It's 3 AM. The house is quiet. Too quiet. And then you hear it: the toilet flushes. Nobody's in the bathroom. Nobody's been in the bathroom for hours.
You lie there with the blanket pulled up to your chin, doing the math on whether you can afford to move. Then the pipes start knocking. The hallway light flickers. And the bedroom door you know you closed slowly creaks open.
At this point you have two options. Call a priest, or call a handyma'am.
Here's the good news: your house isn't possessed. It's just being dramatic. Most of the things that go bump in the night have perfectly reasonable explanations, and a lot of them can be fixed with a cheap part and a Saturday morning. Some are so common the trades already have names for them.
In our Halloween episode of the How to Handyma'am podcast, we rated five of the creepiest things your house does on our official Scare-O-Meter (1 to 5 ghosts), then explained what's really going on. Here's the written version, so grab your flashlight, a level, and your sense of humor.
Handy Vocab: Words You'll See in This Post
No prerequisite knowledge required. Here are the terms we use below.
Ghost flushing (phantom flush): When your toilet refills on its own because water is slowly leaking from the tank into the bowl.
Water hammer: The bang in your pipes when flowing water stops suddenly because a valve closed fast.
Plumb: Perfectly vertical, straight up and down. Think "level," but for the up-and-down direction.
Dead front: The metal cover inside your electrical panel that keeps you from touching live parts. The breakers poke through it, and the panel door is mounted on it.
Back drafting: When exhaust from a gas appliance gets pulled back into your house instead of going up the vent.
1. The Toilet That Flushes Itself
Scare-O-Meter: 5 out of 5 ghosts. This one was unanimous. A toilet flushing sounds like a person did it, which is exactly why it's so terrifying at 3 AM.
What's really going on
Plumbers call this ghost flushing, or a phantom flush. (We didn't make that up, but we wish we had.) Your toilet tank is slowly leaking water into the bowl. When the tank level drops far enough, the fill valve kicks on to top it back up, and that refill sounds just like a flush.
The usual culprit is the flapper, the rubber seal at the bottom of the tank that your flush handle lifts. Over time it warps, gets mineral buildup, or stops sealing well, so water seeps past it a little at a time. Less often, the fill valve is set too high and water spills into the overflow tube, which also drains into the bowl.
How to check it
Take the lid off the tank and add a few drops of food coloring to the tank water.
Don't flush. Wait 15 to 30 minutes.
If colored water shows up in the bowl, your flapper is leaking.
While the lid is off, check the water level. It should sit about an inch below the top of the overflow tube. If water is running into the tube, adjust the float on your fill valve to lower it.
The fix
A new flapper costs a few dollars at any hardware store and usually snaps on in minutes, no tools needed. Turn off the water at the valve behind the toilet, flush to empty the tank, swap the flapper, and turn the water back on. Bring the old one with you to the store so you can match the size.
Call a plumber if the toilet still runs after a new flapper and an adjusted fill valve, or if you see water leaking anywhere outside the toilet.
Bonus: fixing this saves water, too. A slow leak can quietly waste a surprising amount every day.
2. Knocking Inside the Walls
Scare-O-Meter: 2 out of 5 ghosts. Unlike the toilet, this is one you can talk yourself out of. It's the house. It's the neighbors. It's probably a raccoon with a stick.
What's really going on
Knocking can come from a lot of places: a branch against the siding, ductwork popping as pressure builds and releases, or an animal outside. But the most common cause is water hammer.
When a valve closes fast (like a washing machine or dishwasher shutting off its water), the moving water stops suddenly and sends a shock wave through the pipe. If the pipe isn't strapped down, that jolt makes it slam against the stud or joist next to it. Bang.
Think of a fish tank sliding around in your car when you slam on the brakes. The tank should be seatbelted in. Your pipes should be too.
Why you shouldn't ignore it
Copper pipes are durable, but they aren't meant to be knocked around. Pipes banging against framing over and over can eventually wear and spring a leak inside your wall, and that's a much scarier problem.
