Weird noises at night, explanation required?

[YDraig]

I’m not a very “woo” person and even if ghosts are real I certainly don’t fear the dead... but I’m searching for a logical explanation to this noise/noises.
Almost every night since I moved into this flat (in April) I’ve heard weird noises. Mostly coming from the living room, when I go into the living room the noise will stop then resume (about half the time) when I’m back in bed.

It’s difficult to explain but sounds almost like something heavy being dragged across the laminate. Like very heavy shopping bags or similar. I’ve also heard what sounds like the floor being smacked by something plastic or silicone; Maybe a shower mat of some kind... very occasionally (twice) I’ve heard footsteps I know it makes no sense at all! I probably sound crazy. I have a baby and no one else here, one night the noise was so loud I called my sister and had her stay on the phone because I was actually convinced someone had broken in.

The noise cant be upstairs or downstairs as I live in a flat that juts out on its own, nobody lives directly above me though 2 other flats (on top of one another) are attached to mine via a hallway and I’m on the ground floor. Maybe the footsteps could’ve been someone in the hallway outside but I’m very certain that the other sounds can’t be explained by anything I’ve thought up yet, so any suggestions?
Ps, be gentle. I’d really like to find a logical explanation so I can sleep without worrying! The rent is quite cheap and it’s a lovely area so I don’t want to move...

Rodents under the flooring would be my bet

Oh god... didn’t even think of rats. Dies inside

Agree it could be rats...they are really noisy compared to mice,
I thought it was a cat in my loft it was that noisy!...it had disturbed all the insulation and when it was actually caught it was as big as a small cat. The pest control man had never seen one so big.
Probably best to get the pest control people in to investigate.

yeah rodents, even mice make a suprisingy loud noise when they get running.

Yes, the smacky noise could be its tail. We used to live in an old cottage and you could hear them in the roof at night scrabbling about. I remember when my parents went away for a few night and left me in charge (I was 20!) and sitting with my twelve year old sister being bloody petrified.

Noise travels. It might be someone moving about elsewhere in the building.

I live in a detached house, however the space between properties is such that I hear the neighbours on one side knocking, I assume cleaning the floor. On the other side I hear children running through the hall. I hear when they open their shed door and move their furniture. The sounds travel via the concrete paving between properties, you would get the same sort of thing with walls and floorboards.

Little furry creatures make a different kind of noise. Have had squirrels in the loft, mice in walls, they have been quiet compared to people.

Also had sounds like walking through the hall, after we had a new front door fitted, sounds of footsteps at night, so we keep the key in the lock just in case, to stop the door being opened.

It could also be squirrels. My bedroom when I was a teen was under an attic which had squirrels in it. When they first moved in the noises they made had me petrified.

Noises do weird things and travel in strange ways though. In my Grandparents house, the plumbing makes a sound that's just like someone walking up the stairs. In our current apartment footsteps in the corridor can sound like they are in your living room at times.

Demons .... sorry, I've been watching 'deliver us from evil ' tonight -an Eric Bana movie .... saying that I'd risk it if he came round to help me lol

Set cameras up in living room?

In one old house, I used to hear footsteps in my hallway. Scared the living shit out of me. Turned out it was weird acoustics with next door and I was hearing my neighbour walking around.
It then became a comforting noise, knowing he was around next door. My view was that if I started shrieking blue murder in an emergency, in theory it would be heard....

@YDraig did you get to the bottom of this?

@Jocasta2018 you have jogged my memory of a house we rented. We would hear footsteps upstairs and worked out that it was the neighbours and somehow the floorboards were connected between the houses. It was really creepy if you were on your own and could hear what sounded like someone walking above you in an empty room.

Set up camera.

I bet it’s rats.

Depending upon the time of “night”, could also be birds. Especially as your flat juts out. We have a flat roof extensions upstairs, with an single story extension outside these bedroom windows.

The birds are out with the sunrise, which over the past few months has been really early. We get what sounds like walking, knocking and scratching. The sound carries but it’s birds hopping/walking on the roof as well as pecking at the metal shiny flashing. It actually wakes us up. As we used to have a cat who liked to hang out outside our bedroom window on the single story part of the extension, this didn’t happen until he sadly passed away, it was most bizarre and scary as we lived here for years. Took ages to figure out what it was.

Still not 100%! Thinking of getting a camera. Investigated rats and put some traps down outside and by cupboards just in case but no signs whatsoever apparently they’d try to get into food packets and so on no signs whatsoever. Don’t think it’s birds as I’m ground/basement floor (weird layout, old converted building on a big hill). But yeah I’m still trying to get to the bottom of it.

Acoustic effect of something elsewhere, or old pipes, setting boards, wood/ metal contracting and expanding with temp changes, especially with it being an old building. Or rats under the floorboards.

My house is really old and makes all sorts of woo noises, but they’re all explainable if you know the property.

Yours could turn out to be the dead. Was it formerly called Hill house?

Doesn't sound like rats, I'd set up a camera and that should tell you what you need to know.

Good luck op!

It's either the boiler or the cat or next door farting in their sleep. That's my guess. Now I'm going to read more than the title post and reassess.

...

Oh, okay, that was more weird noise than I expected!

Yeah, rodents in the walls etc is probably a large part of it. And part of it will be your brain searching for the pattern it thinks is there, and so interpreting all sounds as The Weird Sound. And reinterpreting normal sounds as Extra Dimensions of The Weird Sound.

(totally hanging around just to see what it turns out to be)

Re the signs etc. We have had rats on and off since we moved in nearly 5 years ago. Bloody irritating and bloody loud but we have never found any rat poo and they have never bitten any food packets etc. They mainly live under the floorboards and must get what food they need either down there or outside.

The noise stopping when you go in the room sounds like rats.

Just want to point out we haven't been in a constant state of infestation for 5 years - but we're an old 'gappy' house so we get them a lot when the weather changes.

We get squirrels in our loft (live next to a massive walnut tree) all the time, they make a horrendous amount of noise. Sounds like someone running up and down our loft boards.