How to Tell if Your House is Haunted: Tips from a Pennsylvania Ghost Hunter

Story Colin Deppen of Spotlight PA

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I think my new house might be haunted.

To be honest, I didn’t experience anything particularly annoying there. No ghosts. No votes. No sudden chills or closed doors. (There was a night light in the bathroom that blinked violently every time I walked by, but I’m pretty sure it was just a faulty sensor. Pretty sure.)

My suspicions stem from the age of the site—it’s almost as old as the Civil War—and its location: it’s directly adjacent to a former sawmill that a neighbor, fighting the pull of his menacing corgi, told me was most likely the site of terrible events long ago. .

So what should you do if you suspect your home may be repossessed and want to know more? I asked Lou Bernard, a paranormal investigator, author and historian from Clinton County.

We covered DIY research tips, the ethics of ghost hunting, and why some people feel comfortable when they finally meet their ghost. The conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Pennsylvania Local: Lou, I think I have some at my house. story. I asked you to share some tips for paranormal investigations, but first can you tell me about the work you do for others?

Bernard: Yes. I am on a ghost hunting team, the Lock Haven Paranormal Hunters, and this is part of our service. I’ll actually do a search on the house name and, you know, find out who is most likely to stalk you in that location.

Once we’ve done all of this, there will come a point where the occupant will decide if he wants an investigation. We have people who assume that we will come with candles or proton packs and rid the house of their ghosts. We are investigators, not exterminators.

We have cameras. We have digital recording devices. We use laser thermometers and devices that detect electromagnetic fields. And we’ll just go in, set everything up, pay close attention to the instruments and look for evidence or anomalies.

We typically do four to eight of these events per year.

How much does all this cost?

We do it for free. So, if you want to treat us to a swim or something like that, great, but it’s not necessary. In my opinion, taking money for this is not entirely ethical.

Why?

Let’s assume that the sound the passenger hears is a loose pipe. You want to be able to tell them this. It’s important to be able to say, “We didn’t find anything.” I once met a guy who charged $1,500 for an investigation. He has 1500 reasons to find something, whether he found something or not.

Has anyone ever regretted learning more?

Yes, I guess you could say that. Sometimes we do an investigation and find that someone has died in the house, and it depends on the type of person, but for some people it makes them nervous. I will say that there is really no danger in this. Television and film are really shaking things up. Most of the time people feel better after we finish.

How so?

It’s one thing to be afraid of that faceless, nameless sound in the night. It is quite another to be afraid, for example, of a five-year-old child who died of cancer 50 years ago.

There was a family here in Clinton County that was just scared to death because something was going on in their home. A lot of it was centered around my father. They thought he was being attacked. But it turned out that it was just a little boy – I think his name was Vincent. He died, I want to say, from complications of measles. And once they knew this, it seemed much less scary and intimidating to them. He was just a little boy who missed his father.

Perhaps this is an obvious question: do you believe in ghosts?

Well, it’s an obvious question with a not so obvious answer.

My answer is generally that if I believed, I wouldn’t have to investigate. You’re a bad scientist if you’ve already decided what the outcome of an experiment will be, right? I will say that I have seen some evidence that convinces me that there are things we don’t understand.

Okay, if I want to do a little research on my own, where should I start?

If you own a home, the process is already underway for you.

In Pennsylvania, you must conduct a title search for 50 years before you can buy a home. But assuming you’ve owned the house for 20 years and can’t begin to search for title, which happens, you should go to the courthouse.

I always start with the appraisal office. This is where they keep records when taxes are due on them. All you have to do is ask based on your address and they will find a copy for you. The last couple of actions will be listed there. They are usually labeled books and pages, so it will say something like “Book 157, page 203” or something like that.

Using this will take you down to the reception and registrar’s office. You pull out this particular book, go to this page, and there should apparently be the most recent document where you or the current owner purchased the house. You can use this document to find the previous document and so on, and you can trace it back to the beginning of your county. (Editor’s note: State Library of Pennsylvania also offers Searchable index of land records of state archives for old objectsas well as an online catalog of land records and deeds. for younger objects.)

How do you know when you’ve reached the start of living at home?

There are improvement clauses in the deeds that say something like, “The improvements include a two-story frame house with a detached garage.” This usually means improvements to the land, and if you start finding documents without an improvement clause, the house has not yet been built; you’re at the beginning.

What to do if the property is for rent?

In this case, knowing who owns the property won’t necessarily tell you anything, so you’ll need to look up something called a city directory. It’s like an inverted telephone book, and every city directory must have a list of who lived there, year after year.

Where can I find a city directory?

Libraries, historical societies, museums. These are the places I check.

Now that I have my documents and start date, what should I do?

The paperwork will say who bought it and who sold it, and you need to copy that information down because in most cases they are the ones who lived there.

Once you have a list of all the people who have lived there since the house was built, you go to the local newspaper, library, historical society (this part will be a little different) and find out where the obituaries and newspaper are. archives are saved.

Check obituaries, cemetery records, findagrave.com. Usually the documents indicate one main owner of the house, the father of the family. The obituary will tell you when and how he died. And it will also tell you who the rest of the family were.

Let’s say a three-year-old child dies in the house. They probably won’t have an obituary, but they will have a headstone. So, you know, that’s how you know that this child has passed away.

Usually you are not looking for death from old age, but rather young death and violent death. This is what causes a ghost.

Check out our previous coverage of Pennsylvania’s strange paranormal history.:

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