A sale can turn into an own ghoul if you have a ghost

When journalist Tristan Redman was a teenager living with his parents in Richmond, south-west London, he noticed some peculiar activity going on in his bedroom on the top floor of the house at night.

Despite not believing in ghosts, a vase would periodically appear to move around the room, lights seemed to flicker on and off on the landing and a strange cold feeling would descend whenever he was alone in the house.

Years later, long after his parents sold the house, he discovered that two subsequent families who lived in the same Victorian property noticed similar goings- on at the top of the stairs. These included the apparition of a faceless woman.

When Redman found out that, in 1937, a lady had been shot twice in the eyes in the house next door, it inspired him to investigate further.

The results were turned into an award-winning podcast, Ghost Story, which launched last year.

During the research, Redman contacted the current owners of the Richmond house where the murder took place. It’s not clear if they were aware when they bought the property that a violent crime had taken place there, albeit many decades ago. Given the fact that they were happy for Redman to conduct a séance in the room where the murder took place suggests a sangfroid approach to the paranormal.

There are no specific legal requirements in the UK that mandate the disclosure of supposed paranormal activity or hauntings when selling a property. The market is primarily governed by principles of caveat emptor, placing the responsibility on the buyer to thoroughly investigate and assess a house before buying.

In 2004, the owners of a house in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, tried to sue the couple who had sold them the property after discovering that a murder had taken place there in the 1980s.

It was while watching a television documentary that they learnt how a father had killed his 13- year- old adopted daughter and hid her body parts around their house and garden.

The couple were horrified and decided to sell at a loss of £ 8,000. Their case, which challenged whether the vendors had fully answered the question in the conveyancing process, which asks about any information a buyer may have a right to know, was dismissed. Recently, the actor Dominic West claimed that a poltergeist occupied a house he once owned in Hoxton, east London. When he asked the Catholic Church for help – the Vatican trains priests in exorcism – he was told an option was to hold a rumbustious children’s party in the house to settle the spirit and cheer them up. It worked.

When it came to selling the house, West didn’t tell his buyer about this activity. “There’s no obligation to share any such information. However, if a buyer had any suspicions or heard any rumours that required clarity, then it would be acceptable to ask the seller’s lawyer to disclose,” says Marc Schneiderman of Arlington Residential, an estate agency.

The same isn’t true in parts of the United States. In the 1991 case of Stambovsky v Ackley ( also known as the “Ghostbusters ruling”) the New York Supreme Court upheld on appeal a complaint by the purchaser of a house that the owner had not warned him it was haunted. A number of states now require full disclosure of so-called “stigmatised” properties. This is an umbrella term covering anything from houses where murders or suicides have taken place to ones that have been used for criminal activity.

Julia Kendell is a TV presenter and kitchen and interior joinery designer who runs her own firm Kendell & Co. In the early 1990s, she bought a house outside Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire.

A number of strange things started to happen including toys that had been left strewn across the lawn being magically tidied away in the playroom or baby mobiles spinning uncontrollably when windows and doors were shut.

When it came to selling the property, Kendell didn’t disclose this activity. “I guess the responsible answer would be [to reveal the presence] but I do wonder whether everyone would experience the same or if it’s just those who attract it in some way,” she says.

Charlie Wells, of buying agency Prime Purchase, says he has come across three houses where someone has been murdered and the owners have struggled to sell them.

Often, this sort of home will be bought by a developer who has a degree of separation, because they won’t be living there themselves. The agency estimates that such properties can sell for a discount of between 15pc and 20pc.

Salisbury- based solicitor Marcus Thorpe, of Trethowans LLP, says it stands to reason that most people don’t want to live in a haunted house, so the pool of potential buyers will shrink if it is known that “there are lots of spooks about”.

He believes it is important to be honest about any activity in the house. “While questions about the paranormal don’t form part of the standard buyer’s questionnaire, and perhaps it’s rather unique to the country house sector, a good solicitor might ask the question if dealing with a property of this type.”

Does a ghost put off a buyer? “Probably not,” says Lindsay Cuthill, co- founder of Blue Book, an estate agency. “Those buying a historic property normally know that a spirit is likely part of the package – and, after all, not all spirits necessarily have to be bad.” Arabella Youens