- The only thing scarier
than being haunted by a ghost is getting sued.
And you may not believe in ghosts,
but that doesn't mean that they don't show up in lawsuits.
(people screaming)
(ghosts laughing)
- Oh my God!
The Scoleri Brothers!
- Because telling ghost stories
isn't just something that you do around a campfire
or as an overused plot device in horror movies.
- Why, once I met this guy who knew this guy
who knew this guy who knew this guy
who knew this guy who knew this guy..
- In fact, ghosts have actually repeatedly been involved
in litigation.
- We would have to perform a sue-ance.
(lightning strikes)
(spooky ambient music)
- And when it comes to the paranormal in court,
judges don't simply say ghosts aren't real
and get that (bleep) outta my courtroom.
Judges have repeatedly treated spirits
with a veneer of seriousness
in both civil and criminal cases.
And on occasion, poltergeists have even helped establish
legal precedent that we still teach law students
to this day.
So let's start with the ghost who testified from the dead
to convict her own murderer.
In July 1897, Edward Trout Shoe
was convicted of first degree murder
by a Greenbrier County West Virginia jury
in the strangling death of his wife, Zona Shoe.
What makes this gruesome murder so notable
is the evidence that sealed Mr. Shoe's fate
came from a most surprising source,
the ghost of his murdered wife.
This was the first and to date only instance
in the US history that testimony of a ghost
has been admitted as evidence to obtain a conviction.
So how did this ghost help convict her own killer?
Well, it's quite the story.
On the morning of January 23rd, 1897
the 23-yeah- old Zona Shoe was discovered
by an errand boy sent to the house by Trout Shoe.
The boy found her at the foot of the stairs,
face down, dead, her head cocked to one side.
By the time the coroner arrived,
Trout had moved his wife's body to their bed
where he had dressed her in a scarf and high necked gown.
Trout was sobbing uncontrollably
and showed signs of distress
whenever the corner attempted to examine the body.
Now, out of respect for the grieving spouse,
the coroner stopped his cursory examination
and then wrote in his report that Zona died
of quote "everlasting faint," or heart attack.
At Zona's wake the next day, attendants noticed
more odd behavior from Trout.
When the casket was opened for viewing,
Trout immediately covered Zona's neck with a scarf
and propped her head with a pillow and blanket.
Trout also put on a display of inconsolable grief,
blocking mourners from getting close enough
to look at the body.
Then one month later while Zona's mother
lay wide awake at night,
Zona's spirit appeared before her mother
to reveal a shocking truth that Zona was murdered
and Trout was her killer.
Zona's mother then went to the local prosecutor
to reveal what she had learned from her daughter's ghost.
Over a period of four nights,
Zona's ghost purportedly appeared
and gave a chilling account of her murder.
Zona's spirit revealed that Trout had a history
of physically abusing her.
When Trout became enraged
one night that Zona didn't serve meat for dinner,
he grabbed his wife by the throat, crushed her windpipe,
and snapped her neck between the first and second vertebrae.
After hearing this, the prosecutor went to the coroner
to ask what he had observed about Zona's neck.
When the coroner revealed the husband
had prevented him from examining the neck,
the body was exhumed and a second autopsy was performed.
They found bruises on Zona's neck in the shape of fingers,
a crushed windpipe, and her neck broken
between the first and second vertebrae,
matching the mother's account from the daughter's ghost.
And in the course of investigating,
the prosecutor discovered that Shoe was not who he seemed.
Edward Trout Shoe was actually Erasmus Shoe,
a blacksmith from a neighboring county.
Shoe also had a history of violence
and was married twice before.
His first wife got a divorce after enduring physical abuse,
while his second wife died under mysterious circumstances
after eight months of marriage.
But after Trout was charged with a murder,
there were real concerns about securing the conviction.
While Zona's neck was broken and there were hand marks,
there wasn't much hard evidence linking Trout to the crime.
The prosecutor was reluctant to subpoena Zona's mother,
fearing her ghost story
would actually damage the case,
but instead of discrediting the witness,
it appears that it actually bolstered
the prosecution's case.
Here's an excerpt from the remarkable exchange.
"Mrs. Heaster, are you positively sure
that these visits are not for dreams?"
"Yes, sir.
It was not a dream.
I don't dream when I'm wide awake, to be sure,
and I know I saw her right there with me."
"Are you not considerably superstitious?"
"No, sir, I'm not.
I was never that way before and am not now."
"Now, I would like to say if I could,
to get you to say that these were four dreams
and not four visions or appearances
of your daughter in flesh and blood."
"I'm not going to say that for I'm not going to lie."
So pro tip, for all you aspiring trial lawyers out there,
don't tell the witness you're cross examining
what you want them to admit,
because they're probably not going to do that.
