My parents' house - 14 months of documented activity

I'm posting this because I need to know if I'm going insane or if what's happening in my parents' house in Yorkshire is actually worth investigating properly.

Timeline: Around May 2023, doors started opening in the night. Both my parents heard it, so not individual hallucination. In August, objects moving (glasses off the kitchen counter, my dad's reading glasses ending up on top of the fridge). September onwards: footsteps upstairs when nobody's up there, and specifically - and this is the weird bit - these footsteps follow a routine. They happen between 2:15am and 2:45am almost every night, same pattern, same location (hallway outside the bedrooms).

No historical trauma at the house (built 1994), no previous owners reported anything unusual, no deaths on the property that anyone knows of. My mum wants to move, my dad thinks it's drafts and rats, I'm trying to be scientific about it.

I've bought a thermal camera and some basic EMF equipment. Planning to do overnight documentation this month. Is there anything I should be doing differently? And be honest - am I wasting time or is this actually worth investigating?

The routine aspect is genuinely interesting. Rats and drafts don't follow schedules like that. They're random. A pattern suggests either something with intention or something you're not thinking of - like a neighbor's boiler kicking in, or some environmental factor that triggers at the same time each night.

Definitely log it all - times, weather, what was happening in the house, electrical usage. The thermal camera will show temperature anomalies if anything's physically there. EMF meter is probably less useful for proving anything but worth having.

The moving objects thing is what gets me. That's harder to explain with normal causes. Stuff doesn't just migrate from one place to another. You might actually have something worth investigating properly here, or you might have an explanation that hasn't occurred to you yet.

Is there anything I should be doing differently? And be honest - am I wasting time or is this actually worth investigating?

You're not wasting time if your family is experiencing it. Even if the explanation is mundane (settling house, infrasound from external sources, memory bias), finding that out is valuable. Just go in without assuming it's paranormal - rule out everything else first.

Get your boiler serviced. Seriously. New boiler or one that's starting to have issues can make awful noises on a timer, cause vibrations, sometimes even move lightweight objects through resonance. Before you buy more ghost-hunting kit, rule out the absolute basics.

The footsteps being on a schedule is the key thing to investigate. Document everything - weather, whether your parents slept well, what time the central heating cycled, whether there were storms, anything. Pattern-matching and elimination is your best friend here. Good luck with it.