Ariel Castro's Seymour Avenue home reduced to rubble

[localroger]

15. This bothers me

Tearing down a perfectly good building because something bad once happened there is a rare thing. We generally don't do that to houses were people were actually killed, even famously, although we require potential buyers to be warned of the cooties that might be residing within. This strikes me as the atavistic reaction of a primitive tribe whose highest advisor is the witch doctor who has shaken his head and pronounced, sadly, that the place cannot be cleansed of the evil embedded within it.

While it's true the house would probably be infamous and a tourist magnet that will still be true of anything built on the site; probably the only safe thing to build there is a memorial park, which is a very bizarre thing when none of the victims are, like, dead. This obviously affects people more deeply than death, deeply enough that someone just threw away $100,000+ in value for the sake of spitting in Ariel Castro's eye.

If another house is built on the lot it will still be That Place. If it's left vacant or a memorial garden is planted it will be a visible scar and still That Place. I just don't get the logic of tearing the house down. It's fucking stupid. I can't imagine the thought processes of the person who actually got control of the deed and arranged the demolition, particularly in such a public and spectacular way as if to act like some kind of ghosts are being evicted.

There are no ghosts. Even if you believe in ghosts there are no ghosts here because nobody died. It's just fucking stupid.

The house where the Manson family murdered Sharon Tate stood until 1994, and was only finally replaced because the buyer wanted an upgrade on the bling level.