One Crazy Trick For Selling A House: Don't List It as 'Slightly Haunted'

If you ever decide to put your house on the market, you might consider not disclosing the banshee who lives in the attic or the thing that lives in a bag in the basement. Or even any run-of-the-mill screams that happen precisely at 3 am. I don’t know; I am not a real estate agent, but that sounds about right.

A couple in Pennsylvania has discovered that listing a house as haunted seems to have the direct opposite effect of what one would want: ghost hunters will show up, serious buyers will not. Because, why would they? Why would anyone willingly buy a house that includes such features as banging doors, screaming, and ghostly visages in bathroom mirrors—the scariest place to see a ghost; agree/disagree? My house is one-hundred-percent not haunted and I still refuse to go into the laundry room after dark, even if it means I have to wear the same clothes the next day. Ain’t no ghosts getting me!

And then there’s this:

…then there was the guy who used to live there, who got in touch and told the couple that he found a human skull in the basement when he was a child. The wife says she barricaded that same basement door shut once because she claimed she heard the clicking of a cigarette lighter down below.

A human skull. In the basement. The second most frightening place after the bathroom. Sorry, sellers: the best you can hope for at this point is that the bros from Ghost Adventures will show up and yell at the ghosts some. Although, that only seems to make the ghosts more angry and less congenial. That means more screaming.

Please share your stories of slight hauntings in the comments. I will go first: One time a ghost locked me out of the house while I was getting laundry. My partner insists that it was the wind and that I should keep my keys with me, but I know the truth.