" GHOST"

When I was in high school, my family lived on a lake in a small town in Missouri. My mother and I were alone in the house watching a movie on the Disney Channel. I'd seen the movie many times before (not sure anymore what it was) so I started to look around the room. When my gaze focused on the spiral staircase, a ball of light came down the stairs and shot across the room about a foot from the ceiling. When it came to the television, it shut off. None of the other power in the house was affected by the ball. My mother and I looked at each other with utter disbelief. She immediately said, "Well, I wonder what that was?" I wasn't sure about my mother, but I thought it might be the ghost I believed to live in my mother's room. I mentioned it to her, but she dismissed it as the cat (because my belief was based on the creaking of foot-falls in her room when I was the only one home). Even though I told her, "Cats aren't that heavy."
The only other person who ever heard what I heard constantly was my friend Susan. We were in the house alone during our Christmas break. I was doing the laundry (which was on the main floor) when the sound of footsteps was heard. Susan said, "I thought your mother would be at work." I replied, "She is, that's our ghost." She got this look on her face and asked, "Do you really think you have a ghost?" I told her I really did and that I'm the only one who believes it. We took a tape recorder into the bedroom and shut the door for the better part of the day. All we heard was a constant clicking. I first thought it was just the sound the tape made, but it wasn't uniform like it should have been. Long story short, Susan's boyfriend (who I later found out was a Satan Worshiper) told us that there was a portal in my mother's bedroom, but the good spirit in the house kept it at bay. I'm not so sure I believe that.
Anyway, I'm an adult now and my husband and I live in a rental house in the city. I've heard strange things a lot, but the strangest and most recent was when I woke up with the alarm one morning. I pushed the snooze and was lying there waiting to fall back asleep. I was unable to because I heard the doorknob rattle once. I was shocked but was able to tell myself (to a point) that it was the cats playing on the nearby cat tower. They must have jumped off and hit the knob. That notion was banished when I heard it rattle three more times in rapid succession. Something I'm sure my cats could not have done, no matter how close to the door the cat tower is.