We lived in a 50 year-old house in West Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, from 1979 to 2007. There were many incidences that we couldn't explain, and that make me suspect that a ghost and ghost cat, were at work.
Some events I remember are these:
My mother had a lovely sofa covered in white elegant cloth. The one side of it stood against the window, the other stood at a small distance from a wall. There was a space for a coffee table between the sofa and the wall, but there was no actual coffee table. So it made a nice little nook. Over time, the arm support of the side of the sofa near the wall became more and more shredded. That's the only word that would describe the way the cover material looked as it started to deteriorate. Like as if a cat kept clawing the sofa there, using it as a scratching post. Except, we didn't have any pets in the house! Although we love animals, I'm allergic to most furry creatures, especially cats. At the very first, we tried to rationalize it, saying "You're scratching the surface too much with your elbow when you sit there reading", or "your rings must be ripping it". My mother's favorite explanation was "The sofa is standing right by the window and the sun is wearing on the fabric until it gets so dry, it just rips". It might have made sense except that the only area affected was the one side of the sofa that was near the wall, where the little nook was just between sofa and wall, away from the sun's rays! Over time, it got worse and worse, as if with "daily wear". At the end there were hundreds of slim rips in the sofa on that side, always from top to bottom, never horizontally. This "wear" on the sofa progressed at the same rate as I would imagine a living cat might use a scratching post on and off. It was only that one side, just where a cat might have a favorite spot in that little nook between sofa and wall. The rest of the sofa remained pristine. When guests would come, we'd throw a blanket over that area. But for some reason the blanket never stayed there for long.
After a number of years living there, it would start to happen that I'd feel someone sitting at the edge of my bed as I was napping on a week-end. I'm a family doctor, and get quite burnt out during the week. A couple of times I woke up from someone sitting down next to me on the bed. At first I thought, with my eyes still closed, that it's my husband come to wake me up for an afternoon tea, or my son, who was quite heavy even as a young boy. But both had sat down on the bed next to me numerous times, and this "weight" felt like that of a different person! But at that time no one else was in the house. So I'd open my eyes to see who it was, and there was no one! This happened twice, spaced a long time apart. Then one afternoon I was napping and someone woke me up by putting his hand on my shoulder, and shook me determinedly, as if to say "come on, sleepyhead, we have somewhere important to go." It was a slightly cool hand, but not icy. It didn't feel familiar, but I rationalized that it must be my husband. I kept my eyes closed; I was so cozy I didn't want to wake up yet. So I just mumbled, "what!?" But there was no answer. Then the person sat down beside me on the bed. Because of the silence, I thought there was something strange going on, so I opened my eyes and there was no one there again!
Yet another time I was enjoying my afternoon nap, something jumped on my bed, something fairly light. I somehow knew it was the "ghost cat". That only happened once. About a year or so later, I was playing badminton on the lawn behind our house, with my son. Suddenly out of the corner of my eyes I caught a glimpse of a young woman sitting on the stone wall beside me, watching us play. I had the impression of a young woman in her mid-30's, pretty curly dark blond hair, slim in a light blew long dress that went down to her ankles and looked Victorian-like, at least old-fashioned. She had ankle-high lace-up boots on made from leather, very old-fashioned. She seemed to be amused in a quiet way. When I turned toward her to take a closer look, she was gone.
One winter, my husband enlisted our son's and my help in finding his favorite toque. We couldn't find it anywhere. He went through his closet, of course, pulling out all the clothes, turned everything upside down, but it wasn't to be found. My husband gets very attached to his things, so rather than shrugging it off and buying a new toque, we really put effort into trying to find it, but couldn't. Then we went into the kitchen for lunch. A few hours later I went back into our bedroom to get something and I saw my husband's toque lying right there on top of a pile of clothes that we'd gone through earlier and left to clean up later. The toque was not crumpled up like thrown there, but nice and flat and straight, like deliberately put there carefully. I didn't think anything of it, I assumed in the meantime my husband must have finally found it, and just didn't have the time to put everything back in its proper drawer. The next day or so when we went for a walk he had it on. I said "You must be happy to have found your toque". He said, "I thought you had found it". When we asked our son, he had no idea what we were talking about. No one took credit for finding it. It must have been our quiet, friendly ghost.
Another time, I mentioned to my husband that it would be a good idea for him to use Post-Its for bookmarkers, like I often do. His own bookmarkers would often slip out or he'd misplace them. But he wasn't keen on my Post-Its idea. When I went in to our bedroom that night, there on my pillow lay an open book with a yellow Post-It sticker on the right hand side page. It was a book I had started to read a long time before, but never finished it. I had put it on a shelf right above our bed, with a Post-It marking the page, between a large number of other books. So here it was on my pillow, opened to the Post-It book mark, just what I had spoken to my husband about earlier that day. I thought that for some reason he had found that book and put it there for me, as if to say, "I get it, yes, it's a good idea". But he said he hadn't, and neither did our son.
My husband doesn't believe in ghosts or an afterlife, and he really wasn't interested in any of these mysterious "going-ons". So I knew it must have been our friendly house ghost who overheard our little exchange, then took out a book that was a perfect illustration of what we had been talking about. As if to say "see? I can hear what you're talking about". I put the book back on the shelf amongst the many other books (the whole wall behind our bed was really a huge bookshelf, as it was my dad's old library.) Then it occurred to me that when the book was back in its place, you could only see the spine of the book, you couldn't see the top of the book where the yellow sticky was poking out. So even if someone had intentionally wanted to find a book with a marker like that in it, he or she would have had to partially take out a lot of books to find one like this. I think among several hundred books on that shelf, most of which were my dad's, there would have just been that one that was mine with a sticky in it, and perhaps one or two other ones like it.
There are a lot more examples like that. They are nothing really dramatic at all, except for the very shredded sofa), but meaningful events that blended into our lives, and couldn't be explained away rationally. I believe that a young woman and her cat had lived in that house long before we bought it, and they were still around, quietly watching our lives. I never felt threatened. Even the time when I was napping and all the closet doors starting banging open and close, and no one was there. I don't know why she did that, but I didn't feel any particular anger towards me or threat. In fact, because she must have helped us find my husband toque, I thought she was a benign presence.
I have a number of other events like that to tell you about; some other time. Some are about the very cool thing that happened when my dad died while I was at his side.
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