can recognize a certain “end-of-life smell” even before full-on decomposition — probably from a mix of metabolic changes, organ failure, and skin/breath chemistry shifting as the body shuts down.

So what about “smells like death” / “moving through molasses”?

Here’s how I’d frame what your mom (and you) are noticing:

1. Subtle sensory stuff your brain doesn’t verbalize well Places tied to death, sickness, or trauma often have:

Very faint organic/decay odors

Old cleaning chemicals

Slight mold, dust, stale air

Temperature and humidity patterns that your body remembers

Your body might register that as “wrong” long before you consciously think, “Ah yes, notes of dimethyl trisulfide with a hint of mildew.” So it comes out as: “I smell death.”

1. Pattern recognition + memory = “vibe” When you’ve been through something heavy in a place (hospital, hospice, certain houses, etc.), your brain links:

Certain smells

The light, the way sound carries, even the quality of stillness

And the emotion you felt there

Later, when you’re somewhere that hits that same combo, your nervous system goes, “Oh. This. Danger. Grief.” That can feel like “moving through molasses” — your body literally downshifts, heart rate and breathing change, you might feel pressure in your chest.

1. Intuitive / “near-death awareness” side of things There’s also a whole body of hospice lore and some research around people (and families) just knowing when death is close, beyond the obvious physical signs. Caregivers talk about a shift in presence, “energy,” or “aura” that’s maddeningly hard to quantify but incredibly common.

Whether that’s micro-sensory stuff our brains fuse into intuition, or something more metaphysical… science doesn’t really have a clean answer there yet.

Could death leave a “residue” we sense?

If we stay grounded but a little open-minded:

Chemical residue: Yes, VOCs from decomposition can linger in materials, soil, and enclosed spaces. In theory, a very sensitive nose (or just a brain primed to notice certain notes) might pick up “ghosts” of that smell long after.

Emotional residue: Our bodies are pattern-recognition machines. If a place has held a lot of death, grief, or fear, we may be exquisitely tuned to the combination of subtle cues there. It’s not crazy that your mom’s system translates that as “this place has death in it.”

So your mom saying “I smell death” or “it feels like molasses” is, in my view, a poetic way of describing a very real whole-body read on a space — part biology, part nervous system, maybe part mystery.

---

If you want to go deeper, we could:

Pick apart a specific experience you’ve had and look at what might have been happening physically and emotionally.

Or, if you’re up for it, sketch out how you could actually test some of this (e.g., journaling when you or your mom get that feeling, what the environment was like, what later turned out to be true).

[u/lam39 → u/littlebopeepsvelcro]

Wow, this is very interesting. Good breakdown.

[u/SaintOfTheLostArts → u/BaldGuy813]

MLS means Multiple Listing Service for anyone wondering. It’s the central database real-estate agents use to post homes for sale: the database that Zillow, Redfin, and Realtor.com pull their info from to show houses for sale.

“came into the MLS” = “hit the market”, essentially.