Lynn,
My first experience was with an old farm house we would stay at on the week ends with my parents it was over 100 years old, and it had poltergeist, so as a kid I experienced the whole gamut of them with the moving objects, and the cold air, and musty smells, front door being found open every morning for a week, and this door had a type of sliding bolt that was jammed shut so you almost had to hit it with a hammer to open it.
The other house that I talked about , was purchased by me as an adult, but did not know that it was built on top of a grave yard when I bought it.
Basically I looked around and finally found a tv show that recommended talking to the ghost, and telling them that they are allowed to live in your house as long as there is some respect shown on both sides, that I would respect them and they had to respect me and my family, but there would be rules made by me. I think this is why they would call my phone to wake us up when the alarm didn't go off. I did not know what else to do because we tried to get them to go away and they would not, and the TV show said that in some houses you have spirits that are just passing through so if you get some to go away then you just get more.
I never got a feeling that they were bad or evil, and as a kid learned to not be afraid of them.
One showed himself to my 5 year old daughter and appeared as a Spanish knight with body armor and came towards her with an ax and swung it at her head and diapered right before he hit her, this made her cry poor thing. Ever since then she has been able to see ghost. This happened right when we moved in and after I talked to them things got better, but you have to keep talking to them to remind them, or let the new ones know the rules.
This was our approach to this issue and it seemed to make things better being that we tried praying and asking them to leave which did not work. I cannot say this would work for everyone, and if I would have gotten an evil feeling with them I would not have taken this approach, I would have called a clergy and soaked the house down with holly water, there would have been a war, it would have been them or us that would have had to leave.
