I don’t know why people care whether a house is haunted or not. It’s like, just help that poor soul cross over into the void or whatever it is they want, and move on. I’m sure they couldn’t care less about rattling your cutlery drawer in the night or stealing your socks, or whatever else people are wont to accuse household ghosts of.
I mean, I don’t have any direct experience in the realm of ghost visitations, but it can’t be rocket science. Sure, it’s probably a bit disconcerting to have a transparent person pop up in your personal space, especially if it’s at night, and even more so if they’re in period dress. But once you’ve taken a few seconds to get your bearings, it should quickly become clear that they’re not there expressly to haunt you.
As for how this should affect property prices, that’s probably a question for a conveyancer. Within the Brighton area, it might not have too much influence, since salt air tends to drive away ghosts pretty fast. At least, that’s what I’ve read – that salt can help with moving ghosts on. Knowing that, if I ever saw a ghost, the first thing I’d do would be to grab a bag of sea salt, chuck some of that around, and go from there.
Given good conveyancing lawyers, you might be able to use the presence of a ghost to bargain down the price. Stranger things have happened. Maybe somewhere less salty, like in the northern suburbs, you’d have a decent argument there – after all, who knows how much you’d have to spend on salt to keep pesky poltergeists at bay? Sea salt isn’t that cheap, you know.
At the end of the day, if a house really is haunted, then the sellers are more than likely aware of that. That means they’re likely to drop the price once they realise a buyer has cottoned on, because they want the thing off their hands.