A Playful Ghost In My Childhood Home

I first came across this site in 2010, and have regularly been a visitor, but I have finally decided to join and share my experiences (and believe me, there are a LOT). I am 24 years old and live in the North of England. Growing up we had regular "paranormal" experiences in my childhood home. I put paranormal in apostrophe's because that's what I believe them to be, however, I am also a rational person who tries to find a logical explanation before jumping to the conclusion of ghosts. Not because I'm a sceptic, but because I think that's the sensible thing to do? Plus, it makes it more exciting and real when you can't find an explanation. It's hard to figure out where to begin. Anyone who has experienced paranormal experiences on a regular basis will know how it becomes the norm, and experiences don't stand out because it just happens all the time. But there are still many experiences that do stand out from the rest, and I will publish them all separately. So here I will sum up the type of things we experienced on a regular basis.

The first time I remember any of this happening was around the age of 6, which would've been around 2001. Our house was a "detached" house, meaning it was not joined to another house, like a semi detached or terraced house. It started with us hearing footsteps upstairs, usually running about. They were very distinct and often loud, I remember that, and it was very clearly the sound of someone walking fast. But they sounded like a child's footsteps. Sometimes it would happen several times a week, sometimes a few times a month. I remember it frightened me quite a lot and I would lie there at night, terrified to even move my head and look across my room. Very recently my mum and I were talking about all of this, and she told me that many nights her and my dad would be sat downstairs, when they would hear running about. She told me she would come upstairs to tell my brother and I to get back in bed, only to find us flat out. I never knew about this until a couple of years ago, and I can confirm we never ran about because our dad was strict and we would've been scared to get in trouble. If we ever did sneak to another's room, we would tip toe. I remember so many times we would be watching TV and we would here the running on the upstairs hallways and bedrooms. This continued until my teens. Although it never fully stopped, by the time I was 14-15 it was something that only happened every few months.

Another regular occurrence were loud thuds and bangs, again, usually from upstairs. Sometimes it sounded like someone stamping their foot and other times it was as if something very heavy had been dropped on the floor. Many times you would actually feel the vibration from how loud the thud was. Like the footsteps, all of us heard it on a regular basis, and there was never anyone upstairs (or downstairs) at the time it occurred. And never any explanation. My bedroom was above the dining room and so many times I would here thuds from the room below, or what sounded like things being moved about. This would happen at like 2,3,4am. You got to our dining room by going through our living room, then you would go through sliding doors to get to the dining room. And many times during the night I would hear what sounded like the sliding doors shutting, and banging together. My mum and brother heard it sometimes too. Again, this never stopped but became less frequent when I got older.

As I got older, different sorts of things started to happen. Various electrical devices would very regularly turn themselves on, or sometimes on and off. The first time it happened with the tv was when I was about 8. I remember it scaring me at first, but then sometimes I would laugh and it was like a game. I would turn it off, then seconds later it would turn itself back on. Then I would laugh and tell my mum and then turn it back off. And it would turn itself back on again. We have several TV's from when it started and until we moved house (which was in 2018) and every single tv did the same.

Now this is where the sensible me, as I got older, tried to find an explanation for it. I know an electrician came several times and there was never any issue found. The lights also liked to turn themselves on, although this was a less regular occurrence. We also had a DVD player that would randomly open on it's own, and even more weirder is when that DVD player broke and we got a new one, the new one continued to open. This started to happen when I was about 15 years old. By this age I wasn't as frightened, but curious. Me and my mum would laugh whenever the DVD player opened, and say "our friendly ghost is back". I remember many times it would open, then shut. Then about half a minute later it would open again, and then shut.

Another thing that happened around this age, but only happened several times, happened when both me and my mum were in the living room. On all three occasions we heard something drop in the kitchen, and when we went to look the loaf of bread was on the floor, 8-9 feet across the kitchen from the unit it had been on. We had similar things happen over the years, involving small objects seemingly "fly" across the room. Except nobody had thrown them. We also started experiencing items go missing, only to reappear days to weeks later. This started when I was about 13-14 (2009). Again, we would all experience it. At first you start to question yourself and your memory, but then after so many times you know you aren't crazy and you know you definitely put it down somewhere. It would often happen right under our nose, literally. I remember a object that would frequently disappear was my mum's comb, whilst she was using it. She'd put it down on the chair under her while she carried on using the mirror, and seconds later it was gone. She'd search high and low and it was nowhere. Usually it would turn up a few hours later, sometime's days later. One item of mine went missing for years, only to turn up in the middle of the night. I will share that experience in full on a seperate post.

Something else happened a lot (although I can't remember the age it started) but I never actually told anyone about this, until very recently when me and my mum were discussing all of these paranormal experiences. It's only when I told my mum that she said she had also been experiencing it for years too! I would often feel what felt like someone suddenly sitting down on my bed. I was not asleep or dreaming at all, this happened all the time and I was more than awake. But one thing I always remembered was it was the feeling (physically) of a child sitting on my bed. I would physically feel my mattress press down, and many times I felt a pressure on my legs, like something was on them. This is what my mum also said she experienced.

And this makes sense to me because both my mum and I believe whatever was in our house was a child. A lot of things that happened (which I will publish in seperate posts) where almost like a child playing pranks. The footsteps we heard sounded like those of a child, not an adult. We often had toys turn themselves on to the point we removed batteries, only for another toy to start making noises. One thing we both agree on is, although at times we were frightened, we NEVER felt threatened.

We moved house in 2018 (I still live with my mum due to chronic health problems) and I was actually sad to leave behind whatever was trying to communicate with us for all those years. I tried to research what was there before our house (which was only built in the 70's) and all I could find from old maps and documents was that a farm used to sit exactly where our house was, in the 1800's. I always wonder if there was some sort of accident or death on that farm but I've never been able to find information on it. Another theory was mining accidents. We are surrounded by tons of old mines (it was a massive mining town) and some houses a few hundred feet from our street actually subsided in the early 2000's. Apparently they were built on top of old mines. And I know people often died down there, including children who worked in the mines too.