What ghosts are you living with in your house? (Plus, a quiz!)
What ghosts are you living with in your house? (Plus, a quiz!)
Here’s a gravely serious Halloween story for you. Maybe you’re not the superstitious type, but perhaps you’ve wondered before if anyone died in your house — or maybe one of your neighbor’s houses.
Now there’s an easy way to find out who met their maker in your bedroom, in a way that doesn’t involve exhaustively searching county records. DiedInHouse.com, an internet company based in South Carolina, will run a background check to see if there’s a record of anyone dying in a given house for $11.99.
CEO Roy Condrey said he got the idea for the business when he decided to check to make sure a rental property he owned wouldn’t turn into “The Amityville Horror” for his tenants.
“In the middle of the night, I had a tenant text me saying, ‘Did you know your house was haunted?'” Condrey says. “So the next day I got online — because that’s where we go to find out information — and there what I did find was page after page of advice telling you how to find this information, and what they say is to check government records, speak to your neighbors, and check online — so it’s tons of research to find this.”
The difficulty in finding out if anyone died in the house, combined with the fact that there are often no laws requiring people selling homes to disclose that kind of information, inspired Condrey to start DiedInHouse.
Condrey says there’s a legitimate need for the service beyond just satisfying your morbid curiosity. If a real life horror movie took place where you live, it can have a big impact on the value of your property.
“A death in the home — especially a violent death — can depreciate the value up to 25 percent, and it will take 50 percent longer to sell,” Condrey says.
What else besides a death can impact home value? Take our quiz and test your knowledge:
Stories You Might Like
There’s a lot happening in the world. Through it all, Marketplace is here for you.
You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible.
Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.
