Would You Buy A Haunted House?

escargot said:
I've known men who swore they couldn't wear a watch because it would always go wrong due to some farfetched circumstance.
It was often their suffering an electric shock as a youth which made their body all charged or summat.

As I'd laugh in their faces the subject only ever came up the once. :chuckle:

This was in the days of mechanical watches. My guess was that as they'd stop if you forgot to wind them, and you'd then need to consult another timepiece to set them by, a less organised person might find it all too much trouble. Especially if Mum or Wifey were on hand to help with all that confusing stuff.

My watch and alarm clock were wound at 9pm every day. I wasn't getting caught out. :bthumbup:
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I can't wear watches. People often assume it's due to my own personal magnetism making the watch malfunction (at least, I like to think that's what they often assume).

It's actually because I talk with my hands so vigorously that I'm always smacking my hands and wrists off desks, doors, walls, radiators etc. I've broken every watch I've ever worn.
 
catseye said:
I can't wear watches. People often assume it's due to my own personal magnetism making the watch malfunction (at least, I like to think that's what they often assume).

It's actually because I talk with my hands so vigorously that I'm always smacking my hands and wrists off desks, doors, walls, radiators etc. I've broken every watch I've ever worn.
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A sweat-band over your watch for protection, was de rigueur amongst some of the hip kids in the 80s.
 
Not a haunted house but a murder house?

Someone I know has just sold a house that was in her family that had an awful murder in the 1960’s

A woman and her 3 children had moved in to her mother’s house to escape domestic abuse. One evening the father who had tracked them down came to the house, beat her, the 3 children and her mother to death with a hammer then killed himself. All members of the family were found all over the house, upstairs and down.

Another member of the family found them all the following morning when he called there for a cuppa. It was a terrible event and the house lay empty for a year or two before being offered by the council to my friends parents. They snapped it up as houses were difficult to come by. My friend grew up in the house and said none of them were ever bothered by the house’s history - it was a happy home.

Her parents passed away and she’s sold the house recently. It’s been such a long time since the events that I don’t think the new buyers needed to be told and I often wonder how I’d feel if after buying it I’d have found out.

I could never have bought the place, regardless of the passing of time I’d always be thinking of the events, especially in the small hours.

Does anyone else feel the same?
 
Technicalgirl said:
Does anyone else feel the same?
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Your feelings are your feelings :)

Personally it wouldn't bother me. I'm not going to let the bastard father drive me off and I'll not think ill of the grandmother, mother and kids. Why would they wish me ill?

I don't tend to dwell on things though.
 
If I had Elon Musk levels of money, I'd buy as many as possible. The Amityville house being No 1 on my list, that house from The Conjuring, the black monk house in Pontefract, the Enfield poltergeist house .. I don't know what I'd do with them all once I owned them though. I'd buy The Golden Fleece pub in York and convert it back to a private residence for myself which would probably anger locals.
 
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Technicalgirl said:
Not a haunted house but a murder house?

Someone I know has just sold a house that was in her family that had an awful murder in the 1960’s

A woman and her 3 children had moved in to her mother’s house to escape domestic abuse. One evening the father who had tracked them down came to the house, beat her, the 3 children and her mother to death with a hammer then killed himself. All members of the family were found all over the house, upstairs and down.

Another member of the family found them all the following morning when he called there for a cuppa. It was a terrible event and the house lay empty for a year or two before being offered by the council to my friends parents. They snapped it up as houses were difficult to come by. My friend grew up in the house and said none of them were ever bothered by the house’s history - it was a happy home.

Her parents passed away and she’s sold the house recently. It’s been such a long time since the events that I don’t think the new buyers needed to be told and I often wonder how I’d feel if after buying it I’d have found out.

I could never have bought the place, regardless of the passing of time I’d always be thinking of the events, especially in the small hours.

Does anyone else feel the same?
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I wouldn't feel comfortable living in a house where a multiple murder had happened, no. Haunted? yes but real big crime scene level stuff, no. I'm amazed someone's comfortable living in Dennis Nielson's old flat, no matter how many renovations it's had. Imagine if you had a problem with the plumbing there and had to call someone out.
 
Steven said:
For once in my life, I wouldn't be frightened of the ghosts in that house; I'd be far too angry at the murderer for that.
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Yup, it's a murder house. Someone I knew decided against buying a very nice house when she found out a woman had been shot dead by her husband in the master bedroom.
I told her that wouldn't put me off but she believed it would affect the resale value.
 
