He chopped away heartily, the hollow strokes ringing through the empty attic and down the stairs.

She recalls how the recording prompted "this image of an empty attic, a place of last resort where one takes out one's treasures and puts them up for a very special public view."

But then, far upslope, Murch's Morn saw a faint glow, like a dim light left on in an empty attic, seen up the long and creaky stairs.

One attic reclaimer, Aleksei Kaminsky, bought two top-floor apartments, expanding each into the empty attic above.

No plan was discernable on first or second floor or in the long empty attics.

You see," he explained, "I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose.

"And the attic's empty and you know that you can go there, of course."

They appear to be the work of a shut-in working in a nearly empty attic with the occasional cooperation of family members.

Home was an empty attic, not much larger than any three of the cubbyholes at the Samaritan House.