October 24, 2025 • 26 mins
When mortgage rates and home prices drive potential buyers to the breaking point, haunted houses start looking surprisingly appealing.
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WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2025, Weird Darkness.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
I'm Darren Marler, and this is weird dark news. Housing
prices keep climbing, mortgage rates remain stubbornly high. The American
dream of home ownership feels further away than ever. So
when someone suggests buying a house with a reputation for
paranormal activity, more Americans than you might expect are saying yes.
(00:33):
The reasons why tell us as much about the state
of the housing market as they do about our relationship
with the supernatural. Over half of Americans would consider buying
a house with a haunted reputation, According to a twenty
twenty five survey by Real Estate Witch. The number stands
at fifty two percent of respondents, with the majority saying
they would only do so if they got a discount
(00:54):
on the purchase price. Specifically, seventy three percent of those
willing buyers set a lower price would seal the deal.
These aren't thrill seekers looking for a paranormal experience. They
are practical people doing the math on their budgets and
deciding that unexplained footsteps might be worth tolerating if it
means getting into a house they can afford. A separate
(01:15):
rocket Mortgage survey found even higher willingness, with sixty five
percent of Americans consider buying a haunted house. In this survey,
thirty nine percent said they would outright say yes, while
another twenty six percent remained open to the idea. The
difference between surveys might come down to how the questions
were phrased, but both show Americans are comfortable with the
(01:37):
prospect of spectral roommates, more comfortable, in fact, than many
would have predicted even a few years ago. The shift
in attitudes has been dramatic and recent. In twenty twenty five,
homeowners are twice as likely to knowingly purchase a haunted
house compared to twenty twenty four. That represents a fundamental
change in how people are approaching one of the biggest
(01:59):
financial decisions of their lives. Among those who say they've
already lived in a haunted house, twenty five percent knowingly
chose to live there in twenty twenty five, more than
double the eleven percent who said the same in twenty
twenty four. Something has changed in the calculation people are
making about what risks they're willing to take. The motivation
(02:19):
becomes clear when you look at what's actually keeping potential
homeowners up at night. Americans say the scariest aspects of
homeownership come in the form of unexpected costs at fifty
three percent, bad neighbors at fifty two percent, and high
interest rates at forty seven percent. Against that backdrop, a
few unexplained footsteps in the hallway or the occasional door
(02:41):
closing on its own look manageable. You can't negotiate with
mold or termites. You can't talk your bank into lowering
your interest rate, But a ghost maybe you can live
to learn with that. Buyers have specific numbers in mind
when they start weighing the value of sharing their home
with the undead. More than a third of potential buyers
thirty nine percent, said they would need at least forty
(03:02):
percent off the asking price before considering a haunted property.
Another twenty nine percent would be okay with twenty percent
to thirty nine percent off, while only fifteen percent would
settle for a discount of twenty percent or less. These
aren't arbitrary numbers. They reflect what people think it would
take to compensate for the challenges of living in a
stigmatized property, from the personal discomfort to the knowledge that
(03:25):
they'll face some challenges when they eventually try to sell.
The real estate professionals who specialize in these properties have
seen the pattern play out enough times to know what
the market will bear. Expert appraiser Randall Bell, who specializes
in stigmatized properties, reports that such homes can sell for
ten to twenty five percent less than comparable non stigmatized properties.
(03:48):
Bell has spent years studying this niche market, and he
has learned something about how it works. Bell notes that
discounts for purportedly haunted homes are very real, though he
emphasizes that perception drives everything in the stigmatized property market.
Whether ghosts actually exist doesn't matter as much as whether
people believe they do. The market reacts to belief, not
(04:10):
to any objective measure of paranormal activity. The disconnect between
what buyers think they should pay and what sellers think
they should get creates tension. Two thirds of Americans sixty
eight percent said they would offer below asking price for
a haunted house, yet only thirty two percent of current
haunted homeowners expect to sell below market value. Either buyers
(04:33):
will be disappointed when sellers won't come down as much
as expected, or sellers are in for a rude awakening
when they discover their property's reputation has a real price
tag attached. The optimism on the sellers side borders on
unrealistic in some cases. In fact, forty one percent of
haunted house owners expect to sell above market value, more
(04:54):
than two point five times the sixteen percent of buyers
who said that they would make such an offer. This
disconnect creates an interesting negotiation dynamic. Sellers seem to be
banking on finding that one person who doesn't just tolerate
the haunting but actually wants it, someone who sees the
paranormal reputation as adding character and interest to the property
(05:15):
rather than diminishing its value. The sellers who've been through
the process before knew the reality is harder than the hope.
Among Americans who've lived in haunted houses, sixty three percent
admit these homes are harder to sell. Yet these same
homeowners remain optimistic about pricing, possibly betting they'll find someone
who've used a haunting as a feature rather than a flaw.
(05:37):
It's a gamble that sometimes pays off, particularly when the
haunting comes with enough notoriety to attract buyers who see
commercial potential or just want to own a piece of
local legend. Most states offer sellers considerable protection when it
comes to disclosing a property's spooky reputation. The laws vary
wildly depending on where you live, and navigating them requires
(05:59):
unders standing a patchwork of regulations that often leave buyers
with less information than they'd like. A Zillo state by
state analysis found only four states deal with paranormal activity
in their real estate disclosure laws New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts,
and Minnesota. Four states on a fifty have bothered to
address the question of whether sellers need to mention if
(06:21):
their house might be haunted. The other forty six states
have apparently decided this is not something that requires legal clarity,
leaving buyers and sellers to figure it out on their own.
