How To Have a Ghost-Free Home

Living in a home that has unexplained activity can cause stress, anxiety, fear, and even anger for the homeowners. It can cause arguments and unease between family members. It can create sleep disorders, eating disorders, panic attacks, depression, and even manic-like behavior. Interestingly, those existing dynamics can also bring activity to a home. 

We can study what kinds of homes tend to have activity and which ones that do not report activity to determined a bit about what you should avoid.

Mess/Clutter/Darkness:  In Feng Shui terms, this is attracting negative energy. Cul-Du-Sacs in the home and packed corners, boxes, crowding, and no open pathways create a place for that negative energy to sit and reside. Energy is pretty much universal in that it appreciates an easy open path to keep moving. As well, packed content can cause a lot of disruption when you consider the energy that each object contains, especially objects handled by many people. You end up with a conflict that can cause bad feelings, unease, and other negative feelings. 

Residents moving in and out:  The very composition of the living within the house can create a chemistry that supports issues or alleviates. It helps to keep a watch on who is in the home when incidents happen and if activity began or ended with a person's addition or absence in the home. If this is the case, time usually readjusts everything. It is much like the "renovation" phenomena. Dynamics create disruption and harmony and stasis helps things to calm down. In this case, it's a waiting game for things to stabilize. 

Poor or no communication between occupants:  Ironically, the one time you need good communication is when you are having issues in the home, but lots of families/roommates become more detached, separate, silent and brooding. Actually talking out loud about what is going on can sometimes dismiss the action. If this brings a family or roommates together rather than dividing them, the home becomes less interesting. Do not ever let ghostly activity separate you - that is the attraction to the spirit realm. In groups, we are less intriguing. Do not become culled from your herd! 

Lack of good air/negative ions: Part of keeping away bad activity is to keep the people in the home healthy. This is vital because sickness and mental illness can create a tension and vulnerability that allows for more activity. So, I always advise if you can to keep the environment clear of smoke, have house plants to clean air, and if you can put in an ionic air cleaner or waterfall fountain; they both give off negative ions that give people a "feel good" sensation. 

Mental Illness/Emotional and Hormonal turmoil/Sleep issues:  The vulnerable are not just attractive to para activity, but it is entirely possible they can activate the situation with their very brain activity and chemistry. Poltergeist activity is noted to be higher for those with temporal and parietal lobe issues. Always remember, your home is only as strong as your weakest link. Proper medications are important to balancing the hormones and electrical activity in the brain to lessen para events. Sleep, as well, is a state in which the brain goes into alpha waves as it drifts into true sleep. During that falling asleep and awakening states, communication is very easy between the "realms." This is exactly why the dead visit us in our sleep. The key to handling bedtime "intruders" is understanding that you are better able to perceive what is there than when you are alert. There is no need for fear, simply know that visitor pass back and forth in your perception. Good sleep hygiene is critical because this is most likely to happen when you are drunk, medicated or overly sleepy. 

No focus for positive:  A "power center" is a very potent home addition and every home should have one, ghosts or not. A table used as a kind of "altar." It's not for worship, so much as gathering a lot of positive energy that you believe in, that feeds your soul and makes a place that is utterly unattractive for anything disruptive. This table can contain anything from religious text, photos of loved ones, stones, gems, geods, seashells, pine cones, plants, flowers, symbols of religious or spiritual significance, items of loved ones who wished you well, happy memories, incense, candles and more. All of it must have meaning to you, to make you feel empowered, loved and protected. The placement is ideal in a room where sun might light it up occasionally, in a main room that is central. If you have sleeping difficulties, put it in your bedroom. 

Peace, serenity and faith:  Playing happy music, hanging up happy family photos, and leaving religious text open on a table are all pleasant, protective and empowering energies. A home becomes less attractive when there is love, peace and faith.

Reclaiming your home: The simplest and often the most effective method to safeguard your home is to take it back. Out loud, as a group, announce that it is your home, there is no place for others, you will not tolerate further harassment, it is time for them to move on. Be sure you get everyone to come together for this so that it shows numbers.

