This house is in the middle of a zoning and use controversy in Los Gatos.  The town does not permit Bed & Breakfasts (I think that’s a shame – it’s really almost ideal for that use) or short term rentals, but this house was being advertised as such for at least a couple of years – I noticed because links to one of my blog posts on my Live in Los Gatos blog was getting cited.

The website for the Los Gatos rental includes a page about the haunting which states that the

friendly Ghost has been heard many times by Lynley and her children and seen only once, by someone else, since Lynley bought the home in 2003

If you have any additional information on it, please share here!

4 Tips for Fixing Up Your New Home (That’s Clearly Haunted)

A house of horrors is the real lead character in the new FX suspense drama “American Horror Story,” which, in early episodes, finds its owners trying to illegally unload their haunted house without disclosing its dark, dark past. (Reprint this story for free with limited copyright restrictions.)

Good luck with that.

“American Horror Story” revolves around the Harmons, a family of three who moved from Boston to Los Angeles in order to reconcile a dark past and end up with a home that has some baggage of its own.

There’s unfaithful Ben Harmon, a shrink; Vivien Harmon, Ben’s pregnant wife and their teens-will-be-teens, pot-smoking daughter Violet Harmon. They are joined by Constance, the Harmon’s gun-wielding, spooky neighbor; Tate Langdon, one of Ben’s patients; Larry Harvey, who doesn’t seem bothered by the spooks; the Harmon’s housekeeper, both in her past sultry mode and in her present guise as a real come-on bitch.

“This house has an image problem,” says the real estate agent who sold the house to the Harmons and who Vivien Harmon arm-twists into re-selling it without disclosing the dastardly deeds committed under the roof of hell house.

After discovering the home has some baggage of its own that gets it listed on a Los Angeles horror house tour as a den of Frankenstein-type experiments, Ben Harmon proclaims, “We need to sell this house and get close what we paid for it.”

“This house has an image problem,” agrees the Harmons’ real estate agent. But she also suggests the family “Might want to adjust your expectations. The housing market is dropping daily and these things aren’t about to change until 2013 until we vote that bum out.”

Given the next presidential election is in the end-of-times year of 2012, it’s not clear which bum she’s referring to, but Vivien Harmon sets the record straight, while setting herself up for future litigation.

“You owe our family. Under the law, you are obligated to disclose any material facts that might have influenced our decision to buy this house,” she says.

The agent attempts to weasel out, using a bit of irony.

“I’d kill to live in this house, regardless of the history, but you probably need a more seasoned Realtor,” the agent says.

Vivien Harmon calls the agent on her attempt to back out of the deal, and further exacerbates the problem proclaiming, “I called every Realtor in this city this morning, Coldwell Banker, Century 21. No one will take this listing. So here’s the deal. You are gong to bake cookies. You are going to buy beautiful, expensive, fresh cut flowers. You are going to make up some nice stories about all the people who have lived here over the years. You are going to do whatever it takes and you are going to sell this house. And then my family and I are going to go live somewhere safe. And in return for that I’m not going to sue you for gross criminal negligence. Are we on the same page?”

The beleaguered real estate agent shakes her head, “Yes,” and the lack of home sale transparency takes up residence in more ways than one.

As silly as it sounds, if your home has a reputation for ectoplasmic activity, you must disclose it.

Disclosing things that go bump in the night, as well as more tangible stigmas could certainly cause your home’s value to drop, but failing to disclose them could cost you a much scarier liability suit.

Most states’ disclosure laws don’t deal with the forms the deceased take in the afterlife, but they do address death as a stigma.

In California, for example, the law says you don’t have to disclose a death that occurred more than three years before the sale.

Real estate attorneys interpret that to mean agents should disclose any deaths that occur within three years of the sale, and the California Association of Realtors advises agents to do so. The association also advises agents to disclose any death, no matter how long ago it occurred, if the seller asks.

The one exception is death caused by AIDS.

Federal law defines AIDS as a disability and such a disclosure could be deemed discriminatory.

Randall Bell, founder of Laguna Beach, CA-based Bell Consulting, which analyzes the impact of detrimental conditions on property values, says secrecy about specters and other conditions only adds to the fear.

Public disclosure has a cathartic effect that helps remove any shroud of secrecy, says Bell, who was called in for consultations after the 1997 Heaven’s Gate murders in San Diego — the largest mass suicide on U.S. soil.

Rancho Santa Fe Groves Inc. led by developer William L. Strong Jr. purchased the property two years after the event for $668,000, less than half the $1.6 million list price before the cultists’ deaths. At the time of the purchase, the 9,000 square foot home on 3.1 acres was slated for demolition, but the assessor valued the land at $1.5 million.

Bell says he would open any such heavily stigmatized home to the media to keep a forbidden property from becoming “haunted”.

