GeoSpooktral Information Systems

“Hello there, Mrs. Gunderson. Thanks for coming in today for your informal hearing,” said Mike Hernandez, chief appraiser of the Brady, Texas Central Appraisal District. “We do our best around here to make property tax protests quick and easy. What can I do for you today?”

The old woman clutched at her purse. “My house is haunted.”

Mike paused. “Pardon me, Ma’am?”

“You heard me. It’s haunted. I want a reduction in my valuation.”

“...because it’s haunted?”

“That’s right,” said the woman, visibly shaking.

“Now Ma’am, I’m afraid that um, the property tax code of the state of Texas does not recognize ‘haunting’ as grounds for a reduction in taxable valuation.”

“I have evidence!”

Mike decided he’d better just let the lady talk. “Okay, sure. What have you got?”

Mrs. Gunderson was prepared. She pulled out a thick manilla folder and spread its contents on the desk. Mike wasn’t sure what to make of the disturbing photographs.

“Now, listen to this,” said the appellant, placing a tape recorder on the table as she hit play. A series of blood-curling moans echoed throughout the office.

“Alright, pretty impressive,” said Mike.

“Also the walls are bleeding.” She pointed out several relevant photographs from the file, then handed him a small outdated digital video camera and played through the clips. It did certainly look like something red and slimy was oozing out of the walls.

“You’re not pulling my leg with that new AI video stuff are ya?” asked Mike.

She gave him a severe look. “Do I look like I know how to use an Ay Eye Pee Tee? Besides, look at this!” She showed him a video of a skeleton with burning eyes dancing on her front lawn, wearing some kind of wide-brimmed hat. “What are you going to do about this?”

“Look ma’am, I'll be frank with you, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with all this. Clearly someone is pulling some sick prank on you, and for that I’m very sorry-”

“All the neighbors have moved out! I’m the only one left on my block!” she protested.

A thought sparked. “Wait, you said you lived on 36 Applewood lane?” asked Mike.

“That’s right.” said Mrs. Gunderson.

Applewood lane. That was a street in the “Autumn Orchard” neighborhood. During the recent re-valuation that had been a tricky one, the few sales records they had from that neighborhood were all suspiciously low without any clear reason…

“Look ma’am, if someone’s harassing you and scaring you like this, that’s probably a matter for the police. Do you want me to give Sheriff Henderson a call?”

“I already called him. He didn't believe me either!” huffed the old lady.

“Now ma’am, just because I don’t believe in ghosts doesn’t mean I don't believe you have claim for a reduction in property value. If the neighborhood is being terrorized in a way that is causing the actual market value of your house to go down, well then you have the right to a reduction, plain and square. I just need some actual evidence for the equalization board. You said all the neighbors moved out, you wouldn’t happen to know what they sold their homes for, would you?”

Mrs. Gunderson relaxed a little but still seemed irked. “You’re the appraisal district, don’t you have that info already?”

“No ma’am, Texas is a real estate non-disclosure state. We rely on voluntary sales disclosures. And to tell you the truth, we haven’t had anything disclosed on your exact street for many years. If we had something to go off of maybe we could get to the bottom of your house’s proper valuation.”

Mike spent another hour talking to the lady and generally trying to calm her down. He learned that she had recently moved from California to be closer to her children. She had been delighted to find such a big house for such a cheap price, and bought it sight-unseen. Now she had extreme buyer’s regret, given the sadistic pranks that started soon after. He escorted her out the door saying that he would look into the matter and contact the proper authorities, and she should probably stay at a relative's house until the matter was resolved. Then he went straight to the IT office.

“You’ll never believe the story I just got. Lucky for me it was the last informal hearing scheduled for today-”

“Way ahead of you, boss.” said Suzuki Tanaka, the district’s GIS specialist. “I heard her from down the hall. Call me crazy, but I think she’s actually on to something.”

“C’mon, don’t tell me you believe in ghosts,” said Mike.

“I don’t, but believe it or not, chief, haunted houses are an actual thing in real estate valuation.”

