Watch now on YouTube:

Or listen right here:

About the Guest: Shannon B. Evans

We have a lot in common with Shannon: from her daily graveyard walks in the birthplace of Tennessee Williams, to her daring podcast about the dark underbelly of Columbus, Mississippi, to the casual way she talks about all the haunted houses she grew up in. Catch Shannon’s podcast, Tombigbee Tales, at pshannonevans.podbean.com. You can also follow Shannon on YouTube at @pshannonevans, TikTok @shannonevans487, and Facebook.

Haunted Houses in Mississippi

Is Shannon just a ghost magnet, or is every house in Columbus, Mississippi haunted? First, she tells us a story about a house she lived in where a ghost wearing old lady perfume hid her kitchen gadgets. Then she lived in a house where ghosts haunted both the nursery and the wrap around porch, wafting the scent of cigar smoke through her open windows. And then, she tells us about the time both she and her dad heard a disembodied voice…twice. Then, she tells us about a séance she attended where objects in the room moved on their own. She goes on to tell us about a wounded Civil War soldier who returned home more than a century late.

Mississippi Ghost Stories

Even with all these haunted houses in one tale, we in fact haven’t had that many guests with ghost stories that took place in Mississippi. I think Stacey Williams-Ng told us about staying the night in a haunted house in the Mississippi Delta in our episode about ancestor communication with an oracle deck. That’s about it!

Have you ever encountered ghosts in Mississippi? Why not submit your story to be on a future episode of Homespun Haints podcast? C’mon Mississippi folks, help us have another spooky day!

The post The ‘Possum Town Whistleblower: True Ghost Stories from Mississippi appeared first on Homespun Haints.

Watch this video episode of Homespun Haints Podcast on YouTube:

Or listen here now:

About the Guest: Ashley Stinnett from WV

Ashely, is an actor, author, and promoter. He’s also an Appalachian from West Virginia, which means he likely grew up hearing ghost stories, much like Becky. But he wasn’t even grown up yet when he learned that ghosts can hurt you. His family home in West Virginia was overcome by an unseen, evil force.

When he’s not acting, Ashely works with US Ghost Adventures, prolific provider of some of the best ghost tours in the country. Even working in the ghost storytelling business wasn’t quite enough to satisfy his curiosity. So he recently wrote a whole book of Haunted Tales from Appalachia: Ghosts, Spirits and Other Strange Happenings From the Hills and Hollows.

Check out Ashley’s latest film credits on IMDB.

Here are some of the best tours that US Ghost Adventures offers:

Ashley recommended some of his favorite places to take a ghost tour on this episode. Have you visited any of these?

• The Villisca Ax Murder House
• The Lizzie Borden House
• Trans Allegheny Asylum
• Colonial Williamsburg, VA
• Wilmington, NC
• Gettysburg, PA
• Deadwood, SD
• Phoenix, AZ
• Neptune Ghosts in Virginia Beach
• Manhattan, NY
• Charleston, WV

And this best-of list just barely scratches the surface of all the ghost tours they offer. For the best deal, book your tour directly through U.S. Ghost Adventures at usghostadventures.com.

Can Ghosts Hurt You?

Well, Hainted Loves, are you convinced ghosts can hurt you after this episode? Have you had a paranormal experience that corroborates (or contradicts) this? Leave a comment on the YouTube video to let us know your opinion! Or, if you’re brave enough, submit your story for a chance to be a guest on a future episode of Homespun Haints!

Speaking of opinions, Becky needs your advice! Her neighbors have teamed up on her giant lawn skeleton—which is in no way a Halloween decoration—and she needs strength to carry on the fight. Head over to Patreon to take the survey: What should Becky do with Dana Skelly? You don’t have to be a paid member to vote, so we can all vote whether or not Becky’s neighbors will continue to have a spooky day!

The post We Don’t Know How You’re Not Dead appeared first on Homespun Haints.

Watch the episode on YouTube:

Listen now:

About the Guest: Beth Castrodale

The way she describes her books makes our goth hearts soar. We want to read every one of them right now. Her first novel was about a scandal-fleeing corset maker during the Depression Era (Marion Hatley). The second book is about a former indie rock star turned gravedigger, overcoming his guilt-ridden past (In This Ground). Her third is about sisters reconnecting over their criminal father’s unfinished business (I Mean You No Harm).

Beth’s most recent novel as of this writing is now available for pre-order through Regal House Publishing. The Inhabitants is coming out September 10, 2024. Keep up with all of Beth’s happenings at her website, BethCastrodale.com, or ask her a question on Goodreads. You can also follow her on Facebook and X.

Beth’s Ghost Story

Beth tells us real haunted apartment stories that may have, in part, inspired her fascination with ghost stories. She used to live by the ocean in a little attached apartment. She’d occasionally come home to some very confusing circumstances, even though she always locked her doors and windows before leaving. That’s when she found out that a friend of her landlord’s had died in that apartment. Was there a connection? There’s never been any other forthcoming explanation for the strange happenings she witnessed in that haunted apartment.

What are the architectural features of a haunted house?

