Questions to Ask Ghosts

Why ask it

The standard opening because almost anything can answer it: a sound, a movement, something on a recording. Ask it once and then wait far longer than feels comfortable, since the length of the pause is what makes any response noticeable at all.

Why ask it

Ask it early, because a name is one of the few answers you can check afterward against a census, a deed or a parish register. Have each person write down what they think they heard before anyone compares, fragments included. Three people with three different names have learned something too.

Why ask it

Asking for one sound is asking for very little, and it gives everyone a direction to face. It is also the moment to say the code aloud for the recording: one knock for yes, two for no. From here on, shape what you can into yes or no.

Why ask it

A nervous group wants this out of the way early, and the answer is the one least worth leaning on, since a knock about intentions cannot be checked against anything. Ask it once, calmly, and do not keep rewording it until something obliges. If whatever follows truly frightens someone, that is the end of the night, not a result to chase.

Why ask it

Old buildings collect more than one story, and a group that assumes a single presence will hang every creak on it. After a yes, ask how many, one knock for each. Keep later answers apart in the notes until something ties them to the same name.

Why ask it

Ghost hunters separate a haunting that responds from one that repeats like a film, the same footsteps on the same stair whoever is watching. This is the question meant to sort them, and most of the page only makes sense after a yes. A story has to make the same choice early: a ghost who notices the living is a character, and one who does not is part of the house.

Why ask it

One of the few questions where you already hold the answer, which makes it a fair test of whatever method you are using. Count the knocks or flashes against the people present and log the result whichever way it goes: a wrong count belongs in the notes as much as a right one.

Why ask it

The flashlight test is a staple of televised ghost hunts, and a single flash proves little: a flashlight left with its cap unscrewed to the edge of contact can blink by itself as the metal warms and cools. Ask for on, then off, then on again, and count it only when the light keeps to the question each time.

Why ask it

The usual first line of an EVP session, where the hope is a voice nobody heard in the room that turns up on playback. Say what the device is and where it sits, then set it on the table and take your hand away, because fingers shifting on the casing can pass for a whisper at the review.

Why ask it

Go round the room first, each person giving their own name for the recording. A name is a short word that everyone present would recognize on playback, which also makes it the easiest thing to imagine into the hiss. Have somebody who was not there listen cold and write down what they hear before being told.

Why ask it

Choose a word of two clear syllables that nobody would say by accident, say it once and leave fifteen seconds. At the review you are listening for one known word in one known gap, a far tighter test than combing an hour of audio for anything at all. Use a different word on the next visit.

Why ask it

Odd to ask, and useful twice over. While the gap runs the whole group listens properly, and then each person names aloud what they caught: a car, the boiler, somebody's stomach. Noises labeled on the recording as they happen are much harder to mistake for a voice a week later.

Why ask it

Before asking, have each person say which doorway or corner they are watching, and stand a camera facing one of them. Eyes held on a dark shape supply movement of their own, so anyone who sees something writes it down before saying a word. Two notes that agree on where and when are worth more than one gasp that everybody later remembers sharing.

Why ask it

For the moment after a knock, a creak or a cold draft, when the whole group has turned to look. Ask for the same thing again from the same spot before anyone offers a theory. A sound that repeats on request is worth writing up, and one that does not was most likely the building.

Why ask it

Some groups record in short bursts, three or four questions and then playback on the spot, so that a faint reply can get a follow-up while everyone is still in the room. This is the line for the moment before pressing play. EVPs found that way go in the log with the file name and the time, and so does every burst that held nothing.

Why ask it

By knocks, offer decades and wait for a yes, then narrow to the year. An answer well behind the calendar is the interesting one, and it tells you which shelf of the local history section to start on.

Why ask it

Put in the present tense on purpose, since it takes nothing for granted about what whoever answers understands. Offer ranges for a yes, a child, someone grown, someone old, because nobody keeps count through seventy knocks. An age and a rough period together shorten a search of burial registers considerably.

Why ask it

Split it in two with a pause after each half, so that a single knock has only one thing to answer. Be slow to settle it from a recording: listeners judge a faint voice as male or female by its pitch, and a whisper has almost none.

Why ask it

A president, a king or a queen places a life inside a term or a reign, and a ruler's name is the kind of thing that stays with a person when the exact year has gone. It works in any country, and the dates take a minute to look up afterward.

Why ask it

Take a yes one piece at a time: a husband or wife, then children, then how many. A household is one of the easier things here to check, because an old census return usually lists everyone under one roof with their ages and how they were related.

Why ask it

Descendants are where a records search ends up, and sometimes they are the people who invited you in. If a surname comes back that matches a living family, keep it in your notes. Nobody wants a stranger at the door with news from a ghost hunt.

