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Footsteps on the Landing

Urvogel

Urvogel

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Dec 23, 2012
Messages
163
This happened in the wee hours of this morning!

At about 4:45am I was woken up by the sound of footsteps on our landing. I assumed it was Mr. Urvogel as he often comes to bed much later than I do. Then it dawned on me that he was fast asleep in the bed next to me :shock:

The footsteps stopped outside the bedroom door, as though whoever was walking had paused to listen. Then the footsteps turned and walked back down the landing away from the bedroom.

Needless to say I shat a brick, thinking that someone had broken into the house. I lay there wide awake for a good 15 minutes straining to hear any other noise, but there was nothing. No sign of anyone moving about. I woke up Mr. Urvogel and told him to go check every room and turn on the lights, which he did. Absolutely nothing there, no sign of anyone. The house was locked up tight.

The obvious explanations I can think of for the footsteps was that I was either dreaming or it was the house making noises. I seriously doubt I was dreaming; I was awake at the time and my dreams never encroach into my waking world. That and the noise of footsteps had nothing to do with my dream I was having when I woke up (believe it or not, I was dancing with Sherlock Holmes! I was pretty annoyed to have been woken up!). I also doubt it was just noises from the house settling, since aside from our house not generally making noises the footsteps were so regular. Literally THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP –pause- THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP that faded away as they moved away from the door.

One thing I am wondering though...I was extremely mad at Mr. Urvogel earlier that evening as I got back from work to discover he’d gone out and left the front door wide open. Initially I thought we’d been burgled and had to check the entire house by myself to make sure no murderers or rapists were still inside. It badly shook me up, and when he got home we had an upsetting talk over it. I wonder, did both our highly charged emotions somehow manifest the sound of an intruder? Although we get annoyed at each other we rarely ever fight, so highly charged emotions are practically unheard of in our house. It just seems odd that I was woken up by the sound of an intruder in the early hours after I’d been scared by the idea that we had one.

Oh, incidentally, after Mr. Urvogel checked the house was secure I eventually managed to fall asleep about 40 minutes later once my worry had subsided. I dreamt I came on here and posted about the event! Does that count as a premonition? :lol:
 
I'd say either a very vivid dream or something paranormal (a rogue spirit having a good laugh). I had almost the exact same experience years ago, vividly hearing my roommate return home and lock the door behind him, only to find out that he'd stayed out late and never once stopped back at the house. I posted it somewhere on here..
 
have you ever had anything else spooky happen there? Otherwise i would say maybe the footsteps where conjured up by your subconscious, triggered by your upset and worry over the open door.... although thinking on that a spirit seems a more likely explanation...
 
One of the experiences reported in the old church I used to work in were phantom footsteps.
A chap called Dave was working over one night in the office, being on his own he decided to lock the entrance door.
He told us that he very clearly heard someone walking outside in the warehouse, he just thought that our driver Frank had come back as Frank had his own set of keys and Dave thought he had let himself in.
After a while Dave wondered what Frank was doing as he hadn't either heard anything else or seen him.
So he went into the warehouse,nobody there, he called out and checked it out, nobody there.
Curious,he went to the entrance door and found it still locked,opening it and checking out the yard, there was no van either.
He went home PDQ, Frank told him the next day he got back about an hour after Dave left.
:shock:
 
We had a thread about this very subject a while back! :D

We often hear phantom footsteps on our landing. We'll hear someone walking about upstairs with shoes on, with a sound as if on lino or bare floorboards. However, nobody wears shoes here at night and whoever's wandering around doesn't put any lights on or open or close any doors. :shock:

Took a while for us to realise that we weren't hearing each other at night, especially as, when we had two alert dogs, there wasn't any barking.

