I've been told by my friends that I should write down & share my real estate experiences. The following experience really happened about 5 years ago. Jen Stauter www.HomeTeam4u.net
Ghostly Disclosures
I arrived for my 6:30 PM listing appt - it was just starting to get dark outside. I had listed & sold these folk's previous house & helped them buy their current house in the Town of Sun Prairie.
We went into the dimly lit living room to chat about getting their house sold. Upon filling out the real estate condition report - we hit the question about are there any other defects in the house to disclose to a potential Buyer.
Mr. & Mrs. Seller looked at each other and paused. * Having been in this business for a long time - I know a look & a pause is never good.
Mr. Seller says to me, "Do you believe in ghosts?" He did not wait for my answer when he responded, "You better - because we got some here. Do we need to disclose them?"
Knowing the rules on "ghost disclosures" in Wisconsin only requires brokers to disclose a haunting if it has an effect on the physical condition of the property - I asked them to tell me about their experiences to see if something needed to be disclosed or not.
I was told sometimes when they were talking on the phone - another voice other then the person on the line would begin talking to them. Whenever the "phone spirit" was on the phone - it manifests itself as a certain bird outside - this bird sits on the deck & tries to get in the house.
As I'm listening to this I'm starting to feel like I'm in an episode of Paranormal State. I keep listening & the Sellers keep talking.
They had a fire in the basement of the house. The Owners are sure that "Jack" caused the fire. The Owners claim a man-spirit, named "Jack" lives in the basement & that they have seen him. He did not like that they were renovating the basement so he started the fire. During the fire clean up, the cleanup workers discovered old bullet holes in the basement walls. The Owners think that "Jack" must have been murdered in the house.
Hmmm... still listening & nodding... the Seller keeps talking.
Next, they tell me about their bon fires in the backyard. Usually, they see spirits running in the backyard at the bon fires.
Ok - that is enough info for me. We decide it would be best to disclose that the Seller feels the house is haunted. Who knows if it is or isn't, but if the Seller is telling everyone that it is haunted - we might as well disclose it.
A few days later, we got the house on the market. I was set up to do an open house - during the day 1 -4 pm. I arrived for my open house & wasn't thinking about the house being "haunted".
As I was sitting in the living room - the place started to feel dark. So I opened all the heavy, purple, velvet curtains to let more light in. At that point, I remembered the "ghosts".
I decided to keep busy so I started doing some paperwork until open house attendees arrived. Shortly, thereafter I started to hear a banging noise from the basement. So being curious I went down to the basement. I could not find the source of the banging.
Just then the phone started to ring. When holding open houses - I do not answer the Seller's phone so I let it ring. 3 separate times the phone rang & I could hear the message that was left on the Seller's old style answering machine. It was just strange static.
At this point, I decided I was going to go outside on the deck so I was out of the house. It was daylight so I did not see any "spirits" in the backyard. I ended up spending my entire open house on the deck as no one came to the open house.
Later, I told the owners about my experience. They thought "Jack", the basement spirit, was playing tricks on me.
This house was creepy. I don't know if all the ghost stories spooked me or if "Jack" was playing tricks on me. In the end, we did not need to worry about all the ghostly disclosures because the Owners decided that they wanted to stay in the house.
