Ghost Busters!

Stambovky v. Ackley, 572 N.Y.S.2d 672 (1991)

"Who ya gonna call?" asks the Court, remembering a movie entitled "Ghost Busters," a 1984 sci-fi flick starring Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray.

The plaintiffs wanted the return of the down payment back on the house they were going to buy, because it reputedly had poltergeists.  The court ruled that the vendor was estopped to deny existence of poltergeists on the premises.  "Whether the source of the spectral apparitions seen by defendant seller are parapsychic or psychogenic, having reported their presence in both a national publication (“Readers' Digest”) and the local press (in 1977 and 1982, respectively), defendant is estopped to deny their existence and, as a matter of law, the house is haunted."  The Court stated:

While I agree with Supreme Court that the real estate broker, as agent for the seller, is under no duty to disclose to a potential buyer the phantasmal reputation of the premises and that, in his pursuit of a legal remedy for fraudulent misrepresentation against the seller, plaintiff hasn't a ghost of a chance, I am nevertheless moved by the spirit of equity to allow the buyer to seek rescission of the contract of sale and recovery of his downpayment. New York law fails to recognize any remedy for damages incurred as a result of the seller's mere silence, applying instead the strict rule of caveat emptor. Therefore, the theoretical basis for granting relief, even under the extraordinary facts of this case, is elusive if not ephemeral.
The court also said that haunting is not a condition which can and should be ascertained by reasonable inspection of the premises. The buyer was allowed to back out of the transaction:

In the case at bar, defendant seller deliberately fostered the public belief that her home was possessed. Having undertaken to inform the public at large, to whom she has no legal relationship, about the supernatural occurrences on her property, she may be said to owe no less a duty to her contract vendee. It has been remarked that the occasional modern cases which permit a seller to take unfair advantage of a buyer's ignorance so long as he is not actively misled are “singularly unappetizing” (Prosser, Law of Torts § 106, at 696 [4th ed. 1971] ). 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.