Highland Park House of Horrors

I'm a minimalist, a Modernist and a card-carrying neatnik, so everything about this Chalet-style house in Highland Park gave me the willies.

Just inside the front door. Hello, is crazy home?

To the left was the living room. Or what would have been the living room if it hadn't been converted into one of the North Shore's largest collections of curiosities. There was stuff everywhere but the ceiling.

The "dining room." Please watch your step.

Another angle of the dining room. That stereo on the right was pumping out heavy metal, which only added to my growing sense of dread. This place was weird.

Welcome to the kitchen, where the specialty of the house is pork and beans in a can. This is where I first heard the shouting.

Turns out the owner was home, and none too happy. Because this was the second day of the sale, almost everything was half price. But he didn't like that. In his opinion things were priced too low already. They'd always been priced too low and he was getting ripped off.

I scurried down the stairs on the right, to the basement.

Oh boy. This place made the first floor look livable. The argument raged on, and now the people running the estate sale were shouting as well. What did he want them to do? Look at all this stuff! They couldn't work miracles. And besides, he'd signed a contract.

Deeper into the basement. There was stuff back there, but no way to get to it. Note the vacuum cleaner on the left.

Doors slammed above me and the argument continued outside. I crept back upstairs to the second floor.

Top of the stairs. Vacuum cleaner #2.

One of the bedrooms. Vacuum cleaners #3 and #4 are there in the back. It's like people kept giving this guy vacuum cleaners as gifts, hoping he'd take the hint.

In the end, I all but ran screaming from this place. But not before getting a few things I'd managed to find in all the clutter.

Purchased: Jack Jones, Our Song; Robert Goulet, Sincerely Yours; Barbra Streisand, Stoney End LPs, Stewart Moscovitz penguin print, $1.50.

Evanston Family Home

Sometimes you step into a place where time seems to have stopped the moment the kids moved out. This little cottage-style home in Evanston is a good example.

A bedroom on the first floor. I'm almost certain that avocado shag carpeting went down sometime in the early '70s, and was paired with cobalt blue and harvest gold accents.

Downstairs in the basement. Someone must have practiced archery in the backyard once upon a time.

Another corner of the basement. I bet the kids rode those bikes all over town once they were old enough.

Things got more interesting -- and revealing -- in the upstairs bedrooms. This room must have belonged to a teenage boy.

Because all those boxes were filled with comic books. They're probably worth some money to the right person.

Additional evidence, literally piled up in the second upstairs bedroom. Looking at this stuff, you can practically chart the kid's progress from Tinkertoys and Tonka trucks to Simon to weightlifting.

Eventually the kid moved out, but mom and dad hung on to all that stuff. In the end, they were the only ones who wanted it.

Almost Empty Prospect Heights House

This place surprised me. When I arrived around 11:00 all that was left were a few pieces of furniture and a lot of ugly wallpaper.

Just inside the front door. Hello? Is anybody here?

Looking to the left at the living room. I want that fireplace. Now. Please.

Someone went to three weddings, three proms, or three Oscar ceremonies some time in the 1970s.

Go past the dresses, turn left and you'll find an empty room.

Make a right and you'll find another.

This looks like a bathroom that you'd find at a really nice Wild West bordello.

Nothing to see here. Move along. The basement stairs are just to your left.

Sweet bar, semi-cool chair, nice fireplace. What's that in the closet?

Wild West bordello patrons?

The rest of the basement. Plenty of room for a lively game of ping pong.

Found on top of the ping pong table. I should have bought these. They would have been good for minutes of laughs.

Barely used, I'm sure. Maybe because that seat was so damned uncomfortable.

Kind of a cool desk. It was only $20.

Back upstairs. The remnants of what might once have been a TV room. All done here. Next.

Highland Park Mid-Century Modern

Not every estate sale is the result of a death or bankruptcy. Sometimes, people just decide to start new lives. Like the former owner of this place.

It was the only Modern house on a quiet, tree-lined street just a few blocks from the lake. It must have been built sometime in the late '60s or early '70s, and had a cantilevered front deck and bright colors picking out the trim. Driving up to it, looking for the address, I kept saying, "Please be it, please be it, please be it." It was.

A phalanx of well-kept older women greeted me at the door. They seemed slightly befuddled at all the hubbub and commotion, as though this was their first time doing something like this. Maybe it was.

The house had an unusual layout. The first floor was small, made up of a single room, and might have been reserved for entertaining. It had big windows looking out onto the backyard, and seemed to be the kind of place that encouraged wearing caftans while serving smart cocktails and listening to Burt Bacharach 8-track tapes. This spiral staircase rose up just inside the front door. Yes, that's orange carpeting on those risers.

