Lonely Spirit?

About 13 years ago my mother bought an older house in Hillsdale, NY. It's a Greek Revival, about 175 years old, really a beautiful house. She bought it from a family that used it as a vacation home, but she and I moved in full time. My son had just been born with severe health problems, so I was at the hospital a lot. In fact, I didn't actually spend the night there until about a month after we moved in.

The first day I was there alone, I was in a small room off the dining room used as an office, on the internet, and talking to a friend on the phone. I started to hear a strange beeping noise from the kitchen. It was a fast high-pitched continuous beep. I took the phone into the kitchen to see what it was, and found the digital clock on the stove going nuts. It had a dial that you used to set it, and it was as if someone was just spinning the dial around and around, although the dial wasn't moving.

I took a quick look around the house thinking there was some kind of electrical problem, but nothing else was acting strange; all the lights worked, the pc was still running fine, etc. All this time the clock is still beeping away. After a few minutes, I got a little freaked out and told my friend I would call her back.

I left the house and walked the block to the store, taking my time. When I got back, it had stopped, and the clock worked fine from then on.

Several months later, my husband and I were spending the night there. My mother was asleep upstairs, and he and I were in that same little room, folding laundry. We both heard a woman say "Hello?" loud and clear in the dining room. We quickly decided it was time to go to bed. On the way, I checked on my mom, just to make sure. Sound asleep.

During this same time I would often feel a presence upstairs on the landing. Especially at night, like if I got up to use the bathroom, I would just know someone was coming towards the door, and have to wait a few minutes for the feeling to pass.

A couple of years later, my husband was gone and I was staying with my mother in the back bedroom, which looks out over the garden. Mom and I were out there with a friend when mom said, "Who's in your room?" We all looked but no one was there, and mom said it must have been a trick of the light. A few minutes later the window that she'd seen someone through slammed shut. There aren't any streetlights back there and it gets pretty dark at night so there was a nightlight in that room. I eventually had to take it out because it would be on for a minute then off for a minute, although this was probably a short.

Soon after, I was laying in the pitch black when a small bright white light zoomed out of the corner of the room near the ceiling. It floated around a little, then zoomed out the door. At first I thought, "Oh, a lightning bug" but then I realized that fireflies are yellowish, they flash on and off, and they are slower.

Another time, I was sweeping the front bedroom, and bent over to use the dustpan. My back was to the door to the landing. My shirt rode up, and I felt what felt like a cat's tail brush across my lower back. There were no cats around and it would have been a little high anyway.

Now during all this time, my mother never experienced anything. She didn't really believe anything was in the house, although she's open-minded about the paranormal. I had noticed that standing at the top of the stairs I often felt dizzy. Mom had actually fallen down the stairs. The animals would sit in the hall and stare up to the top of the stairs.

My mom decided to redo the kitchen, dining room, and small office, and soon it felt like someone was there almost all the time. One evening my mom and I were downstairs watching TV. The dog and the cat were both in the room. All of a sudden we heard a huge BANG from upstairs. We all jumped about a mile. After 15 minutes or so I finally got the courage to go upstairs and found a box of Christmas ornaments in the middle of the landing. It had been on the bed on the back bedroom, a distance of about 15 feet.

After that, we had a talk with the spirit, explaining that the house had been rotting, and that she would like the final result of the renovations. It was fairly quiet after that.

We did find out that an older woman had lived there, had been confined to the back bedroom, and had died there, about 50 years ago.