To preface this, I live in a very rural area. The neighbors to my right are 1/4 mile away, are Mennonite and there’s a ton of farm land and hills between me and them. The neighbors across from me are older, quiet and go to bed at like 7pm, and the neighbors to my left moved out this weekend. I live in a house on a little under an acre of property. Our houses are pretty spaced out along the back road we live on- not in a development, and we don’t get many cars through here. Most horse and buggies. The corn is high right now so it dampens noise from other houses (but it’s generally very quiet around here). I have two kids (2yo and 9 week old) and there father lives in the house too. My 2yo has the first bedroom, my bedroom is next to hers (the 9 week old sleeps in my room) and their dad has the master bedroom across from my room. The 2yo door is always shut when she’s sleeping, but the rest of us keep our doors open at night.

So I’ve always had anxiety about people breaking into my house. Which has never happened to me before, but to many scary movies and tv shows growing up will do that to yah. I notice every noise at night. And I have a direct view into the master bedroom from my room. And it’s very obvious when he gets up and leaves his room. At night when everyone is settled in, I’ve been hearing noises in the walk-in basement. To the point where I have scurried from the living room to the master bedroom to ask their dad to check out the basement. When he goes down and checks he doesn’t ever see anything, but he always checks for my peace of mind.

Last night I had probably the most heart racing, body shaking in fear experience. It was 3am, and I heard a car door shut outside. Which is totally out of the norm, but I was like, okay, take a breath. I’m sure the neighbors just needed to get something from there car. So about 5 mins later I got up and peaked out of the windows in my room and I didn’t see anyone or anything. (I also would be able to see headlights shining through if a car was turned on at my neighbors, driving down the road or in my driveway). And about 5 mins after that I heard noises coming from either the master bedroom or the basement (presumably the kids father doing something). I got up and peeked into the master bedroom and he was laying on the futon sleeping. So I creeped down the hallway to the bathroom and peeked in to see if my 2 yo had maybe wondered out of her room. But she hadn’t. So I went back and sat on my bed. Then another 5 minutes go by and I hear clattering in the sink. Like metal on metal clattering. Sounded like someone was dropping a utensil into it. I jumped up and my heart started pounding. I was watching the walls to see if I saw any shadows. I finally got the courage to scurry across the hall to wake up my kids father. I told him what I had heard, so he stumbled into the kitchen, me about 2 ft behind him. No one was there. So I went to examine the sink and a DIRTY FORK was sitting in it. I had JUST done the dishes after dessert so the sink should’ve been empty. And I was the last person out in the kitchen. I walked over to the basement door and saw it was cracked. I knew I shut it when I came up from doing laundry, so I asked the kids father if he had left the door to the basement open. He said “yeah I probably did when I came back up”, but I’m pretty sure he was bluffing because I don’t think he went into the basement yesterday at all. So he moved our heavy iron made kitchen chair in front of the basement door and locked it. So then I checked out the rest of the house. (Closets, pantry, bathroom). I decided it must be in my head. So I sat back down in my room. Well then I heard more noises. I heard footsteps coming up and down the basement steps. Then everything went quiet. I heard a bang on the wall from my daughters room, which was just her flipping over in her sleep. A few times I heard noises from the screen to my windows, but when I looked out I saw nothing. Then around 5:15am I heard a car door shut again, which could’ve been my neighbor leaving for work. But I didn’t see anything when I looked out of the window. And I heard no more noises.

To sum it up, I heard a lot of noises and found a dirty fork in the sink, but I didn’t see anyone. Nothing else was disturbed.

We do have 3 couches in the basement set up to relax on (my escape spot for the kids). So it’s possibly someone is breaking in through the basement door somehow and sleeping on the couches. I haven’t been down there to check on things because I’m still scared. We have a ring doorbell on the front but it’s been dead for a while. So I’m charging it up for tonight.

It’s more believable to me that it’s paranormal activity more than a squatter. This area is super safe and I just don’t see how or why someone around here would do anything in our home. Nothing was taken. But this isn’t the first time I’ve had nights like last night.