Our former family home was haunted. Some may question the reality of ghosts and hauntings, but I don't have the luxury of disbelief.  I feel there is no other explanation for some of the things my wife, my daughter and I all experienced while living in that house. Although some of the occurrences were probably associated more with us than the location, the site did seem incredibly active. I'm sure I've already made mention of some of these encounters with the paranormal, but since it's October, I thought I would present a more thorough overview.

When we worked on painting the home, prior to moving in, the kitchen lights seem to have come on by themselves. We didn't think much of it at the time, until we started experiencing other types of phenomenon.

Quite frequently, we would see a pale grey, human-like shadow standing in the vestibule between the dining room and kitchen. It was often accompanied by a cold spot and static. There was nothing that could logically be casting the shadow, but it appeared quite often. We figured it was the home's former owner come to check on the place. He never did much but stand there. It was as if he didn't really want to disturb us.

We heard the sound of a game of marbles being played. This sound, coming from the floor and the walls in the dining room, ceased when I dug a bunch of marbles out of the intake vent in the dining room. However, I don't feel that the marbles had actually been moving around because they were buried in thick dust and stuck in cracks in the vent.

We would also hear footsteps upstairs when no one was there. My wife and daughter often heard footsteps upstairs when I was napping or sleeping late. And I don't sleepwalk, so it wasn't me. And I heard the footsteps once or twice when I was home alone, although my wife and daughter heard them more often than I did. Again, the footsteps would be accompanied by a cold spot and static charge. At times you just knew when you walked through someone, even if you didn't see or hear anything.

There was a time both my wife and I heard a woman's laughter coming from an empty room. It was perhaps the clearest disembodied voice I've heard yet. Strangle enough, our daughter didn't hear it, although she was right next to us at the time. The window and storm window in the room were both shut, there are no radios or vents in the room, and we never heard the neighbours that loud and clear, so the source of the laughter remains a mystery.

The living room would frequently come alive with darting, luminous orbs. We would see several shoot across the room. This occurred most often towards the end of our grey cat's life, when she was ill for two years (she didn't seem to suffer until the very end, when we finally had her put to sleep).

Ghost cats, both known and unknown, also appeared when our cat was ill. My wife recognized her former cat, one that had been dead for years. We figured they had come to take our poor elderly kitty to the other side, but she hung on for months, refusing to go just yet. And when she did finally pass, she came back when our black and white, part Siamese cat was ill. My daughter even saw our deceased grey cat transform into a grey orb!

The black and white cat appeared frequently after her death, sometimes in a brief but complete visions, and sometimes only in bits and pieces. One time her ears were sticking out of the wall to drive her "loyal doofus" (our German shepherd/Chow Chow mix) crazy. The dog couldn't quite understand why she couldn't follow her best friend. She actually happens to be one of the spirits that followed us to our new home.

My daughter claimed to see several odd apparitions in the yard and on the porch, everything from tall black figures to my doppelganger. She even saw a man dressed in red, in clothes we later determined wouldn't have been out of place in the 17th century!

A few times, if I entered our bedroom in the dark, I would swear I saw a black shadow rush at me. It would swoop across the floor and get right in my face before dissipating. I always felt as if I someone were right there, and react defensively to the sight. At first I attributed it to a trick of the eye or a trick of lighting, but after my daughter reported a black figure in the window of that room the day we moved out of that house, I'm not so sure.

Strange faces and figures first appeared on my computer's desktop background in that house. However, I don't know if there is a connection, since they still appear on occasion. They might be interested in what I'm doing, and not necessarily associated with any one location.

Based on the impressions we got towards the end of our stay there, and the fact that my daughter saw a black something that she still refuses to describe, we got out of there in the nick of time. A neutral haunting seemed to be turning into something evil.

We have some activity in our new home, but nothing like we had before. Our cat still come by, we have occasional sounds at the door, and my computer screen friends still pop in, but we don't feel anything evil here. We can live with an occasional strange noise or supernatural visitor, as long as it's nothing too negative.