Who Else Lives Here?

My husband and I purchased and moved into a brand new apartment in a very urban area. For the first few months we were settling in and didn't really notice anything out of the ordinary. After about four months of living here I started noticing a few odd things happening. Occasionally I would see something out of the corner of my eye that looked person shaped. The most frequent occurrence was that the water in the kitchen would turn itself off and on. I would also find the lights on when I was sure I had turned them off, I would find household items out of place. Then the light in our bedroom started turning itself off and on when we were right there in the room.

I started to think that the place was haunted. My husband tried to write it all off as water pressure changes or construction defects. He did have a point. The faucet that was turning off and on was one that could easily be influenced by odd pressure changes that do happen in new high rise buildings. The light that was turning off and on was one that was on a timer and could have been being triggered by stray signals from someone's remote. The one thing that made me wonder if this was all happening by design was that often the lights going off and on or the water going off and on would happen when we were talking about the possibility of a ghost. Almost like some intelligence was making a point.

Knowing that some of this could be easily explainable I started talking to the ghost. I said that the things that were happening were all really relatively easy to explain away and if someone was trying to communicate with me or get my attention they would have to work a little harder. Things changed after that. The lights that were turning off and on now were lights on a switch and not on a timer. We started finding the bathroom faucet on at times (a different type of faucet that is harder to turn off and on). The toilet seat started to be left in the up position which we never do (we have cats that like playing in there). The things that had first caught our attention stopped and these more difficult to explain away things started happening instead.

Our cats react to what is going on. I have seen my older cat get up on his hind legs and dance across the room like he is trying to grab onto something that is just out of his reach. Our younger cat (who is a lot more skittish) often gets freaked out and runs away from something while the older cat goes toward the area they were looking at and acts like he is greeting a friend. When we adopted our youngest cat we were keeping her segregated in our bathroom and the light went on by itself. She freaked out. I got mad and yelled at the "ghost" that they were scaring the baby and I would not have that. For about 4 weeks everything was very quiet and nothing happened but then slowly things resumed.

One day I was in the bedroom with both cats and it sounded like our front door opened. I was so convinced that it did that I called out to my husband asking him what he was doing home so early. Both cats ran toward the front door as they usually do to say "Hi" to my husband when he gets home from work. I heard the sound of footsteps coming down the hall but when they passed the bedroom door no one was there. The younger cat freaked out, ran to me, and jumped in my arms. The older cat followed the sound of the footsteps into the kitchen where they just stopped.

Sometimes I think the ghost has a bit of a sense of humor. I was watching a DVD of the show Ghost Hunters and there was a crash in the kitchen and pans were thrown off the stove. Both cats were laying on me at the time which eliminated the most obvious cause. It scared the heck out of me since I was watching a tense episode! Then, after I settled in again the water in the bathroom started turning itself off and on.

Probably the weirdest thing that has happened is hearing someone say "Hello. Hello" when no one else was around. I was packing to go on a trip and had dragged my suitcase into our entry way. The youngest cat was riding on the suitcase. I turned towards our living room where I distinctly heard a voice say "Hello. Hello..." It sounded like a male voice. The voice had an odd, flat quality to it. Every hair on my body stood on end. The cat also heard it because every hair on her body also stood on end and she jumped into my arms and tried to crawl into my shirt. I said "Hello" back and asked if there is anything I could do to help them get to the other side and asked if they were here to tell me something but there was no response.

I could go on and on about the little things that have convinced me that someone else is here. I have had a few other things happen in my adult life that were odd, mostly in connection with my Mom's death but for some reason I don't feel this is my Mom. I don't feel scared at all and do not feel that this ghost or spirit is malicious in any way. I have come to believe that they want to communicate with me for a reason other than to let me know they are here. I just don't know what or why but when the time comes I hope I am paying attention.