http://from-the-shadows.blogspot.com/2007/02/selling-haunted-house-maybe-you-should.html
Selling a haunted house? Maybe you should tell the buyer
Khristina Lorenz bought her first home in September. It's small, "but,
hey, it's mine."
The two-bedroom house sits beside a large, old cemetery in a calm
Independence neighborhood; traffic on the busy Noland Road humming
nearby. Her house is busy, too ? but not with traffic.
Khristina bought the house from her boyfriend. He'd told stories that,
late at night, doors would rattle like someone was trying to open them.
But no one was ever there.
"I didn't really believe it," Khristina said. Then she heard the doors
shake one night. "He's right. It was really loud like someone was about
to break down the door or something."
Then the ghostly intrusions started happening when Khristina was home
with her children, her boyfriend, or when she was alone.
"My radio will just turn on by itself and my CD will start playing," she
said. "A few times when I have come home after my part-time job in the
evening, the radio has been on and the sound isn't going but the
equalizer lights are going crazy."
Khristina may have bought a haunted house. In some states, there are
laws against that. Depending on a state's definition of "stigmatized
property," the seller has to tell the buyer whether or not their house
is infested with termites, or poltergeists.
Stigmatized property simply means something happened on the property
that could psychologically affect the buyer. That includes a natural
death, murder, suicide, a previous owner had HIV/AIDS, a felony was
committed on the property, and, in some states, ghosts.
Jeanne Goolsby, owner of Grand Avenue Bed and Breakfast, and her husband
Michael bought a Victorian home in Carthage, Mo. The home had a second
floor, a basement, a beautiful smoking room, and a resident spirit ?
Albert.
But they knew about Albert before they bought the house.
"The lady before us kept trying to tell us about the ghost and I told
her I did not want to know," Jeanne said. "(Michael) said he can't
remember it being on any paperwork, but he knew about it from the owner.
She told us."
In California, the seller has to disclose a stigma up to three years
from the time it occurred. Texas has no law about it at all. But the
1991 New York appellate court tackled the supernatural in a decision
(Stambovsky v. Ackley) that allowed a buyer to cancel a contract when he
discovered there was a "poltergeist" in the house.
If you're buying a house in Missouri, there's a law about stigmatized
property; a law that doesn't favor the buyer. It specifically states the
seller isn't required to disclose a stigma ? which probably includes
the walls bleeding.
The walls of Khristina's house don't bleed, but her haunting has gotten
more and more personal.
"I have heard voices several times," she said. Her boyfriend never heard
voices while he owned the home. "It sounds like a women's voice and a
small child's voice. I can never really make out clearly what they are
saying but have heard this often. The first few times I thought it was
my son, but when I checked on him he was asleep, I heard the voices and
he was still snoring."
So sleep tight, and let the buyer beware.
by Jason Offutt
You can also list your haunted house for sale here at San Diego Paranormal.
http://www.sdparanormal.com/Haunted_House_Listings.html
