Halloween's Spirit Can Chill Chicago's Housing Market
By Don DeBat
Dark autumn clouds hang over Chicago’s North-Side housing market. Currently plagued by a shortage of listings, high prices and lofty mortgage-interest rates, buying or selling a home in late 2026 can be a pretty scary event.
But what if a property listed for sale on this Halloween weekend seemingly has a haunted or paranormal past? Real estate brokers generally refer to such parcels as “stigmatized properties.” They include: sites of a natural or accidental death, a suicide, a homicide, a violent felony, or environmental contamination. Other than these stigmas, what if the home is rumored to be inhabited by spirits or ghosts?
A seller’s real estate agent generally is not required to volunteer negative information about a property. “However, if a prospective buyer directly asks (the agent), actively lying or misrepresenting the property’s history can still expose a seller or agent to liability,” warned real estate attorney Harvey S. Jacobs, of Jacobs & Associates.
Veteran brokers say not all properties classified as stigmatized are undesirable. Those inhabited by spirits or ghosts may actually attract some buyers rather than dissuade clients.
According to Dale Kaczmarek, president of the Ghost Research Society in southwest suburban Oak Lawn, there are thousands of haunted homes in the Chicago area.
Kaczmarek, who has been involved in researching supernatural phenomena since 1975, says most ghostly encounters are benign and most spirits are playful and mischievous—not evil.
One of Kaczmarek’s best ghost stories is about Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery in south suburban Midlothian. Visitors report seeing the apparition of a phantom Victorian farmhouse in the woods near the cemetery.
And, witnesses report as night falls, “orbs of blue lights” can be seen twinkling and floating near the house. However, if you walk to the lights, they vanish.
Some ghost hunters say an orb—or ball of light—is the spiritual energy ghosts gather before manifestation or poltergeist activity. They say in order to be a true “orb of light,” it has to move with purpose.
Did you know more than half of all Americans believe in ghosts and poltergeist activity? Just in time for Halloween, this writer offers Home Front readers the following classic ghostly apparitions:
• Baby-sitter ghost. A young mother tells the tale of “Tom,” the friendly ghost, who enjoyed haunting her baby son’s room in her two-flat on the North Side in the late 1980s. “Our vintage-oak rocking chair would slowly and mysteriously rock by itself. Sometimes, a hand-crank ‘Swing-O-Matic’ baby swing would start slowly clicking and moving by itself, and the non-motorized mobile over the crib would spin,” she recalled. “And, lights would come on by themselves, and stereo music would play.”
Once at 3 a.m., the baby was found laughing while sitting on the floor near his crib. Mystery—how did an infant jump out of his crib? “I sat down and had a heart-to-ghost chat with Tom, explaining that he was a spirit and had to move on,” she said. “After a long talk, the ghost finally ended his haunting.”
• Grandma’s perfume. Just before midnight on Christmas Eve in 2020, a senior citizen homeowner was relaxing by his cozy fireplace reading a book.
Suddenly, he noticed the heavy aroma of perfume wafting from a nearby corner curio cabinet in the living room, where his wife displayed photos of her late grandmother and grandfather.
The aroma flowed into the library, and lingered. Then, the fragrance concentrated in the bedroom that once was occupied by “Grandma Ruth,” the builder who erected the home in 1965. Gradually, the aroma faded.
“We recently had completed renovation work on our 60-year-old house, which we purchased from the family estate,” said the wife. “It seemed like grandma came back on a midnight-spirit’s tour to review our upgrades. Her fragrance was Tabu. She loved to read.
The new library seemed to be a magnet for her, and her 1950s ‘Little Book Club,’ leather bookmark was on the shelf.”
On Christmas Day that year, the wife witnessed poltergeist activity. The terrace swing moved, but there was no wind. Later, the aroma of grandpa’s cigar smoke wafted across the deck. Four of their grown grandchildren simultaneously experienced the visitation.
• Flickering lamp. On an autumn evening, a couple started happily chatting over a glass of wine about all the hard work that they had completed on their home over the past decade. “If my father were alive, he wouldn’t believe how much we improved the house,” said the wife.
Simultaneously, the bulb in a vintage table lamp that once belonged to her father, began flickering on and off in a sign of approval. No electrical problems were found, but the owners decided to replace the lamp’s electrical outlet to make sure there wasn’t a short.
Later, the same lamp started flickering brightly again. The date was the 10th anniversary of her father’s passing. “Dad was sending us an electrical spiritual reminder through his lamp,” concluded the wife.
• Haunted “blue room.” In late October, 1985, a young couple purchased a vintage English Tudor home in the Sauganash neighborhood on Chicago’s Northwest Side. They were only the second owners of the house, which dated to the 1920s.
After completing a total renovation of the house, the new owners decided to leave one of the bedrooms intact because they liked its deep-blue color. So, the walls were freshly painted the same color of blue. A matching blue bed spread and curtains were added.
However, soon afterward, thumping began inside the blue walls of the second-floor bedroom. Just noisy heat ducts or plumbing, the owners rationalized. But the noise continued even when the furnace wasn’t on.
A year later, a female house guest stayed in the blue room. Within minutes of retiring for the evening, the house guest raced down the stairs in hysterics. “There’s something in that room,” she said. “I heard heavy breathing, and it’s freezing cold in there.”
After researching the house’s past, the new owners found that the only prior resident had built the home in the early 1920s and lived there happily for more than 60 years. His family said their father had passed away of lung and heart difficulties in the blue bedroom only months before the couple had purchased the house.
Because of the credibility questions supernatural phenomena raise, the National Assn. of Realtors encourages states to adopt legislation based on model language provided to each state Realtor association.
The model language asks Realtors to declare that “all psychological impacts or stigmas associated with real property are not material facts and need not be disclosed to a potential purchaser or lessee.”
Although it may take supernaturally creative marketing campaigns to sell an allegedly haunted house, buyers are out there, Realtors say.
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Don DeBat is co-author of “Escaping Condo Jail,” the definitive guide to condominium living. A veteran real estate voice, he provides essential insights for navigating communal ownership at escapingcondojail.com. Stay updated on housing news at dondebat.biz. Don is currently writing “Chicago’s Game,” a look at the history and lifestyle of 16-inch softball.
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