Curious Couple/Bear...Or Something Else?

I have spent a lot of time on this site reading all the stories. I have always been able to "tell" when I was in a haunted place, but it was always something that I just knew. I have never seen or experienced anything unusual myself, until recently.

My boyfriend and I were invited to spend a few days at a cabin in the mountains. The cabin belonged to the family of his friend's wife. Her family had owned this cabin, along with others in the area for over forty years. It was a wonderful place, with a back deck right on the riverbank. I spent a lot of time on that deck reading, and listening to the flowing water. It was very relaxing, the perfect vacation. The first night we were shown the room we were going to sleep in. It was decorated in a very old fashioned manner, with thick shag carpeting, brown and orange flowered wallpaper with matching curtains, and an old oil lamp. The room gave me a funny feeling, but I blew it off, and we went to bed.

The next night my boyfriend and I decided to sleep outside in our tent. The night was very quiet and peaceful. It wasn't until the third day there that strange things began happening. That morning, I decided to take a nap in the den. I was laying on the large circular couch drifting in and out of sleep. The door to the rest of the cabin was closed. There were other people in the house, but I couldn't hear them, and the door never opened. At one point, when I was almost asleep, I saw two people approach me, I jerked completely awake, but there was no one there. It lasted only a second, but I had very distinct impressions about them. It was a man and a woman. The man had a short haircut, almost a flat top, and the woman had long curly hair. The man was pulling her forward, as if he wanted to show me to her, but she pulled back, almost as if she was afraid. It was startling, but I reasoned that it must have been a shadow, or a half asleep dream. I did tell my boyfriend about it as soon as he woke up from his nap in the strange bedroom. His reaction was just that it was kind of weird.

That night was our last night at the cabin. We planned to wake up very early and begin the long drive home. We said our goodbyes and thank you's to our hosts and went to bed early. I woke around 1:00 needing to go to the bathroom. On the way to and from the bathroom I passed a door with a large window in it leading to the front deck. I got back to bed, and almost immediately began hearing stomping on the deck.

The noises got louder, and became crashing noises. I lay in bed debating whether or not I should go peek through the door to see if I could see anything. My first thought was that it was a bear, and that some of the crashing sounds were from the bear trying to get into the trash. As the sounds continued, I couldn't believe that no one else was waking up, my boyfriend was sound asleep next to me, and I heard nothing from any of the other rooms.

The there was one very loud violent crash, and the dog, who was in our hosts bedroom at the other end of the hall, barked once. In the end I was too afraid to get out of bed and look outside. Gradually the noises died down, and I went to sleep, expecting to wake up to find the trash can ransacked, and other evidence of a bear visit.

A few hours later we woke up and began to get ready to leave. It was dark, and everyone else was asleep. I told my boyfriend what had happened, but when we got outside, everything was normal. The trash was in its place, lid firmly on, and nothing else on the deck was disturbed. I couldn't understand what had been making those sounds. I thought what if we had been sleeping outside that night? The night we did spend in the tent had been so quiet. Overall, I was just a little confused about the events of the day. I didn't really consider ghosts, especially since it was only that bedroom that gave me the strange feeling, and nothing strange happened in that bedroom.

A couple of weeks later, my boyfriend shocked me with a few pieces of information: 1. The house was known by our hosts to be haunted. 2. No one heard any noises that night. No one even heard the dog bark (and it's hard not to hear your dog bark, even when you're asleep, especially when she's in the same room) 3. He had seen things as well. (I pressed him further, but all he would say was that when we were all outside, he would see things through the windows)

So what exactly did I see and hear? What is the history of the place? Why do the owners claim that it is haunted? I don't really know any answers, all I know is that I now have my own ghost story to share.