We had something strange happen with our toddler DS once. I am not given to believing in this sort of stuff, though I like a spooky film etc. But the thing is, I do think they’re just stories. Even after what happened, and I don’t know what it was exactly, I couldn’t put my hand on a stack of bibles and say ‘I believe in ghosts.’
I also wouldn’t say with certainty ‘there’s nothing there.’
DS, about three at the time, started to get frightened of the bottom hallway in our house. We had a dinky dining room (ended up being used as toy dump as they always do!) which lay at the end of a long corridor. DS spent a lot of his day in there because it was beside the kitchen and I could talk to him while I worked. I noticed he’d started to drag the big toys -and on one occasion his playpen - and pile them against the inside of the toy room door. He’d cry and plead if I moved them away (fortunately there were two doors into the toy room). He would also run like hell if he ever had to go along the bottom end of the hallway, and would actively avoid that part of the house; for example, there was a wee WC beside the toy room, also at the bottom of the hallway, but instead of using that he’d go out the other door, through the living room and run all the way upstairs.
After a few goes or so of piling and unpiling I asked him what was up. He pointed out and up (to the hall ceiling) and whispered, ‘Naughty Lady.’ DS didn’t say a great deal back then, to the point the HV had wondered at his check-up if he maybe had delayed speech. He wasn’t old enough to know about ghosts. I told him he might be seeing shadows, not to worry, there was no one there but us.
Then, a few days before Christmas I was kneeling in front of him, buttoning his coat, doing up his boots by the front door. I glanced up. He was frozen and his chin was wobbling. He was looking past me, along the bottom corridor, over my shoulder. His pupils were enormous. He didn’t respond when I spoke, just looked up, as if someone very tall had arrived and was standing above and behind me. I couldn’t look; I had the overwhelming feeling that if I did, I’d see. Or, maybe worse, I wouldn’t see anything at all, but whatever it was would see me looking.
We went out and we didn’t go home until my husband was finished work😂
I obviously didn’t say anything to DS, but I told my friend. She laughed, and came to visit at Christmas, and brought some holy water, which she sprinkled about on the QT. She also did some praying. I know some people will say this is the sign of a credulous mind, but I just wanted someone else to tell me if they felt anything was off (of course, DH scoffed). She said if there was anything untoward going on, the best thing to do was to keep ignoring it and it would stop, that the more you think about these things, the more you see.
There were no slamming or breakages, the only disturbance was in DS, who started to come into our room at night. He’d been sleeping happily in his own bedroom all night for nearly two years at that time, but he would come in quickly and quietly, close the door behind him and get in beside me. No crying, no talking. He’d just get in beside me and lie there silently. That did spook me, but he would just go to sleep after a while and that was that.
Months passed, DS kept doing the toy-piling, door-close routine, but he also got more verbal, and one day he told me something about ‘the back door.’
We didn’t have a back door and so didn’t ever refer to one (we lived in what was once the servant’s quarters of a Scots Baronial mansion, like a sort of two story flat, with only one route in and out, unless you wanted to climb out of, or in, a high level window into our garden) What he meant was the kitchen door, which had originally been the back door to the house, and which now led to a kitchen extension.
On the last morning, I walked into the toy-room and was met with a smell of carbolic, like someone had just washed their hands with it. We don’t use carbolic but my dad used to, it’s a powerful, unmistakable smell. When I smelt that soap I said out loud what I’d been thinking for a while - ‘that’s enough, leave him alone, he’s mine.’
I really meant it - I remember being angry rather than scared.
That was the last thing that happened. Later had DD in that house as a baby and toddler and she was very much afraid of nothing at all, and happily wandered around at night in the dark.
TL;DR.
Children might be able to see what we’ve learned not to. So for that reason, OP, I would say YANBU at all.