I am living in a slasher film.

Things weren’t planned as tight as we thought they would be—welcome to Jordan—so for the past couple days, we’ve been essentially camping in what looks like a Saudi aristocrat’s abandoned summer home. And yes, living in an abandoned mansion is exactly as creepy as you’re imagining.

At first glance, it’s magnificent; a three-story, walled villa with olive orchards, rose gardens and ivy creeping up the stone paths and archways. The whole ground floor is full of guest rooms and bathrooms, and a kitchen about as big as our apartment back home. Around the verandah, there’s a special exterior building for receiving guests, with worn, washed-out pictures of the homeowner shaking hands with various members of the Saudi royal family, including the crown prince.

In a village of small homes built out of bare cinderblock, it’s so out of place as to seem surreal—like it just flashed into being out of the ether one day. Possibly as the result of a pact with Satan. As beautiful as it is, though, it clearly hasn’t been lived in for a long time. Picture the nicest house you’ve ever been in, five years after the zombie apocalypse.

There’s no water, no gas, the toilets don’t flush, the front door doesn’t lock, and everything has that musty smell of a tarp that’s been left in the garage for a long time. We spent last night in the tile foyer, washing our clothes in buckets and sponge-bathing in a five-gallon tub of cold water.

The paint is coming off the walls and ceiling in big flaky sheets, and long, spindly-legged spiders have colonized the toilets and the warm, malodorous refrigerator. (I thought spiders were supposed to work alone, but apparently these are Arab spiders—friendly and family-oriented.) There are rat turds underneath and behind everywhere you look, though the culprits have yet to show themselves. It’s a lively little ecosystem, considering the desolation outside.

Adding to the ominous post-apocalyptic vibe is the stuff the owners chose to leave behind: faded pictures on the walls, a couple food items in the pantry (which I assume sustains the zoo that has lived here since they left), and two locked rooms that are still fully furnished, with their personal papers still in the drawers and books on the shelves.

They left weird stuff in the fridge—a ten-pack of rectal suppositories, a tupperware full of tea leaves, and nothing else. I’m told that the homeowner went to high school with Saddam Hussein, and was thus forced to flee to Saudi Arabia when Hussein slaughtered his entire graduating class. Our town sits on the highway to Baghdad, 300km east—who knows, maybe the Ba’athists came looking for him.

My story gets better, though; not only are we living in the haunted mansion all by ourselves, but we moved in during the biggest dust storm the town has seen in years. Visibility is about a hundred meters, and the sun is a perfect white sphere behind a gauzy veil of dust. That makes things a little creepier, sure; but then there’s the 50 mph winds that have slammed against the windows and doors, without interruption, for the last three days. We’re huddled in our little corner of the house, and in the dark, empty rooms all around us, things are going bump in the night.

(Later): Once the storm subsided, we bought cleaning supplies and groceries, and went to work establishing a little human colony in one corner of the house. The front door has been bashed off its hinges—again, nothing suspicious about that—but handily, there are locks on each interior door, each with its own key. So, we just picked the four rooms we needed and locked ourselves in, leaving the rest of the house to the spiders, vermin, vagrants, and vengeful undead that no doubt already live there.