1 LaVeta Place

1 LaVeta Place in Nyack has the distinction of being one of the few places in the Unites States to be legally recognized as haunted. The story of this house begins in the early 1960s when Helen Ackley purchased and moved into the building with her husband, George. Every morning the couple would wake up to their bed shaking, doors would often slam on their own, phantom footsteps could be heard, and they report seeing at least one apparition in their time at the house. Helen has said that the ghosts in her home belonged to a couple from Revolutionary times named Sir George and Lady Margaret. They lived peacefully with the spirit for 20 years before deciding to sell the home to Jeffrey and Patrice Stambovsky without mentioning anything about the haunting.

The Stambovskys found out about the ghosts that haunted 1 LaVeta Place after having made an initial deposit. Jeffrey filed a lawsuit against the Ackleys in an effort to back out of the deal, and in 1991 the New York Supreme Court ruled that he had the right to do so, as the haunting had not been disclosed to him, though it did not award him any damages. “As a matter of law, the house is haunted,” reads the court’s majority opinion in what became known as the Ghostbusters Ruling.