In New York, courts can rescind a home sale if
the seller creates and perpetuates a reputation that the house
is haunted and then takes unfair advantage of a buyer's
(06:42):
ignorance of the home's ghostly reputation. This stems from a
nineteen ninety one case that people commonly refer to as
the Ghostbuster's Ruling, and the story behind it explains a
lot about how haunted house law evolved. A man purchased
a large Victorian house in Nyak, New York, before learning
about local stories of revolution era ghosts inhabiting the place.
(07:04):
He demanded to be released from the contract as the
realtor had not disclosed the house's reputation. The buyer noted
he did not believe in ghosts himself, but was concerned
about the effect on property value. His argument wasn't about
whether the ghosts were real. It was about whether the
belief in ghosts and the reputation they came with it,
would make the house harder to sell. Later, in nineteen
(07:26):
ninety one, in a Joe Glaced ruling that quoted Ghostbusters,
the appellate court agreed with the purchaser, noting that as
the house had been possessed by poltergeists, it could not
be said to be unoccupied. The court said that if
you're going to market your house as haunted to the public,
if you're going to invite ghost hunters in and write
articles about your spectral roommates, then you can't suddenly pretend
(07:49):
none of that happened. When someone wants to buy the place,
You've created a reputation and that reputation travels with the property,
whether you want it to or not. The other states
that address hauntings take different approaches. In New Jersey, a
seller must truthfully tell a buyer if their property comes
with phantom roommates, but only if asked. As long as
nobody asks the direct question, sellers can stay quiet. It
(08:13):
puts the burden on buyers to know what questions do ask,
which assumes they have enough knowledge about the property's history
to know there's something worth asking about. Massachusetts and Minnesota
deliberately mentioned paranormal or supernatural activity as a psychologically affected
attribute that does not need to be disclosed. They specifically
carved out an exception so sellers wouldn't have to mention ghosts.
(08:37):
The law in these states explicitly says that the presence
of spirits or the belief in them, isn't something sellers
have to bring up. When it comes to deaths on
the property, the rules are slightly more concrete in some places,
though still far from universal. Three states require disclosure of deaths. California, Alaska,
and South Dakota require sellers to disclose whether an un
(09:00):
timely or natural death occurred at the home within the
last three years. The three year window suggests these states
believe the stigma phades with time that a death becomes
less relevant to buyers, the further back it recedes into history.
Fifteen states require disclosure when a buyer asks, but there's
no legal penalty if the seller is unaware or has
(09:20):
not researched the property to find the answers. Sellers can
claim ignorance without facing any consequences, even if a simple
Google search would have turned up the information. Despite the
legal protections for sellers, sixty seven percent of Americans think
the government should require sellers to disclose a haunted house.
There is a gap between what the public thinks should
(09:41):
happen and what the law actually requires. People believe transparency
should be mandatory, that buyers deserve to know what they're
getting into. Among those who've lived in haunted houses, sixty
eight percent would not willingly disclose if their house was
haunted when selling, even people who've experienced the challenge's first
hand and would rather keep quiet and hope the next
(10:02):
owner doesn't find out until after the papers are signed.
The numbers on who's experiencing this are higher than you
might think, which suggests that either a lot of houses
are haunted, or a lot of people are experiencing things
they can't easily explain. Nearly one in five Americans nineteen
percent believe they have lived in a real haunted house,
(10:23):
with seventy five percent of those homeowners not knowing the
home was haunted before they moved in. That is a
significant portion of the population who moved into what they
thought was a normal house and then started experiencing things
that made them reconsider. This includes twenty three percent who
believe their current home is haunted and thirteen percent who
lived in one in the past. The people still living
(10:45):
in haunted houses represent an interesting group because they've experienced
the phenomena and decided it's manageable enough that they have
not moved out. The reports cover a range of phenomena
from the subtle to the unmistakable. The survey, they found
that fifty four point four percent of respondents felt a
strong presence that made them believe their home was haunted. However,
(11:06):
most reports centered around incomprehensible sights and sounds. Forty nine
point six percent heard mysterious noises, forty two point seven
percent saw apparitions, forty one point six percent heard unaccountable footsteps,
thirty eight point three percent, witnessed objects move, and thirty
one point eight percent caught doors inexplicably opening and closing.
(11:28):
These aren't people reporting dramatic, horror movie style hauntings with
blood dripping from the walls. They're describing experiences that are
unsettling but not necessarily threatening, things that make you question
what you're seeing and hearing, but don't necessarily make you
fear for your safety. When people encountered supernatural situations, the
(11:48):
most common signs were a strong presence at sixty four
percent and mysterious noises at sixty one percent. Others experienced
unaccountable footsteps at forty nine percent, us at thirty seven percent,
and objects moving on their own at twenty four percent.
The consistency across different surveys suggests these experiences follow certain patterns.
(12:10):
People living in supposedly haunted houses tend to report similar
types of phenomena, which either means hauntings manifest in predictable
ways or that people interpret ambiguous experiences through a common
cultural lens of what a haunting should look like. The
gap between discomfort and action is also revealing a majority
of Americans fifty seven percent said they would feel uncomfortable
(12:33):
living in a haunted house, yet three fourths of them
seventy four percent would not move immediately if they discovered
their house was haunted. There's a big difference between discomfort
and actually packing up and leaving. Moving's expensive, finding a
new place in this market is hard, so people are
willing to tolerate quite a bit of discomfort if the
alternative means dealing with the hassle and cost of relocating.