It still happens but it doesn't bother us. Why would it? :lol:
 
Kudos to Escargot for courage above and beyond.
If I heard phantom footsteps on the landing,or anywhere else in the house,there isn't an atomic clock on the planet that could measure the time it would take me to climb out of the window :lol:
Not paranormal but scary, my mate Andy was left on his own in the house after his parents went on holiday, being the summer he had the bedroom window open and not long after he went to bed he heard a noise and saw the arm of a bloke trying to climb in, Andy shouted and the burglar dropped and ran off. :madeyes:
 
Me too, me too! I once lived in a Victorian semi detached old cottage in the village of Westleton, Suffolk. My son's friend said he used to live in it when it was all one cottage and the people who owned it before that, had a very large family.

On two occasions, around 9,00pm while sitting in the lounge that had the party wall, we heard the distinct sound of someone running across the bedroom floor above us. it sounded very much like the short fast pace of a child and the sound of feet on floorboards. We had fitted carpets. Needless to say, next door was a holiday let, and nobody was in - I checked!
 
I'm going to chuck my acoustic stuff at this particular wall, although I doubt any will stick in regard to these specific instances.
Four doors down from me lives a family, and the dad, from upstairs in my house sounds like he is shouting a lot, at street level he has a normal speaking voice and from my front room I can barely hear him.
Funny acoustics, that's all it is.
I seriously doubt this is the reason for what has been heard in these cases, just thought I would mention it as something to keep in mind.
 
I will add to Smokehead's accoustic analysis a little anecdote of my own.

Some years ago my next door neighbour complained that he could hear men shouting and clumping up and down the stairs at my house.
At the time I had two adult sons but neither were in residence, one being at university and the other abroad with the army. So, who was causing the noises? :shock:

His daughter solved the mystery. Her dad'd been denying that he was going deaf for years but she'd finally persuaded him to accept a hearing aid, and he'd turned it up too high. He'd been unused to hearing anything much and the offending noises were our normal behaviours cranked up to 11. :lol:
 
From 1985 until 2006, now parents live in a large, old detached property in the North Devon village of Chittlehampton.

They would regularly hear very distinct, and heavy, footsteps stamp across the landing above. I heard this myself on one occasion :shock: It really was inexplicable, although it didn't feel 'spooky' upstairs, thank goodness.

For the record, they had two small dogs and two cats, but they present each time, in front of the fire. The cat flap did not permit access to the main building.
 
Weird.
I will also lob in old central heating pipes and expansion and contraction of floorboards etc,again without suggesting they are the cause of these specific phenomena.
Having said that, one of the strengths of Fortean investigation is the emphasis that is placed on the witness as much as the experience.
It is possible two people will interpret a noise differently, one may ascribe it to a mundane cause, another will think it is evidence of the supernatural.
This is not confrontational in that someone is accused of lying, but an understanding of someones attitudes towards the supernatural is useful, and interesting in itself.
 
I'm completely convinced of the reality of the ghostly footsteps phenomenon, having lived for some years in a house where they were heard semi-regularly. On one occasion I was on a ladder working on a downstairs ceiling and the footsteps crossed the floor above, directly over my head.

Account posted here.

People try to reason that you're hearing heating pipes, creaking joists, branches tapping on windows. If you'd been there you'd think differently.
 
I get footsteps clomping across my landing quite regularly. Usually what happens is really heavy foot steps walking a long, then my bedroom door opening, sometimes it closes after itself too
 
It makes you wonder if it is a basic exercise in haunting
to be mastered by all the newly deceased. :D
(I think I need to watch "Beatlejuice" again !)
 
Thanks for the comments everyone! It seems spooky footsteps are quite common :shock:

Update on my own situation: the next morning I was talking to Mr.Urvogel about it, and he complained I'd made him get out of bed twice. I told him it was only once. He said no, I'd woken him up and told him I'd heard a noise downstairs and to go check it out. I had zero recollection of doing this. Apparently sometimes I do talk to him in my sleep, but I never have any memory of doing so because I'm asleep at the time. So hearing a noise downstairs was definately a dream since I don't remember it. But the footsteps on the landing I remember perfectly. I was certainly awake, and the shock of realising who I thought was the cause was actually in bed with me definately ensured I was awake! So although I did dream the first noise the fact I remember the second proves to me it wasn't just imaginary...

titch4 said:
have you ever had anything else spooky happen there? Otherwise i would say maybe the footsteps where conjured up by your subconscious, triggered by your upset and worry over the open door.... although thinking on that a spirit seems a more likely explanation...
Click to expand...

