Friendly Visitors?

This experience is fairly recent, it happened within the past few months or so.

I had become closer to a friend and her mother, I stayed over a lot at their house during school breaks, holidays, etc. I usually stayed in the mother's room because my friend had an extremely small bed. It was late at night the first time I tried to sleep there. Sleep was eluding me for some reason, so I layed there and stared at the doorway which was right in front of the bed. I must have been staring for quite awhile before I heard the sounds of footsteps on the hardwood floor of the hallway. I thought perhaps my friend was puttering in to sleep with us or maybe one of the family dogs was up and about. I sat up to see what it was but there was nothing in the hallway. Still there was the sound of footsteps getting closer and closer until it seemed someone should have been at the door. I ducked under the covers, frightened, until I finally fell asleep.

At breakfast the next morning I mentioned the sounds from the night before. My friend and her mother shared a knowing glance and laughed. I asked why they laughed. My friend's mother told me that was not the first time that something like that had happened. When the family had first moved in, her husband had wanted to redo the wooden floors of the front room (sand it down, finish it, etc.) After painting on the finish they left the house to get away from the smell and shop for awhile. When they came back they noticed a child's footprint right in the middle of the floor. They know it wasn't there before and it was odd to have one footprint in the floor. They said it looked like a little girl's dress shoe, that sort of curved toe and square heel.

After my friend's stepfather left for his tour of duty there were even more occurrences. My friend and her mother both awoke one night to the sound of a baby crying. It seemed as if the sound came from right outside, in front of the door. They looked out the window, where you can see the door and front patio, and there was nothing there. Needless to say, they were disturbed and stuck together to try to sleep. My friend's mother says there has also been times where she has been cooking in the kitchen and felt as if she had been tapped or slightly pushed when there is no one there but her. She's not generally afraid of paranormal things and doesn't feel that if there is any ghosts that they mean to do any harm.

One of the latest happenings occurred when I visited them after work a few weeks ago. My friend, her mother, another friend and her boyfriend were sitting in the living room. They all looked like they had been shocked into silence. I asked what had happened. My friend's mother said that they had all been sitting there watching TV when they heard a door slam. They weren't really too bothered, thinking maybe a dog had pushed the door shut or something. But then other doors starting opening and slamming shut repeatedly. The other friend's boyfriend wouldn't even walk around the house after that without someone in front of him to "protect" him.

Whether you believe me or not, I do not know.

I do know that the neighborhood that my friend and I share is old, the houses were pretty much the first ones built during the 50's. I also have found out that there was a murder on the street my friend lives on. A woman killed her husband in one of the houses there. I'm fairly sure it isn't the only death on that street, the neighborhood being old and not the most upscale. We can only hope that whatever it is in my friend's house, it stays friendly.