Old Farmer Or Slave?

I've never considered myself to be sensitive to ghosts or spirits and I've never held a firm believe in whether they exist or not but I have always considered myself to be objective.

The events that have taken place since moving to our current home have led me to think I'm not alone here.

In 2014 we purchased the closest thing to our dream house our budget would allow. It's a very old farmhouse that had been through several renovations make it move it ready. This house was the homestead for the neighboring acreage about 100 years ago.

My first experience at this house was right after we bought it. I stopped up with some things that needed to be taken into the home before we moved in. I pulled into the driveway, put my car in park and was immediately overcome with the feeling that there was an old farm man in my back seat. It was so real to me that I refused to look in my rear view mirror. In my mind's eye I could see every detail about the man, his sandy grey hair, bright but sad blue eyes, his worn denim coveralls and tattered flannel shirt. I worked to gather my thoughts and got out of the car without looking at him or accidentally interacting with him.

While preparing to move in we needed to replace the furnace. A friend does this professionally and offered to help us. As this home once had a large double fireplace in the center we have a huge chimney that runs through the center of the house. While working on the furnace I noticed a small wooden boxed structure had been build to one side of the chimney. This box had a small rectangle "window" about a foot across and 7 inches tall at about chest height. As soon as I saw it I had bad feelings. I made a joke that the box was where they kept prisoners and the window was the way they were given scraps of food until they eventually died. (probably my imagination but again this little space felt wrong)

Not long after we moved in I began waking EVERY NIGHT at exactly 3:05 AM. It happens less during the warmer months but it happens a few times a week during the winter. For that 2-3 weeks I have woken at exactly 4:22 am to go to the bathroom (Note: we've not had our daylight savings time so it's equivalent to 3:22 during the winter.) Sometimes I feel like somebody's watching me in bed and sometimes the closet along the chimney (almost above the creepy basement box) appears darker than on other nights.

The dogs act strange sometimes. We have 2 small Chihuahuas in our old house they would only bark when someone came to the door. Since we've moved in here they will go to the laundry room door and bark into the dark at nothing. We've made sure the cats were not in that room and that the windows were covered, we can not explain it. Note: The laundry room is on old stone building that likely predates the home and could have been a summer kitchen or milk room on the old farmstead.

Remember the creeping box in the basement? Well closets are located above it on all the floors of the home. When the dogs are in my son's room on the second floor the are nervous and want to be held constantly, more than normal, if you won't hold them they will sit on the bed and stare or bark into the closet that is above the creepy basement box thing.

One last thing... Our foundation is made of stacked stone with the exception of one corner of the basement that is stacked concrete block. We thought it was odd that one section be a lot newer then the rest of the basement. One day a neighbor mentioned the home had been part of the underground railroad and the former owner had closed the opening in the basement where the salves would hide under the road outside of the home's foundation.

I'm sorry I've arranged this as more of a list of observations then a narrative. We've been here almost 2 years now and the dogs have settled a bit but I'm still waking up at night feeling like I'm being watched.