Five Steps for Exorcizing a Haunted House

The Bay Area is hella haunted. Are you ready for the spiritual energy that’s coming?

Creepy dolls? Nothing to fear. Just follow our advice.

Suspend your disbelief, ye skeptics, because you’re outnumbered. Over 50% of Americans believe in ghosts. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s start with the basics. A haunting, according to anthropologists, is “the way ghosts make their desires known.”  

San Francisco and the greater Bay Area are some of the most expensive places to live in the US. Many residents rent older, rickety apartments, and lots of people find themselves needing a roommate. But it’s also purportedly one of the most haunted areas, too. So what if you find yourself with a noncorporeal bunkie of the Casper variety?

As autumn sets in and brings the energy of Spooky Season, we here at Broke-Ass Stuart want to take a moment to offer cheap solutions for people who think they might have a haunting on their hands. 

1. How do you know if it’s haunted?
   Jeff Dwyer’s Ghost Hunters Guide to the San Francisco Bay Area claims there are at least 100 known local haunted spots here. While the dead are no longer interred in The City, it’s rife with hundreds of years of murder and violent deaths. You can research records related to your address through the San Francisco Public Library.
   If you already established the history or just don’t care, do us a favor. Get your pipes checked. You got a carbon monoxide detector? No? Get one. Rule out that you’re not brain-farted by the monox’. If you pay a PG&E bill, you can request a free pilot light inspection. 
2. Call someone.
   An HGTV article tells readers to “call the police.” Not our first pick. If you find yourself tempted to call 911, remember to picture “lipstick on a pig.” That’s how the new San Francisco 911 dispatch center has been described by the president of the dispatchers’ union, according to CBS. The people who answer your call probably have bigger fish to fry than a ghost.
   An alternative? You can call a holy person. There are options. It depends on your comfort level. The go-to in movies is a priest: after all, Cardinal Cordileone exorcized the area where Junipero Serra’s statue was removed. Maybe he’d be willing to go into your stinky crawlspace. But wise people know that one size does not fit all when it comes to involving holy people in the intimacy of what happens within your home. The bonus is that this option should definitely be totally free.
3. Talk It Out
   ReMax suggests talking to the spirit. But be honest… You barely even talk to your mother. If you choose this route, come prepared with some tools. Salt offends nobody but demons; white sage, on the other hand, is culturally significant to Indigenous peoples on Turtle Island and you run the risk of appropriating and contributing to harmful poaching.
   Tread carefully. You can find more supplies at local witchy businesses like The Sword and Rose. A DIY exorcism could theoretically save you some money, but it might also cost a lot because crystals don’t come cheap. 
4. Seek other professional help
   There are several people around the Bay Area claiming to offer spiritual cleansing services for a fee. We reached out to a few, but none responded to our requests for comment. Expect to pay upwards of a c-note; be wary of fraud and read reviews if they’re available.  
5. Ignore it
   Like the rickety pipes, screams of neighbors, and hot water that takes forever to get warm, being a happy renter in San Francisco involves a lot of cognitive dissonance. Big caveat: If you really are having trouble with your apartment and there’s any possibility it’s due to a negligent landlord, go ahead and reach out to San Francisco Tenants Union. If La Llorona won’t suffer in silence, neither should you. 

We spoke with Eihway Su, a tenant rights expert, who said bluntly, “This question is outside my experience, but I’ll give it a shot.” She explained that because of rental protections, a tenant can bring this issue to their landlord and request a rent reduction if there is any decrease in habitability. 

If it goes to court, Su says, “The tenant will need to convince the judge, so evidence of the decrease in services is crucial (witnesses, videos, photos, audios, etc.) I think the witnesses will be essential since it is easy to doctor videos/photos these days. Overcoming skepticism about haunting is also vital, but this is outside my knowledge.” No attorney is required to navigate the court procedures at the Rent Board.

There you have it. Hopefully you can evict (or learn to live in harmony with) your specter or phantasm before it gets to that stage.