How To Tell If There's Nothing Going On In Your House 
That A Swift Kick And A Couple Of Prozac Won't Fix  

Firstly, do you live in a mobile home?  Congratulations!  You are not haunted! Not even if there is blood streaming down the mail slot in the front door and you are sited atop a Victorian Era grave full of  deformed infants and grimoires.  

1.  Do you hear a baby crying and you don't have a baby?  Congratulations!  You are not being haunted by a baby!  If you live in the Pacific Northwest, what you have is a opossum. 

2.  Do you hear what sounds like cinderblocks or stones being whipped super hard at the walls or any other part of the house?   
My Advice:  Check the neighborhood for unsupervised boys between the ages of 5 and 20. If you actually find objects -rocks, fruit, cinderblocks, etc. you have an infestation of unsupervised boys

3. Does your cat stare at one spot for an hour or more, hissing and yowling, with it's fur standing up?
My Advice:  Ignore. Cats are insane.

4. Does your dog stare at one spot for an hour or more, whimpering or growling, with it's fur standing up?
My Advice:   Your dog hangs around with your cat too much.

5. Have you lost a beloved pet recently, and are now having experiences that seem as though that pet still resides with you in ghost form?
My Advice:  This is not happening.  Let go already. I know this will garner cries of bereaved outrage and denial, to which I say buck the fuck up.  Fluffy is a' mouldering in her grave.

POINT TO PONDER  

Ever wonder why hauntings are limited to people, dolls, the occasional horse, dog, or cat, and Victorian homes?  Why don't you get haunted by the cows that gave their lives for your Happy Meal? And why are ghosts always (post)mammalian?  What about canaries, or tilapia, or road machinery?  Ever wonder why you aren't hip deep in the ghosts of cavemen?  Why don't the animals you run over with your car return to torment your nights with unexplained 'splut' noises?  I have no idea.  Neither do Penn and Teller, from whom I totally ripped this off.  

6. Do you see 'shadow people' darting past?  You don't.  You see shadows, period.  This is an artifact of peripheral vision.  You might have a bat in the house, though.  Or a large moth.  EW.

7.  Do you see small shadows darting past?  Congratulations!  Your house is infested with rats!

8.  Do you wake up choking with a hideous old woman sitting on your chest?  Hooray!  This is a sleep disorder called 'Old Hag Syndrome'.  Go see a sleep specialist.  Problem solved.

8. Do you wake up in the middle of the night with somebody breathing heavily near your face, and you sleep alone?   Hooray!  You have a mild case of sleep paralysis.  Your brain wakes up just an instant before your body gets the message; creating a sensory dissonance, and guess what?  You snore.  Yes you do.

9. Digging up a lot of bones (non-human) when you garden?  Ignore. For some reason people think nothing of chunking bones out in the yard.

10.  Old houses only: hearing loud banging noises indoors, infrequently and at any hour?  There are two answers to this.  1. You have steam heat.  2. You're losing fire stops ( short boards jammed between the wall studs), lumps of dried-out plaster, or forgotten sashweights. These objects have been subject to decades of  rodent nibbling, leaks, and temperature fluctuations.  Usually at the worst possible moment one or the other of these objects will suddenly cut loose and clatter and bang down inside the wall. Yeah, that'll make you pee yourself.

11.  Do non-Victorian Era toys change locations unexpectedly?  You have children.

12.  Does your baby laugh and giggle as though it were interacting with someone, but nobody is there?   You have a baby.   Babies do weird shit.

13.  Do you see mysterious figures outside at night which seem to gaze intently at your house as though they were waiting?  These are unsupervised boys, and you have a teenage daughter.

14.  Do you hear whispering, voices, screaming or growling that nobody else hears?  You have schizophrenia.

15.  Are you possessed by an evil entity? No you are not.  You are mentally ill.  The right  combination of therapy and drugs make this shit stop dead, pun intended.  Note:  If you have fugue states during which you barf up lobsters and speak grammatically correct Latin?  Now we call Father McGillicuddy and grab a tarp.

16.  Do you look out the window at night and upon occasion see a nasty fucked-up face mashed up against the other side of the glass going GUUUUUUUUUH UK BLUH PBBBBTH?  My Advice:  No matter what the explanation, the memory alone will ruin your homeowner experience at that address forever.  Pack and move.

Don't forget to remember to tune in in a couple days for the final installment of the 'Dealing With The Supernatural' series!!  I'll be covering issues like non-stick cookware, herpes zoster and the deadly consequences of stuff that is deadly!