What's In My Son's House?

I am posting this story in hope of some help. I will post this story in two parts since it is so long. I think what I want most is to know that this really is happening and that I'm not losing my mind. Let me give you some background on our situation.

About 6 months ago, my oldest son, Mike (27 yrs) rented this cute two bedroom house. From the second I stepped into the place, I could tell something wasn't right. It didn't feel ominous, but it felt anxious, for lack of a better word. I brushed off the feeling and helped my son move in. I have always loved anything paranormal, and have had several experiences myself, so I was somewhat intrigued by it's atmosphere.

Almost immediately my son started mentioning that weird things were happening. Within the first week, he called me several times, saying that he heard footsteps, things kept coming up missing to be found later in strange places, and a general feeling of creepiness. Then later that week he called to say that while he was outside smoking a cigarette, he saw a man in his house, walk past the kitchen window. Of course, when he went inside to investigate, no one was there.

Now Mike moved in on a Sunday night and was working 12-14 hour shifts, 6 days a week, so he didn't have much time to settle in at first. He decided to take the following weekend off from work to finish settling in. He called me up on Saturday afternoon to come over and "see what he found."

Just off the living room is the stairway that leads to the bedrooms. As you go up the stairs, there's a wide landing and then you turn to your left and go up some more stairs and into the hallway that leads into the two bedrooms. As you go up the first set of stairs, above the landing on the wall on the right, at head height is a door that opens to a big room. It looks like a big bedroom, but there are no steps to get up into it, so maybe it was used as an attic space? But it's weird because it's not at the top of the house like most attics. Inside this room, the last tenant left a chair, small table and there's a cross nailed to the wall that's painted dark red. I could barely see into the space, but I didn't need to see much. Having that door opened felt awful. I felt extreme fear, but I chalked it up to power of suggestion from seeing the red cross and knowing about Mike's experiences so far. Mike told me he went up in there to store some of his things in there and tried to pull the cross off the wall, but it wouldn't budge. It definitely piqued my curiosity, but I certainly didn't want to go in there. We talked about for a while, then I left to go home. Mike finished settling in that weekend and became accustomed to his new surroundings and the strange occurrences became old news.

About 2 months ago my youngest son Rob (12 yrs) and I started staying with Mike (temporarily) due to transportation problems. At first I really didn't notice anything strange happening. My two little dogs barked a lot at nothing, but I didn't think much of it since they're quite yappy. Then one night I thought I heard whispering. I listened for a bit, but when I would try to hear what was being said, it would stop. Mike was at his friend's house and Rob was at his Dad's. I got kind of freaked out, but turned the tv up to ignore it. I tried to forget about and enjoy the rest of the night to myself.

As the days went by, I kept noticing more things happening. Mostly the fact that I was starting to see shadows out of the corner of my eye. Mike works 3pm to 5am and I catch the bus for work at 6am and don't get home until 4pm, so we don't see each other until the weekends, so I didn't have much of a chance to ask him about any of it yet.

One Saturday, my middle son Alan (who has his own apartment) stopped by to visit, and all three boys and I were sitting in the living room laughing and talking when Alan and Mike stopped mid-sentence and both said at the same time, "did you see that?" as a black shadow swooped from the floor up to the ceiling and across the room. That got a full discussion going! This was Alan's first time in Mike's new house (Alan's 21 and too busy for family!), so of course Mike jumped up to show Alan the red cross. The red cross led to them exploring all the nooks and crannies of the house.

In the downstairs hallway right next to the coat closet is a louvered door. Behind that door is the furnace. Alan asked what was in there and opened the door, looking around in the small space. When we saw him reach behind the back of the furnace up on top, we asked him what he was doing. He pulled out two Ouija boards and one planchette. That just became fuel for more ghost/paranormal talk! Rob absolutely hates anything paranormal, and wanted nothing to do with any of it, so he left to go to his father's for the night. About an hour later after much discussion, we decided that the Ouija boards shouldn't be in the house, but since it was late, Mike promised to get rid of them the next day. Alan went home and we settled down for the night (as much as we could after that!) To Be Continued