What to do if you maybe have a ghost in your house

Using a FLIR heat camera during a paranormal investigation in a Wellington House.

Today we received an email from the UK from a university student who's been sharing a house with other uni. students. They all moved in recently, and each has experienced strange things, such as hearing footsteps in a certain part of the house (several people have), feeling a presence in some of the bedrooms (2 people have), possibly hearing a disembodied voice (1 person has), and the feeling of being pinched while in bed (2 people have). The person who emailed is very worried about actually seeing a ghost. Being on the other side of the planet, we can't do the investigation, unfortunately, but I thought my email response was worth a blog anyway. Of course I've changed bits and added bits to it since sending the email. Here goes...

• First, I'd say none of this stuff can actually hurt you, so there's nothing much to worry about except maybe losing some sleep. I know how worrying this sort of thing can be as I have personal experience of it, too.
  
  One factor that we've noticed quite often when we've conducted our paranormal investigations is what psychologists call 'contagion', which has nothing to do with disease but a lot to do with people infecting each other with their ideas about a thing, such as the presence of a ghost. This is the power of suggestion. Once people in a group are thinking alike then anything that happens, for example several light bulbs blowing in succession, gets put down to the ghost, rather than, say, coincidence, or an electrical power surge. I'm not saying this is what's happening in your case, it's just worth considering as a contributing factor.
  
  Personally, I'd love to actually see a ghost. I imagine I'd be terrified of it, but really there's no reason to be. If you are lucky enough to see one, you are very privileged.
  
  None of this is meant to trivialise your experiences, just ease anxiety.
  
  There are (I believe, at last count) about 10,000 paranormal groups in the UK and so there will be quite a few local ones, any one of which would probably jump at the chance to do an investigation of your house. So, if you decide to call in paranormal investigators to find out what's going on, make sure you don't get crackpots! They will make things worse, not better. Chances are they'll discover a portal to Hades in your bathroom or something similarly terrifying (and inconvenient).
  
  One way of telling if a paranormal group is crackers is if they have photos of dust orbs on their website and they proclaim them to be spiritual manifestations. (Here's some info about dust orbs, so you know  what they look like: http://strangeoccurrencesparanormal.weebly.com/orbs.html )
  
  Perhaps have a look at a couple of good UK paranormal websites. One of the best is ASSAP.  The SPR (established 1882) is also reliable. Either of these would be a good place to get advice and/or look for a lead to a sensible local paranormal group, but there are many others, too.
  
  A good paranormal group will interview you about you experiences of unexplained events and listen carefully to you. If you have a series of notes about these events, then they can systematically work through them and try hard to find natural explanations. Mediums, on the other hand, almost never do this, which is why I would recommend that a medium should not be your first port of call. I've never heard of a medium going into a reportedly haunted property and not sensing a spirit or some kind. If they're wrong, and they often are, then it's really not helpful.
  
  You also might want to look at this advice list on our website
  
  Please keep in touch and let me know how you get on.
  Cheers, James.

Of course this begs the question: what do you do if, after all this, you decide that you do have a ghost in your house? Should you get rid of it? If so, how?

This is not something we have much to do with at Strange Occurrences - we don't want to get rid of ghosts, we want to study them - but I'll write the next blog post on it anyway.

James Gilberd of New Zealand Strange Occurrences Society investigating a private house in Karori, Wellington, with a Trifield EMF meter and a FLIR heat camera. I wasn't aware of the green orb on my chest. This is not a dust orb, but could be a flare image caused by the light bulb above and behind me.