“[M]y first reaction,” said someone who lives near the Massachusetts property above, was “like, it’s definitely haunted.”

It wasn’t.

Ultimately it’s impossible to prove that, of course, because ghosts are one of those phenomena that, like psychic powers or evidence that Trump won the 2020 election, can be counted on to vanish in the face of any serious investigation. Maybe they’re just really good at hiding, but the more you look for something and don’t find it, the more confident you can be that it doesn’t exist. But if you want to believe it might, I guess you can still do that.

None of the neighbors seem to believe this house is haunted, for what that might be worth. “No,” said the woman whose tweet of this “NOT HAUNTED” sign went viral back in 2021. (A search revealed at least half a dozen other examples of “NOT HAUNTED” signs around the continent.) “I mean, this is not ever a scary area or anything,” she insisted. “It’s just another house.” Or is it?

Yes, it is.

“My family has owned this land for over a century,” said another neighbor, though it wasn’t very clear what he meant by “this land.” Not the part of it over an ancient Indian burial ground, presumably, although because members of other families lived in that area for about 10,000 years before this guy’s clan showed up, statistically it’s almost certain that at least one of those people also died in that area. And they weren’t going to cart him any distance for burial, either, so most likely he was buried there too. And you know what that means!

No, that was just a movie. Scary, though!

As I thought I had mentioned before, but if so the post has mysteriously vanished, in some states a home seller or realtor may have a duty to disclose whether someone has died on the property, although the scope of that duty varies. (Realtor.com told its readers about the problem here.) That isn’t the same as “haunted” status, however.

In California, for example, an owner or agent is not required to disclose “the occurrence of an occupant’s death upon the real property or the manner of death where the death has occurred more than three years” before the date of an offer. Cal. Civ. Code § 1710.2(a). They might be required to disclose more recent deaths, or at least the immunity wouldn’t apply then. But—in what I’m pretty sure is a fairly recent amendment—the law also says the immunity doesn’t apply if the buyer asks about “deaths on the real property” and the answer is a lie. Id. § 1710.2(d) (no immunity for intentional misrepresentations in response to a direct inquiry). So you don’t have to volunteer the information, unless it was recent, in which case you might; but if directly asked you have to either tell the truth or just stand there saying nothing, which is a bit of a giveaway. Okay.

Connecticut, on the other hand, says “the fact that the property was at any time suspected to have been the site of a death or felony” is, by definition, a “nonmaterial fact” that does not have to be disclosed in a real estate transaction. Conn. Gen. Stat. § 20-329cc and 329dd. (“Suspected”? I guess that includes property where something actually happened, because you’d have to “suspect” it first before you could prove it.) Amusingly, Connecticut used to refer to this situation as involving “psychologically impacted property,” but they have since changed it to “nonmaterial”—meaning “not important,” although I’d like to think they meant “nonmaterial” in the other, ghostly sense.

The legislature’s apparent discomfort with “psychologically impacted property” is understandable, because if the impact is on the property, that means you think the death left a ghost behind. Which it didn’t. The psychological impact, if any, would be on potential buyers. I’m not sure what to think about this idea. On the one hand, I don’t believe in ghosts, so I’m not worried about one lingering on the property to hassle me for whatever reason ghosts supposedly do that. (In California, apparently, they are legally required to quit doing that after three years anyway.) And I don’t think others should worry about it. On the other hand, there are people who do believe in ghosts, or at least enough people are sufficiently creeped out by the idea of living in a place where someone died (especially by violence) that this might affect the market price. That effect is probably real, even though ghosts aren’t. But should a legislature be basing statutes, even indirectly, on a common but false belief? I’m not sure about this one.

I am sure that if you want to know whether someone died in your house, the people at DiedInHouse.com would be glad to help you find out. I warn you that if you go there, you will be seized by an almost uncontrollable (and possibly demon-inspired) impulse to type your address in the box, whether you want to know or not. Luckily for me, they charge for the actual report, and I am way too cheap to pay for something like that. So I avoided that possible psychological impact.

Well, even if in some states you are required to disclose a death on the property, you are not required to disclose a “haunting”—just particular facts that some might think pose the possibility of one. You’re also not required to disclose a not-haunting, but I wouldn’t recommend that. You never know what somebody might come up with.

For a compilation of other items related in some way to the law and ghosts, haunted houses, witches, vampires, and/or other Halloween-adjacent topics (including the famous Stambovsky haunted-house case), see “Terrifying Halloween Assortment!” (Oct. 31, 2017).