I'm on the low end, yes, but I think my mom is somewhere in the middle. And so is our cat, I believe!

One day my Mom drove my youngest sister to school and dropped her off. When she got back, there was one thing strange going on...the door to the hutch where we keep the stereo was open, and the radio on the stereo was playing. It was CERTAINLY not on when she left, as my mom is not a big fan of music, and since it is in the living room, would have noticed if it was on before. The only one in the house? The cat.

Our cat sleeps on a wooden shelf in our laundry room, which is connected at one end to the kitchen, by a door, and connected to the garage by a door on the other end. We put her in there every night and close the door. One morning we came out to find a strange sight. The house was still completely locked up, the electric garage door opener was locked closed, the door between the garage and laundry room (which is steel plated) was locked and deadbolted, but the doorknob on the door between the kitchen & laundry room was hanging out, with the hole it fit in being cracked and splintered, like someone tried to jerk then knob off the door. And the knob doesn't even lock. The only one in there? The cat.

Also, we have an electric staple gun that we keep plugged in,in the kitchen, and use to staple school paper together. The stapler will often times go off by itself, when no one is in the room. When the computer was in the kitchen, it used to dial into the internet when no one was in the room. Even when the computer was "asleep". And I have an option on there that when an automatic dialup (for a task scheduler, e.g.) start, it requires someone to click "ok" for it to connect.

My mom has also heard a child's laugh in the house on a few occasions, in the middle of the night, when there are only 3 people in the house, my parents, and my 19-year-old sister. My mom also hears a phantom radio playing music in the middle of the night too. It's just low enough so as to not make out what the music is. Once though, it was so loud that it woke her up. She thought it was the clock/radio that had gone off, but it wasn't on...she woke up my dad, but he didn't hear anything. I CAN actually remember hearing something similar when we lived here back in 1983, and I was about 4 years old. I got so scared I got out of bed and ran to spend the rest of the night in the doorjam of my parents' bedroom.

Interestingly enough, there was an accident a few hundred feet from our house abour 3 years ago. 3 Marines coming back from lunch were killed, including a young woman Marine who was my age (22).

My mom used to have the weird dreams when we lived in the apartment in Okinawa, Japan. Weird waking dreams that seemed like reality. Dream where the bed would depress like someone was sitting on it, or a cat was jumping on it, even though there was no one there. Weird dreams of strange male voices whispering her name, or ones where one of us kids where calling to her. They continued until the 1st shipment of our belongings from America arrived, and we hung up the decorative crucifix that belonged to my Grandmother (my mom's mother), as well as the brass crucifixes that me and my sister have. I have the one from my grandfather's casket, she has the one from my grandmother's. Somehow I think when we hung them up, our grandparents were watching over us. My mom always used to call my grandmother a "watcher," who would wait at the window for hours until her children where all home....

--Matt