Every now and then Craigslist gets a whopper of an ad. This ad was discovered by a woman who was researching the Southwest Florida region.

“HAUNTED TV - Toshiba TW40 40″ HDTV television

I am selling my 5 year old Toshiba HDTV because I am a college student who is unable to transport it to another school. It is rather large because its a projection and weighs about 100 pounds. It works fine, has a nice glossy screen and is in good condition.

There is one caveat that I must bring to the buyer’s attention: This TV is almost certainly haunted by the spirit of a 1970’s-era baptist pastor named Klent Kloom. He is harmless, but the buyer should be comfortable with cries of “HALLELUJIA”" (sic) at unearthly hours of night. I am unfamiliar with exorcism and cannot find a good reference on the internet. … Original URL: http://fortmyers.craigslist.org/ele/532991654.html

I had to admit that I was curious about Kent Kloom and why he would pick a TV, of all things, to haunt. Then I remembered those stupid TV evangelists and moved on to investigate Kloom. The Craigslist ad has since been flagged for removal. A quick check in Google revealed this thread in the Something Awful forum. A grin spread across my face, which is a hard thing for me to do in the morning.

This entire thing was a hoax.

Dreadite says:

I checked my Gmail about 3 hours later to see if there were any inquiries. One caught my eye: the local newspaper wanted to do a report on my “haunted” tv. I couldn’t pass this up, so I called the number the reporter left me and went through with the phone interview. I basically made up all the details on the phone, and that was that.

Here is the resulting article from the unsuspecting reporter, which caught my attention in the first place. Dreadite has since sold his TV, and the news article was syndicated on a score of blogs. It even received 3 Diggs.