The fix
Strap down loose pipes you can see. If you have an unfinished basement ceiling and can watch a pipe jump, secure it to the joist with pipe straps or clamps.
Add a water hammer arrestor. For the washing machine, the most common offender, you can buy arrestors for around $15 that screw on between the shutoff valve and the supply hose. They absorb the shock. They're a great option when the noisy pipe is hidden inside a wall.
Check your water pressure. A pressure gauge that screws onto an outdoor spigot costs about $10. If your pressure is over 80 psi, call a plumber. High pressure makes water hammer worse and is hard on your whole plumbing system.
Call a plumber if the knocking is frequent, loud, hidden inside walls you can't reach, or your pressure is over 80 psi.
3. Doors That Open and Close on Their Own
Scare-O-Meter: 0 out of 5 ghosts. Startling? Sure. Scary? Not once you know why it happens.
What's really going on
There are usually two causes, and sometimes both at once.
Gravity and a weak latch. If your door frame isn't plumb (perfectly vertical), or the hinges are installed crooked, the door will naturally want to swing one direction. Without a latch that catches firmly, it drifts open or closed all on its own.
Air pressure. When air moves through your house (from open windows, a strong wind, or your HVAC system), it can push or pull a door hard enough to swing it or slam it shut.
How to check it
Hold a level against the side of the door frame to see if it's plumb.
Then check the door itself twice: once wide open, and once about 90% closed. A door can read level in one position and off in the other if the hinges aren't screwed in properly, because the pull on the hinges changes as it swings.
Close the door and make sure the latch actually catches in the strike plate.
The fix
Tighten the hinge screws. Loose hinges are the most common cause of a sagging, drifting door.
Use a longer screw. If a top hinge screw keeps spinning, replace one with a longer screw that reaches into the stud behind the frame. It can pull the door back into position.
Adjust the strike plate so the latch catches cleanly.
When it's not just the door
If doors swing or slam when your windows are closed, the pressure differences may be coming from your HVAC system. That's worth a call to an HVAC tech, especially if you have gas appliances. Strong negative pressure can cause back drafting, where exhaust from a gas furnace, water heater, or stove gets pulled back into your home instead of venting outside.
4. Flickering Lights
Scare-O-Meter: 2 out of 5 ghosts. One flickering bulb? No big deal. Every lamp in the room flickering in sync? That's a different story.
What's really going on
The first question is how much is flickering.
If it's one light, the cause is usually small:
An LED bulb on an old dimmer. This is super common now that most of us use LEDs. Older dimmer switches were designed for incandescent bulbs and often make LEDs flicker, especially when dimmed low.
A loose bulb or a dying fixture. A bulb that isn't screwed in snugly, or loose wire connections in the fixture, can make and break contact over and over.
If it's a whole room or several rooms, the problem is more likely in your electrical panel or wiring. That's a job for a pro.
The fix
Tighten the bulb, or try a different one.
Make sure your LED bulbs are labeled "dimmable" if they're on a dimmer.
Swap an old dimmer for an LED-compatible dimmer. (If you're not comfortable replacing a switch, an electrician can do this quickly.)
We ran into this on a kitchen remodel. We swapped an old dimmable chandelier for a small chandelier fan with LED flame-style bulbs, and below about half brightness it flickered. Our electrician sorted out the compatibility issue and it's been fine ever since.
Stay out from behind the dead front
You'll find videos online showing how to swap breakers and work inside your electrical panel. Especially if you're new to DIY, please don't. It's fine to flip your breakers on and off yourself. But anything that requires removing the dead front, the metal panel that protects you from live parts, is a job for a licensed electrician.
We always ask, "Can you handle the consequences if something goes wrong?" With an electrical panel, the consequences are electrocution and fire. Even as professionals, we're not willing to risk those.
Call an electrician immediately if anything is smoking, smells like burning, buzzes, or a switch, outlet, or panel is hot to the touch.
5. A General Feeling of Dread
Scare-O-Meter: off the meter. This is the scariest one on the list, and it's the one that can actually hurt you.
