hi Vijay
good topic VJ, and a lot of input can be given to a topic like this....
whenever we come to a question about spirits, ghosts, etc., our religious teachings, our culture, and our childhood stories start shaping our perception about such things... and mostly we then go around what we have been thought or have been told about generations after generations....
there is no 'rule of thumb' in such question or situations... in several countries there have been profession certification/courses on ghost hunting and there are 'certified' people who offer their professional services for quite a handsome fee in helping people making their houses, estates, etc. free of spritis or ghosts... the whole series of acts in 'clearing' the haunted houses starts from that house or that particular place but ends somewhere else... normally in the area where the eternal abode of such spirit rests like some graveyard, cemetry, shamshaan ghaat, etc. so the whole act of chasing spirits is acutally to help them make a safe 'crossing over' like Andy and Dennis said...
there has been always a mystery, and feeling of fear associated with spirits, haunted houses, ghosts, etc. and in a way this feeling is the natural precaution of the nature in making people take a 'safe distance' from such things... 'safe' in the sense, that we often come to prey of our own fears and hallucinations, while such spirit does not actually play any active role in the whole process....
regarding your question... a generalization would not be safe to be made... the reason is that we dont have diagnosis of what exactly that spirit or ghost is... whetehr it is a haunted spirit waiting a crossing over, whether it is an elemental clustered about that specific room to feed upon un-channeled energies, whether it is a cluster of thousands of tiny entities, whether it is jinn, etc. etc. there are around 70 species of such invisible entities, and each one has a different trait, a different life, a different food, and different lifestyle...
but one thing in common, all such entities respond to the mind waves of human beings in a particular way... a strong mind wave is all that is required to make them run
provided, the person who is trying to clear them off, does actually exactly know, that to what species such entity belong... of course, this should be done by people having mastery over such areas of knowledge...
dealing with such entities is like prescribing an antidote to some poison... if you give wrong antidote, the only result is a painful death... having that said, it does not mean that we would lay arms before such entities... we, human beings, have superiority over every other thing, living or non-living...
the best approach to start dealing with such areas is to cast a protection around you... it can be mantra, some verse, etc. or it may be your strong mental note and intention to create a circle around you for protection... once you are protected, you would have to 'feel' that entity... you will have to meditate in that area... then only you would come to know what that spirit, cluster of energies, elemenatal, etc. want of you... it is quite possible that such entity might need your help to make that cross over and in that case you might need to pray for it... and seek blessings from your god to help that entity pass over... if you were a christian, i would have advised you to seek help of Archangel Micheal to help that spirit pass over....
it is possible that before making that cross over, the entity might like to clear off some baggage, make some will, may want to make contanct with somebody on earth who is still living... and in a way, might need you to act as medium... and in this case you need to be bit careful... since in such case, that spirit might be feeding upon your personal energies to establish and maintain contact...
the second possiblity, is that such 'entity' is one of the elementals who has acquired that area for food, due to enriched composition of the air, earth or water of such area... and if you try to remove, they might resist, but you must take confidence that your strong mental repulsion while you are duly protected is all that is required...
third, it may be a jinn... for definition, a jinn is specific creature like we human beings are.... it is not an off-shoot like some astray spirit, and nor it is a cluster or un-absorbed or un-channeled energies, and equally a jinn is not elemental in nature...
jinnat (plural of jinn) have families, tribes, nations, etc. exactly like we human beings have... they feed upon three things Stones, Dead Bones, and Dead Layers of trees and plants... they have their homes, their places of worshipp, etc. jinns belong to religions like we humans have.... they have a complete system of life and worlds, but we dont have access to them...
if there is a jinn over there, and it is mischivous, then buddy you might land into some trouble, since jinns are not easily affected by mental notes of human beings... they are affected only by prescribed words, mantras, verses, nouns, which have a certain energy frequency higher their sentinent being...
a better way is to make a request to them... but the person requesting needs to be requesting must be a person who has a clear comprehension of whom he is requesting
so? what is the solution and advice for your case ? i feel, the best way is to rely upon your intitution, feelings and extra-sensory judgement....
take care VJ
salman