I’m A Chinese Medium Who Has “Cleansed” Houses Over 10 Years. Here’s How Your Home Can Get Haunted.

Is your home haunted?

Owners call me when they suspect their homes have become haunted or if they have just moved in and want me to check for any lingering entities. Usually they report hearing disturbances such as marble balls dropping and furniture being dragged.

Western pop culture representations of hauntings aren’t accurate; they’re always biblically centred and revolve around trespassing a house haunted by a spirit or demon. It’s just not that dramatic or straightforward. Hauntings take time and often manifest subtly before they become a lot more apparent.

Think of a haunting like it’s a possession and it puts things into perspective. Most people accept that humans can get possessed but they forget that houses are, in a way, alive as well. They contain the ‘yang’ energy. A home possession occurs when the yin energy triumphs over the yang. 

If you’re not familiar with chinese culture, here’s a breakdown on the yin and yang balance:

Yin = Dark
Yang = Light

A house that experiences many spiritual encounters is said to have its yang energy compromised. It has excessive yin energy for different reasons, making it more ‘attractive’ to entities. Visualise a room that has its curtain closed everyday without any sunlight. Now imagine being locked up in a house with no windows. Think about how drastic the energy shift would be. We all have some sort of sixth sense and it explains why most of us like the feeling of sunlight pouring through our homes. 

When a house becomes possessed, it starts to feel dirty spiritually. You’ll feel goosebumps, icky, and cold while feeling like you’re being watched. However these things don’t happen overnight and hauntings aren’t random at all. There’s always a reason and there are way more colourful entities than just ghosts that can be exorcised with a Bible. 

We usually only attribute hauntings to violent occurrences such as murders, wars, or suicides that have taken place. Here are some lesser known reasons why and how houses can become haunted, that you should be aware of too. 

The home originally belongs to spirits. You’re displacing them.

Humans find it hard to fathom that we consistently share our world with countless other species. We find it even harder to believe that spirits occupy and share our spaces too. We have tried to establish order and structure over spaces through architecture and artificial modifications of natural landscapes just so that we can make it livable for us. However, the fundamental land that these buildings are mounted on have been alive for years. Many entities reside in such spaces and some are even congruent with the natural scape of these terrains. 

Nature spirits are darker and denser entities than human spirits. They are spirits of trees and plants, and they have a different ‘shape’. In Western mythology, such representations would be fawns, fairies, and nymphs. In Islam, such spirits may be referred to as ‘Jinns’. 

When we move into our house, we’re essentially trespassing and treating them like the intruders. This is why I don’t always ‘clear’ every spirit. We are only allowed to banish intruding entities. However, things like nature spirits have to be negotiated with and oftentimes, it involves a mutual agreement on sharing the space. There was an instance of a haunted home in Marsiling where my client kept hearing footsteps. Upon investigation, I identified that it was a female jinn who claimed that her father had abandoned her there and she was just ‘waiting’ for him. I spoke to the homeowner and we agreed to let her ‘hide’ in the storeroom as long as she does not come out of it. The solution should not always be exorcism or banishing. As with the human world, it’s always better to come to a peaceful agreement than strong-arming your way to get what you want. The latter usually results in more consequences. 

You invited things to follow you back home

Let me start off by saying that no spirit or entity is going to randomly choose to accompany you back home. There are hundreds of people in a space at any given time. For a spirit to ‘spot’ you, you must have made your presence known. When we engage in certain activities, we become a lot more visible and attractive to these entities. It’s like spraying blood on yourself in the middle of the ocean and blaming sharks for encircling you. Here’s how most people end up having entities ‘follow’ them home:

• Commenting on dead people
• Calling and challenging spirits 

The latter is a no-brainer. However, most of us love to nonchalantly ‘comment’ on people who have passed, especially at funerals or ‘sites of passing’. The most common phrase being ‘Oh, she was so young’. I had to deal with one such case once. One of my clients had been to a funeral and commented ‘She was so pretty and young. If she was alive, I would have totally dated her. What a waste’. 

For some reason, people love to say such things on obituary posts on social media too. When he exclaimed what he did, the vengeful spirit of the deceased girl heard him and took it as an invitation.

The spirit did not mean malicious harm but was simply biting the bait he had put out. He started hearing female voices in his bathroom and would be woken up by ‘touches’ in the morning. He got increasingly tired and drained every day too. Even though she did not mean harm, he was not living up to his ask and was not giving her the attention she wanted. So it spiralled into more intense ‘tantrums’ and demands for attention, worsening the home haunting. 

This is why it’s always good to just pay your respects and leave after. Don’t loiter around funeral or cremation sites because anything you do or say may not be privy to just you.

The place has been empty or abandoned for awhile

There’s a reason why places or houses that have been ‘empty’ for a long time never truly feel empty. The air feels odd, the energy feels dense and there are signs of overgrowth and deterioration everywhere. Oftentimes, very little sunlight gets into these places too. As mentioned earlier, such spaces would be brimming with ‘yin’ energy.  

When left empty, a home can attract spirits to move into them and take root. It’s the same with run-down buildings and homeless people or ‘addicts’ looking for a temporary shelter. This is why if you’re leaving your home for a few months, it’s always good to hire someone to come in and do weekly cleaning. Creating movement in the space, letting periodic sunlight in, and cleaning up dust helps maintain the ‘security’ of your home.

If you have an altar dedicated to any sort of deity at home, it will also be good to get your neighbour or friend to come in weekly and light a joss stick or candle. This will serve as sufficient protection from curious entities. 

You’re not in the best mental state

Everyone has a bubble of protection made up of:

• Religious beliefs
• Prayers
• Optimism
• Self-esteem
• Mental health

The thicker this bubble, the less likelihood of a spiritual possession. Mental state plays a huge part when it comes to hauntings because our mental state is always reflected in the space we occupy. When we are in a depressed state, we tend to be a lot more messy and cluttered. 

I had one client who was reeling from a really bad heartbreak, so he resorted to misusing painkillers to tide over each day. He got himself into such a dysfunctional state that his room was littered with rubbish, broken glasses, and loads of unnecessary clutter. His windows were also mostly closed while he smoked cigarettes indoors and he refused to leave his room because he wanted to self isolate. 

During this period, a very dark entity started to creep into his room and take root. It also ‘grew’ over time because his energy was feeding it. It was one of the most dangerous cases of home possession I had to deal with and was a poltergeist-level of haunting. In fact, we ended up evacuating overnight and he had to find a new room. If he had spent any more time there, he might not have made it out alive. I will share more details on this spine chilling haunting another time. 

A “one-size fits all method” never works for haunted houses

When it comes to hauntings, it’s important to be sensitive of all beliefs. Even though I’m a Chinese medium, I use a mix of different religious methods when I clear houses. If the spirit is Christian or Hindu, you need to use the most appropriate method to clear it. If it is some sort of ‘deity’, a biblical method will simply not work. A “one-size fits all” solution never works and will only make things worse. 

This is why I don’t usually work alone because it’s always important to put ego aside and have back up. Home possessions are never a one-man job. Stay tuned next week for my guide on the types of entities that you might encounter in a home haunting.

Is your house creepy and kooky? Mysterious and spooky? Tell us your horror story below!