Woke up to..

[Hellohihola]

A loud noise on my stairs! Woke at 1am(Ish), jumped out of bed (I am a single parent) to see no one was on my stairs and both DC’s in bed. Have not been able to get back to sleep since so I am now in bed with a cup of tea watching Mafs..

Weirdly, I woke up at 4am several nights ago and I swear someone was knocking on my front door. I genuinely heard it! Went down and checked, no one is there.

I think I’m a little paranoid as there is a small window in the kitchen that does not lock (I’m sure a grown man would not fit through it). Maybe it’s my subconscious?!

My letterbox bangs in the wind and sounds like someone is knocking on the door op. Could it be that?

Think the wind kept a lot of us up last night.
Hoping you have a quiet and peaceful night tonight OP.

I've been woken up by someone banging furiously on my door, to the point I've leapt out of bed, put on a dressing gown and hurried downstairs... Only to find it was an elderly washing machine spinning towels and complaining it was far too old for such nonsense. I would guess either an appliance (my freezer sounds like cows, my boiler sounds like the hoover etc) or the weather. Don't think either murderers or ghosts would knock politely on the front door and then scarper before you get there. Maybe annoying kids I suppose, but unless you were sleeping really late I'm not sure that's likely either. Pretty sure they're not released 'til after breakfast at the earliest.

I agree about getting the window lock sorted. Maybe a man couldn't get through it but a child probably could and then let the men in ... can you tell I'm a Charles Dickens fan? Seriously, it was a robbery technique in Victorian times.

I also hear knocks at my front door that I know aren't real and have accepted that I'm liable to auditory hallucinations when asleep. It's sometimes a bell I hear and I know that's not real as I don't have a bell. It's probably dependent on which stage of the sleep cycle I'm in, but I know it definitely happens; it'll probably happen tonight after reading all of these.

Look up exploding head syndrome - I've had it a good few times and could swear the noises I heard were real. The name sounds far more dramatic and terrifying than the reality!

I sometimes wake up convinced someone has been knocking on the front door but never anyone there. It happes when I'm particularly stressed. Weirdly also happens when I stay with DP except my brain somehow knows that his doorbell is different to mine and it's that sound that wakes me!

Mice running through walls / floorboards can be surprisingly loud, although ( at least in my case) that would only be marginally better than an intruder.
The wind can also make my doors rattle and creak even with only the trickle vents on the window open (I assume there is a draft somewhere I can’t track down).

I get hypnogogic auditory hallucinations occasionally, usually loud bangs. The scariest one was when I woke up thinking I could hear a smoke alarm which then immediately stopped. I went to check our alarms and they were fine. I went around the entire house smelling carefully for smoke or fishy electrical smells and nothing. I even opened the one I thought I heard to check there wasn't dust or a spider or something on the sensor and there was nothing there. I laid awake for ages wondering if something was smouldering away undetected, but did eventually drop off, no sign of fire in the morning, asked DH and my sister who had been staying if they heard anything and they hadn't, so I think it was just me!

Cats are noisy, burglars would be quieter.

Says she who has been woken up by them knocking their food bowls off the kitchen island. Also when the local tom cat broke in through the cat flap and couldn't get out. Jumping onto and off furniture. 3 am attacks of the zoomies.