“Don’t go pulling my leg, son,” said Mike. “I’ve had a long day and I’ve got even more informals stacked on top of each other tomorrow.”

“No, I’m serious, sir. Like my parents are from Japan, right? Over there old people sometimes have a real problem renting or buying homes, because there’s a decent chance they might die of old age while they’re still living in the house. And a house that somebody dies in is way harder to sell or rent, 'cause it spooks people out. Ghosts or no ghosts, our valuations are supposed to follow market forces, right? So who cares what people believe, as long as it’s measurably affecting prices?”

“Interesting,” said Mike. “So you think something like that is happening here?”

“Well, I’ll tell you what.” said Suzuki. “There hasn’t been a single sale on that street for the last five years, except for Mrs. Gunderson. Just listings, and they’ve all been going down.”

Mike crossed his arms. “And how exactly would you know that? You haven't been using your uncle's MLS login, have you? Last thing I need is the realtor's association breathing down my neck.”

“Wouldn't dream of it, sir.” said Suzuki with a smirk. “I just run a check against Redfin.com listing prices every day, and if I check every day, I can catch when they sell. It'll change the status to sold but without a closing price; thing is, a daily check captures the last listed price. Then I check those against the few voluntary disclosures we get and work out how close it tends to be. It's not perfect, but it's something. Anyways, I can confirm no sales on Applewood lane, except for Mrs. Gunderson's regretful purchase.”

Mike folded his arms for a minute, grunted, then said, “Okay, sure. So what'd you find?”

Suzuki grinned. “Let me just drag this parquet file over here to this Felt.com map, apply a few gradients, and … ta-da!” he spun around in his chair.

“What am I looking at?” asked Mr. Hernandez, sipping his coffee.

“That’s a map of ratio study scores–our current workbook market value compared to the most recent sale price. Notice, we have no data points on Apple street because there haven’t been any sales. But look at the neighboring streets in Autumn Orchard, right here–do you see the big red circle pattern? Do you see what I’m seeing?”

“Yeah, it gets redder the closer you get to Mrs. Gunderson’s house…”

“Exactly. Our model’s rate of predictive error increases, with an approximately inverse square decay rate from a central point, which just so happens to be Mrs. Gunderson’s house. The closer you are to her, the less your house sells for. Everyone's really been clearing out! The pattern’s clear even without a specific sale on her street. That’s a classic sign of a missing variable in our model.”

Mike scratched his head. “What are those parcel numbers, can we pull the deeds of sale?”

Suzuki pulled them up.

Mike pulled up a chair and scrutinized the documents. “Why are there so many short sales? I thought this was a nice neighborhood.”

“Boss, something’s going on in that neighborhood, and whatever that something is, it’s affecting more than just Mrs. Gunderson, it’s driving the neighbors away too.” said Suzuki.

“I'm afraid you're right, son. Unfortunately I don’t have time to look into this, I’ve got to prepare for all the informals tomorrow. But someone needs to look into this.”

“Should I call the sheriff?” asked Suzuki.

“Mrs. Gunderson already called him and he just blew her off. We’ll need to bring him something real for him to take it seriously. Get our PI to look into it.”

“The appraisal district retains a private investigator?” asked Suzuki.

“I forget you’re new here. Yeah, she adjudicates homestead exemptions and stuff. Marital disputes mostly–if someone’s separated instead of divorced that means only one of ‘em gets to claim the exemption. Can’t have any homestead exemption bigamy!”

Mike continued: “Anyway, Potter’s great, have her look into it. If some psychopath teenagers are terrorizing an old lady enough to drive property values down on a map, she’ll soon sniff it out. Soon as we get something concrete that the police will buy, we’ll turn it over to them.”

Later that week, Maybelle Potter strode into the chief appraiser’s office with a folder full of photographs and interview transcripts.

“This is extremely weird. Both neighboring houses as well as the one directly across the street have been vacant for months, the owners just up and left town. I can't confirm for the rest of the houses on her block, but at the very least, nobody was home. As for the other neighbors down the street, the few who would talk to me are all spooked but won’t say why exactly, just that, ‘something feels wrong,’ or that they feel oppressed by an ‘evil aura,’ that gets stronger every day. Every single one of them has been trying to sell their house but no real estate agent in town will touch Applewood lane.”

