In a previous home, the seller threw the keys across the table at the place of signing ( where I live, we all meet around a table at closing, it's crazy and not done anywhere else I think) and was very unpleasant, borderline bitter and cross. I excused her by thinking that it was traumatizing for her to sell a home where she had raised her kids, her husband had died, etc.....

It took a long time for me to feel this house was mine, without writing a novel about it, suffice it to say it was a long and drawn out process to renovate it,
and I always seemed to take one step forward and 2 steps back. I had a feng shui expert in, I did a lot of positive reinforcements and affirmations,
it was that bad as far as how the house was making me feel, despite my efforts and work..
The last 2 years we owned the home, I truly felt that the negative vibes were gone.

The people who bought the house from me got it filled with memories of love and happiness and good times, they are thrilled about it, I was happy to have my legacy in that home. I did struggle many years to install that legacy, despite the bad previous owner's vibes.

Had I had access to a space healer, I would have gladly tried them at the time.

I think that the symbolism of what the space healer does can be helpful in taking a concrete action in removing whatever bad vibes are there; I don't really believe the healer has any special powers, he/she is just an enabler as far as assisting the homeowner in taking a step in feeling better about their space,

I can't believe I'm writing this but this is the year where I feel I can share more. And this coming from a very sceptical person by nature.

Mitch, we've always met across a table at all 5 of our closings.
Glad no one threw anything at us though, that's awful - sorry you had that experience.

At this point, I need to do something.
The home we're getting ready to sell is 3 states and 6 hours away and I have nothing but negative feelings about the city even though I love the house.
I plan on going back in 3 weeks for the final prep and have to seriously change my attitude about the area.
I'm very mindful when I'm in the house about doing everything little thing with care, love, and positive energy.
Since I'm a believer in such things, I'll probably do some sort of cleansing ritual when our last possession is out of the house and we plant the sign in the yard.
It can't hurt :-)

There are some states in the U.S. where closings are done in person, too. I'm not sure that's a good thing, precisely because of the sort of thing you experienced, Mitch. Whether or not the vibes are experienced inside the dwelling, if bad vibes are experienced at the closing, that can influence the new owners' experiences in the house. (And, as an erstwhile real estate broker, I can say that I do believe homes have vibes.)

When we bought this house I knew that it was a divorce situation. Obviously the family that was leaving wasn't happy. I was worried about the house having bad vibes so I went to the library and got some feng shui books and they have rituals that you can do to clear bad chi. Not sure I believe in it but I figured it couldn't hurt. As soon as we moved it I did a cleansing that involved basically walking around ringing wind chimes. Who knows if it helped, but couldn't hurt. We've been living here happily for 7 years.

Interesting. Thanks!

Last fall my husband and I were looking for a condo to buy for our son, who was out of the country at the time and due to start medical school shortly. We looked at several foreclosed properties which were great deals. However, you could feel negative energy in all of them. The most beautiful one of all had an oppressive air we could not get past. The feeling was strongest in the kitchen, which was ¾ of the way through a high quality renovation. It was as if someone had stopped in the middle of working on it one day and just walked out. Or died. All of us felt it, including the agent. My husband is a pragmatical engineerÂand even he commented on it and cut short the viewing. It was eerieÂI get goosebumps just remembering it. After that one we told the agent we wanted to see no more foreclosed properties.

Another we viewed was not a foreclosure, but a new conversion in a new gorgeous vintage building. It was the last unit left in the building. Again, a negative sense permeating the unit: though not as bad as the other one. As soon as we were in the hall and foyer the feeling evaporated.

I had been thinking I was way too imaginative. Maybe not! How do you train to become a home clearer? But maybe IÂd better find me a couple of spirit guides first.

Jeff Lewis from the fabulous "Flipping Out" on Bravo, uses someone to bless/cleanse his spaces before he puts them on the market.

I can hardly wait for new episodes of that show to start. It's DH's favorite, so I don't have to feel guilty for turning on a home show when he's around.

Native Americans have long held sage smudge ceremonies to signify purification of the physical and the spiritual. I find the practice fascinating!