Ultimately, the jury convicted Trout
with just over an hour of deliberation.
He was sentenced to life, which ended up
only being three years when he died in prison.
But that brings us to the medium
who faced an extra large copyright lawsuit
after claiming that Mark Twain's ghost wrote her book.
Because at the turn of the 20th century,
America was in the midst of a craze of spiritualism.
During this time, the practice of holding seances
and seeking guidance through mediums
became increasingly popular in the United States.
So when St. Louis medium Emily Grand Hutchings
claimed that her new book, "Jap Herron" subtitled
"A Novel Written From the Ouija Board,"
was actually authored by Mark Twain's ghost
as revealed to her by the Ouija board,
many Americans bought the book believing Hutchings' claims.
Among those skeptical of the book's ghostly origins,
Mark Twain's Estate and Twain's publisher
who were so offended by the claims
they went straight to court seeking to block publication
and have every copy of the book destroyed.
It all started in September, 1917
when the book got national attention
following a scathing review from the New York Times.
Panning the book as quote, "a feeble attempted imitation
of Twain's humor," the reviewer cast out
on its ghostly origins by noting the recent trend
of dead authors allegedly writing books
through Ouija boards.
Quote, "if this is the best that 'Mark Twain' can do
by reaching across the barrier,
the army of admirers that his works have won for him
will all hope that he will hereafter respect that boundary."
In June, 1918, Mark Twain's estate
through his daughter, Clara Clemons,
and Twain's publisher, Harper and Brothers,
went to the US Supreme Court
to file an extra large copyright suit
against the medium and her publisher, Mitchell Kennerley.
The complete alleged Harper and Brothers
held the exclusive right to Twain's stories for 17 years.
And Hutchings and Mitchell Kennerley
were infringing on that right.
The complaint asserts that quote "'Jap Herron'
is far below the grade of anything Mark Twain wrote
while alive and the circulation of the book
would harm his reputation."
The complaint further alleged that Hutchings
approached Harpers with a book in 1916,
but Twain's publisher refused to publish it on quote,
"the ground that it didn't emanate from Mark Twain
and had no literary merit."
For relief, plaintiffs requested
that the Supreme Court blocked publication of the book,
have all copies destroyed,
and require full accounting of all illegally earned profits.
However, the plaintiff's victory was by no means assured.
To establish copyright infringement,
they'd have to prove definitively that a ghost
spoke through a Ouija board, which was no easy task.
And as the New York Times reported at the time,
quote, "there is of course ground for doubt
whether testimony transmitted through a Ouija board
will be accepted.
The court may consider it
incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial."
And as kind of amazing the kind of hedging of bets
that the New York Times was doing with the word 'may'
in that particular sentence.
But anyway, the plaintiffs here put forth
a clever two-step legal strategy to corner the defendants.
On the one hand, if Twain's ghost
did actually write the book,
the defendants have committed copyright infringement
and must return all profits
made to Twain's estate and publisher.
On the other hand, the mediums could avoid a copyright claim
by simply admitting that Twain's ghost
didn't actually write the book,
which would expose them as liars.
So stuck between the rock of massive copyright exposure
and the hard place of admitting to be frauds,
the mediums agreed to halt publication of the book
and remove all copies from stores.
The copyright trial of the century would never come to pass,
but Hutchings would continue to insist
that she was telling the truth until her death in 1960.
Though Mark Twain famously quipped, "if you tell the truth
you don't have to remember anything."
So whether Hutchings was a liar with a great memory
or an unjustly mocked prophet, I suppose we'll never know.
(girl screams) Ooh!
But that takes us to a couple of ghostly cases
coming out of Texas.
They say that everything's bigger in Texas,
but you know what else is bigger in Texas?
Cases where people took financial advice from ghosts
only to claim fraud when the advice didn't pan out.
You know, that old chestnut.
Because in the early 1900s, Texas courts addressed the issue
of ghostly misrepresentation
in both civil and criminal contexts.
In the case of Burchill versus Hermsmeyer,
Bell Burchill claimed ghosts told her
that there was substantial oil under her land.
- I drink your milkshake!
- Believing this to be true, HC Hermsmeyer
invested $10,000, about $175,000 in today's dollars,
into Burchill's oil company.
When no oil was found, Hermsmeyer sued
to recover his investment,
arguing that Burch's claim
constituted a fraudulent misrepresentation of fact.
But the Texas Court of Appeals disagreed,
ruling that ghosts cannot form the basis
of a fraudulent misrepresentation,
because the existence or non-existence of ghosts
is uncertain and a matter of belief, not fact.
And a similar result occurred in the criminal case
of Nurse versus State.
Jim Nurse, a self-described spiritualist,
claimed that he could speak to ghosts
who told him a large amount of money
was buried under the property of one Mr. Alexander.
