The guy who tried to sell his house by stressing it was "slightly haunted," now admits his cunning marketing ploy may have backfired.
"I tried to word it with a little bit of a sense of humor," Greg Leeson said of the ad he placed last month for the 113-year-old Victorian house in Dunmore, Pennsylvania which is on the market for $144,000.
That's why he described the mysteriously banging doors, the 3 a.m. screams and "the occasional ghastly visage" in the bathroom mirror. "Slightly haunted. Nothing serious, though," says the listing on Zillow's real-estate site.
But he says he hasn't had a ghost of a chance. "I don't think it has helped with marketing. We're not really getting very many interested buyers. We're getting a lot of nonsense people," Leeson told the Associated Press this week.
There were calls from ghost hunters and an open house attracted lots of curiosity seekers, but no legitimate buyers. Then, a former resident came out of the woodwork to tell the couple that when he was a kid, he found a human skull in the basement.
Spring should bring more serious buyers, Leeson said. But if it doesn't sell, the couple said they might consider renting it out — by the night — to folks looking for spooky thrills.
- The Associated Press