My house is haunted advice please

[saminamama]

Husband - 32 and an absolute scientist non believer
me also 32 and whilst a bit more open minded also a non believer

So my husband has been saying for months he thought I was on the landing and then found our no I wasn’t.. he saw a shadow on the upstairs landing and looked up to discover I was downstairs

didnt think much until both children were on my bed and then one of the picture hooks on a picture rail pinged onto the floor of its own accord the other morning now while it freaked me out.:: I didn’t think much and rationalised a mouse ./////

again didn't think much of it until the baby was crying this afternoon and I saw with my own eyes the outline of a man walk across the landing (looked like a shadow)

then this evening the lights (dimmer switch) were switching on and of and this happened about 20 times

not sure what to think

Personally, I think thats a lot of rubbish

Utter garbage 😂

I've seen far too many strange things not to believe in ghosts

My current house has a both a sentient spirit ( I am starting to think there are 2) and recorded events that replay at intervals.

And I know someone with a newish build house that I would not be happy living in at all without a full on exorcism. She hides under the duvet.

When I was growing up I had exactly this in my house. I was in my bedroom and my parents had nipped out - I was probably about 13 and I saw a shadow across the gap in the door, assumed they had come home but they hadn’t. I also used to have dreams about shadows and figures. Anyway, my parents thought I was being a dramatic teenager so I went to the library and started researching the land our house was on. Using microfiche of old newspapers (showing my age now!) Our house was built very near an old coal mine that had collapsed in 1806 and trapped 2 men and a boy. It was known as the Hunger Hills Pit disaster. I was sure that this was why our house was haunted and I had disturbed sleep and night terrors until we left when I was 16. I’ve had other experiences of a ‘presence’. Titanic Spa in Huddersfield is probably the most haunted place I have ever been to. It’s an old mill - the staff have some interesting stories. I suppose the point of my reply is that I do believe in the paranormal so I don’t think you should keep trying to explain away odd happenings in your home. I’m not sure on a solution, maybe others on here have practical advice.

I’m just you being unreasonable because ghosts don’t exist

Ghosts do exist, we just don't know what they are yet.

@smallglassbottle - totally with you on this. We don’t know what they are.

I’m inclined to believe it’s powerful energy imprints or perhaps an additional dimension where time works differently.

It amazes me that people blithely accept that we can speak to someone on the other side of the world by our voices being broadcast up and bouncing off satellites; that we can watch a coherent image made out of a load of scrambled signals sent down a cable etc, yet apparently never wonder whether the scientific phenomena that allow those processes also allow for other types of connection and transmission of other types of energy.

Tend to agree.

The concept of ghosts exists in just about every society and culture across the world since records began. They seem to be a universal human experience. The experience of these ghosts may vary but the basic concept of a spirit or essence that survives physical death is pretty consistent across cultures. To the non believers, how do you explain this? Do you really think all these people over the centuries are just talking out of their arse? That's a pretty arrogant way of thinking to me personally

It's fairly easy to explain, isn't it? We have a natural wish to feel that death is not the end of everything, and inventing ghosts is one way of fulfilling that wish. That was particularly the case centuries ago when so many people died early, whether due to disease, war, famine or whatever. It takes very little for that sort of belief to start up and grow. See also all the studies on the human need to invent and believe in a deity.

Your house isn't haunted because ghosts aren't real.

Some people like to pretend otherwise for a variety of reasons, which is - mostly - fine. Each to their own.

But whether someone has genuinely convinced themselves, whether they're trying to con or frighten people, whether they're staying open minded for lack of a better explanation...it's all irrelevant because ghosts aren't real.

Was wondering where that was going!! 😆😆

@GoodQueenWenceslaus

I completely understand that people who have lost family or friends would perhaps be in the mindset of wanting to reconnect with that person and then the mind making up visions of where they think they might have seen them again. But how do you explain all the other millions of accounts of people seeing ghosts or experiencing paranormal activity in places that they have no sentimental connection too?

Lots of things exist in broadly similar forms across different cultures. We all developed tools, languages, kept pets, discovered medicines, etc.

Every culture experiences death in the same way, so 'What comes after?' is a natural, universal curiosity - even moreso the further back you go, when death would have been a much more prominent part of everyday life.

How many different explanations could there possibly be? The 'spirit' either goes somewhere else or it hangs around. Add religion and superstition to the mix, and consider how all societies have used them throughout history, and it's not difficult to see how cultures on opposite sides of the world all end up with concepts resembling ghosts and haunting.

Those people are either mistaken, or lying. It's that simple.

People will tie themselves in knots not to believe in ghosts. It's actually really weird.

Sounds like you probably have a ghost. I mean you literally both saw it. It's pretty rare to actually see something too. Could it be something else? Sure. But it sounds like you know it isn't.