What's really going on
We learned this one the hard way. We had a small gas leak in our workshop, and we couldn't smell it. Nobody felt sick, exactly. Instead, it felt like something was wrong with the world. We felt anxious and full of existential dread, and we started questioning everything, from our work to our new space.
It never crossed our minds that a gas leak could feel like that. Now, if we ever feel that way at home, a leak is the first thing we'd check.
Two invisible gases can cause this kind of feeling:
Carbon monoxide (CO) comes from fuel-burning appliances like furnaces, water heaters, gas stoves, and fireplaces, especially when they back draft or vent poorly. It has no smell at all, which is why it's called the silent killer. Common symptoms include headache, dizziness, nausea, fatigue, and confusion.
Natural gas usually has a rotten-egg smell added so you can detect it. But as we found out, you won't always notice it.
A simple test
If you feel headachy, nauseous, or off at home, go outside for a while or run an errand. If you feel noticeably better away from the house and worse when you come back, take it seriously and get your home checked.
What to do
Install CO detectors on every level of your home and near sleeping areas, especially if you have any gas appliances. Many smoke detectors come as combination smoke and CO alarms.
Test them monthly and replace them when they reach the end of their life (check the date on the back).
If your CO alarm goes off or you smell gas, get everyone out of the house right away. Call 911 or your gas company from outside, and don't flip switches or use anything that could spark on your way out.
And if it's not the house
If your detectors are working, your home checks out, and the dread is still there, that's worth taking seriously too. Talk to a doctor, therapist, or mental health provider. Feeling off isn't something you have to just push through.
The Final Scare-O-Meter
A general feeling of dread: off the meter. Carbon monoxide or a gas leak. Get out and call for help.
Toilet flushes itself: 5 ghosts. Leaky flapper. DIY.
Knocking in the walls: 2 ghosts. Water hammer. DIY for easy cases, plumber over 80 psi.
Flickering lights: 2 ghosts. LED bulb on an old dimmer. DIY for one light, electrician for a whole room.
Doors opening on their own: 0 ghosts. Crooked hinges, weak latch, or air pressure. DIY, or an HVAC tech if it's pressure.
So, is your house haunted? Probably not. It's just broken, and now you know how to fix it.
If you take one thing from this post, make it this: put a CO detector on every level of your home. It's the cheapest peace of mind you'll ever buy.
Listen to the Full Episode
Want the whole conversation, including our Three Minutes of Chaos and the first-ever Handy Vocab segment? Listen to the full episode wherever you get your podcasts: [episode link].
Our first long-form YouTube tutorial is here, too! We teach you how to use a drill, starting from zero: what the trigger does, how to change directions, and what all those numbers mean. Subscribe to our YouTube channel so you don't miss the next one.
Want more? Join our newsletter for the week's episodes, studio updates, and 2-day early access to events and workshops, or support us on Patreon for our unhinged bonus episodes.
Full Episode Transcript
This transcript was generated automatically and lightly edited, so it may contain small errors.
Hello, friends. Welcome. Welcome to How to Handyma'am, the podcast where we are Ghostbusters. Who are you gonna call? Handyma'am! In today's episode, we're going to talk about three or four, maybe five of the scary things that happen in your home that might make you think it's spooky Halloween, but the reasons behind it and how to make it stop happening. So you stop being afraid in the middle of the night. Yes. I'm Samantha. I'm Arly. And I'm Emily, and this is How to Handyma'am.
And this episode is dedicated to Amanda, who is a lovely human being. She works with my dad at the church that we also happen to rent the basement out of. So it's, like, delightful to get to see her pretty often. She is just lovely. She loves what we're doing, and I love her because she's like, I don't want to do anything handy. Like she knows herself. Yeah. And she sticks to what she's good at and she's like, but my daughter is handy, so she's gonna fix stuff for me. Yeah. So she's also really positive. She's so positive. She's an encourager. She keeps treats in her office for when my dog and the assistant pastor Winnie, aka my dad's dog, visits. And it's just so sweet and she's amazing. Talk about her style as well. She has the cutest style and usually wears sparkly stuff in such an iconic way that I love. So true. So, Amanda, we love you. You're great. Hopefully you like spooky stuff. Spooky. Spooky. It would be spooky to not know you. Oh, yeah. All right, let's get into it.
