Oppression, anxiety, dream-state visions and ghost-like phenomena at home

I would like to make it clear from the start that I am probably not a very sensitive person. I work as a research scientist. I have a very logical and regimented mind when it comes to observing nature. I've got a PhD in Chemical Physics and the closest I've ever come to a spiritual experience has been in the course of my research, when I just had to stop for a while and admire the beautiful complexity of the nature at quantum level.

I've never seen ghosts or witnessed any other paranormal events while fully awake, but I've kept an open mind towards "paranormal". There are limits to our knowledge and these boundaries are constantly being pushed further. Who knows what lies in the murky worlds of multiverses and quantum weirdness?

In 2006 I moved to a brand new house in a newly developed area of the town. After living there for about a week or so, I began to realize that the house had a strange alternating atmosphere. At times it would feel light and cheerful, but on other occasions you could feel as if a heavy, oppressing pressure was bearing down on you. If you were alone, you'd start feeling uncomfortable. You'd feel slightly paranoid as if someone was watching you. One time I was about to open a closed door and got a distinct feeling that there was someone standing, in hunched stance, just behind the door. The feeling was just strong enough to make me hesitate opening the door, which is really silly considering that I was in my own house.

At first I thought it was just me, since in my youth I battled with clinical (diagnosed) depression and was well on my way to alcoholism before I got help. However, you'll never fully recover from the two. The dark cloud of depression, anxiety and the habit of making mountains out of molehills is always there.

Now that I think back, I also kept hearing strange murmuring sounds and clicks/taps, but I simply thought that the murmurings were my next-door neighbours talking or that the house was making noises when the walls and roof warmed up and cooled down. If I remember correctly, I had only a few cases of sleep paralysis, nightmares so bad that I couldn't control them (in my youth I did lucid dreaming and can still take control of most of my nightmares) and night-time anxiety attacks.

Nevertheless, visiting friends - some of them staying overnight - also began to comment on how strangely silent my house and the neighbourhood was and, more importantly, how "thick the air" (their words) sometimes got. As I mentioned, the house was brand new and is mechanically ventilated and air-conditioned. Sometimes there's such a strong draft that I have to turn down the ventilation. At the time I didn't make much of those comments.

However, when my wife (then: girlfriend) moved in, things got more active. I never said anything to her, but it later turned out that both of us heard occasional murmurings and she complained about the occasional heavy feeling in the house. She also reported seeing a ball of light shooting under a cabinet in our shower room, but I thought it had been a reflection from the mirror that's just opposite to the shower door. She also got freaked out by a door (leading to our backyard) opening and closing by itself. I was outside gardening and she had just come from the shower and was dressing up. She thought that I had just opened the door, seen her dressing up and closed the door so that people outside couldn't see inside. However, I had been nowhere near that door and didn't notice it opening and closing.

At the same time she said the door had moved, I had heard rather loud low murmurings in the garden. I can remember it, because I heard the low murmuring and felt strangely disoriented. I remember feeling oddly confused, watching our cherry tree and trying think of what could have made that sound.

Apart from the occasional heavy feeling inside, daytime events have been very rare.

Nights, however, became different. Instead of my usual sleep disturbances, I started waking up to shocking visions of a female face and figure floating near the ceiling and suddenly rushing at my face. Seeing it would jolt me out of bed thus also waking up my wife. I thought I had just not grown accustomed to sleeping next to someone.

I also had one more scarier vision that still troubles me to this day. I was sleeping on my side with my face towards my wife's face. I had fallen asleep, but woke up to see her staring at me and suddenly her mouth opened so wide that it was not humanly possible. It looks liked she was screaming, but there was no sound. I don't remember anything else, but my poor wife got a real scare. She later told me I had grabbed her shoulders hard, trying to push her away, and growled, "Don't come near me. I know who you are." Even as I am writing this, I'm feeling freaked out by this. I love my wife dearly and don't want to scare her or - even worse - hurt her. Fortunately it has never happened again. I do get the visions of the ghostly woman rushing at me from time to time and sometimes my nightmares are so grotesque (fleshy, slimy cancerous-like growths on walls or in furniture, deep, blackened necrotic wounds in my arms, legs or calves and so on) that they make me feel ill even the day after.

Recently we were visited by a wife's relative who's seriously into geomancy, spiritual healing and channelling. The moment she sat down on the couch, she started moving uncomfortably and soon she got up saying "Wow! These energies. Where are they coming from? Something's not right here." We had never said a word about our experiences to her, but she was visibly disturbed by something that she felt in our house. Later that day she did some exploring and claimed that our house has been built on ground that in distant past was a sacred grove where sacrifices were made by our ancestors who worshipped nature gods. She didn't say what kind of sacrifices, and I did some research on the history of the locale and sacred groves in our culture. In our culture, food, drink and animal sacrifices were common, but human sacrifices in Finland were extremely rare (if any). However, the ground on which our house is built used to be a bog and our ancestors punished severe crimes by drowning offenders in bogs.

So, I don't really know what to think about this. On a logical level I think this is nonsense. On an intuitive level, however, I feel that there is something strange going on. Too many coincidences with too many people who know nothing about our experiences. What prompted me to write this post was that I've been feeling the heavy atmosphere again for a week or so. The weather outside is nice and sunny, so it's not about feeling blue on a rainy day. I have also been waking up at around 3 am feeling angry and full of anxiety for no apparent external reason. Once I get up to get a glass of water, I feel that there's something in the dark watching me. I have had no nightmares or visions, but I thought that yesterday I heard that damned murmuring again.

Am I just being irrational and reading too much into random events and peoples' comments? Is there something in the ground or in the neighbourhood that is causing these feelings? It's a scientific fact that the old bog ground is releasing radon gases, which is one of the reasons why the house was built with such good ventilation. The building codes are very specific when building on a ground like this. Infrasounds generated by heavy machinery are another explanation for anxiety and heavy feelings. There is no heavy industry in the neighbourhood, but there is a nearby busy highway with constant heavy traffic including semi-trailer trucks. Or is there a "paranormal" explanation? Residual energies from the past ceremonies in the alleged sacred grove? Restless spirits of people who experienced the horrible death of being drowned in a bog?