March 8, 2023 • 41 mins
These days, many people associate the idea of a 'haunted house' with horror novels, campfire tales and scary movies. But what happens when someone goes to court, claiming their new house is haunted? In celebration of International Women's Day, guest hosts Lauren Vogelbaum and Mykal Alder June take over to explore the strange series of events that led to New York officially declaring at least one house legally haunted.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome
(00:28):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. I'm Lauren, i am
Michael Alder June, and we're not the people that you're
probably used to hearing on here. Yeah, you're like, who
in the hell are these people? Well, if you are
listening on the day this comes out, it is International
Women's Day, and a thing that I Heart likes to
do for that is to have some of us lady
(00:51):
hosts come on and do a takeover for some of
the dude hosts, and so Ben and Nol invited us
to come talk about some weird stuff with y'all. Yeah,
and Lauren is being very nice in referring to us
both as hosts. I'm you've probably only heard my name
if you've heard it at all associated with the shows
(01:14):
Where Were You in ninety two and the Fabulous Too
Much Information? I cut tape on those. This is actually
I think my first time on the business side of
the microphone on one of these. So I'm very excited
maybe on these podcasts. But you have plenty of experience
you I mean, you've got you've got a long and
storied career, You've done some really stellar interviews. Oh okay,
(01:38):
So Lauren's referring to my dozen or so years in
public radio before this, during which time I got to
run out into traffic in the middle of Atlanta and
ride shotgun in a race car. I once conducted an
interview whilst climbing Stone Mountain that was fun and exhausting. Yeah,
(02:00):
breath support. Yeah, and I've I've once interviewed Spike Lee
that was terrifying. Oh my heck. I would have not
gotten there. I would have been stuck standing in my house,
not remembering how to tie my own shoes. It was
not one of the times when I was making my
job look easy. I'll we'll put it that way. Well,
(02:22):
making both of our jobs look easy today with us,
as always is a super producer Max Williams Man. Yeah,
I'm still here, and I'm still here. Well, they couldn't
get rid of the entire crew. We need somebody to
push buttons and to look things up for us and
to make us sound like we aren't a couple of
(02:44):
bumbling fools. And I'm here and I am qualified to
do it. Possibly, we trust you, We trust you. Okay,
So for today's episode, we are going to be talking
about houses, and not just any houses, but haunted houses.
And not just any haunted houses, but haunted houses that
(03:06):
have been legislated about. Yes, there is at least one
home in America that is legally haunted, and we know
about that thanks to real estate. And I don't know
if y'all have ever tried to buy or sell a house.
I'm in the process of attempting to buy a house
right now, and I can speak to you from extremely
(03:26):
personal experience that it is arduous and complicated, and there
are all kinds of like weird plot twists that pop up,
like I don't know, man, Like is that mold in
the wall going to require me to tear down the
entire house? It could? Yeah, the installation in the attic
is that still? Does that still work? Or am I
going to have to take all of that disgusting fluff
(03:48):
out and replace it with something that was made in
this century. I was, at one time a homeowner, and
let me tell you, clambering around in your own attic
not before I went in, Before I owned a house,
I always pictured it kind of like working on a
pirate ship and being very swashbuckling and getting the you know,
(04:11):
climb up into the attic and clamber down into the
into the crawl space and work on things and you know,
hoist the riggings. And it is not like that at all.
It is. It is disgusting, and it is laborious and expensive.
It's it's terribly, terribly expensive. And so when you're buying
a house, there's so much to think about, and you
(04:34):
probably aren't going to think to ask, Hey, also, is
there a ghost that lives here? Right? Is it already
occupied by a dead person? Yeah, there's quite a long
way to go between your kids hearing bumps in the
night or seeing lights flicker on it off. And then
(04:55):
they're being like lawyers and courts involved, So like, let's
let's dive in. What how did we get to there
being such a thing as legally haunted? All right, let's
set the scene. Yeah, so the Ackley House is this
earnestly beautiful Victorian home. It's in this wonderful place called Nayack,
(05:17):
New York, which sounds like the kind of thing that
theater kids used to warm up. Nayak, New York, Nayak,
New York, New Nayak, New York. You know, I love Nayack,
New York. It's not too far away from the legendary
Sleepy Hollow and If Shore Shore, and it was built
(05:38):
in like eighteen ninety. You know, it's just one of
those beautiful, sweeping Victorian homes. You know. It's got the
it's got all of the wood paneling, it's got the
wrap around porch, it's got that kind of turret sort
of thing, it's got a it's got an in ground
fenced in pool, eight bedrooms, four and a half bathrooms,
like one and a half kitchens because there's one in
(05:59):
what I assume was the servant quarters. Lovely, you know,
it's got the stained glass in the windows and stuff
like that. It sounds like the kind of place where
like a murder mystery would take place, But has there been.
No one knows. We don't know much about the early
occupants of the house. Some people say that it was
(06:22):
probably owned by a family that still that still lives
in the area. There's just not a lot of documentation,
but it does stand out from the other houses on
the street. Okay, so we should note that the house
is not the site of any like infamous murder or
some kind of heartbreaking tragedy. The rumors of ghosts go
(06:46):
back to the mid nineteen seventies, so we're jumping way
ahead in time. And in nineteen seventy seven, Readers Digest
published this article titled Our Haunted House on the Hudson
and it was written by this woman named Helen Ackley
the Ackley House. She lived there. She was married to
(07:07):
a man named George Ackley, she had four kids, and
in it she wrote these flowery descriptions about the family's
many ghostly roommates that lived there. And it's funny because
while it is a ghost story, it feels more like
it feels more like somebody describing like an unexpected pet
(07:31):
living with them, Like maybe not maybe not like an
elephant in the room. Maybe like uh, like a one
of the smaller, less lethal wildcats, like a lynx. Like
if if the lynx came to live in your house unexpectedly,
but you like kind of made way around it. Yeah,
it's like, oh, you know, could it hurt us? Maybe? Maybe? Oh?
(07:54):
How cute? Sure? Like it's just standing here enjoying the
views of the Hudson River with me. You know, I
asked it if it likes my paint color. Choices and
it didn't disagree. So heck, yeah, let's keep the links
and let's write a charming Reader's Digest article about it. So, like,
just to set this up, let me, I'm just gonna
read a little bit of this of this description, just
(08:17):
from the first couple of paragraphs. I saw our house
for the first time on a hot July day in
nineteen sixty seven, a bedraggled old Victorian. It had stood
vacant for seven years. Okay, red flag right away. It's
waste high lawn clutched about a sturdy stone foundation. It's
(08:39):
wood shingled roof was awry. But as I followed the
real estate agent and my husband George into the spacious hall,
I knew I was home. So this is the tone
that she's going for. Yeah, and so even before, like
even before they get all of their boxes unpacked and
their stuff moved in, local children start wandering up, I imagine,
(09:03):
like kids like scooting up on like on bicycles, wearing
like like those like like jug head crowns. Probably you know, local, local, local,
ne'er do well, twelve year old um who rode up
and warned them that, like, hey, did you know that
you just bought a hunted house. Because like this was
the talk of the neighborhood. Everybody knew it, it had
(09:25):
been it had been vacant for seven years, everybody knew
to I imagine, everybody knew to stay away from it,
and the local kids probably had all sorts of like
stories about what could have happened in the house. Oh sure.
I mean it's also like a like a low key,
creepy old Victorian, and that's you know, there's there's there's
one of these, or I mean, even if it's not
a Victorian, there's one like slightly in disrepair home on
(09:46):
every street that the local kids have a story about.
