project-one

Realtor Dana Bull was doing a final inspection on a two-family property in Salem, Massachusetts, on behalf of a buyer who wanted to live in one unit and rent out other. The second unit already had tenants in it, and the buyer needed to decide whether to let them stay or try to find new ones. As Bull and the inspector surveyed the rental unit—which she says was “filthy” and littered with “satanic decor”—Bull stumbled upon a door hidden behind a drape, a door she hadn’t noticed during her previous looks at the property. Behind it she found a curiously clean room with strange objects she didn’t recognize. The inspector did, though, and clued her in. “It was a room where we guessed they were... sacrificing animals [as part of a religious practice],” Bull says. “Needless to say, my buyers didn’t pursue that property.” While Bull encounters her fair share of odd situations in Salem, which attracts colorful characters because of its history as home to the infamous  Salem witch tria...