Around 3 AM one night in 2020, I looked at our baby monitor and watched a human-shaped figure walk to my daughter's cot, look in, walk away, then come back and do it all again.

This happened to me and my partner in our own home, a council house (UK social housing) in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, United Kingdom, just outside Birmingham. It was around late summer / early autumn in 2020, and our daughter was around three or four.

A bit of background

The house was built in the early 1960s, and for the first two years we lived there nothing odd happened at all. Then, around July or August 2020, in the middle of COVID, we had two or three months of strange things.

It started with a gentle knocking late one night that seemed to come from the other side of our bedroom wall, about 20 feet up the outside of the house. Then one night around 11 PM, seconds after our Ring doorbell sent an alert saying "Someone is at your front door" with nobody on the path, something banged hard on our closed bedroom door. The hallway was empty when I opened it.

One evening, alone downstairs, I heard water running and found both kitchen taps pushed fully on and gushing, with the cat sat calmly on the floor. I panicked and video-called my mum so someone else could see it - I think I needed a witness to prove it was happening.

Another evening, while I was out, my partner heard a massive bang on the front door, then her phone started playing a song on its own: the song from her late Grandad's funeral. On top of that, there was knocking on the bathroom door, and heavy interference on the baby monitor, the Ring's live view and the microphone I used for creative recordings (Rode NT1-A).

The monitor night was the only time either of us saw anything physically manifest.

The incident

I was wide awake in bed watching Netflix, and the baby monitor was on the bedside table. When I glanced over to check on my daughter, there was a white mist moving across the screen.

Then a silhouette of a person moved through her room.

It walked up to the side of her cot, looked in, and walked away. Then it did exactly the same thing again, and kept repeating it. It moved naturally, like a living person checking on her. I could clearly see it had arms and legs when it was moving.

Her bedroom backs onto our garden, and there are only other gardens around it, so there's no road and no passing headlights. I can't see how a reflection or a shadow from outside could get in there, especially with her curtains drawn.

I woke my partner, but I was too scared to speak. I think part of me was worried that saying anything out loud would draw its attention and make something bad happen. I typed on my phone that we needed to get our daughter and go to my mum's, then handed her the phone and pointed at the monitor.

We both watched it happen in silence. It felt like ages, but it was probably a couple of minutes. We were absolutely stunned.

What it looked like

• Clearly human-shaped, a silhouette with distinct arms and legs
• No features at all, so I couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman
• Moved naturally, like a living person pacing the room
• Followed the same route over and over: up to the cot, a look in, then away
• A white mist moved across the screen just before it appeared (unsure if that was the figure or something else)
• At the end, it grew more and more see-through before vanishing

How it ended

My partner suddenly jumped out of bed and ran straight into our daughter's room. I grabbed a metal baseball bat from beside the bed and went after her, with no real plan for what I'd do with it. Before we opened the door, I was honestly expecting a scene out of a horror film to unfold.

The room was completely normal. Our daughter was fast asleep, nothing was out of place, and there was no bad or menacing feeling in there at all.

When we got back to our bedroom, the silhouette was still on the monitor, but fading - repeating the same pattern. As soon as I got my phone out to film it, it was gone. I wanted to leave for my mum's there and then, but my partner insisted we stay because it was our home. Nothing like it had happened before, and nothing like it has happened since.

Afterwards

I spoke to a local vicar. A neighbour had told me the elderly lady who lived here before us passed away in the house, and the vicar thought she might need help moving on. He gave me prayers to say in our daughter's room, but I never needed to use them. The activity stopped abruptly after the baby monitor incident. I later tracked down the lady's grandson, who said when his grandparents lived in our house, they never noticed anything odd in their years here.

What I've considered

The monitor had been glitching a lot around that time, so interference is the obvious everyday answer, along with a reflection or a shadow from outside. But the view behind the house is only gardens, the figure repeated the same walk to the cot for a couple of minutes, and the room was empty when we went in. We were both wide awake and watching the same screen. After this happened, all the interference within our house with our electronic devices stopped.

My take

I believe something was in our house, and I lean towards it being protective rather than bad. In 2024 my partner's other Grandad died, and while she was struggling, her phone started playing "Heaven" by DJ Sammy through the car on its own, right on the chorus. It's made me wonder whether the figure was her first Grandad, checking on our daughter - either protecting her and moving something on out of the house or stopping something bad from happening within the house.

Has anyone else watched a figure on a monitor or camera keep going back to a sleeping child, only to find the room empty when you got there?

I document paranormal incidents, and what's above is a trimmed version of the full report I put together on our house. If there's anything you want to know more about, ask in the comments and I'll fill you in.