The purpose of this podcast is to empower women to take care of their homes. I really grew up handy, but my mom and I, six years ago, didn't have any of these skills or tools. We were you six years ago. So that tells you you absolutely can do every bit of what we're doing. We want to be able to bring in-person education to women, and the podcast is our vehicle to get us started.
Three Minutes of Chaos
Three minutes of chaos. Are you guys ready? Ready for it. I've brought a question today. I'm going to steal your phone. I need your timer. Boop boop boop boop boop boop. Sound effects. She's narrating for the boop. Apparently it's my thing. Yeah, I see it come up in videos and I'm like, why am I booping again? Okay. Are you ready? Who wants to go first? I'll go first. Okay. In one minute, tell me: if you could have a different podcast, what would it be about?
I would have a podcast about plants. Oh, fun. I mean, okay, I don't have a lot of plant knowledge, but if I had to have a podcast about something, I would probably have it about plants. Because first of all, I loved cell biology when I was in college. I loved that class so much. What's the hook? So if I'm a listener, what makes me want to listen to your podcast? Because plants kind of lend themselves more to a visual mode. So you have to have a plan for audio. I thought we were just making dreams happen here. I'm just asking, what's your dream? Make flowers prettier. Make plants plant-ier. I'm so sold. Can't wait. I didn't say that people would listen to it. You just make it. There's some kind of science about all the colors and stuff. It could be interesting. Yeah. What makes impatiens different colors? How can we get the same plant but different colored flowers? I have a husband who could probably answer those questions for you. Or I could just make a new podcast. True.
What's your podcast? I would make a podcast that is for pastors' wives to listen to. And I know that sounds incredibly boring, but hear me out. I'm a pastor's wife. And there's a certain life reality to being a pastor's wife where you have to kind of keep everything you think to yourself. And there are a lot of things going on, culturally and politically, that are very problematic. And I wonder if there are other pastors' wives that are like, I just want to talk to someone where I don't have to toe the party line. I can talk about this as a human being. This is why this bothers me, and this is a struggle. If you are not a pastor or a pastor's wife, you're free to have those conversations because you don't have any doctrinal requirements. Even just asking questions can be problematic as a pastor's wife. So I would have a podcast, I'd call it The Anonymous PW, the anonymous pastor's wife. It would be a place where we could just have conversations about things that you can't really comfortably talk about. That would be a good podcast. Plus, I think a lot of people who aren't pastors' wives are in a similar situation, like spouses of politicians, or teachers, or principals. They're probably not encouraged to speak their mind, especially if it differs from whatever their spouse's official role is.
How about you? One of my favorite podcasts of all time is called History for Weirdos, and they just stopped making episodes. So I want to do something exactly like that. It wouldn't be super history based, but probably a variety show on weird stories. Oh my gosh, I love weird stories. If you like weird stories, we've done a few weird Tool Origins episodes, which have been so fun. It seems fun to research episodes on, like, this haunted ship or this weird phenomenon. Welcome to My Weird Brain would be the title. Can I be a guest? Every episode. I feel like the three of us were gonna have another podcast. Telling weird stories would actually be a really on-brand fit for who we are. Like, who gets the weirdest story? I love that.
I do have to interject one last piece of information. I changed my mind, and my podcast would be how things are made. Like How It's Made, but in podcast form. That'd be cool. Guys, the information that I found about insulation. Oh my gosh, it could go in that podcast. I was just telling Lucas, my husband, I just listened to like three hours of podcasts on how smoke detectors work, and I want to make podcast episodes about this. And he said, I love you, but I don't really know if your listeners want to listen to you explain how that works. And I was like, well, there's a certain population of a bunch of yous and mes that would listen. Let us know which one of these three you'd want, because my plant idea is still out there. My hook would be: things are pretty. I like purple flowers. Things are pretty, and so are you. One host and an audience of one. I make this podcast for myself.
