Haunted addresses on record in Missouri
What Missouri requires
Missouri law does not require sellers or their agents to volunteer that a property was the site of a death, homicide, suicide, or alleged haunting — a specific statute shields them from liability for staying silent on this kind of "psychological" stigma. If a buyer asks directly, practitioner guidance says the seller must answer honestly rather than lie, though the statute's protection is really about the duty to disclose, not about the duty to answer.
Missouri's stigmatized-property statute, RSMo § 442.600, defines "psychologically impacted real property" to include real estate that was the site of a homicide, other felony, or suicide, or where an occupant had HIV/AIDS or another disease highly unlikely to spread through occupancy. The statute says this status "shall not be a material or substantial fact" required to be disclosed in a sale, and that no cause of action may be brought against a real estate agent, broker, or (per later amendments) seller for failing to disclose it. This text was confirmed directly from Missouri's official revised statutes site (revisor.mo.gov) and Justia's statute archive.
There is no Missouri equivalent of California's three-year death-disclosure window (Civil Code § 1710.2). Missouri's approach is the opposite: it affirmatively protects non-disclosure of deaths and hauntings rather than mandating disclosure within any time period.
The one real disclosure duty in this area is unrelated to hauntings: RSMo § 442.606 requires disclosure of whether a property was used to manufacture methamphetamine, or whether a resident was convicted of certain drug offenses or of endangering the welfare of a child — because meth production leaves physical/environmental contamination, not just psychological stigma.
On the "ask rule": secondary sources from Missouri real estate attorneys and brokerages (e.g., a St. Louis brokerage's stigmatized-property guidance) state that while sellers need not volunteer stigma information, they should not lie if a buyer asks directly. This isn't spelled out as its own clause in § 442.600 itself, so it's treated here as consistent practitioner guidance rather than a verified statutory command. No Missouri court case comparable to New York's Stambovsky v. Ackley (the famous "haunted house" ruling) turned up in this research, though multiple sources note Missouri was among the states that passed a stigmatized-property statute in the wake of that decision.
General information, not legal advice. Laws change and turn on details — for a real decision, talk to a licensed professional in Missouri.
The Missouri record is waiting
No entries filed from Missouri yet. If something happened at an address you know, write it down — you may be the reason the next resident feels less alone at 3 AM.