And this was that one, and right, the couple and
the children go on to have any number of of
supernatural run ins. There's mocks in style, shoe clad feet
on the stairs, there's a dude in the hallway, and
like perhaps Revolutionary War era attire, the powdered wig and everything.
(10:11):
Oh yeah, absolutely very proper. The daughter, Cynthia, who was
in high school at the time, said that over Christmas break,
every morning her bed shook her awake, and she wasn't
like scared particularly or mad about it, except like she
wanted to sleep in, and so one night before she
(10:32):
went to bed, she was like, Hey, I'm on vacation, dude,
can I sleep in? And it didn't happen that morning.
So I love how laws fair they are about this
whole thing, right, I mean, I don't know. That's as
long as nothing particularly frightening is happening. This this all
seems just fine. Yeah, like like yeah, like again, like
(10:54):
having a you know, a lynx just like padding around
the house, sleeping in the sunbeams, Like just just leave
it alone and it won't claw your eyes out of here.
But so, okay, the ghosts were not the reason that
that this couple decided to eventually sell the home. You know,
they were just ready to downsize. So they imagine, you know,
(11:17):
they had like empty nest syndrome. They had this gigantic
house on the Hudson right and they fixed it up.
You know, they were ready to make a little bit
of a profit. So it's nineteen eighty nine. They list
the property with Ellis Realty with agent Richard Ellis and
this young couple Jeffrey and Patricia Stambovsky our interest Remember
(11:41):
that last name, Yeah, Sambovsky. Sambovsky, Yeah, yeah, yeah, they
get interested and they put in down payment. So okay,
So talking to that realtor, According to Helen's daughter Cynthia,
Helen Actley did in fact disclose the haunted nature in
a you know, just bringing it up in passing, like, oh,
(12:01):
by the way, there's also a link that blues here.
By the way, this place is also kind of haunted,
you know, fun fact, you know, not not in any
kind of like hey, before you build. Yeah yeah, so
if you were to ask Ellis the real estate agent,
he remembers even her refusing to sign her end of
(12:22):
the contract before having a conversation with a Stambovski's about it.
So like she did make it known that hey, places haunted,
but there's like a ghostly he said. She said about
this because the Stambofskis insist that they had not heard
about this, and furthermore that they don't believe in ghosts,
(12:43):
but that they do believe in the market and and
that ghosts can impact the market. So after they heard
about this whole ghost thing, they wanted to pull out
of the deal. They in fact mild action against the
acclas for and I quote, fraudulently misrepresenting a material condition
(13:08):
of the home by not mentioning, Yeah, it's scratching up
the furniture, you guys. And with that, these ghostly specters
have brought these people to court. That's it's not even
(13:30):
a links in the room. It's a link. It's links
in the courtroom. Yeah. So okay. The idea here is that, um,
whether or not ghosts are real, the fact that Helen
had told the whole neighborhood about this, had like had
like written an article that was published in Readers Digest
that this affected the the value of the property, and
(13:53):
not by making it go up either. No. No, although
we'll get into that a little bit later. So that
complaint was initially dismissed by the courts. The courts threw
it out said that, um, this woman, she didn't have
she didn't have to disclose anything about a haunted house
(14:13):
to the buyers, like y'all should have asked, don't worry
about it, not our problem, get out of here, guys. Yeah. Yeah,
and that's uh. One of the legal things that the
crops up in cases like this is a caveat empter,
which is Latin for buyer beware. Basically, it's just it's
just saying that it is the buyer's responsibility to do
(14:37):
any due diligence in figuring out whatever's going on with
a property. It's not the seller's responsibility to tell you
have to figure it out as the buyer. And which
like I mean, Lauren speaking to you, like you know,
you're you're working from experience here. You you know, you
went through all of the folder, all of buying a house,
(14:58):
Like what did you not think of that you should
have to ask? Like if you could go back into
the warm yourself, like, hey, ask about the basement or whatever.
I mean, it's the process is still ongoing, so I
guess we're gonna find out. But um, but that being said,
like I mean, I hired I hired a contractor and electrician,
(15:20):
um an HVAC expert, And to be honest, I did
have a friend come through for like a vibe check.
So okay, So you you were you were more much
more proactive than the Stumbrovskis apparently okay, But at any rate,
(15:40):
they appealed the decision and it went all the way
to the New York State Supreme Court. That's bonkers, okay.
So once it got to the court, once it got
to the Supreme Court of New York. Let me make
sure that I'm getting this judge's name correct, Justice Ruben.
(16:02):
Do we have his first name? Hey, Max, do we
have Justice Ruben's first name? That speaking? And he's Fallen
Millege just for you right now. So we've got like
a whole Jackson five situation going on in the Supreme
(16:25):
Court in New York. All right, I think I'm pretty
certain I have the right one. The right justice I
think is Israel Ruben. He was the Associate Justice from
nineteen eighty nine to two thousand. Tune born December fourteenth,
nineteen twenty six and died May twenty third, twenty fourteen.
But as June was joking, there are multiple Justice Rubens
(16:48):
in New York around this time. So let's call this
Max with the partial facts right here and go with it.
Phone get back. So Justice Ruben, who was quite a
(17:10):
spring chicken at that point, Um, he disagreed with the
former courts ruling that you know, basically said get out
of here. And he was joined by two other judges.
Whether they were the other two Rubens, we don't know.
He was joined by two other judges to form the
majority opinion that the caveat of buyer beware caveat ter
(17:33):
should be set aside in this case because the defect
is not a physical one. Again, it's ectoplasmic now. Because
the judges were not you know, tarot readers, they weren't
wuiji bored enthusiasts. Um. Instead, they argued that things like
(17:55):
a crime, a violent crime happening in the house, a
reputation based on and past occurrences in a location, can
devalue the market value of a property, and so as
a result, the seller should have have to disclose this
to the buyers. So he was kind of wagging his
finger at um at acclee there. Yeah, yeah, the court wrote,
(18:20):
having reported the ghost's presence in both a national publication
i e. Reader's Digest and the local press, defendant is
a stopped to deny their existence. And as a matter
of law, the house is haunted. Yeah, as a matter
of law, legally haunted house. Where is that movie by
(18:41):
the way, like I will I want to see, like
you know coming this fall from Miramax Pictures. Elwoods is
back from the dead, legally haunted harmonium. Cyclocally, I think
I think that we we could have multiple movies in
a year the same you know that that once upon
(19:03):
a time we had like multiple Tornado films in a year,
Like like a one can be a really tense court
drama and one can be way more fabulous. You get
like fashion tips from the ghosts, so you like really
start bringing back some revolutionary era of fashions. I think
it would be really cool. A buddy comedy with a kid. Yes,
we need more of those. Yeah, all right, I agree.
(19:26):
So but yeah, so the judge was basically like Helen,
you went and told everybody, yeah in Reader's Digest, Yeah,
in great detail. Okay, so just I'm sorry, but to
return to this Reader's Digest article because it's so it's
so flowery and fascinating, like it's it's as if she's
writing about like just an old friend who stopped through town.
(19:48):
So at one point she's writing about how she she's
alone in the house and she's painting a room and
she feels eyes on her and I'm reading here. I
turned my head. The room was empty. I started working again,
but the eerie feeling persisted, so I spoke out loud,
(20:09):
I hope you like the color, hope you pleased with
what we're doing to the house. It certainly must have
been lovely when it was built. And as I talked,
I kept painting, but I felt the energy of those
eyes focused on the nape of my neck. I looked
over my shoulder again. Quote. He sat there in midair,
(20:29):
smiling at me from in front of the old fireplace.