Handy Vocab
Should we transition into our new segment? Ready for Handy Vocab? So we had feedback from some of our listeners. We are attempting to make sure you don't need any prerequisite knowledge before getting the information that we're teaching, and sometimes there are words that are familiar to us that might not be familiar to you. So we've decided to add a segment to the beginning of each of our teaching episodes called Handy Vocab, with the words that we think might not be everyday language, so that you know what they are before we get into the teaching. Today's topic is haunted houses and what actually isn't haunted.
First one: ghost flushing. When a toilet refills on its own because water is slowly leaking from the tank into the bowl. Our next term is water hammer. This is the bang in your pipes caused by water stopping suddenly when a valve closes fast. That's pipes knocking. Number three: plumb, which means something perfectly vertical, straight up and down. So level, but vertical. A dead front: the metal cover inside your electrical panel that keeps you from touching live parts. The breakers poke through it. Oh, so not the door. The door is mounted to the dead front. And the last term: back drafting, when exhaust from a gas appliance gets pulled back into your house instead of going up the vent. Terrifying. How does that happen? We're gonna figure it out together. All right, that's Handy Vocab.
Is Your House Haunted, or Just Broken?
I have a little monologue to start us off. It's 3 AM. The house is quiet. Too quiet. And then you hear it. The toilet flushes. Nobody's in the bathroom. Nobody's been in the bathroom for hours. You lie there in bed, blanket pulled up to your chin, doing the math on whether you can afford to move. Then the pipes start knocking. The hallway lights start flickering, and the bedroom door, the one you know you closed, slowly creaks open. At this point, you've got two options. Option one: call a priest. Option two: call a handyma'am. Because here's the thing. Your house isn't possessed. It's just being dramatic. Most of these things that go bump in the night have perfectly reasonable explanations, and a few cheap parts and fixes you can knock out on a Saturday. Some of them are so common the trades already have names for them. Plumbers literally call that 3 AM toilet ghost flushing. We did not make that up, but we wish we had. So grab your flashlight, maybe a level, and definitely your sense of humor, because today we're figuring out whether your house is haunted or just broken.
I have had those experiences where I'm lying in bed and I hear noises that should not be happening in the middle of the night. You know the spookiest one that you didn't cover? When I lived at the lake house, the vents, when they would go on and off, would click and crackle. That scared me.
So here's how this works. I'm gonna say the symptom, you guys guess the cause, I'll tell you if you're right or wrong, and then we're going to rate it on a scale of one to five ghosts: how terrified we'd be if it happened in the middle of the night. The Scare-O-Meter.
The Toilet That Flushes Itself
The toilet that flushes itself. If it happened at all, five out of five ghosts. It would scare the living bejesus out of me. Because a toilet flushing is a very somebody-flushed-the-toilet kind of occurrence. It's not like, oh, the house is creaking.
So why does it happen? Your tank is probably overfilling, and when it overfills, it goes into the overflow tube and leaks into your toilet bowl. A toilet works on gravity and pressure. When you flush, the water from the tank rushes into the bowl and reaches that threshold very quickly. But if it's slowly adding water, then it can reach that point at any time. That's still creepy as heck. I would 100% get the crowbar out from under my bed. I'd be calling the pastor for an exorcism. I'd be like, at least I have a polite ghost. Although they don't wash their hands after.
It commonly could be the overflow, but it's most commonly the flapper, which is the part between your tank and your bowl that holds the water in. That's what your flush lever lifts up. If that seal isn't working very well, it just drains a little bit at a time, and that's when you can get that flush. A toilet is just a siphon. I love stuff like that.
I sleep next to my bathroom. That would scare me, a total of five, because that definitely feels like something a human did or a ghost did. Can you imagine if someone broke into your house and flushed a toilet to scare you? That would absolutely work. Instead of sneaking around, they just go in your bathroom, flush, and they're like, how long till the scream? Five on the meter.
