Childhood haunting

Hi all. First time posting here. I saw a few posts about kids seeing some shadowy things and felt like talking about a few stories from about 20+ years ago.

I was 5 when we moved to a new house in June of 2000, and for the first several years, there were a variety of strange things that happened.

For the first few years, my mom would hear stuff constantly. Me, my sisters, and my dad (school teacher) would all be at school during the day, and my mom stayed home to tend the house and such. Almost daily, she would hear footsteps, doors being opened, etc.

I don't know how many times this happened, but I know at least once, she was in the shower around 10am when there was no chance of anyone else being home, and she said she distinctly heard the following:

1. Front door opens (a unique sound specific to that door and kinda loud, especially when it closed)
2. Heavy, shoes-on footsteps coming down the hall, turning, and coming down the hall to her bedroom
3. The door to the bedroom opens
4. Footsteps into the room, including a creak in the floorboards that has a particular sound unique to a spot just inside the bedroom door
5. Footsteps over to her nightstand
6. The nightstand opening (distinct handle + drawer opening sounds)
7. Drawer gets closer, footsteps out of room

She came out of the shower and then the bathroom, and peeled around and nothing was moved. No open doors or anything. She called for my dad and no one answered.

She called my dad's classroom phone and asked if he'd stopped by home for anything, and he said no. I certainly hadn't snuck out of 1st grade to come home, haha. There was no one.

If I remember right, this happened a few times.

Very often, while anyone was in the basement (especially alone), we'd feel watched and definitely not alone. It was always creepy to go in the basement, much more than it's normally would be.

I swear I saw a wispy white thing fly from right to left along the ceiling one time while walking down to the basement, but I wouldn't necessarily swear on it. I do remember stopping and being confused if I'd actually just seen the though.

We called this ghost Peter. We usually felt safe, unthreatened, but also uneasy. We figured it was just someone stuck here, or something, who didn't mean us harm.

Most of the activity stopped after a few years. Nothing truly crazy ever happened, nothing knocked over or anyone seeing anything...until 2008.

We were having dinner, and my younger sister went to get something from a second fridge that was in the garage. The door from the house to the garage was just near the kitchen, around the corner, so she goes and opens the door and cries out.

We all asked what happened, and she came back in a few seconds later with whatever she's gotten from the fridge, and closed and locked the door.

She was clearly shaken a bit, but honestly not nearly as much as I would've been. She said she saw a face hovering right in front of her, just on the other side of the door once she opened it.

It just hung there, only a face. No body. She said it was wispy and gray and looked sad, like one of those sad-face masks of old Greek stage plays.

I don't know if my parents didn't really care much or if they were trying to be brave for us but I don't remember them having much of a reaction to this either. But I was absolutely freaked out and refused to go in the garage for quite a while.

Later that night while hanging out on the couch and reading, we all heard a poster from my room down the hall fall to the ground. There was one loud sound which caused us to pause and listen, and then a few seconds later another loud sound and a crumple on the ground. I was too scared to check it out, so later we went and found that a poster had just fallen, that was all.

I still remember thinking that the poster had been pretty secure on the wall, and it was quite the coincidence that it chose that night to fall off the wall.

Even to this day, whenever I visit home for holidays and such, I have a brief twinge of fear and anticipation when opening that garage door. I have luckily never seen anything.

I know this isn't the most compelling little story, but I've never really told anyone about these experiences besides my gf and of course revisiting them with family members when the topic comes up. I have many more to share some day.