That sounds genuinely unsettling, especially the dogs part. Animals picking up on something you can't see or hear properly is one of those things that always gets to me more than the actual noise itself.
Could be something mundane like a fox or a bird, they can sound massive on a roof in the middle of the night. But the dogs staring at the ceiling rather than barking at a door or window is a bit odd isn't it, like whatever it was wasn't something they recognised as an animal either.
Did it sound like it had a particular pattern to the footsteps? I've been reading a lot about NDE accounts lately and one thing that keeps coming up is people describing a presence that animals reacted to strongly, even before anything happened. Not saying thats what this is at all, but I do wonder sometimes if animals are tuned into something we're not.
What kind of dogs do you have and how long did they keep staring?