There aren’t a lot of folks attuned to ghostly energy like your crystal-toting, herbal tea-drinking hippie friends, but pets are up there, especially cats.

If you want to know if a Casper has taken up residence in your home, your cat or dog is the best tool in your arsenal.

Strange behaviours, like your cat staring fixedly at an empty or unremarkable spot in the room, or the dog yowling at the same time every night even though they’re loved and fed are some signs.

If they run around as if they’re chasing an imaginary string when they’re not really predisposed to the zoomies, go call a professional.

An older house is more likely to be playing host to ghosts.

Unfortunately, old houses have quirks and personalities that ape the signs of a supernatural houseguest, so it’s hard to tell the difference between a home in need of a plumber or a priest.

If you’ve insulated the place properly but still experience random chilly spots in the centre of rooms, away from windows or ventilation, then you could be inadvertently walking right through a spirit.

Put on a scarf and give those ghouls their personal space.

Watch a single horror movie and you’ll know that ghosts and kids go together like strawberries and cream. Many believe that children are able to access the supernatural more easily.

They can hear higher frequencies, affect electromagnetic fields and even see things adults can’t.

If you think ghosts are hanging out in your bathtub or pantry, then watch your own children carefully or borrow a niece or nephew for the day.

If they start talking to imaginary friends, drawing “memories” with details from before they were born or playing morbid games, they might be influenced by a friend from beyond.

Ghosts are scary when you first experience them, but not all spirits are dangerous or inconvenient.

They stick around usually because your home is where they also lived, so they are unwilling or unable to move on. These spirits will send you signs that they are around and mean you no harm.

A ghost can do this is with smells. If you catch a whiff of perfume no one wears, smell flowers, potpourri, cigar smoke or unfamiliar washing powder, it could be a spirit nudging you.

Ghosts may not be malicious, but that does not mean they are not mischievous. Spirits get bored so they entertain themselves in many ways, one of which is shuffling your belongings around.

If you always lose your keys despite keeping them on the hook by the door, you might not be losing your mind.

Poltergeists are famous for messing with people’s stuff, but they don’t have a monopoly on it.

But if the items are moved around in a frenetic, chaotic or dangerous way, it’s probably poltergeist you are dealing with, as compared to a regular spirit.

A common theory about ghosts is that they are beings freed from the shackles of mortality, so they vibrate at a higher frequency than material matter.

This lets them move through our world and interact with objects and people to some extent without being seen or heard.

This explains why ghosts interact with televisions, radios and light bulbs, as these things include frequencies they can tap into.

If your television is on when you come downstairs in the morning and your kids swear it wasn’t them, then it may be a spirit who loves catching up on Real Housewives reruns.

Folklore dictates that ghosts will either haunt the place where they died or return to the location that feels like home to them to continue existing in peace.

So when you’re dealing with a spirit in your house, it’s probably because they either died or lived there before you did.

You could be visited by the ghost of a loved one or family member though. One who wants to watch over you or let you know that you are in their thoughts.

One way they do this is by leaving out their keepsakes, or objects that reference your relationship. A white feather is also a signal that their loved one is nearby.

A quiet house can be creepy, but so is one filled with mysterious noises. It’s one thing to hear your partner making the world’s loudest bowl of late-night cereal, or hear giggling upstairs because your kids are doodling with lipstick on the bathroom mirror.

But what about sounds you just can’t explain?

Ghosts love making their presence known but are limited when it comes to doing so.

That’s why their communication attempts can feel more terrifying than reassuring. Think banging cupboards, slamming doors, rattling cutlery or turning on radios.

If you’re dreaming of spirits, monsters or aliens more often than not, then you’ll probably see signs of them in your daily life.

If you dream of spirits trying to communicate with you out of nowhere, then there may be something more going on.

Sleep is when we are at our most vulnerable, so it allows spirits to access a different part of our consciousness. Many believe that ghosts can make contact with the living when they’re in this state.

A recurring dream of a ghost could mean they have something to tell you.

That feeling of thinking someone is standing there watching you isn’t something to be shrugged off.

You may have been proven before in cases of living people, so if you feel this way in your home when no one is there to be seen, it could be that those watching are not visible to the naked eye.

We are taught to ignore the creeping feelings but we should be trusting our intuition more. If this feeling comes when you are in your house, something deeper might be going on.

Ghosts are not always visible, but they have ways of showing themselves. An example would be movements that seem partially visible.

If you notice movements out of the corner of your eye but there’s nothing there, then you could be dealing with something supernatural.

Ghosts can also manifest as a dark shape in your peripheral vision, or you could see something shake or go foggy.

Your mind and body can play tricks on you, but if things keep appearing to move just out of sight, ghosts could be the culprit.

Random objects going missing with antique or sentimental value attached to them, might point to reasons those items are targeted.

Ghosts will hang around in the place that they died, so targeting those items could signify the time period they originally came from, or even the emotions related to unfinished business.

If this pattern continues, try to draw links between the items to derive information about the spirit within your home.

