Shocking

Even though this was one of the first curiosities we found in the house–it hangs right in the middle of the second floor hallway so it's real hard to miss–it took me forever to discover what it means.

This is the original electric box for the house. Just like the fuse box of old, or the breaker box you use now, this was where electricity to outlets and fixtures in the house was controlled. Albeit, everything turned off all at once by flipping that cartoon-like electric handle, there, in the top-middle of the box (I swear I remember seeing Bugs Bunny flip one of those in the cartoons of my childhood.) One electric contractor said its still hot and confirmed that there is some active Knob & Tube in the house.

One of the mysteries about this box was what the pink label meant. OK, I knew it was an inspection sticker, but was there a story to it and what was that handwriting scrawled up the middle of the door?

With a lot of time and research I found out that the Ransdell's owned the house from 1948-1951. They ran an upholstery shop out of it at that time. Someone, presumably a child, wrote their name right through the middle of the door.

The date the house was built was declared a mystery because of a fire at the records office. Well, with some additional in depth research I discovered that the property the house sits on was compiled through several purchases from 1901-1906. A portion of the total property was sold to a neighbor in April 1908. Now, I suspect that that lot of land would not have been sold after the house was built since it moved the property line to only 7 feet from the house, but immediately before building began. Assuming that the Oct. 1908 date on the inspection sticker was added during the final stages of building (when then, like now, you would have had a utilities inspector check the electricians handiwork and sign off on it). I can surmise that the house was built between April and October, 1908.

Kind of a cool finding from the old electric box. Now if I can only figure out what it means every time the ghost opens the box (yeah, while I work from home, and am home totally alone, on numerous occasions, the box would be closed and latched, I'd go upstairs to work and upon coming back down the stairs, the door would be full open. Hasn't happened in a while, but still ....