Own a Haunted House!

If you happen to be shopping for a house in the Chicago area, check out this listing. For a mere $159,000 you can own a 5-bedroom, 4960 square foot mansion complete with an actual four-story tower, perfect for setting up an oratory. The Hiram B. Scutt Mansion in Joliet, IL was built in 1882 in the Second Empire style, and remains a single-family home rather than having been converted into a duplex or apartments. Also, according to Huffington Post, the house is reputed to be haunted, which explains the low price.

The home has something of a dark history, however, and some say it is haunted. In 2004, a 19-year-old man named Steven Jenkins was fatally shot during a party in the home. A few years later, a John Wilkes Booth impersonator named Seth Magosky bought the home and died suddenly there in 2007, just six months after he began work on turning the mansion into a Victorian museum, Patch's Joseph Hosey reports.

Real estate agent Maria C. Cronin told Patch an energy reader she had come to the home said it was not haunted, but paranormal investigators who have flocked to the mansion over the years would likely disagree. One paranormal group claims the spirits of children, as well as the home's two original owners, can be encountered there.

Spiritual observer and psychic reader Edward Shanahan also wrote in 2010 on his Chicago Paranormal and Spiritual blog that the mansion, which also came to be known as "Barb Villa," is very haunted and pointed to compelling videos from multiple paranormal groups as alleged proof.

I've owned two houses from the 1880's including my current residence, built in 1886, and I've never come across anything in either of them resembling ghostly activity. Of course, the first thing I do when I buy a house is set up a temple and start doing my daily practices there, so that could have something to do with it, but I still find myself a little disappointed about it now and then. I imagine that for readers of Augoeides, the mansion's haunted reputation is something of a bonus. It drives the price way down, all because of events that are either made up or easily dealt with by practicing magicians.