Help with a haunted house

[nettycurtains]

We've been in our house for about three months and to start with things were fine. Now every day something more happens. I have heard footsteps upstairs on several occasions and am now being woken at about 3am by scratching noises. I've put it down to mice but my dog is not frightened of rodents, he's a terrier and he shows no signs of there being anything in the house. He has though started sleeping under my bed. My teenage daughter phoned me today, I'm at work, in terror and two doors have slammed shut, with no sign of draft or windows open, and a set of towels have been thrown from the bannister on to the floor. We are starting to get scared and need some help please.

[freetoroam]

Check your attic:

A family did not realize they had an unexpected Christmas guest until a man who had been in their attic for days emerged wearing their clothes, police said.

Stanley Carter surrendered Friday after police took a dog to search the home in Plains Township, a suburb of Wilkes-Barre about 100 miles north of Philadelphia. He was charged with several counts of burglary, theft, receiving stolen property and criminal trespass.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/28409695/#.U5haRSiuddg

This gentleman couldn't figure out why food was going missing in his high-storey NYC apartment. His girlfriend denied taking it. So he set up a hidden camera to see what was happening, and shortly thereafter, he saw a strange woman creep out of a deep storage crawlspace over the kitchen, let herself down onto the kitchen table and help herself to his pantry. He phoned the police (he was in the apartment), and they told him after investigating that they believed the woman had been secretly living in his apartment for weeks.

http://boingboing.net/2009/12/09/woman-whod-been-secr.html

Better still, get a camera set up.

[nettycurtains]

Well that would be an 'easy' explanation. Apart from the fact that my attic is not easily accessed and the person hiding in it would have to be some kind of gymnast to jump down slam a couple of doors, dislodge the towels and jump up into it again. There is no ladder handy!

[jamesjr191]

Set up a camera to record any unusual events, you will capture the culprit in action or cure the problem.

[MissJatti]

Its time to call....

"who you gonna call... 'The Ghost Busters'"

[Keel M.]

Well that would be an 'easy' explanation. Apart from the fact that my attic is not easily accessed and the person hiding in it would have to be some kind of gymnast to jump down slam a couple of doors, dislodge the towels and jump up into it again. There is no ladder handy!

Usually the answers to a "haunting" are quite easy.

It's possible the towels were dislodged by a person and not noticed until much later when no one was around.

[coriverson]

We've been in our house for about three months and to start with things were fine. Now every day something more happens. I have heard footsteps upstairs on several occasions and am now being woken at about 3am by scratching noises. I've put it down to mice but my dog is not frightened of rodents, he's a terrier and he shows no signs of there being anything in the house. He has though started sleeping under my bed. My teenage daughter phoned me today, I'm at work, in terror and two doors have slammed shut, with no sign of draft or windows open, and a set of towels have been thrown from the bannister on to the floor. We are starting to get scared and need some help please.

Since you moved in, have you made any changes like updating a room or anything like that?

[rashore]

Welcome to UM netty

Your attic noise might be due to animals larger than mice- sometimes squirrels, birds, raccoons, and opossoms can get up into your roof and attic and make alarming noises. They just might not have gotten in or gotten active till recently, it happens.

The slamming doors might be drafts, even without the windows open. It could be doors out of alignment as well.

The towels could be just slipping off due to gravity- I have some kitchen towels that regularly fall off my oven handle unless I hang them pretty much perfectly even, but they don't slip off the towel rack even when I hang them sloppy.

I'm sure there will be some folks offering paranormal advice too. But I think you should consider the mundane before the paranormal. And even if it was something paranormal, that does not necessarily mean something bad. Keep a journal of the incidents as they happen, if you can record activity, do so.

[sinewave]

We've been in our house for about three months and to start with things were fine. Now every day something more happens. I have heard footsteps upstairs on several occasions and am now being woken at about 3am by scratching noises. I've put it down to mice but my dog is not frightened of rodents, he's a terrier and he shows no signs of there being anything in the house. He has though started sleeping under my bed. My teenage daughter phoned me today, I'm at work, in terror and two doors have slammed shut, with no sign of draft or windows open, and a set of towels have been thrown from the bannister on to the floor. We are starting to get scared and need some help please.

