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My family's experience


LanaBananaRama

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I'm writing this with the permission of my father, mother, and sister but with the strong warning not to give real names or even pinpoint locations. All I can say is this happened in a different state from where I now live. Also, they'll probably be lurking to make sure I get things right. LOL.

I don't know if I could call this a ghost story because we never saw anything out of the ordinary like an apparition, but I know we couldn't say it was normal everyday either. We just mostly heard things. But there were a few times when we would come from another part of the house and find the kitchen door open. We have a cat that we never let outside and whenever the kitchen door was open she wouldn't go anywhere near it. It was like she was afraid. None of us ever could understand or explain why or how the back door was open. We didn't hear that particular door open either.

Mostly what happened is we would hear doors opening. Especially my sister and me. But the problem with my sister is that she's deaf. I would hear the front door open and she would actually feel it because the wood floor trembled slightly and she could feel it in her feet. (Hard to explain, but her other senses are real sharp.) The unusual thing with the front door opening was that we only answered that door whenever we had guests who weren't familiar with the house or when we had deliveries. Which wasn't very often. Usually people who knew us or our family itself entered through the kitchen door. Anyway, about the door, it was like someone had opened the front door and left it open because I didn't hear it close back. I didn't think of anyone breaking in because the alarm didn't go off. Though my sister might not hear the front door open, she was often able to hear it close back. But during these times she didn't hear it close either. Since I was afraid for our cat Sadie to get out, we would go immediately to check the door but it would be closed and locked.

Mom heard the same thing once when she was in the kitchen but no one else was in the house. It scared her and she was about to call 911. But when she didn't hear the door close back or the alarm going off, she went to check and saw the same thing my sister and I did. A closed door. She also heard it again when she was in the master bedroom. And with the same result. My dad sort of blew us off when we mentioned what we heard, saying we were hearing noises from next door or the wind blowing or whatever.. Also that back door he said was carelessly left open by one of us. But that changed when he heard the front door open while he was in the den watching TV. This would have been during the 4th of July in 2011 because the rest of us were outside doing a cookout. Dad doesn't cook because he can't even boil water. LOL. Sorry, Dad. When he heard the sound, he ran out to us with the phone and said for us to stay outside, he was going to call the police. Mom convinced him not to do that because of scaring the neighbors. No idea why she thought that was a good idea when it happened to her. LOL. Anyway, Mom and Dad told my sister and I to stay outside while they went to check. And of course, the results were the same as in the first 6 or 8 times. Nothing. My sister then got mad at Dad and said to him in Sign Language, "You made us feel stupid and humiliated us when we told you about what happened to us. Now what do you think?" Of course then Dad then apologized to all of us. My sister also apologized later because she was afraid that she might have ruined the 4th of July dinner for us by telling Dad off. She's real sensitive, and Dad forgave her.

I think we found the kitchen door open one time after that, but I don't remember any more incidents about the front door. We moved from that house in March 2012. I know I've left a couple of things out, but I didn't realize how long this story was going to be until I sat down to write it. I don't mean for one of my first posts to be a blog or a book. And as you can probably tell, I'm not much of a writer. LOL.

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i've heard of similar happenings. The sounds of doors and none are open.

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I don't think its any thing paranormal but doors after a house settles and continues to settle, the doors have a tendency to open and close.

Edited by docyabut2
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Don't be hard on yourself. That's a good first story, and your writing is very clear and concise. I like your style. I hope that you contribute more posts.

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Yes, you write well, Annie. There's a lot of credibility to your story. I don't know how old you are, but these are stories I like to hear about. They're open-ended and don't come to a definite conclusion. You seem to write it so that you might get an answer as to what you experienced. I can't say for sure, but if you related that experience in human terms it sounds like a prank. Like someone opened the door and left it open as a prank to alarm you. But since you say you and your sister were the only ones in the house, then it couldn't have been human. I think this what you were faced with, a prankster. And I'm sorry if I alarm you by saying this, but those things aren't ever good. They might be able to affect you mentally, but you don't need to give them any more power than that.

I do hope that you didn't try to contact whatever was doing that. They can't harm you if you give them any credibility, and contacting them would give them credibility. I also hope you didn't use a Ouija board. Of course, they're not evil in themselves, but since we concentrate more or less intently on the answers, we enter a sort of semi-meditative and/or semi-hypnotic state which can bring about certain mental/psychic phenomena that we don't entirely understand and might not be easily controlled. That's been my theory, anyway. So IMO it would be okay to play with a Ouija board to find out the name of your future spouse, for instance, but not for contacting possible spirits.

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Welcome to the site :)

Doors opening and closing isn't that common unless it's got weak hinges. I do think there might've been a spirit in that house though, but I could be wrong.

