How to Sell a Haunted House (or Not)

Other agents are more skeptical, but they have had encounters that have made them think twice.

Julie Brown, an agent in Marshall County, Ala., recently sold a house to a couple relocating from the Northeast. “Right after they bought it, they called and said, ‘There’s a little brown dog dancing every night in the living room,’” she said. The couple didn’t know that the seller’s wife, who had recently died, had a small brown dog who had also recently died.

She’s now not as eager to dismiss them as hoaxes anymore. “I still don’t know if I believe in ghosts. But maybe,” Ms. Brown said.

Jennifer Stauter, a real estate agent in Wisconsin, recalled how she listed a house whose owners mentioned it was haunted by a ghost who liked to make phone calls. At an open house, she heard banging noises coming from the basement. Then the landline rang three times, with only static on the other end.

“If you tell me your house is haunted, I’m not going to say you’re crazy,” she said.

In Bensalem, Pa., Scott Geller sold what he believes may be a haunted townhouse in his own neighborhood twice: first to a woman who told him she felt an eerie coldness in the front bedroom, and years later to a man who stopped to chat with his wife on the street. “He described the exact same thing,” Mr. Geller said.

Before, “when people would tell me about flickering lights or cold spots I would say, ‘OK, call an electrician or an HVAC person,” Mr. Geller said.

He is still mostly doubtful ghosts exist. But “I think there could be something going on, some kind of spirit energy that gets left behind.”