Bumps in the Night (and Morning and Afternoon...)

The family and I have just passed our 8th anniversary here at our current home, and the date did not pass without a few strange happenings.

Before I explain the things that took place over the past week, I should first note that the last year was entirely mundane - no paranormal events were witnessed at all. The last few days have certainly made up for lost time.

On Wednesday, my husband and I were in opposite sides of the house (not terribly far apart) and heard a strange tinkling of bells come from the dining room in between. Immediately noticing an out-of-place sound, we both went in to the dining room to investigate. We found nothing that could have produced the bell-like noise and were unable to replicate the sound by shaking furniture, stomping around, jumping, etc. After discussing it for a while, we wrote off the event as "weird", but were not quick to label it the work of "Bob".

The following afternoon, I came in from running errands and found two items in the dining room (a decorative cake pan and a small painting on a stretched canvas) had fallen off the walls and were sitting on the floor. After examining the nails, which were still firmly set in the plaster, I stretched my mind as far as I could for an alternate explanation but came up empty.

On Thursday evening, and again on Friday and Saturday morning, the entire family detected the uncanny odor of fresh tobacco - NOT SMOKE, but tobacco - in one bedroom of the house. The scent seemed to travel from one area to the next, but no one item in the room had the same smell as what we noticed in the air. After getting a bit annoyed at trying to find the source of the odor for days, my husband (the skeptic, remember?) reminded me that the original owner of the house was a lifelong employee of a local tobacco company.

Coincidence? Possibly. We are not discounting the idea that there is a perfectly normal reason for all of these experiences, we've simply not found one yet.