Help! My House Is Haunted: Becoming Your Own Ghost Hunter

In recent months, I’ve been contacted by several listeners and people finding the podcast who aren’t ghost hunters and have little to no interest in the paranormal. They don’t want to get into this as a hobby, but they themselves are experiencing something that they can’t explain and are looking for answers.

As interest in the paranormal dips, TV shows die out, teams break up, and people exit. It’s expensive, and there are only so many people who can make a living from this. Unfortunately, that leaves holes. Places where there are no reputable teams to help families when weird stuff happens. So, people are doing it themselves.

This post will discuss how to conduct your own paranormal investigation.

Do I need to purchase gear?

Nope. You don’t need a bunch of expensive equipment, unless you just want to. Most of what we use is supplemental to our own senses, and documentation equipment like audio and video recorders. 

As the person experiencing the activity, you’re probably interested in an explanation, more so than scientific documentation. 

What you’ll need:

• A notebook
• Critical Thinking

What’s nice to have:

• Tape Measure
• Camera (phone is fine)
• Voice Recorder (phone is fine)

Things to consider purchasing depending on the activity:

• Blink Wi-Fi camera
• Simple motion detector

I think I have a ghost. Where do I start?

So, you know what you need. What do you need to do with it? A lot of things are going to depend on the exact type of activity that you’re experiencing.

Documenting Activity

I generally start everyone here. Patterns are important. Most often, they lead us to natural explanations. Even when the activity is anomalous, establishing hotspots and patterns helps to focus resources in the right area so we can understand things faster.

I am working on a workbook for people going through this. But for now, get a cheap spiral notebook and put it in a central location like the kitchen counter. Somewhere it will live, and you will have easy access to it. 

When you experience something, immediately write a journal entry with as much detail as you can while it’s fresh. Make sure that you list the time and location as precisely as you can. Include any relevant information, such as sounds and where they seem to originate, directions of movement, and light anomalies. The more detail there is, the better.

After a couple of weeks, in most cases, patterns emerge. Times of day, recurring manifestations, and repeat locations. 

This phase may take longer than a few weeks if the activity is spread out. It can be frustrating and you may feel you are wasting time, but stick with it. Skipping or shortening this phase keeps many professional teams from finding viable solutions.

Also, this doesn’t have to be a passive phase of the investigation. Journaling can give you a little distance from the phenomena and help you better get into a headspace where you can think critically. 

When you’ve made your entry, go back to the area where the activity just happened. Poke around a little and make an entry detailing what you did.

For example, 10:30 pm on a Wednesday, you see a shadow person in the hallway. It’s something you’ve seen before, and it’s usually moving in the same direction.

You collect yourself, make an entry, and flip back through. This is week two, and you remember making a similar entry the week before. You see that almost the exact same thing happened last Wednesday at 10:25 pm.  

You are a little calmer after writing things out, and you go back to the hallway and stand where you saw the shadow man. You take in everything and notice that the only light in the hall is coming through a window. So you check and realize that most of the light casts on the area where you see the apparition. There’s nothing outside the window but trees. However, you know there is a roadway on the other side of the woods.

You make a note, and next Wednesday you set up in the hallway around 10 pm. By 11 p.m., nothing happens. Note that in the journal. No shadow man.

Don’t stop there.

You set up the following Wednesday, and at 10:24 pm, the high beams on a large truck light up the woods as it passes. The combination of shadows cast by the moving vehicle gives the impression of a shadow with unusual depth, resembling a person. That shadow moves along the wall in sync with the truck.

Hang some curtains and your shadow man is gone, no priest required.

I’ve used this method with families for years, and that’s the way it usually goes. Sometimes it lights. Sometimes, it’s vibrations from nearby construction or an electrical issue.

You’ll need to use this trial-and-error process on all manifestations that have consistent times and locations.

Even in cases that have verified activity, at least a couple of things have natural explanations, and they need to be weeded out.

Recording Activity

As you document, you’re also going to notice spontaneous activity. You may notice that things are going missing, you hear random voices, or see one-off apparitions. Or there may be repeating activity in an area in or around the house, but it’s infrequent. This is when you might get a bit more proactive, and it starts to feel more like an investigation.

Even after doing this for over 20 years, when something happens right in front of me, and it's unexpected, it’s hard to have the presence of mind to pull my phone out of my pocket and hit record. So, don’t feel bad if you miss opportunities. It’s going to happen.

When you can, get out your phone and shoot some video. If objects are moving, or there is something walking around an area, try to at least get a picture, preferably video.

You don’t need a special camera; your phone is fine. It will get video and audio. The same thing goes for phantom footsteps or voices. Try to get those recorded.

24/7 Recording

Another better option would be to install a Wi-Fi camera, like a Blink camera that is recording 24/7. Or if it is a rural outdoor thing, a trail cam. Review it regularly to see if you have something. When you see something, log it.

