Who Was Walking Around The House?

This encounter in particular was just outright odd. Nothing that would make you scream in terror, but it was disturbing.

First of all, before I go into the story let me explain the layout of my house because the rest of the story won't make sense if I don't.

My house is a 1-story brick home. As soon as you come in through the front door you are immediately in the living room, and across from it several feet away to the right is the den, which is made lower than the living room so you step down into it from a short stoop.

Ok, back to the beginning. As you are coming in through the front door and into the living room, directly in front of you several feet away is an open doorway which leads to the hallway corridor. If you go to the immediate left there is the door to my bedroom (which I shared with my two siblings at the time). If you go directly across and in front of you there is an open doorway leading to the kitchen. If you go to the right you are immediately in the hallway. On the left wall down the hallway is the bathroom. A few feet down from the bathroom is the master bedroom. Directly across from the master bedroom on the opposite side is another open doorway that leads to the den, which again you step down into. The whole layout is not as confusing as it sounds. Just imagine a rectangle with two parallel lines in the middle of it length-wise, three squares at the top half, and three squares on the bottom and you kind of got the picture.

Now I can begin with the story. I cannot for the life of me remember what grade I was in (maybe the 6th grade, circa 1996), but I think it was somewhere around the start of the new school year. I was sleeping on the couch in the den that night while everyone else slept in their respective bedrooms. The way I was laying on the couch, my head was next to the open doorway that led to the hallway corridor, which was to my right.

I am not sure what time it was but it had to been during the wee hours of the morning (I'm guessing around 2 or 3 am). The house was almost completely dark, but it had just enough illumination from the hallway nightlight to allow you to see a little bit. I was half asleep when I was awakened by the sound of very soft footsteps walking around aimlessly in a big circle, going down the hallway, back around into the living room, stepping down into the den, and then stepping back up into the hallway again, making the floor creak slightly as they passed by my head. At first I thought it was maybe one of my parents just checking around the house or something, so I just kind of ignored it and drifted back off... You know that daze that you be in when you're half asleep and you just kind of ignore things that should otherwise make you think?

I managed to slightly doze back off. However, the footsteps persisted and I woke up again thinking to myself, "Who is that and why are they just walking around the house like that?". I didn't sit up, I just laid there and opened my eyes waiting for whoever it was to come back around. To my surprise, when I heard the footsteps come by me there was absolutely no one there. At first I thought I was imagining things given the fact that I abruptly woke up, so I waited for them to come back around again. When my eyes told me that I should now be seeing someone, the footsteps went right on by and yet again, there was no one in sight. I mean you could just hear it, "shuffle, shuffle, shuffle".

I was, at the same time, confused and scared. All I could do was pull the covers over my head and lay as still as possible. The footsteps continued on for a pretty good while but I knew that I had to get up in a few hours for school, so I tried my best to go back to sleep. How I managed to do it, I don't know.

Til this very day I have absolutely no clue who or what that was. I didn't think anymore of it after that night, but that was a pretty creepy experience.