An Empty House?

I'm new to the board and have had very few experiences, but one particularly comes to mind as inexplicable.

I am female and was 45 years old. This occurred in 2003. I was looking for a home to buy, and the realtor gave me a key to an empty house I wanted to look at. It's a small town where everyone knows each other, and I had been living there just over a year.

I went to the house alone and looked at the top floor and walked around the exterior, liking it rather a lot. The water and power were off, but it was daylight, and there was plenty of light. It had a basement with a large picture window enough to see by, so I went down some bare wood stairs to the basement. Above would have been the living room and entry door.

There was a sauna in one corner, and I looked at it, thinking it would be kind of nice having that in the winter, though I am a bit claustrophobic and didn't know if it would be something I really could enjoy. The more I looked at it, the more uncomfortable I felt, so I retreated to the middle of the basement and was just looking around, wondering why the sauna bothered me so much. I suddenly heard footsteps above me, as if someone had entered the house. At first I just thought the realtor or a neighbor had stopped by and didn't think much of it, looking at the stairs and waiting for whoever it was to come down.

It seemed to me that someone entering a known empty house, upon finding the front door open, would call out. I kept listening, but nobody called out and that made me nervous. Then I remembered I was responsible for the house since I'd unlocked the door, so I needed to identify who else was in the house, and I didn't want to scare anyone to death if they did come downstairs or startle them when I popped up. So I called out, "Who's there? I'm just looking at the house, and I'm downstairs." Nobody answered, but I continued hearing the footsteps, which sounded like they were coming from a man or somebody who was rather big and heavy. I kept looking at the stairs, waiting for someone to come down, and called out again, still not getting a response.

This alarmed me, and I felt rather vulnerable being alone in the house with someone unknown, but there was only the one entrance in and out and that was up the stairs, so I charged up the stairs to confront the unknown person. There was nobody upstairs, and the sound of footsteps stopped. The hair on the back of my neck stood up as I looked around. There was no time for someone to exit, so where were they? It really spooked me, but my mind said there's a logical explanation and perhaps someone had just left. I quickly ran to the door and looked out to see if anyone was leaving and saw nobody.

There was a long and narrow railed wooden walkway leading to the front door, so it just wasn't possible for someone to quickly leave without making noise. The lot was also on higher ground than the street, so the view was good. The walkway ended at the front door and there was no way to get off the veranda to go to the back yard without retracing your steps because the lot was at a much lower level than the veranda at that point.

I went back into the house and searched it, checking the back door and windows to see if they were all secure, and they were. I opened all the doors and closets to confirm there was nobody inside the house. I locked up the front door and left after checking the back and side yard, puzzling over my experience.

That property was purchased by a co-worker just a few days later. I was disappointed because I missed the opportunity to buy it, but it occurred to me it was meant to be that way.

About six months later, after the co-worker and his wife moved in, I mentioned I had looked at the house and was considering making an offer on it when he purchased it and saying how disappointed I was that I didn't get it. I asked him if he had experienced anything strange since they moved in, and he said, "Oh, yes, it's definitely haunted."

They hear footsteps and music, see ghosts, and things were always being moved around. He thinks it's the previous homeowner, who apparently died at home. I then told him what I had experienced when I looked at the house and how shaken up I'd been. They love the house and were renovating it at the time. Their resident ghosts don't seem to bother them much.

When I spoke to the realtor to make an offer, she told me it had sold a couple days prior. The prior homeowner owned the local Dodge dealership and he was eccentric in his later years. A former single car garage on the property had been turned into a guest house for his mother. I believe he, his wife and mother all died on the premises. They lived in the house for about 25 to 30 years. The house appeared to date from about the 1940's or early 1950's.