The Occult Section

If you’re in the market for a haunted house but don’t have the cashola to invest in real estate, consider this fixer-upper in France. Its owner is selling it on eBay with a starting bid of 1 euro. Let’s see….how to put it in real estate terms. It’s cozy, charming, rustic, with a lot of old fashioned details, and is quiet and isolated from all the hustle and bustle of ever day life. The owner is motivated to sell!

In regular, non-real estate speak, it’s a dilapidated house where a murder supposedly took place 50 years ago whose owner seems to be eager to get the hell out.

A HOUSE which has been described by its owner as being haunted, has been listed on eBay for just 1 euro.

A mime is a terrible thing to waste.

On the French version of eBay, Maud69620 – who listed the house – has stated the house is haunted by spirits after a murder allegedly took place there during the 1950s.

While the murder was never officially confirmed, as their bodies were never found, the former owners’ bodies were discovered to be buried in a nearby field.

Paranormal incidents have reportedly been witnessed in and around the house, including random knocks on windows, strange voices and murmurs, weird noises and moving objects.

The house is located in Arbresle, in the Rhône-Alpes region of France and is a 110sqm home on a 350sqm block of land.

While many have questioned the authenticity of the eBay auction, the owner has stated is it real and anyone who believes in the spirit world should contact her.

So how did the listing do? Either Maud69620 was able to close the deal quickly or removed the auction entirely, as there’s nothing on her eBay profile. Hmmm.

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Dude. Really?

Yup. A New Jersey couple who rented a house moved out shortly thereafter claiming the home was haunted. Then, quite naturally, sued the landlord. I mean, that’s what people do, right? Suing someone else over ridiculousness is one of the benchmarks of our society. Especially when you sue over something that cannot be proven.

 

I was going to do this whole funny caption, but instead I'm shocked to discover how much Shaggy looks like a ginger Grant Wilson.

TOMS RIVER — Are you afraid of the dark?

A Toms River couple is suing their landlord for $2,250 — their security deposit — claiming that an abundance of paranormal activity forced them to vacate only a week after moving into the rental home, the Asbury Park Press reported.

Jose Chinchilla and his fiancee Michele Callan said that odd things began happening soon after move-in. Whispers, footsteps, doors slamming and lights flickering were reported throughout the house, the Press wrote.

Clothes that were folded and put away were found laying on the floor and the couple claimed to record a voice saying “Let it burn,” according to ABC News.

Their landlord Richard Lopez, an orthodontist whose practice neighbors the house in question says that the couple fabricated the story because they could not afford rent and wanted out of the one-year lease, the Press wrote.

Lopez has filed a counter suit against the couple and a hearing is expected at the end of April, the Press wrote.

Perhaps Jose and Michelle should be more concerned about a). burglars, b). electrical problems, c). drafty windows, d). skittery critters, e). misbehaving children, or even f). EMF hypersensitivity?

Nahhhhh. Definitely a ghost. Best to sue first, figure out the truth later. God Bless America!

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The great and glorious Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ laws about “stigmatized” properties was recently discussed on the Boston Glob Globe blog:

The well maintained 4 bedroom Colonial in a North Shore suburb with a great backyard looked nice enough thought “Debbie,” the buyer. However, she was dismayed to learn from neighbors after closing on the property, that the prior owner had committed suicide in the house. The real estate agent never advised her of this, and she says she would have never purchased the home if she had known this.

In Massachusetts, real estate brokers struggle to sell homes tainted by shocking murders, suicides, or even suspected “haunted houses.” For real estate brokers, sellers and buyers, these “stigmatized” properties are particularly difficult to deal with as they raise unique valuation problems and disclosure issues.

Under Massachusetts law, however, real estate brokers and sellers are under no legal obligation to disclose that a property was the site of a felony, suicide or homicide, or has been the site of an alleged “parapsychological or supernatural phenomenon,” i.e., a haunted house. Thus, buyers are on their own to discover these types of stigmas—however, a quick Google search on the property address or prior owner may have revealed the prior suicide in “Debbie’s” case.

I think the most stigmatized properties are those owned by Yankees fans, personally.

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To tell or not to tell? Currently, that is a raging debate amongst the real estate profession (well, not really raging, but you know what I mean). What happens when a haunted house goes on sale?

” ‘He’ sat there in midair, smiling at me from in front of the cold fireplace. Hands clasped around his crossed knees, he was nodding and rocking. He faded slowly, still smiling and was gone. . . . He was the most cheerful and solid-looking little person I’d ever seen.”

“He” was one of five friendly ghosts that inhabited Helen Ackley’s 18-room Victorian home in the New York suburb of Nyack, or so she claimed in an article she wrote for Reader’s Digest in May 1977.

Sadly for Ackley, the tale came back to haunt her.

When Jeffrey M. Stambovsky contracted to purchase the house in the early 1990s, he and his wife soon began hearing tales of things going bump in the night. They wanted no part of them — even if the resident spooks did, as Ackley boasted, occasionally leave gifts such as “tiny silver tongs” to toast a daughter’s wedding and a “golden baby ring” to rattle in the birth of her first grandchild.

Stambovsky made his case to the Appellate Division of New York state Supreme Court and got his deposit back. Because Ackley had publicized that her house had ghosts, the court ruled, “as a matter of law, the house is haunted.”

I tested Google out to see if there were any other Supreme Court rulings dealing with hauntings. The only story that kept coming up (and up and up) was this one.  Having the Supreme Court rule on anything dealing with the paranormal is quite unique. The article continues on:

The court’s precedent, though, was short-lived. By the mid-1990s, New York and many other jurisdictions, including the District, Virginia and Maryland, passed what are known as stigmatized property laws. While real estate agents must pass along information to prospective buyers about leaky roofs and other physical defects, immaterial items such as a murder or suicide in the house — or a ghost — may now remain shrouded in silence.

But should you tell anyway?

“Are you out of your mind?” one real estate agent said with a shudder. “Never, never, never tell anyone you have a ghost.”

But Don Denton, a branch vice president of Coldwell Banker/Pardoe Real Estate, disagreed: “I’m of the school that you disclose everything — but you disclose with the permission of the seller. If you don’t, two or three weeks later the client will be walking down the street and hear about it and it becomes an issue. They feel taken advantage of.”

Washington real estate lawyer Morris Battino thinks the same way. “It goes with termites and leaky roofs,” he said. “People today are litigation-happy. As far as I’m concerned, the more you disclose the better. In fact a ghost might turn out to be a good selling point — something to brag about.”

Richard Ellis of Ellis Realty should know. He handled the sale of the Ackley house and listed it again several years later. “People love the history of the house,” he said. “It appreciated with the marketplace when it changed hands.” The current owners have lived there six or seven years, he said. “I assume they’re happy. They’re still there.”

When my parents were looking for a house in the late 70s, they briefly considered purchasing a home in which a murder had been committed (I believe the husband murdered the wife in the bedroom). I  remember hearing that the carpet still had a distinctly cleaner spot on it than the rest – no, no blood, but a super clean patch is almost eerie enough. Whoever was going to buy that house would be the occupants immediately following the murder. My parents didn’t buy the house – not because of the murder, but for other logistical reasons.  I think it was disclosed because it was a pretty well-known story in the area at the time.  But it does make you wonder…if the house went up for sale now, would it be disclosed?

What would you do in that situation if you were trying to sell a home?

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