There's never been anything remotely spooky in the house, so I doubt it's any kind of ghost. tbh I'm more believing that it probably was conjured up by all the emotions. Me being terrified that someone was in the house, him being very upset that he'd scared me so much, combined with being more...receptive I guess whilst asleep maybe triggered the noise.

Still bloody scary at the time though...
 
Actual footsteps can be scary enough.
One night it started snowing, we went to bed and the next morning saw very clear boot prints leading from the top of the garden to the back door.
We didn't hear anything in the night and checking the door no obvious attempt to break could be seen.
Certain people seem to be more sensitive to these things than others,like me a great blundering clodhopper.
So are these things heard in the conventional sense or percieved somehow?
 
I'm not "sensitive" I don't think, I don't generally experience weird stuff, just once in a great while.

In my case the footsteps were a perfectly normal sound, I'm sure they could have been recorded on a tape recorder. Anyone who'd been present would have heard them.
 
smokehead said:
Actual footsteps can be scary enough.
One night it started snowing, we went to bed and the next morning saw very clear boot prints leading from the top of the garden to the back door.
We didn't hear anything in the night and checking the door no obvious attempt to break could be seen.
Click to expand...
That's an interesting one. Did they return to where they came from? Were they big demonic boots such as might be worn by Old Nick himself? I love stories about marks in snow; there's something cool (if you'll pardon the pun) about briefly being able to see what's moving around your local area.
 
That's a good question, tbh I can't remember, there were two very clear bootprints, about a size 10 at a guess just outside the door and I remember seeing the line, but not any leading back, although they must have done I suppose. :?
Prints in snow are cool though, seeing that something has wandered across your garden in the night, certainly a cat, possibly a fox, and what else?
All the best.
 
smokehead said:
Weird.
I will also lob in old central heating pipes and expansion and contraction of floorboards etc,again without suggesting they are the cause of these specific phenomena.
Having said that, one of the strengths of Fortean investigation is the emphasis that is placed on the witness as much as the experience.
It is possible two people will interpret a noise differently, one may ascribe it to a mundane cause, another will think it is evidence of the supernatural.
This is not confrontational in that someone is accused of lying, but an understanding of someones attitudes towards the supernatural is useful, and interesting in itself.
Click to expand...

I know what you mean about central heating, I've been startled several time s by a radiator cranking into life!

Have to say the footsteps were just too human, and too infrequent, to be the CH though.

It remained a genuine mystery until we children eventually sold the house. We neglected to mention the footsteps, of course ;)
 
I think there was a case where someone sued because the house was haunted and the previous owners hadn't told the new ones :p
Estate Agents' blurb sheets could be interesting:
'Nicely finished 3 bedroom semi-detached,central heating,double glazing, charming paranormal activity,believed to be Edwardian' :lol:
I will own up to looking for down to earth reasons first when hearing about paranormal experiences, but I never accuse anyone of lying, I believe they believe so to speak, but their belief may be pre existent,and so their perception may be biased.
Not that this invalidates the experience either, rather I agree with Sherlock Holmes that after all other explanations have been ruled out,whatever remains,however improbable,must be the truth.
Therefore, thorough investigation may find a mundane solution, but it may also reveal an event that is truly inexplicable, and they are the cases that interest me.
 
I remember experiencing this once, in a ground floor bedroom, hearing someone loudly walking the length of the long, roughly 30ft hallway, we hadn't yet had carpet laid so there was just thick, bare concrete. The sound was clear and distinctive akin to platform boots. As the footsteps neared the bedroom doorway they just stopped. There was no one home but me and my dad at the time, and we were in that same bedroom together, he heard it just as well as I did.
 