“Well, that’s disturbing,” said the chief. “What about the skeleton? Did someone rig a motor up to something from a Halloween store?”

“Well, I found two eyewitnesses who claimed to have seen it. One was Otis Freedman, he lives two blocks down.”

“That’s a good lead,” said Mike. “Otis is a good man, my father and him used to work together. Who’s the other witness?”

“I am.” said Maybelle Potter, with a sigh. 

She put her iPhone down on the desk and opened the photos app. On the screen was a dancing skeleton with burning eyes.

“I saw it with my own eyes,” she said.

“What in God’s name is going on?” said the chief.

“Chief,” said Potter. “I think the house really is haunted.”

Otis Freedman leaned back in his rocking chair as Mike Hernandez, Suzuki Tanaka, and Maybelle Potter listened with rapt attention to the elderly homeowner of 26 Applewood lane, just as the sun was setting and the stars began to come out.

“Oh, I know who’s been paying these visits. My grandfather knew him well, though I wish I could say he hadn’t. That’s the foul ghost of damned ole' general Greely.”

Otis shivered, then continued: “The wickedest man in the Confederacy, they called him, and that’s by Johnny Reb's twisted standards, too. He was cruel to his slaves, sure, that goes without sayin’, but he was just as cruel to everybody else, his own relations even.”

Otis’ eyes grew wide as he dropped to a hushed tone. “The things that man did in the dark of night to innocent souls were unspeakable, I tell you. But nobody dared touch ‘im, not just because he was a violent man, but because everyone lived in fear of him. Word was he’d sold his soul to the devil.”

Otis leaned back and scratched his beard. “He was a right terror for the Union in the war, right up to the day his number came up and he got shot in the leg. Rotted through and they had to saw it clean off. After that they shipped him back here to Brady, and he was confined to his bed for the rest of his long, pathetic, lingering life. He died in 1925, nearly one hundred years ago to this very day.” Otis leaned forward and whispered, “I suspect that's why he's been getting bolder and bolder all of a sudden.”

The old man continued: “The night he died, his house burned to the ground. Some say the devil was taking back what was his, some say the General tipped the lantern over himself. But whatever the case, my grandpa will never forget how that cruel old man crawled out from that burning wreckage wearing nothing but his skin and his ole’ cavalry hat. Crippled as he was, in those last moments he somehow got up the power to dance his infernal dance on that grass as he burned alive. As my grandpa tells it, you could see the fires of hell burning in his eyes as he cried out his last.”

With that, the four of them heard a strange crackling sound in the distance. Ten doors down, a spectral skeleton danced and burned in the darkness on the front lawn of 36 Applewood lane. The spirit lingered for a moment, then faded away.

Then it appeared again, ten steps closer.

It turned to face them, and started to approach.

The appraisal district employees froze in horror.

Otis chuckled to himself and said, “Let's see now, what did Grandma always say? That's right...good ol' psalm sixty-seven...” He picked up a small wooden crucifix, brandished it, and spoke:

“Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered: and let them that hate him flee from before his face! As smoke vanisheth, so let them vanish: as wax melteth before the fire, so let the wicked perish before the presence of God!”

The specter flickered and faded to nothing.

“That should put an end to that,” said Otis, returning to his chair. “But, I'm still getting that reduction on my property taxes this year, right?”

SIX MONTHS LATER

Suzuki Tanaka walked up to the podium. The convention room was standing room only and even still attendees were still streaming in. Never before had there been so much excitement over a simple GIS presentation at the annual convention of the IAAO, the International Association of Assessing Officers.

“I guess we may as well start now,” said Suzuki. “And yes, for everyone asking, the presentation will be recorded and posted online, along with the slides.”

“Hi everybody,” he continued. “My name is Suzuki Tanaka, and I’m the GIS technician for Brady Central Appraisal District down in central Texas. I’d like to welcome you to my presentation, Latent Detection Of Paranormal Entities via Geospatially Correlated Residual Error…”