(12:57):
Two thirds sixty eight percent still would not move even
if they saw a ghost. Even a direct visual encounter
with a paranormal isn't enough to make most people abandon
their home and investment. When asked what they would do
if they found out their house was haunted, only eighteen
percent said they would move out and sell it, while
forty one percent replied they'd make friends with the ghosts.
(13:20):
If you're stuck living with something, you might as well
try to make the best of it. If they discover
their new homes haunted right after moving in, thirty seven
percent would try a ghost eviction using salt, sage or
exorcism before they give up on the house entirely. More
than a third would try to solve the problem using
methods borrowed from various spiritual and religious traditions. When you
(13:41):
line up all the possible homeownership concerns, ghosts rank pretty low.
The survey data makes it clear what's actually keeping people
awake at night, and it's not the sound of phantom
footsteps in the hallway. Americans are more concerned about everyday
home problems than spirits. Nearly all respondents four percent fear
home repair issues more than ghosts, including mold at seventy percent,
(14:05):
termites at sixty five percent, and asbestos at sixty three percent.
Those problems cost real money to fix. They can make
you sick. They can destroy the structural integrity of your home.
A ghost might give you a scare, but it won't
give you respiratory problems, or eat through your foundation, or
require you to spend thousands of dollars on remediation. When
(14:26):
it comes to complete deal breakers, more than half of
Americans fifty two percent, would refuse to buy a home
near a nuclear waste facility. In comparison, just twenty two
percent said they would completely rule out a home simply
because it was rumored to be haunted. Nuclear waste is measurable, documentable,
and definitely dangerous. It poses real health risks that no
(14:48):
one disputes. Ghosts remain theoretical, and even for people who
believe in them, the threat they pose is ambiguous. They
might scare you, They probably won't hurt you. Nuclear waste
will I will definitely hurt you if you're exposed to
enough of it. About half of Americans would rather live
with spirits than a hoarder at fifty percent, or somewhat
(15:09):
with bad body odor at forty nine percent. Ghosts don't
leave their stuff everywhere or create unpleasant smells. They don't
use up all the hot water or eat your food
from the fridge as roommates go. The incorporeal kind have
certain advantages over the flesh and blood variety. A third
of potential buyers say a property that feels isolated and
creepy is a deal breaker. Death on the property, either
(15:32):
natural or violent, gives some pause, but more than half
would not rule it out if the price was right.
The atmosphere of a place matters to people. They want
to feel safe and comfortable, but even those concerns have
a price point where they become negotiable. Before signing on
a potentially haunted property, Prospective buyers have options for research
(15:52):
beyond just asking their real estate agent and hoping for
an honest answer. The Internet has made it easier than
ever to dig into a proper history, and several services
have sprung up to meet the demand for information. Died
in house dot com offers property history reports that search
public and private records to uncovered deaths that occurred at
a property, including dates and cause, registered sex offender information,
(16:17):
math activity, fire incidents, and names of previous residence. The
service provides a comprehensive look at a property's past, pulling
together information that would otherwise require searching through multiple databases
and public records offices. It's become one of the resources
for buyers who want to know what happened at an
address before they commit to buying it. It was created
(16:39):
by Roy Condrey after a tenant complained that a property
Condrey had rented him was haunted. Condrey did an online
search to determine if anybody had ever died at the address,
but found there was no one stop shopping service for
this information, so he built one. It's a solution born
from personal experience with the gap between what buyers want
(16:59):
to know and what information is easily accessible. The basic
search service costs fourteen dollars ninety nine cents for three reports,
or offers unlimited monthly searches for nineteen ninety nine. Premium
searches for US addresses costs fourteen ninety nine per report.
The pricing structure makes it affordable for individual buyers to
(17:19):
run checks on properties they are seriously considering, and a
subscription model works for real estate professionals who need to
run multiple searches regularly. The limitation of the service is
that most information dates after the mid nineteen eighties due
to a lack of older digitized death records. Anything that
happened before records when digital is harder to track down.
(17:40):
The further back in history you go, the less likely
you are to find comprehensive information, which means older homes
might have gaps in their documented history that no database
can fill. The disclosure requirements themselves vary dramatically by state,
creating a confusing landscape for buyers trying to understand their rights.
Disclosure laws for stigmatized properties vary by state. Three states
(18:04):
require disclosure of deaths within one to three years of
the sale fifteen states require disclosure only if the buyer
asks and the seller knows, but no penalties exist for
failing to disclose, and thirty two states have no disclosure
laws related to deaths on properties. In most of the country,
sellers can stay completely silent about a property's history. They
(18:26):
have no legal obligation to volunteer information, and in many cases,
they face no consequences for hiding it even when asked directly.
Buyers are left to do their own detective work if
they want to know what happened in the house before
they lived there. Sometimes a notorious past doesn't hurt value.
For certain properties, the dark history becomes the main selling point,
(18:47):
attracting buyers who see commercial potential or just want to
own a piece of macab Americana. The home's notoriety can
sometimes be one of its biggest selling points. The Lizzie
Borden House in Fall River, Massachusetts in Breakfast and the
site of the eighteen ninety two axe murders of Borden's
father and stepmother, sold in twenty twenty five for one
(19:07):
point eight seven five million dollars after it was listed
for two million. That's not the price of a stigmatized
property struggling to find a buyer. That's a premium price
for a property that's turned its dark history into a
profitable business model. The Rhode Island home that inspired the
twenty thirteen film The Conjuring recently went on the market
for one point two million and is currently under contract
(19:30):
for an undisclosed amount. When a haunting is famous enough,
when it's been immortalized in books and movies, the property's
value can actually increase rather than decrease. Casey Gaddy, senior
real estate agent at Keller William's Realty in Philadelphia, makes
a good point about perception and reality when it comes
to haunted houses. A haunted reputation does not necessarily make
(19:53):
it a bad home. Neighbors might say it's haunted, but
in reality, it's a house with good bones that's been
neglected needs the right buyer to bring it back to life.
