Would you buy a house that somebody had been murdered in?

Yes very much so. I definitely couldn’t get past that (especially every time I used the loo 😱)

I remember being asked that question once by an estate agent who we'd engaged to sell our house. We weren't potential buyers for the house in question, as it was in the same area and we were moving to a different part of the country. I suppose he was just getting some opinions on what kind of reaction to expect once it was put on the market.

In my home town (york),there was a murder of a 4 year old girl called Norma Dale (21st Sept 1947)

She went out to play,didn't come home and they found her a few weeks later wearing her red shoe (it's known locally as 'the red shoe murder')

My father says she heard something she shouldnt have heard,it was a wet time of year,she'd been 'stored' in a coal scuttle before being dumped less than 60 yards from her home (I know that area well-it was wasteland at this time and an environmental centre now)and they left it too late to call in Scotland yard-they never found who did it

The house she lived in in Rawdon crescent is known as the 'unlucky house' (it's a council house)

I grew up just up the road and used to live in the next street along as an adult and someone would move in,last about a year or so and move back out,the next tenants would move in,live there a max of 18 months,rinse and repeat

My friend used to live next door but two along and we've both been in the 'unlucky house'

It's got such a weird vibe,I can't explain it,just 'unfriendly' and it has a 'shadow' as you walk past

(I know this is a bit different to buying a house but it's still people living there)

A lot of people say they wouldn't live there but can't explain why-she wasn't murdered there,she only lived there

You could pay me enough to live there myself-its got awful vibrations

(I've not lived in york for the last ten years so as far as I know,whoever lives there now could have been there ages and be perfectly happy-im going by the 36 years i lived in the area)

No. Because there are lots of other houses where such things haven't happened, and I'd rather have one of those. I am not at all spooky-minded, but some of my guests would be; nothing puts a downer on a cheese and wine soiree like twitchy Woos who won't go to the loo on their own or someone's 'psychic' pal going off into a swoon in the camembert.

Absolutely not.

No I don’t think so. I don’t believe in ghosts (my own mum died in my house) but I would be wondering what happened where. If I could knock it down and rebuild, or completely refigure maybe, but that would mean I have plenty of money to buy something else anyway.

Yes, nothing to do with woo. I would just feel uncomfortable living in a space knowing a horrific murder had taken place there.

Absolutely not. Houses have vibes. Our first home was very neutral vibed. Not positive or negative.

Our current house has very good vibes. I don’t know how to describe it but I think the previous occupant is still here and he is happy.

No, because I wouldn't be able to stop thinking about what had happened. Don't beleive in ghosts or bad energy or any of that nonsense though.

I don't think people who don't like the idea of it, object because they are worried about ghosts. It's got nothing to do with superstition. It's because the house is associated with a horrific murder.

Adults can rationalise - or choose to ignore an issue or favour a narrative or whatever - but I don’t know if kids can be expected to process something like that in the same way. So I’d be concerned because it’s a fairly horrible story which I’d imagine made news and it’s still within living memory of people who’re kicking about locally. So when your child gets older someone at school might start yapping about it, and then it’d freak them out or they might get hassle for living in the ‘murder house.’ Some kids can be very unpleasant.

Yes, of course I would.

Possibly, it may actually depend on what happened.

I think that we pass through places where horrible things have happened all the time. Lonely deaths, car accidents, violence, accidental deaths etc. We cope with this.

I live in a medieval house in a village that had a massacre several hundred years ago. Our house was already 100 years old and is one of several still lived in from that time. It's pretty much inconceivable that any of our houses or outbildings escaped the slaughter, and there are mass graves in and around the village. We had a house blessing when we moved in. I've never felt anything uncomfortable or amiss in our house or neighbours' homes, and the dogs don't react badly either. Everyone's roses and camelias grow very well. And over 600 years there will have been countless deaths including children, mothers in childbirth and probably accidents and violence, probably in every room.
On the other hand knowing about a specific horror such as a family annihilation in relatively recent times would be hard to overlook- not because I'd fear haunting, but because it would be hard to put out of mind.

I was coming on to say the same thing!

I'd see how I felt walking around it. Some houses you instantly feel like it's a home, others you don't get a good feeling. If I felt it was a home and I could put my stamp on it I don't think it would bother me too much

To be honest if a blood police sniffer dog went through our old house it would probably alert to the living room carpet. Apparently the place looked like a murder scene after my son was born at home...oops

Yeah why not say?

See now usually I’d say yes, wouldn’t bother me. But this one is different given the structure of the house was incorporated in to the murders.

I'm not sure I would - not for bad energy or woo or such tings. I'd probably think about it whenever I entered the room it happened in, and that would stop me enjoying living in my home.

If it were a house the murderer had lived in but the killing didn't happen there I would buy it, as I wouldn't think of the violence in association with the building.

I could never knowingly live in a house with that history.

Yes, my house was built 120 years ago, pretty sure some terrible things will have happened here. I do work in criminal justice though and deal with the details of the most horrific sexual and violent crimes, so I'm probably more able to detach from it than most

No.

Where I grew up there was also a beautiful house where a child was murdered. The murder remains unsolved.

The house stood empty for about 20 years before being bought by someone who presumably didn’t mind.

I live near the site of an absolutely notorious multiple murder. The current owners are foreign and only found out when journalists came knocking on the 25th anniversary of the crime.

No, I couldn’t do it.
I don’t believe in ghosts etc but I just wouldn’t like knowing I’d be living in a place where something so terrible had happened. I think it would depress me.

Even if you were planning on living in it for decades?