In January 1995, I experienced the first odd occurence. We have a wrought iron bed and one night I was woken abruptly shortly after going to sleep by the entire bed shaking. It was still shaking for a few seconds as I sat up in it so it wasn't my imagination! Then over the next few years we had the occasional thing happen. Most often it would be the doorbell ringing at odd hours...12.30am, 2.00am, 6am. Never anybody there and we eventually put it down to it being set-off by something else electrical that a neighbour had, that worked at the same wavelength. As recently as 3 weeks ago we stopped even going out to check if anybody was at the door when the bell rang. But then the other things started happening.

We would start hearing noises coming from the front of the house. My husband would always go and check but nothing was there. One night last week we heard noises from our living room - as if somebody was walking on the floorboards. They weren't footsteps but just the occasional creak of the timber. Again, my husband went to investigate and found nothing. Curiously, while he was out the front of the house, the creaking (which was coming from the middle of the house) stopped. And when he returned to bed, it started again.

In the same week, I had three other things happen. The first was knocking at the bathroom door in the morning as I had my shower. Often my son (1yo) gets out of bed early and comes knocking on the door so I assumed it was him. I called out thinking he would push the door open but nothing. When I went to check where he had gone, I found both he and my husband still fast asleep in bed. The second thing (and this has occurred about 5 times since) is that our air-conditioner, which is programmed to start heating at 5.30am, starts up early. It varies... 4.45am, 5am, 5.10am. The clock is set correctly - I checked. Again the first time it happened it freaked me out but the effect wore off on me and we deduced that somebody else in the neighbourhood must have one that is setting ours off (deep down I wasn't convinced because it runs on infrared controls). The third thing: last Thursday night we went to bed and seconds after laying down, the cord on the blind above my head rattled and then something dropped to the floor and I heard it run around the room before disappearing. We thought it could be a mouse but the running sounded more like two individual feet than a scamper. Then a few minutes later both my husband and I became incredibly itchy all over and then 10 minutes later the itch was gone.

And then came last night. I was sleeping alone in the living room on the futon bed. My son woke at 12.30am and I went in to settle him back to sleep. I returned to bed at 1.15am and switched off the air-con because it was too hot. Sometime later (I don't know the exact time) I was woken by a noise in the lounge room at the front of the house. It sounded like furniture being dragged across the floor. I know I was awake when I heard it and it went for about a minute. I was too scared to go and investigate and too scared to go to my husband and son sleeping in another room all of 5 metres away. I lay back down and surprisingly got back to sleep. I woke next to hear my son crying at 4.45am. As I went into him, I noticed that the air-conditioner had switched on. It was programmed to come on at 5.30am and it was very strange that I hadn't heard it turn on. I usually hear it start up when I'm sleeping in another room and this time I was sleeping right under it and didn't hear a thing. After I settled my son back to sleep I got up to have breakfast and went out to the lounge room to see what could have been making the noise in the middle of the night. I nearly freaked when I saw a little wooden stool and realized it was exactly the noise I had been hearing - it being scraped across the floor. We had only put it out the front room 2 nights earlier because my son was pushing it across the living room (polished wood) floors and we were scared that it would scratch them!

And then something really weird... I usually get up and turn the TV on at 5.30am. For some reason this morning I decided to read the Sunday Mail as I hadn't had time all week. So I was flicking through and was about to finish up when I turned the page and saw a story about a haunted pub in Ravenswood. The bit about the noises of furniture moving about in one of the rooms and alarms sounding was enough for me. I am convinced now that I have a ghost.

Admittedly it took me a while to really convince myself it could be a ghost in my house. I am a research scientist and usually base everything on facts but at the same time I am open-minded and believe in spirits and other dimensions etc.

Submitted from: Brisbane, Queensland, Australia