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Is D.C. Real Estate Haunted By More Than Interest Rates?
October 20, 2023 @ 10:00am
You might not be the only one living in your old home – take it from these locals.
Ask about D.C. ghost stories, and you’re most likely to hear about hauntings in Lafayette Square, the White House and spots around Capitol Hill, but that doesn’t mean the spirits have stayed away from residential homes.
Carolyn Muraskin, founder and tour guide at DC Design Tours, explains that there are multiple active homes throughout the District.
“The Halcyon House, the Octagon House, Decatur House and the Walsh-McLean House are all known to be home to previous owners and residents that never left,” she says.
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But that activity isn’t restricted to high-profile properties in the District. And real estate agents in the area have a front row seat to the hauntings.
Jillian Hogan, a realtor in Alexandria and the D.C. area, grew up on a property established in the 1700s outside of Richmond, so she’s well acquainted with the paranormal.
“I am pretty sure I have a vibe check on when spirits are lurking or not,” Hogan says.
And she does have clients occasionally ask for her perspective on whether a house is haunted, though typically that’s not the reality and the house is just dirty or neglected.
But her radar starts going off in homes that are stuck in the spiritual middle.
“Some of my signs are by picking up that the property is still owned by someone who is deceased, but their items are still there,” she says. “I would think a soul has a harder time moving on when they didn’t get the opportunity to clear things out themselves or don’t have a family member ready to pick them up. It feels unsettling, for sure.”
Morgan Boyer, a realtor with Hunt Country Sotheby’s International Realty, grew up in a 1775 colonial in Berkeley County, West Virginia, and she isn’t one to be spooked by old houses or spirits. In her market, she reports that clients always ask if the house is haunted.
“When I market historic properties on historic real estate sites, like Circa, there are always comments relating to the houses being ‘definitely haunted,’” Boyer says.
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And she’s sold a few haunted houses of her own. She recently sold a historically significant property built 1787 in Jefferson County, West Virginia. The home originally housed Union soldiers during the Civil War and served as a hospital after the battle at Antietam.
“Multiple previous owners have all had the same experience of seeing a black shawdowy figure sprint across the backyard,” she says. “They all saw the figure in the same portion of the yard — both standing in place, then sprinting.”
Another previous owner and previous skeptic spotted a soldier standing over him when he woke up one night. Yet, the property sold once again, spirits and all.
One real estate expert, who preferred to remain unidentified due to the nature of the topic, has worked in historic districts within Washington for years. We’ll call him “UR” — unidentified realtor. He says that someone having passed away within the home is probably a given when you’re looking at homes that are well past the century mark.
“When you’re talking about a one-hundred-year-old home, there’s a good chance someone died or something cataclysmic happened within the house,” UR says.
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In one case, he heard of someone who bought a two-unit building with an unbeknownst murderous history. While the owner occasionally felt things were off in his part of the home, each tenant that came through the home had more direct encounters. Objects would move, sometimes in subtle ways and other times more aggressively and in plain sight of the resident.
But a common thread began to emerge and, in more than one instance, the presence, while startling, seemed to protect the tenant from something worse. It eventually came to light that there had been a gruesome murder in the basement — where the rental unit is located. However, to his knowledge, not a single tenant has ever asked to move.
However, not everyone is tapped into the hauntings. Joe Himali, a D.C. realtor with a particular interest in architecture and history, reports he’s never had a client ask him about potential paranormal activity.
“People are more concerned with what’s going on right now rather than hauntings – ultimately people are concerned with bad juju,” he says. “If it’s an estate sale, people will ask if the person died around the house, but that comes from a general feeling of not wanting to be around death.”
Looking for other haunted and spooky spots in D.C.? Check out our recommendations here.
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