The stairs led to a galley kitchen at the top. The windows on the left overlooked a good-sized front deck. "Imagine hauling your groceries up here," one of the women said as she followed me up. That room just ahead was an artist's studio.

The house was filled with artwork, and apparently it all originated here. The former occupant was an artist, and had decided to leave the country. "She has a passion for Nicaragua," another woman told me -- they seemed to be everywhere, which made taking pictures a touchy proposition -- "and all the art is for sale."

Here's an example, which I rather liked. It's from her "Nicaraguan Strays" series, and priced at $1900. The artist also painted nudes, and yet another woman told me, "You can see faces in them." I assumed she was talking about more than the faces of the models. "The longer you look the more you see."

I fell in love with this house. It needed work -- some of the wall colors were a bit exuberant -- but it had dozens of great touches like radio/intercoms in the walls and dark wood beams on the second-floor ceilings. It's too bad the bedrooms were closed off, because I would have enjoyed nosing around in them.

This Lightolier fixture hung at the top of the spiral staircase. It seemed to be calling my name, but the $1700 price tag didn't say a thing.

This is back downstairs, in the party room. I'm pretty sure those are Nicaraguan baskets lined up on the shelves. They're actually quite beautiful, but I can understand why she'd leave them behind. Where she's going, there's sure to be plenty more.

Crumbling Winnetka Colonial

Who knows if houses can actually be haunted? What I do know is that some houses are certainly haunting. This one is proof.

Just walking up the circular drive I could tell it had seen better days, and that those days were somewhere in the distant past. Bricks were stripped of paint, the mortar worn away by who knows how many storms. The roof was rough and patchy. The front porch sagged. Inside I found a rambling mansion frozen in time, except for all the decay.

Somehow, parts of the main floor had managed to maintain a bit of their grandeur. This sun room still seemed welcoming despite all the dust and dirt.

Contrary to most older homes, the kitchen was actually one of the nicer rooms. Of all of them, it looked like it had been decorated most recently -- about forty years ago.

Two service kitchens occupied the space leading toward the dining room. The second had a wet bar, shown above. The dining room itself was generous, and I got the impression that someone had enjoyed hosting parties and celebrations here, once upon a time.

The glassware was another clue that entertaining had been a favorite activity. It was everywhere. Lined up in open cupboards...

... on counter tops...

... and tables.

The public spaces downstairs also included a formal living room with a grand piano, and a clubby, wood-paneled den. I could imagine a family watching TV there, or gathered around the game table.

The private spaces upstairs told a different story. Three main hallways cut through the second floor, and each one had several rooms off of it.

This suite -- with a sitting, dressing and bedroom -- was the strangest. It must have belonged to the lady of the house. I don't know what was more upsetting: the extreme wear and tear, all the personal items she'd left behind, or the fact that her presence was still so strong.

Here's the sitting room. I bet she read here at night, before going to bed, and planned the parties for downstairs during the day.

The sitting room again, from the opposite angle. All the clutter and mess of an estate sale didn't do this room any favors, but even if it had been in perfect order, the sense of decline was still evident.

There was water damage everywhere, and the carpet was so badly worn I could see the backing. Even that was pretty threadbare.

Here's the dressing room. The closet behind me was enormous, and oddly empty.

Pictures of children -- probably from fifty years ago -- still hung on the bedroom walls. Family pictures are a rarity at estate sales. Survivors almost always take them. Wherever these kids are, I bet it's far away.

The house had seven bathrooms, and all were out of order.

While I was upstairs I overheard two people talking about the woman who'd lived here. She'd been alone for many years, and after a while stopped letting anyone into the house. That's a sad end for someone who'd once enjoyed entertaining so much.

Apparently she spent her time putting together jigsaw puzzles. They filled one room.

And tending an extensive and well-organized collection of seashells.

This is the library. There weren't many current books on the shelves, which added to that frozen-in-time feeling.

This is the view from one of the upstairs windows, looking out onto the back yard. In contrast to the rest of the place, it seemed very well maintained.

There was a basement, too. About halfway down these stairs the smell of mold became overpowering.

The room at the bottom was painted dark blue, and reminded me of that basement in The Silence of the Lambs. Just beyond that doorway was a second, even stranger room.

I didn't know what to make of it. It was situated in the deepest part of the basement. The red ceiling definitely gave it a sinister feeling. But it was also well-appointed, with a fireplace and built-in bookshelves.

And this elaborate, incongruous mural on one wall.

Earlier, when I'd been in the den, I'd found an LP that looked interesting, and I carried it with me through the rest of my tour. But I put it back before leaving. I just didn't want to bring anything home with me from this place.