Meteor global version is different than project's

Solution 1:

Actually, you don't have two Meteor versions in your machine. Right now, you have only Meteor 2.5.3 (the latest version).

Version 2.5.4 that you see from npm is the version of the Meteor installer. This npm package is not Meteor itself, it is just an installer. You can see and compare these versions here (https://www.npmjs.com/package/meteor).

Besides that, each Meteor project may have different versions. If you create a project right now (meteor create myproject), by default it will use Meteor 2.5.3 (the newer version you have locally) but that project you mention you have created before with Meteor 1.8.1 will still use version 1.8.1. You can check which Meteor version a project is using by checking yourprojectdirectory/.meteor/release.

Also, you have the option to create a new project with an older version by just passing a --release option (meteor create myproject --release 2.5.1).

I hope it is more clear now.