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7 Signs Your House Could Be Haunted, According to Paranormal Experts

These chilling signs suggest your home may have visitors from beyond the grave. So, is your house haunted?

Haunted House
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A haunted house

Haunted houses aren’t just ghost stories for Halloween. For those who believe in the paranormal, hauntings can take place anywhere and at any time, whether it’s in abandoned places like old hospitals or in a currently lived-in house. Hauntings can take the shape of ghostly figures, unexplained occurrences or even a feeling of being watched. If you’ve ever wondered “Is my house haunted?” we’re diving in, with expert advice from a ghost hunter and a psychic medium based on their experience with the beyond. If you’re concerned your house is haunted, these are the signs to watch out for.

Ghost Light coming in through the window of a haunted house
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The three types of hauntings

According to professional ghost hunter and paranormal TV star Greg Newkirk, there are three kinds of hauntings: intelligent, residual and intentional. He describes the classic haunting as an intelligent haunting, where it has a personality and interacts with people. This kind of haunting could include, for example, a poltergeist.

He describes the second kind of haunting, residual, as a trace left behind from another life that replays over and over but isn’t intelligent. This could be somebody who died tragically and repeats their final moments forever but doesn’t interact with people. Newkirk explains that a residual haunting “doesn’t ever really acknowledge that people live in the house. It just is. It just happens. There’s no intelligence there, so there’s really nothing you can do about it.”

Last, an intentional haunting is actually more about living, breathing humans than ghosts. “It really comes from people who have put so much energy and intention into the belief that their house or object is haunted that they’ve ended up actually manifesting a haunting.” Think of kids who follow urban legends and routinely go visit the place of the supposed haunting. They feed the story so much that they actually open the place up to paranormal activity.

Two ravens perching on wooden fence. La Palma, Canary islands, Spain.
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Mysterious sights and sounds

Newkirk says most hauntings aren’t evil, only misunderstood: “I think they’re trying to send us a message.” This can manifest as mysterious sights and sounds as the haunting tries to communicate or to navigate its environment.

When it comes to answering the question “Is my house haunted?” he says, “I think a lot of the classic signs are mysterious noises that seem to come from places they can’t locate, a lot of bumping and scratching on walls, seeing full-bodied apparitions, and things moving from place to place when you’ve not touched them.”

However, what you call a “haunting” may not be the real deal. Newkirk has been called to houses where the cause of the phenomena has actually been carbon monoxide poisoning, which caused people to hallucinate. Mold, too, can cause the same reaction. For houses with legitimate ghosts, there are more telling signs that your house is haunted—like maybe your dog barks at something you can’t see.

Water puddles on the bathroom floor
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Ectoplasm

Fact: Ectoplasm is a substance that still mystifies even the most seasoned paranormal experts. It’s not just the realm of Halloween monsters and Ghostbusters! Historically, it has been reported to show up during seances through a spiritual medium. Newkirk himself has experienced the phenomenon in real haunted houses.

“There was a house I investigated several years ago where the family claimed that things were moving on their own,” he says, “and while I was there I actually had a strange, viscous fluid show up. [It] dripped down my arm, out of nowhere. And [the family] claimed that would happen all the time. It was a very strange kind of off-white, almost like a raw egg kind of fluid.”

Ectoplasm is not often seen or experienced at your run-of-the-mill haunted house, but paranormal experts see it as a sign of certainty that there is a paranormal presence at work.

Spooky image of ghost girl standing in window in eery light
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Feeling watched

Though “feeling watched” isn’t a quantifiable factor, people who live in genuine haunted houses do report it a lot. Many believe in a kind of sixth sense. Basically, you might be in a house with a really bad vibe.

“Cold chills move throughout the room,” Newkirk details, “and even just the feeling of being watched. Sometimes whispers, or being awoken in the middle of the night because of the feeling that somebody’s standing there.”

Whether there is a normal explanation for this sensation or a paranormal one is hard to know for sure, but it’s definitely a contributing factor for nearly any house that is afflicted by spirits.

haunted house attic with a single chair
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Inexplicable movement

Objects don’t move on their own. That’s why when you see things flying around your house without visible cause, you can be pretty sure that there is something—or someone—other than you in your house. “I’ve seen books thrown through the air by an invisible force,” Newkirk recalls.

Soaring objects are another staple of horror flicks about exorcisms, but inexplicable movement can be even more sinister than that. Another well known and televised expert in the field, psychic medium Patti Negri, has had some even more intense experiences than flying books.

