Naughty Ghost Child?

This is my first post, but have many more to share. Been reading for a while now, but this recent occurrence made me sign up.

It happened on the 17th of this month (February), to be exact. My "friend" and I were at home. It was past 10 to 11pm and I was already in bed. My friend, was preparing for bed, when there was a knock on our door. It was our neighbour who came to ask my friend to come talk to her husband because he was being verbally abusive and it being so late and all, on a Sunday, the children obviously couldn't sleep. Now, I am hearing all of this commotion outside, but decided to continue sleeping and let my friend handle it. I was knackered.

Fine, so he steps outside and walks over to their apartment. (The following bit I was told by him).

As they were standing outside on our neighbour's stoep, with my friend trying to calm the husband down, he happened to look up and saw a small child running across the yard towards our other neighbour's apartment. He says he immediately felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up and he quickly told our neighbour's to look behind them. He says, as much as he felt creeped out by the child, he tried justifying it; that it could be one of the neighbour's kids (they have four children; 13, 11, 9 and 2) He said he thought it was the 9 year old. The mother quickly ran towards the direction the child ran off to, but found no one. She then went inside her apartment and all her children were accounted for.

Tiff, now obviously quelled, they all said their good nights and parted ways.

When my friend came back, me being nosey, asked what the neighbours had been arguing about. This is when he told me about the child he saw run passed. He said, come to think of it, the child didn't look like any of the children from our complex and it was way too late for a child to be running around, unsupervised at that time.

We decided to call it a night.

While we were asleep, we were woken up by a loud bang in our apartment. It's an open space bachelor pad, so we can basically sit up from our bed and look into the kitchen, lounge area etc. Hearts pumping, we sat up and tried to figure out what just fell. We looked around the apartment and couldn't find anything amiss. The time was now past 2am.

After a while, I found what had woken us up. It was a thick and heavy wooden 'Dune' sign that had been resting perfectly on a side table near the lounge. We didn't notice it at first because it had fallen and landed upright on the floor, as if placed there. Not flat as one would've expected. While we discussed this in bed, I asked him to describe this child entity he saw. He said it looked like a solid, normal child, only the face looked pale as if he had calamine lotion on his face.

Needless to say, I did a lot of praying that night.

It wasn't even our first occurrence in this apartment, but it's the first time we could tie it to something. Sometime in January I woke up in the middle of the night to the air fryer switched on and changing temperature. My partner slept through that one. Had to really shake him awake.

We moved in here November of last year. The apartment had been freshly painted and the door revarnished. Once settled, we noticed crosses had been drawn behind the main entrance door, clearly while the vanish was still wet. At times we'd see shadows floating in our peripheral vision. My partner sometimes moans in his sleep as if fighting off something. In our bedroom area, one wall is taken up by a sliding door. Once he nearly kicked it broken, after jumping up from his sleep. Upon enquiry, he said he dreamt a huge snake slithered under the covers onto the bed and settled itself right in between us. To him it felt so real he jumped up, nearly breaking the sliding door.

We discussed the Sunday event with our neighbours the following day and they said, they often hear someone walking passed their window, shuffling their feet, always around midnight and this thing enters the toilet but never comes out. Another neighbour once saw a family of three; mom, dad and child, outside their kitchen. He greeted but they just stared at him with blank expressions. They were all in black. Annoyed, he made to close the door and when he turned around they were gone. Just vanished. He didn't hear/ see them walk off. Other neighbours have stories of their own to tell regarding this complex. Apparently, the guy who rented our apartment was into dark magic.

It's safe to say this place is clearly haunted and we are looking for a new apartment now.

This is in Johannesburg, Midrand by the way.

Thanks for reading.