Normal or Paranormal...

I want to know if anyone else has experienced this before. and before I explain what it is we (myself and family) have experienced I'm going to give you a bit of background information...I currently live in an older (built in 1938), two story home. We don't use the upstairs for anything other than storage because it hasn't been wired with ac/heating or electricity (there is however a ceiling fan with a light fixture but it doesn't work because again the electricity hadn't been wired for upstairs), it has three small (approximately 12 inch by 6 inch) windows that are nailed shut, we didn't nail them shut they were like that when we moved in and we just left them that way. Our upstairs also consists of three different closets all of which lock from the outside, none have door knobs you just pull them open and push them shut. Now while the pulling opening and pushing shut part sounds like an easy task it's not, the upstairs has carpet and the doors drag across the carpet when they are shut and opened making it more difficult than opening and shutting the normal door. Now it should be noted that while we have carpet in the upstairs area, carpet isn't in any of the closets. When we began moving in we noticed in the smallest upstairs closet (and by small I mean it's height is about 3 feet tall and about the 3 feet wide and no I'm not kidding it is that small if not smaller) we noticed that a board seemed out of place, so we nudged it with our foot, and there was a crawl space about 2 feet deep, there was old ragged clothing in it and we didn't think anything of it so we simply nailed the board back down placed our boxes and things in the closet and went on our way. We also had our homes foundation inspected since it was old to make sure it was sturdy and not shifting, according to the inspector our house was perfectly fine for being as old as it is.

Now lets get to what we've experienced. Since we've lived here which has been slightly over a year, we (myself and family 3boys, and my fiance') have experienced cold spots, wet walls for which there was no explaination, doors opening and shutting, sounds of people walking, whispering when no one was around, lights flickering and other things. However, with all of these experiences we never really thought too much about it, I brushed it off as being an older house, it's trying to settle, we've got carpet but underneath is wooden so that's where the creaks and noises come from etc. That was until more recently, it began when our cable kept messing up, it seemed like everytime we'd turn around to watch tv, our tv would pop up a poor signal sign and wouldn't work. So we call out the cable guys and a man named Steve came to our home to fix our cable, and I was home by myself, now I'm not one that's easily spooked, so when what happened that day happened I became a little paranoid I suppose for a couple of days after. I know your wondering what happened and I'm about to tell you. The morning had began like any other day I got up got the kids to school, seen my fiance' off to work, and since we were having a yard sale I had decided to go upstairs while it was still day time to get down some stuff for the sale. I had went up and down several times getting boxes and ended up picking up a box that wasn't going in our sale, so I go back up the staircase like I had done all day to put the box back and get another, when all the suddenI hear a voice ask me "would you like the light on" (Remember we have no electricity upstairs) I looked up and I seen this glowing figure thing, that looked like a little girl, I couldn't see her feet, however I did see her dress and her facial features even though she seemed translucent yet bluish looking, I dropped the box and ran down the stairs the fastest I've ever ran in my life. I slammed the door, and went outside to the front porch, and tried to calm myself, I told myself I was imagining things, that I didn't see what I know I seen and tried to shrug it off. A short time later our cable guy Steve came up, and I invited him into the house, and showed him what was happening with the tv, he said he'd look outside for the problem, and went out our backdoor. I stayed in the front room trying to tidy up some and I heard him talking, and of course I thought he was talking to me, so I walked through our dinning room and into our kitchen where he was closing our backdoor, and I was like "I'm sorry what did you say", and he looks at me and said while pointing toward my son's bedroom "I was just telling her, it was wired backwards and now it will work", I looked at him puzzled and said "who" and he says "that girl that just walked down here and went into that room" I started to get a bit nervous because I notice the door to the staircase which I had slammed is now open and told him "No one's here but me", and he says as he walks toward my son's bedroom "No that girl with blonde hair that...well she was right here" I take him through our entire house and show him no one is here but me, he turns pale white, gathers his belongs, tells me he won't be able to come back to our house again and leaves. I was obviously shaken and stayed outside my home until my boys arrived a while later. I told my fiance' about the incident and he suggested we get a recorder and leave our home for a few hours, with it recording. I was more than happy to leave the house and so we took the kids bought a recorder he placed it upstairs, made sure all the closets were closed and shut the staircase door behind him, made sure all the doors and windows in the house were locked and we leave. When we come back almost 4 hours later we get the recorder from upstairs and he begins listening to it, and then he became a bit more weirded out I guess is the best way to put it.

What was on the recorder you ask the following things...

Shortly after myself and my family had left our home (we know this because my fiance' stated the time he put the recorder upstairs and the recorder has a timer so we could see exactly what time things occured in our home), nonetheless shortly after we had left, you can hear the staircase door open and then shut, you hear walking up the staircase, and then what sounds like children playing. We also heard a lady moaning, someone playing a guitar, a noise that didn't sound human at all and more like a growl than anything else. What sounds like someone messing with pots and pans, a lady humming, some whispering that couldn't be distinguished, what sounded like our recorder was moving, a man and woman talking, and what appears to be either someone bouncing a ball down our staircase or possibly running up and down it quickly among other things.

Now we don't nor have we ever owned a guitar, the upstairs isn't wired with electricity so the music that is heard, and lady humming obviously isn't from any electrical source. Everyone in our home was gone so there wouldn't be any children playing, and besides that, we don't allow our children to play upstairs. We don't live by a busy street, nor do we have neighbors who are close enough for us to have somehow picked up their conversations.

So my question is has anyone else experienced this, is this normal or paranormal?

While the recording did freighten me as much as seeing the little girl, I am much more comfortable today with strange things happening around our home, and less likely to jump when things go bump in the night. I would also like to say that while I do believe in the paranormal and have had strange experiences as long as I can remember I've never been able to pick up any activity on a recorder although I had never thought about it before my fiance' had mentioned it. And while I'm sure many of you will think I'm just another delusional crazy person, and ghostly sightings, and paranormal things aren't real I feel they are, and am ok with those who disagree with me.

Lastly my first ghostly experience came when I was about 5 or 6 years old, I was in our bathroom and was talking to a man in the mirror, whom at the time I did not know and I knew him just as my friend Hansel. My father walked in one night when I was speaking in the mirror to my friend Hansel and asked me, who I was talking to, and I told him my friend Hansel, and he asked me to describe what this person looked like, and I told him how he wore a checker/stripped shirt that buttoned up, and wore a hat with a red feather in it, and was an older man. My father explained to me, that I had described his dad who had passed away 2 years before I was born, I never met him and never seen pictures of him and had never heard anyone in my family talk about him. So that was my first "ghostly experience" I suppose.


Willow Monroe