While some of the creepy discoveries in this list may indeed look unsettling and raise some doubts whether the place you just moved into is really fine, some people encounter way more serious issues. Think of hard-to-explain sightings, sounds, or smells… How do you know your new home is not haunted?

Well, to find out, Bored Panda reached out to Greg Newkirk, full-time paranormal investigator and founder of the world’s only mobile museum of the unexplained. For the last two and a half decades, Newkirk has been tracking down and investigating cases of high strangeness ranging from flying saucer crashes to cursed artifacts and everything in between.

“If you just moved into a house and it doesn't feel quite right, remember that anything but a brand new home has spent years soaking up the experiences, actions, and emotions of the people who have lived inside it,” Newkirk explained. It turns out that many paranormal researchers—including himself—believe that intense emotional states can create some kind of lingering bond with a location, which most people can pick up on unconsciously, the investigator explained.

“My advice, as silly as it might sound, is to talk to your new home, introduce yourself, explain why you're there and that you plan to care for the space. This kind of introduction can make a big difference, because even if you don't believe in ghosts or the paranormal, it can act as a kind of positive affirmation that will help you settle in.”

If you're looking for signs that your new home might be haunted, Newkirk said that you won't have to look too hard. “In my experience, hauntings in residential homes exist primarily to draw the residents' attention to something—whatever is causing the haunting *wants* you to see, hear, or feel it.”

Moreover, “common experiences in haunted homes range from the subtle feeling of being watched all the way up to visual manifestations of what we'd call ghosts. I've found that the longer you go without acknowledging these kinds of anomalies, the more pronounced they'll get until they're basically demanding your attention,” he explained.

If you're worried that you might be moving into a haunted house, the professional investigator urges you to choose curiosity instead of fear. “Parapsychologists have long believed that there is a strong link between the unconscious mind and ghostly experiences, so when it comes to hauntings, consider that maybe it's *you* with the 'unfinished business,' and not the ghost.”

However, “if you remain open to the experience and explore the possibility that a haunting may very well be a product of your own powerful subconscious attempting to communicate important information, you'll find that these experiences are far less scary than they are enlightening. Sure, maybe your ghost is the lingering construct of a dead person, but those are easy to deal with—they just want to talk,” Newkirk explained.

The professional investigator reminded us that “if you are seeing things, hearing things, or feeling things that are scary—especially if they're instructing you to do things that are out of character—it's always a good idea to speak with a medical professional before calling in a ghost hunter.” He concluded that “you'd be surprised how many paranormal experiences are cleared up with a visit with a doctor!”