Sometimes the haunting is just a local legend built up
around a property that's been sitting empty too long. The
stories grow and multiply in the absence of anyone living
there to contradict them, and by the time a new
(20:14):
owner comes along, the house is a reputation that has
nothing to do with its actual condition or history. Sometimes
a haunted home is just an abandoned home or a
fixer upper that needs some attention. Fixer upper homes are
up to seventy eight percent cheaper in several metros, including
places in the South like Jackson, Mississippi. If you can
look past the reputation and see the potential, if you're
(20:37):
willing to put in the work to renovate and restore,
there's money to be saved. The haunted label might actually
be working in your favor, keeping other buyers away and
reducing competition. Americans view haunted house owners positively, with about
one in three saying that they are spiritually sensitive at
thirty nine percent, open minded at thirty six percent, and
(20:58):
interesting at thirty three percent. Additionally, ninety two percent of
respondents think people who claim to live in a haunted
house are not liars. There's a cultural shift happening where
living in a haunted house doesn't carry the stigma it
once did. People who talk about their paranormal experiences aren't
automatically dismissed as crazy or attention seeking. Instead, they're seen
(21:20):
as interesting, as having experiences worth hearing about, as being
open to possibilities that others might dismiss too quickly. Belief
in ghosts doesn't correlate with willingness to buy a haunted
house in the way you might expect. The relationship between
what people believe and what they're willing to do is
more complicated than simple logic would suggest. Ghost skeptics may
(21:43):
say they do not believe in the existence of the supernatural,
but forty seven point six percent still reported they would
be unwilling to buy a house that's haunted. Belief and
willingness to buy don't always line up. Even people who
intellectually dismiss them the possibility of ghosts feels some emotional
resistance to buying a house with that reputation. Maybe it's
(22:06):
the social stigma. Maybe it's concern about resale value. Maybe
it's just a lingering on ease they can't quite rationalize
a way. Americans who previously have shared their living quarters
with ghosts appear most inclined to jump into spectral co ownership.
Fifty five point one percent reported they would willingly purchase
(22:27):
a haunted house. Experience makes people less fearful once you've
lived with paranormal activity and discovered it's not as terrifying
as movies make it out to be. Once you've learned
that you can coexist with whatever might be there, the
prospect of buying another haunted house becomes less daunting. You
know what to expect, you know you can handle it.
Based on survey results, fifty five point eight percent of
(22:50):
Americans believe in ghosts, twenty seven point seven percent do
not believe in them, and sixteen point five percent are
undecided as to whether ghosts exist. More than half the
country believes in some form of paranormal activity, which means
haunted houses are not a fringe concern. They's something that
resonates with a significant portion of potential buyers, even though
(23:11):
they've not had personal paranormal experiences. Thirty percent still believe
in hauntings. Belief doesn't always require personal experience. Sometimes it
comes from cultural narratives, from stories told by people they trust,
from a sense that there is more to the world
than what we can easily measure and explain. The housing
market continues to challenge American buyers in concrete ways that
(23:34):
have nothing to do with the supernatural. Zillo reported that
the national average rent averages nineteen hundred seventy nine dollars,
while the average home in California is valued at seven
hundred sixty three thy two hundred eighty eight dollars. Against
these numbers, the willingness to consider haunted properties starts to
make real economic sense when homes are that expensive, When
(23:56):
rent takes up that much of your monthly income, you
start reconc considering what counts as a deal breaker. A
paranormal reputation that might not tend to twenty percent off
the price starts looking like an opportunity. Julie's Alanis, licensed
real estate agent in Eldorado Hills, California, notes that if
somebody has no fear, they could end up with a
(24:17):
fabulous bargain. For buyers who can look past the stigma,
who aren't bothered by the idea of sharing their space
with someone they can't see, there's real money to be saved.
Mark J. Schmidt, broker associate at Remax Country in Milltown,
New Jersey, makes a practical observation. You can prove a
home has raid on, and you can prove a home
has mold, but there is not a widely accepted test
(24:40):
to prove a home as a ghost. That's the fundamental
difference between a haunted house and other stigmatized properties. The
thing that's supposedly wrong with it can't be measured, it
can't be fixed. It either matters to you or it doesn't,
and if it doesn't, you might have just found yourself
a deal. The surveys show Americans weighing tangible financial pressures
(25:02):
against intangible supernatural concerns in twenty twenty five. For many buyers,
the ghosts of the housing market prove more frightening than
any reported hauntings. When you're facing down high interest rates,
limited inventory, and prices that keep climbing regardless of economic conditions,
the house with a paranormal reputation looks like an opportunity
(25:23):
rather than a problem. The ghosts you might encounter in
a haunted house are at worst an inconvenience. The financial
pressure of trying to buy in this market is guaranteed
to keep you up at night. If you'd like to
read this story for yourself or share the article with
a friend, you can read it on the Weird Darkness website.