We have always done this, with every living space we have occupied. Several of our apartments and our first house were noticeably "negative" when we got them, but we do a housecleansing and blessing before we move in so we at least start with a clean slate. My previous house was pretty stubborn (the family was miserable, having been transferred semi-involuntarily from down South for the father's work and since they hated everything about living here in NH it just permeated the place) so instead of a housewarming we had a "house swarming" where we had about forty people over - huge crowd for that size house - to "deposit" positive, happy energy in the house. Never hired someone though, seems silly given our religious calling/practice. (No "spirit guides" here though, unless you count a relationship with our patron deities, which makes about as much sense as calling Buddha or Krishna a spirit guide!) We also cleanse the space when we move out, to leave it in a "neutral" state for the next resident. This is pretty standard practice among our coreligionists. I suppose if you're Christian or in other established mainstream religion you could always have your clergyperson bless the place if you didn't want to DIY it.

The St. Joseph statue didn't do doodly for us - our property sat for several months after we planted the statue, despite my dutifully asking daily for a good buyer - and I wonder sometimes if it was because we had no proper place asking a Christian saint for anything, but our realtor was rather insistent and we were approaching desperation, willing to try anything. :-)

This is an interesting subject! I've never thought to have a house cleansed, although I would now if I thought mine needed it. I do think homes give off vibes. I admit to being a bit of a real estalker and frequently attend open houses. I usually get a "feeling" about a house within the first few minutes. Luckily, the house we bought came with some good vibes! There have been a few occurences in our new house that were just uncanny! I think the original lady of the house is looking out for us. Just two nights ago, I literally got a sudden urge to go down to the cellar and "check on things." Very uncharacteristic of me. The second I got down there, a piece of firewood that had mistakenly been placed too close to our add-on furnance went up in flames. We were able to put it out right away, but it was almost a disaster. The whole thing was just too weird! But, I'm very thankful that we seem to have a good luck house.

Personally, I don't believe in "healing" or "cleansing" a house, but I do think that a house can have a positive or negative feel to it. I'd fall more into the category of asking for God's blessing on a house and it's inhabitants. I think what we believe will work, will work.

The house we live in now has a very "happy" vibe - bright, sunny, etc... The former owners retired to Florida, and loved this house so much they hated to leave. It was a "FSBO" and we feel as though they chose us, not just a contract. We also met across the table at the closing, but it was nice because we were able to reassure them that we loved the house and would take good care of it. Ten years later we still exchange Christmas cards, and they have been back to visit.

Maya Angelou says that the words spoken in a house seep into the walls. I once ushered a workman out of my house for using a particularly intolerable racial slur (they're all intolerable, but this one is the worst). Whenever we move, we clean scrupulously behind ourselves (the buyer's broker from our last sale is apparently still telling people about those wonderful sellers who had all the floors cleaned and polished for the new people. Ain't we swell...!). But not everyone does, or can.

I always find that playing music I love while cleaning and settling in is very helpful. The aforementioned house was full of subtle bad feeling when we moved into it...of the 5 families that had lived there before us, two marriages had ended in divorce. But the worst thing was the evidence inside the powder room door frame and a basement closet that a dog had been locked up in there, and torn up the woodwork in his/her anguish. That took some time to flush out, with soap and water, wood filler, paint, and love for our animals, to replace it. We learned later that there had been an abused dog, and wife, living there years earlier.

I have no doubt that, when we left the house to the darling people who bought it last year, and who loved absolutely everything we had done to it, including wanting all the curtains and rugs and furniture we weren't taking, the bad spirits were gone for good. Which reinforces my traditional belief that love triumphs over loss, and that the light of kindness in even the meekest soul wipes away all residue of sorrow.

I don't believe in bad energy in a house, or that a house needs to be healed.

I absolutely believe in cleansing a house before moving in. We have done this with every house/apartment we have lived in. First we clean thoroughly, then we circle around each window/door/room with a smudge stick. For us, it is important to do this because it is our way of saying this is our space now, and that we will treat it with love and respect. If we have lived in a place for a while and things are starting to feel stagnant or cranky or "off" in some other way, we do a repeat cleansing and blessing. It really seems to make a difference.

A realtor friend of mine had a client who walked out of a closing where the buyer was paying full price because she decided she disliked her so much she didnt want her to live in her old house.

I believe that houses do absorb negative energies -- and need to be cleansed -- and re-energized!

Other homes just feel "stifling" and "dead" to me. Sometimes I just want to open the windows and even if the lights are already on -- the room feels dull.

Jan

I feel as you do, Jan. Right after we moved into our house, I just instantly felt a sense of calmness and peacefulness in the place, and as I've since been in touch with the children who grew up in the house in the 40s (the house was in their family for many years), I fully believe that the walls absorbed the loving, happy, positive energy that this family exuded.

