1) Mouse or rat, most likely. I hate that sound (and I know from what because I worked in a store maybe five years ago that was so infested with them they were chewing through the metal-mesh-reinforced sheet rock in between the walls - the place looked and smelled hideous; worst nine months I ever spent working anywhere).
2) We had a hutch caddy-cornered by itself in the dining room of my NY apartment that when I was about 25 - we'd lived there maybe 15 years by then, and it was a brand-new building when we moved in so we were its only tenants that whole time - that began rattling by itself a few times a week. Never figured out what that was about even after ruling out every normal possibility.
3) Within the same year the ghost showed up. Three times. I bumped into him once, my mom twice. Mom met him before I did, I think. We had the exact same description of him each time we compared notes (right down to the same medium-tall black top-hat). And he got us all three times in the same place - third step up from the bottom on the full flight of stairs connecting upstairs bedrooms to the bottom of the place.
What was weird was when he brushed by me on his way down he was dark, like muddy-dark, more like an aura/silhouette than a person, felt cold and sort of messed with the gravity around me in a bad way. Very not-nice aura but not harmful in any discernible way, either. Fortunately we got out of there just a few years later.
I'm also German and think it's neat you have those old documents. Things like that didn't stay in my family for some reason. Wish I had stuff like that to look over now that my family is gone.
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2) We had a hutch caddy-cornered by itself in the dining room of my NY apartment that when I was about 25 - we'd lived there maybe 15 years by then, and it was a brand-new building when we moved in so we were its only tenants that whole time - that began rattling by itself a few times a week. Never figured out what that was about even after ruling out every normal possibility.
3) Within the same year the ghost showed up. Three times. I bumped into him once, my mom twice. Mom met him before I did, I think. We had the exact same description of him each time we compared notes (right down to the same medium-tall black top-hat). And he got us all three times in the same place - third step up from the bottom on the full flight of stairs connecting upstairs bedrooms to the bottom of the place.
What was weird was when he brushed by me on his way down he was dark, like muddy-dark, more like an aura/silhouette than a person, felt cold and sort of messed with the gravity around me in a bad way. Very not-nice aura but not harmful in any discernible way, either. Fortunately we got out of there just a few years later.
I'm also German and think it's neat you have those old documents. Things like that didn't stay in my family for some reason. Wish I had stuff like that to look over now that my family is gone.