Knocking on the Walls
Knocking on the walls. It sounds like someone's knocking on the walls. That one probably wouldn't scare me that much. I could talk myself into, it's the house, in a way I couldn't with the toilet. What causes it? It's the pipes, but I don't understand the mechanics of it. It could be the pipes. It could be a branch hitting against the house. It could be a raccoon outside hitting the house with a stick. Occasionally you have a pressure issue with your ductwork, and it will build up pressure, suck the ductwork in, and then release it, and it'll pop.
But the most common is water hammer. It's a shock wave from fast-closing valves. Most pipes are supposed to have something that holds them close to the wall or the joist run. If the valve closes really fast, it shakes the pipe, which then knocks on stuff. If you have a long run of copper supply pipe inside your wall that isn't strapped down in any way, it will hit against the joist or the stud that it's next to. It's kind of like if you have a closed fishbowl and you're suddenly stopping in a car. It knocks against the side of your fish tank. Instead of the fishbowl being seatbelted in, it's slamming against the car.
One reason to address it, other than the knocking sound, is that copper pipes are pretty durable, but they're not meant to be knocked around. If your copper pipes are knocking against the studs repeatedly, at some point they're going to leak. If it only happens every so often but you want to take care of it, they make a fifteen-dollar device for the washing machine, which is where it comes from most of the time, that you screw on the supply hose. And the washing machine often runs while you're sleeping. What about the dishwasher? We run that before bed most nights.
If your water pressure is over 80 psi, that's when it requires a plumber. So if you have a lot of knocking, you probably just call a plumber to help sort it out. If you're in the basement with an open ceiling and you can actually see your pipe knocking, that's one you can strap down yourself. But if it's inside your wall, that's more difficult, and that's where the water hammer device would come into play. I've actually seen supply lines have some movement when I turn the shutoff valves under sinks on or off, so I can understand how when you scale that up, with more water pressure or bigger pipes or a really long run of copper, it would happen.
Scare-O-Meter: I'd say three, only because I could talk myself out of being scared. I would say two. I'd say two. Plus, I have neighbors. I have apartments above me and right next to me, so I could definitely chalk it up to something else. Your own toilet flushing is not something you can chalk up to your neighbors.
Doors Opening and Closing on Their Own
Doors opening and closing on their own. There are two answers for this one. First of all, do you have a good latch on your door? Because if your door isn't perfectly level, or the way the hinges are hanging wants it to stay open, and you don't have a good latch, it's going to open. Or close, if that's the way the hinges want it to fall. The other one could be pressure in your house. If pressure is changing, or there's suction in a room or a lot of air moving out of a room, your door is going to swing open or closed. You nailed them both.
It happens in our house if we're sleeping with the bedroom door open and the windows open. If the wind is strong enough, it will grab the door and slam it shut. This one doesn't scare me at all, because I know this. It might startle me, but it doesn't scare me. In my apartment the doors have glass panels, so when one slams hard I'm waiting for the crash, but I'm not scared. It startles me. I don't think someone's in the house.
So, your door frame. We're bringing a vocab term back. It could be out of plumb. A way to check that is to just stick your level on the door and see if it's plumb. Your door is a rectangle, and if your door frame stops being a rectangle, they're not gonna fit together nicely like a puzzle.
And with the HVAC: if this is happening when your windows aren't open, you might want to have an HVAC tech look at it. If the pressure differences in your HVAC system are strong enough to pull a door, that can actually be a problem for gas appliances with vents. That's back drafting.
One other thing about doors: put a level on the door when it's open and also when it's almost closed, because your door can be perfectly level one way and unlevel the other if your hinges aren't screwed in properly. I've encountered that a couple of times, where it's perfectly level, and then I close it ninety percent of the way so I can still fit a level on it, and I'm like, oh, that's why. If the hinges are installed crooked, the door will travel in whatever path the hinges allow.
Flickering Lights
Lights flickering. Sometimes it's because the wires that are twisted together to provide light are loose, so they make contact, and then they don't, and then they do. Sometimes it happens when a light fixture is dying. It's the intermittent connection of the power.
It's probably one of two things. Often now, because we use LED bulbs for everything, it's an old dimmer switch plus an LED bulb. Oh, I've seen this. That's super common. Or it's actually a breaker problem. If it's a whole room, not just one light, that's when it's most likely your breaker.