I've placed a link to it in the episode description,
(25:43):
and you can find more stories of the paranormal, true crime, strange,
and more, including numerous stories that never make it to
the podcast at Weird Darkness dot com, slash news
I'm Darren Marler, and this is weird dark news. Housing
prices keep climbing, mortgage rates remain stubbornly high. The American
dream of home ownership feels further away than ever. So
when someone suggests buying a house with a reputation for
paranormal activity, more Americans than you might expect are saying yes.
(00:33):
The reasons why tell us as much about the state
of the housing market as they do about our relationship
with the supernatural. Over half of Americans would consider buying
a house with a haunted reputation, According to a twenty
twenty five survey by Real Estate Witch. The number stands
at fifty two percent of respondents, with the majority saying
they would only do so if they got a discount
(00:54):
on the purchase price. Specifically, seventy three percent of those
willing buyers set a lower price would seal the deal.
These aren't thrill seekers looking for a paranormal experience. They
are practical people doing the math on their budgets and
deciding that unexplained footsteps might be worth tolerating if it
means getting into a house they can afford. A separate
(01:15):
rocket Mortgage survey found even higher willingness, with sixty five
percent of Americans consider buying a haunted house. In this survey,
thirty nine percent said they would outright say yes, while
another twenty six percent remained open to the idea. The
difference between surveys might come down to how the questions
were phrased, but both show Americans are comfortable with the
(01:37):
prospect of spectral roommates, more comfortable, in fact, than many
would have predicted even a few years ago. The shift
in attitudes has been dramatic and recent. In twenty twenty five,
homeowners are twice as likely to knowingly purchase a haunted
house compared to twenty twenty four. That represents a fundamental
change in how people are approaching one of the biggest
(01:59):
financial decisions of their lives. Among those who say they've
already lived in a haunted house, twenty five percent knowingly
chose to live there in twenty twenty five, more than
double the eleven percent who said the same in twenty
twenty four. Something has changed in the calculation people are
making about what risks they're willing to take. The motivation
(02:19):
becomes clear when you look at what's actually keeping potential
homeowners up at night. Americans say the scariest aspects of
homeownership come in the form of unexpected costs at fifty
three percent, bad neighbors at fifty two percent, and high
interest rates at forty seven percent. Against that backdrop, a
few unexplained footsteps in the hallway or the occasional door
(02:41):
closing on its own look manageable. You can't negotiate with
mold or termites. You can't talk your bank into lowering
your interest rate, But a ghost maybe you can live
to learn with that. Buyers have specific numbers in mind
when they start weighing the value of sharing their home
with the undead. More than a third of potential buyers
thirty nine percent, said they would need at least forty
(03:02):
percent off the asking price before considering a haunted property.
Another twenty nine percent would be okay with twenty percent
to thirty nine percent off, while only fifteen percent would
settle for a discount of twenty percent or less. These
aren't arbitrary numbers. They reflect what people think it would
take to compensate for the challenges of living in a
stigmatized property, from the personal discomfort to the knowledge that
(03:25):
they'll face some challenges when they eventually try to sell.
The real estate professionals who specialize in these properties have
seen the pattern play out enough times to know what
the market will bear. Expert appraiser Randall Bell, who specializes
in stigmatized properties, reports that such homes can sell for
ten to twenty five percent less than comparable non stigmatized properties.
(03:48):
Bell has spent years studying this niche market, and he
has learned something about how it works. Bell notes that
discounts for purportedly haunted homes are very real, though he
emphasizes that perception drives everything in the stigmatized property market.
Whether ghosts actually exist doesn't matter as much as whether
people believe they do. The market reacts to belief, not
(04:10):
to any objective measure of paranormal activity. The disconnect between
what buyers think they should pay and what sellers think
they should get creates tension. Two thirds of Americans sixty
eight percent said they would offer below asking price for
a haunted house, yet only thirty two percent of current
haunted homeowners expect to sell below market value. Either buyers
(04:33):
will be disappointed when sellers won't come down as much
as expected, or sellers are in for a rude awakening
when they discover their property's reputation has a real price
tag attached. The optimism on the sellers side borders on
unrealistic in some cases. In fact, forty one percent of
haunted house owners expect to sell above market value, more
(04:54):
than two point five times the sixteen percent of buyers
who said that they would make such an offer. This
disconnect creates an interesting negotiation dynamic. Sellers seem to be
banking on finding that one person who doesn't just tolerate
the haunting but actually wants it, someone who sees the
paranormal reputation as adding character and interest to the property
(05:15):
rather than diminishing its value. The sellers who've been through
the process before knew the reality is harder than the hope.
Among Americans who've lived in haunted houses, sixty three percent
admit these homes are harder to sell. Yet these same
homeowners remain optimistic about pricing, possibly betting they'll find someone
who've used a haunting as a feature rather than a flaw.
(05:37):
It's a gamble that sometimes pays off, particularly when the
haunting comes with enough notoriety to attract buyers who see
commercial potential or just want to own a piece of
local legend. Most states offer sellers considerable protection when it
comes to disclosing a property's spooky reputation. The laws vary
wildly depending on where you live, and navigating them requires
(05:59):
unders standing a patchwork of regulations that often leave buyers
with less information than they'd like. A Zillo state by
state analysis found only four states deal with paranormal activity
in their real estate disclosure laws New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts,
and Minnesota. Four states on a fifty have bothered to
address the question of whether sellers need to mention if
(06:21):
their house might be haunted. The other forty six states
have apparently decided this is not something that requires legal clarity,
leaving buyers and sellers to figure it out on their own.
