My aunt's always been fond of houses out in the middle of nowhere. The kinds of places where your nearest neighbour is at least a 10 minute drive away, and the more remote the better. In one particular house, she used to hear pounding footsteps on the stairs. Not every night, but often enough for it to become fairly routine.
She's got this mate. Really nice guy. Fixed the rain gutter on our old house, but a huge sceptic. He offered to help fix some problems with the pipes and agreed to stay the night since it would have taken him the better part of the day just to get out there and back. She warned him about the "ghost" beforehand and he laughed in her face.
They were playing scrabble and sharing a bottle of wine and just generally hanging out downstairs, lost track of time. At about 1-2am, they hear the noise. Now, this was the first time my aunt had heard it from downstairs and it was LOUD. Made the light shake kind of loud, only this time it was accompanied by a slamming door upstairs. The door opposite my aunt's bedroom.
Her mate leapt to his feet, grabbed a hammer from his tool kit and everything. He was CONVINCED someone had broken in, insisted on searching the whole house. The cats were hiding the whole time.
I've met the guy. Incredibly rational. Still claims he doesn't believe in ghosts, but at 2am he still got back in his van and drove home rather than spend the night. He outright refused to go visit her there again until after she moved house.
Archivist’s Supplement
This is awful interesting! It must’ve been misfiled for months.. Well! time to hunker back down to work. I’ll have someone see if there’s any follow-up work to be done, though I doubt we can find this person’s errant ghost.