Hands clasped around his cross knees. He was nodding and rocking.
He faded slowly, still smiling, and was gone. But I
knew that he approved of the work our family had
lavished on our mutual home. This is it's very Norah Roberts.
(20:51):
I feel I love everything about this story. Oh my goodness,
it's like it's it's not it's not a ghost story.
It's like a it's like it's like a ghost story,
but for HGTV. Right, Okay, so this house. The decision
(21:16):
is known as the nineteen ninety one Stanbovski Versus Acte ruling,
or or right by its way cooler street name the
Ghostbusters Ruling. Who are you gonna call a lawyer? You're
gonna call a lawyer? Okay, speaking of where does the
(21:37):
law stand today on haunting disclosures? Okay, So the acte verdict.
Of course, as court cases do, created a precedent. It's
not official state law in New York, but it did
set this precedent for the question of whether or not
to disclose paranormal activity. And people have come out of
(21:58):
the woodwork or the grave work to capitalize on this,
Folks like Cindy Hagley, who is a real estate agent
I think in the Bay Area, Max, can I get
a fact check on that? Is she in the Bay Area?
I will get on it. Thank you. Um. She runs
the Hagley Group Hagley pardon me, and is the president
(22:22):
of and I love this Past Life Homes, which is
a consultancy that helps haunted homeowners sell their properties. Yeah,
and shout out to HowStuffWorks dot com who interviewed her
back in twenty twenty about all this and that phrase
haunted homeowners sell their bedeviled properties is straight from them. Thanks. Thanks.
(22:44):
So I got Cindy Hagley's Zillo page up well first
and foremost she her hers are pronouns perfect five stars
on fourteen reviews. That's most important, specially these buyer's agent
listing agents foreclosure short sales. She is located on the
Francisco esque area Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, that kind of
(23:04):
area all we out of Stockton phone and drops inegeh
for you. And we should note she's also a podcast host.
(23:25):
She has she's the co host of a show called
Grave Misunderstandings, which, oh my god, I love this so much. Okay,
this is wonderful. Um, if it wasn't clear to everyone,
June and I are kind of like spooky bitches and
so like I think that this is this is this
whole thing is perfect. I'm so glad. I'm gonterally do
(23:47):
it right now literally wearing a skull necklace. That's why
they asked me to do this. But okay, so a
core to Hagley, who is an expert in this kind
of thing. She will disclose hauntings if they are open
(24:07):
and notorious, like if there have been multiple sidings the neighbors. No,
maybe you've written a Florid Reader's Digest article about it
and you know, but because right, but like like along
the lines of the fact that that this could be
stigmatizing for the home and like state law is difficult,
(24:31):
like like to be honest, I did not dig through
the legal code for home buyers for every state. But
I have read on legal blogs, lawblogs. Um that, lawblogs,
thank you, that three states do mention hauntings in their
disclosure law. Minnesota and Massachusetts actually both free sellers from
(24:53):
having to disclose such a non material fact as haunted.
Unim the material is great, all right, UMU, and Minnesota
specifically calls them perceived paranormal activities. Yeah, um, y'all keep
your your free roaming vapors tears. Yeah, don't have to.
(25:17):
New Jersey specifies that a seller does have to disclose
hauntings if asked. If asked is the important part, so
I or beware exactly, yeah, like like generally you don't
have to proactively tell anyone about this. But if you
live in California, if you live in California, South Dakota,
(25:38):
or if we have any listeners in Alaska, which I
know that we do, there are exceptions to this rule
and I love this. So in California, for example, any
death on a property, peaceful or otherwise it states needs
to be disclosed if it occurred within the last three years. Um.
In Alaska and in South Dakota, they're a little less
(26:00):
concerned with death. H it's any death within the past year. Okay, yeah,
so that that that person who got accidentally murdered to
death in your fourier U five years ago. Don't worry
about it. Oh yeah, that one's fine. Yeah, she's okay,
she's just chilling. Um. But other states it's uh, it's
(26:23):
going by it's going by the good old guacamole rule. Uh.
It's available on request. It's gonna cost you extra. But
you know, if if you're if you are particularly if
you're particularly there, we need to come up with another
phrase for like afraid of ghosts or like having a
prejudice against like deadest ghost ISTT Yeah, spiritist. Are you
(26:50):
a spirit It's like being agist. Like no, it's like
being agist to an extreme degree. So if if you're spiritist,
just know that you should probably ask sure. Yeah, because
generally speaking, like if a potential buyer asks any question
about the property to the seller or the agent that
(27:12):
they have to answer truthfully to the best of their knowledge.
The rules do change if the death in question was violent, um,
like like a like a murder, a suicide, especially anything
that's been publicized. UM is floridest I don't know in
(27:34):
a true crime podcast something like that. Um where where
where would we hear something like that? Though, Oh, I
have literally no idea. Um, that's considered something that would
stigmatize the property to the same extent that like that
like fiscal damage, like like water damage or you know,
lead paint in the walls, which is a form that
I had to sign off on, knowing about my house having.
(27:56):
They're like, yeah, don't eat the paint chips. I was like, gotcha, cool,
no problem, stated Georgia. Um. Yeah, no, they're They're like, yeah,
I love Like the checklist is like, you know, make
sure that the rufous stable, make sure that the foundation
isn't cracked, make sure that it's not haunted, and there's
no murders that happened here. Yeah, although I will say
that there are some situations in which, yeah, hauntings can
(28:17):
be considered a bonus. Ooh okay, this is okay, this
is what I'm here for. Okay. So, just for example,
some agents who sell homes in New Orleans hang special
placards from the street level signage. You know, like you've
seen these placards on real estate signs. It's like open house,
swimming pool, contract pending haunted or not haunted. They have
(28:42):
both of those specified. What I want is like a
motel sign that has like a kneon like like like
no vacancy, haunted, not haunted, like oh yeah, depending on
when the ghosts are coming and going. Um, I like
the crisp crispy cream, hot hot fresh now ghosts. I'm
(29:07):
very into this. I have to admit to y'all that,
um that if I ever hang a sign like upon
my person that says in large caps, lock block letters,
not haunted, it's a lie that is absolutely over compensation
and you should oh we can see it in your eyes.
(29:28):
I don't think you need. Okay. So, having said all
of that, what is the Actley House doing now? I mean,
apart from standing by the Hudson handsomely. Sure, sure it
has actually changed hands like relatively frequently. The aforementioned real
(29:51):
estate agent Ellis said, maybe it's because of the energy there,
but but right, like, it does have this history of
perceived haunting. None of the subsequent owners have just have
reported any ghosts themselves, and a bunch of them have
been like really pretty public figures. I believe the guy
who bought it after the accles were trying to sell it,
(30:13):
and they went through this whole Stembowski case. Was filmmaker
Adam Brooks who lived there for like twenty years. That
was his residence if you're unfamiliar with the name off
the top of your head, while he co wrote the
screenplay for Practical Magic. How freaking perfect does that? I
love that? And then after him and Grid Michaelson, the
(30:35):
you know, lightened Bubbly Ukulele Whielder lived in it, and
then she sold it in twenty fifteen. So in nineteen
eighty nine it sold for how much eight hundred thousand? Okay,
so by the time Ingrid Michaelson is unloading it in
twenty fifteen, it was listed for one point nine million
(30:57):
dollars an old victorian on the Hudson because of course,
but she didn't blame ghosts for leaving. I can't imagine
that Ingrid Michaelson would like would see ghosts like she
she would like living with that Lynx. I would impress, sure, yeah,
she'd be like, hey, what do you think of this briff?
