Owners of 'haunted' Louisiana home that has been compared to the Amityville Horror House want to give the property away for FREE
- Sylvia McLain posted photos of the house on Facebook and said that it was free
- She said the house would need to be removed from the property and restored
- Former residents of the home said the house was haunted while they lived there
- It's said to be haunted by the spirit of a 90-year-old woman who died there
A Louisiana real estate firm is giving away a free house for anyone willing to relocate it - the only catch is that it's haunted.
Sylvia McLain, the co-owner of McLain Investments, posted pictures of the house, located in Lafayette, Louisiana, on Facebook in March, saying it was up for grabs, gratis, to anyone who was willing to pick up the house and move it off the property.
She wrote that the 'iconic home' was built in the late 1920s to early 1930s and that it had been unoccupied for the last six months, but was 'vacated due to development,' after her company bought the land.
A Louisiana real estate firm offered up this 2,400-square-foot home for free to anyone willing to move it off the property and restore it
Sylvia McLain posted pictures of the home on Facebook in March, saying that it needed 'TLC'
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'We have concentrated our efforts and development cost in saving as many of the trees as possible and simply do not have a place in the neighborhood for the home,' she wrote.
'In an effort save the history' of it, she said her company decided to give away the home to someone willing move it off the property and restore it.
The home, she noted, 'needs some TLC,' but had two working air conditioners.
The Facebook post attracted hundreds of comments from people interested in taking the 2,400-square-foot house - as well as a slew of notes from former home residents and locals who noted that the house is haunted.
Locals are said to compare the house to the 'Amityville horror house' - the Long Island home where a man murdered his parents and four siblings while they slept in 1974, which was later said to have been haunted after the slaughter occurred.
One Facebook user, Gypsy Dawn, claimed to have been the 'last tenant that lived there before it was abandoned. The property was heaven but that house is quite unsettling if you don’t enjoy communing with the Spirit world because they speak loudly.'
Former residents of the home said that they experienced paranormal activity while living in it
The two-story home was built in the late 1920s to 1930s and housed several generations of a family over the years
A Facebook user said the house was haunted while she lived there. McLain revealed that after two months, someone has agreed to cart the house away and restore it
The house is said to be haunted by the spirit of a 90-year-old woman, Adele Vincent (circled). She is pictured here in a family portrait taken in 1900
Adele (pictured in 1900, left, and in an updated image, right) was said to have a penchant for checking on the stove when people were cooking in the kitchen during her life
One of Adele's relatives said that while living in the house, she would hear the sound of pots jangling on the stove, even though nobody was in the kitchen. Adele (seated) is pictured with her family in an undated image
Gary Alleman, meanwhile, wrote: 'I experienced three things there that could not be explained and my friend that lived there had more than that. We actually experienced one together and we still talk about it.'
Although neither of the former residents specified exactly what happened, a woman who grew up in the home revealed her experiences.
Dawn Vallot DeClout, told the Mirror that her family bought the 160-acre plot of land the house stands on in 1860 and that her great grandmother, Adele, died in the front room in 1967. DeClout and her family lived in the house until the 1980s.
Adele, DeClout said, 'lived to be almost 90 and she was always digging in the pots, like when you have something on the stove and someone goes and looks in the pot and stirs it around.'
Dawn Vallot DeClout said her relatives built the house and that she lived there up until the 1980s. She is Adele's great granddaughter
DeClout said that her family believes that it's Adele's spirit that's haunting the house, but that she's 'not menacing at all.'
She said that while her family lived in the home, 'we used to hear her all the time jangling the pots when we had something on the stove' and added that 'You could hear somebody picking up the lid but there was nobody in the kitchen.'
McLain told the newspaper that she had heard the haunted house rumors, calling them 'really cute stories.'
If the supposedly haunted nature of the house didn't scare off potential takers first, the high-price of moving the house seemed to do the trick.
McLain said that one person who was interested in taking the house balked after learning that it would cost about $80,000 to move the house and then reassemble it at the final destination.
If kept closer to its current location, though, the cost could be as low as $50,000.
On Sunday, however, McLain wrote on Facebook that the house is now spoken for, as someone has stepped up and agreed to cart it off.
The house will be broken up into four pieces and then moved in about a week.
'We were able to find a house mover that wanted it for one of his children,' McLain wrote, adding that she and her company are 'in love with the property and hope to bring it back to its original glory!'
