I was thinking about how many court opinions I've read over the course of my career, probably

100,000.

And this particular line out of a court opinion is in the top 10 most remarkable statements

I've ever seen a court make. Hey everyone, welcome back to Dark House.

Thank you for listening.

I'm Hadley Mendelsohn, and this is my co-host, Alyssa Fiorentino.

If you're new here, we spotlight allegedly haunted houses or otherwise infamous homes,

and we dig into the backstories to give you

the history of how they became so infamous. And we also do try to shed a little bit of light onto

the design characteristics as well as the region so that you can feel like you were there,

although I probably wouldn't want to actually be at any of these locations. Yeah. So for today's episode, we are going to a town on the Hudson River right outside of New York City

to look at the first house that was ever declared legally haunted. It's called the Ackley House.

Legal haunted. Like what does that even mean? Exactly. That is the question here.

So in the second half of the episode, we have a guest interview with Eric Goldman, who is a law professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law. And he is just as fascinated by this case as we are. He's going to teach us a little bit about what makes it so groundbreaking and some other great general real estate advice.

So if you're in the market for a new house, stay tuned for that.

So this story gets me excited because it really exemplifies how the topic of haunted houses or just ghost stories in general can be seen as more of a like

either fluffy kind of lighthearted thing. For example, I can even tell you how many times

people have asked me if I do this podcast for a hobby on the side and I'm like, no, it's my job.

So people, I don't know, just don't take the idea of ghost stories as something that has a lot

of cultural value. However, this case really

proves that it can infiltrate these more mainstream platforms and have real life consequences. And in

this case, it's going to be in the context of property law. Right. Yeah. So the Stambobsky

...