The Spooky Open House I'll Never Forget - Scared the Heck out of Myself!

As a new real estate agent in 1989, I was always looking for a house to hold open on weekends and would volunteer to hold any house open. An older & more experienced agent in my office was very (almost overly) anxious for me to hold open her new listing in East Silver Spring.   It was a cute Dutch Colonial Style house.  I was really excited about having it open and wondering why she did'nt want to do it herself.   This agent ALWAYS held her own listings open, especially if it was the first open for a brand new listing.   I did get this funny feeling in the office that the other agents knew something I didn't.  I can't explain exactly what it was, I thought they were snickering, chuckling or whispering about me.  I shrugged it all off as my imagination and the that I was a nervous newbie.  

The day before the open, I was talking to a loan officer friend of mine.   Prior to being a loan officer my friend had been a real estate agent.   She asked me what house I was holding open.   When I told her the address there was dead silence and a Huge GASP.... OMG

She told me that her real estate company had listed the same house 8 years before and sold it to a nice couple.  The couple moved in on a Saturday.  The next day while the wife was out at church, the husband had gone into the basement and shot himself to pieces with a double barrelled shotgun.  The wife never went back, so my friend's company cleaned the house up and resold it to another couple.  Obviously all the agents in town had known about this except me!  No wonder they were acting so funny around me!

It was a long, quiet, lonely, spooky 3 hour open house.  My mind kept thinking of the Dutch Colonial house from the Amityville Horror story.  I was scaring myself to death and every noise I heard made me jump.   I Couldn't go anywhere near that basement and never did go down there and look, not once!   Only one person came to look at the house that day (needless to say, I did not escort him into the basement) and low and behold he bought the house from me.

* NOTE . . .To those of you who are thinking - was this disclosed to the Buyer? - No, it was not.
( Hey, ..  it wasn't even disclosed to me up front!)   Because in the state of Maryland it is the Seller's choice (not the listing broker or agent's) whether to disclose or not. What is required in Maryland is Disclosure of "Material" and "Latent Defects" only.  The Maryland Legislature/Law excludes Murder, Suicide, Violent death and the prescence of Aids from being "material defects.  In this particular case the buyer purchased the house for an investment never lived in it.