There can be two perceptions going on at once of course. The locals can view it as a murder house, and the resident may view it as a haunted house (or just a weird house). When I lived in a haunted house, I didn't know the history but there were surely some weird things going on there. I only found out on the day that we moved out that the place had a reputation as a murder/suicide house.
 
I found an author (Jan Bondeson who’s written about ”Murder Houses” in the UK) via a Guardian article.

Jan Bondeson

Article snippet:
“For better or worse, their mere presence bore witness to a violent and unloved chapter in a place’s history, no matter how many people might wish to forget it. I also found it compelling to trace how the most infamous residences had become dark monuments of a sort and how this continued fascination so often curdled into the strangest kinds of myth.”

Could you live in a house that has been the scene of a murder?

An investor remarks that investors probably buy them.

It’s also easier to demolish some than others, seems to depend somewhat on the intensity of the feeling. 10 Rillington Place was demolished but was that part of a general gentrification of the area? The Wests House…I don’t see that ever have being allowed to remain. I’m sure someone would have bought it, maybe even tried to capitalise on dark tourism, but the sentiment was strongly that it should come down, and I’m glad it did.

Britain’s Murder Houses — Metro article

The Murder houses so horrific they were demolished — US based, Independent article

I would feel far too sad and horrified to live in such a place — if I knew about it. I might feel nothing in such a place, and in the UK Estate Agents don’t have to tell a potential buyer the history — but if I did, sadness and horror would make it very difficult to live there. A haunted house? I’d be nervous no doubt, but far more fascinated. We’d put cameras and motion sensors up :wink2:
 
Technicalgirl said:
Not a haunted house but a murder house?
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Suicide or murder, I don't know if I could live in a house with this type of background. Though it would have to be very recent history.

I would probably have nightmares and dark thoughts about the suffering.

There is a house close to where I grew up in which the owner committed suicide by hanging circa 30 years ago. His wife sold up. This home in particular I would now have no problem living in it. I did not know the couple. If I knew people involved, definitely not.

I doubt that anyone who did not live in the area at the time know that there was a suicide.

Murder houses bring their own troubles if the event is broadly known. People visiting these homes to gawk, no I would not buy one of them.
 
Swifty said:
If I had Elon Musk levels of money, I'd buy as many as possible. The Amityville house being No 1 on my list, that house from The Conjuring, the black monk house in Pontefract, the Enfield poltergeist house .. I don't know what I'd do with them all once I owned them though. I'd buy The Golden Fleece pub in York and convert it back to a private residence for myself which would probably anger locals.
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Have to agree, I would definitely purchase the Amityville house. Also the Lizzie Borden murder house in Fall River, Massachusetts. But only for psychic investigators to tour and give their impressions. Right now we are temporarily residing in a home where several have passed on, and can't say we are comfortable here at all, it is strangely not a happy house.
 
Swifty said:
I wouldn't feel comfortable living in a house where a multiple murder had happened, no. Haunted? yes but real big crime scene level stuff, no. I'm amazed someone's comfortable living in Dennis Nielson's old flat, no matter how many renovations it's had. Imagine if you had a problem with the plumbing there and had to call someone out.
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...Plumber sucks teeth a bit, then whistles...'Got quite a bit of a blockage there...its gonna cost you'...:oops::omg:
 
escargot said:
Wouldn't bother me at all, not one bit.
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If I lived in a haunted place or on haunted land, I wouldn’t mind if people came around at all (drawing the line at a bunch out on the lash at 1 a.m. Mind you). I’d be interested and offer tea and coffee and cake etc and ask them what they’ve seen or heard or sensed.

I can see the morbid curiosity that draws people to murder houses but you might get some really odd ducks. I don’t mean people who think they can get in contact with the spirits, but some who get a little bit excited at the thought of murder.
 
I have mentioned on here the place I grew up in, (from 5 to 16 years of age), and the impact that had on my paranormal belief into adulthood. Everything I saw or heard or felt, I believed was down to whatever haunted that house. My 5 siblings and my mother held the same view. We never discussed it with my Dad when he was alive, but coming from the bogs of Kilkenny, he had a different view of life and death and seemed very open and accepting of the likelihood of life after death.
When we lived there it was a 4 bedroom maisonette; now the dining room has been sectioned off from the lounge and it is a 5 bedroom.
IF I was ever fortunate to have the money to buy a 5 bedroom family home a spit off the Old Kent Road, and IF that particular place came up for sale I would buy it.
For one, I would like to go back and find out if the same phenomena are still occurring, or whether they have abated. Two, if they are still occurring I would like the opportunity to investigate with a more sceptical outlook and find out if there are non paranormal causes for the phenomena we all experienced on a daily basis.

