Id like to test if it is genuine or not, I suspect there is a rational explanation but have been wondering about ways to investigate. Does anyone have any knowledge or experience of such things?

41 comments

  2. My aunt believes her house was haunted and she got someone in to perform an exorcism. Whether it was a ghost or a trick of the mind, the exorcism resolved it. Sometimes the end result doesn’t require proof.

  4. On a side note, if you ever get to speak to an estate agent ask them about haunted houses, they often have some weird tales!

  5. If you could prove it was real you would overturn huge chunks of science and religion

    You think you are going to be the one who can do that, after people have been trying for hundreds of years?

  6. I’d suggest that they’re an idiot and then offer to give them a short science lesson explaining why ghosts don’t exist.

  7. Suggest that it is definitely haunted and they need to sell it to you at way below market price.

  8. I’d suggest that they prepare to be relentlessly taken the piss out of by myself and the rest of our friends.

  12. Well, theres a main investigation technique that never fails. You need to gather something that picks up EC communication (theres expensive equipment, but a simple old wind up radio or walkie talkie will do the same), some go pros to monitor the main rooms, you need an accurate and back up thermometer that can monitor your cold spots… now you take all those and ask yourself do you live in the real world or a movie, if its the former theres no such thing as ghosts grow up.

  13. Do they live in an abandoned amusement park? Do they own a Great Dane who eats extremely large sandwiches?

  14. I was an English teacher abroad and had recently started a new job in Indonesia. I was given a ‘housewives’ class at about 11 in the morning. I was new and not really prepared and it was almost Halloween so I thought I’d do a Halloween lesson that I’d taught a few times before in Spain and Italy. At the start of the class, I asked the group if anyone had seen a ghost or if they knew anyone that had seen a ghost. In Spain and Italy, you’d usually get one or two people who knew someone who had seen a ghost, but in this group in Indonesia, every member in the group raised their hand. They had all either seen ghosts or had family members who would see them regularly.

    Later, I was at a friend’s house in their village (like a village in the city). One of his neighbours was in front of his house cleaning a motorbike. My friend told me that his neighbour had the power to open your eyes to see ghosts and asked me if I would like to see some ghosts. I told him that I’d love to see ghosts (as I am a materialist and skeptical of anything metaphysical). He asked his neighbour who stopped washing his bike and looked about a bit before announcing that there weren’t any ghosts around as it was Ramadan.

  15. I would tell them to double check there’s not a carbon monoxide leak. That’s usually the explanation, and it’s why it tends to be old, run down buildings that you hear spookiness about.

    Beyond that I would enjoy the stories as a bit of fun

  16. My friend became convinced his house was haunted after the birth of his child. He said he followed his wife into the bedroom but she wasn’t there. I believe that he believes he saw something. I just think it was a hallucination due to lack of sleep.

    Him and his wife started researching and think the haunting began due to the “sudden and dramatic change of having a baby” upsetting whatever dwelled in the house. They didn’t like me pointing out that surely when we ripped the house back to brick (empty shell ready to be rewired, plumbed and plastered) that would’ve counted as a “sudden and dramatic change”. We were pulling original 150 year old fixtures apart, surely if the ghost didn’t like change that would’ve pissed it off?

    Anyway they burnt some sage and left a few doors open and the “haunting” stopped. Coincidentally around the time they both started to get some sleep as the baby settled.

  17. Whilst ghosts are not real and houses cannot be haunted, the experiences of people who think their houses are haunted are real.

    Take them seriously and offer to come and experience them together, and find out what the phenomena actually is with a rational head on.

    Buildings make the strangest noises and if you’re the kind of person who believes in ghosts, you’ll hear them in any home with enough time.

    Sightings are more complex – but most people see the same things others interpret as ghosts too, and just never think anything of it. When my dog died, I kept seeing her out the corner of my eye – but I know that’s just my brain expecting her to be there, not her ghost.

    Humans are dumb and think perfectly normal stuff is weird.

  18. For the few people on here who do believe in ghosts, why aren’t there billions of ghosts clogging up the whole world from the 3.5 billion years we’ve had life on earth?

    Animal ghosts with their heads poking up through your floorboards because they lived there before your house was built, insect ghosts, T-rex ghosts that take up the whole interior space of your house so all you can see is shimmering white ectoplasm filling the living room.. it doesn’t make sense to me.

  19. Ask your friend what they would do if they just died and found out there was an afterlife, would they want to spend their time hanging round their old house?

  25. A lot of peole don’t understand what the human brain is capable of. Sleep paralysis, hallucinations, the mind ‘filling in blanks’, seeing faces in shapes, etc etc. The human mind is a complex and paranoid thing, pre-programmed by millennia of being prey animals, to see danger.