This isn’t needed most times but is absolutely nice to have. There are several companies I’ve personally used that have great affordable products. Ring, Blink, and Arlo. Are my top 3 recommendations. Each has Wi-Fi and/or cellular-capable cameras that will stream video to a secure server that you can access for a monthly or yearly subscription. Some have free trials. 

Set the camera up in the room where you’ve seen the activity and let it run. Many of these have alerts, but I would still review the footage nightly for a while. You never know what you’ll find.

I’ve had cases explained by syncing up indoor and outdoor cameras to find that something natural was causing the manifestation. I’ve also had property owners capture actual paranormal activity on camera. Sometimes it set off alerts; other times they found it on review.

Just a note, I would disable notifications on your phone and set the sensitivity high to make sure you catch what you’re looking for.

How do I find out why my home is haunted?

Once you know you absolutely have activity, it’s time to research the actual property. This can be labor intensive, so I usually wait until there is a real, verified reason to search the property. You might start there, or it may take a few weeks to dial in what’s on, what’s legit, and what is caused by natural sources. When there is paranormal activity, we usually find it’s tied to one of two things. The person or family themselves, or the actual property.

We want to find out everything we can about the land, structures, and past occupants. There are a couple of ways to do this, depending on where you are. 

Property Records

Start with the free stuff. Check county and state property tax records. This is going to give you the names of the past property owners and who paid the taxes on the property. For most counties in the US, this information will be available online. It’s usually free.

If you can’t find the information online, you may need to go to the property tax office and speak with a clerk. Most often, they’ll look up and print off the information for you. Sometimes the records have not been digitized, or the property is historic and many of the records are still housed in the physical book. Depending on the resources available and the relationship you have with the clerk, they’ll either have you put in a request for them to pull the records over the next few days, or they’ll let you look through the old physical books.

Take an allergy pill; those things are dusty.

I’ve spent hours digging through book after book to track a property back to its first owner. And if you’re savvy enough, you might even find building permits with the contractor's details.

You’re not going to hit gold here, but you’ll leave with a list of names associated with the property.

Deep Web

Now that you have a few names, it’s time to search what we used to call the Deep Web. Technically, property records are part of the deep web search, but I like to give them their own spot on the checklist.

The deep web just refers to things past the surface searches on Google. It’s where most of the actual information is hiding online. Places like forums, news archives, public records sites, and deep social media dives.

I start by Googling the property address and seeing what pulls up on the first few pages. Sometimes that’ll pull old news stories, legends from online sites and forums. I then go a little deeper and search specific words like the address, or street + homicide, death, or news. And see what pops up.

I also do basic searches of past owners looking for obituaries or relevant news. There are a couple of reasons I do this.

1. I want photos of past owners in cases where apparitions are seen
2. I want to see if they were possibly into anything shady
3. I want to see any events surrounding them that could explain some of the activity

When I feel like I’ve exhausted Google, I move on to specialized databases.

Where I go here can depend on the property, activity, and what I’ve found (or haven’t found) so far. But I have a basic checklist of resources I almost always hit.

• Local Newspaper Archives
• Local News Outlet Archives
• Asetery.com
• Public record aggregators like Been Verified
• State Vital Records

Like the tax records, news and vital records may need in-person follow-ups

Where can I find information that’s not online?

Public Library

Libraries house troves of local records and lore. Every one I’ve been in has a local section that has resources about historic locations, historical events, historical newspapers, and sometimes old land maps and information that predates the structure on the property. Best of all, almost everything has been digitized in most places, and librarians love to help with projects like these.

Most have entire sections dedicated to genealogy and local family trees. You’d be surprised how many family legends get passed down. You might not leave with any new direct information, but you may have a list of folks to talk to.

Historical Societies

Almost every town has one, and most of the time, someone in there is receptive to this kind of work.

I’ve found these folks to be caches of information about historic properties and local events that could affect the property.

In the early 2000s, I had a case that involved voices, and occasionally, full manifestations of Civil War era soldiers marching through the backyard of the property.

After hitting several dead ends, I found a Civil War buff at the local Historical Society who could not only confirm that troops had indeed marched through that area, but the society had also collected several stories of similar activity in the area, lending a bit more credence to the activity that my homeowner was experiencing. 

It doesn’t always bear fruit, but historical societies can at least help you get some context.

Putting it all together.

Verifying the activity and putting it into context makes up the bulk of the investigation, and it’s where most people stop.

Nine out of ten times, you’re able to find a perfectly reasonable explanation during the documentation phase of the investigation. In those instances where there is an otherworldly presence, putting the activity into context usually eases fears. They find it’s harmless. Many people find a way to co-exist with the entity or become comfortable with the property’s supernatural quirks. They’re happy with the answers they’ve found.

But what happens when there is a need to go further, when the activity isn’t benign? What happens when the presence is dark and intent on harming the occupants? In the next post, we’ll talk about drilling down further and dealing with negative hauntings.