I mentioned the dead front at the beginning because I've seen stuff online where people are like, here's how to swap a breaker and get in the guts of your electrical panel. I would highly suggest, especially if you're new to DIY, that you don't do that. Electricians can be expensive, but they know how to safely handle these things. You can safely flip your breakers on and off by yourself. But if it requires going behind the dead front, the panel that protects you from the scary wires, don't do it. We always talk about whether you should DIY something: can you handle the consequences if something goes wrong? With an electrical panel, that's electrocuting yourself and a fire. Even as a professional, I cannot handle those consequences.
This actually happened on that huge kitchen remodel we did with the light uppers and the dark navy lowers. The electricians installed a chandelier fan. It was really cute, an old-fashioned-looking chandelier with flame-style bulbs and a little fan. It used to be a regular chandelier that was dimmable, and then we switched to LED, and when it was dimmed below half, it would flicker. The electrician fixed it. So that's why you might hire a pro in that situation.
So remember: if it's one light, it's probably just the bulb, the fixture, or how it's attached. If a whole room is flickering, it's most likely a problem with your electrical panel, and that's when you want to call a pro. And call a pro immediately if anything is smoking, smells bad, or is hot to the touch. Those are signs for emergency electrical service.
Scare-O-Meter: this is a zero for me. If it came out of nowhere and multiple lamps were flickering in sync, I would be scared. I'd think something's wrong with the electrical. Maybe a two. Let's go back to the 1800s. You have a candle and it suddenly goes out. You'd think it was a witch, a ghost, or Satan. Those are your only three options. They didn't believe in wind back then.
A General Feeling of Dread
Okay, our last one: a general feeling of dread. Before the thing that happened to us, I would have probably thought something is creepy wrong. But we had a little tiny gas leak in our workshop. I didn't really feel ill. I felt existential dread. It felt like the world is wrong. I was very anxious, and I wouldn't have thought that would be a side effect of a gas leak. But since that happened to us, if that was happening at home, I would think, I wonder if there's a gas leak. Before that, I was like, do I hate my job? Do I hate work? Is it a bad idea to be moving into this space? And we couldn't smell it.
Whenever I feel dread, I get really scared, like a six or seven, because I'm like, am I getting depressed again? The unspecified depression and the unspecified anxiety are the worst kinds, because there's nothing to grab hold of to fix.
So here are your two courses of action. Get a CO detector, or make sure yours are up to date, because it could be carbon monoxide or natural gas. With natural gas you're more likely to smell it, although we didn't. Or, if your home checks out, go see a therapist or your mental health practitioner. It never once would have crossed my mind that feeling unwell could be gas or carbon monoxide. A lot of times it comes with headaches and nausea. If you go outside for a bit or run an errand, and you feel better outside of your house, it's most likely carbon monoxide. That's a great tip, because it is a silent killer.
The Official Ghost Whisperer
I was picking who's the official ghost whisperer. Arly answered the most right, so I crown her the official ghost whisperer. She has an invisible ghost crown. If you're on audio, imagine a giant crown with a skull in the middle, bedazzled pink and purple.
My final reminder for today's episode is that CO alarms are super important in your house. You should have one on every level of your home, especially if you have gas appliances. A lot of times you can get a smoke detector that's a CO detector as well. That's my PSA for the end of this episode.
One Small Request
Thank you for hanging out with us today. We have one small announcement and a request for you. It may already be out when you're hearing this: we are doing our first YouTube long-form tutorials, and we are so excited to share them with you. It's kind of the last piece of the puzzle of the content ecosystem we've made. Our first one is all about how to use your drill, and it's for people who know literally nothing about a drill. We explain what the trigger is, how to change directions, and what the numbers mean, in depth, in a way that is for you. It's a labor of love. So my humble request is that you subscribe to our YouTube channel, which is linked in the description, so you're there when it comes out. Or if it's already out, go comment on the first episode and say, oh my gosh, I came from the podcast. We love you. Thanks for being part of our community, and we hope you have a great day. We'll see you again soon. Bye!