Your phone could be new, and you may have purchased it based on the excellent battery life it provides. However, it always seems to be on the verge of dying with super low battery.

Like electronics, ghosts exist on a higher level of frequency which means they can tamper with digital tools.

Spirits may try to communicate through electricity, so the juice from your phone could be sucked out to sustain this energy.

If may be an old phone but if the problem persists, then you should be suspicious.

A shiver up your spine could mean one thing, but a constant crawling on the back of your neck could mean something ghostly.

Supernatural experts say a constant odd feeling on the back of your neck can mean that a ghost is attached to you. This is the most common location for them to connect to living people.

This connection usually happens to someone who is metaphysically gifted.

And if this happens to you, the ghost stops being tethered to your house and will follow wherever you go. You just won’t be able to shake it off without help.

They say grief is a thing with feathers.

Winged creatures have been historically associated with the ones who have passed. If you share a special meaning with a relative or friend with a particular creature, then you see that bird or butterfly appearing, it could be that they are paying you a visit.

Try not to think too deeply about every winged creature you see since animals don’t stop existing without spirits.

The main message winged spirits leave are that they are at peace and OK in the afterlife.

You move to a new place and you know something’s not right. Perhaps of the sudden changes in you or your family’s personalities.

You may have stopped feeling like yourself, or your family member is acting like a completely different person.

Malevolent, or demonic spirits can be a reason for this switch. In extreme cases of a loved one acting particularly different, you may be dealing with possession.

This is dangerous for everyone in the household, since a strong shift in personality can be evidence of a demonic spirit within that person who uses their body as a vessel.

If you fear that the place you’re in could be haunted, look into the building’s past.

Past occurrences of hauntings, possessions, or death, could mean something eerie could be afoot in the house. Do you know why the previous owners or tenants wanted to move out?

Why was the place on the market? How old is it? These questions may raise interesting answers.

Look into a property’s past if you’ve noticed other signs of disturbance and possible haunting.

If there are haunting signs along with a mysterious and sketchy history surrounding the property, then that’s the evidence you need that there are ghosts about.

A haunting feels like a weight you have to carry, and that energy in the house can feel burdening. You don’t need to experience possession for your mood to be brought down by the spirits around you.

If your house makes you feel depressed or super irritable, it could be the spirits present there.

Intense mood swings can be indicative of a ghostly presence. In the same way that spirits tamper with electricity, our brainwaves and emotions can run a little haywire when they make a home in our space.

Doors should open and close easily so if you’re having trouble getting from room to room, or getting in and out of the house, you should be suspicious.

It’s not uncommon for ghosts to be the cause for jammed doors, like the front door.

They jam doors to protect their space, since they’ve lived there a lot longer than you so they consider the house to be theirs.

Spirits also jam doors to get you to stay inside if they are trying to communicate, or if they intend to use you for a malevolent purpose such as possession.

Things can get confusing when spirits are around. Those flickering lights, glitching electronics, and doors not working can make you forget why you entered a room.

Ghosts can even make you feel disoriented in your own home by altering the air pressure. This weird sensation can disorient you and make you dizzy.

The more confused you are walking around and forgetting why you walked into certain rooms, the more likely there is a ghost in your house.

Disorientation tends to be a sign that it doesn’t want you there, though this could be for a morally neutral reason. So tread with caution.

Spirits cannot always move physical objects, but they can communicate through smoke and steam, since it is the closest thing to visible air.

In rare circumstances, a ghost may be able to make themselves visible in smoke or steam from a fire, candle, cooking, or your morning cup of tea.

The more common way of making themselves known is through manipulating the pattern or direction of the smoke.

Keep an eye on the way the smoke curls through the air, or if it is blown off course with no real reason to do so.

Some ghosts will cause chaos. If you’ve spent time around cats and are familiar with the way they like to knock objects off of surfaces, then you might understand this variety of chaos.

A ghost may shove objects off cabinets and even off hooks. There are many reasons why they do this.

They might want to scare those in the house into leaving, cause you harm, or just be trying to communicate with you.

The latter reason is the most common, so if things in have been falling with no explanation, pay attention to which items those are.

Sleep paralysis is the state where someone has awoken from their sleep, but their body is still asleep and so are unable to move at their command.

If this is familiar, then you have known sleep paralysis.

Sleep paralysis figures or demons are the ones that some see in front of them while experiencing the phenomenon.

The figures can be people, or sometimes horrifying creatures, but they are a way for ghosts to make themselves known.

Because of your semi-conscious state in paralysis, you are more likely to be able to see spirits at these times.

If recurring figures appear only within your own house, then your building’s ghost could be making itself visible to you.

Houseplants help keep the air feeling fresh inside. Not everyone has a green thumb, but some plants shouldn’t be a struggle to keep alive, especially if you had them for years before moving to your new place.

If your plants aren’t looking great, yet you don’t remember changing up your plant care routine, then it could be a sign of the supernatural in your house.

Ghosts are on a higher frequency level, so they can produce noises out of our range of hearing.

Plants react to sound which is why they thrive with classical music. Really high-pitched noises will make them suffer.