Strange Occurrences At My Parents' House

From the age of about four until I left for college, I lived with my parents in a house surrounded by woods. It wasn't that far back from the road, but just far enough that it was considered to be "in the woods". That alone was kind of creepy, but at least it was explainable. I should mention that my parents built the house, so anyone living/dying there before us is out of the question.

A few months after moving in, I began to notice strange things. One night I woke up in the middle of the night to see a large black figure standing in my doorway, which was always left open. At the time my bed directly faced the door, so I got a good look at it. It didn't have any features. It looked human, but it was tall--it took up the entire space. It appeared to be casually leaning, just looking at me. I wasn't scared, and I went back to sleep.

Later, my bed was moved to the adjacent wall and I could see all the way down the hall from there. A few times from here, always in the morning, I saw a white furry figure, about the size and height of a cat, materialize from nowhere and run down the stairs. We never had any pets.

These experiences confused me more than anything, and I never mentioned them to my parents. My dad completely disregarded any possibility of anything paranormal, the reason for which I didn't find out until years later, and would have told me I'd been reading too many stories. My mom pretty much agrees with anything he says, so I couldn't tell her either.

I also got a weird feeling in the living room, and after a few years I stopped playing in there altogether. I often felt a presence watching me from the doorway or the windows. There was also an old electric (Hammond?) organ in this room that I'll mention again later.

I didn't have any experiences again that I remember until I was in high school, when I first started staying home alone in the afternoons until my parents got home, which was usually late at night.

One afternoon, shortly after I had come home, I was in the den watching TV when I heard a noise in the garage. It sounded like something had fallen or been knocked over, but then it happened again. And again. I thought someone had broken in, so I grabbed my phone, ran upstairs, and locked myself in the bathroom. I called my parents, who came home to find everything in place. I got a very stern "talking to" about my "little joke" after that.

Not long after this, I was watching TV upstairs one night in bed waiting for them to come home. I had the TV on quiet enough so that I would hear the door open when they got home. I heard a squeaking sound and thought it was the door, so I turned the volume down. It sounded like music playing somewhere, but it was just a short phrase, like a broken record. This went on for a good ten minutes before I figured out it was coming from the Hammond organ, which hadn't worked in years (kept for sentimental reasons, I guess), and was unplugged (I checked), downstairs, all the way at the opposite end of the house. I went back to my room to find that a music box I kept on my dresser was playing on its own, unwound. Needless to say I was more than a little creeped out. I put it in my closet under a blanket and for the rest of the night I turned the TV volume up nearly all the way so I couldn't hear it. By the time I went to bed both things had stopped.

The last experience I had while actually living there happened while my parents were home. I was in my room reading when I heard a booming crack and just about hit the ceiling. It had come from the corner of the room opposite me. My parents heard it too. My bedroom adjoined the garage attic and my dad thought a beam had split. But we all went out to check the garage, and it was fine. We went around the front and back of the house to see if any windows or frames had broken, and everything was perfectly intact.

I went back to visit for Christmas a couple years ago. I was only there for three days, and got absolutely no sleep. The ominous feeling had gotten worse since I had left, and it now felt like it was encompassing the entire house. The night before I was leaving, I had just showered and was brushing my hair in front of the mirror in the bathroom. The vanity in that bathroom is separated from the rest by a door, with another leading out into the hallway. There are three mirrors--one that takes up the wall in front of the sink, and two medicine cabinets on either side. If the door is left open (which it was), you can see the reflection of the hallway in the largest mirror. I had just finished with my hair and was about to turn off the light when I saw my mom walking down the hallway in the reflection. She got about halfway to the bathroom door and vanished, almost in a dissolving kind of way. I looked again and nothing was there. Sure enough, she was in bed asleep.

I have not been back to their house for a while now, and I wonder sometimes if it's gotten even worse since. I know if I ask them they'll just deny anything, and I certainly don't want to go back and find out.