All houses make noise and it can take a while to get used to them. My 98 year-old bungalow creaks and squeaks and thumps and bangs all of the time. it is a product heating and cooling cycles stressing the construction materials. There are also fluctuations in the water table that can apply hydraulic pressure to the foundation and footings. As Freetoroam correctly pointed out. Attics are sometimes the homes of small furry guests who can be surprisingly noisy. Raccoons are particularly active at night where squirrels are more active during the day.

You are probably also loading and unloading the floors as you move stuff around. This can definitely make the structure react and make noise.

Edited June 16, 2014 by sinewave

[Sakari]

The seed has been planted.

A few noises here and there, then the family starts talking about " haunted ".

Now, anything out of the ordinary ( and explainable ) will be paranormal.

Try to dis-lodge that fear seed, and things will go back to normal.

As said, and not being sarcastic, put up surveilence cameras ( they are cheap ). I 100% guarantee that will solve your problem. If above does not work.

[6.6.6]

I think you have to reign in your imagination and be realistic!

New house, new surroundings, your senses just need a settling in phase!

And the house may need a visit from pest control!

[grateful]

Hi Netty, I'm new here as well. Like you, our house has a number of odd things going on. I have found keeping a journal to be quite helpful. Anytime something odd happens, I make a note of it including the day, time, weather and anyone who witnessed it or was at home at the time it occurred. I look for patterns. I won't say that I've been able to explain all of the instances, but my children are a bit calmer when we approach it from a detective viewpoint.

For example, my youngest would hear growling noises which would frighten her. They would happen at all hours of the day, but mostly the evening hours and only when she went into a certain room. After a bit of poking around, we realized the room was on an outside wall. Outside the room was the back porch. We sent another daughter (my teen-ager, imagine the eye-rolling) outside to bark and growl. The noises were clearly heard inside. Nothing paranormal which reassured her.

We do have things that we can't explain and when we can't, we look to acknowledge that it's not frightening so much as startling. I can understand how towels falling down on their own would startle someone, but it's not very threatening. (That might bring your daughter some peace).

All the best to you.

[Josbos]

I've had some experience with odd things happening. Shortly after my Dad died strange things started happening in our house. The five most notable things that happened were as follows:

1. A picture of him fell over face forward and fell off the counter on which is was standing, shattering the glass in the picture.

2. We had a collection of bottles that stood by our kitchen outer door. The door was closed and the safety gate that was in front of it was closed and locked. We seldomly used this door and this is why it was locked. One night, out of the blue, the bottles went flying towards the inside of the kitchen. As if somebody had walked through the door and kicked them with quiet a bit of force.

3. I was standing inside our bathroom, washing my face. When I looked sideways the vacuum cleaner that was standing just outside the bathroom door rotated all by itself, once again as if somebody had walked by and brushed against it.

4. My sister was home with her boyfriend once and she freaked out because a dishcloth towel moved unexplaineably and a drawer opened by itself. These were some of the things that happened at that point in time.

5. Another strange incident was as follows: I got home from my friends 21 birthday at 04:00 in the morning. I took a shower etc and before I went to bed I walked through the house and made absolutely dead certain that I switched off every light. the following morning when I woke up my mom wanted to know why I had switched every light in the house on. I explained to her that I didn't. It took a lot of convincing, but eventually she believed me. Somewhere between me switching every light off at 04:00 and her getting up at 06:00, someone had switched on every single light in the house.

We basically ignored these things and eventually they went away.

Another period of time that was weird was shortly after I left my ex girlfriend. The things that were notable during this time period was I suddenly and inexplicably had an inner voice telling me to pray for protection. Then one morning I was eating my porridge before going to college. I noticed a black thing waddle across the floor toward the couch that was adjacent to me. The thing had no legs, but instead seemed to waddle on it's "torso". It had these huge arms that almost hung to the floor. When it got to the side of the couch, it threw it's arms up and around our cat's neck. The cat was sitting on the arm rest of the couch. It tried to pull the cat off the couch and the cat resisted. The thing then disappeared and the cat jumped off the armrest and ran out of the house. I turned to my mom and asked her if she saw it as well and she said yes. She also mentioned that she was seeing a lot of these things around our living room at the time.

We started suspecting that my ex girlfriend was using witchcraft against us. Other than pray for protection, we didn't do anything and just ignored it. Eventually it went away as well.

Pray and involve a priest if you want to. It never hurts to get a house that had previous occupants blessed when you move in. Other than that, ignore it as much as you can. Don't give it any more inches than you have to.