Tampering with the alarm clock volume

My alarm goes off on weekdays at 5am sharp. I don't use that annoying beeping sound. I tune the radio to one end of the dial, where all the white noise lives, and turn up the volume. So when the alarm goes off, its loud white noise.

Like everyone I'm sure, either I or Holly reaches over to hit the snooze button a few times.

For some reason today I was overly tired. I usually wake up only a few times after the snooze button is hit. This morning I let it go a few times more.

I woke up at some point later, and the volume of the white noise was turned down. I thought that Holly must have turned it down instead of hitting the snooze button. I reached over, turned the volume back up, and hit the snooze button. I got up a few minutes later, started my morning and forgot about it.

Today in the car while running some errands, Holly told me some extra info. This morning, at 5:09, the alarm went off for the second time. Holly reached over to hit the snooze button and as she was reaching for it, the volume of the white noise went down. She snatched her hand away from the alarm clock for a second, then reached over and hit the snooze button, rolled over and went back to sleep.

My corroboration of this event is the fact that I had to reach over Holly and physically turn the volume knob back up. So there was nothing wrong with the radio. Someone actually turned the volume knob of the radio down as Holly was reaching for it.

Follow-up to Holly's Hello

I talked more with Holly this morning about her experience from 4am. I was under the impression that she had the exact same experience as I did - that the "Hello?" came from outside the room, that it was loud, and it was phrased in the form of a question.

Boy was I wrong. Although still a little girl's voice, it came from inside our bedroom - right next to our bed in fact. It was quiet, and soft - almost a whisper. And it was phrased in the form of a greeting rather than a question.

Holly also told me that a few nights ago a soft "Hi" was spoken near her ear. This was also in a child voice and it originated from next to the bed. She admitted that she didn't mention this because she thought she might have been dreaming, but last night's episode confirmed that indeed she wasn't.

Ernie, my constant freaky toy companion

Back in August, I blogged about the strange behavior of a Sleepy Time Ernie, packed away in a box somewhere in this unfinished basement. Unfortunately, I work down here as well, tucked in the corner of this basement where my future office room will be if I ever get a chance to start finishing this basement.

Anyway, Ernie is still going, taunting me with his exclamations of how well he feels. It's mot constant, but very intermittent.

BUT, he did just go off ten times in a row.

"I feel GREAT!"

Which caused me to kick off this quick entry. I think I'm going to have to find that Ernie this week, if not today. I will have to find him and do some tests on him to see if indeed the mechanism that causes him to speak is broken.

Holly hears the "Hello?"

This morning, fifteen minutes before the alarm went off, Holly woke me and told me to turn the bedroom light on. Half-asleep, complaining, and asking why, I stumbled out of bed to comply.

She told me she heard had rolled over and was awake for a few seconds, when she heard, very distinctly, someone say "Hello?"

I asked her if it was a girl's voice, thinking back to when I had the same experience and she confirmed that it was indeed a little girls voice.

We lay there in silence, myself wondering if I would hear the voice. No voice, but I did hear things that have been missing the last few weeks: knocking on the walls and in the ceiling.

Could it be the holidays are over and the girl has returned?

I got tired of hitting the snooze button, got up, and came downstairs to start work.

Quiet during Christmas season

I noticed something this morning as I was waking up for work. The house has been quiet, very quiet since Thanksgiving. There are no knocks on the walls, no mysterious bangs, no weird compression noises from the shower stall in my bathroom at night, no voices. It's been blessedly quiet.

As I've stated before, the main culprit of the cause of these noises is a little girl. She's been heard and seen by just about pretty much every one of us who live in this house. I've also been told by several people who live in the area that a girl who died in a barn fire back in the 19th century. This house is only a few hundred yards down the road towards town. I don't think it's a big stretch to assume that the girl that visits this house is the girl that was killed in the fire.

So my theory is this: what if the reason things are so quiet is because the girl has returned to the house she died in for the holidays. What if Christmas is such a significant event for her, that she feels compelled to return there for this period of time?

Shelby sees something white peek around the corner at her

The girls are home for Thanksgiving this week. They were all downstairs watching TV in the family room. I had went upstairs for something and was on my way back down to the basement to continue working when Shelby stopped me.

I'll recreate the conversation I had with her from memory.

"I just saw something white peek out of the bathroom door at me," she said. Her voice was low, almost whispering like she didn't want the whatever she just saw to hear her.

"You did? Are you sure it wasn't your imagination playing tricks on you?"

"Yes. I saw it out of the corner of my eye, and when I turned to look, it ducked back into the bathroom."

I just nodded and said, "Well, you know funny stuff goes on around here."

What am I supposed to tell her? She's seeing things? She's getting too old for that. I don't want her to start questioning her own sanity at 11!

Three knocks in the early morning

Early this morning I woke up for some unknown reason, and lay there, trying to return to sleep.

A few minutes later, three knocks happened in quick succession. The sound had an "echo" quality to it, so I knew it came from the foyer, which has hardwood floors and is open to the second floor above.

I thought that maybe it might have been Jack, my larger dog, dreaming and tapping his tail on the floor, but the taps were too quick for that.

I then thought of Bobby, my Jack Russell Terrier, and how he barks furiously whenever someone knocks on the front door, or any door inside the house, or even the dinner table. So... why didn't he bark? Did he not hear the noise?

I saw a Ghost Hunters episode a few weeks ago where there were two investigators, only feet apart. One heard a voice, and even captured that voice on a recorder, and the other investigator, only feet away in another room, separated only by an open doorway, heard nothing. Very strange. Could this phenomenon be occurring with me and the dogs? Could whomever made the tapping sounds enable only my ears to hear it, and not the dogs?