Victorian and gothic architecture was, in many cases, specifically designed to soothe the mind and rejuvenate the soul. And then, there are those houses that feel like they must be haunted, just by the way they look. Beth tells us that, at least in novels, the architecture of any haunted house will likely share some specific features. Here are some of the features an evil architect might incorporate into a hauntingly scary house.

• Being difficult to exit, or making inhabitants feel trapped or lost within.
• Liminal spaces like staircases without a clear view of the space beyond.
• Never having quite enough light, or seeming to absorb what little light enters.
• Situations where one might find themselves in absolute darkness, or complete silence.
• Low ceilings.
• Closed-in, claustrophobic spaces.

The psychology of haunted house architecture

These similarities in architecture among haunted houses probably exist for a reason. All of these features have a potential to evoke disturbing emotions, which can make inhabitants feel uneasy. Take absolute silence, for example. There are very few places in life where people with hearing actually experience REAL silence. When the house seems silent to our conscious mind, there are likely sounds still happening that fall outside the audible range. More than one study has found that infrasound at around 19 Hz could cause physical effects in humans. Not just any physical effects, but specifically feelings of anxiety, shivering, and chest pressure, all of which could likely contribute to the perception of a paranormal event.

In addition, the effect of low ceilings might be inferred by examining the inverse. Turns out, there’s actually a name for the feeling of awe and spiritual elevation one feels when inside a large, high-ceilinged indoor venue: the “Cathedral Effect.” Research indicates that high ceilings can actually create a sense of openness and freedom, which can lead to abstract and creative thinking. This is one reason why places of worship usually feature high ceilings.

Why is Gothic Revival architecture associated with haunted houses?

In this interview, Beth tells us that, in Gothic novels, the house itself is a character. Often, the house has agency, a backstory, even a fate. In stories like “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe, or “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Brontë, the house reflects (and perhaps influences) the mental state of the characters. In some cases, like in “The Haunting of Hill House” by Shirley Jackson and “The Woman in Black” by Susan Hill, the house even directly controls or influences the characters, driving the plot. Many Gothic novels exemplify this association between Gothic architecture, haunted houses, and ghost stories, but is it strictly a literary convention, or something more insidious?

Houses in Dreams

Interestingly, in at least one style of dream interpretation, houses and similar environments represent the mindset of the dreamer. Because dreams are the language of the subconscious in a sense, this quantum entanglement of sorts between one’s house and one’s mindset seems programmed deep in our human psyche. Yet, dreams are sort of ghost stories in their own right, are they not? Fictional alternate worlds where the rules of reality don’t apply, featuring people who may not precisely exist, whose main purpose is to represent an idea?

What mindset do OUR houses represent?

Diana’s house is streamlined and spartan. Most of the things she furnishes and decorates it with were found objects, hand-me-downs, or handmade crafts. She prefers to have a designated place for everything to hide away when not in use. The few exceptions to this frugal minimalism are a handful of mementos with little intrinsic value besides the people, places, and experiences they abstractly remind her of. Even though the aesthetic of the home hints at the deep well of darkness below the surface, Diana values having a well-organized home full of natural light, which filters into rainbows through translucent prisms of privacy film on the windows.

The only landscaping Diana cultivates is either fast-growing vines, or easily-moved potted plants. Diana has never lived in a home long enough for larger, slower plants like trees and shrubs to germinate and mature. Amazon Music is often playing on shuffle, or there’s dead silence; there’s never a TV on in the background.

What things about Diana does her home reflect?

Similar to her house, Diana’s mindset values light, in the form of enlightenment and education. Her aesthetics are more of a game than a standard: whereas she might wear a ballgown to a casual dinner, most days she wears only pajamas. Her house reflects this with walls of intensely subversive creepy artwork, that, when you get closer, you realize is mostly Halloween decorations she didn’t bother putting away. She values privacy, and lets very few people in. And like her house, she’s much nicer inside than her rough exterior would imply. Like her plants, Diana doesn’t enjoy putting down roots, preferring to be trans-locational when possible. She’s quiet and introspective for the most part, and has a habit of going with the flow instead of making distinct choices and following them to fruition.

Becky’s house reflects her nature.

Becky’s house is more open, with very high ceilings and quite a bit of natural light, coming through clear, floor-to-ceiling windows that offer no privacy, which is fine because it’s set far back from the street in a small copse of old trees. All the entrances are convoluted, especially the front door, making it a little daunting to enter the house for the first time.

Inside, her belongings are out and about, wherever she likes to use them. Every wall shines with professionally curated art and family portraits. There’s usually a record spinning on the turntable, and the delectable smell of things frying in butter wafting out of the warm, roomy kitchen. There’s always a whirlwind of activity inside, as several 2- and 4-legged children romp within. She’s also recently discovered a surprise, hidden behind a wall for the past 40 years, which you’ll hear about in this episode.

What parts of Becky’s personality does her home reflect?

Like her house, Becky is an open book. Yet, she’s one so far off the beaten path that not everyone attempts to read her. She has a penchant for catching people off-guard with non-sequiturs, which feels like she’s revealing secret passageways between parts of her own mind. Like Diana, she also values education. She tends towards pursuing the A in STEAM more than the other letters. Her wide open spaces full of useful and whimsical belongings lend themselves to creative expression and flow states. Like her established arbor, Becky is settled and doesn’t mind having some roots, even feeling like her current city offers her opportunities for growth. Also, like the constant movement in her house, she tends to mainly pass through her home as part of a wider, global orbit. She’s always planning the next trip out of town before the previous trip even starts.

