So You Want to Talk to GhostsNeed to summon a spirit? Set up your Ouija board, light some candles, and follow these guides to get chatting with parties who have shuffled off this mortal coil and onto the next.
Have you ever asked yourself, "Is my house haunted?" Perhaps you've seen a few horror movies like The Conjuring or The Amityville Horror, and some of the spooky occurrences hit a little too close to home for you. Whether you are in this unenviable position or simply curious, there are numerous ghost and haunting signs everyone can detect, if you know what to look for.
These tell-tale indicators will serve as a guide to knowing whether you're being haunted.
Don't immediately jump to conclusions concerning strange noises, they could be natural sounds your house makes, especially if said abode was built in or before the '50s. But don't take these noises for granted, either. A knocking pipe can sound like just about anything, but there's no mistaking genuine footsteps or knuckles rapping against the wall.
Note the timing of mysterious sounds in your home - do they arrive at intervals, or seemingly at random? Do others hear them, or just you? What about pets? Do they get nervous when the sounds occur? Get familiar with the usual goings-on in your home, and make note of anything that seems out of the ordinary.
Is a particular dresser or chair always out of place? Are particular objects always going missing, no matter how many times you find them? You might have a mischievous poltergeist in your house.
Be aware that some more extreme cases of poltergeists are pranks by attention-seeking humans, which is known as poltergeist-faking syndrome. But this doesn't mean you're not being pranked by a ghost.
If you wake up every night around 3 am, you may be experiencing the gentle prod of a spirit. "The veil between here and the spiritual world is thinnest between 3 and 5 am, but most often we are woken up between 3:15 am and 3:30 am," spirit medium Maureen Hancock told Elle Decor. "Because the veil is so thin, spirits can wake you up or nudge you, or even come to you in a dream."
Do you sometimes wake in the morning, or in the middle of the night, and find a scratch on your body you don't remember getting? Or a bruise that seems to sprout from nowhere? Have you ever found mysterious bite marks on your skin?
While the first two examples could be due to natural causes (the body sometimes doesn't register pain upon injury, particularly if the cut or collision isn't serious), in both cases, and certainly where bite marks are concerned, you might be living with a violent or malicious poltergeist. You may need to take action, or you may need to do nothing - reportedly, many poltergeist hauntings, even those of a more serious nature, only last for a short period of time.
Are you having nightmares more frequently than usual? Are they recurring, often involving the same figure or scenario? Increased nightmares don't necessarily indicate your house is haunted, but they can be a sign, as certain theories insist that people are more susceptible to ghosts when asleep, and especially when we're dreaming.
Of course, if you are seeing and/or hearing things and you also feel paralyzed, it could be you are simply experienced sleep paralysis, not spirits from another realm.
Do your lights ever flicker or surge in intensity? Do electronics and appliances turn off and on or operate on their own? You either need to call an electrician or the Ghostbusters.
Or, do nothing. It's theorized that spirits affect electromagnetic fields, and thus are able to cause fluctuations in light intensity or otherwise make electronic objects behave abnormally. Of course, there are logical explanations for this phenomena, so it's best not to jump to conclusions in these situations (phoning the electrician is the best first step).
