Cynthia Ackley Kavanagh remembers being on her bed in her new house when she saw something unusual happening to the chord that led to the light above. It wasn’t arcing as it ought to have. Rather, it seemed as though some unseen force was engaging in a game of ping pong with the pull switch.
It was 1967. The family had recently exchanged their farm in Maryland for a run-down Victorian just north of New York City, where her father had secured employment. The 4,200-square-foot, dilapidated mansion on the Hudson River, where her parents, Helen and George Ackley, intended to raise their four children, needed to be restored.
The Nyack home, which was constructed in 1890, had been unoccupied for seven years prior to the Ackleys’ purchase. Children from the neighbourhood would claim to have seen faces in the windows at that time.
Throughout their twenty years in the house, the Ackleys would encounter a number of unexplainable incidents. Unidentified footsteps and sounds reached them. Doors and windows would fly open. They also claimed to have experienced visitation from gentle spirits dressed in clothing from centuries ago on a few instances. Their new house included the paranormal as standard features.
The Victorian in Nyack, NY
(Courtesy of Mark Kavanagh Collection)
The Ackleys put the old Victorian on the market, and it would go on to become notorious in the early 1990s. Upon discovering the house’s eerie past, the purchasers attempted to back out of the agreement. They sued to get their deposit back. Additionally, the court determined in a public ruling that a property was haunted for the first time.
The Ackley mansion was declared to be the sole officially recognised haunted house in America by this decision, which became known as the “Ghostbusters ruling.”
Since then, legal schools all around the nation have taught the case. Furthermore, even if state disclosure rules differ significantly, the judgement did provide a somewhat reasonable standard for what vendors must tell customers.
Since the verdict, the Nyack residence has changed ownership many times, including to a few famous owners drawn by its reputation. Still, not a single person has come forward to publicly describe a paranormal encounter.
Still, there are many unanswered questions, like: Is the nation’s lone house with a valid haunting actually haunted?
‘Is there any way we can take our otherworldly friends with us?’
At seventy, Kavanagh still believes. The house was her home during her high school years, her brief marriage, and her subsequent widowhood.
She tells Realtor.com® that during her first Christmas break at the home, she woke up to the sound of someone shaking her bed. It happened again in the morning.
“It wasn’t violent,” remembers Kavanagh. “It felt really soft, like you were being gently shaken awake and told to hurry up or you’ll be late for school.”
According to Kavanagh, she loudly declared to the room the next night before going to bed that she was on Christmas vacation and didn’t have to wake up early for school. The ghosts then gave her permission to sleep in.
She got to know one of the other “residents” of the house a few years later. One late night, she entered her bedroom and noticed a woman dressed in white sitting on her bed. The ghost was brushing her golden hair while staring at herself in the mirror. Kavanagh recalls apologising and retiring to the lower level for perhaps thirty minutes. The woman was gone by the time she got back.
Kavanagh claims that the ghosts also gave her some presents.
Helen Ackley had to tie a gold ring onto the baby’s finger during the baptism of Kavanagh’s eldest daughter since it was too large for her. Following the wedding, the family went back to the house and discovered a little ring on the dresser. The baby’s finger fit it nicely. Even though she is grown, her daughter still wears the ring around her neck.
“We experienced a lot of ghost sightings,” adds Kavanagh, who presently resides with her spouse in Salem, Oregon. “There was never anything that scared any of us.”
In 1977, her mother wrote a piece for Reader’s Digest. Helen wrote about the family’s experiences living there.
While painting the living room, she wrote about witnessing a man ghost float through the air and smile at her. He was wearing short slacks that ended at his kneecaps, black shoes with buckles and a blue suit with ruffles at the wrists and throat.
“We’ve come to enjoy these events,” They provide a feeling of how the past, present, and future are all interconnected,” Helen stated. These enigmatic beings appear kind, kind, and incredibly entertaining—occasionally scary. We now worry if we will be able to bring our extraterrestrial companions with us when the time comes for us to relocate once more.”
How the Victorian became the nation’s first legally haunted home
Helen Ackley
(Courtesy of Mark Kavanagh Collection)
Had Helen been able to bring her extraterrestrial companions along, she may have perhaps escaped the ensuing legal issues.
