I found the shrine three weeks after moving into my new house. It was a secret room, secluded in the rear quarters of the beautiful old colonial manse in upstate New York. I had purchased the house, along with the fifty acres of property on which it was situated, hoping to have some seclusion. I had decided to retire as a hermit after the company I founded was bankrupted by the pandemic and my girlfriend left me.

The building was what my real-estate agent called a “fixer-upper.” I don’t really have any home improvement skills. But I figured that watching YouTube videos and learning how to mount drywall and apply spackle would be a good distraction from my personal woes. Read more…