And you know, I don't know if ghosts would have
an opinion. I'm sure that that old powdered wig would
(31:19):
probably have a word or two to say, try going
to a minor chord. See, maybe maybe this is why
she left. Maybe she was like yeah, but but um
it was. In fact, another musician who bought the home.
Modest Yahoo bought the homes and lived there for four years.
(31:44):
Who knew until until twenty nineteen, and then the home
went up for sale in twenty twenty for one point
nine million and last sold in twenty twenty one for
one million, seven hundred and ninety five thousand dollars. So
not quite the asking price. But you know, real estate's
weird right now. Yeah, okay, so maybe the most important
(32:09):
question that we haven't really touched on. I'm surprised that
we've gone this entire time without talking about it, Lauren.
Have you ever seen a ghost? You know? I can't
say it was necessarily a ghost I have. I don't
believe in ghosts, but I have experienced phenomena that I
cannot say that I can explain. That's a pretty big butt, Laura.
(32:30):
It is a it's a that's a large that's like
a baby got back like sis, but right there, I
mean like like I brought that friend over, our friend Cody,
you know, Cody. Uh oh, yes, Cody, of oh, but perfect,
not specifically because I wanted them to do a vibe check,
like they're one of my best friends. Like I wanted
them to check to see the house. In general, it's
a thing that I'm excited about. Come check out this
(32:52):
very expensive thing I might embark on. But right, like,
the fact that they did a vibe check was welcome,
partially because the house that I buying is an estate sale,
and you know the former owner. I'm not sure where
she passed. It might have been in the house. Oh
(33:13):
that's from the nineteen sixties. Any number of things could
have happened there. Oh well, of course, nineteen sixties Atlanta.
Come on, right, come on, I have seen I'm fairly, no,
not fairly. I am absolutely a thousand percent certain I've
seen a ghost. Yeah. Yeah. So I was staying with
(33:36):
my I was a young child. I was staying at
my grandmother's house, and my great grandmother at that time
was in a nursing home which was almost literally just
across the street from the oh oh wow. Uh. And
I was sleeping in her old room, and I recall
(34:00):
one night waking up because the light in the bathroom
next to that bedroom was turned on and like light
was flooding into the room in the middle of the night,
and I, you know, kind of sat up with a start.
I didn't have my glasses on because I had been asleep.
(34:21):
But there was a figure, a shadowed figure in the
doorway sort of poking its head into the room, and
it made it made a surprised noise, like they did,
like they pup their head into the room, not expecting
to see somebody lying in the bed and went huh
and withdrew really quickly, and for some reason in my
(34:42):
like nine year old brain, I was like, oh, my
Lola is asking me to get up. So I got up.
So I woke up, and I went to the bathroom
and I brushed my teeth, and then I was I
walked into the living room. It's the middle of the night,
and finally I'm wearing my glasses at this point. And
in the living room, my great grandmother, my Nana, I
(35:06):
was sitting in the chair she normally sat in right
by the front window, just looking out onto the lawn.
And it freaked me the hell out, and I ran
to my Lola's bed and I like dove under the
cover and slept between her and Lolo like for the
rest of the night, and then nobody believed me in
(35:28):
the morning until until Okay, they got news that in
the middle of the night Nana I had suffered some
internal bleeding and had to be emergency rushed to the
hospital in the middle of the night, probably right around
the time that I saw her in the living room.
(35:48):
So I've had close personal experience with um, with the supernatural.
So I am like, I am so on board with
this whole lake, Like, let me at this. Somebody, somebody
give me, somebody give me a couple million dollars so
I can move into this house on the Hudson in
New York and and just live out, live out my
(36:12):
my ghostly dreams, my my links, my my my Lynxy fantasies. Yeah,
I see, all of mine are much more easily explainable
than that. Like, like I don't know, like like one
of the theaters that I volunteer out around town sometimes, um,
you know, like like I would be there after hours
at weird times when when no one else was around,
(36:33):
and you know, I would hear weird, weird sounds coming
from places where I mean, old building, you know, things
happen in old buildings, but but sounds that I couldn't
quite explain, um, in places that I couldn't quite explain
them having come from uh kind of hot and cold
areas stuff like that. Somebody right, yeah, yeah, that kind
of thing. And um, and there was this one specific
(36:56):
like like really like really rhythmic knocking that would happen
that was that was just like really almost inquisitive. It
was just like a kind of thing happening. I don't
know if that picked up on Mike at all. But
this went on for a number of weeks, and then
we found out that there were raccoons living in the
(37:17):
air vents. So um, speaking speaking of of furry rodents
moving into your house, where's this transition going going back
to the links? Great? Great, I'm about with you. Cool
(37:39):
all right, So what have we learned? What have we learned? One?
Old houses are awesome and should all all of them
should come with ghosts In my opinion, yes, absolutely. But
if if, if living with a ghost is not your jam,
and you're buying a house, just ask, because they have
to tell you it's it's it's ghostly, it's it's it's
(38:02):
entrapman and containment. It's the great oh dear. Okay, yeah,
so buyer beware is like the biggest thing. And also
like if you live in Alaska, you know you got
a year, you got you got three hundred and sixty
five days and that's all that they're going to give you.
Yeah yeah, um oh hark so uh June, if people
(38:26):
want to hear more from you, where can they find you? Well,
you can find me. I have a website, Michael June
dot com that's m y k a L because I
have to be extra m y k a l j
u n e like the month Michael June dot com
for all your Michael June dot com needs um. That
has linked all my socials. If you follow me on Twitter,
(38:49):
just know that it's a mess um um. But I
I have linked you know, shows that I've worked on.
I'm a writer, so you know articles that I have written,
music that I make that kind of thing of you know,
you know, spooky bit just gotta bang on guitars. It's necessary,
(39:09):
it's in our contract. Actually yeah, um, you died. You
don't want to cross the spooky bitch legal department and
that's terrible. Um. Yeah, my full name I don't think
I said it at the top. Was is not? Was? Oh? Gosh,
am I a ghost? Is Lauren vogel Bomb. Um. You
can find me around the internet on Instagram. I am
(39:31):
at vogel Bomb like vog e l Bomb because I
was really feeling myself that day. On Twitter, Oh, thank you,
no you, oh both of us, Yeah, you two Max
on Twitter, I'm grammar monkey because that happened in like
two thousand and nine and it's very very aol instant messenger,
(39:51):
a kind of kind of handle. Yeah, all right, well,
Lauren June, thank y'all so much for being here. Oh,
thank you for having us. You know, it was much
better than the normal. Two fools I am with all
are much more enjoyable. But you know, Ben Noel, they
are both very spooky. Bit just too they are they
(40:12):
are it's what brings us together, right. But also we
want to give us special thanks to Christopher Haspiotis and
Eaves Jeff Coat, who are you know here with us
in spirit obviously, in spirits obviously, Ben Boland, Noel Brown
of the normal host who will be back next week.
Of course, special thanks to Alex Williams who composed this
(40:36):
theme right here our research associates, Jeff Bartlett and Zach Williams.
