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Wow! Interesting stories from everyone, but I'm not seeing much in the way of answers to the questions mattshady brought out.....let me see if "the ancient Tiggerella" can shed a little light on things.....
First off, I'd like to admit that I ended up at this web site because of a fascination with ghosts, ghouls and other things that go bump in the night, so I've done a LOT of reading in my 44 years on this earth - especially about ghosts, ghouls and other things that go bump in the night.....
In my many years of reading, I've found many references to poltergeists appearing when there is a teenaged girl who has just started getting visits from "her monthly friend". I've also read and heard tales of spirits being trapped on earth due to a sudden death (wherein the spirit doesn't know that the earthly body has died and is still trying to live). In short, it's entirely possible that all the places you've shared stories about are haunted, but I have yet to find something that truly works among the many means of ridding the area of spirits, so you may end up just having to live with yours.
In the meantime, what do you think of my little tale (below) - and the reasons I began looking into ghosts, ghouls, etc.?
You see, I grew up in an old farmhouse in a small Maine town, and every night, just about the time my parents went to bed in their room on the first floor, the stairs from the first floor to the second floor would creak, one after the other, as if someone were slowly climbing them. When we mentioned this to our parents, Dad always thought it funny to tell us that our Grampy Dow, who had died when I was only 9 months old, was just coming by to check on his grandkids. Dad usually followed this up with an admonition to be in bed when Grampy came to check or he'd do something really scary to make sure we'd never try again, but the one night I stayed up to see if it really was Grampy, I heard the creaking slowly coming toward me - but saw nothing at all. However, my hair is standing up on the back of my neck just remembering the cold breeze that seemed to brush past me when the creaking stopped, as if Grampy had gone by to check our beds.....and I never tried to see who was coming upstairs ever again.
I was still living in that same house when my father died there of cancer during my first year in college, and although I thought the old house couldn't possibly get any creepier, I'll never forget one of my last visits home before moving out forever.
My brother, who was still in high school, was away at a jazz band festival and my mom had gone to the store next door to get a few things, so I was home alone watching tv in the living room with all the lights out except in the living room. I heard the front door open and close, saw the kitchen light go on, and then heard the door of the kitchen woodstove swing open. "I just loaded that up about ten minutes ago." I yelled, expecting Mom to make some comment, even if it was just to thank me for doing so, as she almost always did, but no one said anything, so I thought she may have not heard what I said and got up to go see what she'd brought home for tv watching snacks. Imagine my surprise when I got out to the kitchen to find the door to the woodstove wide open - and no one around to have opened it. Not wanting to believe that I hadn't just imagined what happened, I firmly shut the woodstove door, made sure the damper was properly closed (ruling out an errant wind as the culprit that opened the door the first time), and shut the light back out on my way out of the room.
Before I got all the way into the living room (which involved crossing just one room), the kitchen light was back on and someone was banging around in the woodstove again. This time, I didn't say anything and tiptoed as quietly as I could back to the kitchen door so I could catch whoever was playing the prank on me - and almost wet myself when there was still no one there, but the damper and the door to the woodstove had both been reopened again......
Mom swore that it was either someone's idea of a prank or my vivid imagination, but I don't guess I need to tell you that I went through every book on the paranormal I could find that had suggestions on how to get rid of an unwanted spirit - and I tried every one out on that house before Mom finally sold the place. It wasn't until about two years ago when we were talking about the latest Stephen King book I was reading that she finally admitted to me that she'd had several scary things happen to her after Dad died in the house such as coming in late at night and having lights turn themselves on in other rooms when she knew there was no one else in the house. She said what finally made it stop was the night she got downright pissed about going all through the house with a baseball bat for the fourth time in five days and hollered "Dammit, Bob, will you quit turning on the lights like that? I'm less scared of the dark than I am of your shenanigans!" She said she had no more scary things happen after that, but the person who bought the house has asked her a couple of times if there was a problem with the electricity, because lights seem to go on by themselves......