I think I’m going crazy! Spooky things in house.

[Bobbybear10]

So this might be a long one and my phone hates me so there may be a fair few typos! Apologies in advance.

It’s also a bit of a possible spooky post so best not to read if you have delicate sensibilities.

Within the last 8/9 months DH and I have moved into a new house.
It’s a lovely place, we are really happy with it. It is very old in places and has a nice warm feel most of the time.
Neighbours close-ish but nobody right next door iyswim.

Now for the point of my post.
I am really quite concerned either I am going crazy or DH is trying to make me feel like I’m going crazy, honestly I am not saying this in a jokey way I am deadly serious.

The first couple of months in the house were quiet and busy! But it all felt ‘right’ like the house clicked and was warm and welcoming.

The last few months some strange things have started.
I want to prefix this post with I don’t believe in ghosts or similar. I have had a few close loved ones die and if there was such a thing they would’ve been the first to make contact, as they haven’t I don’t believe there is an ‘afterlife’ as such.

It started with some odd noises. One time we were sat in the living room and a noise louder than a knock but quieter than a bang went off twice upstairs. We just ignored it thinking, old house, floorboards settling etc. These noises would probably average 4 times a night.

After a week or so of the noises upstairs when we were downstairs we started to hear noises in the kitchen which is down the hallway and to the left of the living room. Again they were quite loud clicking/thudding noises but when we checked nothing had moved or fallen and we just couldn’t see where the noise could’ve come from.

I started to get an odd sensation of someone behind me most of the time but put this down to being a bit creeped out by the noises.

Occasionally we would hear creaking on the stairs when we were in bed. This wasn’t like footsteps literally just a creak. The bathroom door would also be open in the morning when we had closed it and not used it during the night.

One night the TV turned itself off.

The volume on our tv’s sound bar turned itself up and the remote was right in front of us. It turned down again when we used the remote and hasn’t done the same thing again.

The Dog will occasionally act strange and if I’m home alone will start to randomly run to another room and bark like somebody is there. TBH I find this the most frightening as he is a very good guard dog but absolutely soft as shit if someone was actually in the house. I also leave all the doors locked when I’m inside alone.

The most frightening thing that happened two nights ago, we were walking from the garden back into the house and I looked at the dining room. The light was shining through the door as we had left the hall and living room lights on.
In the dining room we have two windows that face each other, one side faces the garden the back other faces the front garden.

My DH was slightly behind my shoulder and we were on a path about 15ft from the window. I was looking through the window and saw a person walk from one corner of the room past the window and out the internal door. I asked DH if he had seen someone and he said no. He said he was looking though the window too and saw nothing. I went in with him to see if someone had come up the path or broken in but no one was there. The dog was with us but didn’t bark at any point.
I got DH to come back outside and stand where we were in case it was his reflection. We walked up and down the path twice checking.
I got him to go inside and walk past the window as the ‘figure’ had. As he did I could vaguely make out the colour of his clothes but the figure I saw was completely black.
It was a fully formed figure and was the size and shape of a regular person.

I honestly felt like I was going mad! It didn’t feel particularly cold or unfriendly in the house but I was a bit uncomfortable.

Last night I heard a strange noise like metal crashing together in the garden when we were in bed. It was fairly loud but DH said he heard nothing.

Today three different light bulbs have blown when I have gone to turn them on. One a side lamp that was ours and two ceiling lights.

I got DH to check the attic hatches as well as the actual attics and there is nothing there.

We have two carbon monoxide detectors and both are working fine.

DH has started to get angry when I talk to him about all this. I’m not sure if he is scared and being defensive or just thinks I’m an idiot.

I still don’t know who the person was and where they are now. Strange noises are still happening.

I don’t know if I am seeing things and should see a DR. I’m honestly questioning my sanity. I saw a person it was no reflection. I do believe what I saw that if it wasn’t an actual person which obviously it can’t have been then I really do wonder if I need to be sectioned.

I feel quite upset and worried, although it does feel better to write this all out.

Does anyone have any ideas?
Do you think I might be going mad?

Agree with gronky and would also mention we had an old tv remote where a button would get bit wedged and pop on or off ages after we had put it down.
My mum's house has a flat concrete roof with steel through it. It heats up during the day especially in summer and the really loud noises at night are terrifying if you didn't know what it was.

It’s been a very unusual year in Britain for extremes of temperature- very cold snaps, a prolonged heat wave. This will explain a lot. Other posters have eloquently described the vision issues, and your dog’s behaviour.

About your husband, I expect he is either a) not reacting to the noises or things you’ve ‘seen’ because he hasn’t experienced them the way you have - not that you are ‘imagining’ things but that he’s not sensitised to them, he’s tuning out the noises etc. Or b) not wishing to fuel your anxiety by admitting he’s heard a noise - he wants to downplay it to help you downplay it too.

Neither of those are malicious or trying to undermine you - but feeding anxiety with attention is often a really bad idea.

Practical steps - I’d take all of these.

1. electrician. Different I’ve to last time, hopefully one who specialises in old houses.

2. Acknowledge the presence of something and greet it, have a chat, say you’re sorry but it’s scaring you so would it please mind moving on.