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Welcome, Annie.

Not speculating as to what was going on in your former residence,

I will say that a shifted house and /or unlevel foundation can cause

doors to ill fit their frames.

[...] So IMO it would be okay to play with a Ouija board to find out the name of your future spouse, for instance, but not for contacting possible spirits.

Or, preferably, not that much, insofar as I was thrown a virtual curve-ball:

not long after I'd met my prospective husband, I met an attractive man

with his first and middle names reversed.

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Welcome to the board, Annie. I hope you enjoy your stay. :)

I think the kitchen door part might have a more mundane explanation, like a faulty lock. My parents house had that problem with a dead bolt lock which wouldn't engage properly, although it appeared to do so. You could turn the dead bolt and think the door was locked, but all you had to do was turn the knob and the door was open with the bolt still sticking out of the deadbolt thingy! And this had been going on for several years! Needless to say, my dad wasn't very happy about that and quickly had a proper lock installed after this revelation.

But about the other part of your account, I couldn't say. I'm sure it's unnerving to have that happen. I wonder if you've ever been in another part of the house and heard when the front door was actually being opened by someone? Do you remember how that compared to those sounds you heard?

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Hi Annie, you mention wooden floors and I assume the doors were wooden too. During the year wood expands and contracts, this is very common and having wooden floors too can add to the shifting.

it would be interesting to know what kind of wood treatment had been used on the doors and floors.

When ever wood is mention, rest assured there is nothing paranormal about it when it expands, contracts and one of the best one, creeks by itself.

Well done on your writing. :tu:

Edited by freetoroam
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Hi. I really don't mind natural explanations. But I don't understand the noise that sounded just like the front door opening. Some history of the house that Mom could remember. That house was built in the early 1960s so it's fairly old. Of the first owners the wife died in that house. She had been suffering from lung cancer. I'm not saying that's who the spirit was, I'm just mentioning that.

Now about the kitchen door, some of you could be right. Especially about the deadbolt not going all the way in. I never thought of that. So that could be the best explanation but there's no way for me to test that now. It would be kind of awkward calling the new owners and asking "Hey has your kitchen door been opening for no apparent reason? And how about that front door?" :D

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I think skepticism about the unexplained and even paranormal is the best attitude of all.

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Although unexaplained noises especially from other rooms, like doors opening or closing or furniture being moved, that all turn out to have no cause when investigated (doors and furniture found just as they are left) DO occur in a lof of typical haunting and poltergeist lore, that doesn't necessarily mean that sort of thing was going on - only that these same things went on in such alleged cases.

Obviously in cases of such noises, or any other unexplained occurrence, the best thing to do is see if you can figure out how to reproduce it, no matter how unorthodox (but safe) a method is. Creaking floors yes, loose lock mechanisms yes, warped doorframes yes. There are common, mundane rooms whose contents all interrelate in such a way that stepping from a doorway into them, in just the right area on the floor, will cause a window to slam shut, or walking on a certain length of hallway will cause a door to swing open or closed fifteen feet away (again, it has to be the EXACT right place to step or it won't happen).

I know some explanations might seem silly to some, like underground tributaries or seismic disturbances, wind or power lines causing various real effects or even distorted perception in the people in a residence, but these things DO happen in some cases, and you have to ask yourself, is it more likely that a possibly rare but documented scientific/physics phenomena caused a cabinet door to close on its own, or that a discarnate spirit (an idea not remotely supported by modern scientific principle) did it?

That isn't to say I don't "believe in ghosts" - I do believe in them, and I think some might even be unusual and currently unexplained occurrences outside known experience, but I cannot push my brain or reason into the area that allows for the idea that when someone dies their "soul" or whatever somehow gets "stuck" or "trapped" and it is possible for a person to just hang around and not be able to go to whatever happens next. To me this is like suggesting a common interference in any commonly known everyday occurrence, like letting go of an object doesn't mean it will fall straight down due to gravity, or putting water in a working freezer doesn't mean it will freeze. When you die, whatever happens on a chemical, physical and mental or even spirital level just *happens* - there's no way for it NOT to happen, because it's automatic. You don't get your consciousness snagged on an "astral nail" or something, in my opinion. I even will entertain the possibility of some personality-like phenomena that may seem like people, causing some problems, but I believe even these would be some sort of not-understood dynamic of our mind or nature itself, not actual "spirits" of someone. There are a lot more ways to think of "ghosts" than totally mundane explanations or dead people.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I know I'm a little slow to reply but thanks for the replies guys. :)

Even if nobody believes me, at least I've got a creepy story to tell my grandkids. lol

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