Of course, establishing one has a haunted house is the most important step and that will involve bringing in a team. I'd honestly suggest a team that was established pre-TAPS era (2004). Really look over the team's website. You want to know what their take is on the paranormal. Many teams are like TAPS and go in to disprove a haunting and then up occasion find conditions that leave them with the "haunted" option, but don't offer much for homeowners except to have a little discussion with the invisible occupants and tell them basically that their lease is up. There's nothing wrong with that approach, but if you have a religious background or are a very spiritual person, this process is one that should involve some symbolic ritual for cleansing or blessing. If this is the case, ask the team if they offer such services.
I'm very rational/logical person, so when I'm stuck in a situation that I can't do anything about, I learn to reframe it in such a way that I can make it easier to live with. We do this every day that we go to a job with a boss who's real asshole. We learn to say, "They pay me to be in the same building with him for 8 hours, but when I leave here, he can go to back to hell where he resides the other 16 hours of the day."
First, you ask yourself if anything that has happened is threatening to your or others. We're talking about physical, not mental. Mental is a whole different issue we will deal with next. If there is something that has been physically threatening, then it is time to consider a spiritual ceremony, however, you also want to take into account the potential religious background of whomever might be haunting the place. It needs to be something that would sing to a Catholic or Native American or whoever else might be the culprit. If you truly believe it might be demonic, your best bet is probably someone with a Catholic background or even Lutheran or Episcopal.
If there are no physical threats, but you personally feel threatened, it's time to have a look at your own internal process. If the sense of being watched gives you the willies, it's probably because your internal dialogue is going something like this, "Something is here with me. I can feel it watching me. What does it want? Why is it watching me?" Paranoia ensues. Another person might enter the same place and think, "Wow, this old building has a really creepy feel," and then they would look at the antique moldings or the antique furnishings and attribute it to the way the place visually appears. Two people having the same feeling and two completely different takes on it.
The key is to stop your inner dialogue and how you describe things because terms like "I can't take this," and "it's after me," are going to produce a new interpretation on anything that occurs. I knew one woman who was tormented by her toilet's leaky valve and certain that it was a ghost trying to communicate ever time she came into the bathroom. She made assumptions that someone died in the bathroom and that every time she entered, it wanted to make its presence known. It wasn't until a friend visited her and used the restroom and came back to announce he'd fixed her leaking valve that the ghost magically disappeared, but the woman had spent the past four months certain she was in constant threat. It may seem funny, but when you look for evidence of something, you can usually find it, so definitely check out your explanatory story. I discuss this a lot in my book, Was That a Ghost?
When I was growing up, my parents had a good attitude. "The soldiers died here during the Civil War. They just keep walking the halls guarding our family since they no longer are with their families."
I had one client who was in a situation in which there was no option of moving and the spouse was not cooperative about accepting the haunting. My suggestion was to keep in mind that there was nothing threatening occurring, simply sounds and cold breezes and doors opening and closing. It was random, but hardly an actual threat. So, I suggested keeping a diary of events to look for correlations with who was in the house, the emotional content of the people inside the home, the areas of the home, the times of the day, looking for patterns and information. When you can't do anything but be a victim, instead become a researcher. That shift in knowing this person could contribute to the field and research, made it actually an exciting thing whenever events occurred just to be able to record them. This is taking back your power in any way that you can. It's sort of like the neighbor with the barking dog. You can whine and complain, but if you start recording the events, you might have a case against them and feel justified in your annoyance once you see it written down. You take back a bit more of your power by making the event accountable.
The final chapter in my book does discuss this issue and what also what you can do when you have experienced the paranormal, the potential changes that could occur in your life as a result from research to creative outlets. Haunted homes happen, but wise people learn to coexist with the unexpected as much as the unexpected patterns of the living people within a home.
