‘Slightly haunted’ house getting wrong type of visitors

DUNMORE, Pa. — Between the mysteriously banging doors, the odd noises coming from the basement, and the persistent feeling that someone is standing behind them, homeowners Gregory and Sandi Leeson are thoroughly creeped out by their 113-year-old Victorian.

So when they put the house in northeastern Pennsylvania up for sale last month, they advertised it as “slightly haunted.”

Then things got REALLY weird.

There were calls from ghost hunters. An open house attracted lots of curiosity seekers, but no legitimate buyers. And 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 — the same basement whose door Sandi Leeson once barricaded because she swore she could hear the clicking of a cigarette lighter emanating from the subterranean depths.

It’s enough to make her husband wonder whether he did the right thing when he playfully wrote about the home’s spooky charms:

“Slightly haunted. Nothing serious, though,” says the listing on Zillow’s real-estate site. It goes on to describe 3:13 a.m. screams and “the occasional ghastly visage” in the bathroom mirror.

The listing attracted local and national media attention. Now the Leesons just need an actual buyer for the four-bedroom home, on the market for $144,000.

“I tried to word it with a little bit of a sense of humor,” says Greg Leeson, a 35-year-old who works in information technology, but “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.”

Spring should bring more traffic. But if it doesn’t sell, Leeson said they might consider renting it out — by the night — to folks looking for spooky thrills.

While Leeson concedes the home has a “creepy vibe,” he doesn’t believe in ghosts.

And his wife?

“I definitely think there’s a spirit or a ghost in the house, just from my personal experiences,” she said.