Clues to Finding a Ghost in the House
If any of several spooky occurrences are happening in your home or at your workplace, you may have a ghost on your hands.
According to Unsolved Mysteries, there are several categories of evil spirits that may be haunting a particular area. One is the geomagnetic entity, such as the djinn or banshee, that is endemic to a culture or region and often manifests itself in folklore. The next category is the daemon, or agent of an evil sorceror. There is also the poltergeist, which is the manifestation of wild or hormonal impulses in a person, and can be exorcised. The last category is what most people think of as a ghost: a manifestation of a traumatic death or event that haunts the area where it expired. This is why so many buildings tend to be haunted for a long period of time, spooking many different tenants, until the ghosts therein are successfully eliminated.
One possible manifestation of a ghost, according to About.com, is that lights or electrical devices, such as TVs, are found switched on when the owner of the house knows they had been switched off, or vice versa. A particularly bold ghost may even switch devices on and off while people are in the room.
Objects also might disappear for weeks at a time, and reappear somewhere in the house that you had already searched. This is called the DOPler Effect, where DOP means "Disappearing Object Phenomenon."
There are also the unexplained noises (screeching, weeping, thumping) and drawers opening and closing. Like the lights and disappearing objects, these phenomena are rarely witnessed firsthand. However, many homeowners have had far more harrowing run-ins with spirits: levitating objects, physical assaults, and of course, seeing an actual human-shaped apparition glide through a room.
In order to interest a paranormal expert in your case, it may be advisable to take a photo of your ghost. Perhaps your ghost will look similar to some of the spirits at "Ghost Pictures with Craig & Jane Hamilton-Parker." It shows a ghost photographed on the street, and one captured on a television set. According to Craig, this last one may be a manifestation of Electronic Voice Phenomena, where the sound signals picked up by electronic devices could net a ghost.
You may also want to keep a ghost diary, recording dates and times of suspected supernatural occurences in your house, and let an expert sort out what's in your imagination and what's genuinely haunting.