Crime

It is Halloween night 2011. It is a beautiful warm evening. There is a 1/2 moon. The kids are coming by my house for “trick or treat” Lots of them. I am watching Frankenstein with Basil Rathbone Lon Chaney and Boris Karloff.

I am reminded  that Boris Karloff lived 7 miles from my home in New Milford Connecticut. I never knew that. No one around there knew. This was a small New England town. Everybody knew everything. Certainly, if a big star like Karloff lived there.  I only found out because my new girlfriend Slylvia Prichard lived in his house with her parents. Her parents were British. So was Karloff.  The Pritchards bought the home shortly after karloffs death in 1969.  They had lived there just over a year when I met Sylvia.

It was a long time ago but I still remember it like it was yesterday. Sylvia and I were swimming on a hot June day in 1971. Only her mother was at home. She didn’t want to be left alone at night. Her mom had PTSD from being an English searchlight girl during the London Blitz in the 1940s. She was a bit quirky. Sylvias mother invited me to stay for dinner and to spend the night.

That is when I first heard the story of how Karloff had murdered his wife some 20 years earlier. Karloff  was never arrested for the crime, but New Milford police always suspected him. At the time I was a young reporter, so I ventured over to the Police department and got my hands on the police report.  It seemed Mrs Karloff had fallen down 30 stairs into the basement one night after an New York theater party. I had never heard of this.  It was never in the papers. Never except this death notice from 1961 in the New Milford Times. “Andresca Karoff died accidently at her home on 312 Maple trail”

But the police report said they had found blood on Karloffs clothes.

As the evening wore on Mrs Pritchard revealed that she did not want to be alone because Andrescas Karloffs ghost roamed the house at night. Also, that sometimes Boris was there too. And that the murder was played out over and over. By this time it was nearing midnite. Both Sylvia and her mother were looped from wine we had been drinking.

I was like what the fuck?? Get out of here. Sylvia asured me that it was true but she didn’t care cause she took sleeping meds and never saw anything.  I didn’t believe it. I thought they were both crazy.

Mrs. Pritchard saw that i wasn’t on board with yet another New England tale of horror and ghosts.  No of course not I don’t believe in ghosts period. I didn’t then and I don’t now.  I spent then night without episode.

I was tired and went off to my room in the basement. The guest room at the bottom of the stairs. Then something curious occured. An old car had pulled up to the back of the house when an older women came in through the sliding gloss door. It was Agness Mrs Pritchards sister who was visiting the family from England. She had been to bridge party in town. Not wanting to appear rude I sat at the sun table downstairs and chatted with her.

OMG she kept me up all night talking…… endlessly about her life in Liverpool. It was daybreak when I finally went to bed. agness went to bed in the room next to mine. Syvia and her mother had apparently passed out, because they did not come downstairs and rescue me from this odd duck.

I awoke late the next morining . Sylvia was smashed on ludes for sleeping and I from the old lady.  During coffee when I asked about Sylvias aunt….Mrs Pritchard said. “What aunt??”

Your sister I said” Agnes. she kept me awake half the night talking”, Both Mrs Pritchard and Sylvias face drew pale.” I don’t have a sister Jann”  When I took them to show them the old Mercedes parked in the back it was gone. The room next to the guest room was not a second guest room at all but  an old unused coal furnis room.

Mrs Pritchard insisted ” It was her. It was her. It was Andresca Karloff you spoke with.”  Like I said I don’t believe in ghosts. With a couple of lushes like the Pritchard, i have no idea what to believe. But this story is true and the case of Andresca Karloff death is still unsolved. And Agness? I don’t know what to make of her. But i did talk to her . she was as real as that cup of coffee you’re drinking. One other small fact. Andresca Karloff drove a 1961 Mercedes 220. The same car i had seen that June night in 1971.

from a place where innocent girls are murdered  for fun

Jann Scott

Boulder Colorado