I'm new to the site and would love to share my experiences with all of you. I have been serving in the United States Air Force for approximately 8 years now and have seen my fair share of the world. Each new place I have visited has brought me new and exciting experiences. The same cannot be said for the base I'm currently stationed at. I will give you two stories from this location.
I'm currently stationed at a base in Eastern New Mexico, a few miles from the Texas border. I was previously stationed there from 09-14. I returned to this installation in 2015 after a year spent in South Korea.
Prior to my return, my wife had gotten us a home on the base. This home we lived in was temporary due to new homes being built on the off base housing complex. These older homes were built, I believe, in the 1960s and had been inhabited by many military families.
Due to my job on the base as Military Police, we patrol all over the installation. I have typically worked the night shift so most of the base has always made me uneasy.
Now due to the age of the homes, you can assume lots of things within these homes have happened. I know we have had suicide attempts all the way up to a murder that happened a few years ago. Needless to say, strange things go on there.
I'd approximately been home for a few months when we had our first experience at our house. This was one of the first times in my career that I was assigned to work days so I had to typically be up by 4 am. I woke up to what I thought was my wife getting out of bed. Eyes half-open, I felt her walk by the edge of the bed and out into the hallway. I looked at my clock and it wasn't even 3:30 am yet. I asked her what she was doing and she responded with, "Trying to sleep." I rolled over and she was still in bed. I told her that I thought she got up, but she had thought I did. We both couldn't go back to sleep at this point.
The following morning I was woken up again at the same time. My wife was at work so I had the house to myself. I awoke to a strange noise. Our bedroom door was always left halfway open for our dogs to get out. I looked down from the bed and both of our dogs were staring at the hallway. As they looked back at me, I looked up just in time to see a man walk by my bedroom and down the hall to the living room. I jumped out of bed and went into the living room to make sure no one was there. The house was empty.
As I stated earlier that home was temporary. So we moved into our new home in a complex right off base. This property is owned by the Air Force and is considered a part of the installation. In the back of this complex, there is a small cemetery that is widely known as the "Children's Cemetery." Bodies buried there are from the 1800s and vary in age. It is believed that the land this housing complex sits on was once a cemetery and upon the USAF's purchase of it, they moved some of the bodies to the Children's Cemetery. There are locals who are mad that the Air Force continues to build on sacred land. For the sake of this story I will leave all of the other experiences of this housing area out until a later time. I will just tell you about our new home.
Compared to our previous home, the new one is two stories and is attached to another house. So due to paper thin walls, you can occasionally hear your neighbors.
About a week into living there, I woke up around 3:30 am again while my wife was at work. A sliver of light from the street light outside shined into our bedroom and I saw a child sized shadow standing at the edge of my bed. I stared at it for a few seconds until it walked back into the corner of the room. I immediately turned on my light and saw nothing.
My wife would complain to me that while I was at work, she could hear someone walking around downstairs. Typically, she would think it was me stopping home real quick, but that was never the case. I ended up switching back to night shift to spend more time with her.
A few months had passed and nothing strange had happened. One Saturday morning, a co-worker of mine stopped by our house to take us to go pick up a new bed for our spare bedroom. Both of our cars would not be able to fit it so we asked to use his pickup. I ended up opting out of going due to an appointment in our bathroom. Upon finishing my business (I take long poops), I heard a little girl's voice calling my name from downstairs. I figured my wife was home and they needed help getting the bed upstairs. I heard, "Heelllloooo" and "Frankieeee" a few times until I stepped out and said, "I'll be done in a sec." I walked back downstairs to my wife and buddy walking into the house. I asked her when they got home and she told me they just pulled up. I said, "You weren't here 5 minutes ago?" She replied, "No, why do you ask." I proceeded to tell her what I heard.
Another few months had passed and still nothing other than someone moving around downstairs. We had grown relatively used to that and chalked it up as our neighbors. Until one night when I had fallen asleep in my Man Cave. My wife typically got mad at me for falling asleep in there and would normally wake me up to have me go back to sleep in our room. So when I woke up to a knock at my door, I didn't expect much. I originally woke up to just a genuine weird feeling. I heard that knock and said, "I'll be in the room in a minute." I then heard footsteps walk back to our room. So I immediately got up, turned off my TV and left the Man Cave. By the time I got into our bedroom, only a couple minutes had passed.
When I walked in, my wife was sacked out and in deep sleep. I woke her up and apologized to her for sleeping in the Man Cave and having to make her come wake me up. She asked me what I was talking about. I told her and she responded that she hadn't gotten out of bed. I asked then who knocked on my door? Due to her being half asleep, she said, "Obviously not me." I, at the point, got shivers down my spine and after it took her a few minutes to realize what happened, we ended up not going back to sleep until the sun started to come up. Since that night, nothing has really happened there.
I have many more experiences from there, specifically the housing complex. Some of us like to ghost hunt on the creepier parts of the base, but I'll leave those stories for another time! Thanks for taking the time to read this!
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While any supernatural experience is unnerving, it isn't always sinister or dangerous. Much of the activity you've described thus far seems to be residual in nature, with (as shelby correctly noted) one attempt to be helpful. As you have a "man cave," it's entirely possible --and here I'm speculating-- that a male entity simply was watching your back so you'd avoid getting into trouble with your wife. The other events you describe seem to be occurring without regard for your presence.
Unless you're very familiar with the number of people living in the adjoining property (their duty shifts, routines, etc) I'd be hesitant to completely rule them out as a source for the sound of someone "walking around downstairs." If you can rule them out (e.g.: they're both at work, their kids are in school, they don't have a cleaning lady, they don't have an elderly relative staying), then there's not much to fear in someone who is simply walking around. If it is a haunting, it seems to be minding its own business.
The base's expanded housing facilities are "believed" to have been built on the site of an earlier cemetery. Who is your source for this information? Sometimes, when it's a part of the town/base folk history, there is a kernel of truth in it; more often than not, though, a truth has been distorted beyond all recognition into something resembling a hollywood-style horror movie. Not every location containing human remains was necessarily a cemetery; as Americans expanded westward, people who died on the trail were buried in a nearby convenient spot because no one wanted to carry great-grandma's corpse through another 200 miles of terrain in the back of a conestoga wagon in late July. The simple wooden crosses or boards to mark these graves weren't the most permanent of markers. What with the cattle trails, escaped slaves seeking a better life, Mexican ranchers, Texan settlers, Apache and Mescalero tribes, farmers, railroads, etc., there must be several thousand people buried in unmarked graves throughout each of the southwestern states.
Now, more often than not, the government has gotten pretty good about relocating the remains of the deceased in a respectful manner, such as the reburial in the Children's Cemetery, and -over the last few decades, anyway- has improved efforts (not consistently, but there have been efforts) to avoid offending Native American peoples by delaying construction once ancient/ancestral human remains have been uncovered. As for the ambiguous notion of "Sacred Land," I'm a little more skeptical of the dead haunting it; it all depends upon what religious practice made it sacred to begin with.
I'm looking forward to reading more of your experiences.
Best,
Biblio.