A ghost that haunts a house is etymologically just going home — the word likely traces to the Old Norse heimta, "to bring home."
To manifest as a ghost or spirit in a place; to visit or recur to the mind continually; also, to frequently visit a place.
From Old French hanter, meaning to frequent, to inhabit, possibly from Old Norse heimta (to bring home, to fetch), from heimr (home). The supernatural sense of ghostly visitation developed in English during the 16th century. Key roots: *haim- (Proto-Germanic: "home, village"), *ḱóymos (Proto-Indo-European: "home, dwelling").
The word haunt originally had nothing to do with ghosts — it simply meant to visit a place frequently, as in "a favorite haunt." The supernatural meaning only emerged around the 1500s, possibly because people imagined spirits as beings who could not leave and kept returning to the same place. The deepest irony is that haunt likely derives from the Old Norse word for "home," suggesting that a ghost haunting a house is, etymologically speaking, simply going home.