sockportal Yes indeed they can be witches without accepting the label. My grandmother was the same. She would have considered herself a good Christian but had a deep belief in the fairy folk and had a whole host of witchy practices. Call her a witch and she'd have been horrified.
I admit it's not my preferred term either as it carries so much negative baggage. Practitioner of Cunning Craft sounds much less loaded to me.
Plant native trees/ flowers in your patch - especially ones that attract the bees and insects. The gaudier and showier the plant the less insect value it has - many are sterile and provide no food for them. My borders are constantly buzzing but the tubs of pretty summer bedding are largely ignored.
If you can let it overgrow a little to provide cover and a habitat for wild things. Sadly nature friendly gardening does not lend itself to neat and tidy gardens. If you can add a bird bath or pond - all these will attract life. I love watching the blue damselflies playing in my own tiny pond.
Many witches seem to have cats - me included! Cats hunt as part of their nature, so while I hate that they do, I don't think it disturbs the overall harmony of the garden. Death is part of life after all and a sparrowhawk made a good meal of a pigeon on my lawn yesterday.
dentistwimp Welcome!
I believe that yes some places do have an "atmosphere" that is unpleasant. I've actually walked into places and felt so uncomfortable that I don't stay long. It's unlikely that the place you lived was actually hexed or cursed. It's nowhere as easy to do as the internet would have you believe and to craft an effective and long lasting one is quite a skilled job and I'd have to be seriously motivated to do so. In fact a friend and I had a very enjoyable time over lunch discussing a field that was said to kill anyone who stuck a spade in it and working out how we'd power it!
I would think its more likely that previous owners were unhappy and just left an awful lot of pain and misery behind them which you and your family picked up on. I' have done a through energetic clean up of the place, warded it well and filled it with something nice instead. If a place is really unclean it can take a few cleanings to get rid of it all.
What the house was built on or if something really traumatic happened there could also have been bleeding through. They've turned a disused hospital near me into luxury apartments - absolutely no way would I want to live there. Hospitals are such places of searing raw emotion that I'm sure it gets recorded into the fabric of the building (we do that with music on to vinyl or CD deliberately) and that would be so hard to get rid of. In fact I'm not sure you ever could.