Sometimes things go bump in the night; but what causes the bump and why does it happen at night?
I consider myself to be a person with a logical mind and not prone to jumping to conclusions or making assumptions, but at the same time I like to think I have a mind open to any possibility--if that possibility is plausibly supported by facts.
Ask me if my house is haunted I would have to reply that I do not know, but I cannot rule out the possibility that something extraordinary is happening.
I’ve seen normal household artifacts behaving abnormally, moving on their own accord and defying what natural laws I understand. I’ve heard sounds that seem to originate from nowhere, footfalls on steps, singing coming from an empty kitchen, and voices recorded in empty rooms.
I assure you these are not the sounds a hundred-year old farm house makes in the normal course of expansion, contraction and settling. These are distinct sounds that would seem to emanate from the mundane acts of human existence; except for the context in which they occur they would not raise a single eyebrow. Yet, in our house, they occur in empty rooms.
I’ve not experienced these events once or twice, but many times. Moving objects, footsteps and voices that come from nowhere can be very convincing evidence of something paranormal.
Perhaps for me the most compelling evidence of something completely out of the ordinary can be firmly rooted in two events. The first was a curtain rod, standing askew in the corner of a storage closet, bouncing up and down by itself as if it were being thumped against the floor by an unseen hand. As I recall the event the most powerful memory isn’t the visual sight of the rod moving on its own; but the feeling the movement generated in me. Oddly enough I wasn’t startled. My initial response was to be annoyed. And just under the surface of that annoyance was intuitive feeling that someone (something) wanted my attention.
The second event was even more disturbing to my logical mind. I was outside looking into the house through the sitting room window and teasing our dogs, working them into a doggy frenzy at the possibility of a treat. I could see through the house to the back yard, where Elizabeth was reading in a lounge chair. I was enjoying the dogs' excitement when the front door opened and they came running out. Our front door, which sags on its hinges just the slightest amount, opened on its own. I saw the doorknob turn, and the door lift up just a tiny bit to accommodate the sag, and the dogs came running out to greet me. Our dogs are very, very smart, but they lack the opposable thumbs necessary to grasp a doorknob and turn it. I saw this with my own skeptical eyes and I can only conclude that someone or something opened the door for my dogs.
Those two events in particular have no natural explanation and they force me to conclude that something odd and is going on in our house. I can dismiss the voices and the footsteps as the rational functioning of my mind trying to find a pattern in random (although some of the EVPs are remarkably clear), but I cannot dismiss what I saw as a trick of my eyes when physical events support what I witnessed.
Is what is going on in our home paranormal? Maybe, I cannot rule it out. But I also refuse to believe in the concept of paranormal. What we consider to be paranormal today I believe is only a symptom of our ignorance. I'm sure that one day we'll understand events like the ones happening in my home and the label "paranormal" will fall out of vogue.