In New York, courts can rescind a home sale if
the seller creates and perpetuates a reputation that the house
is haunted and then takes unfair advantage of a buyer's
(06:42):
ignorance of the home's ghostly reputation. This stems from a
nineteen ninety one case that people commonly refer to as
the Ghostbuster's Ruling, and the story behind it explains a
lot about how haunted house law evolved. A man purchased
a large Victorian house in Nyak, New York, before learning
about local stories of revolution era ghosts inhabiting the place.
(07:04):
He demanded to be released from the contract as the
realtor had not disclosed the house's reputation. The buyer noted
he did not believe in ghosts himself, but was concerned
about the effect on property value. His argument wasn't about
whether the ghosts were real. It was about whether the
belief in ghosts and the reputation they came with it,
would make the house harder to sell. Later, in nineteen
(07:26):
ninety one, in a Joe Glaced ruling that quoted Ghostbusters,
the appellate court agreed with the purchaser, noting that as
the house had been possessed by poltergeists, it could not
be said to be unoccupied. The court said that if
you're going to market your house as haunted to the public,
if you're going to invite ghost hunters in and write
articles about your spectral roommates, then you can't suddenly pretend
(07:49):
none of that happened. When someone wants to buy the place,
You've created a reputation and that reputation travels with the property,
whether you want it to or not. The other states
that address hauntings take different approaches. In New Jersey, a
seller must truthfully tell a buyer if their property comes
with phantom roommates, but only if asked. As long as
nobody asks the direct question, sellers can stay quiet. It
(08:13):
puts the burden on buyers to know what questions do ask,
which assumes they have enough knowledge about the property's history
to know there's something worth asking about. Massachusetts and Minnesota
deliberately mentioned paranormal or supernatural activity as a psychologically affected
attribute that does not need to be disclosed. They specifically
carved out an exception so sellers wouldn't have to mention ghosts.
(08:37):
The law in these states explicitly says that the presence
of spirits or the belief in them, isn't something sellers
have to bring up. When it comes to deaths on
the property, the rules are slightly more concrete in some places,
though still far from universal. Three states require disclosure of deaths. California, Alaska,
and South Dakota require sellers to disclose whether an un
(09:00):
timely or natural death occurred at the home within the
last three years. The three year window suggests these states
believe the stigma phades with time that a death becomes
less relevant to buyers, the further back it recedes into history.
Fifteen states require disclosure when a buyer asks, but there's
no legal penalty if the seller is unaware or has
(09:20):
not researched the property to find the answers. Sellers can
claim ignorance without facing any consequences, even if a simple
Google search would have turned up the information. Despite the
legal protections for sellers, sixty seven percent of Americans think
the government should require sellers to disclose a haunted house.
There is a gap between what the public thinks should
(09:41):
happen and what the law actually requires. People believe transparency
should be mandatory, that buyers deserve to know what they're
getting into. Among those who've lived in haunted houses, sixty
eight percent would not willingly disclose if their house was
haunted when selling, even people who've experienced the challenge's first
hand and would rather keep quiet and hope the next
(10:02):
owner doesn't find out until after the papers are signed.
The numbers on who's experiencing this are higher than you
might think, which suggests that either a lot of houses
are haunted, or a lot of people are experiencing things
they can't easily explain. Nearly one in five Americans nineteen
percent believe they have lived in a real haunted house,
(10:23):
with seventy five percent of those homeowners not knowing the
home was haunted before they moved in. That is a
significant portion of the population who moved into what they
thought was a normal house and then started experiencing things
that made them reconsider. This includes twenty three percent who
believe their current home is haunted and thirteen percent who
lived in one in the past. The people still living
(10:45):
in haunted houses represent an interesting group because they've experienced
the phenomena and decided it's manageable enough that they have
not moved out. The reports cover a range of phenomena
from the subtle to the unmistakable. The survey, they found
that fifty four point four percent of respondents felt a
strong presence that made them believe their home was haunted. However,
(11:06):
most reports centered around incomprehensible sights and sounds. Forty nine
point six percent heard mysterious noises, forty two point seven
percent saw apparitions, forty one point six percent heard unaccountable footsteps,
thirty eight point three percent, witnessed objects move, and thirty
one point eight percent caught doors inexplicably opening and closing.
(11:28):
These aren't people reporting dramatic, horror movie style hauntings with
blood dripping from the walls. They're describing experiences that are
unsettling but not necessarily threatening, things that make you question
what you're seeing and hearing, but don't necessarily make you
fear for your safety. When people encountered supernatural situations, the
(11:48):
most common signs were a strong presence at sixty four
percent and mysterious noises at sixty one percent. Others experienced
unaccountable footsteps at forty nine percent, us at thirty seven percent,
and objects moving on their own at twenty four percent.
The consistency across different surveys suggests these experiences follow certain patterns.
(12:10):
People living in supposedly haunted houses tend to report similar
types of phenomena, which either means hauntings manifest in predictable
ways or that people interpret ambiguous experiences through a common
cultural lens of what a haunting should look like. The
gap between discomfort and action is also revealing a majority
of Americans fifty seven percent said they would feel uncomfortable
(12:33):
living in a haunted house, yet three fourths of them
seventy four percent would not move immediately if they discovered
their house was haunted. There's a big difference between discomfort
and actually packing up and leaving. Moving's expensive, finding a
new place in this market is hard, so people are
willing to tolerate quite a bit of discomfort if the
alternative means dealing with the hassle and cost of relocating.
