Haunted Object?

I live in rural West Virginia and I sell vintage and collectible items. One evening in the early fall of last year, I was alone and up quite late doing research on the Internet. My computer is in the living room, which is open to the dining room area, where I can look up and into that room from my chair.

I do not know when I became aware of it, as it seems I ignored the first few, but I looked up because there was a tapping noise I was hearing… it was like the sound of a fingernail on the glass. Just one tap at a time, and then moments would go by before another just like it. My ears told me the sound came from the large ground floor window behind the dining room table, and I wondered if someone was outside that window tapping. I opened the living room door, stepped out on the porch and could see up the side of the house to that window because of the bright overhead pole light. There was no one there, and I came back in and listened. After a moment another tap came, so I turned on the dining room light and walked to the window. The tapping continued, but now it was coming more frequently, still just one tap at a time between pauses and not emanating from the window itself. I wondered if there might be a mouse in the wall, so I got on my knees and put my ear to the wall next to the window, and as each tap came, I knew I was close but not finding the exact spot. I then had to pick up one of the dining room chairs to move it out of the way so I could continue to search by ear, and as I moved the chair, I heard the tap move with it! I looked down, and there on the chair was a small, opened cardboard box containing six vintage restaurant parfait glasses I recently acquired and was planning to sell. I waited, and the tap came again and I was sure it was coming from the box. I picked the box up and held it, looking inside at the glasses. The noise was coming from the box, and I wondered if there was a trapped insect in a glass, or a mouse, or what it could be so I quickly took the box out onto the porch, turned on the bright overhead light and yes, the tapping was continuing, so I put the box down, lifted out each glass, inspected and shook it and set it out on the cement.

This is hard to write, but entirely true. When all of the glasses were out of the box, I was left holding an empty box… which was still tapping! I put my ear into the box, and absolutely, without doubt, this empty box was the source of the sounds. I was still looking for the rational explanation, and decided there must be a bug of some sort down in the lining of the box or maybe even in the corrugated spaces, so I pulled up all the flaps, turned it over and shook it nearly to pieces. Nothing at all came out, the box continued to tap and I suddenly felt so tired I could barely think. It was as if my brain, having come to no rational explanation, just wanted to shut down. I was looking dumbly into a small empty box in my hands which continued to tap and tap, as though there was still glass in it! I did the only thing I could think of doing at the time… I tore the box into absolute shreds, watching for anything at all to fall out. Nothing did, and when I was done, the tap was gone. I went straight to bed and decided not to even think about it until morning, and I was immediately asleep, which was my defense mechanism.

Maybe it was foolish of me, but I never brought those parfait glasses into the house again… I sent them to the dump and burned the shreds of the box. Nothing that dramatic has ever happened to me here before or since, but I’ve only been in this old house a few years. The other things that do happen here (such as lights dimming and random noises) I do not attribute to the supernatural as a first thought, but rather to the age of the wiring and settling of the old beams.

Just this year I started snapping photos inside the rooms and there are orbs, some very, very bright. I have not yet decided if I think orbs are a spiritual phenomenon or a digital camera quirk… I am still reading many things on this subject.