Yes.
My parents, who are both very intelligent people, have experienced them firsthand. There are soooo many to list! Hearing heavy boot footsteps upstairs when I was just a baby -- with no signs of a break in -- in the early hours of the morning they were about to move out of a house built in the early 1700s -- an old sea captain lived in that house, and was probably making presence known before they left for good.
In the next old house they lived in, within the first few months, pictures randomly fell off their hooks and shattered, day and night, a lighting fixture dropped down from the ceiling, and the garbage disposal turned on and off by itself.
They also heard the sound of children's playful footsteps suddenly running along the upstairs hallway at Thanksgiving in my great grandpa's 17th century house before there were even any children in the family.
In a more recent house they lived in which wasn't very old at all, my mom and sister both reported seeing strange flashes of light out the corner of their eyes for a split second when they were upstairs, and our cats would get spooked in a certain area of the upstairs hallway and stare at what appeared to be nothing. My mom also felt herself being shoved out of her bed one night and got a bad cut on her forehead. A second time, she woke up suddenly from a deep sleep only to see a dark, swirling shadow at the foot of her bed, and when she reached out to touch it, it faded away. Also, in the days they were trying to sell it, everything kept going wrong -- the beautiful tree out the front which was a major selling point split in half for no reason whatsoever, a large vase randomly shattered in the middle of the night-- literally exploded -- and the entire basement flooded in a heavy rainstorm. An old man who raised three children there had died in that house just before my parents moved in, which is why his widow had moved out... and we believe he didn't like us being in his house. (Cue Twilight Zone theme!)
My aunt had terrifying experiences in her 17th century house about 15 years ago when she was trying to raise my cousins as a single mom, recently divorced -- such as hearing old-fashioned music coming faintly from the fireplace, her name being called distantly from the unfinished upstairs which she never went up to, and the doorway leading into the kitchen of her crying baby son being held shut suddenly as she was desperately trying to get in to him, then releasing and opening easily again. My cousin, a young child at the time, also reported seeing a woman in a white dress coming down the stairs leading to the unfinished upstairs then vanishing. My aunt's house was where the minister lived (there was a church across the street) and brides several centuries ago would stay overnight there and get ready for their wedding, which explains the woman apparition in the white dress. I'm sure there are things I'm forgetting, but I'm rushing here and I'll spare you the details! Enough already!
What was your favourite subject in school, and what was your least favourite? And why?
