to think something supernatural is going on and want to move house? (Any rational explanations much appreciated!)

[GoldLetter]

6 months ago DH and I bought a detached 4-bed Victorian Vicarage in isolated spot on edge of village, no other houses in sight, woods behind. This had always been our dream. House seemed beautiful and peaceful until we moved in.
Soon after we moved in I started feeling really uneasy when alone during day,as if being watched, but I put it down to house being so big and isolated until bizarre things started happening. In upstairs bathroom there's a trapdoor leading to attics, I've never been up there but one morning I noticed trapdoor was slightly ajar. When DH came home from work I asked him why he'd been up in attic, he said he hadn't been up since putting some boxes up there when we'd moved in months earlier. He was freaked out by the trapdoor being ajar in case we'd had a break-in but he checked attics, nothing amiss. No explanation, and we would have noticed if he'd left it ajar the first time as I used to take bath in there everyday.

A week later, we heard a bang, like explosion, from upstairs and found one of glass shower doors in same bathroom had shattered! Luckily it's safety glass but was all over floor. Its quite new and company who fitted it had no explanation, said it had never happened before. They replaced it but I'm now too scared to go in that bathroom in case it happens again. No window was open and there'd been no sudden change in temperature. Is there anything that causes this to happen?

Last month DH went away for a week and I was nervous about being in house alone at night, but I'm skeptical about supernatural and an Athiest, so I convinced myself I was being silly. The first night he was away, there was a power-cut at 11pm, which tripped all the burglar alarms! The second night I was on phone to friend and heard lots of banging and crashing in attics, like piles of books falling, it was so loud she heard it down phone and asked what the noise was! Was a nervous wreck until DH came back.

My female friends also find the house very creepy, they say they can't sleep and that its always really cold with strange atmosphere.

Other strange things include a long hallway leading to an (unused) porch with outside door that's always locked, there's something so creepy about it I can't bear to walk past hall at night and twice DH thought he heard knocking on the door in eve, shouted to the person to go round to other door, but no-one came and no-one was out there when he checked. We put security lights all around house and garden, but they constantly flicker on and off, DH says they're just oversensitive and get triggered by bats or the wind. He's quite chilled about it all and says it just feels spooky because its an old house, he likes it here and can't understand why Im so scared. He's going away for another work trip soon, I said i'd stay at my friends' and he thinks I'm being totally unreasonable and got angry. He thinks I'm joking when I say I want to move again.

AIBU? Im not usually an anxious person but I'm constantly on edge!

Call me a cynic. The Op has a very high quality of punctuation (untypical in someone who is typing in a personal way) in the 1st post. So either a wind up or someone trying out a potential story line (yet again)

I wouldn't call you a cynic acegik... other terms come more to mind!

Your post is one of the silliest bits of nonsense I've read in a while. I pay great attention to grammar, spelling and punctuation. Does that mean I'm a troll?

I'm a sceptical atheist but your house if definitely haunted

I have also recently bought a haunted house. The same as you, it's quite big and Victorian. Last night DH and I went into the kitchen to wash up and when we came back into the living room there was a screwed up bit of paper in the middle of the floor which wasn't there when we went out the room.

I unravelled it and it just had the word 'Hello' in handwritten red letters. The handwriting wasn't mine or DH's and it hadn't fallen out of their of our pockets.

When I'm at home I definitely feel like I'm being watched but I now talk to our ghost so it's fine.

if you check all the real things listed and still have no explanations; submit yourself for one of those prizes that are offered for proof of the existence of ghosts etc.

there's a reason they've never been claimed.

Not helpful, sorry

I believe in ghosts or something other than what we can explain. However, you have an explanation for all of your phenomenon.
Wild camping became a bit of phase a few years ago and since then abandoned tents and camping equipment have become a huge problem, nothing scary just ignorant people littering gorgeous places so others can't enjoy them.
The tinkly bell noise is your brain's response to living in a much quieter environment. It's never truly silent in modern towns so in some circumstances when you are confronted with silence your brain will substitute the tinkly noise as it searches for noise. I first came across this hill walking as a child and was lead to believe it was music leaking out of fairy hills. I was gutted when I found out there was a scientific explanation :)

Burley, when my sister and I were children, we went through a phase of writing HELP or BOO or stuff on pieces of paper and throwing them in through the open windows of other people's houses or posting them through people's letterboxes to achieve exactly the effect you describe.

(That was around the same time as we used to put on white make up and take it in turns to arrange ourselves by the front gate as if we had fallen down and knocked ourselves unconscious to see if a passerby across the road would be fooled - we were macabre kids...)

I would outwardly make sensible rational suggestions such as creaky old houses, the wind, tricks of the lights, and furry infiltrators.

In secret when there was no one else around I'd be burning sage like there was no tomorrow and telling the spirits to push off.

My house is fairly old and it creaks, makes cracking noises, pipes bang and rumble, the windows make weird noises if there are high winds, the noises at bedtime are ridiculously loud as the house settles down, to the extent if you had just moved in it would have you running for the hills.
We have lived here for twenty odd year and i remember feeling just like you at first.
No one bats an eye now or will jokingly say "what the fuck was that, is there anyone there?" like the crew of most haunted!
Stick with it, the house sounds lovely and with character.

I'd definitely get a dog though OP. Great company for when you're alone, they act as great burglar alarms and frankly every lovely old country house needs a dog.

