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Ghostface Real Estate Listing

In Autumn 2019, a real estate listing for a century-old home in Lansing, Michigan went viral when the listing agent (James Pyle) used the Ghostface character from the Scream movie in marketing photos that showcased the home on Realtor.com and Zillow. The listing went live on September 27, 2019, and quickly began trending on Facebook, garnering 300,000 views in 2 days, at which point a story on the unusual popularity of the listing appeared in a local newspaper. Pyle stated that wanted to do something fun and novel for the Halloween season but to keep the photos professional at the same time, and hired photographer Bradley Johnson to take several pictures of him dressed as Ghostface raking leaves in the backyard, preparing to carve a pumpkin in the kitchen, standing on the front and back porches, and peeking out behind curtains and doors. The following day, the story was picked up by several radio stations, including K102.5 in Kalamazoo, WCRZ in Burton, WOMC and ALT97 in Detroit, as well as the Metro Times newspaper in Detroit. Following the increased attention on the Zillow listing, over the next few days the story appeared on major news networks. Pyle stated that a normal listing typically received under 150 views, and his goal was to get between 500 and 1,000 views of the home. However, the Zillow listing ended up receiving over 20,000 views by October 1, one million views by October 2 and exceeded 1.2 million views by October 3. It was estimated that the combined views of the listings on both sites (Zillow and Realtor.com) exceeded 5 million in 5 days. The listing received a cash offer within 4 days and the immense popularity resulted in the home becoming overbooked during the open house and subsequent viewings. Due to the success of the listing, Pyle was scheduled to appear on “Good Morning America” on October 2, 2019. He was quoted as saying that he didn't think he would ever be able to duplicate the success of the listing, but he planned to try some additional variations for future listings. The listing continued to be popular even after the house was off the market. This approach was so successful that it became a recommended practice on Realtor.com.