Thanks Jeff's, Thanks Zach, and of course the haunted spirit
of our show, mister Jonathan's Stricklin, whose ghosts will be
around to haunt us someday soon, but hopefully that day
is not today. Just just don't stay his name two
(40:58):
more times it is Beel rules, oh you, And in
the words of our fast and furious leader, Noel Brown,
We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
(41:19):
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome
(00:28):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. I'm Lauren, i am
Michael Alder June, and we're not the people that you're
probably used to hearing on here. Yeah, you're like, who
in the hell are these people? Well, if you are
listening on the day this comes out, it is International
Women's Day, and a thing that I Heart likes to
do for that is to have some of us lady
(00:51):
hosts come on and do a takeover for some of
the dude hosts, and so Ben and Nol invited us
to come talk about some weird stuff with y'all. Yeah,
and Lauren is being very nice in referring to us
both as hosts. I'm you've probably only heard my name
if you've heard it at all associated with the shows
(01:14):
Where Were You in ninety two and the Fabulous Too
Much Information? I cut tape on those. This is actually
I think my first time on the business side of
the microphone on one of these. So I'm very excited
maybe on these podcasts. But you have plenty of experience
you I mean, you've got you've got a long and
storied career, You've done some really stellar interviews. Oh okay,
(01:38):
So Lauren's referring to my dozen or so years in
public radio before this, during which time I got to
run out into traffic in the middle of Atlanta and
ride shotgun in a race car. I once conducted an
interview whilst climbing Stone Mountain that was fun and exhausting. Yeah,
(02:00):
breath support. Yeah, and I've I've once interviewed Spike Lee
that was terrifying. Oh my heck. I would have not
gotten there. I would have been stuck standing in my house,
not remembering how to tie my own shoes. It was
not one of the times when I was making my
job look easy. I'll we'll put it that way. Well,
(02:22):
making both of our jobs look easy today with us,
as always is a super producer Max Williams Man. Yeah,
I'm still here, and I'm still here. Well, they couldn't
get rid of the entire crew. We need somebody to
push buttons and to look things up for us and
to make us sound like we aren't a couple of
(02:44):
bumbling fools. And I'm here and I am qualified to
do it. Possibly, we trust you, We trust you. Okay,
So for today's episode, we are going to be talking
about houses, and not just any houses, but haunted houses.
And not just any haunted houses, but haunted houses that
(03:06):
have been legislated about. Yes, there is at least one
home in America that is legally haunted, and we know
about that thanks to real estate. And I don't know
if y'all have ever tried to buy or sell a house.
I'm in the process of attempting to buy a house
right now, and I can speak to you from extremely
(03:26):
personal experience that it is arduous and complicated, and there
are all kinds of like weird plot twists that pop up,
like I don't know, man, Like is that mold in
the wall going to require me to tear down the
entire house? It could? Yeah, the installation in the attic
is that still? Does that still work? Or am I
going to have to take all of that disgusting fluff
(03:48):
out and replace it with something that was made in
this century. I was, at one time a homeowner, and
let me tell you, clambering around in your own attic
not before I went in, Before I owned a house,
I always pictured it kind of like working on a
pirate ship and being very swashbuckling and getting the you know,
(04:11):
climb up into the attic and clamber down into the
into the crawl space and work on things and you know,
hoist the riggings. And it is not like that at all.
It is. It is disgusting, and it is laborious and expensive.
It's it's terribly, terribly expensive. And so when you're buying
a house, there's so much to think about, and you
(04:34):
probably aren't going to think to ask, Hey, also, is
there a ghost that lives here? Right? Is it already
occupied by a dead person? Yeah, there's quite a long
way to go between your kids hearing bumps in the
night or seeing lights flicker on it off. And then
(04:55):
they're being like lawyers and courts involved, So like, let's
let's dive in. What how did we get to there
being such a thing as legally haunted? All right, let's
set the scene. Yeah, so the Ackley House is this
earnestly beautiful Victorian home. It's in this wonderful place called Nayack,
(05:17):
New York, which sounds like the kind of thing that
theater kids used to warm up. Nayak, New York, Nayak,
New York, New Nayak, New York. You know, I love Nayack,
New York. It's not too far away from the legendary
Sleepy Hollow and If Shore Shore, and it was built
(05:38):
in like eighteen ninety. You know, it's just one of
those beautiful, sweeping Victorian homes. You know. It's got the
it's got all of the wood paneling, it's got the
wrap around porch, it's got that kind of turret sort
of thing, it's got a it's got an in ground
fenced in pool, eight bedrooms, four and a half bathrooms,
like one and a half kitchens because there's one in
(05:59):
what I assume was the servant quarters. Lovely, you know,
it's got the stained glass in the windows and stuff
like that. It sounds like the kind of place where
like a murder mystery would take place, But has there been.
No one knows. We don't know much about the early
occupants of the house. Some people say that it was
(06:22):
probably owned by a family that still that still lives
in the area. There's just not a lot of documentation,
but it does stand out from the other houses on
the street. Okay, so we should note that the house
is not the site of any like infamous murder or
some kind of heartbreaking tragedy. The rumors of ghosts go
(06:46):
back to the mid nineteen seventies, so we're jumping way
ahead in time. And in nineteen seventy seven, Readers Digest
published this article titled Our Haunted House on the Hudson
and it was written by this woman named Helen Ackley
the Ackley House. She lived there. She was married to
(07:07):
a man named George Ackley, she had four kids, and
in it she wrote these flowery descriptions about the family's
many ghostly roommates that lived there. And it's funny because
while it is a ghost story, it feels more like
it feels more like somebody describing like an unexpected pet
(07:31):
living with them, Like maybe not maybe not like an
elephant in the room. Maybe like uh, like a one
of the smaller, less lethal wildcats, like a lynx. Like
if if the lynx came to live in your house unexpectedly,
but you like kind of made way around it. Yeah,
it's like, oh, you know, could it hurt us? Maybe? Maybe? Oh?
(07:54):
How cute? Sure? Like it's just standing here enjoying the
views of the Hudson River with me. You know, I
asked it if it likes my paint color. Choices and
it didn't disagree. So heck, yeah, let's keep the links
and let's write a charming Reader's Digest article about it. So, like,
just to set this up, let me, I'm just gonna
read a little bit of this of this description, just
(08:17):
from the first couple of paragraphs. I saw our house
for the first time on a hot July day in
nineteen sixty seven, a bedraggled old Victorian. It had stood
vacant for seven years. Okay, red flag right away. It's
waste high lawn clutched about a sturdy stone foundation. It's
(08:39):
wood shingled roof was awry. But as I followed the
real estate agent and my husband George into the spacious hall,
I knew I was home. So this is the tone
that she's going for. Yeah, and so even before, like
even before they get all of their boxes unpacked and
their stuff moved in, local children start wandering up, I imagine,
(09:03):
like kids like scooting up on like on bicycles, wearing
like like those like like jug head crowns. Probably you know, local, local, local,
ne'er do well, twelve year old um who rode up
and warned them that, like, hey, did you know that
you just bought a hunted house. Because like this was
the talk of the neighborhood. Everybody knew it, it had
(09:25):
been it had been vacant for seven years, everybody knew
to I imagine, everybody knew to stay away from it,
and the local kids probably had all sorts of like
stories about what could have happened in the house. Oh sure.
I mean it's also like a like a low key,
creepy old Victorian, and that's you know, there's there's there's
one of these, or I mean, even if it's not
a Victorian, there's one like slightly in disrepair home on
(09:46):
every street that the local kids have a story about.
