Ok, so to start off... I am reluctant to even post this.

I do not believe in any supernatural entities and I really don't even believe in "god" (I believe there is a higher power, but it is not how we see it in religion).

You can check my posts and see that I haven't even posted in any topics like this before, I am a science and politics guy...

But I woke up about an hour ago for no particular reason. My wife was still asleep so I came in the living room to have some tea and read what is happening in the news so far this morning. My cat followed me and was keeping my feet warm while I was surfing the net.

And then we (the cat and I) began hearing a "tap" noise on the wall.

Now I don't live in a huge house, but it is a large antebellum home my family has owned for two generations. I grew up in this house but moved after college and haven't been back here in close to eleven years. We recently moved back (my wife, myself, and the cat) after my mother decided the weather was nicer in California.

So this "tap" noise starts out in the hallway connected to my living room/back den. It is only one single tap, not like a rattle or multiple sounds. And I'm pretty sure it wasn't a usual ambient sound because my cat reacted to it also.

The "tap" began moving along the halls and through the rooms of my house... One tap, and one wall at a time. It would be in almost timed intervals, and it never seemed to skip a room, or a wall inside the room. For example when it began in the hallway, it started on the back wall, and then I heard it next on the wall that connects at a ninety-degree angle before it "moved" onto the next wall in the next room.

After the third or fourth tap, my cat ran after the sound into the other room to, I presume, track down what it was. She (my cat) came back a few minutes later and the taps continued through the house until they came back through the kitchen, and back down the second hallway to my den.

The cat's head is still reacting and turning to face it every time it moves walls, and after it gets back to the door to my den it stops and seems to go away.

About fifteen minutes later it starts again in my front hallway and starts heading to the front rooms where the door is, and you can hear the wind chimes on my door jingle a little. (I still don't have an electric door buzzer because if someone shows up they know to call and I am expecting them, so I have a knocker and wind chimes on the door to let me know when it opens)

I open and close my front door dozens of times a day and I know what it sounds like when it either opens or closes, and it was softer than either of those... Like something brushed them, or lightly blew on them.

The tap started through the kitchen just like last time and started back toward my den, and by this point I'm a little freaked out.

After about two more minutes it's getting closer in the hall behind my den and I'm looking at my cat and she looks like she is staring at me. I make a kiss noise at her to get her attention, and her eyes and head move slightly my direction to look at me, and I realize she was staring behind me and not at me.

Needless to say I hopped up, and started walking for the bedroom.

So here I am, a grown ass man, ex military, sitting in my bed next to my wife and cat, typing on an iPad..

I just felt I had to type this out before I go back to sleep and my wife calls me crazy and tells me I was dreaming.

hehehe, funny, yet creapy!

Sounds scary to me. I do believe in this stuff however I wonder why your Mom's house would be haunted? Had she ever mentioned anything before...maybe thats why she moved! just kidding.

Pics or it didn......err..

Really though, if something like this happened again, it sounds like something a smart phone should be able to pick up and genuine recordings of things like this are so rare as to be priceless for people interested. Thanks for sharing..and I'd keep an eye on your cat, personally. Animals sense and see more than we can, I believe. Just a difference in how they're made....nothing more, but something I sure don't ignore.

Does sound creepy!

Whats the weather like where you live? Could it be frozen water pipes? (metal expansion/contraction?) Rats in your ducted heating vents?



...

AHA!

YOU WATCHED PARANORMAL ACTIVITY LAST NIGHT DINT YOU! :-P


EDIT:-

On a more serious note. I had an experience like this a few weeks back. There was a bleep bleep electric noise. It was just 2 bleeps. I first noticed it in the garage, and a tad bemused, I let it slide. Then a while later it happened again, but this time I was in the kitchen.... So, being a science believer, I start searching the room for electronics. But nothing turned up.
Then, the next day, I heard the same damn sound chasing me again, but I was in the lounge. It, just seemed to sound in my head almost, because it was always in the same room I was. So, I ask my kids if they heard it, but neither had. I scratched my head and pondered some more and forgot about it until it happened the third day in a row. Then the ominous maker of the sound was finally discovered to be......
A digital watch one of my kids had put in my utility-bag which is under my wheelchair. No wonder the damn noise chased me everywhere!!! Yeah, I felt a dunce once I found it! ;-)

You'll be fine though... I hope. Just check your misses didn't tape an electric stapler to your back :-)

I would like to say heating. My house makes a lot of taps and creaks when I have the heating on (which is a lot lately with this cold weather), and during the night, you will hear some odd taps within the ceilings and walls, and sometimes it seems like a sort of pattern emerges, but this could be more down to imagination than anything else.

But I reckon you would know whether it was something along those lines or not.

I guess the next logical step is to investigate as too whether things like this have happened before, considering it's been in your family for so long, you should have a healthy amount of history on the premise.

And cats always have their funny moments, especially when it's sounds like that, in which they don't recognize the source. The best thing to do, and it works with dogs too, is to investigate the sound with the animal, because once it recognizes their isn't anything making the sounds (more likely in their minds, a mouse), they are a lot happier and will settle down. Alone at night with my dog, when it thinks it hear's a sound down stairs, I go down with him, let him snoop around, and once he's happy, he just goes back to sleep.

Just a quick few idea's though, I hope you find out more.

prob good you didn't look back..

If this happens again try imagining yourself on fire like a barB-q pit.. or a bonfire..

It usually keeps most imaginary things at a distance.

Have you looked for mice or rats in the walls as they might be the source of the noise you are experiencing, just a thought....

I'm going to say squirrel or mouse. We have a family member that has a big southern house in Tenn. She thought she was going crazy for about 3 months. She was hearing tapping in the wall, and lights would flicker. Turned out to be a whole family of squirrels. They made a serious mess!

My heating also makes knocking sounds which come from inside the walls. The sound also startled me when I first heard it at night.

My heat makes loud tapping in the walls. Slow tapping then faster fro room to room, so it could be along those lines. A mouse in the wall sounds more like a scratching than a tapping. Is there an odor near the walls? Mouse urine can make a cat crazy I assume.

On the flip side, stick some post it notes on the tapping spots and track them with dates/times.
Look for patterns with the heater vs "other things".

Exactly what I was going to ask, what type of heat do you have in your home? Is it boiler? That could explain these tapping sounds.

If it's any comfort, there were all kinds of odd things going on in the house I was brought up in. I could write a book.

The sounds of someone's fingers suddenly drumming on the hard surface nearest your ear when you were trying to get to sleep / violent banging going round and round the room / grandfather clock chiming incessantly till you went downstairs to investigate, at which point it would abruptly stop / blood curdling screams / door handle working up & down when nobody was near it on / glass jug rising off he draining board & travelling about 16 feet, about 5 - 6 feet high, to drop & smash on the table around which 6 people were seated...I could go on & on & on. Several of these things were witnessed by visitors (including the jug incident, which scared several people into refusing to ever enter the house again).

The thing is, it's because of these things that I'm now very open-minded about all things paranormal, whereas anyone who's not experienced such things 1st hand can be forgiven for being disbelieving.

I'm still aware that there are characters around who invent such things for attention, or who mistake mundane things for the paranormal. But nobody will ever convince me that everything that goes on can be explained away by mice and temperature changes.