Okay, who put this in here? It was a ghost who wants to keep a low profile? A longtime spectral resident announcing that he has found a new haven?
“It just turned the corner and I HAVE MANY QUESTIONS,” Bloomstein wrote Wednesday morning in a tweet that included an image of the sign.
On Thursday, thousands of other people online also had some doubts, as Bloomstein’s tweet went viral and was shared more than 14,000 times. It was retweeted by actor George Takei, as well as Neil Gaiman, author of the macabre.
In an interview, Bloomstein said her husband first noticed the sign when he went for a walk on Wednesday morning with the German shepherd, Rex. He took a picture and showed it to Bloomstein when he got home.
Perplexed, she had to see for herself, so the couple drove along.
“I said, ‘Oh my God, I want to see that too,'” said Bloomstein, who later shared the image on social media. “It certainly brought a smile to my face – and also to the faces of almost 100,000 other people” who “liked” the tweet.
Bloomstein did not say where the house is to respect the owner’s privacy, she said. But she contacted the Ponte Realty Group-Keller Williams Realty real estate agency in South Watuppa to find out more about the small rectangular sign, known as the rider.
It turns out that they didn’t know anything about it either, she said. Very mysterious.
“They said they didn’t put the sign on,” said Bloomstein. “It raises more questions than it answers.”
Someone from the real estate agency even contacted Bloomstein separately on Twitter, as his post was gaining momentum, to say: “‘Wait a second, where is this license plate, because it is our license plate, but we did not put that pilot’,” she said.
Bloomstein said the conclusion they reached was: “maybe someone is playing around here” – or maybe, as some people have joked on Twitter, it was a ghost trying to keep people away from the smell.
“It looks like something a haunted house would say,” joked one person.
Representatives of the real estate group declined to comment Thursday.
Bloomstein wondered if perhaps his neighborhood had its own “Banksy” on the loose. Whether it was a joke or an attempt at public art, the signs are easy to find. A quick Google search shows that you can buy “Not Haunted” cards in the same red and white color scheme on Etsy.
The signs have been used by real estate agents in other states to sell houses before. In December, a Baltimore-based realtor placed “Not Haunted” signs outside two properties on the market to make people laugh and get attention.
And in New Orleans, known for its frightening past, realtors are known for employing such tactics – although they sometimes play “Haunted” signs.
In Massachusetts, realtors and homeowners are not required to disclose whether a property hosts the paranormal.
“The fact or suspicion that a property may be or is psychologically impacted should not be considered a material fact that must be disclosed in a real estate transaction,” according to Massachusetts General Law.
This includes whether “the property was the site of an alleged parapsychological or supernatural phenomenon”.
The law does not seem to determine whether it is normal to disclose that a house is not haunted, at least not anymore.
Betsy Merry, from MerryFox Realty in Salem, said that if people asked about alleged bumps during the night, they would reveal that information to a buyer.
“I wouldn’t put it on the list ‘By the way, there are ghosts in the house,'” said Merry. “If someone said, ‘We’ve heard it,’ we would say, ‘Yes, we’ve heard the same thing.’ We would corroborate, but we will not touch on that. “
Although Bloomstein laughed at the sign, she also saw it through the lens of her work on trust and how “information empowers people”.
“For me, I saw this as a perfect crystalline distillation of what it is like to disseminate information? It is such a simple and basic form of disclosure, ”she said. But “in this case, I don’t think it was the realtor who hired that pilot, so that we can draw our own conclusions”.
Research says: Likely prank. Still, “who’s to say there are no playful ghosts?” Asked Bloomstein.
Steve Annear can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @steveannear.