Home is where the haunt is

This particular mansion may be well below the upscale, luxury-home price range, if you check current Halloween property values. In fact, the only way to market it might be to appoint Stephen King as its Realtor, Mary Shelley as its interior designer and Charles Addams as its architect -- with the blueprints drawn up in blood, of course.

Since the property is haunted, there may not be a ghost of a chance of selling it. At least, not without some kind of paranormal guarantee.

With Halloween night looming, local architect Bill Snyder envisioned the ghoulish particulars of the haunted mansion's design, using part imagination, part pieces of folklore and a fraction of old Disneyland memories.

This hypothetical spook palace would be situated atop Lone Mountain. And at three stories high, it would be an imposing structure indeed, employing the darkest elements of Victorian architecture.

"This hilltop, while it is known as Lone Mountain today, used to be known as `Haunted Hill' back in the Victorian age," said Snyder, who was digging deep into some speculative 19th-century history. "Haunted Hill was so named because of the squabbles of the miners back then. Being (Southern Nevada), the house was built over an old mine shaft or cave, and it's haunted by the spirits of the miners who have never left, and are still seeking the fortunes of their old mine."

As a result, bats can frequently be seen flying out the windows of the mansion, which Snyder said is similar to the Addams Family residence in its construction, circa 1960s TV.

But Snyder pointed out that this mansion is composed of "beautiful stone from Red Rock Canyon," and now is "weatherbeaten" due to all the fires that have beset the cursed edifice over time.

Still unmistakable are the mansion's "steep slate roof with many gables, dormer windows, and a bell tower used as a `lookout'," as conceived by Snyder.

One needs to climb a flight of stone steps even to approach the house, he said. Adding to its menacing visage would be a pair of stone pedestals with evil gargoyles planted atop both. Upon reaching the front door, one is dwarfed by the enormity of both the wooden door and massive door knocker.

And no spiritual spread would be complete without a "BEWARE" sign. Snyder pictured it being etched over the front door in limestone.

Naturally, the lights flicker. Constantly. Local handyman Mike Klimek elaborated on the causes of this creepy malfunction.

"The house would have a tripping breaker," he said. "You would turn on the light, and all of a sudden -- snap! -- the lights would go out. What causes that is too much of an electrical load or a short in the system. Actually, there could be lots of causes, but the whole thing would be kinda scary."

Equally bone-chilling would be the squeaky floorboards and staircase. Klimek provided a creakily frank explanation.

"Ordinarily, you want all the floor joists to be even, and you usually get a creaky floor when one of the joists is not aligned with the others," he said. "When a 200-pound man steps on it, the subfloor is going to have more vertical movement because the joist isn't in the same plane as the others. The nailhead will keep the subfloor from rising, but when someone steps on the out-of-position joist, the subfloor pushes down until it meets resistance from the joist. The flexing of the subfloor along with it riding along the nail shank causes the squeak."

The interior, as seen by local designer Gail Mayhugh, would be eerily augmented by a "pantone" color system. Consisting of "bone brown," "night shadow blue," "ox-blood red," "lichen green," "plum mist," and "raven black," the colors ideally suit the home's nightmarish mood.

In keeping with Snyder's blueprint, Mayhugh spoke of the sparse Victorian furnishings within the wide-open confines of each enormous room. The dining room would contain its mammoth dining table, of course, while large candelabras are also visible throughout the home. Especially bare is the kitchen, which contains only two items: a fruit and vegetable cutter that looks suspiciously like a guillotine, and a skull-and-crossbones can opener.

But on the whole, interior décor wasn't considered high on the haunting agenda.

"The rooms would be very large, and there wouldn't be that much furniture in them because all the rooms would be oversized," she said. "You wouldn't get a warm and cozy feel from walking in them."

The house's big chill is also due to its numerous broken windows, Mayhugh said, and the resulting draft would keep the home's velvet drapes flapping constantly. She referred to the effect as one of those "scary things," enhanced by the paintings on the wall, which are large portraits of dead relatives where the eyes in the paintings seem to follow wherever you go.

Even worse, the roof leaks, according to Klimek, along with other types of moisture problems.

"There's going to be a million leaks in this thing -- the plumbing is all corroded because it's not modern piping," he said. "We're talking galvanized piping. None of the connections have been tightened, so there's a constant `drip, drip, drip.' The water just corrodes it, and the hard water of Las Vegas might hasten that process.

"With this problem plus the leaky roof, you've got a a nice moldy smell. There's mold in the air right now, in fact. The spores float through the air and when they land in an environment conducive to their growth, they start to grow. They need moisture, food and warmth. They feed on building materials such as drywall and lumber."

Klimek said the porous roof would be most pronounced the attic, which he stated would be "cramped" and historically, a "spooky place to go." Since many objects would be stored up there, it would be a "perfect place for ghouls to hide."

Mayhugh made special mention of the mansion's elevator, which opens and closes automatically every Halloween, without the touch of a button. She said that long ago, a 7-year-old girl met an untimely end in the elevator, so it now operates with some rather unusual properties.

Snyder, Mayhugh and Klimek all said the mansion would definitely be among the most notable in Clark County. As far as the luxury-home market is concerned, Snyder said this particular house would be a "scream."

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