Haunted House in Point Pleasant Beach Proving Difficult to Sell

Five years ago, when Fred Jones bought a small bungalow on Niblick Street in Point Pleasant Beach, he thought it would be a great investment. "It's a one bedroom house, and it needed some work, but it was only a couple of blocks from the beach," said Jones. "It wasn't expensive, either. I thought I had really lucked out. I guess I was wrong."

Jones and his girlfriend, Daphne Blake, spent that first winter fixing up the house themselves. They didn't really notice anything odd, at first. "Sometimes we'd hear noises," said Blake, "and it would just feel colder in certain parts of the house, but we thought that was normal for an old house." By the time they finished their repairs and upgrades, the noises and temperature variations had increased. They also started to notice the distinct smell of beer. Still, Jones and Blake didn't think it was anything supernatural. They had no problems getting tenants for the next summer. Their friends, Velma Dinkley and Shaggy Rogers along with their big dog, moved in just after Memorial Day in 2016.

Dinkley and Rogers immediately noticed odd things about the house. "I was in the bedroom when I heard my boyfriend suddenly shriek 'zoinks!' from the kitchen. I asked him what had happened and he stammered 'g-g-ghost!' in reply." Rogers said he saw a translucent apparition of a young man in beachwear, carrying a red plastic cup. He claimed the ghost said, "Where's the beer, dude?"

Shortly after this encounter, Dinkley had her own ghostly experience. "I came out of the bathroom and there were these two women in bathing suits. One said 'OMG! We thought you'd be in there forever!' Then they walked right through the door! Jinkies! That freaked me out." 

Over the next weeks the appearances increased. There was a fourth ghost that would often appear in the kitchen. Whenever he did, the area he was in would feel extremely cold. Dinkley and Rogers soon realized that the cold was because this ghost usually appeared with a keg. The other ghosts would soon follow and fill their ghostly red cups from the keg. Then they would demand that the living residents get them some munchies.

"It became almost unbearable," said Rogers. "We'd try to watch TV and the female ghosts would change it to Real Housewives or MTV. Or the male ghosts would change it to ESPN. We could never get through a whole movie. Even if it was a movie the ghosts liked, they were so loud and obnoxious we couldn't enjoy it."

In the end, Dinkley and Rogers moved out after only four weeks. They said it wasn't so much that the ghosts were scary, but they were unbearably annoying. Fred Jones came down to check on the house after his friends moved out and verified what they had experienced. "I expected it to be scary, but it wasn't. The ghosts were just really terrible roommates." 

Jones did some research and found that the ghosts were most likely the spirits of four people who had rented the house in 2014 and died in a boating accident. He was able to contact some of the family of the four individuals and they confirmed that all four of the deceased were extremely annoying people when they were alive.

Fred Jones has tried to rent the house several times since that first summer, but every tenant has had the same experience. Eventually the shear annoyance drives them from the home screaming. Jones has finally decided to sell the house, if he can.

"It's been a hard sell," Jones said. "Realtors come in and the ghosts immediately start bothering them. They tell them to go buy more liquor, or they want to borrow their car, or they tell the realtor to get out because their rent is paid. I haven't found a realtor who's lasted more than two weeks."

Jones is now trying to sell the house on his own. He has taken to advertising in occult magazines and ghost hunter web sites. "'Hopefully someone who likes ghosts will want to buy it. I'm willing to sell it at a loss. I've also been trying to ask the ghosts to behave. I don't know if they listen, but I told them that if they help me sell the house, I'll buy them a keg. I figured it was worth a shot."