I Think My House is Haunted

Ghost stories: everyone seems to have mixed reactions about ghost stories. I, personally think they are fascinating. Hearing about experiences that people have had with what they deem spirits or ghosts is something that is very interesting to me. However, in the recent past I may (or may not) have had some experiences of my own. So am I crazy? Or do ghosts really exist?

I live in Buffalo, NY, have lived here all my life (except for going away to college) and it seems that there aren't too many ghost stories about this area, but there are a lot of old houses and old neighborhoods; which can make fantastic backdrops for ghost stories. My boyfriend and I recently moved into a new house, about six weeks ago, and I'm convinced we have a ghost. Both my boyfriend and I have seen/heard things that couldn't really be explained any other way (although my boyfriend thinks it's the woman who lives next door who is almost always drunk).

It started about a week after we closed on the house. I was sitting at our dining room table with my boyfriend's sister. We were just carrying on a normal conversation and all of the sudden we heard a moaning/screaming noise from the family room. Now the family room is right next to the dining room and the only thing that divides the two rooms is a large archway, so we could clearly see that no one was in the room. After being crept out for a few minutes, we chalked it up to the wind blowing and other noises that could have come from outside.

Later that week I was in the kitchen when I heard a loud banging noise. It sort of sounded like the noise you'd make if you jumped off the couch and onto the floor (we have hardwood floors). I walked into the living room and stood there for a few minutes but nothing happened. A few nights later my boyfriend was woken repeatedly (I slept through it) to loud banging noises. He would get up after hearing the noise and sit in the living room for several minutes and no noise would be made. As soon as he'd get back in bed he'd hear the noise again.

The most recent incident was the night before Thanksgiving. I had already gotten in bed for the night but realized my cell phone was out in the dining room (it has my alarm clock on it). I went out to the dining room to grab my phone off the table and I just happened to glance into the corner of the living room. I only saw it for a split second but I distinctly saw the shadow of a person in the window waving their arms over their head. It was very weird because of the way that it looked. It was as if I was standing outside of our house at night and looking into a window that was covered by drapes. You can see the light through the drapes and you can see shadows moving inside. This is how this shadow looked.

Although there is probably an explanation for each of our experiences, I'm convinced that we have a ghost. Since we've only been in the house for about 6 weeks so far, we don't know much about the previous owners so I'll have to do some digging and find out if anything happened in the house that would cause a spirit to stick around. I'm hoping that if we do have a ghost that it's friendly, because we plan on staying in the house for a while and I don't think I could deal with a mean spirit. So if anyone has experienced anything like this I'd love to hear about it. While I've always found ghost stories very cool, now that it's happening to me, I might have to change my opinion!