Why ask it

After a name, a trade is the most checkable thing you can ask for, because work leaves paper: licenses, apprenticeship records, trade directories, a name over a shop. In a building that was once a mill, an inn or a school, ask whether they worked here, which a yes or no can carry.

Why ask it

A warmer cousin of the work question, and too open for knocks, so it belongs to a recorder left running or to a writer's notebook. The answers worth having reach past a trade: a steady hand with horses, good pastry, the best voice in the choir.

Why ask it

Hardly a question anyone expects to put to the dead, and that is the reason to ask. It suits a recorder better than a knock, and it changes how the group sounds: people asking about laughter stop whispering as if at a bedside. A writer gets a whole temperament from the answer, dry, sly or easily set off.

Why ask it

Groups ask everything in the one language they share and then puzzle over the silence. In a port town, a mining district or an old mission, the people who lived in the building may have spoken something else, and a few words of it from someone in the group is a fair thing to try.

Why ask it

Some groups play music from the building's busiest years in place of asking anything, on the idea that something familiar draws more than a stranger's questions. Play one piece, quietly, then stop and wait. On a tour or at a sleepover it is the least frightening experiment on offer.

Why ask it

Nearly every haunted building comes with a legend: the gray lady, the caretaker, the child on the stairs. Hold this until the open identity questions are done, because naming the legend first tells everyone in the room what to hear. If the earlier answers pointed at someone else entirely, that mismatch is the finding.

Why ask it

Two claims that are easy to blur: someone who lived in these rooms, and someone tied to whatever stood on the ground first. Put them as two questions. Old maps and deeds show what was on the plot before, a farm, a chapel, an earlier house, so have one person look that up and keep it from the rest of the group until the night is over.

Why ask it

Floor plans, insurance maps and old photographs record what rooms were for, which makes this the easiest answer on the page to confirm. Offer uses one at a time for a yes: a kitchen, a nursery, a sickroom, a shop. A use nobody present could have known, later borne out by a plan, is about the best result an amateur night can produce.

Why ask it

Houses, farms and streets get renamed, and the name a building went by a century ago is often on an old map or in a directory. The answer is a word or two, which makes this one of the open questions a recorder can take. Whoever researched the house should wait outside for it, so that nobody in the room knows the old name well enough to hear it.

Why ask it

Owners and staff usually name one room or one stair where things happen. Have someone who has not been told which one ask this, and see whether the answers lead to the same place. A group that knows the story before it starts will tend to find the story.

Why ask it

Suited to a room that still holds old furniture, tools or pictures. Point to things in turn, then ask the owner which pieces came with the house and which arrived from an auction last year. A yes to the auction lot is a result as well, and an honest log keeps it.

Why ask it

Reports of a house turning restless after building work are a fixture of ghost stories. Walk to wherever a knock or a light seems to point, then ask the owner what was altered and when. A wall or a staircase nobody in the group knew had been moved is something the plans can confirm.

Why ask it

Owners tend to want this one asked, so offer it to them and let them put it in their own words. Keep the follow-ups to yes or no: do you like them, do they disturb you. For a writer this is where a ghost story turns funny or tender, since the dead have opinions about the new kitchen.

Why ask it

It turns the fear around: the living arrive expecting to be scared, and here they ask whether the other party is. Good for a night that has slid into dares and bravado, because it is hard to say in a mocking voice. If earlier answers suggested more than one presence, this is the gentle way to ask how they get along.

Why ask it

Treating the building as somebody's home is the manner that gets a group invited back. Asking it is a good moment to remember the living reasons for staying out of a room as well: rotten boards, loose plaster and an owner who said no.

Why ask it

Everything else under this heading hangs on it, which is why it waits until the names and rooms are done. Ghost lore offers two kinds of answer: someone who knows and has stayed, and someone still going about a day that ended long ago. Say it plainly and kindly, once, and do not fill the silence afterward.

Why ask it

It asks about the death without using the word, and it works whichever answer came before: someone who knows can describe an ending, and someone who does not will describe an ordinary afternoon. Too open for the knock code, so let the recorder take it. In a story, this is the line where a ghost's sense of time shows.

Why ask it

Set the answer beside the year they think it is now. If the two match, you have the ghost who has not noticed time passing. If they differ, you have a span of years to check against burial registers and old newspaper notices.

Why ask it

Plenty of haunting stories attach to people who died somewhere else, in a hospital or away at war, and are said to have returned to the place they knew. A no is the more interesting answer, since it turns the next question from what happened to why this house.

