Ruby,
I don't know if what you felt was a spirit or just your house settling or something else, but I wanted to share something that happened to me years ago, in order to offer another possibility.
This was many years ago, when I was living in my previous apartment, and I'm pretty sure it was before I even met my husband (so he was definitely alive). That apartment had a small entry foyer, a big bedroom, and a big living room. There was no door between the living room and bedroom, so in order to go from one to the other it was necessary to walk to the front of the apt and traverse the foyer (sounds complicated, but it wasn't -- there was just no hallway, and the foyer was about the size of a bathroom, so it was very quick to do).
Anyway -- one day in the evening, pretty early I think, but starting to get dark -- I walked from the bedroom into the living room, and as soon as I entered the living room I got a
very strange feeling. It felt to me as though someone/something were there, a spirit of some kind. It didn't exactly feel malicious, but it did feel scary -- I kind of felt as though a prey animal must feel, when it senses it is being hunted, but to a lesser degree (it's hard to explain -- it didn't feel
evil, it just felt otherwordly).
I froze for a few seconds, unsure what to do, then I did what humans always do to try to ameliorate the situation -- I turned on the light (in this case, it was an overhead light, set into the middle of the living room ceiling, and the light switch was on the wall right near the entrance to the room). So I flipped the switch, the light went on, and about 3 seconds later the light blew out, and the feeling was
immediately gone -- I mean completely gone, no sense of anything anymore.
I absolutely believe that in this particular case, what happened was down to EMF ("electric and magnetic fields are invisible areas of energy...associated with the use of electrical power and various forms of natural and man-made lighting"). Basically, because the light bulb was reaching the end of its useful life, the EMF charge associated with it had built up to the point that it needed to discharge. What I felt was that strange energy stored in the air, and then as soon as it discharged the feeling was gone.
If you watch "ghost shows" at all, you will have seen paranormal investigators using EMF readers to read the electro-magnetic energy in the air. It is often associated with lighting and electronics, and people often report hauntings in areas of high EMF concentrations, and then once the EMF is lowered (the house is rewired, or some of the electronics are moved elsewhere so it isn't so concentrated in one area, etc.), the people report that the "haunting" (eerie feelings, etc.) has disappeared.
So -- sometimes what feels like a presence is quite
literally just a change in the air.
