The isolated retreat that Edith Wharton designed for herself in The Berkshires is straight out of The Shining.
Wharton lived on this estate – named “The Mount” – with her husband (Teddy), a MADMAN, from 1902 to 1911. She wrote her first bestseller, The House of Mirth here in 1905 but more importantly the home was the scene of the disintegration of her ill-fated marriage and of Teddy’s descent into mental illness. She fled to Paris and left the house to the ghostsIronically, Edith Wharton was always scared of ghosts. As a child she felt she was “haunted by formless horrors”. She said she felt haunted by  “some dark undefinable menace … I could feel it behind me, upon me; and if there was any delay in the opening of the door I was seized by a choking agony of terror.” Even as a grown woman she admitted she couldn’t sleep in a room with a book containing a ghost story and claimed to have actually burned books containing ghost stories that were downstairs in the library. With this I completely empathize.
You would think she would have known better.
One big mistake was her decision to construct a PET CEMETERY on the property. Who does that?
Another mistake was allowing the house to fall into the hands of a SCHOOL FOR GIRLS (The Foxhollow School for Girls from 1942-1976).
At some point the house became lousy with ghosts and fell into ruin. The Mount is currently undergoing a major restoration. I hope they remember the holy water and prayer book along with the Benjamin Moore Historic Colors collection!