I thought it was a British case, but the American one also fits the bill.
Working in a supposedly haunted church,a great blundering clodhopper like me,apart from a creepy feeling in the upstairs area,never saw or heard a thing.
Another story I was told was that a driver was lurking around on the dock, and Wendy,one of our office ladies wondered what he was doing, so she asked him.
He said he was interested in old buildings and churches and asked if he could have a look around.
Wendy said ok,and as they moved into the bottom stores she said the hair rose up on the back of his head,apparently, if you have never seen it you would not appreciate how weird it is.
The driver said he was a medium and claimed he saw the ghosts of an old woman and a little girl.
"They won't hurt you" he said and off he went.
I think that's what I mean by 'sensitive'
 
Could belong on this thread, though it didn't happen to me.

When I lived in a village as a child, we knew the family who lived in the closest house, although I myself never went in the house. The woman was the aunt of a man who's a long-time family friend, called Rob.

Many years after, the house (I think it belonged to the local farmer) was extended and rebuilt and a top flat-race jockey lived there. He added more on to the house, including a pool, and in time sold it. Later, he wrote his autobiography and Rob, who now lives in Lambourne and is heavily into racing, read it. Apparently a friend of the jockey came down from up north and stayed over, but in the wee hours did a bunk round to the local pub, where he knocked up the owners and asked for a room. It turned out that he'd been in bed, the lights off, and seen a black shadow by the window that terrified him so much he fled.

Rob went on to tell me that whenever he stayed with his aunt in that house (before its remodelling) they often heard slow, heavy footsteps on the landing, and coming down the stairs. In the winter, to keep the heat in, they would close the doors if they were watching t.v. and no-one was out of the room in the toilet or kitchen, etc when these steps were heard. (This was before central heating was put in; like us, they had an open fire and those portable paraffin heaters to take into the bedrooms).
Rob said it was quite normal to hear them, and that his aunt saw a black shape in her bedroom (which became one of the spare/guest rooms).
They believed it to be the previous occupant, a woman who had difficulty getting about in her later years and died in that bedroom.

I had been wanting to research ghosts in and around that village. It is very small, and out of the way, and I never came up with much until Rob told me about that house, which was next door to where I lived! (And a few other local stories came to light)
He was very down-to-earth about it, quite amused that a strong young man should leg it in the middle of the night, when his aunt had lived there for years with the footsteps and the 'shape'.

He said that the steps were quite deliberate and slow, which perhaps an older woman with difficulties walking would be, and rather heavy. Often they would be on the landing, less often they would come downstairs, but he his aunt just ignored it, as it was so much a part of the house.
 
Back in 1975 my wife and I lived in an old house in a small village in Maine. The house was on the bank of the Sheepscott River and was built in 1898. Being on a bit of a slope, the basement had a wooden door that opened into the back yard. The front door of the house was on the street. The front door opened into a dining room and behind the dining room at the back of the house was the kitchen. Between the dining room and kitchen there was a doorway that led down wooden steps into the cellar which had a dirt floor. Our bedroom was off the dining room, opposite the cellar door. We had two cats back then, and I was aware at that time that the cats didn't like to be in the dining room. When they felt a need to pass THROUGH the dining room they always make a wide circle around the big side board that was next to our bedroom door. We thought that was pretty odd.

