You step inside—a sudden chill runs down your spine. You can’t quite explain it. Maybe it’s the creak of the floorboards, a mysterious shadow that caught the corner of your eye, or even the home’s already known spooky past.
Whatever it is, there’s still a property to sell.
A haunted house is not actually so far-fetched. Nearly one in five Americans—or 19%—believe they’ve lived in a haunted house, whether it’s from the creaking of the floorboards, the flickering lights, and rattling of pipes to other spooky happenings, according to a recent survey of 1,000 adults by Clever Real Estate. Among those who suspect their home is haunted, about two-thirds acknowledge the property will be more difficult to sell and likely will be sold at a discount due to the home’s haunted reputation.
Yet those eerie happenings that go bump-in-the-night may not be the ultimate dealbreaker to buyers. After all, Americans are more put off by the idea of living next to a data center (33%) than discovering a home is haunted (24%), according to the Clever Real Estate survey. In fact, more than half—54%—of Americans said they could be convinced to buy a haunted house, especially if it came with fewer home repairs and at a discounted price. One-third said “friendly ghosts” would help, too.
For real estate professionals, a property’s paranormal reputation certainly can complicate a sale, but it also can become its most distinctive selling point depending on who you ask.
From Haunted Funeral Home to Boutique Inn
“Nobody believes me about the basement,” says Janie Coffey, an agent with eXp Realty who represented the sale of the former Lawton Pratt Funeral Home in Jacksonville, Fla., twice over the years—first for buyers who purchased the property from the original owners in 2019 and then two years later in 2021 as the listing agent.
Basements are rare in Jacksonville, but beneath the historic funeral home, built in 1916, was a dugout space, with raw dirt floors that once served as an embalming room.
Coffey recalls descending into the darkness with a flashlight and finding the original gurney still in place. Lining the walls were old embalming-fluid bottles, some dating to the 1920s. The contents of the room had remained largely undisturbed for decades.
The building once housed an entire funeral operation. The family operated a hearse service, held services in the chapel, manufactured caskets on the second floor and performed embalming downstairs. Remnants of the business remained throughout the building, from dusty caskets to an old hearse and shelves of handwritten ledgers chronicling decades of funerals.
The funeral director’s family had lived in an apartment on the top floor. To Coffey’s seller, the building was home. She grew up in the upstairs apartment while her parents operated the business, watching Saturday morning cartoons, and she and her now-husband even got engaged in the building. Those left-behind ledgers represented all the people her family had cared for over the years.
Still, Coffey knew the building’s history would be unnerving to some buyers. She reached out to historian Tim Gilmore who writes about unusual places in Jacksonville, and who agreed to write an article about the building’s unique history.
“I knew we needed to embrace the property’s uniqueness,” she said, believing its historic character might appeal to a buyer interested in preservation.
It worked. A buyer purchased the $350,000 property in 2021, completing a $2.1 million renovation and transforming it into what it is today—The Raven, a 13-room boutique inn and event space, with a restaurant coming soon. The new owner used a grant from the Local Initiatives Support Corporation to support the renovation. The building’s history as a funeral home remains part of its story, which was recently featured in Southern Living.
Coffey says the redevelopment has contributed to the revitalization of LaVilla, a historic district just west of downtown Jacksonville. The new owner “kept the history instead of covering it up,” she says. “It’s been a nice piece of LaVilla coming back to life.”
The House Nobody Thought Would Sell
In 2005, one of Ryan Koubeserian’s first real estate assignments was helping his real estate broker father prepare a property for sale where a double homicide had occurred about a year earlier. Koubeserian’s task was to assess the work needed to prepare the home for sale.
The home’s history was difficult to ignore. Dried flowers and melted candles still hauntingly remained on the porch.
“I walked up that day with a yellow steno pad and pen for simple notes, and the dried flowers and burnt candles on the stoop began my journey—a very spooky way to start as this was one of my first tasks in real estate,” Koubeserian recalls. The concrete slab was also still bloodstained, and bullet holes were visible in the walls.
Today, Koubeserian is a real estate broker and co-founder of The Koubeserian Group in Coronado, Calif. But that property from years ago remains memorable for the question it raised: Would anyone want to buy the 1951, single-story Craftsman that had such a tragic reputation?
“Regardless of the horrible, sad history, it was a great property.”
-Ryan Koubeserian
The property had come into the hands of a longtime client of the real estate brokerage as payment for legal fees. And there was no escaping its past. “We disclosed the deaths that occurred on the property in the MLS” and in other marketing materials, Koubeserian says.
Eventually, a buyer—who was also a real estate agent—requested a showing, unfazed about the home’s history. He attributed his strong religious faith as helping him feel safe and comfortable in proceeding with the purchase of the home.
“Regardless of the horrible, sad history, it was a great property,” Koubeserian says.
The experience reinforced a lesson to Koubeserian that has stayed with him throughout his career: “Always disclose,” he says. “The right buyer will see the home, not the headline.”
A House Blessing, a Sudden Chill and an 11-Foot Alligator
When Pennie Arneson, a real estate pro with eXp Realty, listed a home in Ave Maria, Fla., she expected the usual challenges of selling a property in probate. She didn't expect a series of unsettling incidents that would culminate in an 11-foot alligator showing up in the driveway at 2 a.m.
Rumors and speculation surrounded the death of the former owner. She had been accidentally shot and later died in the hospital during surgery. After her death, her son listed the property with Arneson.
During open houses, neighbors often came less to view the home and more to try to find out what happened to the woman. Some even searched for bloodstains or other evidence of the incident. “Everyone had their own story about what happened, so I had to keep repeating—‘No one died in this home,’” Arneson says.
Still, the extra attention prompted Arneson to consider whether a house blessing might bring comfort to a future buyer. With the seller's permission, a friend of Arneson’s conducted a house blessing using sage, candles and prayers.
Arneson said she had never felt anything unusual in the house prior. But as her friend finished with the house blessing ceremony, they both experienced goosebumps on their skin and a sudden chill when they stepped into the home’s office.
Her friend blessed the house again.
Within a week after the blessing—and after 10 months on the market—the home had an accepted offer from an interested buyer. But the unusual experiences weren't over.
As the seller prepared to move out, Arneson sent the buyer's agent, as requested, photographs to verify the home's condition: Water running in the sink, lights on and the air conditioning set to 74 degrees.
Shortly after the photos were sent, however, the water suddenly stopped working.
The seller contacted the utility company, and the problem was quickly resolved.
Then, around 2 a.m., as the seller was moving out with a trailer full of belongings, an enormous, 11-foot alligator crawled up the driveway. The home wasn’t near the water so the sight was particularly startling.
Arneson alerted the buyers about the alligator.
“The buyers still weren’t spooked,” Arneson says. “In fact, when I mentioned the alligator to the buyer’s agent, he said it was no big deal.”
Still, the oddities kept on coming.
The next morning, the buyer's agent arrived at the then-vacant home to find the faucets running at full force and the air conditioning set to 67 degrees, with the system frozen over.
An air-conditioning technician was called in to flush the lines and defrost the unit to get everything working again.
It was a fittingly eerie end to the 10-month listing. The home finally sold on Aug. 20, 2026, and it’s a listing Arneson won’t soon forget—from unexplained mechanical issues to unexpected wildlife encounters and a few twists she never saw coming.
Every Home Has a Buyer—You Just Have to Find It
As the real estate agents behind these three transactions show, understanding a property’s history and communicating it transparently to potential buyers may be key. A home’s past may raise questions, but, as these agents learned, it doesn’t have to determine its future—or stand in the way of a successful sale.
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