(12:57):
Two thirds sixty eight percent still would not move even
if they saw a ghost. Even a direct visual encounter
with a paranormal isn't enough to make most people abandon
their home and investment. When asked what they would do
if they found out their house was haunted, only eighteen
percent said they would move out and sell it, while
forty one percent replied they'd make friends with the ghosts.
(13:20):
If you're stuck living with something, you might as well
try to make the best of it. If they discover
their new homes haunted right after moving in, thirty seven
percent would try a ghost eviction using salt, sage or
exorcism before they give up on the house entirely. More
than a third would try to solve the problem using
methods borrowed from various spiritual and religious traditions. When you
(13:41):
line up all the possible homeownership concerns, ghosts rank pretty low.
The survey data makes it clear what's actually keeping people
awake at night, and it's not the sound of phantom
footsteps in the hallway. Americans are more concerned about everyday
home problems than spirits. Nearly all respondents four percent fear
home repair issues more than ghosts, including mold at seventy percent,
(14:05):
termites at sixty five percent, and asbestos at sixty three percent.
Those problems cost real money to fix. They can make
you sick. They can destroy the structural integrity of your home.
A ghost might give you a scare, but it won't
give you respiratory problems, or eat through your foundation, or
require you to spend thousands of dollars on remediation. When
(14:26):
it comes to complete deal breakers, more than half of
Americans fifty two percent, would refuse to buy a home
near a nuclear waste facility. In comparison, just twenty two
percent said they would completely rule out a home simply
because it was rumored to be haunted. Nuclear waste is measurable, documentable,
and definitely dangerous. It poses real health risks that no
(14:48):
one disputes. Ghosts remain theoretical, and even for people who
believe in them, the threat they pose is ambiguous. They
might scare you, They probably won't hurt you. Nuclear waste
will I will definitely hurt you if you're exposed to
enough of it. About half of Americans would rather live
with spirits than a hoarder at fifty percent, or somewhat
(15:09):
with bad body odor at forty nine percent. Ghosts don't
leave their stuff everywhere or create unpleasant smells. They don't
use up all the hot water or eat your food
from the fridge as roommates go. The incorporeal kind have
certain advantages over the flesh and blood variety. A third
of potential buyers say a property that feels isolated and
creepy is a deal breaker. Death on the property, either
(15:32):
natural or violent, gives some pause, but more than half
would not rule it out if the price was right.
The atmosphere of a place matters to people. They want
to feel safe and comfortable, but even those concerns have
a price point where they become negotiable. Before signing on
a potentially haunted property, Prospective buyers have options for research
(15:52):
beyond just asking their real estate agent and hoping for
an honest answer. The Internet has made it easier than
ever to dig into a proper history, and several services
have sprung up to meet the demand for information. Died
in house dot com offers property history reports that search
public and private records to uncovered deaths that occurred at
a property, including dates and cause, registered sex offender information,
(16:17):
math activity, fire incidents, and names of previous residence. The
service provides a comprehensive look at a property's past, pulling
together information that would otherwise require searching through multiple databases
and public records offices. It's become one of the resources
for buyers who want to know what happened at an
address before they commit to buying it. It was created
(16:39):
by Roy Condrey after a tenant complained that a property
Condrey had rented him was haunted. Condrey did an online
search to determine if anybody had ever died at the address,
but found there was no one stop shopping service for
this information, so he built one. It's a solution born
from personal experience with the gap between what buyers want
(16:59):
to know and what information is easily accessible. The basic
search service costs fourteen dollars ninety nine cents for three reports,
or offers unlimited monthly searches for nineteen ninety nine. Premium
searches for US addresses costs fourteen ninety nine per report.
The pricing structure makes it affordable for individual buyers to
(17:19):
run checks on properties they are seriously considering, and a
subscription model works for real estate professionals who need to
run multiple searches regularly. The limitation of the service is
that most information dates after the mid nineteen eighties due
to a lack of older digitized death records. Anything that
happened before records when digital is harder to track down.
(17:40):
The further back in history you go, the less likely
you are to find comprehensive information, which means older homes
might have gaps in their documented history that no database
can fill. The disclosure requirements themselves vary dramatically by state,
creating a confusing landscape for buyers trying to understand their rights.
Disclosure laws for stigmatized properties vary by state. Three states
(18:04):
require disclosure of deaths within one to three years of
the sale fifteen states require disclosure only if the buyer
asks and the seller knows, but no penalties exist for
failing to disclose, and thirty two states have no disclosure
laws related to deaths on properties. In most of the country,
sellers can stay completely silent about a property's history. They
(18:26):
have no legal obligation to volunteer information, and in many cases,
they face no consequences for hiding it even when asked directly.
Buyers are left to do their own detective work if
they want to know what happened in the house before
they lived there. Sometimes a notorious past doesn't hurt value.
For certain properties, the dark history becomes the main selling point,
(18:47):
attracting buyers who see commercial potential or just want to
own a piece of macab Americana. The home's notoriety can
sometimes be one of its biggest selling points. The Lizzie
Borden House in Fall River, Massachusetts in Breakfast and the
site of the eighteen ninety two axe murders of Borden's
father and stepmother, sold in twenty twenty five for one
(19:07):
point eight seven five million dollars after it was listed
for two million. That's not the price of a stigmatized
property struggling to find a buyer. That's a premium price
for a property that's turned its dark history into a
profitable business model. The Rhode Island home that inspired the
twenty thirteen film The Conjuring recently went on the market
for one point two million and is currently under contract
(19:30):
for an undisclosed amount. When a haunting is famous enough,
when it's been immortalized in books and movies, the property's
value can actually increase rather than decrease. Casey Gaddy, senior
real estate agent at Keller William's Realty in Philadelphia, makes
a good point about perception and reality when it comes
to haunted houses. A haunted reputation does not necessarily make
(19:53):
it a bad home. Neighbors might say it's haunted, but
in reality, it's a house with good bones that's been
neglected needs the right buyer to bring it back to life.
