Caveat Emptor, or My Unnatural Purchases are Coming Back To Haunt Me

While we've all run into someone in our lives who believes in ghosts, or in the supernatural, we typically don't base the day-to-day minutia of our lives around the existence (or, non-existence, if you prefer) of these spectral spooks. I don't even have Egon Spengler on speed dial anymore. 

In the mid-to-late 80's, Helen Ackley, of Nyack, NY, made claims that her house was haunted, and even spoke to the Readers Digest and several newspapers, reporting this haunting publicly. On a tour of haunted houses in the area, Ackley's home was one of the stops. 

 When Ackley was looking to sell her home, she, and her real estate agent, did not inform Jeffrey Stambovsky, the unsuspecting buyer from New York City, of the houses reputation as being haunted. After settling on a price of $650,000 and Stambovsky making his initial payment, he learned of the house's otherworldly renown, and filed an action requesting recession of the contract for fraudulent misrepresentation by Ackley and her real estate agent. 

After a trial court dismissed the action, Stambovsky appealed, and in Stambovsky v. Ackley, 169 A.D.2d 254 (N.Y. App. Div. 1991), the NY Supreme Court ruled that, for the purposes of an action of recession, the house was legally haunted, notwithstanding the actual existence of ghosts. The majority opinion states, 

"Where, as here, the seller not only takes unfair advantage of the buyer's ignorance but has created and perpetuated a condition about which he is unlikely to even inquire, enforcement of the contract (in whole or in part) is offensive to the court's sense of equity. Application of the remedy of rescission, within the bounds of the narrow exception to the doctrine of caveat emptor set forth herein, is entirely appropriate to relieve the unwitting purchaser from the consequences of a most unnatural bargain."

In dissent, it was noted "if the doctrine of caveat emptor is to be discarded, it should be for a reason more substantive than a poltergeist. The existence of a poltergeist is no more binding upon the defendants than it is upon this court."

While the court might have taken a step back from ruling on the existence of apparitions and specters, I think it's safe to say this supernatural ruling is quite chilling.