(TNS)—A busy open house can be a real estate agent’s dream. But for some people who turned out for two open houses at a majestic Victorian home in Midland Park, N.J. it wasn’t the prospect of buying the home that piqued their curiosity.
 
Instead, they were there as ghost hunters.

As Halloween approaches, real estate agents say rumors of ghosts can attract the curious but also scare off prospective buyers and silence owners, who are trying to sell their home or tamp down rumors about their house. But in other cases, an opportunity to rub elbows with a ghost can be a draw (think “The Amityville Horror”).
 
Over the years, Internet lore had grown about the Midland Park home, with rumors of apparitions, including those of a former owner and a cat. Stories about the home, known as the Crayhay Mansion, abound with tales of the uninvited. It’s unclear how or when the accounts began. What is clear is that neither previous nor current owners want to talk about them, as was the case for several of North Jersey’s alleged “haunted” properties.
 
The Crayhay Mansion, which sold in August, had been on the market since April 2014. The home, built in 1864, had an urban myth, which the sellers knew about when they moved in, says Patti Crawford in Ridgewood, N.J., a co-listing agent on the house. Curiosity seekers drawn to the open houses would head for the third floor of the house, where the cat is rumored to appear, but would leave “a little disappointed,” Crawford says.

The sellers had bought the home in 2006 for $955,000 and says they never experienced anything unusual in the house, says Nena Colligan, the home’s other co-listing agent. The house’s price was reduced several times before it was sold in August at $710,000.
 
Colligan says the final price reflects a market adjustment. “We’re not selling at 2006 prices,” she says, but admits, “I think the stories did hurt the value of the home.”

One couple came very close to buying the home until the wife learned from a friend of the online stories. After some additional Googling, the wife was scared away, Colligan says.
 
“People really do react to it. It really does make people uncomfortable,” Colligan says. “I was surprised how much it did that.” Even the eventual buyers had heard the stories and called to check out the rumors ahead of seeing the home. The new owners would say only that they have not experienced anything out of the ordinary.

Ana O’Callaghan lived in a Victorian home in Ridgewood, N.J., for 13 years.
 
Throughout her time in the home, which was built in 1871, O’Callaghan says she and other family heard unexplained footsteps and objects falling, and saw numerous ghostly images, such as one of an older gentleman in Victorian garb and a little girl, who liked to play with her daughter’s toys. O’Callaghan later learned from her next-door neighbor that an 8-year-old girl had died in the house in 1950.
 
“There was definitely a lot of activity” going on in the home, O’Callaghan says. “I just think certain souls either come to visit or are grounded to the home they lived in and don’t understand they left.”

O’Callaghan, who describes herself as sensitive to her surroundings, had some unusual feelings when she first toured the house; however, the previous owner denied any alleged paranormal activity in the home.
 
In New Jersey, sellers aren’t required to tell buyers whether there was a murder or suicide in the house, or if the home is purportedly haunted, unless the buyer specifically asks, according to the New Jersey Real Estate Commission.

“I’ve shown houses where murders have taken place and I always reveal it,” says Peter Jordan, a REALTOR® and paranormal researcher with Vestigia, a Wayne-based group that investigates the paranormal. “Some find it fascinating, many are so skeptical it’s not a concern to them. They are more concerned with the material defects.”

Bill Hanley, a former president of the New Jersey Association of REALTORS, says buyers who have particular concerns need to tell their agency in order for the agent to do due diligence.

Despite her experiences, O’Callaghan says she loved her home and only moved because of a divorce. The house sold within a weekend in 2012.
 
As for her new home, also in Ridgewood, O’Callaghan says all has been quiet.
 
Charles and Anne Kruger’s Harrington Park, N.J., home sits on a small hill overlooking the street.
 
The Victorian home, which dates back more than a century, was left to the Krugers by the owner, Clara Eckerson, the daughter of a former mayor, Cornelius Eckerson, Kruger says. Clara, who was born and raised in the home, had become very close to the Kruger family, who lived with her during her final years, he says.
 
Shortly after her death in 2001, Charles Kruger says, he began to see a figure of a girl, maybe age 11 or 12, wearing a long gray skirt and a “very proper starched white blouse” in various rooms in the home.
 
“If I was in the kitchen, I would see her pass from the living room,” he says.

Kruger says they have no photos of Clara at that age, but is fairly sure it is her.
 
His wife, Anne, hasn’t seen the figure but says she has seen shadows and often finds the back door open, when it had been closed.

While the figure was seen often early on, now she makes an appearance just a couple of times of year, typically around Christmas and in the spring, when the lilacs bloom, which she loved, Kruger says.

“She’s certainly welcome to be here,” he says.

The Krugers have no plans to sell the home but don’t think their visitor will pose any issues.

“She’s checking on us and letting us check on her, I think,” Charles Kruger says. “It’s just something that we live with.”
 
©2015 The Record (Hackensack, N.J.)
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

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