#1 I decided one weekend to sleep in my living room in a pullout bed. About 3:00 am, I was startled awake when the tri-fold partition screen next to the bed fell on top of me. I turned on the light, set the screen back up, and went back to sleep. Didn't think much about it. The next night, the same thing happened at about the same time. How could the screen fall over like that; it was not a heavy screen, but it would need some force to push it over. And it had never fallen over before (or after that). I live alone and had no pets at that time. All windows & doors were shut and there were no drafts. It was not in contact with the bed, either, so very unlikely any movements I made while asleep would've jostled it.
About a week later, I was in the kitchen washing a few dishes by hand. As I was turning to place a rinsed dish on an adjoining counter, I pivoted to my right, and that's when I was unable to move my right foot. It felt like something was holding my foot down for a few seconds. I was now a little freaked out because of this experience and the 2 falling screen incidents from the prior week.
I thought about the history of the house and then remembered that the elderly man who sold the house to me in 1989 had told me that his son, 17 years old at the time, had died suddenly while mowing the lawn. Also, his wife had died suddenly in the kitchen: They were getting ready to eat breakfast - he went to the garage for a minute and when he came back she was dead, slumped over with her head on the table. I am not a superstitious person, but it did make me think a little. I never had any other strange experiences . . . but I don't sleep in the living room anymore.
#2 Years ago, a friend used to live in a rental house in the Seward Park neighborhood of Seattle. She is a CPA and worked fulltime while her widowed elderly mother stayed at home all day. Shortly after they moved into this home, the mother told my friend that she would sometimes see an old man walking across the hallway between different rooms in the house. The mother said the man was white-haired and dressed in a white shirt and white pants. My friend assured her mother she was just dreaming as the mother would doze off on occasion while sitting for hours in the living room, watching TV or knitting. After living in the house for about a year, my friend bought a home of her own. Before leaving the neighborhood, my friend was chatting with the next-door neighbor and lightheartedly mentioned her mother "seeing" an old man in the house. That's when my friend was told that the former owner and resident of that house was a man, now deceased, who lived there for decades and was known for wearing white.
#3 About 10 years ago, another friend Anna was with her mother and sister at a casino in Tulalip, WA celebrating their elderly mother's birthday. They were dining at one of the restaurants when Anna saw her deceased brother Phil standing a short distance away, looking at the mother. Anna said she didn't know the moment when he appeared as he "was just there" when she looked up. She immediately said to her sister, "look, there's Phil", at which time her sister also witnessed the brother standing there. Then, he just "wasn't there" anymore. (Anna said her mother was not paying attention and did not see Phil.) Anna said Phil was very close to their mother, often checking on her and taking her to that very same casino on a regular basis. I have known Anna for 30 years as a close personal friend and was also a coworker of hers for 12 years. She is a very stable, down-to-earth person who does not use drugs or alcohol.
#4 I spent a lot of time at a local nursing home where my Dad spent the last 3 years of his life. I became well acquainted with the staff there. One of the nursing assistants told me that she once had to go down to the laundry room, located in the basement of the building, late at night. That's when she saw the apparition of a recently deceased long-term resident of the nursing home. She said only the top half of him appeared. After that experience, she said she has avoided going down to the basement by herself late at night.
#5 I have 2 friends, a couple, who bought a house in Sammamish, WA about 20 years ago. Very nice home located next to a golf course. After living there for awhile, they would occasionally hear faint voices, like some mumblings, but it was not clear what was being said or where the voice was coming from. At first, they thought it must be coming from outside, perhaps neighbors passing by or kids from a distance, but they ruled that out. It seemed it was coming from the heat vents or air ducts. One night, the wife was startled awake in bed when she felt someone or something tugging on her hair, and then a woman's voice saying "Leave him alone!". They quickly turned on the lights, but no one was there. What the heck was that?? They sold and moved out of the house as soon as they could. Again, these people are intelligent, emotionally stable people with no history of drug or alcohol abuse.