“I’ve had people literally burst into flames in front of me,” she says. “The house where [they caught] on fire had been a famous movie star’s house, Mary Astor, in the early days of Hollywood. Then all sorts of people lived there. The Rolling Stones, the Mamas & Papas … The last person there was Marilyn Manson, and the house was too scary for him, so he moved out.” When she visited the Black Dahlia house in LA, she herself was violently thrown against a wall.

If anything small or big like this happens in your home, you can be sure you’ve got a haunted house.

Sad boy looking through window
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Personality change

When we think about possession, our minds immediately go to demons, demons, demons. Ghost hunter Newkirk says that more often than not, demonic possession and even a demonic presence is not behind whatever it is you’re experiencing. A “normal” ghost can possess you too.

The tipoff is if someone you know is acting extremely strange all of a sudden. If you’re questioning “Is my house haunted?” and a housemate has a radical change in personality, that’s a red flag. “We see cases of possession or influence by a spirit all the time,” Newkirk says. “If you start to notice someone has taken on a pretty distinct personality change, that can be a sign of that.” Don’t miss these stories from the most haunted places in the world.

piano in an old haunted house
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Previous tragedy

If you suspect you might have a haunted house (or haunted hotel) on your hands, you should probably dig into the history of your property.

“Once I was in somebody’s condominium,” Negri says, “and this woman just could not breathe in her bedroom. She didn’t have breathing issues, but in her bedroom she just couldn’t breathe. I found out that her room had caught on fire and the [previous] woman had died.”

If you’re experiencing things you can’t explain, doing research might help clear it up for you. The hope is that once you know what happened, you can then ease the haunting. However, some places just can’t be cleared of their histories.

“One house had everything going for it,” Negri recalls, “from Indian burial ground to being a drug house for years. When I first went there, seven people had already died, one in every room. I [was] seeing dead bodies everywhere. I would clear it, and then it would ooze back up.”

Spooky man standing in the fog outside of a haunted house
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Physical and emotional disorientation

Much like a horcrux in the Harry Potter series, a haunting can have a terrible effect on your mood and even your physical state. It can leave you feeling angry or weak. Newkirk reports having this kind of experience while investigating the famously haunted Hinsdale House in New York.

“That’s a place where it’s a very extreme haunting. There’s something about that place when you walk into it, it gets very, very confusing. Some of the things we started to see in this place and hear in this place—including drumming and strange lights—were very disorienting. I noticed that my mood would change when we were in this building, and I would have to keep leaving it regularly.”

Cabin in the Woods
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What to do if your house is haunted

Both Newkirk and Negri agree that the best way to deal with a haunting is to make a firm statement. Talk to the presence in your home and let it know what your intentions are. “Generally, most people who come to find out that their house is haunted can live peacefully with whatever spirits are there,” says Newkirk. “If it’s something that really, genuinely bothers you, say something as simple as ‘You need to leave.'”

Negri adds that, to back up your statement, make it in the name of whatever it is you believe in most strongly. For some people, it’s Christianity. For others, it’s their own power inside themselves. Putting that extra energy into your statement makes it more effective.

Finally, if you try to use sage, just be cautious and use it the right way. “Sage is great, but in my opinion, it’s a little overrated because it’s harsh. It’s so cleansing it almost creates a vacuum. It’s like dusting your whole house and then leaving your doors and windows open in a sandstorm. If you’re going to do sage and clear your house, then come in with something holy or something magical so you fill it back up with [your] intent.”

So next time you’re wondering “Is my house haunted?” keep in mind these telltale signs.

About the experts

  • Greg Newkirk is a professional ghost hunter. He has appeared as an expert on TV shows such as TLC’s Kindred Spirits, Travel Channel’s Mysteries at the Museum and Destination America’s Paranormal Lockdown.
  • Patti Negri is a Hollywood-based psychic medium. She starred in Travel Channel’s Ghost Adventures and has appeared on shows like Master Chef, Beverly Hills Pawn and Flipping Out.

Taylor Markarian
Taylor Markarian is a regular contributor to RD.com covering culture, advice, travel, pets and all things weird and haunted. She is the author of "From the Basement: A History of Emo Music and How It Changed Society," which analyzes the evolution of punk and mental health. She holds a B.A. in Writing, Literature and Publishing from Emerson College.