What to do if your house is haunted
A brief primer, with fewer explanations than are probably warranted or necessary, but one very interesting anecdote.
Scripture refers to ghosts in several places. Isaiah 8:19; 19:3; 29:4, in conjunction with 1 Samuel 28:11–19, indicate clearly that communication with the spirits of the dead is possible. Matthew 14:26; Mark 6:49; Luke 24:37–39 speak of seeing ghosts, and treat this implicitly as a possibility. Acts 12:15 takes for granted the reality of crisis apparitions — a phenomenon experienced by about 30% of people, according to research by David Hufford, where the spirit of someone recently-deceased appears to them for a little while
For a fuller understanding of this interpretation, compare Acts 23:8 for how Luke treats “angel” as synonymous with “spirit,” or check out my sermon on this here:
The gist of this scriptural data is that the living can and sometimes do interact with the spirits of the dead.
However…
This does not mean that all haunting-type phenomena are human spirits, even when they are legitimately supernatural.
Indeed, we should be careful to notice that none of the scriptural examples are anything like the phenomena experienced in classic hauntings.
There are a wide variety of spiritual beings out there, some of which we know nothing about, aside from that they exist. Many of the wicked ones seem to take delight in the fact that, being spiritual, they can appear to people in various ways, in order to mess with them. Consequently, in cases of legitimate hauntings, it is at least as likely that we are dealing with some other spiritual being as with a human spirit.
What kind?
I would argue that we can rule out fallen gods (Ps 8:5; Ps 82:1, 6), and in most cases probably also elemental spirits (Col 2:8, 20; Ps 104:4; 148:1–4, 7–8; Job 38:11–12; Jer 33:20–21). These manifest differently; for instance, Bigfoot and Mothman seem to have strong evidence for their existence, and in my view, would be elemental spirits.
Typical hauntings, however, are more likely to be unclean/bastard spirits (dead giants) like those encountered in the gospels; or some other kind of spirit entirely, like those mentioned in Isaiah 34:14 — if they are indeed different. In that case, the night-demon called Lilith is often associated (rightly or wrongly) with the mara or night hag, euphemistically referred to by doctors as “sleep paralysis.”
We also shouldn’t rule out psychic phenomena. We know very little about how human spiritual abilities work. For instance, poltergeist phenomena seem very frequently (if not invariably) to be associated with a living human — usually a teenage girl — rather than with other spiritual entities. There also seems to be fairly good evidence (in fact, it is a leading theory) that traumatic events, or possibly any events in certain places, can leave a sort of “echo,” which can be seen or heard by people with varying degrees of sensitivity to the spirit world.
So ghosts can be real, but it is not wise to assume that they are always human spirits. (Also, this should go without saying, but…don’t go seeking out spirits. The only ones likely to answer such invitations are the ones you definitely don’t want to.)
Dealing with haunting-type phenemona
This all said, what do you do if your house is “haunted?”
The simple answer is a house blessing.
I have written on the spiritual/covenantal mechanism at work behind blessings and curses already, so that is the only theological justification I will provide here:
What I would like to do here is bolster the theological case with empirical data. If the theology is right, we should expect it to actually produce results in the real world. A house blessing ought to have at least some effect on haunting phenomena.
This is exactly what we find — and many such stories exist. I will close out this post with an anecdote from a brother in the Discipleship & Dominion private discussion group:
This discussion is interesting and I’m coming out in support of the power behind simple house blessings conducted my ministers of the church. Early last summer I moved my family into a new home closer to our church so we could better engage in the community. Within the first week moving in, things started feeling weird. There was a sense of dread, depression, and anxiety that infused the atmosphere of the place. Everyone felt it and was on edge.
After a few discoveries while doing deep cleaning, and an informative 1AM visit by the police, we learned that the house had been a renowned heroin den. It was a hub for dealers from two states looking to sell their wares in bulk. A young woman died of an overdose in one of the bedrooms just months before we moved in. Further research via the rabbit hole of Facebook revealed that one of the tenants had been a practicing witch.
Now a few weeks into our move, our oldest daughter — who always stays up late during the summer as teenagers tend to do — started reporting seeing and hearing odd things. Footsteps in the hall in the middle of the night when she was the only one upstairs; feelings of being watched or with another presence; and occasionally glimpses of what she described as a tall, dark figure with long arms and long fingers that would stand in thresholds and step into other rooms when she jerked her head around. I attributed it to her imagination and detecting patterns in normal house settling sounds, but I became skeptical when I started having experiences of my own. I get up around 4-5A most mornings for coffee, scripture reading, and Zen time — we have little kids, so it’s difficult to get this time when they are awake, and by the end of the day I’m beat — and after getting my coffee and retreating to the living room, I would return to the kitchen to find all the cupboards inexplicably opened. This happened a few times, and it started getting under my skin.
My wife — who has always mocked the idea of haunted houses and the like — started getting her own creepy feelings and hearing odd things in the middle of the night, usually around 3A, for what it’s worth. I decided to reach out to the elders of our church and request a house blessing. Most of our elders came and blessed the home; we prayed, read Psalm 91, and they blessed the house. When we stepped back into the home, the atmosphere was different; everyone in my family reported that it felt more peaceful, like something that was previously there was now gone. My middle daughter, who had refused to sleep in her new room and was camping out on the sofa next to our bedroom, told us that night she was ready for her own room. There have been no more footsteps, opened cupboards, or phantasms in the middle of the night.
Spooky but also I am so glad to see Reformed folk discussing such topics. I also appreciated you leaving open the door to an "Echo" and not necessarily always some Nephilim unclean spirit.