The Bath Township, Ohio home where serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer committed his very first murder is back on the market and can be yours for the low, low price of $295,000.
In June of 1978, 18-year-old Dahmer picked up hitchhiker Steven Marks Hicks, also 18. Hicks was attempting to hitchhike to a local concert, but was persuaded by Dahmer to accompany him back to his parents’ house in Bath Township to drink alcohol and listen to music. Dahmer’s parents had recently divorced and moved out of the home, leaving Dahmer there alone.
After several hours of drinking and listening to music in the house, Hicks said he needed to leave, at which point Dahmer killed him. Dahmer would later dismember Hicks’ body in the house’s crawl space before scattering the remains around the property.
Almost 13 years later, police arrested Jeffrey Dahmer on suspicion of murdering over a dozen young men in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area. While in custody, Dahmer admitted to murdering Hicks and told police where to find the body. So for one week during the summer of 1991, local police and crime scene experts wandered through the woods behind the former Dahmer family home, eventually recovering the remains of Stephen Hicks.
Since then, the house has had several different owners. The current one, who has lived in the home since 2005, put it on the market back in 2012, but it didn’t sell. The recent resurgence in the real estate market prompted the owner to put it back up for sale in the hopes of finding a suitable buyer.
Of course, they’re having to weed out the curiosity seekers who really don’t want to buy the house, merely get a peek inside. For that reason, only pre-qualified potential buyers are being allowed access. “The house is not a museum. We are not giving public tours”, said Richard Lubinski, the real estate agent handling the home.
Truth is, the house is really nice: over 2,100 square feet sitting on 2 acres of land that includes woods, gardens, and even a pond. It’s just a matter of people getting over the whole Jeffrey Dahmer connection. And as if this poor house didn’t have enough problems, recent articles are throwing around allegations that the house “might” be haunted. Personally, I’ve known about this house since I moved to Ohio in 1999 and even visited it for a potential story for Weird Ohio back in 2004 (the story eventually mutated and ended up in the book in a different form). Truth is, I have never heard of a single instance where someone said the house was supposed to be haunted. Not one. Even the Internet, where people throw around ghost stories like they are going out of style, was incredibly quiet when it came to this house being haunted. That is, until now. So forgive me if I look at these ghost stories as being nothing more than people trying to add another layer to the tale. As far as I’m concerned, this is a really nice house where, unfortunately, something unspeakable happened.
That being said, no, I couldn’t live there. But not because I’d be uncomfortable living with the memories of what happened in the house. Rather, it’s because I recently re-watched Sinister and have come to the conclusion that strange and spooky writers like myself need to stay as far away from murder houses as possible!
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Here’s a link to an AOL article about the house recently going back on the market.
And here’s a link from WCPO-9 in Cincinnati, again about the house being for sale.
Finally, here’s an interesting link from when the house first went up for sale in 2012, complete with interior photos.