Conversely, I've been in places that just felt very cold to me ... One place in particular stands out -- my ex-husband's boyhood home. I couldn't stand to be alone in certain rooms of that house, and even though I was a grown woman who ordinarily had her wits about her, I'd find myself literally running out of the basement rooms to join the rest of the family, whenever I found myself down there on my own. It was just downright creepy. I later learned that some of the ex's family members were very much into "communing with the spirit world", and I believe some very odd things went on in that house. I'm just so glad I'll never have to go back there again! That's one place that definitely needed a good cleansing. ::shudder::

I was never aware of this until my current house. I got in contact with previous owners to try to find out what I could about the history of the house. Owner #2, who bought it in the 1970s from the original owners (built in 1922), told me the wife, who was an elderly widow at that point, really seemed to love the house. He said she called it her "honeymoon cottage". I always felt a good vibe from the house, and after hearing that, I think that's why. Even though I never met her, I think of her often. Of course, owner #2 made many wreck-o-vations and had a nasty divorce himself, so he probably came close to ruining the good energy, but owners #3 were a happy family so I think they saved it for us (owners #4). :)

Thanks so much for all your stories, everyone. I love this forum.

Our last house was a smallish arts & crafts cottage. The family who lived there didn't appreciate what they had; they furnished it with ultra-modern stuff and painted the rooms the most peculiar colors.

Oh, and they were AWFUL people. When we went to the closing, their attorney said, "The sellers won't be here, which is just as well, because they are terrible, terrible people." Yikes! This was their attorney!

It took us nine years, but we restored the house -- it felt like we were healing its spirit. I believe that thoughtful decorating can help honor a house.

One day, our of nowhere, a family knocked on our door. The man, now in his forties, had grown up in the house; their family was the family previous to the AWFUL people. They had come from out of state to visit friends and had this sudden urge to see his boyhood home.

He was lovely and kind and told us all sorts of sweet stories about the house.

It felt like the house was finally healed.

it felt like we were healing it's spirit

I know exactly what you mean!

While we're on the subject, do you feel like your house gets "mad" when it's not kept up to a a certain standard? I never had this feeling when I lived in a 70's house, but now that I've been living in houses that are sixty, eighty and one hundred years old, I've noticed that they definitely seem to have certain expectations.

According to my neighbors, my house used to be a grow house (until the Feds shut it down). So I figure it made a lot of people very happy. :)

Oceanna, what is a "grow" house? I'm so hopelessly behind the times...

Oceanna, very funny!! How do you feel living there?

The people we bought our current house from seemed very unhappy to us. I did use a smudge stick to cleanse the house when we moved in because of that. I know Catholics who have the house blessed by a priest. Catholics use incense in church to carry their prayers to the Almighty, so I guess it's similar in a way to the Native ways of using smoke for cleansing or prayers.

I've only ever cleansed one house, a townhouse that I rented several years ago. Every night, I'd have nightmares about someone coming up the stairs to kill me or my kids, and I'd lived alone with my kids for over 10 years at that point.

I finally found a couple of rituals about cleansing spaces that involved water, rice and 'blessing' the home. I performed them, praying over the house and asking God to release the evil spirits in that home. It took 3 days and 3 repetitions of the rituals, but after that was completed, I never had another bad feeling or nightmare about the place.

I'm not sure what it was, but something bad had happened in that townhouse.

Mclarke, marijuana growing. Some guy bought the house new but didn't move in. He'd come here every couple of days. He kept the place up, mowed the lawn, weeded and so on. The neighbors said he was a nice guy and the perfect neighbor, never any noise or anything.

Then one day the feds came and hauled out many, many marijuana plants -- apparently there were plants in every room! Now mind you, this is a decent middle class suburban neighborhood, with the accent on "neighbor" not on "hood." :) The neighbors never saw the owner again.

Anita, then it stood vacant for several years. When the government (I guess?) finally sold it, they sold it to the people who were here before me, for 11 years. They were a young couple, and they had two darling little boys while they were here, so I think they were a happy, loving young family. The man was a carpenter so he did some cool things to the house, put a lot of love into it.

Anyway, I feel just fine here. I think this house has great vibes. The neighbors always laugh when they tell me about its former occupant. Of course, it would have been an even happier place if the the feds had left the plants here -- haha! But don't look at me -- I'm not growing anything more exciting than a philodendren.

Oh! of course! Thanks so much for the story.