Abandoned Horse Farmer's House in Illinois With Jewelry, Trophies and a Snowmobile

This farmhouse belonged to a man who loved horses. He passed away in the early 1990s, and his wife stayed in the house until she died in 2013. Whoever took ownership afterward never came to clear anything out. It’s now 2022 as I film this and their things are still inside. The exact location stays off this page.

I found their gravestone too, and it had a horse and a bear on it. There is a lot in this house to learn how the two of them lived.

What we found

The front rooms are packed. A TV console sits in one corner and clothes and boxes cover the floor. The kitchen was covered in stuff and completely full of china, and on the wall hung a sign that read this kitchen will be closed today because of illness, I’m sick of cooking. Nearby there was an old baby doll with half a body and a bunny with no stuffing left. A farmer’s almanac from 2011 sat on a table with fake flowers and some old glasses.

The back porch has a swinging basket and what I think is a stand up freezer. I could hear something banging against a wall the whole time, though nobody was there. There was a National Park map, and a painting of horses that looked like it was by Tim Cox. One bedroom had a mermaid and a linen basket, and more horses.

The bedrooms are full of clothes. There were photo albums, an old suitcase, and lots of little shoes. One bed looked like a medical bed that raises and lowers. It always makes me wonder how someone could leave their clothes and everything behind, and what would make them just up and go.

On the main floor there was a fireplace, a whole box of shoes, an old watch, a horse comb, a sewing machine and a cookie jar. The dishes have a gold colored edge, and I figure they would sell for a dollar each at Goodwill. There was an old clock, a house phone, a bulletin board with mushrooms on it, and a sign that said a mother’s love is something you never outgrow.

The kitchen shelves still held spices, chocolates, a food processor and a hand warmer in its box. The ceiling is starting to cave in. Then I found the stairs to the upstairs.

Upstairs there were school desks, a Sony VHS tape, boots and a plaid shirt hanging on the wall. You can see right through a hole in the roof. There was a nice headboard, a blue suitcase full of clothes, a closet, and a machine that might have been a breathing machine. A horseshoe and other horse items sat in one room, along with a record player and a lot of old pants.

The garage was the best surprise. I got the door open without breaking anything, and inside were a snowmobile, a second very old snowmobile, and tractors, at least some of them John Deere. It looks like a typical man’s garage, except for the kid toys. I wondered if they had a kid.

The basement was right there the whole time. Cobwebs everywhere, lots of canning, a huge stainless steel pot, a stove and an oven, and mason jars, though no food in them. A washer was tipped on its side, the furnace sat with duct work on the ground, and a license plate hid up in the rafters. There were cans of insecticide and fungicide, a fan, and a dog collar. The last thing I found was a box of jewelry and a first place trophy.

Why places like this end up empty

I don’t know who owns this house now or why nobody cleared it. What I can say is how houses like this tend to stall.

The Center for Community Progress describes it as heirs’ property. An owner dies without a will, state law decides who inherits, and the result can be several owners, some of them unrecorded. That makes it hard to sell or insure the house or get repair money. Some heirs aren’t interested and some don’t know they hold a share, and the property can sit abandoned for decades.

Greater Greater Washington lays out the cost side from a District of Columbia example. Every deceased owner on a deed needs a probate estate, with publication, bond, filing and attorney fees up front, and probate can take six months to several years. Meanwhile the property can run up thousands of dollars a year in taxes.

Whatever the reason here, the jewelry box and the trophy were the last things I found, in a house where the clothes were still on their hangers.