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Lessons from a P.I.: Check Your House Before You Buy It

Saturday, February 16, 2013 14:43

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(Before It's News)

As a former private investigator, I’m used to digging around and getting the scoop on just about anything. My specialty was people, usually living—that should come as no surprise, because that’s conventionally what private investigators concern themselves with. However, every now and again, I would get a weird case. This is one of those.

I received a call one day from a man that had just moved into the local area, and he seemed just about at the end of his rope. This was when I had just started as a private investigator in the early 2000s, so I was accepting work of any kind (including finding a missing beagle for a family that lived down the street). This guy, who we will call Andy from here on out, wouldn’t tell me what exactly what he wanted from me over the phone. All Andy wanted to know was whether I “did investigations”. I remember distinctly that those were the words he used because, being listed in the phone book as a private investigator, I figured it was pretty clear that I did investigations.

I met Andy and his family at his house, and they invited me in to sit on the couch. The rest of the family seemed relieved that I was there, but they soon dispersed and I was left in the living room with Andy. He was a very professional looking man, a little disheveled, a little lethargic like he had just gotten done with a long day of work, but ultimately a normal-looking guy. The same went for his family; plain-Jane wife with an infant son and a wide-eyed daughter. What Andy said next was what was really unconventional.

Now, I hadn’t gotten into the practice of using a handheld recorder yet, so I don’t have the conversation verbatim. I just remember him telling me that they had noticed odd things happening around the house: the sounds of footsteps when nobody else was in the house, distant voices that sounded like they were whispering in adjacent rooms but would stop as soon as somebody approached, objects being set down in one place and showing up again in another, and a couple other things that I can’t recall. The strangest detail to me was that he’d woken up with scratch marks on his forearm one morning, even though they didn’t own any animals. I’ll go on record to say that the house never gave me any weird vibes or anything like that, myself. These people seemed serious enough though.

I told them I would try to help them out as best I could, which didn’t lead to much. I used one of the only search engines back then that did property lookups and found out that the house had been host to about three murders, a mother that went crazy and drowned her children before shooting herself in the head. Not only that, but Andy’s family was not the only one to complain about strange activity in the house. When I reported this back to Andy, he was furious that the realtor had never told him anything.

As far as Andy and his family went, I wasn’t able to help them any further than that. I didn’t keep in contact with them and last I heard, they moved. I did look a little further into the situation myself, and learned that, due to a set of laws passed in New York in 1991, these folks should have been informed that their house was haunted. The law was passed because a man named Stambovsky was not informed that the house he had just bought was reported by multiple sources, including the previous owner, to be haunted. Stambovsky ended up getting a full refund on the house, and moved away promptly.

This story has always served as a precautionary tale to any friends that I’ve had that are buying houses. Even though it is the realtor’s job to tell you if you are going to be buying “stigmatized property”, you should always check up on the property yourself. Sites like People Smart and Online Searches are particularly helpful when doing reverse lookups on property, though there are other great sites out there as well. Do your homework when buying a house, because not every realtor is going to be honest with you about the history of the property.
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Colter Brian is a former private investigator turned freelance writer. When he writes, he contributes to sites such as Online Searches. Some of Colter’s hobbies include hunting whatever is in season and perfecting his pasta recipes.

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