My son heard me tell him to come downstairs, but I wasn't home!
You get used to someone’s distinct sound of how they come in a door, and their footsteps and such. It sounded just like it was her coming in, but no one was there.
I'm so glad I found this forum. This voice phenomena has been happening to me and my family for the past couple years. It started around 2010 in our old house and, it still happens now in our current house, we are also getting ready to move this week and I am very curious to know if it will happen in our new house! Your quote above is what really struck me, it's hard to describe the feeling when someone walks into your home, the atmosphere changes, almost like static, almost like the feeling you get when the channel is changing on the T.V. , a certain frequency you can feel. That's why you know you are not just hearing things but feeling someone as well.
My first distinct memory of this happening was in our old house. My 5 year old daughter and I were sitting on my bed together watching t.v. We both heard the front door open and heard my husband. she looked at me and said "daddy's home!" and then i got up to walk down the hall and greet him, but no one was home! so that was definitely creepy in itself, and even more so because my young daughter heard the same thing that I did! If she wouldn't have, I would have brushed it off as if I were hearing things, and probably laughed at myself.
After awhile we moved into our current home, we have lived here for about 2 years, and I have NEVER EVER disliked a house so much as this. It's an older home, which I really don't mind, but this house has a darkness about it, which is so hard to explain. my husband always looks at me like I'am crazy when I tell him this house is negative. I have been emotionally drained living in this house, I went through a very bad depression in this house which lasted an entire winter, I barely left my bed. My husband and mother were very worried, not to say very irritated with me as well, as this isn't my normal behavior, and I also din't know why i was so sad, I just honestly had no will to do anything. My grandmother also swore it was the house, making us sick. as spring rolled around and I started spending more time outside gardening and stuff, I instantly felt better, I was convinced it had something to do with the fresh air, and the mustiness of the house and the winter time just got me down.
The voices have happened a lot in this house, my, now 7 year old daughter, often says that I have called out to her. She also said she heard a woman outside her window and a gun shot, and she was so serious about it that it scared me and I once again called my husband. Now my husband is the more skeptical one, so I often tell him of these things to settle my nerves, I will quickly blame things on the paranormal, I guess you could call us a Moulder and Sculley only reversed! lol
Another instance happened after my mother had visited, Now we often use our garage door as our main entrance, it's off the side of our kitchen/ dining area. After she left I had started to vacuum in the dining area. I distinctly felt my mother come back in the garage door, and thought to myself that she must have left something, then I heard her holler my name, which wouldn't have been unusual as I was vacuuming she would need to yell to get my attention. So I turned off the vacuum and looked up towards the garage door and no one was there! Unnerving to say the least! Within the past 2 years my husband has started truck driving over the road, so there is a family friend of ours who will also poke his head in from time to time to make sure we don't need anything. One day I heard him at the garage door call my name, which wouldn't be unusual, but once again, when I went to check, no one was there!
The real creepy instance happened only last night, my husband and I have just been approved to move into another home! Finally getting out of this miserable house! So we were out in the garage talking about the house and how happy we were to finally be moving out of here and in mid sentence my husband stopped talking and looked stone cold right at me and started looking around frantically! "did you just hear that?!" he said, and I assumed he was talking about the cicada bugs and crickets as they were very loud last night, then he says "I just heard your mother calling your name in the kitchen!" The same exact thing I heard my mother saying, and in the same exact place, the kitchen, by the garage door. I turned to him and said "finally! You have heard them too! I told you we hear voices in this house!" He was visibly shaken. My husband NEVER entertains this kind of thing. I'm glad he finally heard it and now believes me, but him hearing the voices only validates their existence. (Let me also say my mom has also heard them from time to time as well.) He commented that it was as if the house was trying to hold on to us.
So this experience last night is what prompted me to once again search for an answer, and after getting weird search results, such as schizophrenia and auditory hallucinations, I finally found this forum thread and I have never related to a story so much so as yours Cmac. Just the way you explained the feelings of someone coming home, I just related to a lot. I have no idea what this is, but others truly experience it as well, and now we are moving into our new home and I am curious to know if this phenomena will occur there as well! I will definitely keep you guys posted, because all of my homes have been relatively far from each other, miles at least, so if it were some kind of environmental factor or radio towers and the like that option definitely doesn't explain this!