I was nine years old when we moved to Germany. My step father had received orders to return to Schleswig-Holstein, and my mother and I followed him shortly thereafter. We moved into a 64 year old house that was occupied by my step dad's parents. They were 68 and 75 years old. Grandma's parents had bought the house in 1924, and she had a brother that was the victim of a fatal infection between the years 1930 - 1940. He was spared to fight in WWII, yet still died young. Grandmother's parents had passed of old age and my father had been raised in the house since he was born, and until he joined the German Air Force shortly after graduating (what to us would be) high school.
I was always afraid of the dark as a child, but the dark was much more frightening in the old house we were now living in. The floors would squeak with almost every footstep, some spots louder than others. At some point you were able to locate a member of the family just by the distinct sound of the particular area of the floor!
My parents and I lived on the second floor, the grandparents downstairs. After about 2 years my father had started renovating and made us our own little kitchen upstairs that was basically in the hall that you walked into when standing at the foot of the steps. The living room joined the kitchen, and another door led to my bedroom. A long hall right beside the stairs would lead into the very small bathroom, and behind it was my parent's bedroom. (Weird architecture, I know...)
One night, I was lying in bed reading a book. Everyone else was asleep, it was 1 a.m. I was stunned to hear the kitchen fan suddenly turn on. I knew it wasn't done by anyone in the family, because the floor didn't signal footsteps as it otherwise would have, and I could not see any light through the skeleton key hole in my door. Thinking- more so hoping there might be some explanation for it I was still too chicken to open my door and investigate. I slowly put my book down, turned off the light, pulled my blanket over my head and forced myself to sleep after my rapid pulse had calmed down...
I woke up after the rest of the family, and asked my early bird dad if the fan was still on when he entered the kitchen, and he said it wasn't. So "something" was considerate enough to turn it back off...
Months or so after the fan incident, I was watching TV and heard someone approaching the living room. Or rather "the squeaky floor" announcing that someone was on their way to the living room. I expected the door to open nothing. Thinking how odd it was for someone to just stand in the little kitchen in front of the living room door was weird, so I got up and opened the door to find: nothing. That was very scary to me. I know I should've seen someone.
The last thing that I can remember experiencing there was the knocking sound that would come from by bedroom floor. I was about 17 years old when it started, and would first associate it with the old wood. It would happen (or I would hear it) when I was ready to sleep, and it always changed locations in the floor. It was a carpeted floor but the sound kind of reminded me of like a hard baseball sized wooden ball being dropped on a hard wood floor. It would make a "knock" sound and continue: knock - knock -knock-knock-knock-knock-knock...it would get faster and quieter and then fade... And maybe an hour later reappear. Sometimes I'd hear it 3 times a night, some nights I'd wait for it and never hear it... I still wonder what that was.
Though I've never really seen ghosts in the house or felt them touch me, I think that what I've experienced was a spirit/some spirits that still felt at home there. They just decided to stay.
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