My DSis had a simular experience with a shower door, it was a small tension crack that expanded. Supplier said it was a first for them

Also my security lights come on several times a night, usually a cat. I like them being sensitive (no close by neighbours to annoy) because it means they will definitely come on if I ever have a real life intruder!

I wouldn't get a dog.

I don't believe in woo.

But every time my dog leapt up and stood stiff-legged, staring at nothing and whimpering in the centre of the sitting room, in front of the fireplace it was more than a little unsettling .....

Right ... cracks knuckles ... this is one of those things where I have a theory.

A lot of my relatives live in bloody old houses and over the years I have had some very odd and bloody terrifying experiences in them. After one particularly OMGthisplaceisHillHouse incident, I got to thinking about just why and how some old houses give us a feeling of a presence or being watched and why you can experience such strange things.

The first thing is that a lot of old houses were built to house and receive far more people than those that live in them today. Your vicarage may well have had five to seven members of the family in residence, along with maybe two members of live-in staff. It would also possibly have received a substantial number of visitors every day, all coming to see the local vicar for various reasons.

So your house would have been rather full of people on a daily basis, and it was designed and built with those requirements in mind. Now, as the situation is different, what you get is a form of the "abandoned hospital wing" phenomenon where a place feels odd and strange because there is a presence of an absence: i.e. you have a place that should be full of people but isn't and, on a very fundamental level, your brain makes you wary because it perceives the possibility of risk in that environment.

The second thing is that a lot of old houses will have had a fair amount of internal renovation done over the years. If the house has central heating, a lot of the floorboards will have come up at some point. If it has a modern bathroom, there is a possibility that someone may have cut into the joints. Built-in cupboards may have been removed, doorways may have been altered or moved. Internal walls may have been demolished. Staircases may have been replaced or switched. You may have a false ceiling in a bathroom, a false floor in the kitchen if the original was stone. You may have a later extension that doesn't quite work with the original plans.

What this all does is create an incredible capacity for the creation of utterly bizarre noises, vibrations, draughts, warms spots, cold spots, dark spots, over bright spots, reflections ... because internal alterations can have unintended consequences that you experience but cannot actually consciously perceive.

Think of it a bit like that Brooklyn subway step experiment where one step on the flight out of the subway was a fraction higher than all the others. Almost everyone going up those stairs would trip on that step, but if you actually asked someone why they had tripped on the step, they would never say it was slightly higher than the others. They would think it was for another reason.

What is happening to you is that you are tripping on your vicarage's "subway steps" to the point where you realise there is something not quite right because you keep tripping for no obvious reason, but you don't actually know that, say, the real cause of a "trip" is the fact that the sound refracts strangely in your living room because you have modern, fitted, thick carpet in a room with large windows and stone walls, and the removal of an internal wall means a faint draught hits the back of your neck when you are sat on the sofa.

IME, the houses that have the most "woo" are always the houses that have been internally messed about with the most. You don't seem to get as much "woo" in a house where the layout and living paths through the house have remained pretty much the same.

Just to add ... In upstairs bathroom there's a trapdoor leading to attics.

You see, to me, this sounds a little odd. In a Victorian vicarage with an attic, I would expect a narrow staircase up to that attic. That the trapdoor is in your bathroom, well, I would suggest that the original staircase may have been taken out at some point so a bathroom could be put in the house without losing one of the bedrooms.

So this could suggest that the ceiling and hatch in your bathroom was a renovation job that hasn't quite worked somehow, and that the staircase to the attic probably ran through your bathroom and had a door at the bottom that opened onto your first floor corridor or landing. The removal of all this could be why the latter hatch/attic interface doesn't quite work and the hatch keeps opening by itself.

If I were you, I would not be able to resist getting hold of the old plans.

Great theory Walls!

Walls? I meant Works!

Re the toughened glass - it's actually the toughening process that makes what you describe actually quite common. It is heated to a very high temp and occasionally a small flaw in the glass means it will suddenly shatter for no apparent reason.
Happened to use twice - once in a roof light and once in a glass balustrade.
If it happened to untreated glass without any apparent cause - that would be spooky.

You are brilliant Lady Gregory! have you ever tried to contact Yeats?

Really sorry but am on my way our and not had time to read all the replies (will do later) but wanted to say (sorry if others have suggested same/similar) that my aunt bought a countryside Old Vicarage on the edge of a tiny village. She had "spooky" problems too. It turned out to be mice and bats in the attic. Neither easily visable and the bats are still there today as they have a protection order.

Also, in 2 of our houses basic pretty much original condition 1950's houses - we have had the loft hatch doors lift and open with wind! It had never happened before in my life but a couple of times in each of these houses.

Hope this helps reassure you a little and you are not too freaked. I will be back to read properly later.

Like your thinking, works "a presence of absence " I've offen thought a bit like that but never put those thoughts into words. Never had occasion to air my random pondering

We had a definite feeling that our house harboured some kind of ghost. Strange noises, loud crashes in the kitchen, smells of bacon cooking, footsteps upstairs. One night when I was on my own. I announced in a clear voice that I was very upset and would like them to go. I repeated this every night for about a week. Sounds, smells, everything stopped.

I once heard of a homeless guy who lived in an attic for years without being discovered.
Probably just as weird albeit less spooky...

I'd definitely be more spooked by a man living in my attic than a ghost!

I think Works explanation is brilliant. A big empty old place just instantly puts you on edge.

All of the things you describe are explainable, don't worry and don't wind yourself up about it. And enjoy your lovely house in the country!

As for the abandoned tent in the woods - yep, that's a bit creepy. Possibly a homeless person who has since moved on.