Do creaky floors and cabinets confirm the presence of ghostly apparitions? Does the hair rising on the back of your neck mean a spirit is attempting to make contact with you? Is it possible to unwittingly invite a spirit into your home? And why are only certain people sensitive to spiritual entities?

Let's explore each of these questions one at a time.

Creaky floors and cabinets are obvious signs that you live in an older home, but as any house settles, certain noises are unavoidable – and expected. However, if the floors creak when nobody walks on them and if the cabinets squeak when nobody opens them, something or somebody could be haunting your home.

So what do you do, hire a professional ghost hunter?

How about investigating the ghostly invaders yourself? (For tools you'll need on an in-depth ghost-hunting expedition, click HERE.) You can unearth a lot of information about your new home without contacting a professional ghost buster.

If unusual and unexplainable events cause your skin to crawl and tingle and you wonder if anybody has ever died in your home, why not ask your neighbors? Because neighbors move frequently due to our transient society, though, your home's history may be unknown to your current neighbors.

If you can't learn about the house's history from neighbors, search online or at the local library for information on previous inhabitants. Librarians might offer leads you wouldn't have considered. Check with the local historical society as well. Find out the names of all of the residents who lived in the home prior to your purchase of it.

Pay attention to personal observations and perceptions. Do the curtains move without you moving them? Don't let your fears consume you – you might have drafty windows.

Do you hear voices in the night? Your home could be situated in a spot where voices bounce in such a way that sounds you think are coming from upstairs are actually coming from your neighbor on the other side of the cul de sac. Look at all possible scenarios when determining the validity of your observations.

If friends and family cannot explain the haunting cries that rip you from your bed at night, if shadows that loom in darkened hallways appear when nobody else is home, and if the footsteps on the stairs pound with each beat of your heart, you could be seeing shadows of yourself on a moonlit night. Or maybe you had a few too many drinks. Maybe you were drugged. OR you might be experiencing a genuine haunting.

Pay attention also to children and domestic animals that enter your home. If they feel particularly unsettled, your home could be haunted. Children and animals seem to have a direct link to their their sixth sense.

A decade ago, The Sixth Sense, written by M. Night Shyamalan (starring Bruce Willis and Haley Joel Osment), showcased a little boy who talked to dead people. The movie was fiction.

Wasn't it? We often think of children as having vivid imaginations, but what if imagination is the key to opening our minds to the possibility of making contact with spirits who have passed on?

Pretending is child's play, but pretending is also an exercise in imagination. We often think of our child's imaginary friend as just that – imaginary. What if your child is not imagining? What if the little girl with the taffeta dress that your daughter "pretends" is her friend is actually a former occupant of the house? What if your daughter picked the imaginary girl's photo from a lineup of other photographs? And what if that little girl's name was the same name your daughter used when she spoke of her?

That scenario is not at all impossible and, as a matter of fact, has been shown and  discussed on the program Psychic Kids: Paranormal Children on A&E TV.

So if spirits abide in older homes, is it possible to unwittingly invite a spirit into your new, previously unoccupied home? For that I offer two possibilities.

First, ouija boards are notorious for carrying with them an open-door invitation into the spirit world. By virtue of the fact that one is enticing a connection to the world of spirit, any lingering earth-bound soul could jump onboard (pun intended) and "speak."

Second, a potential effect of alcohol, which is sometimes referred to as spirits, could provide another doorway into this world for entities who are unable to move beyond the earth plane and into the light.

Maybe something happens between that fourth and fifth beer. Maybe spirits sense vulnerability and invite themselves in when our defenses are down.

Being sensitive to the world around us without accessing and relying upon our five senses – sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell – opens a channel to our sixth sense and causes us to become receptive (a receiver) to energy passing through the ethereal realm. Some of us are more receptive than others, but we can develop our sensitivities through exercises. For more on how to develop your ESP, you can follow the advice of this extra sensory perception (ESP) guru (now deceased) by reading, How To Make ESP Work For You by Harold Sherman.

If it's true that energy never dies, then maybe some of it is left behind by the spirits who shared your home. It may be time to turn the tables on our ghostly inhabitants by scaring them out of our homes.

So the answer to what makes a house haunted? Could be ghosts – could also be you!