It’s not zuhausesuchen or wohnsitzsuchen or heimatsuchen… There’s something about that use of Heim in the word “to haunt; afflict; befall” (as war, a plague, a natural disaster) that really brings it home, just as if you visit me at my house it has a different feel than if you come to my home. Tax assessors visit my house; family comes to my home.
Heimsuchen originates in the Middle High German heime suochen “to seek someone out at home with good or ill intent.” Somewhere along the line the ill beat out the good, so that, at about the same time, the noun heimsuochunge meant “trespass.”
My boyfriend and I were talking one morning, in the house alone, when we heard a knock on the closed office door, clear as day, tap tap tap. Thinking my daughter had come home earlier than expected, I jumped up and opened the door. Nobody; not even a dog with a wayward tail or a hardworking cat (although it didn’t sound like a dog tail or a cat’s tenacity; it was human in origin).
Now and then, I remember that we’re being heimsucht by a polite ghost and hope something more will happen. Maybe I can’t use heimsuchen for such a retiring Casper, but the idea of a haunting by a considerate spirit, which is nonetheless an otherworldly haunting, does have that ambivalent feel that heimsuchen used to have. “Intent good or ill.” Remains to be seen.