There is case law that sets legal precedent, but it doesn’t totally support Bell’s assertions.

In 1989, naive out-of-towners Jeffrey and Patrice Stambovsky, purchased an 18-room rambling riverfront Victorian mansion on the Hudson River in scenic Nyack, N.Y.

Unbeknown to them at the time, the $650,000 home was haunted.

Owner Helen Ackley, however, had actively promoted her home as a haunt for apparitions in the attic, poltergeists in the pantry and ghosts in the garage.

Both the local and national media reported the story. The most notable version was a 1997 Reader’s Digest story, “Our Haunted House on the Hudson.”

According to Ackley’s Digest account, there were at least three ghosts thought to date back to the Revolutionary War, a red-cloaked woman often seen demurely descending the staircase, a wandering sailor with a powdered wig and an elderly gentleman sitting in the living room suspended four feet above the floor.

“Our ghosts have continued to delight us” Ackley told Reader’s Digest.

The spooks were always “gracious, thoughtful – only occasionally frightening – and thoroughly entertaining,” she said.

At their worst, the spirits almost knocked her daughter out of bed and shook her four-poster bed in the mornings just before the alarm clock went off.

Jeffrey Stambovsky insisted he didn’t believe in ghosts, but the possibility of living with them spooked his wife.

The Stambovskys demanded that Ackley return their $32,500 binder and ax the deal. Ackley refused to return the money, claiming that the Stambovskys had agreed to purchase the home “as is.”

Instead of taking metaphysical law into their own hands, the Stambovskys took it to court.

“We were the victims of ectoplasmic fraud,” Stambovsky moaned.

A lower court ruled in favor of Ackley, but later Justice Israel Rubin of the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court reversed the decision with a devilish tongue-in-cheek ruling.

“(A) very practical problem arises with respect to the discovery of a paranormal phenomenon: ‘Who you gonna call?’ as a title song to the movie Ghostbusters asks. Applying the strict rule of caveat emptor to a contract involving a house possessed by poltergeists conjures up visions of a psychic or medium routinely accompanying the structural engineers and Terminix man on an inspection of every home subject to a contract of sale,” Rubin said.

“Whether the source of the spectral apparitions seen by defendant seller are parapsychic or psychogenic, having reported their presence in both a national publication and the local press, defendant is estopped to deny their existence, and, as a matter of law, the house is haunted,” he finished with a flourish.

(Reprint this story for free, without copyright restrictions, provided any reprint is as is, including all links, this notice and the byline “By Brodeick Perkins, DeadlineNews.Com” with “DeadlineNews.Com” linked to DeadlineNews.Com. Any other reprint is a copyright violation and will be policed as such.)

Who is this cool person who’s shared so many neat movies and clips with the ghost-and-paranormal obscessed public? Ghostwatching’s description of herself as “a Connoisseur of History the Victorian era and all things of a mysterious and spooky nature”. Looks like this is simply a labor of love and not a profit center (exactly like this site, the Haunted Real Estate Blog). Also looks like some of her content has been swiped and plagiarized at times – so if you do visit this cool site, please be respectful and don’t “pinch” anything!

• A CBS poll in 2005 found that 48% of those asked said that they believe in ghosts and 45% said they didn’t. The same query revealed that 56% of women did believe in them. Surprisingly, 22% of those polled (not just of the set that believe) said that they had personally seen or felt a ghost. That’s huge!
• A Pew Research poll in 2009 found smaller numbers but that 18% felt that they had had some sort of experience with a deceased person.
• Scientific American calls these “grief hallucinations” and states that 80% of the elderly have them within a month of the passing of a close loved one.  This is, of course, a surprising conclusion that the otherwise very respectable magazine failed to prove, but instead merely asserted.

Whether real experiences of the dead or, as Scientific American unscientifically claims, why is it that so few people ever talk about it?

No one wants to be labeled as crazy, nuts or disturbed.  In casual conversation, friends and relatives (even if they believe and have experienced something themselves) are never going to ask, “so have you seen a ghost or felt the presence of a deceased loved one recently?”  So it’s a self-imposed “don’t ask, don’t tell”.

How do you get past that so that people will share with you?

But, if for some reason they are made to feel safe in discussing it – say, if you verbally open that door – you might be surprised at the outpouring of stories.  I get them all the time, often weekly.  People I don’t know will call or email me about their experience because with this blog they know that they will gain a receptive ear.

You can also find a MeetUp group in your area for ghost hunters.  Most of them will have a very good, personal, compelling reason for being there.  And they won’t  be nervous about sharing their experiences with you, either.