Then one night we were in bed at around 1:00 AM. We had just gone to bed and the house was dark and quiet. We suddenly heard someone fiddling with the lock on the front door, then we heard the door open and close. We both heard heavy footsteps in the dining room just on the other side of the wall from our bed. I immediately jumped out of bed and grabbed a big heavy wine bottle that we were using as a candle holder. I held that bottle ready to attack and I whipped the bedroom door open, positive I was about to encounter a burglar. I saw nothing unusual. I went around the house turning on lights and searching everywhere. I checked the door and found it locked. I finally gave up and turned off the lights and went back to bed. My head no sooner hit the pillow than we heard the same footsteps outside the bedroom door again. Furious, I jumped up and grabbed my wine bottle weapon and flew out the bedroom door again. And again I found nothing. I KNEW someone had to be there hiding somewhere and I couldn't understand how he made himself so scarce so fast. I did another more thorough search of the house, like checking under the couch and behind the couch and behind curtains. I finally decided there couldn't possibly be anyone hiding, and bewildered, I turned off the lights and went back to bed. And almost immediately we both heard the footsteps again. It was at that point I decided there was no future in persuing the matter further. We laid in our bed and we heard the footsteps go over to the cellar door. We heard the door open and the footsteps went down the stairway into the cellar. We heard the inside bolt on the cellar operating and we heard the cellar door scraping across the dirt floor as it opened. Then nothing else.
The next morning we inspected the place. We found the front door still closed and locked. We found the cellar door to the back yard still closed and bolted from the inside, and no fresh door scrape marks on the dirt floor. It seems whatever we both heard that night, it was all just sounds and nothing more. I can't explain it.

Now, the spooky part. I never had any other strange experiences in that old house. I never felt spooky there, except around the third time we heard the footsteps. But years later, my wife told me that she and her friends had some strange things happen. The most alarming thing was when our friend Peggy came to visit her. I was at work when this happened. Peggy went to brush her hair in the big mirror over the side table next to our bedroom door. Peggy let out a blood curdling SCREAM. My wife ran to see what was wrong and Peggy was trembling. When she looked in the mirror she saw her own reflection, and behind her the reflection of a man standing there!

There was something definitely strange about that house. I can't say if it was haunted by a ghost. Maybe some other quantum physical phenomenon nobody has ever guessed at yet. I do know that two of us heard the same thing that night.
 
:shock: That's a proper haunted house there. :D

I've mentioned this before elsewhere, but it bears another outing:

Some years ago I went to our local Spiritualist church for a course. They do all sorts of New Age whimsy-quimsy stuff there.

It's built from two Victorian terraced houses and has lots of space upstairs, with a library and a lounge and so on.

Anyway... while we were supposed to be doing someting quiet on the course, like a bit of meditating, I could hear someone clumping about up there. Sounded like boots on bare boards. I thought this rather rude, and said so at the discussion afterwards.

However, we were told that we were the only people in the building. (I sceptically counted everyone out at home-time and found this to be true.)

The footsteps are so often heard there that it's no big deal. Not everyone hears them but people who do always assume there's someone wandering about upstairs.

I was fascinated. 8)
 
I haven't personally had any other unexplained footstep experiences, but I've heard and read of a lot of them. I used to work in an airplane hangar in Maine that had some ghost stories attached to it. A friend of mine was a supervisor there and was working one Christmas day. Most everyone else was off that day but he had one employee working with him. He told that employee he could go home and have Christmas dinner with his family and then come back afterward. That left my friend alone in the hangar. He eventually got hungry and went to a bank of vending machines located under the metal stairway leading to the second floor offices. While he was standing there deciding what he wanted to eat he heard footsteps coming loudly down the stairway above him. He assumed the other employee had come back to work and he stepped around toward the bottom of the stairs to greet him. There was nobody there. He got a creepy uneasy feeling and decided just to stay in the foreman's office, but walking back to the office he heard footsteps in the hangar. Someone was walking around the airplanes parked in there. He decided he better find out who was in there and went looking. The footsteps could be heard going to the far end of the hangar where there was a door leading to the outside of the hangar. He heard the door open. He hurried and got to the door and found it open. The snow outside was undisturbed. No footprints. At that time he decided to hustle himself back to the office and STAY there!
Eventually the other employee did return. He walked into the office and saw my friend. He said, "Man, you look like you saw a ghost"!
 
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