Rich people are the only people who are allowed to be eccentric. The middle class are always the most conservative while the working class are judged and condemned for their peccadillos. For instance, take Steven Kings who has become one of the richest writers of all time. He now lives in a haunted house. Who in their right mind would want that? He’s got two period mansions in the States, one of them is a gothic manor fenced off by a formidable wrought iron gate, the bars fashioned into spider webs. These are the kinds of things that rich people take licence to do.  

We have some rich people in our neighbourhood and recently they called in the painters. Melbourne is a small place so it isn’t uncommon to have rich people living in mansions flecked across middle class suburbia. A few days into the exterior paint job I realised what was going on. They were transforming the house into a neo-gothic Edwardian villa. The house is beautiful but it also gives me chills to think that people will be sleeping in there and not just watching the horror unfold on screen.

The house painters did an excellent job of recreating the look of the era and giving the property a haunted feel. Although I wouldn’t want to live in a haunted house myself, they did give me the idea to revamp my own home. We have a modest weatherboard house and I discovered that the same company also does weatherboard painting. Melbourne companies can also do roof spraying and driveway coating to add the finishing touch. For the house, I’m thinking of a nice warm burgundy colour with cream edges.

Finally on the topic of rich people, another writer friend of mine also demonstrates this illustrious disregard of social mores. He’s purchasing a disused mental hospital and turning it into a kind of haunted fun house for ghost hunts and writers’ workshops. Nuts, all of them!