So if in this Halloween season  you want to hear some “real ghost stories”, be daring and bring the subject up or put.  Don’t make a verbal avalanche of it, but warm up to the topic a little. “This is a really interesting old house. Are there any stories associated with it?”   Or volunteer something true in your own life, like  “after my pet died, I really felt her presence for awhile afterward…” Or even, “my relative said that after his wife died…” The more closely it’s connected to you, personally, the safer it will be for others to share their stories and experiences with you in turn.

Yes, some people will think you are a little off but most likely you will find someone out there with a story that he or she is just dying to tell.  So to speak.

A title company can run a title search and get what is called the “chain of title” for you.  That will tell you much more than a property profile or the county records, which often go back only about 10 years. A chain of title can go way, way back – as far as Mexican or Spanish land grants in our area.

Sometimes the chain of title will also include death certificates, so you’ll know if anyone died on the land or in the house.  But don’t expect this to be absolutely perfect – no guarantees here!

The title records won’t include everyone who lived at the property address, only those who were on title, so at best it can give you a particular window. But with the owners’ names you may be able to expand your research and learn more about what took place there in days gone by.  Google and other search engines can be a huge help, but so can archives from the paper (San Jose Mercury News and others). Don’t forget to just ask the neighbors – you’d be surprises at how much they might know!

My name is Susie and I am writing to ask about an experience we had at a rental property (in Indiana).

We have three daughters and out youngest was 13 yrs when we moved into a two story rental home. Her room was a large room over the garage with steps down into it. During our time there the room was always cold (even in the summer). Ali (my daughter) had trouble sleeping and I would go lay in bed with her and I would become uncomfortable in the room and somewhat anxious and inevitably take her to my room.

Ali finally talked to me after we had been there two or three years that there were two children – a girl in a blue smock dress and a boy in older style clothes) that were in her room. She described them as angry at times and they would pick on her. Ali would sleep walk (hasn’t since we moved out). She said they pushed her down in the bed-she said she knew they were mad at her because, she had been gone two days. They would get mad at her when she got migraines (they thought she was ignoring them). The radio would turn on in her bathroom when she showered. One day Ali was very upset about something and went into her room and a music box in the window that needed wound up turned on, on its own, and they whispered “it’s okay”.

As we got closer to moving I would verbally tell them to leave her alone and Ali told me they didn’t like me. After we moved out – they literally broke things – it was winter and the land lord blamed us for leaving the house a mess….It was spotless when we left. I saw pictures of what the landlord claims we did. The toilet in Ali’s bathroom had black water in it that had frozen and cracked the bowl. The oven had been turned on by the landlord to warm the house and all the grease on the exterior turned black. There was a huge water stain on the wood floor that could not be removed. We ended up owing $2000.00 to the landlord for repairs of things we did not do.

I did leave a necklace of Ali’s behind hoping they would not follow her. So far so good. It has been over two years. I wondered how to find out about the land the house is on but I don’t know where to start.

Normally I do not go in front of a video camera, but…due to popular demand, here’s a little commentary on why I discuss haunted real estate. Enjoy!

10 Campus Buildings That are Totally Haunted

My own children will be happy to learn that their university did not make the list!

What’s it all about?  Ogmento, an “augmented gaming developer”, is showcasing  at GDC their new mobile game, Paranormal Activity: Sanctuary.  It’s an app that’s location based.  Since the conference is in San Francisco, they’re playing with it.  Here’s what I was told:

“…players in SF will be able to participate in an actual good versus evil battle. Running around San Francisco, players will stop at several locations to investigate paranormal activity.

“A list of locations include the Mansions Hotel, Queen Anne Hotel, Trinity Episcopal Church, San Remo Hotel, Curran Theatre, Alcatraz, the W Hotel, and of course Moscone Center itself.”

Now,forgive me for being a purist, but the only problem with this whole concept is that there is a little mixup between hauntings and demons or evil. (As well as a confusion with casting spells and other such stuff.) It’s not really the case that “alive” people are good, and dead people, or ghosts, are evil.  And ghosts may or may not give a care if you try throwing a “spell” their way.  (You know, the odds are against them believing in witchcraft.)  As the readers of this blog likely know, ghosts are not necessarily or  predominantly evil.  Ever visited the Queen Anne Hotel?  The ghost there is NOT bad in the least.  She is, in fact, benevolent and is as likely to tuck you in, cover you if your blankets fall away or fold your clothes should they slip on the floor as anything else.

But hey, it’s a common mistake.  A lot of folks get confused and think if it’s a ghost, it’s gotta be bad.   If I had my druthers, they wouldn’t mix up all these unrelated things which might only find each other in a horror film, but apps sell if consumers respond.

Even so, it sounds like fun to see the mock up of San Francisco and its most haunted spots.  As for me, I’m no video game addict, but I’ve got my people at GDC, and am expecting a full report on this game…as soon as the train pulls in to Silicon Valley….