I don't have any stories as interesting as most of yours. But...I do have a few odd occurrences, both personal and some that have been told to me.
I grew up in a large house in a small farming town in NE Ohio, built around 1890 or so. It was built by a banker. There were plenty of creaky floors, and a creepy hand-dug basement. Anyway, my Mother would often tell the story of the night that someone was knocking on our front door, which we rarely used. It was around midnight on a bitter cold winter night. I was a young-'un...maybe 2 or 3, and my brother was around 11 or 12, but tall for his age. My Father was working the night shift at the Steel Mill. My Mother didn't want to answer the door, but the knocking turned to pounding, and wasn't letting up. So, she got my brother to go to the door with her, hoping his size might deter someone. When they got to the door and my Mother turned on the porch light, the pounding ended immediately. She looked out through the window of the door, but saw no one. Peering out other windows, still no one could be seen. Finally, she opened the door to investigate (probably not the best idea, but that's another discussion), and there was no one within view, not up or down the street. The only thing she found were footprints in the fresh snow on the front porch...coming up onto the porch to the door, but no footprints leaving the porch, just an otherwise unblemished blanket of snow.
About 20 years later, my brother was renting my parents previous house in the suburbs. It wasn't that old, built in the late '40s or early '50s, and my parents had purchased it around 1956. Anyway...he claimed to be shaving one day, and as his eyes swept across the mirror at one point, he swore he saw the face of a man staring at him from just over his shoulder. He made it sound as though he nearly had a heart attack. But, of course, as he spun around in fear and shock...no one was there. Looking back in the mirror, everything was normal. He lived there for a few years, and said furniture would occasionally be moved around during the night, though he never heard anything, and thankfully...he never saw anything/anyone again.
My first place of my own was a crappy older mobile home in upstate N.Y. My roommate & I worked in the same job in the AF. One day just after we'd moved in, we went to the commissary together to buy groceries. I remember we bought one of those large Morton containers of salt. A week or two later, I was going to use it to refill the shaker, but I couldn't find it in the kitchen cabinet where I believed in had been put. I asked my rommate where it was, and he came out and looked exactly where I'd been looking. We turned that little galley-style kitchen upside down...but no salt. There was still a little salt in the shaker, so...whatever. A week or two went by, and we never could find that salt. Then...one day I opened a kitchen cabinet to get something else, and there, front and center, was the big Morton salt container. I called out to my roommate, asking him to come into the kitchen. He came in, I pointed to the salt...and he asks where I found it. I told him that was what I was going to ask him. Neither of us had "found" it, and we had no explanation for it. I don't believe he was having me on...because that just wasn't his style.
A short while later, a bunch of us were sitting around shooting the bull at work, and I don't remember if my roommate or I had told our "salt" story, but people were telling ghost stories. I remember one young lady who told us about the old house she was living in right then. She said that several times while vacuuming the rug, she'd hear something metallic enter the vacuum, just as she was near this one particular chair, which was there when she moved in. She'd sort through the contents of the bag, and find an old silver dime from the '40s or '50s. After the 3rd or 4th time, she turned that chair upside down & inside out, thinking the dimes were falling out of it. She found nothing in the chair...but continued to find them while vacuuming. She said she had a dozen or more of them.
As I'd mentioned, the house I grew up in was old & creaky. I would often hear things creaking & groaning, sometimes I'd hear footfalls coming up the stairs & down the hall...but no one was there. One winter night when I was about 7 or 8, I was huddled under the covers, when I heard a faint creak of the floor...and it seemed to be right next to my bed. My heart began to pound in my ears, and I lay completely motionless, straining to hear any sound. A short while later, the creak came again, still right next to me. I was too scared to even open my eyes. The creaking continued for several minutes, when it occurred to me that they were happening very regularly. I started counting between creaks, and they were coming at precise intervals. I finally opened my eyes, and saw nothing. But I still heard the floor creaking, very close by. I started getting out of bed to investigate, and after much listening and "zeroing-in" on the sound...I determined that the creaking sound was coming from the control unit of my electric blanket! I turned it off, and voila...no more creaking noise! I couldn't believe that electric blanket could make a sound so like a creaking floorboard!
Tim
