Halloween brings haunted houses and spooky trail hikes. Cozy
neighborhoods overflow with creepy
Halloween inflatable figures and pun-sporting plastic
gravestones. Shop windows fairly drip with
spider webs, usually swinging from
the bones of jaunty looking
skeletons or eerie ghostly figures.
That sort of haunted humor is mostly aimed at making fun.
But do you believe
homes can actually be haunted?
Some folks scoff at ghost stories, while others swear by
such tales.
We've all heard claims of creaks in the night, strange sights on the stairs, or mysterious faces in windows. Do such yarns hold true, or are they simply the stuff of silly scare tactics and late-night movies?
Here’s an intriguing
question.
Would you consider purchasing a home, if you knew someone
had died on the property? Would the nature of the death make a difference in
your decision?
News stories circulated this week in spots like
USA
Today and
Fox 32 News Chicago, touting
a service called
Died in House. For
about 12 bucks, you can enter just about any valid U.S. street address to
research whether any person has ever perished on that property.
Of course, you could also run or request searches of city
public records, real estate transactions, and police reports. Then you’d likely
have to cross-check against local obituaries.
Or you could ask a few long-time neighbors.
But, let’s just suppose you actually discovered a shady secret or two
about a house’s history. What if you found out about the proverbial (or real)
skeletons in the closet, ghosts in the attic, or bodies in the basement?
Would you still buy?
Image/s:
Adapted from Haunted
House
WP ClipArt
