Haunted Listings: A Realtor’s Deal with the Dead


Farah was a star real estate agent.

Smart, stylish, and so persuasive she could sell a 1980s one-bedroom with no ventilation as “a cozy retro capsule.” She prided herself on finding the perfect homes for her clients. Her Instagram (@farahsellsfast) had boomed thanks to her signature tagline:

“This house just needs love!”

But lately, she was starting to wonder if some houses didn’t want love —
They wanted revenge.

It started subtly.

A newly listed bungalow in PECHS (with questionable plumbing but a great school nearby) gave her the creeps. Not the usual Karachi-creeps, like stray cats fighting or mysterious sewer smells. This was colder. Quieter. Off.

She ignored it. Until one day, she was giving a tour and a client asked:

“Is the old man in the living room part of the staff?”

Farah froze. The house was empty.

That night, she came back to double-check the keys and saw it —
an old man in a white kurta staring out the window. He turned, gave her the saddest smile she’d ever seen… and vanished.

After that, it escalated. A woman in Gulshan refused to leave the nursery, still humming lullabies no one could hear but the babies. A teenager kept playing old Strings cassettes in the attic of a Defence duplex. Someone — or something — kept resetting the dining table for six in a Korangi house where no one had eaten for years.

The houses weren’t haunted in the usual horror-film way. There were no flying plates or screams in the dark. And the spirits? They weren’t angry. They were just… heartbroken. As if they missed the people who once made them homes.

One night, Farah sat in a cold drawing room, sipping chai that had somehow brewed itself (ghost hospitality is real), and finally whispered:

“I get it. You don’t want to be forgotten. But can we work something out?”

She proposed a plan:
If the ghosts helped make the house more appealing, she'd promise to sell only to kind people. People who’d listen to the walls. Who wouldn’t bulldoze every crack in its memory.

To her surprise, the ghosts agreed.

Now? Farah’s listings are the hottest in the city.

Clients walk in to fresh smells of baking (ghost brownies), soft warm lighting (courtesy of a former electrician who died in the 80s), and that eerie but oddly comforting feeling that someone is watching — in a good way. There’s always a candle already lit. A fan that knows just the right speed. 

Farah has a new tagline now:

“Some houses just come with history… and excellent ghost staging.”

And business?
Hauntingly good.

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