Family Of Sensitives Or Are We All Haunted?

I wanted to share with you some experiences we are having at our home and actually have had for a number of years. I have to say I am a little hesitant to talk about this for many reasons but lately we have seen an increase in activity and I am not sure why.

We live in a normal suburban home built in the early 80s (I think). I do know the previous owner of the house met an untimely end in a car accident with a drunk driver a few miles from the house. I also know the following occupant lived there many years but is also now deceased (not related to the house as far as I can tell).

I moved into the house in May of 2007 and almost immediately began to experience a few small unexplainable things. My son is very sensitive and he saw someone several times in the kitchen area, I personally heard someone talking (unintelligible) when I was in the kitchen and he was in the living room but it sounded like a female voice. This was two years ago. Since then the activity has been fairly sporadic... Increasing from time to time - subsiding in others. Mostly we have experienced odd noises - voices, a repentant "swooshing" sound like material being moved about, both my son and I have seen a woman in the kitchen/laundry area, the sound of the front door opening and closing at all hours of the day and night (but the door does NOT actually open, it just sounds like it does) . My dogs also hear these things and look toward the apparent source of the noise.

Lately in the last six months the activity has increased. It seems primarily centered around my 21 year old son and 15 year old daughter. Items disappearing and reappearing, the swooshing noise, the sound of a car driving through the rain - except it is INSIDE THE HOUSE - and we haven't had any rain in over a year. Now not only do we get the door opening sound, but also the phone is ringing - ok actually the phone doesn't register a missed call, but the three of us have HEARD the phone ring - it stops before you get there. My son has had his hair pulled so hard it bruised his scalp. My youngest daughter (12) has been awakened by someone tugging on her foot. My dogs have days where they go nuts... Very nervous barking at nothing all day and night.

Last night around 4am my dog started barking, a very agitated and angry bark. This went on for about 2 minutes. As I got up to see what was going on I was putting on a robe and I heard the front door slam shut. I went to the door and as I walked toward it - I heard the sound of someone vigorously sweeping. I couldn't tell if it was inside or just outside the door. The door was locked as it should have been. I opened it - still heard the sweeping noise but - there was no explanation of where it came from. I went outside onto the front step (the sweeping was either just inside or just outside the door but in that area) - and the door slammed shut on me. It wasn't locked and I was able to go back inside but as soon as the door shut - the sweeping noise stopped. I never made it back to sleep.

Okay believe it or not with the exception of the hair pulling and foot tugging I could probably actually live with all of this - except, well here is where the story gets complicated.

This is not the first house where we have had issues. When my son was 6 and my daughter was an infant we lived in Germany. At that time I was fairly agnostic toward the paranormal... I wasn't sure if I believed or not. After living there I was convinced. I have never felt or seen or heard anything that strong in my life. There was a female and male entity in that house that not only we saw /experienced...people from outside of our family saw and heard the same things. We actually had some negative altercations with those entities and we ended up moving out of the house because of it. Both of my older children experienced phenomenon in that house.

Now this is what has provoked me to write to you. My kids have not spoken with each other about their experiences. But the older two have both come to me within the last month and told me that they believe the ghost is not attached to the house but attached to them personally because they have experienced these issues at different houses. Also they have both mentioned they felt it was both a male and female entity. I was talking about this to my mother and she brought up some things I didn't remember - when I was a child and a young adult I experienced similar things. Items moving, lost and found items, an entity touching my mother, inanimate objects moving (yes we could visually see them) and I was able as a child to look at it and say "stop that" and it stopped. I also know my father was able to see spirits and that he and I were oddly linked by - dreams and emotions but then that is another story.

Now - I don't want the world to know these things; I know people will say/think we are a family of freaks. I am pretty comfortable with "other than worldly" influences in my life so I am not asking for an exorcism and anything like that. I think I really would just like to understand better. Actually I just want to know if there is something that follows us around, or if we are just collectively sensitive to the things that are around everywhere in the world. I am curious about similarities in experiences between myself and my children and between different locations. (missing/reappearing items, sound of water, female voice) etc. And why sometimes the experiences are strong and frequent and other times are not so much.

Are there things we can do collectively as a family to investigate ourselves?

What about psychics/mediums... Would it be helpful?

How do I find one who specializes in this kind of thing?

And how do I tell a hoax from the real thing?