#6 In 2016, I had a contractor do a major renovation on a rental house in the Queen Anne Hill neighborhood of Seattle. The house is 114 years old. Shortly after the renovation was completed, the contractor told me he experienced some unusual things. He was at first hesitant to tell me, but thought I should know. While working in the basement, he heard footsteps upstairs like someone walking around. He immediately went upstairs because no one else was supposed to be in the house. He found no one. Another time, he heard noises coming from another room, but when he checked he found no one. He was the only one working in the house and both front and back door and all windows were closed and locked, so no one could've entered.
One day, he had just finished installing a new fan vent on the bathroom ceiling. He went outside to his truck for a minute to get another tool. When he returned to the bathroom, he saw that a couple of the screws, which he used to secure the fan vent into the ceiling, were now on the floor. How can that be? No one else was working in the house. The screws were not loose, they were firmly attached. It would've taken a person to apply some pressure to unscrew them. Again, the front door and all windows were closed and locked, so no one could've gotten in that way. And the back door, not more than 15 feet from his parked truck in the backyard, was clearly visible to him. It would be very difficult for someone to have entered and exited the house without the contractor noticing, especially in that short a time.
Very strange. I wonder if the spirit of someone who lived in the house from a long time ago was upset by all the noise, drilling, hammering, etc. while the house was being "torn apart". Maybe the spirit was protesting because the renovation was altering the character of the house and the spirit wanted to keep it the same, keep it "familiar". LOL!
#7 About 10 years ago, my brother-in-law received a phone call around midnight. The caller did not identify herself but said "Hi (nickname of brother-in-law), how are you?". That's all he heard before the call abruptly disconnected. My brother-in-law recognized the voice as his mother's. (His mother and only a few in the immediate family addressed him with that nickname; everyone else called him by his birth name.) My brother-in-law could think of no one else it could've been. He was unable to trace the call through caller ID. The spooky part is his mother had died several years prior to this call. Could it have been someone playing a prank? And, no, my brother-in-law does not use drugs and is a teetotaler. He has a Ph.d in theoretical physics, has a high level security clearance, and has worked many years for a major defense contractor.
#8 Another strange phone event occurred about 40 years ago when my Dad received a call from a friend Jack who he had not heard from for awhile. Jack was also a friend of my Dad's brother-in-law, Carl. Over the phone, Jack told my Dad that he had lost Carl's phone number and could my Dad get this information for him. My Dad took a minute to get his address book out and relay this information to Jack over the phone. A couple of weeks later, my Dad was visiting Carl and asked if Jack had gotten ahold of him. Carl said, no, how could that be? Jack had died the prior year, months ago. My Dad insisted it was Jack because Jack had a very unique raspy-growly voice that you could not mistake for anyone else. And no, my Dad was not senile (he was in his early 60's at the time), did not use alcohol, and was not on any medications or drugs.
#9 When he was a teenager, a friend and former coworker (retired Federal Investigator) was walking to the store. He saw a UFO drifting above a low building for a little while before it dipped down and disappeared on the other side. He said it looked like a silver metallic object shaped like a flattened disc (typical stereotype of a flying saucer). This was in the late 1960's in San Antonio, TX. My friend said he didn't dare tell anyone what he saw because they would call him crazy, and he himself did not know if he was just imagining it. A couple days later, he found out a woman claimed she saw a similar object on the same day in roughly the same vicinity.
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There may be a psychological, logical, or scientific explanation for all of the above. I know what I experienced and had no reason to doubt the experiences described by my friends and relatives - they were dead (lol) serious. But were these incidents real or were our minds, ears, or eyes playing tricks on us? Was it rare coincidence, or someone playing a prank? Who really knows, and some things may forever remain a mystery. I like to keep an open mind, though. Who would've believed back in 1700 that we could send a man to the moon, or communicate with someone halfway around the world with a little hand-held gizmo. Will Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or some other future visionary find another planet to live on? The realm of possibilities keeps evolving and advancing the more we learn and discover.