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After we moved out of our most haunted house (see post "Most haunted(?) house I ever lived in") in 2009, I lived with hubby and kids on the ground floor of a big house in the country. There were woods, a swamp and a mountain on three sides of the property, one neighbor on the other side. Two of hubby's sisters had bedrooms on the second floor. They had a big German Shepherd, we'll call her Lady. They also had friends over almost every night, being single and in their early 20's, and oftentimes after I put the kids to bed downstairs, hubby and I would spend some time up there with everyone. It was a big giant family basically.

The laundry room for the house was downstairs off my kitchen, so I was very used to one sister-in-law or another walking through our living room and kitchen with a basket of laundry on the days they had dibs on the washer and dryer. One day in particular, hubby's youngest sister walks through in her pajamas while I'm cleaning up in the kitchen, puts her laundry in the machine and mentions she'll be back after her shower to switch it to the dryer.

I go about cleaning up the living room next, and only five minutes later, while I'm bending over to pick up a toy, I see someone in black pants and a white T-shirt walk through the kitchen towards the laundry room. Weird, because honestly, plain white T-shirt would most likely be my husband, but he's at work. It could be SIL back down to throw something in the wash she had forgotten, but she's supposed to be in the shower now; other sister is at work or school. I wait to hear any voice or noise at all from the laundry room, but enough seconds go by that whoever it is should be back out by now. So I go look in and of course no one is there. I should mention there's no other way out of the laundry room besides back through my kitchen.

A good 20 minutes goes by, and who walks through the living room, in black pants, white T-shirt and a towel on her head, but sister-in-law fresh from the shower. I tell her I swore I saw her 20 minutes ago wearing that exact outfit, and obviously she says I must be seeing things because 20 minutes ago she was in the shower. I don't know who or what I saw.

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Another time, at night, I'm laying on the living room couch, TV is on but I'm not paying attention because it's commercials, and I'm facing the inside of the couch with one leg slung over the back of it to get comfy. I can see behind the couch into the dining area, and I can see down past the side of the couch, where my feet are, into the kitchen. From the hallway, coming past the dining room table towards me, is a tiny little green light. I mean really tiny, and a good four or five feet off the floor. In the dark I assumed it was the little LED light some android phones had by the top of the phone, and that my SIL was holding her phone up to her ear, sneaking through to the laundry room. The deal was that they generally didn't come downstairs past a certain hour, so it wouldn't be weird for her to assume I was asleep and try to sneak by quietly to grab her stuff from the dryer that late.

I couldn't really make out or sense any sort of human figure there, so I didn't talk to whoever it was. By all my senses, it really was just a green dot of light navigating through the dining area, toward me in the living room, turning at the couch to head into the kitchen, and disappearing into the laundry room. Well now I know it's sister-in-law on her phone, because she actually went into the laundry room as I suspected was the case.

30 seconds pass and I don't see the laundry room light click on. Another 30 seconds and I don't hear the dryer door open. Another minute and I'm starting to feel weirded out. So I throw on my phone's flashlight and shine it into the kitchen. That should get her attention, but no, nothing. So I finally get up and go in there, flip on the laundry room light, and as you're expecting, nothing. No one in there. Never saw anything like that weird little green light again and I have no idea what it was.

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My oldest sister-in-law had the biggest bedroom upstairs. She and I have been close since before I married her brother. She used to have a best friend (call him Derek for this entry). We all thought SIL and Derek would be married someday. He practically lived at her house growing up and we all felt like he was already our future brother-in-law. This kid was older than his years, hard worker, 4H, farmhand. The boots, the trucker hat, the whole thing. We just loved him. Unfortunately, Derek was killed in a farm equipment accident in December '06 at only 17 years old.

By the time we lived in the same house together it was late 2009. Sister-in-law worked odd hours and it wasn't weird for her to be in bed at 9/10AM some mornings. One morning I needed to run to the store to get some medicine but didn't want to take my son with me. He was probably less than 3, my only kid at the time. It would've taken longer to get him bundled up and ready to go than to just go and get back by myself. I brought him upstairs and SIL let him lay with her while I ran to the pharmacy. When I came home she and my toddler were sitting up in bed and she was near tears. You see where this is going, right?

Apparently while SIL was still half asleep, toddler was talking to someone in her room.

[Have you seen my post about "The Man" only my children could see? Same house, but "the man" always stayed outside. This was the only time either of my kids said they saw someone inside the house]

When SIL asks who toddler is talking to, he tells her it's the boy next to her bed. Now, she's heard him talk about "The Man" or "The Guy" before, so she's pretty freaked out that this being is now inside the house. But he tells her it's not "The Guy." This is a boy with dirt on his pants and wearing a hat. She shows him a picture of Derek and I believe that, while he didn't confirm "That's him!," he said something like "like him, that's his hat." Something to that affect. Enough to confirm for her that her friend was still with her. I thought that was so nice. I love that story.

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Last one. It's one of those awesome weekend nights where both kids, probably 1 and 4 years old now, are asleep in their room and hubby and I can hang out upstairs in oldest sister-in-law's big-ass bedroom with her friends. Board games, snacks, beer; a relatively quiet gathering of maybe 7 or 8 of us altogether. We're waiting on one more person, and we'll know when he's here before he even rings the bell because Lady the German shepherd will start barking as soon as he shuts his car door in the driveway. I've got the baby monitor on for myself in case someone wakes up and needs me downstairs.

The baby monitor base is in my kids' room at the bottom of the front stairway. Halfway up the stairway is the landing for the front door. So any noise in that front entryway is going to be picked up by the monitor. It's no surprise when we hear the dog start barking, from where we sat in the back bedroom and from the monitor receiver. This was an analog monitor from 2010. Not digital, no video, nothing fancy.

Anyway, through the monitor and with our own ears simultaneously, we hear Lady bark, then the doorbell ring, then the front door open, our friend greeting Lady, the front door close, and his footsteps up the stairs.

He gets into the room we're all in and as we're all saying hi to him, we hear *only over the monitor*, the doorbell ring again, and the dog bark again. It wasn't actually happening though. We heard the real thing just a minute ago, both from a couple rooms away and on the monitor *at the same time, with no delay.*

This second time the monitor started up, it was not—dog barks, bell rings, door closes—like when friend actually came in.

This time it was just—bell rings once, dog barks a couple times—and then nothing. All while the matter of fact was that it was not actually happening at the moment. I don't know what that monitor was picking up.

It wasn't digital, so it wasn't just repeating recording from earlier. And even if it was, it wasn't playing in the right order.

It wasn't picking up a different channel, because we only had one neighbor in like a quarter mile radius, and they didn't have a baby. Or a dog for that matter.

Eight or nine of us kept trying to figure out what we heard for the rest of the night, but we never came up with a decent answer. One of them felt uncomfortable hanging out in that room after that.

About six years ago we left that rental home and bought our first house in the suburbs. I haven't seen or heard anything even bordering on supernatural here since then :)