    Whilst ghosts, spirits and demons remain conjectural, the suggestible and malleable nature of the mind is a certainty. If your friend really believes their house is haunted, then nothing you can say or do will stop this belief – any proof will be knocked down with ‘yes, but what about…’ All you can do is nod and smile and keep an eye open for degenerative mental conditions (like dementia, which can cause hallucinatory occurances which seem real), psychosis or carbon monoxide poisoning.

  26. They can set up a series of mirrors in every room in their house.

    If they think they see a ghost, the can go to the nearest mirror, and take a long hard look at themselves.

  29. My mates considered my house haunted because me lil sister had an imaginary friend. One of the lads actually ran down the stairs and knocked tea out my hand which I made for him cos he saw something. Never believed in haunted houses but the one I’m living in now freaks me the duck out. I’ve seen things and heard things that my brain can’t process. Due to the way I bought this crack den I knew someone died as the carpet downstairs was only lifted in a certain area. Also human teeth in the living. That was a fantastic find

  30. The last house I lived in there was loud moanings from the kitchen at night. And most mornings the blind in the attic room we slept in would slowly open itself. You could watch it happen.

    The “moaning” was a Bosch dishwasher that we inherited from my parents. They called it moaning myrtle. Wasn’t haunted, just noisy.

    The blinds were pulled down against a spring and held in place by friction. When the Sun hit the blinds it would warm up the metal causing it to expand and release the grip. The spring would open the blind.

    Not haunted.

  31. I’m extremely sceptical about this sort of thing, particularly those who claim to have ‘evidence’.

    That being said, when I was 13 years old I woke up one morning and went to the bathroom for a piss. This was about 8am. I left the bathroom to go downstairs and as I got to the top of the landing, a man half-dressed walked into my sisters room. Bear in mind my sister is 7 at the time so no bf sneaking around and she wasn’t home anyway.

    He was only 3 feet away and I caught the bottom half of him as I was looking down towards the stairs. It was so real i could have touched him.

    Goes without saying I screamed and launched myself down the stairs and ran into the living room to tell my mum I saw someone upstairs. Obviously she runs to check but nothing. It wasn’t a huge house so not like they could be hiding anywhere.

    I’m not into superstition but I have no explanation for that morning. I wasn’t in a heightened state of awareness and it was broad daylight. No real reason for my mind to play tricks on me.

  33. Have a niece who saw the previous owner who apparently passed away in the house or use to live there

    Strangely she described her as looking old with a hunchback etc, which a neighbour did confirm the previous owner had those features

    Of course, hard to convince the little one that its not real etc, but apparently its something she saw during the day and night, she just tried to ignore the figure. Eventually they moved away anyway

  34. I have some magic beans that prevent hauntings, if your friend really really needs them then I’d reluctantly offer some for sale.

  35. The house being haunted or not is the least interesting part of the question (it’s not…) The interesting conversation is how would you convince someone who believes their house is haunted, that it’s not?

    That requires some more creativity.

    Ask what makes them think that, (the “symptoms”) and find ways to observe/test/measure them.

    Maybe there’s a draft that causes doors to creak or slam shut, maybe sound from the boiler travels through the walls.

    If the symptoms are apparitions or spooky voices, it could be a mental health problem. Cognitive effects of carbon monoxide poisoning have caused people to “see” ghosts, aliens, demons, etc.

    There are lots of reasons to believe a house is haunted, you need to be able to show rational explanations your friend will accept.

    Or your friend is just pissing about.

  36. if someone believes in ghosts (not in an edgy teenager way) there’s little thats going to persuade them they’re not real. i would suggest some …spiritual… methods of getting rid of an unwanted guest; burn some sage and place some hawthorn boughs over windows & doors. the ceremony of it should calm them down & shut them up.

  37. Smoke so much weed, hot box the house and the ghost will get high and just float away.

  38. Believing in ghosts is crazy. Believing in a God is absolutely fine though…

  39. First off, it’s not haunted. Let’s just get that out of the way lol.

    I find most haunted houses are the result of people not understanding how their house works. Once you learn a bit about the house, these misattributions tend to go away…

    Typically, “haunted houses” have several reasons for unexplained phenomena and unusual goings on. Maybe a door slams shut, noises, groanings, items falling off shelves, ghost sightings. All can be very easily explained… I’ll go through a list for you.

