Haunted by a child? Thoughts?

[GIYess]

Before I got married and moved out of my parents house I used to hear "a person walking from the stairs across to my bedroom as plain as day. The first time I heard it I thought we were being burgled but it was just the house cooling down. Happened almost the same time every night in winter.

I also have "seen" people out of the corner of my eyes to look round and nothing be there. Its often caused by some shape or shadow that tricks you when not looking at it directly.

[Plate spinner]

zarjaz1991 said:

If dead people wanted to make themselves known, they'd surely just appear, in full, and say "hello, here I am".....not mess about rattling things and throwing things across rooms, or whatever.

I dunno... think it through... You're a ghost now.
You're here for ever and there's not much you can do about it.
Presumably you can't travel - so your existence is incredibly boring.
Time moves slow, you've got to amuse yourself.

So let's cut the ghosts some slack. Everyone's got to fill their day somehow.
Shaking the bed to wake you up with a start, turning the lights on downstairs and making footstep noises may be enough to keep them amused for decades!

[N Dentressangle]

Sa Calobra said:

Please explain mine. It's a 1927 house with the boiler living outside in a brick built building. We have smoke and carbon monoxide detectors and when we had a dog he used to sleep throughout all the noises yet bark if he heard footsteps approaching up the drive.

The remote control used to disappear for weeks then as soon as we bought a new one the old appeared in the same spot that it'd appear if we lost it for a few days. Yes that can be absent-minded Ness but to what degree?

Animals can be quite astute at differentiating between 'threat' and 'non-threat' noises. Our cat will sleep right through noises he's accustomed to, but will wake and run if you make an unfamiliar one, or one which he finds threatening.

Remote controls are like any other lost object, I'd say. They turn up in random places (which aren't actually random), and sometimes we just can't see them for looking. The famous 'dancing gorilla' video shows how our brain / eyes can easily miss the bleeding obvious. I am very bad at finding things: my wife laughs at me tearing my hair out looking for something right in front of me. She can find most things in the house within a few minutes, whereas with me they're gone until I stumble over them.

It's fun to believe in the paranormal, and the world would be a duller place without it. Boring rational explanations are really tedious, and I often enjoy the more lurid alternatives. However, it sounds like the OP and his family are driving each other up the wall with the belief that 'something' is there, and it would be a shame to leave an otherwise lovely house because of this.

Alternatively, Halloween's coming up, and there are people who'll pay a stack load of cash to stay the night in what they think is a haunted house: business opportunity!

[OzzyR1]

I grew up in an old house where heating pipes ran under the stairs, when the heating when on or off, the lowest or highest step used to expand/contract which set of a chain reaction of creaking to the next step which sounded exactly like someone walking up or down the stairs.

Scared the absolute crap out of the 8-year old me

[bobbo89]

N Dentressangle said:

Remote controls are like any other lost object, I'd say. They turn up in random places (which aren't actually random), and sometimes we just can't see them for looking!

The calculator on my desk at work can be smack bang right in front of me but I can still spend a few minutes searching for it! It’s almost as if I go blind to it for a few minutes

[Zoon]

Plate spinner said:

turning the lights on downstairs

Ghosts learning to use technology which didn't exist when they died, evolution I suppose

[BoRED S2upid]

Op a suggestion for you. The walking sounds are they all the time or weather dependent? Old houses creak and make funny noises especially when it’s windy. We have something loose inside the chimney every time it’s windy it makes a tap-tap-tap noise that you can only hear in half the house.

Might’ve worth bearing this in mind.

As for the rest it’s definately ghosts fk that I’d be sleeping in the garden. Oh no that’s where the children ghosts are...

[Triumph Man]

MJ85 said:

Evanivitch said:

Have you had your boiler serviced recently?

You may be suffering from low level carbon monoxide poisoning. It'd be worth ensuring you have a working alarm.

Yes, new CO alarm was my first purchase and the system has since had a number of inspections.

Unless you were a little too late and you're the ghost and what you think is the ghost is the new (alive) owner of the house. woooooo

Like that film Just Like Heaven or whatever it was called.

[MJ85]

All good explanations. That’s what I’m after.

The heating contraction is interesting. Primarily, the floors are lime ash (think ye olde concrete) and I’m not sure that it works in the same way as floor boards. I’ll sort some pics.

[DoubleSix]

ChocolateFrog said:

It's BS.

Creaking old house and rampant imaginations.

Quite, sounds like it’s being talked about within the family as well - fuelling the fire.

I do wonder if those that had seen ‘things’, had previously been made aware of the others experience.

Basically, they may sound like independent occurances (the OP presents them as such) but they are not...

Small animals in the lost spaces explains much of it.

[N Dentressangle]

MJ85 said:

The heating contraction is interesting. Primarily, the floors are lime ash (think ye olde concrete) and I’m not sure that it works in the same way as floor boards. I’ll sort some pics.

http://www.oldhouserepairs.uk/lime-ash-floors

Flexible and breathable, and prone to insect damage.

Would explain a lot of noises.

[Zoobeef]

I didn't realise that PH was such a hive of fruitloops

[Tuvra]

Oakey said:

Why don't we see thousands of ghosts wandering about hospitals every day? Given how many people die in hospitals you'd think they'd be a hotbed of paranormal activity.

Does anyone want to hang around a hospital?

I think the theory is that "ghosts" hang around places where they were happy or places where an injustice has taken place.

[Sheets Tabuer]

Tuvra said:

or places where an injustice has taken place.

So I'll be haunting the divorce court then.

[housen]

Sheets Tabuer said:

Tuvra said:

or places where an injustice has taken place.

So I'll be haunting the divorce court then.

hahahahahahah

[Rawwr]

MJ85 said:

This isn’t the ghost equivalent of the Nazi bunker thread. Genuinely looking for good ideas.

Have you considered reality?

[Zoon]

If you think about the number of people that have died over the course of a thousand years there would be a good chance of ghosts running around in every property in the country.

If they existed.

[Rawwr]

Has anyone ever seen a ghost in a shellsuit?

[Tuvra]

housen said:

Sheets Tabuer said:

Tuvra said:

or places where an injustice has taken place.

So I'll be haunting the divorce court then.

hahahahahahah

[snowy]

Just get a local psychic medium to come around, they will tell you who the little child is running around the house, happened to us when our kids was young in an old house