Creeeeek. Squeeeek. Scratch, scratch, scratch.
With Halloween arriving, real estate agents might be thinking about their own experiences with the spirit world. And houses old and new alike can have spiritual activity, Shari DeBenedetti, a paranormal investigator who has appeared on shows like Ghost Hunters and is also a licensed real estate agent, told Inman.
Worse still, sometimes those spirits can also disrupt a deal — intentionally or not. But there’s also typically a way to resolve it, DeBenedetti said. Here’s what she shared with Inman.
TAKE THE INMAN INTEL SURVEY FOR OCTOBER
How she got into the paranormal
DeBenedetti has felt spiritual energy from a young age, but didn’t decide to pursue paranormal work as a part-time career until something happened when she lived in a house with her parents in her early 20s. DeBenedetti had noticed odd things in the house before, but one night when she came home from a date, the situation escalated.
Shari DeBenedetti
“As soon as I got into bed [that night], something grabbed my ankles and held my ankles down,” DeBenedetti said. “So I bent forward to see what was there because I couldn’t use my legs. And there was nothing there. But then they grabbed my wrists and pushed my wrist into the bed, so then the rest of my body went back more.
“So then I tried to yell out to my parents down the hall for help, but nothing was coming out of my mouth. And then they put their hand over my mouth and pushed my head down. It wasn’t sleep paralysis … I could actually feel the fingers on my lips.
Right after that, a doppelgänger of my boyfriend appeared at the bottom of the bed and for a split second I was like, ‘Is he here? Am I still at his place?’ All of a sudden, he’s in front of me and the moonlight was coming in, so I couldn’t see his face, but everything else was him … When he came over to me, he leaned over to look at me and he didn’t say anything, but his face — it was like he didn’t have a face. It looked like if you were looking outside to the sky, and it was that distant, black look.”
That was one of the most intense experiences DeBenedetti ever had, and it made her curious about the paranormal. She started reading as much as she could about the topic at the library and eventually started connecting with other people who had had similar experiences, largely by word of mouth. From that day onward, she also never stepped foot in that house alone again.
Ultimately, she started her own team of paranormal investigators because she wanted to help others who were dealing with similar occurrences, and they started going out to people’s homes to investigate. She first met Jason Hawes of Ghost Hunters at a meeting of The Atlantic Paranormal Society, which is how she ended up joining the show.
Types of spiritual interactions
DeBenedetti explained that there are all types of paranormal spirits or energies that can surface within a home, or even an office or restaurant.
Older homes will naturally contain much more energy because more people will have passed through them over the years, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that older homes are more likely to be haunted — a common misconception, DeBenedetti said.
“If 100 people walk through a door, there’s going to be so much energy on that door knob,” DeBenedetti told Inman. “There’s going to be energy in that spot. People feel that energy of those people. So it’s not haunted — it’s just a lot of energy.”
Home notwithstanding, a property could also contain large amounts of energy, DeBenedetti said, because of whatever use the land may have served in the past. Learning more about the history of a home’s land might provide some clues into what energy is floating around, but might not always provide a clear answer either.
Some people who think they are experiencing the energy of a spirit may simply be sensitive to electromagnetic fields, DeBenedetti said.
“The people that are sensitive will have all of these feelings,” she said, “like, they’ll get headaches. They’ll feel somebody standing in back of them. They’ll see shadows. They’ll hallucinate.”
DeBenedetti went on to say that “hitchhikers” are ghosts who attach themselves to someone, and might follow them around where they go, then decide to stay in a different place if they like it.
Some ghosts are aware that they’re dead, but don’t want to move on from their home, DeBenedetti added. But there are others who have no idea that they have passed on from the realm of the living and are wondering why someone else is in their home moving things around.
There’s also something called “residual haunting,” which DeBenedetti said can happen when someone routinely moves in the same way throughout a house for years, so much so that their energy remains after they’re gone.
“So if the next people living there see somebody walking up the stairs, or hear the door or the keys, it’s not necessarily that somebody’s there right now and haunting them,” DeBenedetti said. “It’s just the residual energy of that person in that space … that person doesn’t even need to be dead.”
What agents can do
Although DeBenedetti maintains an active real estate license, she hasn’t really worked with clients regularly since about 2017, she told Inman. But because of her connections to the real estate industry and her reputation with the paranormal, every once in a while she’ll get a call from a real estate agent who needs her expertise in ghost hunting.
“Some Realtors ask me to go to locations and check it out for them,” DeBenedetti said. “For example, one gentleman couldn’t sell a home. It was an older home. Something was always going on, and he said one [potential buyer] he was showing it to, they heard stuff and went flying out of the house.
“I don’t know if I experienced something [in the home]. I want to say in the basement that I think I might have felt something, but there wasn’t enough evidence for me to say anything. But I did talk to whoever was there. I’m not a medium, I’m not a psychic, but you can talk to whoever is there and say what is going on — either they need to leave, or they need to allow these people to come in. And the new people coming in to live in their home, they’re going to make sure that it’s all OK.”
For agents facing suspected hauntings, DeBenedetti them to rule out other causes of what might look like paranormal activity. That could mean calling an electrician, a plumber or pest control, depending on the issue.
“After we do that, that’s when we go to trying to communicate with whoever could be there,” she said.
Typically, DeBenedetti might walk through a house and introduce herself, and explain why she’s there. She advises agents who are helping clients sell a listing with an extra spiritual occupant do the same, and repeat whatever they need to communicate multiple times throughout the house.
“Hi, I’m so and so, I’m here to sell the house and I don’t mean any disrespect,” DeBenedetti said, illustrating what might be a routine script. “I’m not asking you to leave, but I am asking you to stop doing whatever it is you’re doing.”
DeBenedetti said sometimes the fix could even be something as simple as rearranging some home decor.
“For example, one [ghost] didn’t like a picture somewhere. Like, they were mad that somebody took it off one wall and put it on something else. They would get upset, so then they would start a problem.”
And she urged people experiencing paranormal activity to keep a daily journal so that they can try and figure out the cause behind the activity. But in the end, she recommended being respectful.
“Say whatever you need to say respectfully to whoever you’re trying to communicate with,” DeBenedetti continued. “Because, again, you don’t know if they know that they’ve passed.”
English (US) · 