Based on the architecture, is your house haunted?

Hainted Loves, what do you think? Does architecture influence hauntings? Are some buildings just irresistible to wandering spirits? Have you lived in a haunted house with any of these architectural features? If you have a true ghost story about haunted houses, why not submit it to tell on Homespun Haints? We’d love to have a spooky day with you!

The post How to Build a Haunted House appeared first on Homespun Haints.

Draw a haunted mansion with me

The most reliable way to draw a haunted house is to draw a real one that everyone already associates with ghosts. The Winchester Mystery House is a great example of one of these famous haunted places. This quirky real haunted mansion is iconic in the eyes of haunted house aficionados.

The Winchester house itself also embodies many of the basic tenants of how to draw a scary drawing. Here is a video of Becky’s step-by-step realistic line drawing of the Winchester Mystery House, which Diana got to take a ghost tour of a few years ago.

Becky uses a straight edge to make clean lines and angles, because this is a realistic drawing. Almost all real houses feature standard architecture techniques, like right angles, straight lines, and peaked roofs. There are many parts of the Winchester House that are quite standard, which we think makes the more unusually constructed parts of the house even more intriguing.

I mentioned above that the Winchester house itself exemplifies the basic components of a scary drawing, making it an excellent example for this tutorial. But what are the basic components of how to draw a scary haunted house?

What is the difference between drawing a haunted house and a regular house?

Unnatural distortion

Unnatural distortion makes your drawing feel wrong and uncomfortable. This works best when it’s subtle. When something is mostly normal, but just a little bit off, we may not consciously notice the oddity. But our subconscious lizard brain is terribly uncomfortable with the dissonance. As we feel the subconscious discomfort, we could associate that with an intuitive sensation, much like the intuitive way we first recognize a haunting.

Translocation

Translocation makes your drawing feel strange and dangerous. The Winchester House’s famous Door to Nowhere is a very plain and normal doorway. It has a frame, a standard wooden door, a doorknob. Everything seems very banal and predictable about it. But when the door opens, it reveals not a room, or a hallway, or even a few steps down to a back garden. The Door to Nowhere actually leads to a tiny bit of the roof that was never meant to be stood on. Another step out would lead to a sheer drop off onto the pavement a full story below.

The same is true for the stairs that lead directly up to a solid ceiling in the Winchester. These seemingly normal architectural details put in entirely the wrong place or context tell us a house is beyond our comprehension. They imply either some mystical arcane knowledge we can only guess at, or a degree of unhinged behavior, which both feel dangerous and frightening.

Disparate meshing

Disparate meshing makes your drawing feel monstrous and paranormal. What are some things that just don’t belong on a house? This might be easy to add to a cartoon drawing of a haunted house. One could extend the front walkway to end in a giant dripping tongue, or turn the broken slats of a basement storm shelter door into the teeth of a jarring rictus.

Disparate meshing is a little more challenging on a realistic drawing, but a successful result is even spookier. Maybe the front windows and doors align in a way that subconsciously mimics an angry face. Even a vague face shape will trigger a natural human response called pareidolia. This phenomenon causes us to see human faces in random patterns.

This simple house displays a few different moods, does it not?

The front of the Winchester house is it’s most conventional part visually. Yet still, there are those two small, round windows, set symmetrically on either side of an arched doorway, with a small set of balusters only in front of the doorway, and a triangle shape above it. It’s not a very accurate face, so it wouldn’t immediately strike the viewer as an intentional face. But the subtle suggestion of a face can be enough to subconsciously imbue the house with a creepy sense of anthropomorphic agency.

Another example of disparate meshing is adding a disturbing situation to your house drawing. What could you add to the drawing to imply that some tragic event has taken place there? Remember, all haunted houses were normal houses before they became haunted. What event or circumstance created the haunting, and is there a way to display that in your picture? There are many ways to make a normal house look haunted because of the situation it’s in.

How to draw a unique, realistic haunted house

Realistically drawing the outside of a haunted house requires significant creativity. After all, most houses look pretty generic from the outside. It takes technical skill and imagination for an artist to imbue a sense of hauntedness onto a technically “normal” image of a house.

You don’t have to draw a real haunted house to create a realistic haunted house drawing. Indeed, the best haunted house drawings come from the imagination. The simplest way to start is to draw a mundane structure that people associate with creepy ghost stories. Perhaps you could sketch a cabin in the woods, or a classic Victorian cottage. Then, incorporate the above techniques as subtly as you can to create a subconscious sense of wrongness. The key to a creepy realistic scary house drawing is when you and I both know that the house is haunted, but we can’t quite put our finger on why we know.

Want to hear a story from a real-life medium who cleanses houses of ghosts before they go to market? Listen to this interview:

How to draw an easy, cute haunted house for beginners and kids

Even beginner artists can draw a cute cartoon Halloween haunted house using the above advice. For very little kids, a quirky house drawing embodies all the important elements that a haunted house drawing does for adults (disparate meshing, translocation, and unnatural distortion), but much more obviously, and minus the spooky elements.

