Hudson Valley House Legally Declared Haunted by the State

People say that their house may be haunted, that they have seen spirits or felt cold spots, but did you know that a house can legally be declared haunted? One in Hudson Valley was.

The house in Nyack, New York was built around 1900 and through the years has been used as a boarding house and residential property. In the early 1960s, Helen Ackley moved into the house with her family, not realizing what she was about to get her family into, acording to Only in Your State.

Once the Ackley family moved into the house, Helen began noticing some unusual things happening. Spirits in the house would wake everyone in the house in the morning by shaking their beds. They ended up getting used to it until one morning there was no school so they asked the spirits to let them sleep, so they did. That’s when they realized they weren’t alone in the house. Most people didn’t believe Helen until something happened to a perfectly healthy guest. They invited the guest over to the house when they collapsed to the floor and died immediately of a brain aneurysm.

Helen started documenting the stories with the Reader’s Digest. One story, “Our Haunted House on the Hudson,” she taked about how one of the spirits sat with her while she was painting the living room, approving of the changes. They ended up believing that there were either two or three spirits with them, probably from the American Revolutionary War era. They would leave the children random gifts, walk around, and slam doors to be heard. When the Ackley family decided to move, they didn’t mention the hauntings to anyone.

They found a buyer who put down a deposit but once they saw the home listed on a local ghost tour, they didn’t want the house anymore. That led to Stombovsky v. Ackley or the “Ghostbusters Ruling” where they legally declared the house haunted. The Ackley family said they were taking the ghosts with them and since then, the house has had no other reports of hauntings.