ARGEN POINT, ELDID – An old mansion in downtown Argen Point, shut up since the mid-1980s, has become the talk of the neighbourhood this week. Residents say they have seen an elderly woman in one of its side windows, in a house where, as far as anyone knows, nobody has lived for almost forty years.
The sightings have revived an old local mystery surrounding the Montenegro family, who own the property.
Built in 1922, the house was once a symbol of prosperity in a fast-growing Argen Point. The city had long shed its old nickname, “the fishermen’s village”, a leftover from the 18th century, and was becoming one of the main industrial and commercial hubs of Western Eldoria. It drew businessmen from all over the country, especially those trying to escape the established competition in Elda.
One of them was Ernest Montenegro. Born and raised on the outskirts of Elda, he arrived in Argen Point in 1943, at around 30, ready to try his luck. He worked hard for decades and made his fortune with Montenegro Insurance, a company he founded to serve the city’s new businesses.
Ernest married Doralice and moved into the house on Pedro Street, which had come to him as payment for a client’s debts. The couple had two children, Ferdinand and Helen. Regulars at neighbourhood events and financial backers of the Argen Point Club, on the north side of town, the Montenegros were well known and got on well with their neighbours. Ferdinand was soon introduced to local high society. Helen was not. Whenever anyone asked about the girl, the answer was always the same: she had been seriously ill as a baby, it had left her frail, and she was better off at home. Older residents confirm that Helen lived practically shut away because of her illness.
When his parents died in the 1980s, Ferdinand inherited the family business. But he had been living in Elda for years as a well-established lawyer and showed little interest in the insurance company. He sold it, along with most of the family’s properties in Argen Point. He kept only two: the house on Pedro Street and the building that now houses the New Mall, one of the city’s largest shopping centres.
With the mall’s rent already bringing in a small fortune, Ferdinand apparently saw no reason to rent out the house. He locked the doors and left everything as it was.
Time was not kind. The once-grand façade began to peel, damp stains spread across the walls and weeds swallowed most of the garden. No lights at night, no sound at all, except for the stray cats that had claimed the yard. The house that once embodied the ambitions of Argen Point’s rising middle class slowly became a forgotten relic.
For years it barely drew attention. At most, it earned a passing remark from someone walking by: “Such a shame, a house like that just sitting empty. It could’ve been a museum, a gallery.” That quiet came to an end this week.
Romeo, 68, has lived in downtown Argen Point for four decades. In the early hours of Monday, he was out walking Biscuit, his mutt, and passed the house, as he does most weeks.
“I was waiting for the dog to finish his business by the lamppost and I glanced at the house, just out of habit. There was a woman in the side window. Old, wearing one of those nightcaps, with a few white hairs sticking out at the sides. A pale nightgown, long sleeves. Her face was white, but too white, you know? Like she’d been dusted with flour. She was just standing there, hand on the curtain, looking at the street. Not at me. At the street. I blinked two, three times, thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. They weren’t. When Biscuit barked, she let go of the curtain and was gone. Just like that, no hurry at all.”
Romeo says he had never seen any sign of life there. “I’ve lived in the same house for forty years. I always thought, and I think everyone did, that there was nobody in there. It gave me such a fright I went home and couldn’t get back to sleep.”
Fontane, 56, another neighbour, is more worried than spooked. To him, the likeliest explanation is that someone is living there in neglect. “Maybe that woman was abandoned by her family. The police should go in and see what state she’s living in. Nobody around here has ever seen a visitor, never seen her outside.”
He adds that his wife has noticed something odd from their apartment window. “She says every now and then a car shows up in the middle of the night. Early Monday morning, always. Someone tosses a box over the wall and the car drives off right away. I keep telling her it’s probably people dumping construction rubble. She doesn’t buy it.”
Romeo and Fontane are not the only ones. A few years ago, other neighbours were already talking about seeing an old woman embroidering at that same window. Iolanda, 74, a retired seamstress who lives on the street behind, is one of them.
“It was early one morning, five or six years ago. I was on my way to six o’clock Mass and went past around five, still dark. The window was half open, there was a faint little light inside, a candle or an oil lamp, and she was sitting there, embroidering. She had on a satin nightcap and a thick white cream all over her face, the kind my grandmother used to put on before bed. Five in the morning, can you imagine! She was stitching fast, steady hands, no glasses. I stood there watching for ages and she never once looked up.”
Iolanda says she kept the story to herself for years. “I tried telling a few people, but nobody believed me. It got to the point where even I didn’t believe it anymore. I started thinking it was just my mind playing tricks on me. Now, after Romeo, I know what I saw. And ghosts don’t embroider,” she says, laughing. “It was an old lady. Very old. Or just worn out.”
For some residents, the explanation lies in the Montenegro family’s own history. Helen’s disappearance from public life has always fuelled speculation about what became of her. Few people remember ever seeing her outside the house, and the rumours lived on long after the family stopped being a presence in Argen Point. One resident suggests the woman in the window might be Helen herself. Others go further and wonder whether the figure might be something not quite… of this world.
Could Helen have stayed in the house all these years, even after her family faded from the scene? Is someone secretly looking after the property on behalf of its former owners? Or have decades of sidewalk gossip turned an obscure family story into just another urban legend?
Contacted for comment, Ferdinand Montenegro’s office in Elda had not responded by the time of publication. For now, none of these possibilities can be confirmed.
Meanwhile, Pedro Street has seen more foot traffic than it has in decades. People walking by now slow down, pull out their phones and keep an eye on the side windows, hoping to catch a glimpse of someone. Some come on purpose; drivers ease off the gas as they pass the gate. But since that early Monday morning, no old woman has appeared. The abandoned house has become an attraction.
In a city that has grown and changed all around it, the house on Pedro Street seems to have held on to a piece of the old Argen Point: the Montenegros’ golden years, when Helen was already beginning to vanish from everyone’s sight.
