5. Footsteps in the hall.

Now, I'm sure that people are probably wondering if I'm making all this up. The answer - whilst I am still king of the skeptics about the paranormal, I am open minded enough to acknowledge the fact that there are some things that are unexplained - is no.

Everything I have written is true. It actually happened. Whether or not they were hallucinations or because of tiredness or whatever, I don't know. I have just written them down as they happened. The fact that other members of my family have had strange experiences in the house, tend to indicate that I haven't just imagined the whole thing.

Given the circumstances, we believe the house to be haunted by the spirits of both the old lady and her son.

About a year or so after we moved in, I was in the living room watching the telly. My wife was upstairs putting the baby to bed - the boys were already asleep - and the house was pretty quiet. Our neighbours had gone out for the evening and even our recently rescued dog Barney, had settled down for the evening.

Now, Barney was a Yorkie cross, and would bark if anyone walked up the path. In fact, he tended to bark at the shadows - he was a noisy wee thing.
But that night he was sleeping soundly in his bed.

My wife had been upstairs for about half an hour when I heard a noise from outside the living room door. Barney was still asleep, so I assumed it was my wife. The noise came again, so I got up and opened the door to see what it was.
There was no one there.

I shut the door and sat down again, looking at Barney who looked quizzically back at me. Then he began to growl at the door. The low throaty sort of growl that dogs do when they're alarmed.
I then heard footsteps from the hall. Walking up and down on the tiled floor.
I got up again to check but again, there was no one there.

This happened perhaps three or four times. Each time I got up to check and each time there was no one there.
Barney eventually settled and went back to sleep and the noises stopped.
I told my wife what had happened and she said that she too had heard footsteps from the hall when she had been in the kitchen a couple of nights previously. She had also seen a figure walk past the window - something, when you consider we live in the middle of the countryside with only two neighbours, that doesn't usually happen.

The following evening we were both in the living room when we heard the footsteps. Thinking it was one of the boys out of bed, my wife shouted at him to go back upstairs. When the footsteps persisted, she got up to see what was wrong. There was no one there. She then went into the kitchen and, coming out, asked me if I had been outside recently. I said that I had been out to my shed earlier and that I had locked the kitchen door when I had come in. She replied that it was odd then, that the door was wide open.

This has happened a few times since then. Each time it begins with footsteps, then the back - and on one occasion, the front - door was left wide open.