Haunted addresses on record in Texas
What Texas requires
Texas law says sellers and agents have no duty to volunteer that someone died on a property from natural causes, suicide, or an accident unrelated to the property's condition — and alleged hauntings or paranormal reputation aren't disclosure items either. If a death left physical damage counting as a property defect, or if a buyer asks directly, different rules kick in.
Texas Property Code § 5.008(c) is the relevant shield: 'A seller or seller's agent shall have no duty to make a disclosure or release information related to whether a death by natural causes, suicide, or accident unrelated to the condition of the property occurred on the property or whether a previous occupant had, may have had, has, or may have AIDS, HIV related illnesses, or HIV infection.' That's a no-duty rule, not a gag order — it just means silence on those specific facts can't be the basis of a claim.
The exception is when a death caused actual physical damage to the property — the statute's carve-out is about the property's condition, not the death itself. If a death (by any cause) left something like structural damage or a defect a reasonable buyer would want to know about, that condition has to be disclosed the same as any other material defect, separate from the fact that a death caused it. Texas is not one of the small handful of states (secondary sources point to New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Minnesota) whose disclosure statutes address psychological stigma or paranormal reputation directly, and nothing in Texas law requires disclosing an alleged haunting.
There isn't a codified 'ask rule' written into § 5.008 the way there might be elsewhere, but Texas real estate practice treats direct questions differently from silence: general misrepresentation principles mean that if a seller or agent is directly asked about a death and chooses to answer, the answer has to be honest. Whether a murder specifically must be volunteered (as opposed to just answered honestly if asked) is where sources conflict — one legal-blog source describes murder as something Texas sellers generally aren't required to disclose absent a direct question, while another describes it as a mandatory-disclosure category; the statute's own text doesn't name murder as an exception to the no-duty rule, so treat the 'murder must always be disclosed' claim with caution rather than as settled law.
No Texas-specific haunted-house court ruling turned up in this research the way New York has Stambovsky v. Ackley (the 'Ghostbusters ruling,' where a seller who'd publicly promoted her house as haunted couldn't later deny it to a buyer). That case is New York precedent, not Texas law, and no comparable Texas case surfaced.
General information, not legal advice. Laws change and turn on details — for a real decision, talk to a licensed professional in Texas.
The Texas record is waiting
No entries filed from Texas 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.