    1. Installing doors is hard – Doors are standardized in size. Which means, that if you were to see hundreds of doors at a shop, the chances they’re near enough the same dimensions is pretty high. Now, imagine you’re a chippy doing the woodwork on a new build. The hours are long, and you can’t really be arsed. Are you going to make sure the door way you fabricate is within single digit mm tolerances each time…? More than likely not, but even if you did, time, damp, the weight on the frame, subsidence, all these factors pretty much guarantee that over a period of time, your door is going to just be straight up installed wrong. This changes the way it opens, changes the way the catch works, etc. Which brings me on to the next point…
    2. Learn what air pressure is – Air pressure is a huge part of understanding how to live in your house. Understanding air pressure can help you effectively warm and cool your house, but if you live in a house, and you’ve noticed before that having a window open downstairs causes a door to slam upstairs, that is done purely by pressure. So lets say you have low pressure out the front of your house, and high pressure in your bed room. The second you open that front window, the pressure in your house will try to equalize. Meaning that air will be rushing through your house trying to get out into the street where the air pressure is low. That rush of air is what slams your door. Now, apply this to an old house. Lets face it, it’s probably *not air tight.* Meaning that pressure changes in all sorts of areas of your home could be pushing and pulling air in all sorts of directions. Couple this with a poorly installed door like above, and you can get some weird occurrences, with things falling off shelves, doors slamming and opening, strange wailing sounds. It’s all just air. Air pressure can do things like knock stuff off shelves to *moving the entire frame of your house.* Don’t under estimate how powerful it is when applied at scale.
    3. Pipes are fucking loud – This is universal, even in new builds pipes are very loud. They’re loud because they’re built to handle very cold water, and very hot water. And because builder don’t want them flopping all over the place, they have to secure them somehow. So they fasten them down to make sure they don’t move. Well, this doesn’t work too well with things that want to expand and contract with how hot/cold they get. Modern pipes do better, but they’re still not perfect. This constant expanding and contracting in your water/heating system is what causes some pretty audible groans and creaks in your house. Oh, and of course, pipes are privy to the same air pressure issues I’ve already mentioned. Which causes the same kinds of sounds.
    4. Human brains need air – So I’ve talked about how a poorly insulated, weathered house can make it seem haunted, but what happens when you get a room that’s *too well insulated?* Well, you get Hypoxia, that’s what. Or worse, co2, or co poisoning. I actually have first hand experience of this. My nan and grandad slept in a tiny room, it was filled to the rafters with stuff, blankets, carpet, heavy duvet, extra covers, thick pillows. They don’t like the cold, so they insulated *everything* and triple glazed their windows, installed draft excluders on the door. Well, the result of that was there wasn’t much air circulating around. This resulted in poor sleep, hypoxia, hallucinations etc. All they where breathing for 8 hours a night was old stale air, which causes havoc with your brain. My grandad swore he occasionally saw angels, and ghosts of dead relatives at the foot of his bed, but nope. Just hallucinations due to a dazed awoken brain starved of oxygen. If my grandparents stock their bedroom like this, I’m willing to bet other old houses do too in the hopes of keeping warm. So make sure you have a clear flow of clean, fresh oxygen into your damn bedroom, and don’t sleep with your face in the pillow!
    5. Electrics are hard – This one is a bit less commonly misattributed as hauntings, as it’s easier for people to parse electrical faults as being just that in our head. But I thought I’d just mention it just in case. If you have an unknown issue around anything that can carry an electric current, it’s probably just faulty wiring somewhere… Not much more I can say about that. The circuit that is your house is complicated and has a lot of components. The likeliness that one will fail is 100%. That’s without getting into the complexity of electronic devices running off of that circuit, which can also go wrong. Corrosion in a damp house is a leading cause for these faults. Leaking pipes can spread along walls, causing mould, and rising damp. Which can lead to high moisture in the air, which can damage anything electrical. Bonus points on the corrosion if you live by the sea.

    Getting to know your house will help you understand these processes, and help you think of your house less as a black box, and more of a system where work has been done to make it all work as a home, but also where things can go wrong. Once you understand that, these ‘hauntings’ become less supernatural, and more just items on your home maintenance checklist.

  40. Experienced a few ghosts and one haunted house. All I can usefully say is that ghosts are like echoes. They don’t see you, they don’t react to you, they aren’t – as far as I could tell – really conscious. Although one did look at me in shock and vanish when I spoke to it, but I think that’s probably a replay of something that happened decades or centuries ago too.

    Best thing is just to get used to what they do then ignore them.

  41. Personally, I’d laugh. Did once and it backfired on me. House share, 6 of us, discussing the “ghost” that supposedly haunted it. I scoffed and said “if there’s a ghost here, pop the lightbulb”. Everyone goes to bed, I’m last up. Guess what happened next?

    I nearly shit myself.

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