u/Left_Phone_3171

Does anyone have any opinions on wooden figurines (Ostheimer, Bumbu, etc.) vs Schleich? My daughter is really starting to enjoy pretend play and I want to start purchasing some animal and fairytale toys, but I’m not sure if I should go with wooden or Schleich. I love the looks of the Ostheimer animals and the Bumbu fairytale wooden toys, but they’re SO expensive. Schleich is pretty easy to find in stores where we live and they’re fun and realistic, but I don’t love that they’re plastic as we typically try to avoid plastic toys. What are your experiences? Open to other recommendations as well! My daughter is two. (:

I apologize in advance for this being slightly long. I truly believe my parents house is haunted. We moved to the home in September 2015 and we’ve endured over 10 years of bizarre happenings. Now, due to some life circumstances, I’ve had to move back in with them.

When we initially moved to this house, I was in middle school. Immediately, my younger sister and I noticed that the house smelled like cigarette smoke. Not super abnormal, as our mom smoked at that time and we figured the previous owners could have been smokers. The weirdest part about this was that it didn’t always smell like cigarettes. Everything would be normal and then it was a sudden, intense smell. Again, we’ve always brushed this off as my mom (although, she quit in 2017) or the previous owners.

It wasn’t long before money started going missing. Cash left on the counter would disappear overnight. My parents got new credit cards a few months after we moved in and after a night on the counter, they were gone and never found again. My parents interrogated my sisters and I about stealing money, but no one ever confessed. They spoke with my mom’s sister who often babysat us as well, but she swore it wasn’t her either. Again, I guess this could be explained away with simple misplacing things.

The really scary and unexplainable things have been what I call the “encounters.” The first time this happened was a year after we moved in, I had made some friends at my new school and invited them over for a sleepover. My cousin, Cole, who was 4 years old at the time, was also staying over that night. Cole wasn’t cooperating with going to bed for my parents, so my two friends and I agreed he could stay up with us. At around 9:30 pm, we were all sitting in the living room watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and hanging out with Cole when he suddenly became very scared. He jumped into my arms and hid his face in my chest. I asked him, “hey, what’s wrong buddy?” Cole then pointed to a dark corner in our living room and asked me, “who are those kids?” My friends and I froze. Before anyone could say anything Cole whispered, “they’re mean” in my ear. Cole began to cry and was inconsolable. My friends lost their minds, and we went to wake up my parents, who assured us that Cole was 4 and was probably just scared from something he saw on TV.

Two years after the incident with Cole, the second encounter happened. I was laying in bed playing on my phone at 1am on a school night when I heard footsteps come down our hallway. My dad typically got up for work around 2am, so I thought it was a little odd that he was awake, but not out of the realm of possibility. Now, it’s important to note that my “bedroom” was supposed to be a second living room for our house, but to give everyone their own rooms, my parents converted it to a bedroom for me. This means my room was right next to our front door and, at this time, didn’t have doors on it. All I had were large, heavy black-out curtains to give me some privacy until my parents could frame in doors (which took way too long, but I digress.) anyways, I hear footsteps coming down the hall and assume it’s my dad. I roll over and pretend to be asleep, because I don’t want him to catch me awake at 1am. The footsteps get slower, and heavier, until they stop outside my room. I wait, expecting to hear the door open and our security alarm turn off, but I hear nothing. A few more seconds go by, when suddenly, I hear the curtains smack the wall and a faint, “mommy? mommy?” I freeze in bed, my heart starts pounding, and I feel like I can’t breathe. I don’t know how long passes until I gain the courage to roll back over to face the curtains. I see nothing, and I’m completely terrified. I curl under my blankets freaking out until I hear my dad wake up at 2am, make coffee, and start his truck as he always did. I spoke with my parents about this incident the next day, and they told me I had dreamed it. This incident still shakes me to my core and makes me sick to think about.

Not sure if anyone has any insight or possible explanations. I’m not particularly a believer, but I don’t really know how else to explain these things. The house still feels eerie to me, but no major events have happened outside of the things I’ve listed here. 100% open to it not being haunted, and would actually really prefer a different explanation.

Thank you for reading!