Exerpt of I Found My Dream Home in the Country. Then the Nightmare Began by Dana Ruprecht
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In the fall of 2015, my husband Trevor and I were driving east on the 401, with our eight-year-old son Oliver in the back seat, to visit relatives in the Ottawa Valley.
“Let’s take a different way,” Trevor said. “I want to show you something.”
We pulled off the highway and took a detour through Frontenac County. Trevor took us into Bedford Mills, a ghost town with a population of fewer than 10, located a three-and-a-half-hour drive east of Toronto. The town consists of a handful of cabins, a restored church and an 1830s stone mill, which stands guard over a pond and a waterfall called Buttermilk Falls, like something out of a gothic novel. My husband’s a photographer and he’d first spotted the mill when we drove through the area a few months earlier. I’d been sleeping in the car. He thought it might be a cool place to take pictures.
Even in the stark greyness of a fall afternoon, it was a beautiful spot. We got out of the car and took pictures until Oliver sighed with boredom. Then we looked up. Across the water, atop a craggy limestone cliff, there stood an old yellow house with a big white veranda, which peered down at us through a forest of pine trees. It was the kind of place I’d wanted to live in my whole life: old, beautiful, surrounded by water and trees. And a little spooky.
“Look at that house,” I said, pointing. “Imagine living there.” We drove up a steep driveway, and it was even more charming up close. On the deserted property, there was an old carriage house and a bell that rang with a satisfyingly loud gong. We took some more photos, then went back to the car and drove away.
I couldn’t get the house out of my mind.
Read the rest of this article at https://torontolife.com/real-estate/i-found-my-dream-home-in-the-country-then-the-nightmare-began/
What do you think? Have you ever had a similar experience? What elements did the writer use to make this story interesting?
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