Harper Bazaar Jan 07

Cleanse your home
Beware: your innocent two-up, two-down may be infested with evil spirits, and only one woman can save it. Charlotte Williamson meets rod-waving, flat cleansing guru Suzi Morris.

With her hennaed hair and jangling crystals, Suzi Morris cuts an incongruous figure as she waits outside the Paul and Joe boutique. There is an anticipatory feel to the day; it's warm but windy, as though Mary Poppins (or Morris herself) had just floated down from the skies. Will she transform my home and therefore my life? Who knows - but she certainly looks the part, exactly as a house healer should, I decide, as we walk back towards my place, sharing the weight of her bulging bag.

But who on earth needs a house healer? The reasoning is that we have detoxed everything from our careers to our colons, so why not our homes? Think of it as the new-style exorcism, albeit with less head spinning, more arm waving and plenty of messing around with dowsing rods, which until I met Morris, I thought no one still used other than beardy old farmers on regional news programmes.

Morris CV, however, is not to be sniffed at. She is in demand from architects and interior designers, and her clients include big-name property developers, TV production company Tiger Aspect, and Lloyds's of London. Her magic can't quite transform a council house into a £10 million mansion, but it can shift hitherto unsellable flats. 'They can be done up to the nines but, if the energy isn't right, they won't sell,' she tells me. 'In one place, the concierge always complained of feeling tired - there was a heavy energy there; it felt dense and negative.' After she cleared the space, the place - and the people - felt lighter. And the property sold in a jiffy.

'A lot of places are haunted, and sometime the owners don't know,' she continues.'If someone has died in a place, for instance, the energy won't be right; it will be stuck - so I will release the negativity. Or if there have been lots of arguments or a divorce... energy gets stuck in a building.' And how does this bad energy feel? 'Heavy, really heavy. I can see it: it looks grey. It feels stagnant, intense, almost claustrophobic.' The kind of thing no amount of open windows and candles can resolve. So far, so hmm; but Morris' other bugbears - electro-stress' generated by electronic devices like mobile-phone masts, and under-ground geopathic stress caused by anything from ley line to trains - have been noted by the World Health Organisation as possible causes of lethargy and listlessness.

I ask her how my house felt as she walked through the door. 'It could have been worse. But I'll find the exact problem areas with my rods.' She whips out her dowsing rods and, Dalek-like, begins walking around and chanting. She moves out onto the street, her rods swinging at an alarming rate. Each building has it's own personality. You live on a corner - that's bad: corners don't allow energy to flow.' She approaches one of my neighbours' house. 'Oh, this is really angry and dark!' I prick up my ears: this was the neighbour who objected to my roof terrace (despite having one himself - and an outdoor shower). She moves closer and the rods dance wildly. 'Here, give it a try. Even the most unconscious people can feel the rods.' I do, and it is the oddest sensation as they lurch from side to side.

Inside, she tells me my living room is bad, particularly the wall backing on to the angry neighbour; ditto my bedroom, which she calls 'dense'. She recommends I move my bed away from the neighbour's wall. Spirits often get stuck on stairs, and I have plenty of those.

As she unpacks the contents of her bag - crystals, pictures of divine masters and mothers, essences made by a healer in Ireland - Morris talks about her background. My father was a healer; he had gift,' she says. She trained in Alexander Technique, but, she says, 'everyone who came to me felt the heat of my heads,' so she retained in healing. She branched out into space healing when a client told her he couldn't get rid of this house. 'After I cleared it, it sold in days,' she says.

With her paraphernalia prepared, Morris is ready to cleanse. She uses ancient Vortex Healing, Which originated in India, she says, and which enable white light to fill a space'. She stands in the middle of the living room, hands above her head, and invokes the spirits. Her arms windmilling, she asks various goddesses and archangels and fairies - even the Indian god Ganesh ('Does nixing all these religions matter?' I ask. 'Oh, no!') - to cleanse the house. It really is quite a sight. Especially when, eyes closed, she enters a trance-like state; we are now well into our third hour.

When the house has been detoxed, Morris appears positively wiped out. We re-dowse, and the rods hardly twitch. 'You should feel a difference straight away,' she says. 'Often, I don't want to leave houses because they feel so friendly. Now your living room is so much lighter; everything is sparkling; the space has doubled. Not that it was ghastly before...' Well, I was having doubts.

I stand outside and feel disappointed that my house doesn't possess a visible Ready Brek glow. Yet, when I awake the next morning. I feel calmer and more rested than I have done in weeks, and my house really does feel less stuffy (although I'm not sure I can remember how stuffy it felt before I met Morris).

A month later, something remarkable happens: I decide to visit Morris to get myself healed. She concentrated on my wonky wrist, something I'd been having physiotherapy for. It instantly fells better and I haven't felt a twinge since. All down to Morris and those heated hands? You never know.....

MORRIS' CLEANSING TIPS