Monday, October 21, 2013

Feel Like Someone Died in Your House? There's an App for That!




Just in time for Halloween.

The answer to your creepy feelings?
 
Every since you've moved into your new place, things haven't gone quite right, have they?
You didn't get the promotion to senior office librarian. You suspect your lover is seeing someone else. And then there's those weird feelings when you go into the second bedroom.

It's not that you get a shiver down your spine. It's that something doesn't seem quite right, as if your possessions have been moved a few inches away from where you left them.
Let's be honest about a possible cause here: someone might have once died in your house. It might have been a peaceful, natural death. Or it might have been something more alarming, like death by stag-goring, or a seance gone wrong.

There's now a site that can help you in your quest to discover what spiritual lurkers might waft around your house.

It's called DiedInHouse.com. And it exists in order to tell you if someone once ceased existing within your walls.

DiedInHouse claims to search all 50 states for evidence of expiration. It promises something called a "certified report."

I couldn't resist. Things have been strange of late. This site might truly provide an answer. So I proceeded.

A single search costs $11.99, such a small price to pay for peace of mind and spirit.
Just as I was about to put my credit card number on the DiedInHouse collection plate, I came upon the disclaimer.

It began: "The materials appearing on any Simply Put Solutions, Inc. the creators of Died in House found at www.diedinhouse.com (DIH) web site and/or owned application could include technical, typographical, or photographic errors."

Simply put, I became concerned. But I read on: "DIH makes no representation, implied or expressed, that all information placed on any DIH web site or application is accurate. DIH does not warrant that any of the materials on its web sites or applications are accurate, complete, or current."

I began to get that same creepy feeling again. Then I came to this sentence: "Died in House does not guarantee to have all deaths that have occurred in or at a specific address; it is an informational use only type of service."

The problem is that the information may be useful of not. Yes, just like my tarot lady, my Ouija board lady, my palm reader, my spiritual guide, and my life coach.

However, being a man with even more spiritual issues than bottles of wine, I went through with the purchase.

The result came in just a couple of seconds: "Died in House did NOT find information relating a death to this address."

So now I can sleep more easily. But only slightly. Maybe that ex who described herself as having "waited all of my past lives and this one for someone like you" wasn't real at all.

Well, she did leave me for an undertaker.



Chris Matyszczyk is an award-winning creative director who advises major corporations on content creation and marketing. He brings an irreverent, sarcastic, and sometimes ironic voice to the tech world.

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