Sounds of footsteps return

This occurred just this morning. I was up and ready for the day first. I had already come downstairs and had taken the dogs out. I had put up the screen at the bottom of the stairs so the dogs could not go back upstairs. Sometimes they are a bit difficult to bring back downstairs. My wife taking longer had stayed upstairs. But when she was ready to come downstairs she said she distinctly heard me coming back up the stairs. As the rear stairs are rather narrow and she needs lots of room to navigate them, she said she waited for me to appear. The sounds of someone coming up the stairs ended at the turn in the stairwell. As I did not appear coming around the corner in the stairs; she said, "Are you coming on up or what?" She got no reply and then she heard me talking to the dogs in the kitchen and knew I was not on the stairs. She came on down and told me about the episode. She insisted it sounded exactly like someone coming up the stairs. As the gate was still up when she reached the bottom of the stairs it was rather obvious that neither I nor the dogs were on the stairs. That it was plain enough for my wife to ask whether or not I was ccming on up indicates to me that she heard something, but what?

Item rappears

A lot of people will think, "You just weren't looking there". But anything that obvious just was NOT overlooked. Yesterday I started work on an old 1839 four foot table or wall clock I picked up at an auction at a good price because it was in so many pieces. But the most important pieces appeared to still be there, scattered in the vast maul of the lower case. I looked the clock up on line. Luckily it was clearly marked as to maker and even had its instructions glued to be back, on the inside, of the cabinet. The works were totally brass and of a form that I was totally unfamiliar with. It was kind of like putting together a jig-saw puzzle with no picture to go by. It took a while but I finally got the works in their proper places with nothing apparently missing. Needless to sat when working on this clock it was necessary to remove the hands and face in order to get into the clockworks. When removing the hands I was very careful to place the hands in a protected area of my work table so they would be readily available when I replaced the clock face. As you have probably guessed, when I put the clock face back on the clock I discovered I had the hour hand but not the minute hand. As those hands were over 176 years old, I knew darn good and well I'd never find a replacement. I looked everywhere for that minute hand including under the work table That minute hand was simply gone. In order to try out the mechanical workings of the clock I resorted to a more modern minute hand that fit (kind of) so I could see if the mechanism would work. I wound the clock (which is run by very heavy weights) though unlike a grandfather clock, the weights are raised with a key rather than pulling a chain. I started the clock and to my utter amazement it ran. Once again I looked all around my work area for that minute hand with no luck. The temporary minute hand looked totally out of place, but it worked (kind of). Time to close the store so my wife and I closed up and went home. I left the old clock running. This morning, about 10am my wife and I reopened the store. I was very pleased to see the old clock still running though it was way slow. And to my utter amazement, laying directly in front of the clock, in absolutely plain, it cannot be missed, sight lay the missing minute hand. I was beyond surprised. Where had this minute hand come from? How on earth could it be here, in plain sight. No way did I overlook it. It was not there last night when we left. No one has a store key but my wife and I. Mice, goblins, ghosts? Where did that dang key come from? Anyone out there have any explanation?

Dogs toy at it again.

My wife relayed this story. It seems that yesterday evening, while my younger dog and I were watching TV (she was on my lap) my wife was playing on the computer with the older dog laying beside her chair. She said that suddenly a loud squeak occurred from the dining room. Keep in mind the dining room and computer room (library) are adjacent to each other and the den with the TV is opens immediately to the right of the library. She said both she and the older dog jumped. It was definitely the older dogs toy parrot that squeaked. Rowdy ran and looked around the corner of the doorway into the dining room, but advanced no further. I'm getting a bit hard of hearing so with the TV blasting rather loud, I and my pup didn't hear the commotion. Rowdy's stuffed parrot toy has to be pressed rather hard to activate the squeaker bulb; but nothing and no one was even close to the toy. My wife even got up and went to the dining room to check out the toy. No reason could be found for its sudden vocalization. That's twice, now, that that particular stuffed toy has squalled with no one or nothing near it. Both times the parrot was in the dining room. Really makes you wonder.