Sometimes the haunting is just a local legend built up
around a property that's been sitting empty too long. The
stories grow and multiply in the absence of anyone living
there to contradict them, and by the time a new
(20:14):
owner comes along, the house is a reputation that has
nothing to do with its actual condition or history. Sometimes
a haunted home is just an abandoned home or a
fixer upper that needs some attention. Fixer upper homes are
up to seventy eight percent cheaper in several metros, including
places in the South like Jackson, Mississippi. If you can
look past the reputation and see the potential, if you're
(20:37):
willing to put in the work to renovate and restore,
there's money to be saved. The haunted label might actually
be working in your favor, keeping other buyers away and
reducing competition. Americans view haunted house owners positively, with about
one in three saying that they are spiritually sensitive at
thirty nine percent, open minded at thirty six percent, and
(20:58):
interesting at thirty three percent. Additionally, ninety two percent of
respondents think people who claim to live in a haunted
house are not liars. There's a cultural shift happening where
living in a haunted house doesn't carry the stigma it
once did. People who talk about their paranormal experiences aren't
automatically dismissed as crazy or attention seeking. Instead, they're seen
(21:20):
as interesting, as having experiences worth hearing about, as being
open to possibilities that others might dismiss too quickly. Belief
in ghosts doesn't correlate with willingness to buy a haunted
house in the way you might expect. The relationship between
what people believe and what they're willing to do is
more complicated than simple logic would suggest. Ghost skeptics may
(21:43):
say they do not believe in the existence of the supernatural,
but forty seven point six percent still reported they would
be unwilling to buy a house that's haunted. Belief and
willingness to buy don't always line up. Even people who
intellectually dismiss them the possibility of ghosts feels some emotional
resistance to buying a house with that reputation. Maybe it's
(22:06):
the social stigma. Maybe it's concern about resale value. Maybe
it's just a lingering on ease they can't quite rationalize
a way. Americans who previously have shared their living quarters
with ghosts appear most inclined to jump into spectral co ownership.
Fifty five point one percent reported they would willingly purchase
(22:27):
a haunted house. Experience makes people less fearful once you've
lived with paranormal activity and discovered it's not as terrifying
as movies make it out to be. Once you've learned
that you can coexist with whatever might be there, the
prospect of buying another haunted house becomes less daunting. You
know what to expect, you know you can handle it.
Based on survey results, fifty five point eight percent of
(22:50):
Americans believe in ghosts, twenty seven point seven percent do
not believe in them, and sixteen point five percent are
undecided as to whether ghosts exist. More than half the
country believes in some form of paranormal activity, which means
haunted houses are not a fringe concern. They's something that
resonates with a significant portion of potential buyers, even though
(23:11):
they've not had personal paranormal experiences. Thirty percent still believe
in hauntings. Belief doesn't always require personal experience. Sometimes it
comes from cultural narratives, from stories told by people they trust,
from a sense that there is more to the world
than what we can easily measure and explain. The housing
market continues to challenge American buyers in concrete ways that
(23:34):
have nothing to do with the supernatural. Zillo reported that
the national average rent averages nineteen hundred seventy nine dollars,
while the average home in California is valued at seven
hundred sixty three thy two hundred eighty eight dollars. Against
these numbers, the willingness to consider haunted properties starts to
make real economic sense when homes are that expensive, When
(23:56):
rent takes up that much of your monthly income, you
start reconc considering what counts as a deal breaker. A
paranormal reputation that might not tend to twenty percent off
the price starts looking like an opportunity. Julie's Alanis, licensed
real estate agent in Eldorado Hills, California, notes that if
somebody has no fear, they could end up with a
(24:17):
fabulous bargain. For buyers who can look past the stigma,
who aren't bothered by the idea of sharing their space
with someone they can't see, there's real money to be saved.
Mark J. Schmidt, broker associate at Remax Country in Milltown,
New Jersey, makes a practical observation. You can prove a
home has raid on, and you can prove a home
has mold, but there is not a widely accepted test
(24:40):
to prove a home as a ghost. That's the fundamental
difference between a haunted house and other stigmatized properties. The
thing that's supposedly wrong with it can't be measured, it
can't be fixed. It either matters to you or it doesn't,
and if it doesn't, you might have just found yourself
a deal. The surveys show Americans weighing tangible financial pressures
(25:02):
against intangible supernatural concerns in twenty twenty five. For many buyers,
the ghosts of the housing market prove more frightening than
any reported hauntings. When you're facing down high interest rates,
limited inventory, and prices that keep climbing regardless of economic conditions,
the house with a paranormal reputation looks like an opportunity
(25:23):
rather than a problem. The ghosts you might encounter in
a haunted house are at worst an inconvenience. The financial
pressure of trying to buy in this market is guaranteed
to keep you up at night. If you'd like to
read this story for yourself or share the article with
a friend, you can read it on the Weird Darkness website.
I've placed a link to it in the episode description,
(25:43):
and you can find more stories of the paranormal, true crime, strange,
and more, including numerous stories that never make it to
the podcast at Weird Darkness dot com, slash news
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