CARBONDALE, Ill.—An incident in Carbondale earlier this afternoon underscores the weird history of a particular house in that college town.
At about 1:10 today (Saturday, May 31, 2014), a call was made to Carbondale police about a “14-year-old female out of control with a knife” at a location on the corner of West Oak and Poplar. Police were dispatched and took the white female 14-year-old into custody; sources advised that she was going to be taken to an area hospital for a psych eval.
The situation, however, has its weird side, given that the house—a rental at 412 West Oak Street—has a history that’s given it a reputation for being “haunted.”
Known locally as the “Rain House,” an incident chronicled there occurred in April of 1982, when a professor of marketing at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, who was of Israeli nationality, was found deceased in the house.
Cover of Bruce Cline’s book in which the Rain House is featured
According to the book More History, Mystery and Hauntings of Southern Illinois, the second in a trio of books about weird events and tales by author Bruce Cline, a segment called “The Professor’s Ghost” outlines the “house of death and hauntings” that was owned at that time by professor Sion Raveed. Raveed subdivided the house and rented it to students at SIUC where he taught.
He wasn’t a very nice landlord; if tenants would complain about conditions, Cline wrote, the professor would “have all of their belongings removed from the house and thrown to the curbside while they were away attending classes.
“The professor was very peevish and was allegedly involved in some dubious international activities that resulted in criminal investigations by state and federal law enforcement agencies,” Cline wrote. “In April of 1982, the professor was murdered. His body was found inside a laundry bag in the basement of the house on West Oak Street after someone noticed that the laundry bag smelled far worse than someone’s unwashed laundry. The bag contained the professor’s decomposing body. He had been stabbed multiple times. It was obvious that the professor had made some enemies and that they wanted him dead beyond doubt.”
When the place was put up for rent after that, weird things kept happening.
One renter Mary Bennes, residing in the upstairs of the place with two other girls while male students rented the bottom of the house, reported that there were objects moving constantly, and that the TV would change channels (this in the days before universal remote controls could be blamed for such a thing). The male students downstairs, Bennes said, also reported their TV changing channels or lights turning off or dimming. A house dog would refuse to stay in the basement and would “go crazy if the door to the basement closed.” As well, a white picket fence around the backyard would not take paint when applied; “Mary could put a whole gallon of white paint” on one spot, Cline chronicled, and a “pinkish color would come through.”
Mary fell and hurt her elbow, and a major surgery cut short her school career there. She told Cline she considered it a blessing, considering the events that later occurred at the house….which included another tragic death.
In September of 2010, a party at the house, which involved a lot of alcohol and some illegal drugs, ended badly when some partygoers climbed up to the roof to sit there and talk.
“The next morning,” Cline wrote, “there were reports of people running from the building. One of the students that attended the party was found dead on the driveway next to the house. He had apparently fallen from the roof to the ground, a distance of about 30 feet.
“Was the student intoxicated and accidentally fell to his death,” Cline wrote, “or did someone or something with evil intent push him to his death? Maybe it was the residual evil from the murder in 1982 that continues to visit the house that played a hand in the tragedy.”
After the incident reported today, those in the neighborhood speculated to Carbondale sources that maybe whatever is “evil” in the Rain House might’ve affected the 14-year-old girl in some way. That’s not something that a psych eval will necessarily show…but it is weird, is it not? And we thought that, with all the OTHER weirdness going on regularly in Carbondale, this might be a little more otherworldly as opposed to the abject corruption that ‘haunts’ entirely too many people in the downstate Illinois college town. We ourselves don’t believe in ghosts or hauntings…but there’s definitely such a thing as evil presence, and in some locations, that’s an inarguable facet of our lives in southern Illinois.
The Rain House, photographed this afternoon in Carbondale
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hit our Facebook page (yes we still have one), and this post on it if you’d like to discuss this subject on Facebook; and be sure you check your “get notifications” selection under the ‘like’ button on our page; recent Facebook upgrades have booted many of our followers off from getting our posts. Also, check us on Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ and Tumblr!