I guess the approach depends on how you feel. If you feel threatened or unsafe then it's a problem and you should probably call in your local minister. Otherwise I'd be inclined to bless the house myself and see if that shifts it. In whatever way feels right to you.

Good luck! I'm sure you'll be fine!

Whatever you believe, you could ask a catholic priest to come and bless the house. It might make you feel better.

@Kimura

Okay well I'll use my in laws house as an example. I was a skeptic before meeting them.

So they have a guest bedroom in their house that experiences some kind of phenomena. Multiple different people and couples who have stayed in that room have experienced various degrees of activity whilst staying there. Including sightings of a female figure, objects falling off shelves with no obvious reasons as to why, voices, and physical sensations of touch and many other strange things. They have all been experienced by people who have not been told about the previous guests experiences. One woman who was part of a couple who had never been to the UK before and had no connection to the property or it's history spent about 3 hours in the room before running out screaming that she couldn't stay in it as there was someone else in the room with them. The room is quite unassuming it's neutrally decorated and doesn't give off any creepy vibes. Even though the house itself is 200 years old it is well maintained and is not like a typical old creaky horror house that might give people pre conceived ideas.

About 10 different people have all experienced some very odd unexplainable things including myself. What we are all lying or stupid according to you are we?

People will tie themselves in knots not to believe in ghosts.

You don't have to tie yourself in knots (or do anything at all, really) to not believe in something that doesn't exist.

I'd say it's the other way around, people who think ghosts do exist concocting fantastical explanations in lieu of evidence in an effort to convince themselves or others.

It's actually really weird.

How? If someone wants to believe in ghosts - or pretend they do - then cool! I hope they have a great time with it.

But if they want to discuss it in a public forum, it's not weird for everyone else to treat it like any other fantasy.

Get the electrics checked asap or the ghosts will be the least of your problems, your risk of house fire exponentially increases.

Years ago when I was still a child/teen we lived in new build house. Single house set in what was once a part of next doors garden. Next door being a 4 storey detached Victorian house
At the back was fields

Considering that our family were the first to live there and everything was brand new it was the creepiest house I have ever lived in. So creepy that if I came home from school and no one was at home I would not enter that house. I used to run from my bedroom down the stairs because I could feel something/s watching me.

Moved to what looked like a really creepy house a few years later and that feeling of being watched just disappeared

Several years later I saw a book about the local area. It had sketches and descriptions of different roads and I saw that the fields that were at the back of the creepy house was once where they held village fetes. Where the large Victorian house was built was once a local church and the graveyard was directly underneath our house

You might not believe in ghosts but a scientific explanation could be that when someone dies, their energy doesn’t die .It must go somewhere. Energy cannot be destoyed, it just changes.

I didn't say stupid. Lying or mistaken, yes.

I struggle to believe that a mentally well, grown adult would run screaming out of a room and refuse to return because they 'thought there was someone else in the room with them'...unless that person was already heavily invested in the idea of ghosts/hauntings.

If I woke up and genuinely thought that someone was in the room with me, I'd turn on the light, look around, see that the room was empty and go back to sleep.

A rational person wouldn't immediately leap to 'ghost'; they'd assume it was a vivid dream, or sleep paralysis, or the unfamiliar environment causing their mind to play tricks on them, or any number of more plausible explanations.

You might not believe in ghosts but a scientific explanation could be that when someone dies, their energy doesn’t die .It must go somewhere. Energy cannot be destoyed, it just changes.

But we know where the energy stored in our bodies goes when we die. Body heat radiates out as we cool down after death. If we're cremated, it's converted into heat and light. If we're left to decompose, it's consumed by microorganisms and converted into heat/other organic matter.

We know this because we can observe, measure and replicate it.

Suggesting that our energy somehow hangs around as a spirit/ghost with no evidence is the opposite of a scientific explanation.

The very need to go 'ghosts dont exist' is weird.
It always comes across as a bit of a narcissistic thing to say tbh.

'I've never seen anything so, who knows'. Sure, makes sense. Perfectly fair.

But here you have a person who's given you perfectly plausible reasons as to why her house 'could' be haunted. And you're like 'nope, not real lalalalala'. It's weird. It always makes me think of a child that's been told ghosts aren't real at 5 and never questioned it their whole lives.Terrifued that anything could rock their world view or take away their perceived control over their lives.

They could very well be real. You don't know everything. Nobody does.

Thank you for sticking with it. The same old nonsense - energy, time slips, quantum effects etc - comes out every time. It’s wearing, and I admire posters who are willing patiently to push back against this woo.

Together with cod anthropology, like “all societies have ghosts - therefore they must exist”, it’s harmful, rationality-destroying tosh.