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John Sundman
@jsundman.bsky.social
Biodigital novelist, mover of heavy objects, volunteer firefighter (retired), national treasure. "Sundman figures it out!" : johnsundman.substack.com/ JohnSundman.com
767 followers1.9k following1.8k posts
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My foreword to Ash Deza's "Only the living feel remorse." Text in the "alt" 4/

From 1984 to 1992 my family and I lived in a haunted mansion in Gardner, Massachusetts. It was a grand old house that had been built for a wealthy furniture magnate in the days when Gardner was the chair-making capital of the world. The exterior was brick and stucco, the roof was slate, the downspouts were copper, and there was a giant gnarled maple tree near the front door. Inside there was a grand front staircase, with balusters as fine as you would expect in the house of a man whose wealth came from making beautiful things out of wood. At the back of the house there was a narrow staircase that had been used by servants whose living quarters were on the third floor. There was a fireplace in the grand living room, and another one in the library and a third in my wife’s study. The ceilings were stretched canvas. It was magnificent in so many ways. We loved it!
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Foreword, part 2/

But it was drafty and the ancient windows rattled and it was impossible to heat in the winter. Before we bought it, it had sat empty for a year. It was a white elephant whose time had come and gone. Nobody wanted that kind of house any more. There wasn’t even room for a table in the kitchen, because a hundred years ago the master of the house took his breakfast in the dining room, attended by servants. Also, as we discovered after we had purchased it, the house was said to be haunted. In retrospect, maybe that was why the real estate agent who showed us the house had liquor on his breath and seemed so terrified the whole time.
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John Sundman
@jsundman.bsky.social
Biodigital novelist, mover of heavy objects, volunteer firefighter (retired), national treasure. "Sundman figures it out!" : johnsundman.substack.com/ JohnSundman.com
767 followers1.9k following1.8k posts
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