Ghosts, goblins, and gremlins seem to be everywhere this time of year, but your car is the last place you expect to find them. While a haunted automobile may seem like a spooky story to tell in the dark, it can certainly sometimes feel like a strange entity has possessed your daily driver. Fortunately, exorcising the demons in your car won't require any peculiar or arcane rituals.

What Is a Haunted Car, Anyway?

Strange explanations aside, unusual gremlins have plagued cars for as they have included electronics. Modern vehicles use sophisticated electronic systems to control everything from the cabin HVAC to the engine fuel mixture. Small issues can have wide-ranging effects throughout the car, sometimes creating many seemingly unrelated symptoms.

If you've been experiencing electronic symptoms that don't seem to be meaningfully connected, then there's still likely to be an entirely scientific explanation. Warning lights that come and go, drained batteries, flickering lights, and even problems starting to engine often trace back to the same set of issues.

In some cases, electrical symptoms can be more than just an annoyance. If your battery seems to be draining at random, it can leave you stranded away from home or prevent you from starting your car in the morning. Unusual behavior from windshield wipers, headlights, or brake lights can all become safety hazards, as well.

Creepy Wiring Issues

Do these varied electrical symptoms mean that a restless spirit has infested your car's electrical system? Most likely, the answer is far more grounded. You can usually trace electrical gremlins back to corroded wiring, faulty grounds, or short circuits. Your car's electrical systems rely on a clean, steady supply of 12-volt DC power. Interruptions to the power supply can wreak havoc on electrical components.

Issues with the vehicle wiring harness or one of the engine grounds can potentially affect many different components in your car. Damaged wiring insulation can also create a short circuit that may lead to a parasitic battery drain. In these cases, you might find that your battery dies any time you leave your car for a few days. In severe cases, your battery may even drain overnight.

Kicking Gremlins to the Curb

Now that you know the most likely cause of strange electrical issues in your car, what should you do about them? Unfortunately, finding a wiring fault can be a challenging process. If you think spooky electrical gremlins may be haunting your car, it's best to trust an experienced mechanic to hunt down and resolve the problem. Contact us for our auto repair services.