- I've heavily invested in gold,
which I've buried in several different locations
around Pawnee.
Or have I?
- After someone working on Mr. Alexander's home
found money buried by the house's foundation,
nurse advised Alexander to rebury the money immediately,
because otherwise the spirits would vanish it all.
Nurse allegedly returned later to dig up the money.
Nurse was swiftly arrested and convicted of the crime
of swindling, the early 20th century term for fraud.
Now, the state argued nurse was a charlatan
who fraudulently induced Alexander to part with his money
by falsely claiming he could talk to ghosts.
But like Burchill, the court of appeals
threw out the conviction on the grounds
that whether or not Nurse can talk to ghosts
is an unknowable fact that cannot serve
as the basis for a fraud claim.
Quote, "there is no evidence in regard to the matter
one way or the other that is as to whether or not
appellant conversed with the spirits
or called them up and tested their veracity."
Ultimately, the court concluded
that Alexander was neither deceived nor misled
because the alleged fraudulent claims
that money was buried under Alexander's house
was actually true.
And since the underlying claim was true,
whether Nurse could talk to ghosts was legally irrelevant
and Nurse's swindling conviction was reversed.
But that takes us to the house that was haunted
as a matter of law.
Now, one of my favorite Halloween traditions growing up
was watching "The Simpsons" Treehouse of Horror episodes.
I still remember the very first Treehouse segment,
"Bad Dreamhouse," where the Simpsons family
is horrified to discover the mansion that they just bought
is haunted and actively trying to murder them.
Now, obviously, this is just a silly cartoon
and no one would ever try to actually get out
of a real estate purchase
because the seller didn't mention
that the house was haunted, right?
Well, this actually happened and it was successful.
And this opinion, which is taught in every law school
in the country, wasn't handed down a hundred years ago
during America's spiritualism craze, but in 1991,
less than one year after the Simpsons episode aired.
Yet another example of the Simpsons predicting the future.
- As you know, we've inherited quite a budget crunch
from President Trump.
- So here's the story of America's
first legally haunted house.
Jeffrey and Patricia Stanbovsky were a New York City couple
who decided to leave behind the big city
and move slightly upstate to the village of Nyack, New York.
While looking for a new home, the Stanbovskys
fell in love with an eight bedroom, 4.5 bath
Victorian mansion occupied by George and Helen Ackley
and their four kids.
Mr. Stanbovsky agreed to buy the property for $650,000
with a $32,500 down payment.
So what's the problem here?
Well, the sellers neglected to mention
that the house had a decades long reputation
for being haunted.
A reputation that the Ackleys themselves helped cultivate
by talking it up in the local and national press.
In the 1977 Readers Digest article,
"Our Haunted House on the Hudson,"
the Ackleys recounted the family's many ghost interactions
in the home.
Most notably husband George claims
he saw a pair of disembodied moccasin clad feet
walk up the stairs while Helen claims
that she saw a man in a powdered wig
and Revolutionary War attire.
The house was even a feature on a walking tour of Nyack
and periodically attracted paranormal enthusiasts.
Now, after learning about
this previously undisclosed ghostly history,
Mr. Stanbovsky filed suit seeking rescission
of the real estate contract.
But the trial court dismissed Stanbovsky claims,
citing caveat emptor.
Caveat emptor, Latin for let the buyer beware,
imposes a duty on a buyer to reasonably examine
the fitness and value of property before purchase.
And under this principle, a buyer is barred
from rescinding a contract on the basis of defects
that would've been discovered
through a reasonable investigation.
But Stanbovsky appealed this decision
and the court of appeals reversed the trial court,
reasoning that because the sellers themselves
were the source of the home's haunted reputation
and this fact that materially impaired the value
of the property could not easily be discovered
by even a diligent buyer, the failure to disclose
was grounds to cancel the agreement.
Quote, "whether the source of the spectral apparition
seen by defendant seller are parapsychic or psychogenic,
having reported their presence
in both a national publication,
(Reader's Digest) and the local press
(in 1977 and 1982, respectively),
defendant is stopped to deny their existence,
and as a matter of law,
the house is haunted." (spooky music)
So what happened next?
Well, the Stanbovskys were able to back out of the deal,
but don't worry, the Ackleys had no problem
reselling the house.
Since then, the house has changed hands multiple times
being most recently sold in March, 2021 for $1.8 million.
And in 2002, New York replaced caveat emptor
with an affirmative duty to disclose.
Sellers are now required to fill out
a standard form disclosure statement,
containing 48 affirmative representations
about the condition of the property.
Though sadly, zero disclosures about ghosts.
And there haven't been any hauntings
since the accolades left,
which some paranormal investigators
attributed to the ghost being bored of the new owners.
Now, if you like Ghost Law want more scary law stories,
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