House haunted? Shore up plumbing and address those squeaking doors

By Karen Youso Minneapolis Star Tribune

ARE COLD DRAFTS curling around your toes? Do doors close by themselves on creaking hinges? Do poltergeists flush the toilet in the middle of the night?

Yes? Then your house is haunted . If not by spirits, at least by household matters going awry.

There’s help for the ghostly magic and eerily uncanny events that happen in a house. Call for a private consultation – or ghost buster, if you wish – but first try troubleshooting them yourself.

Bone-chilling drafts?

The classic sign of a ghost is a sudden chill, but chances are your house isn’t filled with spirits, it’s leaking air. Cold air comes in when the wind blows, of course, but it’s also sucked into the house by invisible forces.

These forces (don’t be frightened, it’s just physics) move air from low to high, warm to cold. As warm air rises and escapes out near the top of a building, chilly outdoor air seeps in low, creating cold drafts.

Seal or button up the house, moving from top to bottom, to interrupt this flow.

Mysteriously moving doors?

It’s creepy to watch a door open or close on its own, the work of some unseen visitant.

Relax. The door merely is maladjusted, or the house has settled.

The simple fix: Remove a hinge pin, lay it on a concrete surface and give it a satisfying whack with a hammer to produce a slight bend in the pin. This creates resistance in the door’s swing.

The more complicated fix involves tightening screws and hinges, maybe rehanging the door or resetting the frame, in which case you might want to consult a handyman, avoiding those who work only when the moon is full.

Hideously squeaking hinges?

Stifle teeth-numbing screeches by removing the hinge pins and spraying with a lubricant such as WD40.

Then treat the knuckles of the hinge, tops as well as inside. Have a rag handy to catch slick drips.

Enchanted toilet?

Toilets flush on their own when tidy spirits are taking care of business. Wrong. Water is leaking from the tank into the toilet.

A quick way to see if that’s true is to shut off the water to the tank, add blood-red food coloring to the toilet tank (after it has finished a flush cycle and has shut off). After an hour, check the color of the water in the toilet bowl.

If it’s the least bit pink or red, you have a leak. Typically, the flapper valve (which releases water from tank to bowl) needs replacing. Check with your local hardware or home store for replacement parts or kits.

Ghostly shadows on walls?

No apparitions here . The culprit is the innocent-looking candle. Candles appear to be burning cleanly , but they aren’t. Tiny particles of soot are being released to accumulate slowly, over time, as stains on carpet under doors and on walls, leaving shadow stripes called “ghosting.”

To squelch the problem:

- Use flameless candles, or the smokeless soy variety.

- Keep the wicks short. Longer wicks make higher flames and more soot.

- Keep candles away from drafts, including heat registers. Moving air creates more soot.

Nerve-rattling attic noises?

Squirrels, raccoons, bats or birds are behind the attic hubbub. Raccoons and bats come out at night, while squirrels and birds are busy by day.

To dislodge squirrels yourself, set a live trap (available at hardware stores) baited with peanut butter. How you dispense with a captured squirrel is up to you, but avoid releasing them to be somebody else’s problem or trying to tie tiny hangman nooses. The removal job may require a professional (especially if you’re dealing with a raccoon).

Really, truly haunted?

If you’re still bedeviled by the unexplained in your home and suspect ghosts and goblins on the loose, call for professional help.

Contact a spiritual leader for advice or a paranormal organization for help.

But Jennifer McDermott, founder of the Twin Cities Society for Paranormal Research and Investigation, warned that no paranormal group can guarantee that they will solve your problem, or even that they’ll find anything in your house. That’s why her group never charges for its work. However, good paranormal investigators can bring experience to the puzzle, according to McDermott. “They go over your place with a fine-toothed comb and seek out explanations you wouldn’t think of,” she said. Eighty to 90 percent of spookish occurrences are explainable, she said. It’s just the heating or plumbing.

If you’re one of the other 10 percent, however, McDermott’s advice is: “Don’t be afraid. Ghosts were people once; they just don’t know they’re dead.”

And she added, “It’s not the dead you have to worry about – it’s the living.”