Tenants’ list of home issues includes ghost

WHEN it comes to complaints tenants make to their landlords‚ “we have a ghost in the house” ranks as one of the stranger gripes.

TPN‚ which vets the credit records of tenants who stay in rental properties‚ says this is one of the more unusual complaints it has heard from clients.

TPN managing director Michelle Dickens said “as a property specialist credit bureau‚ TPN’s landlords and occasionally their tenants report every imagined possibility to us. From the mysterious to the utterly bizarre‚ we have heard it all”.

A landlord of a northern Johannesburg home‚ who asked not to be named‚ said tenants called her husband recently and asked if someone had died in the house.

The tenants said they “sensed a presence and asked had anyone passed away in the house as they were definitely not alone”.

Her husband listened to the tenants’ story, she said. He suggested carbon monoxide from the gas stove might be causing hallucinations and asked the tenants to ventilate the house after cooking.

“My immediate thought was they wanted out of their contract, but this was not it.”

They stopped seeing their ghost. But‚ asks TPN in its press release, “how is it possible members of the family all saw exactly the same ghost, an old lady, in their hallucinations?”