How to draw a simple haunted house

The average cartoon haunted house drawing is more cute than scary. The overtly so cute additions and bright colors are why these types of kindergarten haunted house drawings aren’t scary per-se. Yet the elements that make them uncomfortable and unsettling subconsciously are all there. The following how-to video should make spooky house drawing easy for beginners.

A big benefit to learning to draw haunted house pictures with your kids is that children have such unbridled imaginations. Kids come up with wild concepts that are too illogical or fantastical for our censored and jaded adult brains to easily conceptualize. Quickly scribbling wildly distorted and unpredictable houses with your kids can be a great way to brainstorm for haunted house drawing ideas that could become more polished artwork later.

What are some ways to incorporate ghost folklore into a house drawing?

There may be circumstances where you want to illustrate a house within a universe where ghosts exist, but you don’t want to imply that house is haunted. In that case, adding some details associated with ghosts and folklore can be useful. One example from the American South is the addition of haint blue paint to the porch ceilings, doors, and window frames. (You do know what haint blue is, right? And what a haint is?) These videos of Becky painting houses with symbolic haint blue window frames are good examples of how to draw a non-haunted house in a scary horror scene that implies the threat of real ghosts getting in.

The house above isn’t necessarily haunted. In fact, one could argue it’s less likely to harbor spirits than an average house, given that there’s an obvious ghost repellant apparent in the image. The imagery invokes the thought of ghosts and the paranormal, without necessarily implying that the house in the image is haunted.

What should you draw on the inside of a haunted house?

If drawing the outside of a realistic haunted house is challenging due to its technical subtlety, that implies that the inside of a haunted house is much easier to portray. But why would this be?

How do you draw a haunted house on the inside?

What is the one thing every haunted house has in common with every other house? It’s that at some point in the past, it wasn’t haunted; it was just a regular house. The house became haunted at some point, either because of something that happened there, or because of something that came into the house. That means objects, people, and scenes within the house can clearly convey a sense of hauntedness by depicting the act of becoming haunted, or the consequences of a haunting.

Drawing a house full of haunted objects

There are only a certain number of items that are realistically visible from the outside of a house. Maybe a porch swing, with a pitcher of ice-cold lemonade set upon a white wicker side table. But not many of these items imply a haunting; at least not without delving into the absurd, like a potted venus flytrap, or the fantastical, like a spectral silhouette gazing out a window.

But there are thousands of items that could realistically be inside a house. What types of items might you find inside a haunted house? Maybe tools for occult rituals, that might be used to summon a specter. Or maybe objects that people feel are more likely to be haunted themselves, like antique furniture, or creepy dolls. The inside of a house also evokes a sense of vulnerability, which can contribute to that subconscious feeling of unease we associate with haunted house drawings.

Drawing people and ghosts

Another way to imply a haunting in a drawing is to include characters. Again, subtlety is key to a realistic drawing. Are the characters set apart in time from the rest of the drawing? Are they wearing period dress? Do they lurk in strange places wearing woeful expressions? Or do they show fatal injuries? Are they floating above the floor?

This step is risky if you’re going for realism. It’s hard to draw a realistic image of a ghost. That’s because, at their most realistic, ghosts just look like normal people. Drawing a normal person who is slightly transparent works, but that just doesn’t come across as easily in a black-and-white sketch the way it does in a photograph. The more obviously you try to draw a ghost, the more cartoonish the drawing is going to look.

How to draw a funny haunted house

Sometimes, adding images of ghosts to your drawing can make it instantly less realistic. But that’s not always a bad thing, depending on the desired effect. Becky’s drawing of a haunted bathroom is intentionally unrealistic to emphasize the hauntedness in a comedic fashion. The checkered floor, clawfoot tub, and shower curtain rod subtly imply that this bathroom exists in an old house with renovations. This is, to those in the know, a circumstance very associated with hauntings.

But to clue in the casual observer, Becky has decided to add some unrealistic macabre details. She includes a skeletal hand, a ghostly reflection, blood oozing from the toilet bowl, and emphasized sharp claws on the tub’s claw feet. The artist didn’t necessarily feel that the image wasn’t scary enough. Nor did she necessarily need those cheesy details to get the point across. She wanted to intentionally draw a silly, comedic picture of a haunted house.

Finally, if you prefer to have things drawn for you, rather than drawing them yourself, we get it. This massive detailed haunted mansion wasn’t an easy drawing to make. Diana doesn’t draw much at all either; she leaves that to Becky. Becky sells prints of some of her haunted house drawings, including the one of the Winchester mansion below, in our merch store.

Which video of how to draw a haunted house was your favorite?

We hope this tutorial has illuminated how to draw haunted houses, from easy cartoon haunted house sketches for beginners, to realistic and psychologically unsettling printable horror drawings for advanced artists. Rather than just an easy, step-by-step guide to the physical pieces, we wanted to provide you with deeper concepts. We hope that understanding these elements sparks your own unique artistic creativity.

