No Reason For A Ghost

I'm not sure I believe in ghosts, but living in my house has become very stressful. A lot of weird stuff happens but, unluckily, it all seems to happen to me. Given that I'm only fourteen, people don't believe me when I talk about strange events and things that happened in my home. I really need somebody out there to believe me on this. So here goes nothing.

I live in a suburban area around an hour away from Seattle, Washington. There's probably two traditional ghost stories in the entire town, and that's it. I live on an elevated area a reasonable height above the plateau. The problem with that is that this area was pretty much entirely uninhabited (that includes Native American tribes two hundred years back) before the area began to be developed and built on two or three decades ago. A small logging company used to work here (it's still pretty heavily forested for a primarily residential place), but not near where my house is. That was also sixty-plus years ago. My family is the first family to own the house we live in, and there have been no deaths or anything in the neighborhood. No house in the neighborhood is over four years old.

My point is that there shouldn't be any ghosts.

The history may have been a little boring, but please bear with me. I'm just trying to be thorough. But now on to what has actually occurred.

My friend and pretty much sister Jane was staying over one night. She's the only other person who seems to experience anything. But anyway, around five in the afternoon we were being teenage girls and I said, "Do you want to go on a ghost hunt in my house?"

I was kidding, because this was about a year and a half ago and all that had I had experienced were a couple faint noises and a few fuzzy shadows that I dismissed. I didn't expect anything to happen, and I don't think Jane did either, but she agreed.

I had been playing a game on my phone, and I wanted to finish it before we did anything. But while I was playing, we heard what sounded like really hard knocking on the door. It was weird, because to get onto the porch, you have to open a little gate that we had installed so my dog could go on the front porch. The latch on that gate is a bit noisy, so it was weird that we hadn't heard it. I asked Jane to check the peephole on the door. She hopped off the couch and checked.

When she didn't say anything, I asked who it was. She said, "Abby, nobody's out there. I swear to God, nobody is out there."

I didn't really believe her, so I dropped my phone and checked the peephole myself. Nobody was out there. We went out on the porch to see if someone was playing a prank, or if somebody had left a package. Nothing. But while we were out on the porch we heard the knocking again. I really thought Jane was going to pass out, which was the only reason we went back in. She sat down on the couch again and I tried to find out what could cause the noise. Adjacent to door, there's a closet where we keep random stuff like coats, a broom, spare Kleenex boxes, etc. Well, I grabbed the handle and rattled the door. It was the exact same noise.

There's a vent on the ceiling, but it was four and a half feet away and could not possibly rattle the door. Sometimes we have trouble opening the closet door. This has never happened again, so we don't know what happened then.

The next thing that happened (I'm sorry about how long this is getting to be) occurred two days after the door. I was talking to Jane about it on the phone and I set my cellphone on the counter for a moment. Twenty seconds later I hear my phone ringing. Jane was calling me back. The first thing she did was ask me why I hung up on her. According to her, she hadn't touched her phone. I was right next to a signal booster and she hadn't moved, so it doesn't seem likely that we just lost connection.

That event wasn't scary or anything, but it made me nervous. The thing that happens the most frequently, however, is the most disconcerting thing.

As anybody who owns a hanging pot-rack probably knows, it can get a little noisy if they start rattling against each other. We got rid of our pot-rack about a year ago, and I still hear the pots banging against each other almost everyday. It's really scary because it is completely impossible.

Add to all this the fact that my cat and dog both stare at random places on the wall as if something's there, when there most certainly isn't.

I just don't know what's going on.