19. The Ackley House

There’s a beautiful house in quasi-upstate Nyack, New York, where the views are stunning, the men are terrified, and the ghosts are legally protected, thanks to one haunted-heart judge who just loved Ivan Reitman. The Ackley house was the first legally haunted house in the United States, and you can literally hit Sleepy Hollow with a rock thrown from the house’s back porch, so you just know that’s a ruling that tears New York in twain.

This is the story of the Ackley House. Come for the ghosts, stay for the historical impact of the Marshmallow Man, what not to do when selling a house, the finer points of Reader’s Digest, using ghosts as alarm clocks, and Patrick’s crusade against God-given ghost rights.