If you haven’t already, please check out our YouTube haunted house direct draw videos, embedded above. Hopefully, they fill you with haunted house ideas to draw. Let us know if you can spot the three basic elements in the YouTube comments! Your feedback helps make our day a spooky day!

The post How to Draw a Haunted House With Process Drawing Videos appeared first on Homespun Haints.

Episode Summary: Three true short ghost stories

Sometimes it’s the little things that are the most scary. Those little incidents—the little unexplained happenings that pop out of nowhere—can be the scariest of all. Today, we share three short stories from three different guests, including one from our co-host, Becky.

AI-generated transcript of this episode available upon request.

Ghost Story No. 1

Our guest D lives in the Pecos Triangle (which encompasses the Pecos National Historical Park), where unexplained things have happened to him ever since he moved in.

Apparently, however, the events he experiences are just par for the course for those who dare to live within this strange region of paranormal activity in New Mexico. Strange disappearances, UFO sightings, and, of course, ghostly activity, are all common occurrences in this bit of wilderness in the Southwest U.S.

D references a video about the Pecos Triangle which you can watch below:

D’s experiences in Pecos aren’t the only strange supernatural events in his life. He also had an incident within a haunted house while he was studying photography in school.

Ghost Story No. 2

Ken Sledge of Sledgehammer Horror is not afraid of scary movies. In fact, his entire channel is devoted to horror, especially horror cinematography. However, when Ken was a teenager, he had an experience that could have come right out of a ’90s horror flick–except it was real. Ken retells his horrifying foray into a dilapidated haunted house and how the events of that evening terrify him to this day.

Ken also lets us know his very first horror film: House from 1985. And we have to agree, it’s a damn fine first horror movie for any kid to watch.

Ghost Story No. 3

We recently heard Becky tell of her visit to her family’s land in Lakeland, Florida, and the ghosts she and her family saw there. However, that story wasn’t the whole story. Another story recently emerged about a haunted clock that now, too, resides on the family property.

Be sure to listen to the entire episode to hear all three scary true short ghost stories. Until next time, have a spooky day!

The post An Unholy Trinity of Ghosts appeared first on Homespun Haints.

Episode Summary: A Haunted Florida Woman and her Ancestral Land

Ancestral ties run deep in the land that housed our predecessors. Blood mixes with soil, soul mixes with the air, and our lifeforce breathes into the green growth spurting out from the ground.

But what if we have to share our ancestral land with creatures from another dimension? How can we coexist with such entities? And how do we physically look to one another?

These are the questions our co-host Becky (a haunted Florida woman herself, in a way) had to face when recently visiting her family in Lakeland, Florida. Becky’s ancestors first dug a well in this sun-hardened soil in 1922. But it seems something that’s been on the land far longer than Becky’s family is still hanging around, causing mischief.

AI-generated transcript of this episode available upon request.

Episode Show Notes about the haunted Florida woman’s ancestral home

The original home standing in Lakeland inspired this podcast’s very first artwork. Becky knew the home was haunted long before the podcast began, so naturally the house built in 1922 and home to generations of her family seemed a fitting image for the first Homespun Haints website.

Even though Becky’s aunt and uncle knocked down the original house and built a new one on top of its original foundation, ghosts still lurk around the old walls. Becky, her aunt, her cousin, and her cousin’s children have all seen strange entities flitting around the walls. Perhaps all the antique dolls and other antiques around the house have something to do with it.

At one point, Becky brought out her SLS meter and took a look at the antique dolls.

Or, perhaps, the land is just haunted. By more than just ghosts.

Whatever the case, we want you to make your own opinions after you listen to Becky tell her story on the episode below. Until next time, have a spooky day!

The post The Lakeland Elemental appeared first on Homespun Haints.

Common myths about haunted houses

Before we go into signs of a haunted house, let’s talk about some common misconceptions of hauntings:

• Haunted houses do not need to be old. In fact, even new construction homes might harbor a spirit or two (remember Poltergeist and Stir of Echoes?)
• A house can be haunted even if no one died on the property
• Not all hauntings are malevolent. We’ve talked to people who love the ghosts they live with (though some professionals argue that it’s unhealthy to coincide with lingering spirits)
• Hauntings sometimes aren’t from the house at all–maybe you have a haunted object in your home
• The ghosts in a haunted house may not be there permanently–they could just be “passing through”

Scary things about hauntings that we’ve heard too many times not to believe

There are certain scary horror movie tropes that we used to think were myths, but they’ve happened to a lot of people we’ve talked to. If you think your house is haunted, have you or anyone you live with done the following?

• Recently remodeled your home
• Played with a spirit (Ouija) board or attended a séance of any sort?
• Recently visited a cemetery or a haunted location (yes, ghosts can follow you home!)
• Talked at length about ghosts, or watched a lot of horror movies

Okay, for that last point we need to make a clarification. Many people believe that talking about spirits will “give them strength” and make it possible for them to manifest more easily. Yeah, that’s not the way it works; at least not according to the data we’ve gathered.

What really happens is you become more attuned to the activity around you if you’ve been primed by recent conversations or things you’ve watched. Sometimes, horror movies can cause nightmares, too, if you have unresolved fears that the movie created.