3. Get someone woo in to do a ‘cleaning’ with sage etc.

4. Take a lot of exercise - long dog walks etc - to reset and sleep well. If you’re better rested you’re better equipped to deal with any stress.

You could have the house blessed by a priest, I suppose. That might set your mind at rest. FWIW, I don't think you're losing your mind at all.

I don't think you are going crazy.

Before you do any rituals or scare yourself shitless with tea lights consider two things...

1. get a plumber out to completely service your heating and hot water systems. Your banging noises are very very likely to be air trapped in the pipes.

2. dogs have a different hearing range to us and a far superior sense of smell. Your dog is not sensing anything other worldly or sinister, he is simply hearing and smelling perfectly normal things that are simply outwith our ability to sense.

These are just two perfectly simple and logical explanations for your weird phenomena. There will be similar simple explanations for the others.

The knocking/banging noises upstairs and in the kitchen are almost certainly the pipes. We live in an old terrace and there's a water pipe that runs through all the houses bringing the cold water from the mains. When we first moved, I kept thinking I could hear next door thumping up and down their stairs but then I got spooked when they went away on holiday and I could still hear them! It turned out to be the cold water pipe - sometimes when people were running their water along the terrace, it makes this thumping noise.

I live in a Victorian house and I believe you. Animals can sense and see things before we do so when you mentioned the dog s reaction it made me think. My cat does the same thing sometimes.
I have a lady that we have seen carrying bundles of laundry. She's dressed late 19th century but it's a faint form drifting on the stairs. She's very comforting and I feel warm and calm if she's around. We do have unexplained clothing losses though. Things put down and never seen again.
The house has a very comforting cosy feel.
I don't talk about it to many people though as you will get the weird looks and crazy comments. Mostly coz people maybe like your DH don't want to admit there's something else out there as they are scared.
Most ghosts don't actually mean you harm but they don't make good tv or horror stories.

@Whitelisbon

I've just googled it, and it's called exploding head syndrome.

I get this too, it horrible, you wake up with your heart racing wondering where the bang or crash is coming from.

Yeah. It's not jinns.

As others have said it sounds like usual old house noises (is this the first old house you've lived in?) The figure will have a rational explanation. I have a tendency to creep myself out when alone in the house after living in a 16th century farmhouse where they apparently used to lay out the bodies from the village. I convinced myself it was haunted but looking back with some perspective I can see it was all in my head because I knew the history of it.

I also got cats and it's true they make it easier to ignore random noises!

A lot of great replies so far.

About your telly, TVs do do weird things sometimes. The TV in my bedroom occasionally turns itself on, at maximum volume, in the middle of the night. There is no way the remote has been accidentally touched as it has been on the windowsill whilst I have been asleep. It is always exactly at 3 am and wakes me up.

I thought it might stop when I moved house but no it kept happening in my new place too. So nothing to do with electrics. A friend of mine has the exact same make of TV. It never happened to him, I asked.

After a long time of being scared shitless I had a proper look at it (I was scared to in case I found nothing and was being haunted! - I was scared also to turn it off at the plug in case it came on anyway) it turns out that I had it on a particular "sleep timer" setting, that instead of turning it off at a particular time, seemed to turn it on instead. Everytime my TV would update (new channels or similar) it caused the telly to automatically come on.

A very banal explanation for something that seemed inexplicable and terrifying at first. I'm sure things will turn out the same for you x

PS don't be shy to have your house blessed or cleansed. Although I don't believe anything supernatural is going on, it will free your home of any spirit if I am wrong, and cleanse your mind of bad thoughts and feelings if all the people that are telling you that there is a rational explanation, are right.

Hi op. I don’t think you’re going mad or that your husband is playing tricks on you. I think he’s probably just downplaying the whole thing. It’s possible that he didn’t see the figure in the window. I’m not sure how you could act calm if you really had something. I won’t give my opinion on what it could be if it isn’t just an old house being an old house, as I will have people telling me I’m talking rubbish. I don’t believe in ghosts myself (do believe in others things though) and I think it’s insulting in a way when others come on and poo poo such ideas and mock anyone who dares to believe in the unseen.
I hope you figure out what it is op and I hope it turns out to be nothing!

Are you in the UK?
Don't forget that we have had a heatwave, and this would affect an old house greatly. Now the heatwave is over, the house is becoming damper, it's cooler, so the noises are different. Do not underestimate how noisy pipes, boilers, fridges, freezers etc are when you've no neighbours and little traffic noise masking them out.

How are you getting on OP?

I just wanted to try and give you a couple of reasonable explanations.

Re the tv, mine does this sort of thing when the battery in the remote is low. Maybe try changing the batteries.

Dogs have already been covered, but they absolutely can hear and smell and see things we can’t. That’s doesn’t mean ghosts, but if you recently moved and you’re stressed, the dog probably is too and so barking etc when it would have ignored in the past. Again, my dog seems to sometimes pick up a smell (I think maybe from the zoo a few miles away when the wind is blowing in the right direction) and her hackles go up and she growls and becomes really unsettled.

The mind is a lockbox of weirdness and I’ve also seen things that aren’t there when I went through a very stressful time in my life, and they seemed absolutely real.

After saying all that though, maybe the suggestion above about just accepting ghosts are real (which I don’t believe either) would actually help you relax and then in time these things won’t matter?