You drive up to a prospective property and see the house number is 666. Do you high-tail it out of there, like 14% of women? Or continue in for a tour, like 90% of men? In honor of Allhallows Eve, we polled 2,005 U.S. adults to find out how men and women react differently to some very eerie home hauntings. You won’t believe which ghoulish living situations men and women find totally acceptable, and which they could really, um, live without.
Turns out, more women are deterred from a perfect home if it was the site of a former crime scene (59%) than are their male counterparts (47%). But they’re (almost) equally unruffled by the possibility of their home being haunted by a possessed doll: 27% of women and 28% of men said they’d choose an undead toy to cozy up to over other terrifying options (such as a demon, the least popular haunting choice).
Vengeful ghosts, on the other hand, are the haunting that men and women choose above all others, with 45% of women and 36% of men saying they’d be fine with sharing a little attic space with a mean-spirited Casper if it means avoiding a run-in with their neighborhood evil leprechaun (only 21% of women and 24% of men think he’d be an acceptable houseguest).
So while men are more likely to be OK with living near a cemetery (61%) than women are (50%) if it meant being able to own an otherwise perfect home, more men than women (41% versus 36%) would actually pay cold, hard cash for an exorcism. Superstitious much?
With all this said and done, we have just one question: Would you sell you soul for more square footage?
