Have you tried to sell a haunted house?

[winewolfhowls]

Did you have to declare it on any forms?

Would it put you off a house if you heard a rumour that it was haunted?

Was listening to uncanny podcast on the way home and as we're packing up to move hopefully soon, it got me thinking.

Our house isn't haunted btw!

I’d love a haunted house!! How haunted are we talking?

We did but didn't mention it.

We lived there for 8 years and it's a very historic place so I figured anyone who was bothered would notice on viewing.

It was only one room in the house that would be strange, noises, smells and activity.

Honestly, OP. You declare facts, like disputes with neighbours or historical subsidence. Not the maunderings of the credulous.

I thought haunted houses were a myth

I’ve done so but didn’t mention it. It was a little ghost cat so if they found it I’m sure they would’ve probably been pleasantly surprised.

My mum moved into a house once with lots of strange happenings and when she jokingly mentioned to the next door neighbour that she thought the house was haunted the neighbour said “oh yes we call him Albert”.

Now that’s non-disclosure

But I am a child of the 90s and I Want to Believe!

A ghost cat? That's so interesting! Did you actually see it or just hear it?

The woods behind our house is supposed to be haunted but I've never seen anything

Same. I'd be willing to pay more, especially if it was decorated all Gothic and dark. DD1 would definitely be up for it, DD2 might need some cajoling, she banned us from decorating our front room "horror style" with a massive pic of Annabelle on the wall

Try to put 'ghostwatch' in 1992 out of your mind!
Presumably if ghosts exist then they'd be in the house where the person died?
So any house sold in probate or a building more than about 100 years old would almost certainly have at least one.
Of course I don't believe in such things. But if I got a big reduction on the price I'd buy a haunted house any day! If I had money to buy a house.

It frequented a few places in the house but mainly in the cellar. You would see it running upstairs and then there would be nothing there when you looked for it. My dc also saw it separately out of the corner of their eye - it would hang out in the corner of the living room with them. I never saw it before I got my own cat though

How on earth could you possibly declare it in the paperwork?

A friend was trying to sell their very old, niche, house, the estate agent specifically recommended suggesting in the description that "there might be a ghost" to drum up media interest. (It didn't work and they took it off the market, but I don't think it was the lack of ghosts that was the problem...)

I don't like the idea of a ghost myself, some of the uncanny stories are a bit sinister.

A ghost cat would be lovely tho, I'm allergic to the real thing.
Our current house is 130 years old, not so much as a creaky stair.

Hmmm.🤔

You could get into trouble with Trade Description Laws here.

If you market the house as "haunted" and the new owners don't have any experiences, maybe they could sue you for false advertising?

So did I until I lived in one for 20 years.

We sold a 300-year-old house some years back. My MIL and SIL always claimed there were ghosts--we never saw them.

But a team of two sisters from the East End of London ended up working in the house after we sold, doing rewiring and plastering and decorating. They were tiny, awesome young women, who could do pretty well any trade. We visited once to see what was being done (very kind of the owner) and asked the girls how it was going. 'Fine,' one of them said, matter of factly, 'except for the ghosts. One with a rifle who gets cross because we're disturbing him, and another in a car that comes up the drive at night and disappears.'

My parents' house was haunted. When they sold they took the line of "don't ask, don't tell".

Not sure if the new owners have had any ghostly experiences there.

The hauntings: if you were alone in the house and sat in a room at the top of the stairs for any time you would hear someone running up the stairs and towards the room you were sitting in. However they never actually appeared. Plus a wardrobe pushed behind the door to prevent anyone entering an empty room, a flying teddy bear and a horrible feeling on the turn of the stairs. A builder working alone once popped out for lunch and on his return found the front door locked with the key in the lock on the inside. He refused to come back after that.

These threads always bring out the terribly superior types, don't they 🤣

We had a ghost in our old house, experienced by guests and residents alike over the ten years we lived there, although it never felt sinister and bizarrely enough we found a very good reason for the haunting when we researched the history of the house not long before we moved.

No, we didn't declare it in the viewings but I did tell one couple as I knew through a friend of a friend that it would make the house more attractive if they knew!

(bastards still didn't buy it)

I lived in a haunted house until I was 8.
My parents knew there’d been an exorcism in the attic before they rented it - it didn’t stop them from renting.

Things would move and turn up in different places, most people saw things (shadowy figures, fleeting glimpses of a man who definitely wasn’t there, smells, noises).

Before we lived there, before the exorcism, there was poltergeist activity in the attic, to the point where no one could go in there. After we moved in we used the two rooms up there as spare rooms with no problems, even when people stayed in them.

After we moved (which wasn’t for haunted house reasons) the next people reported similar to what we’d seen, and one man regularly saw a crying girl in one area upstairs. It didn’t put them off living there though as they were there for over 20 years.

I wouldn't declare it because I don't believe ghosts exist as I've never experienced one. Quite enjoying other people's stories of them though.

I think I'd prefer a Casper ( friendly ghost ) over finding out there had been a violent murder /or a serial killer lived there .

Oh a ghost cat! That would be a massive selling point for me. Did it get along with you own cat?

My current house is mentioned in a US 'academic' book on the monitisation of hauntings. (it was advertised for sale as a haunted house)
The day we moved in, I stepped across the threshold and said: 'we have made a mistake'. I quickly found out from the village network that I had bought: 'that house'. I know two elderly religious (non gossipy) people locally. I spoke to one of them 5 years ago. They said: 'we wondered when you would come'. Aaargh.

I’m sure I remember a court case when the buyers of a property in UK sued the vendors for not mentioning the ghost, but I’ve searched Google and I can’t find a reference so maybe I imagined it.