She was widowed and had another Florida house by 1989. She had meticulously renovated the Victorian, and now it was time to sell it. Wall Street trader Jeffrey Stambovsky and his spouse, Patrice Stambovsky, were the purchasers; they were relocating from New York City to Nyack. After their bid was accepted, they paid a $32,500 down payment.
The issue stemmed from Helen’s apparent disclosure of her home’s paranormal past to all parties except the Stambovskys.
The home was featured several times in the local press and was even a part of a haunted walking tour of the town after Helen’s piece appeared in Reader’s Digest, which at the time was one of the most prominent magazines in the country. It was a hot issue of discussion in the community.
However, it appears that the purchasers were not informed of any of this prior to the deal’s closure. Nor were they thrilled nor captivated when they learned of the tales of ghostly activity in their new house. Helen resisted their attempts to violate their agreement. To recover their deposit, they filed a lawsuit.
The homeowner had to “advertise” the paranormal activity, but not to the purchasers, in order for the Stambovsky v. Ackley case to succeed. The judge decided that since the buyers weren’t locals, they couldn’t have been expected to know the house was haunted. Whether or not the house was genuinely haunted was irrelevant. It mattered that, because of Helen, people thought it was. She thus owed it to potential purchasers to provide them of that information.
Now that Helen is dead, Kavanagh tells a different story of what happened.
In front of a pregnant Patrice Stambovsky, her mother had swore to her that the spirits would love to have children in the house once more. Furthermore, Helen maintained that she had firmly rejected the Stambovskys’ request for a significant discount on the house.
That didn’t really matter to the court, though.
According to the 1991 verdict, the seller “deliberately fostered the public belief that her home was possessed.” “She can be deemed to owe no less a duty to her contract vendee, having agreed to inform the general public, with whom she has no legal relationship, about the supernatural occurrences on her property.”
Just four states still have real estate disclosure regulations that address supernatural activity, including New York. The others, with varying restrictions, are New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Minnesota. A number of other states mandate that sellers notify buyers in the event that a death occurs on the property. There are a few general guidelines, however these laws differ widely.
Unless you’re bragging about it, most sellers in the nation don’t have to reveal ghosts, according to University of Detroit Mercy School of Law law professor Christopher Trudeau, who has instructed real estate law courses. “It is your responsibility to inform the person purchasing it if you are informing others that it is haunted.”
And sellers should be honest in their response if a buyer directly questions them about paranormal activity in a house, according to Trudeau. It’s like saying when the roof was last replaced or if the house has ever flooded.
According to Trudeau, “if they lie, then there’s a basis for a lawsuit.” “The court will attempt to find a solution if you are trying to deceive someone.”
So is this legally haunted home really haunted?
America’s sole legally haunted house
(Courtesy of Mark Kavanagh Collection)
High-profile purchasers have continued to reside in the legally haunted house despite the verdict.
Helen sold the land to Adam Brooks, who wrote and directed the movie “Definitely, Maybe.” It is said that throughout his almost twenty years there, he had no paranormal experiences.
He sold the house to pop singer Ingrid Michaelson in 2012 for $1,725,000. The singer of “Way I Am” described it as “a magical home” with a “unbeatable” view to the New York Post.
The home’s real estate agent for both this transaction and the ones that followed, Nancy Blaker Weber, claims that Michaelson enjoyed the ghost stories.
Owning the only property with a legal haunted history has to be entertaining, according to Weber of Howard Hanna Rand Realty. “Some people are drawn to that kind of thing more than others.”
Three years or so later, the house was bought for $1.77 million by rapper and musician Matisyahu, well known for “King Without a Crown.” It seems that he too did not encounter any poltergeists.
The house last sold for $1,795,000 in March 2021. According to Weber, the residence is being renovated by the new owners, who are also in the creative industry. Data from Realtor.com indicates that the five-bedroom, 4.5-bathroom house was appraised earlier this week at $1,864,000.
“Over the years, I’ve spent a lot of time in that house, and I’ve never experienced anything uncomfortable. According to Weber, “if anything is there, it has to be friendly.”