And this was that one, and right, the couple and
the children go on to have any number of of
supernatural run ins. There's mocks in style, shoe clad feet
on the stairs, there's a dude in the hallway, and
like perhaps Revolutionary War era attire, the powdered wig and everything.
(10:11):
Oh yeah, absolutely very proper. The daughter, Cynthia, who was
in high school at the time, said that over Christmas break,
every morning her bed shook her awake, and she wasn't
like scared particularly or mad about it, except like she
wanted to sleep in, and so one night before she
(10:32):
went to bed, she was like, Hey, I'm on vacation, dude,
can I sleep in? And it didn't happen that morning.
So I love how laws fair they are about this
whole thing, right, I mean, I don't know. That's as
long as nothing particularly frightening is happening. This this all
seems just fine. Yeah, like like yeah, like again, like
(10:54):
having a you know, a lynx just like padding around
the house, sleeping in the sunbeams, Like just just leave
it alone and it won't claw your eyes out of here.
But so, okay, the ghosts were not the reason that
that this couple decided to eventually sell the home. You know,
they were just ready to downsize. So they imagine, you know,
(11:17):
they had like empty nest syndrome. They had this gigantic
house on the Hudson right and they fixed it up.
You know, they were ready to make a little bit
of a profit. So it's nineteen eighty nine. They list
the property with Ellis Realty with agent Richard Ellis and
this young couple Jeffrey and Patricia Stambovsky our interest Remember
(11:41):
that last name, Yeah, Sambovsky. Sambovsky, Yeah, yeah, yeah, they
get interested and they put in down payment. So okay,
So talking to that realtor, According to Helen's daughter Cynthia,
Helen Actley did in fact disclose the haunted nature in
a you know, just bringing it up in passing, like, oh,
(12:01):
by the way, there's also a link that blues here.
By the way, this place is also kind of haunted,
you know, fun fact, you know, not not in any
kind of like hey, before you build. Yeah yeah, so
if you were to ask Ellis the real estate agent,
he remembers even her refusing to sign her end of
(12:22):
the contract before having a conversation with a Stambovski's about it.
So like she did make it known that hey, places haunted,
but there's like a ghostly he said. She said about
this because the Stambofskis insist that they had not heard
about this, and furthermore that they don't believe in ghosts,
(12:43):
but that they do believe in the market and and
that ghosts can impact the market. So after they heard
about this whole ghost thing, they wanted to pull out
of the deal. They in fact mild action against the
acclas for and I quote, fraudulently misrepresenting a material condition
(13:08):
of the home by not mentioning, Yeah, it's scratching up
the furniture, you guys. And with that, these ghostly specters
have brought these people to court. That's it's not even
(13:30):
a links in the room. It's a link. It's links
in the courtroom. Yeah. So okay. The idea here is that, um,
whether or not ghosts are real, the fact that Helen
had told the whole neighborhood about this, had like had
like written an article that was published in Readers Digest
that this affected the the value of the property, and
(13:53):
not by making it go up either. No. No, although
we'll get into that a little bit later. So that
complaint was initially dismissed by the courts. The courts threw
it out said that, um, this woman, she didn't have
she didn't have to disclose anything about a haunted house
(14:13):
to the buyers, like y'all should have asked, don't worry
about it, not our problem, get out of here, guys. Yeah. Yeah,
and that's uh. One of the legal things that the
crops up in cases like this is a caveat empter,
which is Latin for buyer beware. Basically, it's just it's
just saying that it is the buyer's responsibility to do
(14:37):
any due diligence in figuring out whatever's going on with
a property. It's not the seller's responsibility to tell you
have to figure it out as the buyer. And which
like I mean, Lauren speaking to you, like you know,
you're you're working from experience here. You you know, you
went through all of the folder, all of buying a house,
(14:58):
Like what did you not think of that you should
have to ask? Like if you could go back into
the warm yourself, like, hey, ask about the basement or whatever.
I mean, it's the process is still ongoing, so I
guess we're gonna find out. But um, but that being said,
like I mean, I hired I hired a contractor and electrician,
(15:20):
um an HVAC expert, And to be honest, I did
have a friend come through for like a vibe check.
So okay, So you you were you were more much
more proactive than the Stumbrovskis apparently okay, But at any rate,
(15:40):
they appealed the decision and it went all the way
to the New York State Supreme Court. That's bonkers, okay.
So once it got to the court, once it got
to the Supreme Court of New York. Let me make
sure that I'm getting this judge's name correct, Justice Ruben.
(16:02):
Do we have his first name? Hey, Max, do we
have Justice Ruben's first name? That speaking? And he's Fallen
Millege just for you right now. So we've got like
a whole Jackson five situation going on in the Supreme
(16:25):
Court in New York. All right, I think I'm pretty
certain I have the right one. The right justice I
think is Israel Ruben. He was the Associate Justice from
nineteen eighty nine to two thousand. Tune born December fourteenth,
nineteen twenty six and died May twenty third, twenty fourteen.
But as June was joking, there are multiple Justice Rubens
(16:48):
in New York around this time. So let's call this
Max with the partial facts right here and go with it.
Phone get back. So Justice Ruben, who was quite a
(17:10):
spring chicken at that point, Um, he disagreed with the
former courts ruling that you know, basically said get out
of here. And he was joined by two other judges.
Whether they were the other two Rubens, we don't know.
He was joined by two other judges to form the
majority opinion that the caveat of buyer beware caveat ter
(17:33):
should be set aside in this case because the defect
is not a physical one. Again, it's ectoplasmic now. Because
the judges were not you know, tarot readers, they weren't
wuiji bored enthusiasts. Um. Instead, they argued that things like
(17:55):
a crime, a violent crime happening in the house, a
reputation based on and past occurrences in a location, can
devalue the market value of a property, and so as
a result, the seller should have have to disclose this
to the buyers. So he was kind of wagging his
finger at um at acclee there. Yeah, yeah, the court wrote,
(18:20):
having reported the ghost's presence in both a national publication
i e. Reader's Digest and the local press, defendant is
a stopped to deny their existence. And as a matter
of law, the house is haunted. Yeah, as a matter
of law, legally haunted house. Where is that movie by
(18:41):
the way, like I will I want to see, like
you know coming this fall from Miramax Pictures. Elwoods is
back from the dead, legally haunted harmonium. Cyclocally, I think
I think that we we could have multiple movies in
a year the same you know that that once upon
(19:03):
a time we had like multiple Tornado films in a year,
Like like a one can be a really tense court
drama and one can be way more fabulous. You get
like fashion tips from the ghosts, so you like really
start bringing back some revolutionary era of fashions. I think
it would be really cool. A buddy comedy with a kid. Yes,
we need more of those. Yeah, all right, I agree.
(19:26):
So but yeah, so the judge was basically like Helen,
you went and told everybody, yeah in Reader's Digest, Yeah,
in great detail. Okay, so just I'm sorry, but to
return to this Reader's Digest article because it's so it's
so flowery and fascinating, like it's it's as if she's
writing about like just an old friend who stopped through town.
(19:48):
So at one point she's writing about how she she's
alone in the house and she's painting a room and
she feels eyes on her and I'm reading here. I
turned my head. The room was empty. I started working again,
but the eerie feeling persisted, so I spoke out loud,
(20:09):
I hope you like the color, hope you pleased with
what we're doing to the house. It certainly must have
been lovely when it was built. And as I talked,
I kept painting, but I felt the energy of those
eyes focused on the nape of my neck. I looked
over my shoulder again. Quote. He sat there in midair,
(20:29):
smiling at me from in front of the old fireplace.
