On Twitter this week you may have seen a real estate listing go viral for its interactive VR walkthrough tour. The tour was so compelling it may as well have been a video game, or a sequel in the Myst series: Cursed 3D Real Estate Walkthrough: Haunted Louisville Hoarder House. Folks on Twitter challenged each other: Did you find the Girls Gone Wild room? The cat? The bathtub room? OK. If you found the bathtub room, were you able to get out of the house?As you click through the home you will find an extremely messy split-level home with trash, junk, clothes, and other… stuff… everywhere. It has an inexplicable layout and as you delve deeper it becomes clear that some sort of online business, scam, or shipping operation was happening here. There are tons of bubble mailers, shipping boxes, and what can only be described as stockrooms. Click more and you will find rooms full of categorized DVDs, toys, books, CDs, etc.Houses like this often have a dark backstory, and this one is no different. It is advertised on Redfin as “church, school, daycare, home business this home has seen it all … many more surprises. This is a must see. The pictures do not tell the full story.” Many people have been wondering what this house's deal is. We researched the address and found clues as to why there are so many bizarre items in it. It was, as the listing notes, a church. In 2014, cops discovered “thousands of stolen items” in the building as the result of a “four-year investigation.”According to local news reports from 2014, a family was allegedly stealing items from Kroger and Target stores, then selling them for huge discounts from their listed prices. The men who lived there at the time denied that they did anything illegal, and claimed they purchased items from closeouts, yard sales, flea markets, and then sold the items online at a profit. The man involved, Troy Curtis, told WLKY news that he likely did end up buying some stolen items: “I probably did buy, by accident, some items [that were stolen]. But I was told by people that they were not hot,” he said.Motherboard attempted to reach the Curtis family but did not hear back. The realtor involved in selling this house also did not respond. A search through federal and state court records did not turn anything up; Motherboard could not determine what happened in the case, but Curtis pleaded not guilty at the time.Andy Baio, however, was able to get in touch with Curtis, who said he settled his case, and has continued his business. He said he’s selling the house because he needs more space.
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