Things that go bump in the night are a common occurrence in your average household. Floorboards creak, doors whine as hinges stick, and chance reflections of yourself in a kitchen window conjure up all the ghostly possibilities, as stories of old spring to mind.

All of this reinforces our sensory sensitivity to the paranormal, and the possibility that maybe - only maybe - spirits do haunt our houses. All over the country, children are preparing for the much anticipated fun of Hallowe'en and all that it entails. Ghosts, ghouls, and poltergeists are enjoying a new lease of life as costumes are prepared for trick or treating on the eve of All Hallows or All Saints day.

For most, the fun stops when the day has passed, but some people live with spirits every day. Not surprisingly, ghosts are rarely a selling point for houses, but some buyers do find them already in residence when they move in. The American Society of Paranormal Investigation cites the most common signs of haunting.

If you see or hear doors and cupboards repeatedly opening and closing, or witness objects moving or levitating, if lights turn on and off by themselves or you have seen the television playing while unplugged, you may have spirits living with you. Perhaps your pet is behaving strangely, attacking something which is not there, or you hear unusual noises in your home.

Footsteps, voices and muffled whispers are also common indicators that you have an unwelcome guest. When you turn on your video, do you hear unexplained growls, or are there hot and cold spots in the house? And finally, have you seen any apparitions?

If you can answer yes to any of the above, who you gonna call - Ghostbusters?

Ghostbuster and psychicpsychologist Sandra Ramdhanie is more fearful of the living than the dead if pushed to choose between the two. Author of Trapped Between Two Worlds - Experience of a Ghostbuster (O'Brien Press, £5.99) she talks about the many experiences she has had, both in the city and around the country, helping people who are at the end of their tether.

Fascinated by haunted houses, her ability to actually connect with the spirits within came to fruition when, after too many rum punches, she and some friends decided to enter a well-known haunted house in Trinidad.

As soon as she entered the house, she could sense someone there and eventually physically saw someone in the place; her first response was to reassure the spirits that she wasn't there to hurt them. With her skills as a psychologist, she tried to heal the presence. After she left, it seemed, all paranormal activity ceased, suggesting that the spirit had found its way to the next dimension.

Always aware of the paranormal, she recalls "from the time I was a child, everyone said l was a weirdo. My earliest experience was when my father, a student at the Royal College of Surgeons, had friends back for grinds; as a child of no more than two years of age, I was able to answer complicated questions in medical terms. Everybody was aware that there was something different about me. I used to insist that I was a man and that my name in a previous life was Dr Wu."

It was only recently that she discovered an ancient religion in China, where the "Wu" were the exorcists. Her family were stunned by this revelation.

One of the very positive sides of her talent were the incredible results she got in her Leaving Certificate, as she knew what was going to come up in the exam papers. "People try to set me up with horse racing and dog racing, but I never wanted to be a performer. I call what l do a mixture of rational and paranormal, a psychic psychology which has its basis in healing."

Ramdhanie's most famous ghostbusting experience was with the Fahey family in Newcastle, Co Galway, which attracted a lot of media interest. Living on a new estate which was built on the grounds of an old farm, the family experienced a lot of haunting which had a child as its focal point.

After connecting with the spirit at the house, she discovered that the child haunting the Faheys was the infant born to a young nun which she had probably smothered and hidden beneath the ground of the original farmhouse. Her intuition was reinforced by the chance visit of the previous landowner, who knew a little of the history of the family who had lived there.

The spirit of the child, dormant for years, had been released by building work which was going on next door, she says. Strangely, spirits can often be released by tampering with a structure or having builders in, the paranormal activity triggered by an "awakening".

Before Sandra was requested to visit the house, up to six priests and a bishop had tried to exorcise the premises, but to no avail. Her success, she believes, is that she rehouses spirits, talks to them much as she would a living being and counsels them, therefore healing and allowing them to move on. "I rehouse them, I don't exorcise them,." she says.

The most haunted county in Ireland, in her experience, has to be Wicklow, where she recently carried out work on a farm in Rathcoole that had to be released of four to five spirits some of which dated back to 1798, she said.

"I don't go out and try to get rid of spirits, but people often look for me to do it. The cases I normally get involved in are the cases which involve children. I fulfill all categories for being a psychic, my birthday is on Samhain - November 1st - I was born feet first and I was born to Irish and Indian parents, two of the most spiritual races I've encountered."

As we approach Hallowe'en she will experience a rise in calls for help as she does every year at this time. Ghosts, it would seem, are seasonal. All around the world, every culture celebrates death or at least commemorates the dead on Samhain Eve, in effect connecting with their loved ones. This apparently has the knock on effect of awakening the spirits.

"The energy of the earth is different at this time of year and it's a thin veil between this world and the next. The tradition of dressing up at Hallowe'en was originally to scare the ghosts that everyone figured were roaming the streets," she says.