Why ask it

This comes at the death more kindly than asking for the cause, and a yes gives you a second person to ask about. If anyone in the group has sat with a dying relative, catch their eye before you ask, and skip it if they shake their head.

Why ask it

Too much for a knock, so offer causes singly, an illness, an accident, a fire, and stop at the first yes. Leave out whatever the legend of the house already claims, or the group will hear the legend. Silence here goes in the log as silence, not as a refusal with a meaning.

Why ask it

A yes changes what the group does next: no more questions about the death, and a check that everyone still wants to carry on. A no opens gentler ground, what they miss and who they are waiting for. Writers need the answer most of all, since it decides whether the haunting is a grievance or a grief.

Why ask it

A churchyard or a cemetery is somewhere you can walk to in daylight, and a headstone or a burial register will confirm or sink a name and a date. Do the looking the next day, with permission where the ground is private, and never as a midnight extension of the hunt.

Why ask it

After several heavy questions, hand this lighter one to the youngest person in the group. For writers the small answers are the good ones: bread, weather, being cold and then warm. A ghost who misses something grand tells you less than one who misses toast.

Why ask it

No question here has less chance of a usable answer, since a knock cannot describe anything. Yes or no versions do a little better: is it dark, are you alone there, is it anything like here. Ask it late, mostly for the conversation it starts among the living on the drive home.

Why ask it

The question the whole genre turns on, and far too wide for a knock to carry. Ask it once anyway and let the quiet run. The questions that follow break it into pieces a yes or a no can manage: a task, a person, a message.

Why ask it

These are two different ghosts and two different stories, and the trapped one is assumed far too often. Wait for a yes to one before offering the other. Writers should try the second: a ghost who could go and does not is harder to write and much better company on the page.

Why ask it

Unfinished business is one of the oldest ideas in ghost stories, and unlike most of the big questions this one fits a yes or no. If you get a yes, try kinds of thing: a debt, a promise, a piece of work, a journey. Nobody should volunteer to finish it before the records show that the person and the task existed.

Why ask it

A person this time, where unfinished business is about a task. Set whatever comes back beside the household you were given earlier: a wife, a child, a brother already named. This one can turn a giggling room quiet, so check that everyone is still glad to be there before you go on.

Why ask it

Only for after a yes about waiting for someone. Count it in tens, one knock for every ten years. The total should sit sensibly beside the year of death you were given, and if the two cannot both be true, that goes in the notes as plainly as a match would.

Why ask it

Take the words down exactly, with the time, and promise nothing while you are still in the room. A message from a stranger's ghost has nowhere honest to go, and turning up with one for a family who never asked is how a harmless hobby hurts someone.

Why ask it

The yes or no a lot of people came for. Decide before asking what you will do with a no, because a room full of people who believe a stranger is suffering and cannot help is a poor end to a night. Follow a no with an offer, never with more questions about the death.

Why ask it

After a night of asking for things, this hands the request the other way. Offer only what the group can do and the owner would allow: leave a door open, put an object back where it was, say a name aloud, sit quietly for a minute. Contacting a family is not on that list.

Why ask it

An offer, and one to make only if the group agreed beforehand what it amounts to: a minute of quiet, a prayer from someone whose own faith it is, or simply saying aloud that they are free to go. Nobody on a ghost hunt can promise more than that. In somebody's home, ask the owner first, since some would rather their ghost stayed.

Why ask it

Ask it only if you will act on the answer. Agree beforehand that a yes by the code means packing up tonight, without a vote. A group that asks and then stays has shown that none of its other questions were meant either.

Why ask it

Most of the night treats whoever lived here as a puzzle to solve, and this treats them as a person, which is worth doing even if the room holds only the living. If the research later puts a real name to the place, let the question steer what you post about it: real people had families, and some of those families can read.

Why ask it

The whole night runs one way, the living asking and the dead expected to perform. Turning it round costs a minute and makes the most interesting silence of the session to sit in. On the page it is a gift: a ghost's first question for the living, about the year, a family or the price of bread, tells the reader who they were.

Why ask it

A prepared list carries the group's guesses about who is in the building, and giving away the last turn admits as much. Leave a longer gap after this one than after any other. Nothing in the wording tells a listener what to expect, which makes whatever follows harder to imagine into being.

Why ask it

A second visit is where anything from tonight gets tested, with the same questions asked in the same spots. Put the same request to the owner on the way out, after every chair is back and every door you opened is shut. How a group leaves decides whether there is a second visit at all.

Why ask it

Ghost hunters usually say it as a statement at the door, that nothing here is to follow anyone home, and it is as much for the nervous members of the group as for the house. Say it once, give the time aloud and stop the recorder. That gives the file a clean end and stops the session carrying on in whispers across the parking lot.