I've spent my life living in old houses, and the one thing folks ask more than any other, when they hear I live in an old house, is... "is it haunted?"
Well, no. My current house is 290 years old, and it's not haunted. Sorry.
But I did live for a dozen years in a much newer 1870's house that almost certainly was, and the odd thing about it is that almost all of the "activity" we experienced there started and ended with the ownership of one dog. I hear this isn't uncommon, many people who claim to have experienced paranormal activity in a house have stated it started and ended with a particular resident's time there, most often children.
Anyway, this damn dog would routinely bark at someone in that house, acting the way a dog only does when somoene they don't like is standing directly in front of them, when no one was there. It was a regular occurrence, always in the dining room of that house, and not the random barking around doors and windows that'd happen when it might hear someone outside. This was focused agression on someone standing in the middle of the room, who wasn't there.
What made it even more odd, is that sometimes we'd hear someone or something banging around in the house in the middle of the night, and the dog would never respond to that.
Sometimes we'd hear banging and thumping that sounded like someone doing construction work in the house, and the dog would just lie or sleep right thru it. I never understood that.
I had to get rid of the dog when my work situation changed, and kept me away from home too much to care for him. After that, most of the strange goings-on in that house stopped. I stayed there several more years.
