The Atlanta Bleeding House

Minnie Winston of Atlanta stepped out of the shower on the evening of September 8, 1987, noticing what appeared to be blood smearing the bathroom floor. Concerned her husband had been injured, Minnie, 77, ran to the bedroom to check on 79-year-old William “Willie.”

To Minnie's relief, William was uninjured and perfectly fine. She explained what she’d seen to William and together the couple began investigating the blood. They first thought maybe an animal had been wounded in their home, although William soon learned this was not the case.

As he walked toward the bathroom, William realized a rodent could not possibly have caused the blood. Blood was seeping from nearly every wall in the house and from inaccessible crawl space areas in the basement. He saw blood oozing from the floors and from underneath kitchen appliances.

Unsure what to make of all the blood, Minnie and William dialed the police.

Source of Blood Unknown

When the police arrived at the home at 1114 Fountain Drive, they asked Minnie and William the usual questions. They did not have any pets. No one had recently visited their home. Since police suspected someone had broken into the home, they first checked for signs of a break-in. A search of the home did not reveal any person or animal that could possibly have caused the blood oozing from inside the home.

Police determined that a homicide had not occurred in the home, suicide did not occur in the home, and neither a pet nor a rodent caused the bloodstains.

Blood samples sent to a local laboratory confirmed the blood came from a human with type O blood, the rarest of all blood types. Wiliam nor Winnie had Type O blood.

Case Closed; Winstons Hassled by Media

Without any leads, police closed the case without any explanation of why the home was seeping blood. Media hounded the couple who only wanted to forget that it ever happened. Minnie asked them to stop hounding them to no avail. Even psychics called the couple claiming to know the cause of the seeping blood.

The hype finally died down until one day in 1987, Curt Rowlett set out to find out why William and Minnie’s house bled. He contacted Minnie who, to his surprise, agreed to sit down and talk with him about the incident.

Minnie now told a different story, claiming the substance wasn’t blood at all, but instead mud and rust mixed with water. She would never stay in a house if it had actually been blood, she told the writer.

Rowlett suspected Minnie did not tell him the truth out of fear of publicity.

How could the substance not be blood when the Georgia State Crime Laboratory confirmed the substance found in the home that day was human blood?

The Bleeding Home: An Atlanta Mystery

Nothing strange occurred in the home after that event. Minnie and William passed away, leaving behind a mystery surrounding their home. No one knows why the house bled that day or the cause of the blood.

Theories range from supernatural occurrences to a cruel prank played by a member of the Winston family. The elderly couple had problems with their adult children, one of whom worked at a hospital and had easy access to human blood. Some people, including the police, suspect the Winstons had perpetrated a hoax to garner attention from their kids.

None of the theories have been proven and more than 30 years later, no one can explain why the house bled that day.