I grew up in an old house that is best described as a pièce de crap. It squeaked, it creaked, and made all the usual creepy house noises that a house makes as it struggles to stay together.
My mother, however, swore that there was a ghost in the house. We all made fun of her cause that's how we rolled, but to her credit, we would often hear what sounded like someone walking around upstairs. Like, it would start at one side of the house and you could follow the sound as it travelled across the floor. Us rational people chalked it up to the house shifting/falling apart but mom wasn't convinced.
As time went on, mom confessed to us that strange things were happening during the day when she was home by herself. She said that things would suddenly go missing and then turn up in weird places or in places they hadn't been a minute earlier. Again, we chalked it up as a Momism and just assumed she sucked at finding things. Plus she liked the sauce.
One night, teeny bopper me had teeny bopper boyfriend (tbb) over. I went to the can and when I got back, tbb wasn't looking so good and wanted to leave. After much prodding, he finally admitted that as stupid and embarrassing as it sounded, he thought he saw a ghost over in the corner.
Now, tbb knew nothing about our house. As young and naive as I was, even I knew that "My mom says our house is haunted" = total game killer.
Well, tbb's confession did startle me a little but I chalked it up to some weird coincidence. When I casually told mom about it the next day, well, holy shit. See, tbb was native and mom believes that natives can see that shit because they are more spiritual so now she was beyond convinced that we had a ghost.
Not long after, I started to notice that things would either go missing from my bedroom or I'd find them in places that I was 99% sure I hadn't left them. I convinced myself it was just simple absent-mindedness on my part - until this one day.
There was this bottle of lotion I used to keep on my dresser. I look over and it's not there. Assuming it had been knocked off, I checked behind, around and under the dresser - no dice. WTF lotion, where'd you go? Checked the floor, under the bed, in the bathroom, nothing. Turned around and nearly blew my pants out.
There, in plain sight, where I had just looked, was the bottle of lotion. I felt my brain skip as it tried to process what had occurred. Every rational thought was telling me that what happened was not rational so I kept it on the downlow, even though the same type of thing happened several more times after that.
The most disturbing incident also ended up being the last incident. I was getting ready for a club meet and went to put on my uniform and lo and behold my sash (as all 90's uniforms involved sashes) was missing. The sash was an integral part of the uniform and I was running late so in teenage girl hysterics, I tore my closet apart looking for it. I couldn't find it, my mom couldn't find it, and there was nowhere else it should have been except attached to my goddam uniform. As frustration increased, rationality deceased, until I finally lost my shit and yelled out something along the lines of "Ghost, I'm tired of this shit!" I immediately felt like a moron.
Then 'ploop'. The sash lands on the floor in front of me. From inside the closet.
I still won't say I believe in ghosts but I don't like thinking about what happened in that house. All I know is that after that day, nothing strange ever happened to me again.