Things that Go Bump in the Night

Each unexplained sound, sight or dream is not necessarily something of a paranormal nature. Can you distinguish a ghostly figure from an eerie shadow made more ominous by the dark of night? Let us look, from my experience, at the logical side of a couple things that go bump in the night.

Shadow Play

You wake abruptly at 2 AM and groggy from sleep, see something pass swiftly by your bedroom doorway. You have no clue what it was, but shaken, you instantly convince yourself it is sinister and disturbing.

You hunker down under the safety of the blankets; your heart pounding. You also considering sucking your thumb, something you have not done since childhood.

In the dark of my bedroom, I did this off and on for a month. I thought someone unseen was paying a visit to the old homestead, which could be any number of family members who have passed over and who have indeed visited on more than one occasion. I was uneasy and tried to stay calm, but it was quite unnerving, even for a seasoned paranormal buff!

After this situation happened the last time, I realized I was thirsty. I waited what I thought was a "safe" amount of time (not feeling up to a ghostly visit that night) and crept out of bed to head down the hallway to the kitchen for a drink of water.

Just as I turned into the hall from my bedroom, a swish of a shadow passed over me and I stood frozen in my tracks. Within a second or two, the swish of shadow appeared and washed over me once again. Perhaps the water could wait, I thought.

At the same moment, though, looking down my long hallway to the next room, I saw my cat pass by the night light, which is located under an aquarium in that room. I also saw the same swish of shadow, caused by the cat, as she played with a dust ball under the fish tank. Mystery or lack of...solved!

Unexplained Scratching Noise

There are so many explanations to identify a scratching noise, especially when heard in the wee hours of the night. Some of them are obvious such as branches scraping the house on a windy night, mice in the attic or as I pointed out, the antics of the cat prowling the house in the dark.

In many instances, it may even be your dog. At the start of an extremely cold winter, I wigged myself out over a particular scratching sound I was hearing for weeks. Almost nightly, I awakened to this mysterious noise. It only happened around 1 AM, however.

I was bothered by it because I could not go back to sleep once I heard it. My husband investigated everything within that part of the house, but could not come up with a reasonable explanation to suit me. When I hear a strange noise in my house, I will hunt it down like a person obsessed. I will not relax until I can find the source of my anxiety.

With this in mind, rest assured, I scoured the room I thought the strange sound was coming from, but I made the mistake of doing it during the day. After hearing, this scratching noise at night for weeks and finding nothing to explain it away, I got brave and decided to investigate the sound in the still of the night, which is the only time I heard it or at the least, actually noticed the sound.

Scary Mystery - Not So Scary

I will make a long story short here. We had a new heating system installed that September, which included, in the middle part of my old home, a nifty wall heater that blew delightfully hot air into the coldest part of the house. The wall heater was located directly across the room from a wall of closets, which were back to back with the wall behind the headboard of my bed.

I discovered that every time that heater kicked on, it was around 1 AM, which was the coldest part of the night. The awesome new heater blew a forceful airflow across the room, which went under the doors of the old closets, which in turn, made a silly cardboard tag inside the closet, flap in the airflow and scrape back and forth on the back of the closet. The tag was attached by string to an old trunk I stored in that particular closet.

That little cardboard tag, while gently scraping the wall behind my headboard, left me sleepless in Massachusetts for weeks. Another ominous bump in the night identified! Therefore, as you can see, as much as I believe in a number of aspects of the paranormal, many things that go bump in the night are not so mysterious after all!