Red Light Properties: spooky and bawdy serial webcomic about realtors who specialize in haunted houses

Dan Goldman's Red Light Properties is a serial webcomic about a Florida real-estate brokerage that specializes in exorcising haunted houses and then listing them for cheap. Goldman (who created the fantastic 08 graphic novel) takes a somewhat lighthearted premise and uses it as contrast to make the fundamental spookiness of his stories stand out in stark relief. Goldman's ghost stories made the hairs on the back of my neck prickle, while the bawdy slapstick interludes served only to lure me into dropping my guard for the next scare. Highly recommended.

• [Lobster]

  I guess if you’re looking to flip the place, pretending it’s haunted is way cheaper than granite counter tops.

• [bcsizemo]

  What the hell is up with the letter C in her thought/speaking bubbles?  I thought that was a ( at first…and started to try and parse it or something.

• [Erik Gilson]

  LISP would throw a fit, no ending parentheses.

• [cheem]

  The server seems to be burdened at the moment. The first series is also available at:

  http://www.tor.com/stories/2010/01/red-light-properties-chapter-1

  I like the panel by panel presentation on the tor.com version, but it has its detractors. This is, however, a quality comic.

  • [Dan Goldman]

    To all: my apologies re: the server getting Boinged; I’ve been kicking it at the Rio Comic-Con all day in sunny Brazil and had no idea things went down until my ISP emailed me. Everything seems to be OK now, and the version on redlightproperties.com doesn’t have the clicky-thingy interface.
    It’s much easier to read this way. Also, you can flow right into the shiny newer material I’ve been creating all year.

    • [rekoil]

      What I’ve noticed is that the site HTML loads fine, but it’s taking forever to load the panels. You might want to check out an on-demand CDN like Amazon’s CloudFront to speed that up some.

• [YakHerder]

  Watch out, realtors, if you don’t disclose that the house is haunted! Because, in New York at least, the buyer can rip up the sale contract if they decide they’d rather not live at 112 Ocean Avenue. Yes, just in time for Halloween, enjoy the spooky tale of Stambovsky v. Ackley! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stambovsky_v._Ackley (NY App. Div. 1991). Mr. Stambovsky bought the house from Ms. Ackley in Nyack, NY. Stambovsky was from NYC and was not aware of the folklore of Nyack, including the widely known haunting story surrounding the house. The court found that a house-buyer shouldn’t be expected to have the house checked for poltergeists before moving in, so Stambovsky was able to undo the contract altogether.

• [bluedream]

  That was great fun to read, all 23 chapters, especially the Yiddishe/Brujo  cultural mix.  Thanks for featuring this.

  • [Dan Goldman]

    There’s another 100pgs of new material at redlightproperties.com
    —love—> d!

• [devophill]

  >squint squint< Nope, that lettering is unreadable (on my computer, at least). Shame, sounds good.

• [blueelm]

  This is seriously the best webcomic I have ever read. I don’t typically like any of them, so take however you want to. But this is the best.

• [blueelm]

  That’s it? I’m at the end of it? Now I have to wait? Nooooooooooooooo!

• [Maxload]

  just a sec, didn’t chuck palahnuick do this exact same story in lullaby?

• [Jon Jones]

  Is that… Carrie Fisher?

• [Edna Rouse]

  I think that that’s a very misleading title… But it works once you know what the comic is actually about!