Something felt off about the new house I’d inherited from my father. It wasn’t until I decided to take my family on a road trip that I suspected he was a serial killer, and his house was where he hid the bodies.

My father died young, unexpectedly. He had cancer no one knew about, which he discovered a year ago, but he didn’t tell us until a week before his death, saying he wanted our family to remember him as "the man who showed up, not the shadow who left." For all the controversy he’d been causing in our lives, it was a touching gesture. Dad and I hadn’t been on speaking terms for years, but after the funeral, I still agreed to move into the house he left me. It was a family home, where my parents lived when I was a child. I hadn’t been there since 1999, when my parents divorced and dad took off, to live God knows where, and do God knows what. The house was big and beautiful, with a large yard full of trees. My younger brother, Alex, was not happy about being disinherited, but his wife was happy to move in, along with their two teenage kids. To be fair, I had a family of my own to provide for, and my husband’s job didn’t pay much, so we were the ones who needed the house more. It was a bit of an adjustment moving in, but after a few days we started feeling right at home. One night, however, I started having these terrible nightmares that woke me up in the middle of the night. In my dreams, I was a kid again, running through the yard as fast as I could, with someone – or something – hot on my heels. I could never see the monster’s face, but I could hear my dad shouting at me to find a good hiding spot, and I always woke up before I could. My husband thought it was weird, but he was also right that it had been years since I’d last seen my father. It made sense that moving into his house would make me think about the past, and have some anxiety issues. After all, he wasn’t the best dad in the world. He used to drink heavily, and sometimes he’d get a little rough, but he wasn’t a bad person. Not that I’d tell my kids anything different, anyway. It was probably the nightmares that made me feel like something was off about the house. The closet door would be open, even though I was positive I’d closed it. Or the tub would be filled with water, and I couldn’t remember if I’d drawn a bath and forgot about it, or if one of the kids had. There wasn’t anything I couldn’t explain, but the overall feeling remained, and it was only getting more intense with time. It wasn’t until we took the kids on a road trip for Spring Break that my anxiety turned into real fear. We were in a restaurant, having breakfast, when I saw a news headline in a local newspaper: “Police identify 15 victims of the ‘highway killer’ after 18 years.” My husband noticed my interest in the headline, and asked me what it was about. I showed him the article, which instantly made his face turn white. “Do you remember that?” he asked me, horrified. Of course I did. In the 90s, there was a serial killer who was abducting people from rest stops along the highway connecting Massachusetts to New York. I was 12 back then, and the news made a huge impression on me, and my family. My parents had been on that highway at least twice a week, to visit with my gravely sick grandfather in upstate New York. It turned out that the abductions had taken place during the exact same timeframe as their road trips. I was in shock, unable to finish my meal or do anything but stare at the headline. My husband tried to calm me down, telling me it meant nothing, and that there was no reason to automatically assume my father was the killer. I knew he was right, but my brain kept creating connections between the article and my family. My parents always drove at night, because they said it was safer with less traffic on the road. But what if it had nothing to do with safety, and they did it on purpose, to avoid being seen? There was also the time when my mom got lost on the highway, and called dad to help her find her way back home. She told me that she’d taken a wrong turn somewhere, but he was more experienced with long road trips, and he could guide her. Now I wondered if it hadn’t been an accident, if she’d been driving back alone, with a dead body in the trunk. I still remember the look on my dad’s face when he told me that mom had died in a car accident, somewhere on that same highway. For years, I’ve been suspecting that he’d been drinking and driving, and that she was just an innocent bystander. But as I finished reading the article, I realized the victims had all been men. If my dad was the killer, he’d have no reason to be violent with women. “Do you think he did it?” My husband asked me, after we got back into the car. I didn’t know what to say, but when we got home, I started looking around the yard, checking for any anomalies in the terrain, any potential places to hide a body. And that’s when I saw it: a patch of land where the grass was taller and obviously newer than on the rest of the property. It wasn’t a freshly dug grave, but I was willing to bet it was a graveyard. If I was right, it would mean that my father wasn’t just a killer, but a psychopath who’d been hiding his dark secret in plain sight. But I had to be sure, so I waited until nighttime, when everyone was asleep, and I started digging. As I stuck the shovel in the ground for the fifth or sixth time, I heard a noise behind me. I turned my head to see my brother standing there, watching me. “You know, too,” I said. It wasn’t a question. I knew the answer. “Yes. I was going to tell you, eventually.” “Eventually?” “When you were ready.” I couldn’t believe he knew, and he’d kept it from me. I couldn’t believe my dad was a murderer, either. But as I thought back on my childhood, I realized there were too many red flags to count. This afternoon, after my husband took our kids to school, I went back to digging. My brother helped me, and we kept digging all day long, until we’d uncovered more than 40 bodies, including mom’s. I don’t know if we’ve found all of them, but we’re going to keep looking. I don’t care how long it takes, or how many more nightmares I’m going to have. I need to bring my father to justice, no matter what. The police took the house, and my brother and his family moved in with us, to keep the kids away from all this. But as I’m writing this, I realize that I have to tell them sooner than later. It’s not fair to lie to them, to keep them in the dark. But as a mother, I want to protect my kids, not hurt them. I know I’m doing this for the right reasons, but I’m not looking forward to seeing the expression on their little faces when they learn the truth. No one deserves to live with that kind of knowledge.

Something felt off about the new house I’d inherited from my father. It wasn’t until I decided to take my family on a road trip that I suspected he was a serial killer, and his house was where he hid the bodies.

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