Watch our video on how to dispel nightmares from horror movies before they manifest.

So how to know if your house is haunted?

Unfortunately, it’s difficult to know if a house is haunted before you purchase or rent it. Unless, of course, you or someone you know is a medium. Many hauntings start slowly and work their way into your lives over time, long after you’ve signed the contract saying you’ll stay there.

Some people know their house is haunted because they see or hear ghosts, in which case we’d love to talk to you on our show! But some hauntings are more subtle–and yet they can be just as menacing.

First of all, look for these signs within your house

• Unexplainable cold spots
• Things going missing or moving when you’re not looking
• Flickering lights
• Pipes bursting
• Strange smells
• Pets avoiding certain parts of the house or staring/growling at what seems to be nothing

These are all great things you can look for. However, as you know, some houses just don’t have good bones. Some houses have cold spots, flickering lights, and pinhole leaks because the contractor cut corners. Hauntings, however, can cause other, less physical problems for you and your family.

Next, see if any of the following happen on a regular basis

• Everyone keeps getting sick after moving into the house (please check for mold if this is happening).
• Healthy pets go missing or die.
• You feel “off;” nothing seems to be working out the way it should.
• You fight with your co-habitants more often over trivial things.
• Someone in your home has consistent nightmares.
• Children in the home have new imaginary friends.
• You are more tired than usual.
• A part of the home has an unusual, sudden infestation of some sort that you can’t seem to get rid of.
• In your gut, something feels wrong.

We all go through spells of bad luck. But if we experience particularly bad luck right after moving into a new home, even when we’re doing everything right, Occam’s Razor suggests the house is probably the cause. And that makes sense whether or not the house is actually haunted.

Listen to an episode about a house so haunted it caused a breakup (or did it?)

You determine your house is haunted. Now what?

In horror movies, the family never moves out of the haunted house until it’s too late. And you’ve seen a thousand tropes explaining why. But that doesn’t have to be you. You can take charge of your situation and keep it from getting so bad it becomes a real horror movie at a later date.

There could be a thousand things that appear to be a haunting. How to know if your house is really haunted could be that all the things listed above are happening, and you have a funny feeling in your gut that things aren’t right. Even then, you will probably have a hard time convincing yourself or others that you are living in Amityville. You and I both know this house is haunted at this point, but it’s reasonable to expect the majority of people to be skeptical of your claims.

What do you do if your house is haunted?

Time to take charge and go through the following steps.

Step 1: Rule out non-paranormal causes

Hire an electrician to look at the lights, and a plumber to see what’s up with those leaking, banging pipes. Get a mold inspection, check your HVAC system, and maybe find a better pest control service. Even if your house is haunted, you don’t want physical problems preventing you from finding the source of the haunting.

Step 2: Investigate the history of the area

Talk to your neighbors, especially the ones that have lived there forever. Find out what stories and lore surround not just your home, but also the neighborhood. Go to the local library and look at old maps–is your home on what was once a crossroads? Is your street called “Hidden Dead People Way?” These are clues about what might actually be going on.

Step 3: Look at your own life

Are you in over your head with rent or a mortgage and it’s causing stress? Did you just take a job you shouldn’t have? Is there a particular food that you used to crave, but now you think you’re allergic to it? Are you pregnant?

All of these things can cause profound change in our lives and our relationships, and not always for the better. If you want to combat the ghosts in your house, you need to combat your own personal demons first.

Step 4: Cleanse your home

You can hire someone to cleanse the ghosts from your home, or do it yourself. And “cleanse” means more than “clean” (though clean houses produce less stress, less places for ghosts to hide, and generally are healthier places so you should clean that house, too).

Smoke out your house with sage or some other herb, give your home a sound bath with a bell or singing bowl, sprinkle salt and water in the corners, etc. There are many guides on how to cleanse your home. Or, if you’re not confident on how to do it yourself, hire a professional who is.

Step 5: Protect yourself from future hauntings

The best way to keep the ghosts at bay is to keep a positive attitude and repel negative energy from your home. We wrote an article on folk knowledge for positive homes, which is a great place to start. Take care of yourself, eat healthy, and exercise.

Also, keep your home as clean as possible, open your windows and air out your home when it makes sense to do so. Some people like to place crystals around their home (selenite is good for repelling darkness and bringing light). Others swear by certain herbs such as eucalyptus and lavender (I keep dried bunches of both in my bedroom). Not only is this just general good advice for mental and physical health; it also makes your home less hospitable for the ghosts.

Should you move out of your haunted house?

We’ve had professional psychic mediums on the show who tell us that it’s not necessary to move out of a house due to a haunting. This is because earthbound spirits and shadow people can all be forcibly relocated by an experienced medium, or by some accounts, even by an intrepid homeowner.

There may be some types of hauntings, however, that can’t be completely eliminated.

Residual hauntings

For example, residual hauntings may be unlikely to stop after taking the above steps. This is because residual hauntings aren’t due to the current presence of spirits. They are usually attributed either to a time slip, or an event in the past that was recorded, almost like a cassette tape, onto the surrounding land. The recording plays, and the living witness the events as a kind of ghostly mirage. But the ghostly images we see in a residual haunting cannot interact with us, as they’re not conscious, or even technically present, any more than the image on a movie screen.

