An eerie wind chime, half a dozen empty plastic cups, a couple of couches, a makeshift hammock and a garden gnome are some of the contents on the front porch of the house on 1008 High Street. Home to Hannah Bernard ’15, Sophie Donlon ’16, Violeta Ruiz Espigares ’15, Maria Shevelkina ’15 and Isaac Walker ’15, this house certainly manages to maintain its aura of ‘amazingness’ while being a spiritual sanctuary to its eccentric inhabitants.
“There are definitely a lot of spiritual presences from past owners, some would say ghosts, that gives it a nice homey [feel],” Bernard said. At this point in the interview, Ruiz Espigares motioned to a shrine that she made in honor of a traumatizing incident involving an encounter with a dead cat on the street outside the house.
“The shrine is very important,” Ruiz Espigares emphasized.
The house is decorated beautifully, using strategically-placed furniture, wall decorations and a plethora of empty bottles and coffee cups among other unidentifiable objects scattered throughout.
“Me and Maria were roommates first and second year, and they [Walker and Shevelkina] were roommates and we were all best friends with each other and liked each other,” Bernard began.
“So we decided to live together and we really wanted to live in 1008 because it has an amazing porch!” Ruiz Espigares interrupted, completing the story of how the group ended up living together.
The group then recounted their experience of the time when Walker lit the stove on fire by placing an electric kettle on it. They went on to attribute the fire’s occurrence to the ghosts.
To help explain the ghost’s presence, the house desires a scientific viewpoint.
“We’re looking for a science major for rent because we have questions—about science!” Shevelkina exclaimed.
“We can give them an internship!” Donlon said.
“We write lots of recommendations!” Ruiz Espigares added. Finding a science major to provide an ‘internship’ to was clearly a priority for the group, judging by the enthusiasm with which they tried to advertise this vacancy.
As renters of a house on High Street, the topic of parties naturally arose early in the semester. The group said that there were many differences between being a partygoer and being the hosts of a party.
“I think we were nicer in the beginning and we exponentially became meaner, over the course of parties,” Ruiz Espigares said. Worried that the group was acting too negative, Walker was quick to point out that parties were still a lot of fun for the hosts and collective praise for the ‘giant speakers’ was expressed.
“We’re starting a band, we just don’t know what it is,” Bernard started, but it was clear that this was news to some of the other members of the house as they reacted with surprised questions to which Walker responded by clarifying that it was more of a ‘conceptual’ thing.
Their slightly disjointed, seemingly irrelevant conversations will no doubt continue in their own, unique pace indefinitely, but in the meantime, this artistically-inclined, health conscious (they’re really into #GrinWell) and bizarrely wonderful group of ‘non-science majors’ say goodbye with an open invitation to their famous porch, the last stop for 10/10.