Cleansing/Blessings:  Most people take the route of a blessing or cleansing for their home, hoping that will quell the negative, but it only works if you believe, as well. It is your continued belief in the practice that makes it have the power of lasting. A Catholic blessing for a Protestant is going to be pretty much, no help. So, stay within your own spiritual practices. Those who wish to burn sage, need to start in the rear of the house, work their way through the house to the open front door and out. The problem with saging is that it can work a few months and then you're back to issues again. My suggestion is simple - sage lightly the house and then do so daily. Nothing elaborate. A fast cursory going through. Do it daily for a whole month. What happens is that instead of the place wearing off, it keeps it at a constant level long enough to be obnoxious. You might also want to do a search for protective stones, protective incense, protective symbols, and more. I have found as a psychometrist (a psychic who reads objects) that stones/gems/crystals/geods have energy. It can be a powerful repellent. Some of the best protective ones are black obsidian, amber, labrodorite, malachite, cat's eye, and more.

Journal: This is one of my favorite methods. Keep a spiral notebook open. When something happens, note the time/date, where it happened, who witnessed it, who was in the house, and if there were any issues among family members that day-like argument or sad mood, etc. Do this for a month or more. What happens is a few things - one is that it is openly known to everyone that events are being documented and you go from being a victim to being an observer and archivist, a "narc," telling on the ghosts. It is not only empowering, but it takes the fear out of the factor and makes the occupants of the home no longer an easy target.

Conclusion

There are many ways to resolve living in a haunted home, but the most important things to know are that there are tools for you to use and sometimes the best thing you can do is consider it a Scooby Doo mystery. Instead of hiding from it, start observing it, poking around, being curious. It's kind of like you're saying "hey, what are you up to in the living room?" 

How To Cope With Ghosts

Lots of ghosts shows have swept right over the part where the homeowners are left with the realization their home is haunted and now have to say goodbye to the team and live there alone again.

I have a set of steps I like to take a client through:

First, we determine if there are haunting features by seeing if any of the events are explainable and seeing if there seems to be unexpected input in the environment. 

If it seems there is something going on, we then determine personal threat. If we're talking about doors opening and closing, footfalls, voices, cold spots, feelings of being watched, there is no real threat, only the unexpected. We learn to cope with unexpected things every day from a rain shower we didn't see coming to a busted water pipe. Cognitively reframing the experience is significant in lowering stress levels.

The next step is a very simple one, the comforting feel of the home can be shifted by doing simple measures like opening a Bible and leaving it out, playing soft happy music, and most importantly letting in light and clearing the clutter--organizing. These simple Feng Shui principles help change the very tone and energy of a home. It also lays down tracks of positive feelings and helps to make energy better able to move on and move out rather than cul-de-sac in dark cluttered corners. Honestly, the very emotional content of the people within the home and their relationships can very much attract activity. A home that is without constant reminders of disorganization, darkness, dirtiness, and clutter, can help elevate the moods of the occupants and make the home a not so friendly hiding spot and help the individual members to handle things with empowerment.

Some teams will advise calling out and telling the spirits it's your house and they need to scram. That's a fantastic tool to use when a family feels the time is right, but one thing investigators often forget to tell families is that this may not work. It may not work because the haunting is residual. In that case, they need to learn to live with a bit of history replaying itself upon occasion from sounds and scents to apparitions. Sometimes, it's as if old houses have memories like people do and they replay them from time to time.

Did you notice so far that I haven't jumped right into saging and prayer? All of these efforts are done in steps. There is no need to run for the big guns when some pepper spray is enough to deter.

Eventually, the belief system of the clients can be taken into consideration when further steps need to be taken. The key here is to not have people jumping to conclusions that what is in their home is bad, is permanent, or is evil. Usually the first steps work and we never have to resort to these unless the investigation team has not done their job at calming down the occupants and helping them reframe the experience so it is not the threatening unknown, but the universally perplexing mystery that it often times is.

There are always exceptions including members being hurt and that is when the further steps can be instituted and the people empowered with mental skills that can help them feel in charge.

There is no one perfect answer for coping with ghosts, but it should go in degrees and it should be done with a great deal of reverence for the power of the occupants who are living and respect for those who have passed on.