What to do for a residual haunting

Apart from removing all the mineral deposits from the property (a practically impossible task), we know of no good way to eliminate a residual haunting. The good news is, by the accounts we’ve heard, residual hauntings can’t directly harm the living. The bad news is, they often happen unexpectedly, giving us a startle. Or, they will occur at night, interrupting our sleep.

Many people just get fed up with watching the same recording night after night, and decide they’re ready to move out. We’d love to live in a world where it’s perfectly acceptable to list your house for sale as-is due to a “harmless residual haunting.” But in some places, such a statement would get you laughed out of the HOA. In that case, they might seek advice from a professional medium on how to sell a haunted house ethically.

Do you live in a haunted house?

We love haunted houses. From the real haunted houses we grew up in, to the ones we see in our nightmares, they all fascinate us. We made a tutorial all about how to draw a haunted house, and our first t-shirt design was of a cartoon haunted house that Becky drew.

If your house is haunted, we’d love to hear your ghost stories! Send us a note on our submit page, and we’ll be in touch. Until next time, have a spooky day!

Listen to our interview with a medium who had a hard time finding a non-haunted house to purchase:

The post How to know if your house is haunted appeared first on Homespun Haints.

Episode Show Notes

Becky’s first encounter with the Pale Man, as she’s starting to call him, began years ago. At first she thought he was the former owner of her 40-year-old home; after purchasing the home she learned he had possibly died on the property. But after talking to mediums, Tarot readers, and other sensitive friends, she’s convinced he’s someone who perhaps knew her in the past.

And, after doing some automatic writing exercises with Diana on this episode, she thinks he may be something sinister.

We provide the few clues we have. Do you have any theories? Let us know on our Facebook group at facebook.com/groups/homespunhaints.

Diana’s haunted basement

Diana has been dealing with a haunted basement for nearly 40 years. And in this episode, she shares the latest strangeness occurring in her home. Catch the full play-by-play of her basement ghost story here.

The few clues we can provide in this ghost attachment story:

The figure appears as a pale, white man, perhaps in his forties, perhaps older. He has blonde or white hair. Becky and others have seen him hanging out in a particular corner of her bedroom. When people try to talk to him, he won’t say who he is; he’ll only smile.

The Pale Man sometimes rides in the back of Becky’s car, but most recently she saw him sitting at the edge of her sofa in her living room. If she asks him to leave, he will. But he always comes back.

Listen to the episode for more hints and clues, and learn what Diana discovers when she tries to communicate with the entity. Should Becky be scared?

Until next time, have a spooky day!

The post The Pale Man: A Ghost Attachment Story appeared first on Homespun Haints.

Hear this paranormal podcast episode about haunted Michigan on YouTube:

Listen right here:

Episode Summary

There are haunted houses. And then there are very haunted houses. Houses where something almost always happens in the middle of the night, or the middle of the day. Houses where the spirits are extra restless and extra active, and the dead outnumber the living.

Today, we speak with Reverend Gerald Hunter, author and paranormal investigator, who’s incredibly haunted childhood home shaped his entire career. Would you have been able to sleep in the haunted Michigan house he grew up in? Listen and decide, today, on Homespun Haints.

AI-generated transcript of this episode available upon request.

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About the Guest, Rev. Gerald Hunter

Gerry is from Brooklyn, Michigan, which is the scaphoid bone in relation to the mitten, a description I’m aware helps just about nobody. Including postal workers, who kept delivering his mail to New York. He has seen some wild hauntings and spirited spirits around the Midwest!

He is retired from ministry, and now works aboard the incredibly haunted USS Edson on the Saginaw River in Bay City, MI. Gerry has published 3 books about his encounters, including Haunted Michigan, More Haunted Michigan, and Haunted Michigan 3: The Haunting Continues… all available on Amazon. Someday soon his fourth book, Confessions of a Ghost Hunter, is coming out! Keep updated by following him on Facebook.

Masculinity and Paranormal Investigation

Is believing in ghosts contrary to machismo?

Gerry identifies wistfully as the least macho of all the men in his family, despite his best efforts. He chose the path of ministry, while all the other brothers followed their father into law enforcement. He’s also the only brother who seeks out ghostly encounters, as opposed to avoiding or denying them.

The theme of machismo comes up multiple times in his stories. He cited one manly friend who flew into a rage to deal with a ghost playfully taunting him with a towel. His father refused to believe when the boys talked about seeing ghosts. Conversely, his mother talked of her own ghostly experiences somewhat openly. His brother refused to stick around to witness any hauntings, despite denying belief.

What is it about ghosts, hauntings, and spirit communications that brings ones masculinity into question? Is it more masculine to bravely interact with the paranormal, or to eschew all participation therein? And what does it mean when masculinity and paranormal investigation combine?

Masculine ways to interact with spirits

There are many ways to be masculine. We think positive masculinity is embodied in qualities like providing fatherly guidance and protection to one’s wards, gallantly defending those who have less power or advantage than oneself, bravely accomplishing the intimidating, confidently taking action based on rational reasoning, and feats of physical strength and endurance.