Hands clasped around his cross knees. He was nodding and rocking.
He faded slowly, still smiling, and was gone. But I
knew that he approved of the work our family had
lavished on our mutual home. This is it's very Norah Roberts.
(20:51):
I feel I love everything about this story. Oh my goodness,
it's like it's it's not it's not a ghost story.
It's like a it's like it's like a ghost story,
but for HGTV. Right, Okay, so this house. The decision
(21:16):
is known as the nineteen ninety one Stanbovski Versus Acte ruling,
or or right by its way cooler street name the
Ghostbusters Ruling. Who are you gonna call a lawyer? You're
gonna call a lawyer? Okay, speaking of where does the
(21:37):
law stand today on haunting disclosures? Okay, So the acte verdict.
Of course, as court cases do, created a precedent. It's
not official state law in New York, but it did
set this precedent for the question of whether or not
to disclose paranormal activity. And people have come out of
(21:58):
the woodwork or the grave work to capitalize on this,
Folks like Cindy Hagley, who is a real estate agent
I think in the Bay Area, Max, can I get
a fact check on that? Is she in the Bay Area?
I will get on it. Thank you. Um. She runs
the Hagley Group Hagley pardon me, and is the president
(22:22):
of and I love this Past Life Homes, which is
a consultancy that helps haunted homeowners sell their properties. Yeah,
and shout out to HowStuffWorks dot com who interviewed her
back in twenty twenty about all this and that phrase
haunted homeowners sell their bedeviled properties is straight from them. Thanks. Thanks.
(22:44):
So I got Cindy Hagley's Zillo page up well first
and foremost she her hers are pronouns perfect five stars
on fourteen reviews. That's most important, specially these buyer's agent
listing agents foreclosure short sales. She is located on the
Francisco esque area Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, that kind of
(23:04):
area all we out of Stockton phone and drops inegeh
for you. And we should note she's also a podcast host.
(23:25):
She has she's the co host of a show called
Grave Misunderstandings, which, oh my god, I love this so much. Okay,
this is wonderful. Um, if it wasn't clear to everyone,
June and I are kind of like spooky bitches and
so like I think that this is this is this
whole thing is perfect. I'm so glad. I'm gonterally do
(23:47):
it right now literally wearing a skull necklace. That's why
they asked me to do this. But okay, so a
core to Hagley, who is an expert in this kind
of thing. She will disclose hauntings if they are open
(24:07):
and notorious, like if there have been multiple sidings the neighbors. No,
maybe you've written a Florid Reader's Digest article about it
and you know, but because right, but like like along
the lines of the fact that that this could be
stigmatizing for the home and like state law is difficult,
(24:31):
like like to be honest, I did not dig through
the legal code for home buyers for every state. But
I have read on legal blogs, lawblogs. Um that, lawblogs,
thank you, that three states do mention hauntings in their
disclosure law. Minnesota and Massachusetts actually both free sellers from
(24:53):
having to disclose such a non material fact as haunted.
Unim the material is great, all right, UMU, and Minnesota
specifically calls them perceived paranormal activities. Yeah, um, y'all keep
your your free roaming vapors tears. Yeah, don't have to.
(25:17):
New Jersey specifies that a seller does have to disclose
hauntings if asked. If asked is the important part, so
I or beware exactly, yeah, like like generally you don't
have to proactively tell anyone about this. But if you
live in California, if you live in California, South Dakota,
(25:38):
or if we have any listeners in Alaska, which I
know that we do, there are exceptions to this rule
and I love this. So in California, for example, any
death on a property, peaceful or otherwise it states needs
to be disclosed if it occurred within the last three years. Um.
In Alaska and in South Dakota, they're a little less
(26:00):
concerned with death. H it's any death within the past year. Okay, yeah,
so that that that person who got accidentally murdered to
death in your fourier U five years ago. Don't worry
about it. Oh yeah, that one's fine. Yeah, she's okay,
she's just chilling. Um. But other states it's uh, it's
(26:23):
going by it's going by the good old guacamole rule. Uh.
It's available on request. It's gonna cost you extra. But
you know, if if you're if you are particularly if
you're particularly there, we need to come up with another
phrase for like afraid of ghosts or like having a
prejudice against like deadest ghost ISTT Yeah, spiritist. Are you
(26:50):
a spirit It's like being agist. Like no, it's like
being agist to an extreme degree. So if if you're spiritist,
just know that you should probably ask sure. Yeah, because
generally speaking, like if a potential buyer asks any question
about the property to the seller or the agent that
(27:12):
they have to answer truthfully to the best of their knowledge.
The rules do change if the death in question was violent, um,
like like a like a murder, a suicide, especially anything
that's been publicized. UM is floridest I don't know in
(27:34):
a true crime podcast something like that. Um where where
where would we hear something like that? Though, Oh, I
have literally no idea. Um, that's considered something that would
stigmatize the property to the same extent that like that
like fiscal damage, like like water damage or you know,
lead paint in the walls, which is a form that
I had to sign off on, knowing about my house having.
(27:56):
They're like, yeah, don't eat the paint chips. I was like, gotcha, cool,
no problem, stated Georgia. Um. Yeah, no, they're They're like, yeah,
I love Like the checklist is like, you know, make
sure that the rufous stable, make sure that the foundation
isn't cracked, make sure that it's not haunted, and there's
no murders that happened here. Yeah, although I will say
that there are some situations in which, yeah, hauntings can
(28:17):
be considered a bonus. Ooh okay, this is okay, this
is what I'm here for. Okay. So, just for example,
some agents who sell homes in New Orleans hang special
placards from the street level signage. You know, like you've
seen these placards on real estate signs. It's like open house,
swimming pool, contract pending haunted or not haunted. They have
(28:42):
both of those specified. What I want is like a
motel sign that has like a kneon like like like
no vacancy, haunted, not haunted, like oh yeah, depending on
when the ghosts are coming and going. Um, I like
the crisp crispy cream, hot hot fresh now ghosts. I'm
(29:07):
very into this. I have to admit to y'all that,
um that if I ever hang a sign like upon
my person that says in large caps, lock block letters,
not haunted, it's a lie that is absolutely over compensation
and you should oh we can see it in your eyes.
(29:28):
I don't think you need. Okay. So, having said all
of that, what is the Actley House doing now? I mean,
apart from standing by the Hudson handsomely. Sure, sure it
has actually changed hands like relatively frequently. The aforementioned real
(29:51):
estate agent Ellis said, maybe it's because of the energy there,
but but right, like, it does have this history of
perceived haunting. None of the subsequent owners have just have
reported any ghosts themselves, and a bunch of them have
been like really pretty public figures. I believe the guy
who bought it after the accles were trying to sell it,
(30:13):
and they went through this whole Stembowski case. Was filmmaker
Adam Brooks who lived there for like twenty years. That
was his residence if you're unfamiliar with the name off
the top of your head, while he co wrote the
screenplay for Practical Magic. How freaking perfect does that? I
love that? And then after him and Grid Michaelson, the
(30:35):
you know, lightened Bubbly Ukulele Whielder lived in it, and
then she sold it in twenty fifteen. So in nineteen
eighty nine it sold for how much eight hundred thousand? Okay,
so by the time Ingrid Michaelson is unloading it in
twenty fifteen, it was listed for one point nine million
(30:57):
dollars an old victorian on the Hudson because of course,
but she didn't blame ghosts for leaving. I can't imagine
that Ingrid Michaelson would like would see ghosts like she
she would like living with that Lynx. I would impress, sure, yeah,
she'd be like, hey, what do you think of this briff?
