Old house seemed “haunted”, but I need some type of rational explanation
Hello!
This is my first post here, so sorry if it seems a little messy. From the time I was about 13-16, I lived in a moderately sized house that was built in the 80s. The first night we moved our stuff in, I sat in my room and cried because I was suddenly so scared and from then on I slept with a night light!
There was several instances that really freaked me out. Even today, I try and search for some type of explanation. The first time something strange happened was several months after moving in or so. I woke up sometime in the middle of the night, and saw a blue figure sitting on the top shelf of my closet. I wear glasses, and there was a light outside of my window, so I wondered if somehow it was a cast of light I was interpreting as something else. Still, I maintained my eye contact on this little figure and reached to the side, waving my hand over the window, and then pulling my blackout curtains closed! The figure still remained and at that point I swung around to see if there was a different light source—none, just the yellow-ish street lamp. When I faced my closet again, it was gone.
Later on, my grandparents were over. My dad had a table saw out from earlier work and they were all drinking in the yard. My grandpa started getting disturbed and called out to my brother and said he was messing with the saw. My brother was upstairs, but my grandpa swears he saw a boy messing with it.
About a year or two after that (I still was sleeping with my lights on every night), I was curled up in bed facing the wall. This was during quarantine so I was going to bed at like 2AM every night. I heard scuffling from the other end of the room, which immediately made me awake and alert. Still, I kept frozen out of fear. Then I heard the most terrifying noise, as though an animal ran across my room floor towards me and growled. I shot up and scanned the room, but nothing. I slept with the big light on after, and had a horrible nightmare about the house being crooked and covered in writing. I started sleeping with my parents after this because I was so terrified of my room! 😭
Finally, a bit before we moved, the hallway upstairs was filled with boxes. I was scared once again because our little dog was with me and staring intently at the corner of my room across from my bed. It was like 4AM and I got so spooked that I went to my brother (who was also awake, as was usual during quarantine). We were standing in the hall chatting, he was also a little spooked about something that I don’t remember now, and then we heard someone ascending the stairs.
We glanced down, and saw a dark figure (it was very dark downstairs so anyone who was ascending would have just appeared as a black figure) walk to the middle of the stairs, stare at us for some time, then walk back down. We wondered if it was our BIL who was living with us at the time. We both were terrified but went downstairs and into the garage (the garage door was about 5 feet from the bottom of the stairs). He was in there, groggily getting ready. His eyes were hardly open but we asked if he’d just come in. He was confused and said no, so we just sort of freaked out and my brother walked us through the rest of the house.
We moved out about a month later (our landlord sold the house) and never really had a weird experience again. I think about all of this pretty often, and whenever I do I get the same terrified feeling I had back then. Is there anything that could be a rational explanation for all this? I’ve always had great memory (I remember being a baby!) and I’ve never really believed in ghosts or been a spiritual person. If there is anything that could explain this and give me some peace of mind, please share! Sorry if my writing is a little rambly. Thank you for any insight.