What did I hear? ( not sure where to post this)

[Angrboda]

It could have been tapping, or it could have simply been the windowpane vibrating in a stiff wind. There's really no way to tell. It could also have been a hallucination, especially if you'd been kind of dozing off. A few weeks ago, just as I was waking up, I hallucinated a man at the foot of my bed. As I sprung upright in alarm, the phantom vanished like it went poof. Hallucinations when we are drowsy, waking up or falling asleep, are common. It's also not uncommon to hallucinate things when a relative has recently passed. I still occasionally hear one of my parents calling out to me from out of the blue. It's not a sign that I'm ill. That kind of thing is pretty normal. Perhaps you hallucinated the tapping and 'framed' it as coming from the window. It's impossible to tell what actually happened from this side of it.

[Cyberman]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia

[ignoramus]

My money's on aliens! (with baby Jesus a close second)

[brewer]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia

You forgot the other half.

[Cyberman]

You've lost me.

[Seraphina]

My Mom passed away in May 2016. It was a shock. My sister has been living in my mom's house, one time she told me she heard a door slam shut, It was late at night. Another time she heard knocking. Both times I told her it was her imagination or she was in a waking dream.  On Saturday night about 11 pm. I was in the family room by myself. That room leads to an outdoor patio, we have a motion detector light, which can also be used as a light. All of a sudden I heard 4 taps on the window, a pause then a few more taps another pause and finally a few more taps. I ran to the picture window to see who was spying on me. The motion light had not gone on earlier and when I ran to picture window, a person would have triggered the light to get away. There was nothing there. The heat was off so it could not be that. 
I can't imagine what it could be. It was a tapping on that window I don't believe in anything supernatural, but that knocking is what I used to do to my mom from outside. No doubt many of you will say I imagined it but I don't think so.  What did I hear? Give me some ideas and be nice.

Manowar

I don't know where you live but the trees in my area are throwing off their acorns this time of year. Sometimes they hit my sliding glass doors - "tap tap". I mostly notice it in the daytime but it's easy for one's imagination to run wild when it's dark.

I used to work as a volunteer in a huge old Gold Rush era cemetery in my town. I don't believe in the supernatural either but I saw and heard things there a few times that I couldn't explain including what I thought were figures lurking around. This was in broad daylight too. They do public lantern tours every October in the cemetery - again, I don't believe in the supernatural but you won't catch me doing a night tour there - too easy for the imagination to run wild!

[Arkilogue]

My condolences for your loss

If I may inquire: Was she an atheist or believer and was she well aware of your atheism? I do believe in the continuity of consciousness after leaving the physical body for a number of reasons.

If this or my questions are in any way upsetting to you, tell me to bugger off and I'll not hesitate to do so.

[Thumpalumpacus]

My sympathies about your mother.

I don't know what you heard.

[account_inactive]

Sorry to hear about your mother.

[thesummerqueen]

There are insects which make loud tapping noises, even.

The thing about ghost phenomena that makes it hard to convince believers is that for any given 'symptom' (tapping, shadows, orbs, lights, etc), there could be a variety of explanations...because each one of those things has a variety of natural causes. Believers try to nail down skeptics into one explanation in order to disprove it. For instance, if in one case the answer to a tapping/banging noise was water in pipes (if you've ever lived in a house with copper piping, you know that every time water shifts, it creaks through the pipes like a charicture of a haunted house), but the next place they hear tapping isn't around water pipes, they will insist that pipes therefore can't be the answer. Well, there isn't just one source of tapping/creaking/banging, up to and including auditory hallucinations due to lack of sleep, or the brain dozing off.

What you heard could have even happened elsewhere in the house and your human ears, far less calibrated at this point in our evolution to pinpoint the source of noises against predators, decided it came from the window instead of a much more mundane place.

I'm sorry to hear about your mother. I can well imagine that such a situation would leave you stressed out on top of grieving and that any small noises would become irritating.