There’s a horror trope so old that it’s been thoroughly disassembled, analyzed, and reconstituted into new tropes over and over again at this point: the overconfident, clueless white people who ignore huge red flags and subject themselves to danger at every turn, never seeming to learn anything.

You know, like these dummies…

Photo Credit: A24

It’s the sort of thing that has historically had audiences yelling from their seats in frustration. “Why are they going in there?! Why are they staying!? Don’t they realize they’re going to die?? It’s so obvious!”

Then you throw your popcorn at the screen and leave the theater muttering about you’d be way smarter than that if YOU were dealing with psycho killers and ghosts.

But it’s just a trope, right? Surely we’re not talking about real behavior?

Well…

Fiction author Olivia Cole had an amazing non-fiction tale to tell on her Twitter account about the day she became the living embodiment of that trope while she and her husband were looking for a new place to live. It begins:

Prologue:

Chapter 1: The Bungalow

Chapter 2: Dark & Stormy

Chapter 3: Grate Expectations

Chapter 4: Scratching the Surface

Chapter 5: Cleaning Out My Closet

Chapter 6: Get Out

Chapter 7: The Door

Chapter 8: Locked Up

Chapter 9: Devil’s in the Details

Chapter 10: Floor Plans

Chapter 11: No Way in Hell

Chapter 12: Rosebush’s Baby

Epilogue:

Chilling stuff. And an important reminder. Fellow white people, let us never ignore the red flags around us. And stop moving into murder mansions, it just doesn’t go well for anybody.

What’s the whitest white thing you’ve ever done / witnessed?

Tell us the tale in the comments.