• Our guest Kerry Blu attempted to create a safe space for the ghost who shared his apartment during COVID-19 quarantine.
• Our guest Daryl Marsten volunteered to take the more frightening lodgings at the haunted cabins.
• In one episode, Becky breaks down gender stereotypes in the male-dominated field of paranormal investigation reality television.

Let’s approach this rationally

Gerry tells us that his favorite way to conduct a paranormal investigation is to attempt to disprove everything. In other words, attempt to find evidence of a non-supernatural explanation for seemingly supernatural occurrences. This does seem to fit in with the spirit of scientific investigation. It also reinforces that skepticism does not equal disbelief.

There is both more courage and more rationality required for skepticism than for disbelief. To be skeptical is to embrace the vulnerable position that what you are hearing might be wrong, or what you personally believe to be true might be wrong. Skeptics must have the fortitude to investigate with an open mind until they have enough objective reasons to rationally form a opinion.

But was it a ghost?

Most people use heuristics to accept or reject ideas from within an established worldview, instead of attempting to re-evaluate their belief in various types of paranormal entities every time they find themselves confronted by a new strange occurrence. That’s why paranormal investigators focus on obtaining as much evidence as they can, with the goal of ruling out a mundane cause for a seemingly paranormal event, instead of focusing on proving “it was a ghost.” In other words, it’s quite possible to be a paranormal investigator who doesn’t believe in ghosts, since you’re merely attempting to answer questions like “is this occurrence explicable by any rationale other than the paranormal?” in most cases. When the answer is “no,” it’s not necessary to then jump to the conclusion “it was a ghost.”

Of course, paranormal investigation evidence is extra scrumptious when it is corroborated with something relevant to ghosts and hauntings. We might not have the patience to go looking for EVPs all night, but it still makes our spirit senses tingle with joy when we hear an EVP that mentions the name of an actual person who has died in the purportedly haunted house where the recording was captured. These synchronicities can be pleasurable to the believer, or upsetting to the disbeliever. But to the skeptic, they may just be more data points to consider on the long, winding path to the truth.

A scary paranormal investigation of a Michigan haunted hotel

After this interview, Gerry told us about another paranormal investigation he performed at the haunted South Lyon Hotel in South Lyon, Michigan. One of the employees had recently quit, because of the encounters she had with one of the hotel’s ghosts. She reluctantly agreed to attend the investigation on the condition that the team would never would be more than 6 feet away from her as she walked them through the eatery. 

At one point, she shouted, “He’s here,” and went into a panic. She hollered “what do you want?” and was thrown against the cooler wall. She started crying, and said her back burned. One of the investigators helped lift her shirt, revealing the backwards word “YOU” scratched into her back, deep enough to break the skin. They dabbed away the blood before taking this photo.

Have a spooky day!

The post Heaven is a Place Where Everything is Just Okay appeared first on Homespun Haints.

Listen to this funny sleep paralysis episode here:

Or watch on YouTube:

Funny Sleep Paralysis Stories

You wake up in a pool of your own sweat. You can’t move—something is sitting on your chest. And it’s a naked man. Or is it a demon? Which is worse?! You try to scream, but all that comes out is a whimper. You’ve just entered the Haint Zone.

Something to this extent happens in this episode, where we speak with two very funny podcasters who have had some seriously sinister experiences in their past, including sleep paralysis and growing up in a haunted house.

AI-generated transcript of this episode available upon request.

What is Sleep Paralysis?

From a psychological perspective, sleep paralysis is when, after sleeping, your conscious mind wakes up before your body. People who experience this realize they are unable to move or speak because their body is technically still asleep; otherwise they feel like they are completely awake.

For centuries, however, people have reported seeing or feeling a “demon” (often a succubus or incubus) while they are in the sleep paralysis state. The actual phenomenon is poorly studied by scientific communities. However, plenty of psychology articles will assure you it is nothing supernatural. When you see something in that strange state between waking and sleeping, it is nothing more than a hallucination. A hallucination that a whole lot of people from a whole lot of different cultures and worldviews all mysteriously see as a similar creature.

Similarities between sleep paralysis demons that our guests have reported

1. Dark figure that appears that sits on sleep paralysis sufferer’s chest and pins them down
2. Figure is pure shadow
3. Figure paces back and forth along long side of the bed
4. Figure is wearing a hooded cloak, or nothing at all
5. Figure makes rustling noises, but does not speak
6. Sleep paralysis sufferer reports feelings of extreme dread and fear emanating from the figure
7. Shadow figure does not immediately disappear when sleep paralysis episode is over, but does disappear in light

About Live Laugh Larceny

Live Laugh Larceny is the brainchild of co-hosts and long-time friends Amanda and Trevin, who are based out of Kansas City. The show hilariously dissects otherwise inconsequential petty crimes and elevates them into long form stories, complete with cheesy sound effects and dramatic music.

Listen to Live Laugh Larceny on any platform at https://linktr.ee/Live.Laugh.Larceny.Podcast and follow this duo on Instagram @livelaughlarceny and on TikTok @livelaughlarceny.

Until next time, have a spooky day!

The post Not Today, Naked Bald Demon! appeared first on Homespun Haints.