You better hope the Old Wench never reads this; the name she was born with is Geist and she would correct the error of your thinking. 
My first thought was they were amateur filmmakers and turned their house into a set.
Might not even have been a deliberately premeditated idea so much as sequential. “Oh, we need to film X let’s just do that here.” “Hey if we put weird lights in Y room we could finish that last damn scene we still need.” Etc.
Isaac Asimov
“Don’t you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don’t you believe in telepathy? — in ancient astronauts? — in the Bermuda triangle? — in life after death?
No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no.
One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst out ‘Don’t you believe in anything?’
‘Yes’, I said. 'I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I’ll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.”
Does caveat emptor not apply in the States?
I don’t disclose my religion to perspective buyers.
I don’t disclose for the sake of argument that I conduct satanic rituals in the spare bedroom.
I don’t disclose that say in times of heavy precipitation the sewer pipes back-up.
I don’t disclose my reason for selling the property.
It doesn’t apply completely in house (and some other) sales and not disclosing 3, at least in my state, would be grounds for the buyer to get some kind of recompense.
Ghosts are for-sure demonstrably not real. There’s no middle ground. Full stop.
The ignorant and the fools of the world may think so, but that’s different.
Also note, most or all the disclosure laws talk about people dying in the house, not if it’s haunted. The stupidly superstitious may take it to mean the same thing. The former is a factual (if irrelevant) point, the latter isn’t.
Okay, what’s the demonstration?
In California at least, the law requires a home seller to fill out an itemized disclosure form informing the buyer of any “material defects” in the property known to the seller. Failure to do so can void the sale. In my experience, sellers tend to go overboard just to be safe, and disclose all sorts of minor things. In the link below it says that in California deaths in the house which occurred more than three years prior to the sale date do not need to be disclosed. It’s not clear to me whether that means that deaths that occurred within the last 3 years DO need to be disclosed.
Thank you OldGuy and markn+, interesting
Over this side of the puddle caveat emptor is why you get a professional to conduct a presale building inspection and search the council and/or strata property notices before putting a bid in.
Presale inspections are pretty universal in the US too, but inspections won’t catch everything. For example, if the roof leaks but it’s not raining the day of the inspection, the inspector likely won’t find anything. But if the seller doesn’t disclose it, they will have a hard time trying to later claim that they didn’t know that it leaks. The exception is things like estate sales, where the seller may have inherited but never lived in the house.
Caveat emptor is not the current policy, at least in my state.
A seller of non-commercial property is not *required *to fill out a Disclosure Form, but I would advise they do. This form shows, in considerable detail, what the seller knows about defects, although the seller isn’t expected to be an expert on them.
If the seller *knows *the roof leaks, but doesn’t disclose this to a buyer, and the buyer finds out, he has grounds for a suit. If the seller DID disclose such, the buyer has no grounds for a suit. So disclosing defects is in the seller’s interest.
Note that religion (which would include satanic rituals) is a protected class, and should have no part in a real estate transaction.
It could certainly have inspired a horror movie set, but it didn’t look like it was done on purpose. The realtor who showed it to me said it looked like Lowe’s had a sale on strip lighting.
Let’s say that you do, and that everyone in town knows it. The Thule House is known far and wide as the site of black magic and people reflexively cross the street rather than pass directly in front of it. Kids avoid it on Halloween, except for the older ones who show their courage by throwing eggs at it. And so on.
If I, as an out-of-towner who knows nothing about these sorts of things, buy the house at a price that does not reflect the stigma that the house bears, I might have grounds for a lawsuit because the value of the house has been impacted by these rumors.
It doesn’t matter if they’re true or false. It doesn’t matter if religion is real or fake. It doesn’t matter if ghosts exist. The value of a house is impacted by people’s perception. I will have lots of trouble selling the Thule House to anybody who isn’t an ignorant outside like I was.
To put it another way - if it makes sense that a house can be worth more if it is famous, it makes sense that a house can be worth less if it is infamous.
If nobody knows that you practice your rituals and the house has no stigma? No need for a disclosure.
I wonder if that’s something that would be included in the appraisal of a home or would even be legally required to be in the appraisal.
According to this (pdf warning).
I can’t imagine why the opposite wouldn’t be true for negative intangibles.
Can science prove that ghosts are real? I only put my faith in scientific evidence. There is no verifiable objective proof that ghosts exist.
I think you can compile data showing some sort of phenomena has occurred. You can set up cameras and other recording devices that often pick up strange pictures, sound, or EM data.
Indeed, even if your New Orleans home isn’t known to be haunted I’m pretty sure it won’t sell unless you present some sort of evidence that it is.