As if home prices aren't enough to scare the dead presidents out of your wallet, two real estate Web pages offer some deliciously devilish fun with real estate served up with a side of fright.

Los Gatos, CA real estate agent Mary Pope-Handy, who has a penchant for things that go bump in the night, recently created HauntedRealEstate.com.

The website reveals that while specters and phantoms will hole up in old opera houses, hotels, churches and the like, they seem to prefer good old fashioned single-family homes -- just like most living buyers.

Offering both tall tales and the straight scoop, Pope-Handy giggles at the ghosts while examining the serious side of haunted houses and how truly frightful it can be to sell a home when tortured souls moan for a rent-back.

"Most homes with unexplained, possibly ghost phenomena, do not experience terrifying events. Ordinarily it's limited to lights and other electrical items going on and off, the sounds of doors or windows opening and closing, footsteps, or an occasional spotting out of one's peripheral vision or sense of a 'cold spot' in a home," she says.

Nevertheless, apparent apparitions or unexplainable conditions, disclose them, even if you don't believe them.

"In most areas, it is no longer 'buyer beware' but instead the burden is on the seller to disclose anything affecting value or desirability," she added.

The cost of outing Casper-like capers can be as chilling as Edgar Allen Poe poetry, but ectoplasmic fraud can lead to a much greater fear -- a buyer's real estate attorney.

Cable News Network's (CNN) "Real Estate's Scary Side" Web page reveals how frightful it can be to try to unload a house when the sheets won't stay on the bed.

The cable television news network reported a study of more than 100 "psychologically impacted" houses (with supernatural stigma caused by murder, suicide, or fatal illness) can kill a deal, take 50 percent longer than comparable unhaunted homes to sell and bring in an average of 2.4 percent less.

Randall Bell, real estate's "master of disaster" consultant whose "Bell Curve" analyzes factors that reduce real estate values, says a well-publicized murder can lower the selling price of a home by much more -- 15 to 35 percent.

But not every haunted house is a hated house.

A few buyers seek out accommodations with abominations and don't mind paying a dividend for a home that isn't insulated against the kind of chill that can be a real thriller.

Not Pope-Handy. She's so fascinated by the subject that she includes numerous links to haunted houses, hotels, walking tours, and additional ways to chance a meeting with the metaphysical or to deal with selling property under a spell.

Intimacy with spirits, however, is best left to the ghouls.

"Some people will seek to spend the night with ghosts. Not me. I like ghost hunting, but am not interested in sleeping with dead people," she explains.

Published: October 1, 2004

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Broderick Perkins parlayed a career in old-school journalism into a contemporary digital news service that really hits home. The award-winning consumer journalist, originally from Wilmington, DE, is founder, publisher and executive editor of the bootstrap DeadlineNews Group, a Silicon Valley-based editorial content and consulting service specializing in residential real estate, consumer news and related editorial consulting services. The DeadlineNews Group includes the website, DeadlineNews.com, offering real estate editorial content and consulting services, and its back shop, the Deadline Newsroom, an open house on news that really hits home. Perkins obtained his formal journalism education from University of Delaware and a journalism boot camp, the Institute of Journalism Education at the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to 20 years of service as a daily newspaper journalist at the Wilmington, DE News Journal and San Jose, CA Mercury News. Perkins covered housing on the San Jose Mercury News reporting team which earned a General News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. He has also produced real estate, consumer and small business content for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, RealtyTimes.com, Nolo.com, Better Homes and Gardens, the National Association of Realtors, Homestore/Move and Intuit/Quicken among more than three dozen publications. In addition to managing the DeadlineNews Group, Perkins most recently served as chief editorial consultant for Nolo's Essential Guide To Buying Your First Home, Nolo, and writes real estate television scripts for RealtyTimes.com.