And you know, I don't know if ghosts would have
an opinion. I'm sure that that old powdered wig would
(31:19):
probably have a word or two to say, try going
to a minor chord. See, maybe maybe this is why
she left. Maybe she was like yeah, but but um
it was. In fact, another musician who bought the home.
Modest Yahoo bought the homes and lived there for four years.
(31:44):
Who knew until until twenty nineteen, and then the home
went up for sale in twenty twenty for one point
nine million and last sold in twenty twenty one for
one million, seven hundred and ninety five thousand dollars. So
not quite the asking price. But you know, real estate's
weird right now. Yeah, okay, so maybe the most important
(32:09):
question that we haven't really touched on. I'm surprised that
we've gone this entire time without talking about it, Lauren.
Have you ever seen a ghost? You know? I can't
say it was necessarily a ghost I have. I don't
believe in ghosts, but I have experienced phenomena that I
cannot say that I can explain. That's a pretty big butt, Laura.
(32:30):
It is a it's a that's a large that's like
a baby got back like sis, but right there, I
mean like like I brought that friend over, our friend Cody,
you know, Cody. Uh oh, yes, Cody, of oh, but perfect,
not specifically because I wanted them to do a vibe check,
like they're one of my best friends. Like I wanted
them to check to see the house. In general, it's
a thing that I'm excited about. Come check out this
(32:52):
very expensive thing I might embark on. But right, like,
the fact that they did a vibe check was welcome,
partially because the house that I buying is an estate sale,
and you know the former owner. I'm not sure where
she passed. It might have been in the house. Oh
(33:13):
that's from the nineteen sixties. Any number of things could
have happened there. Oh well, of course, nineteen sixties Atlanta.
Come on, right, come on, I have seen I'm fairly, no,
not fairly. I am absolutely a thousand percent certain I've
seen a ghost. Yeah. Yeah. So I was staying with
(33:36):
my I was a young child. I was staying at
my grandmother's house, and my great grandmother at that time
was in a nursing home which was almost literally just
across the street from the oh oh wow. Uh. And
I was sleeping in her old room, and I recall
(34:00):
one night waking up because the light in the bathroom
next to that bedroom was turned on and like light
was flooding into the room in the middle of the night,
and I, you know, kind of sat up with a start.
I didn't have my glasses on because I had been asleep.
(34:21):
But there was a figure, a shadowed figure in the
doorway sort of poking its head into the room, and
it made it made a surprised noise, like they did,
like they pup their head into the room, not expecting
to see somebody lying in the bed and went huh
and withdrew really quickly, and for some reason in my
(34:42):
like nine year old brain, I was like, oh, my
Lola is asking me to get up. So I got up.
So I woke up, and I went to the bathroom
and I brushed my teeth, and then I was I
walked into the living room. It's the middle of the night,
and finally I'm wearing my glasses at this point. And
in the living room, my great grandmother, my Nana, I
(35:06):
was sitting in the chair she normally sat in right
by the front window, just looking out onto the lawn.
And it freaked me the hell out, and I ran
to my Lola's bed and I like dove under the
cover and slept between her and Lolo like for the
rest of the night, and then nobody believed me in
(35:28):
the morning until until Okay, they got news that in
the middle of the night Nana I had suffered some
internal bleeding and had to be emergency rushed to the
hospital in the middle of the night, probably right around
the time that I saw her in the living room.
(35:48):
So I've had close personal experience with um, with the supernatural.
So I am like, I am so on board with
this whole lake, Like, let me at this. Somebody, somebody
give me, somebody give me a couple million dollars so
I can move into this house on the Hudson in
New York and and just live out, live out my
(36:12):
my ghostly dreams, my my links, my my my Lynxy fantasies. Yeah,
I see, all of mine are much more easily explainable
than that. Like, like I don't know, like like one
of the theaters that I volunteer out around town sometimes, um,
you know, like like I would be there after hours
at weird times when when no one else was around,
(36:33):
and you know, I would hear weird, weird sounds coming
from places where I mean, old building, you know, things
happen in old buildings, but but sounds that I couldn't
quite explain, um, in places that I couldn't quite explain
them having come from uh kind of hot and cold
areas stuff like that. Somebody right, yeah, yeah, that kind
of thing. And um, and there was this one specific
(36:56):
like like really like really rhythmic knocking that would happen
that was that was just like really almost inquisitive. It
was just like a kind of thing happening. I don't
know if that picked up on Mike at all. But
this went on for a number of weeks, and then
we found out that there were raccoons living in the
(37:17):
air vents. So um, speaking speaking of of furry rodents
moving into your house, where's this transition going going back
to the links? Great? Great, I'm about with you. Cool
(37:39):
all right, So what have we learned? What have we learned? One?
Old houses are awesome and should all all of them
should come with ghosts In my opinion, yes, absolutely. But
if if, if living with a ghost is not your jam,
and you're buying a house, just ask, because they have
to tell you it's it's it's ghostly, it's it's it's
(38:02):
entrapman and containment. It's the great oh dear. Okay, yeah,
so buyer beware is like the biggest thing. And also
like if you live in Alaska, you know you got
a year, you got you got three hundred and sixty
five days and that's all that they're going to give you.
Yeah yeah, um oh hark so uh June, if people
(38:26):
want to hear more from you, where can they find you? Well,
you can find me. I have a website, Michael June
dot com that's m y k a L because I
have to be extra m y k a l j
u n e like the month Michael June dot com
for all your Michael June dot com needs um. That
has linked all my socials. If you follow me on Twitter,
(38:49):
just know that it's a mess um um. But I
I have linked you know, shows that I've worked on.
I'm a writer, so you know articles that I have written,
music that I make that kind of thing of you know,
you know, spooky bit just gotta bang on guitars. It's necessary,
(39:09):
it's in our contract. Actually yeah, um, you died. You
don't want to cross the spooky bitch legal department and
that's terrible. Um. Yeah, my full name I don't think
I said it at the top. Was is not? Was? Oh? Gosh,
am I a ghost? Is Lauren vogel Bomb. Um. You
can find me around the internet on Instagram. I am
(39:31):
at vogel Bomb like vog e l Bomb because I
was really feeling myself that day. On Twitter, Oh, thank you,
no you, oh both of us, Yeah, you two Max
on Twitter, I'm grammar monkey because that happened in like
two thousand and nine and it's very very aol instant messenger,
(39:51):
a kind of kind of handle. Yeah, all right, well,
Lauren June, thank y'all so much for being here. Oh,
thank you for having us. You know, it was much
better than the normal. Two fools I am with all
are much more enjoyable. But you know, Ben Noel, they
are both very spooky. Bit just too they are they
(40:12):
are it's what brings us together, right. But also we
want to give us special thanks to Christopher Haspiotis and
Eaves Jeff Coat, who are you know here with us
in spirit obviously, in spirits obviously, Ben Boland, Noel Brown
of the normal host who will be back next week.
Of course, special thanks to Alex Williams who composed this
(40:36):
theme right here our research associates, Jeff Bartlett and Zach Williams.
Thanks Jeff's, Thanks Zach, and of course the haunted spirit
of our show, mister Jonathan's Stricklin, whose ghosts will be
around to haunt us someday soon, but hopefully that day
is not today. Just just don't stay his name two
(40:58):
more times it is Beel rules, oh you, And in
the words of our fast and furious leader, Noel Brown,
We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
(41:19):
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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