Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

There have been a few cases where tenants, displeased to find they were sharing lodgings with a ghost, wound up settling the matter in a courtroom.  This example was recorded by “The Washingtonian,” September 27, 1813:

The cause was tried in the Justice's Court yesterday, before a jury. 

The plaintiff claimed a quarter's rent of a house in Cherry street, due the 1st instant, amounting to forty two dollars, or thereabouts. 

The defence was that the house was haunted by ghosts, and, therefore, untenantable by man. 

The defendant proved that he hired and took possession of the house on the 1st of May, not knowing that it had the reputation of being inhabited by spiritual beings; that soon after a lighted candle, placed on a mantelpiece, went out without any assignable cause--that on being again lighted, it went out in a similar way--that a third attempt terminated in the same manner, with this addition, that on the extinguishment of the candle, the witness, who was the person holding it, was violently seized by the arm (by an invisible hand) and turned completely round!!! That the family was alarmed by such unaccountable events, and also, by finding, in closets about the house, and elsewhere, “dead men's bones,” and understanding that the house had the reputation of being haunted before the family went in, and while unoccupied. The defendant had deserted the house, because his family, not fond of having co-tenants of such a description, could not live in it with peace and without fear. 

It appears that the plaintiff before he hired the house to defendant knew the reputation of his house, but did not communicate it to the tenant. Some witnesses deposed, that while the house was unoccupied, they had several times observed “a blue flame" on the same mantelpiece, which, though it continued burning, communicated no light to the windows--that this attracted the attention of people passing, gathered numbers of spectators about the house and fixed upon it the reputation of a haunted house. 

The jury retired under the charge of the court, and returned with a verdict of ten dollars, as a compensation to plaintiff for the time the defendant had occupied his house, before he was routed by the ghosts!!!

It would be interesting to know if the owner of the house ever managed to rent it again.