My Brother's Kitchen Ghost

It has been a VERY long time since I have been up here, but I think it is time to add some more recent ghost stories to the site.

My family and I went to visit my brother at his home in Philly. We had been there before with no problem, but I don't know if I had just ignored it the first time or this activity only started up recently. My brother, as far as I know, doesn't believe in the paranormal, but the rest of my family (my mom and dad) are more open minded to it. So we were at his house over this past Christmas, so about three or four days. It was only on the last day did his roommates come back, so keep that in mind.

I don't know about any of you, but I like to know where everyone is at any given moment. Not for any safety or creepy reason I don't think, but I just for awareness. His house is laid out like this (I'll do my best to explain): When you come into the front door directly in front of you is a staircase that leads to a bathroom and three bedrooms. To your right is an open area/living room that continues until you hit the wall separating it from the kitchen (that's as simple but detailed as I can get). In the living room there is a couch that faces the right wall and the TV, and then two chairs, one to right of the couch against the window that looks out into the street, and another to the left. I would mostly sit on the couch because it was more centralized and I could see the TV better.

Here is the creepy part: whenever someone would go into the kitchen (the doorway of which I could see through from the corner of my eye) I would always keep a look out for when they were coming back into the living room. A few times I would see a back shadow (which isn't special because color mostly disappears from your peripheral vision) go past the doorway. I would turn to see if was a family member but it wasn't but I didn't think much of it because there were places in the kitchen I couldn't see and figured they were in those spots.

Well, when my brother's roommates came back I was a little tense because it was their home and we were the guests so I wanted to make sure I always smiled when they were coming through. One roommate went out the back door, which is reached by going through the kitchen. I kept my eyes open for when he would come back (mind you none of the other roommates or my family were in the kitchen) and I kept seeing a person walking back and forth the doorway. Every time it happened I would look, expecting to see the roommate coming in but he was never there. It occurred to me after a while that I had never heard the back door open but I was still seeing someone.

After a while of this, and still ignoring it as my imagination, my dad, from the chair by the window, piped up and asked, "Is anyone else seeing something move around in the kitchen?" And like any normal person I jumped up with a smile and said, "YES!" My mom and my bro didn't see anything, and he kept saying that it wasn't real (I think he may be a scaredy cat).

There isn't much else to the story I'm afraid, but I thought it was pretty awesome that my dad and I had seen the same thing (which has never happened before). And no my brother, as far as I know, doesn't know the history of the house or whether or not one of his roommates brought back something (these are new roommates from the ones he had the first time we were over there).