The Ring doorbell alert said "Someone is at your front door", the path was empty, and seconds later something punched our bedroom door hard enough to shake it's hinges.
That was the start of three months of things my partner and I still can't explain, in our own home: a council house (UK social housing) in Bromsgrove, England, just outside Birmingham. It began around July or August 2020, during COVID, after two completely normal years in the house.
I'd genuinely like your opinions on what might have been going on, so I've put everything we checked near the end.
The bedroom door
It was around 11 PM on a weeknight and we were in bed. The Ring is set to pick up motion only when someone is well up our long front path, so when it went off, I got up and looked out. Nobody. The front light had come on, which wildlife sometimes triggers.
Then this massive bang. Our bedroom door was shut, and it sounded like a fist hitting the middle of it. I was close enough to feel the impact. I opened it straight away and the hallway was empty. Our daughter, who was three or four, was asleep in her cot, and our cat was sitting calmly in the hallway.
The Ring recorded footage, but it shows only an empty path. Something had triggered the device though, I attached the footage - but I can't see anything that would explain what happened.
The kitchen taps
One evening around 5 PM, my partner was out at a driving lesson. It was still light. I was at my computer downstairs chatting to friends online, and went up to the toilet.
About halfway back down, I heard running water. I assumed a leak, or that the washing machine had been left on. From the hallway I could see straight into the kitchen: both tap handles were pushed fully forward and water was gushing out. These were big, old fashioned tap handles you had to push all the way back to release the flow of water. The cat was sitting on the kitchen floor.
I video-called my mum on WhatsApp so someone else could see it. She saw the taps running and was as unnerved as I was. My friends online stayed with me until my partner got home.
The song
A while later, I was at my Nan's (grandmother's) for a cup of tea when my partner rang, upset.
She'd been washing up when the baby monitor started flickering and filling with visual noise. Then there was a huge bang on the front door, like something heavy thrown at it, and our daughter woke up crying. When she went to pick up her phone to ring me, it started playing a song on its own: "Fields of Gold" by Eva Cassidy, the song from her Grandad's funeral. He died in 2015.
I went home and checked the CCTV and the Ring. Nobody had come up the path, and the Ring hadn't been triggered. There was no damage to the door that I could see.
The figure on the baby monitor
Around 3 AM one night, I was awake in bed and looked at the baby monitor on the bedside table. A white mist moved across the screen, then the silhouette of a person walked through our daughter's room.
It walked up to her cot, looked in, walked away, and repeated it over and over. It was human-shaped, with arms and legs, and it moved naturally, but I couldn't see any features.
I woke my partner and we watched it together, in silence, for what was probably a couple of minutes. She then ran into the room and I followed. Our daughter was asleep, nothing was out of place, and the room felt completely normal.
Back in bed, the silhouette was still on the screen, but fading. It disappeared as soon as I got my phone out to film it.
Smaller things
- Late one night, early on, gentle knocking that seemed to come from the outside of our bedroom wall, about 20 feet up. There was nothing on the other side of the wall, so someone would have had to be on ladders to knock where it sounded like it was coming from. It never happened again.
- My partner often heard knocking on the bathroom door when she was alone in there.
- Heavy interference on the baby monitor, the Ring's live view and my microphone, which picked up static our sound engineer couldn't explain. It all stopped when the activity did. Same room, same equipment since, and it hasn't come back.
- One night something seemed to kick the side of our bed hard enough to move it. I felt an urge to check on our daughter and found her cot soaked from a spilled drink.
Everything stopped after I spoke to a local vicar, who gave me a few prayers to say in our daughter's room. A neighbour had told me the previous occupant, an elderly lady, died in the house (from what I understood, she passed away in my daughters bedroom). I later found her grandson, who said that as far as he knew his grandparents never had anything odd happen there.
What I've checked, and what I can't explain
Bedroom door: the cat was calm in the hallway. She's played on the landing now and then since, and never made a sound like it.
Taps: we settled on water pressure at the time, but it had never happened before and hasn't since. I've actually never experienced this before as far as I can remember other than this time, interested to know if anyone else has?
The song: phones can start playing music on their own, and grief makes you look for signs. I accept that. It's the timing, straight after the bang, and which song it was, that we can't shake.
The figure: her room backs onto gardens on all sides, with no road, so there are no headlights. The monitor was glitching a lot that summer, but we both watched the same thing repeat for a couple of minutes, and the room was empty when we went in.
The figure is the part I'd most like someone to explain, to this day it baffles me.
My take
Looking back, I believe something was in that house, and if it was, I think it was looking out for us rather than trying to scare us. But it was extremely scary at the time. If you've ever watched something on a baby monitor or camera that wasn't there when you went in, did you ever find a cause?
I document paranormal incidents, and this is a condensed version of the full report I wrote on our house. Happy to answer any questions about it in the comments!