My father died in the living room. The next day, half of the outlets in the house stopped working. The stove wouldn't light. The garage door opened by itself twice. My mother could speak a language she had never learned, my brother was a Buddhist monk, and I had a spiritual connection to many pieces of vintage Dior (opens in new tab). We just laughed as the lamps flickered and the appliances shorted out. My mother shouted, "Stu, turn it off," and the circuit worked again.

Of course, even without fatal accidents, everyone's space is a little haunted. There's a coffee table made by my old roommate ...... before joining a cult in Venice Beach and shacking up with a girl named Meadowlark. A plaid flannel sheet set I used to love evokes nostalgia for a bassist I used to sleep with but never dated. And don't even get me started on the crate of Ramones records bequeathed to me by my best friend's brother in high school. It may not be the kind of décor you see in horror movies (open in new tab), but it still has ghosts.

Interior designer Mikkel Welch, who until this year did not believe in the existence of spirits, agrees. 'But listen carefully,' he says. I believe now." Welch is most famous for his layouts for Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama, but thanks to the advent of the mobile streaming platform Quibi (opens in new tab), from the beautiful mahogany floor where he died ... He has actually shifted his axis to the floor where someone died. His new project is "Murder House Flipped," which debuted April 6, and through bite-sized video segments on Quibi, Welch and co-host Joel Uziel have created a euphemism for a property that "has been used as a hideout for serial killers in the past" is "troubled" Sacramento property, they take a house like that and make it livable again.

"As soon as I stepped into the space [in Sacramento], I knew something was wrong," Welch says. I'm not a medium, and I'm not a psychic medium. I can "read" a room the way RuPaul "reads" an aspiring drag queen. The walls seemed to vibrate with trauma." This last sentence sounds like something Alexis Rose would say about someone else's walk-in closet (open in new tab), but it is not entirely fictional. The cultural notion of haunted houses has been around for centuries and spans continents, from Japan's famously creepy "haunted houses" to Mexico's "Muñecas Island." In a self-quarantine during the coronavirus pandemic (open in new tab), Welch has some handy tips if you're stuck living with the ghost of yourself-a flashback to a bad breakup or an empty space where someone you once loved was.

"If there's one thing you can do to get rid of ghosts, it's to get rid of the floor," he says. 'Get the negative energy and actual body debris out of your home. Be sure to tear up the carpet. And consider a fresh coat of paint. It should be bright and cheerful. Don't let trapped evil energy get buried deep in a corner because you didn't provide adequate lighting.

The good news: most of us don't have actual ghosts floating around the kitchen like a Hogwarts holograph. The bad news: "Ghosts are just bad energy," Welch says. For that," Welch says gleefully, "we have bleach and matches. Yes, he's serious. The number one mistake I see in my clients is that they have things in boxes that don't belong to them, and they won't throw them out." They burn pictures of the two of you together. Burn his clothes, even if that oversized sweater looks good on you: ...... Or, if you can't make a bonfire, at least donate it. Get him out of your space immediately. He is trash. His stuff should go in the trash."

But this part is tricky. Two of my exes... Wait, three... Damn, five... are artists, and some of their work still graces my halls. One photo is too gorgeous to throw away, one painting has tacky but austere value to contemporary art buyers, and one sculpture is a very practical doorstopper. The doorstopper is definitely going in the trash. That's just an excuse. Throw it away," Welch recommends. And so I did, literally shattering it in a giant garbage bag. It was the most emotionally fulfilling thing I have done all day.

Welch also recommends exorcising hurt feelings and any remaining hope by completely changing the bed. The bed is a symbol of their relationship." There is a reason the "marriage bed" appears in older literature. To get rid of it, remove as much of the frame's exterior as possible with sandpaper. Then repaint it, and replace all the bedding with new. And get excited about the candles. I don't want anything that smells like my ex-girlfriend," Welch says. 'You need new sheets, a new comforter, and a new scent wafting throughout the space. I like to talk about "saging" bad energy, but if you don't have any, just use Le Labo (opens in a new tab) instead. Just make sure the scent is completely new."

A few years ago, I helped my friend Ash do exactly this with his unmarried bed, and I felt terribly smug. The quilt on which I am writing this article was bought for a musician to move in. It went to the back of the closet, replacing the down comforter from the MoMA store that I stole from my parents' house. (Sorry, Mom.) After a little bouncing on the bed, ah, it's fun to give a space a facelift (opens in new tab) with something as simple as a blanket.

But what if something completely new to you is actually hundreds of years old? Is the item itself haunted, or is that only in mummy movies? ...... 'As a lover of vintage design, that's a difficult area,' Welch says. 'It's true that the vintage item came from another place, and we don't know what kind of energy happened in that space. If it is giving you a bad vibe, you can sit down and have a conversation with the spirits that may be clinging to it. It may sound strange, but look at the item, feel its energy, and then say, "I'm sorry. Please leave. You don't belong here. You can leave.' I really think it works. And honestly," he laughs, "it better work. If I find a beautiful Chinese credenza from the 1700s with original hardware, I'm not going to get rid of it. I can't let a ghost interfere with my interior design."

I run my fingers over the 1980s Tiffany bracelet on my lap and wonder if it might be haunted. What if it was worn by a woman who debuted just before she went broke. What if it was bought by a mafia man for his mistress, who later killed him in a whirlwind of cocaine and rage? What if I had stopped watching "Goodfellas" while writing this story? I don't know. But just in case, I picked up my silver cuff (which I picked up at a consignment store in Los Angeles) and said, "You know what? It's ruining my mood. I wait a while and nothing happens. Wait a minute, that's not true. I'm talking to a gem like Shelley Long from Beverly Hills. Then I check all the outlets in the bedroom to see if they still work.

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