In my minds eye I see a scenario where I go back, and as I walk in the place erupts in knocking and banging as whatever dwells there recognises me and welcomes me back after 46 years away.

Edit: https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/newly-built-haunted-houses.27557/post-2291862
 
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It's interesting that people would buy a house where a murder/suicide/nasty death had occurred say 100 years ago, but not if it had happened in the last ten years. Does that mean that it's less the actual possibility of hauntings/spirits hanging around that they are worried about than other people telling them about what happened continually? Because, hauntingwise, whether it's ten years or a century then the house having a 'memory' of what's happened ought to be consistent, yet people are saying that if the deaths were a long time ago they wouldn't be worried?

That seems to indicate that they are more worried about what they might imagine than what might actually BE there, if you see what I mean. Likewise in a house that is so old that you can't possibly know what happened in it over the centuries... I mean either the fabric of buildings CAN hold a 'feeling' and violently departed people might hang around in some element, or they CAN'T. Unless there's a statute of limitations on these things.
 
catseye said:
It's interesting that people would buy a house where a murder/suicide/nasty death had occurred say 100 years ago, but not if it had happened in the last ten year
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I think maybe that’s just tied up with the human lifespan perhaps. If we are living within the timespan of when a murder occurred, it can seem personal. If it occurred before we were born then it’s more ‘historical; and more distant.

Looking through my ghost books, quite a few are the result of murder: someone was shot, a lover’s quarrel, etc, but foremost in the mind is the fact of the haunting, not the murder.
 
I can't remember now what it's called but there was (still is?) a website you can pay to register on and it will tell you if anyone's ever died in your UK house. I'll see if I can re find it. I can't find the website right now but we've got a framed Census of England and Wales 1911 copy on our downstairs bathroom wall that lists a James and Elric North, a married couple who lived in my house in 1911. James was 24, Elric was 22. James's occupation is listed as 'Restaurant Por Conquater' (or Condelator whatever that means) and he was from Middlesbrough. Elric's listed being from Norfolk. Ironic because in 2025, I'm from Birmingham and my Mrs is from Norfolk and is still in the restaurant trade. As far as we know, they haven't haunted us.
 
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Swifty said:
I can't remember now what it's called but there was (still is?) a website you can pay to register on and it will tell you if anyone's ever died in your UK house. I'll see if I can re find it. I can't find the website right now but we've got a framed Census of England and Wales 1911 copy on our downstairs bathroom wall that lists a James and Elric North, a married couple who lived in my house in 1911. James was 24, Elric was 22. James's occupation is listed as 'Restaurant Por Conquater' (or Condelator whatever that means) and he was from Middlesbrough. Elric's listed being from Norfolk. Ironic because in 2025, I'm from Birmingham and my Mrs is from Norfolk and is still in the restaurant trade. As far as we know, they haven't haunted us.
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My house has changed address - and I don't know what from! This has caused me huge problems when trying to look into its history. The first censuses (censi? censusi?) that I can access just have my village noted as 'Main Street' and then numbers, but because I don't know whereabouts they started counting (none of the houses have numbers now, they all have names or, like mine, a number but the name of the cottage row) I can't work out which is mine. The row was also known as Church Terrace for a while but I haven't seen that listed on any of the censuses either. So until 1972, when the entire row was bought up by a builder and given bathrooms and put on the mains, there is nothing to find! I would love to know who used to live here and who died here too (the cottage is around 200 years old, so I'm pretty sure there's a body count to this address).
 
catseye said:
My house has changed address - and I don't know what from! This has caused me huge problems when trying to look into its history. The first censuses (censi? censusi?) that I can access just have my village noted as 'Main Street' and then numbers, but because I don't know whereabouts they started counting (none of the houses have numbers now, they all have names or, like mine, a number but the name of the cottage row) I can't work out which is mine. The row was also known as Church Terrace for a while but I haven't seen that listed on any of the censuses either. So until 1972, when the entire row was bought up by a builder and given bathrooms and put on the mains, there is nothing to find! I would love to know who used to live here and who died here too (the cottage is around 200 years old, so I'm pretty sure there's a body count to this address).
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It's too bad there wasn't a landmark that was existent that could have been used to make a gestimate.
 
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