Will try to keep long story short. I neither believe nor disbelieve in spirits, but this has really made me think.
In the last two years we have had two new neighbours. Out for a drink with one of them and she asks me if the previous owners of her house had ever mentioned a presence in the house (I think the house was probably built in the late 1960s/early 70s). They never had. She said that ever since she had been there she had always felt there was someone else with her in one of the bedrooms. Also a different smell to the rest of the house. She had mentioned it to the other new neighbour, who I don't know very well. Neighbour No 2 said she was some sort of medium and offered to go into the room. She said there was a spirit there of a man wearing a leather apron and she had asked him to leave. All well since then. Different smell gone. Neighbour No 1 had never felt afraid, just that she was not alone.
Purely by chance last week I bumped into my old neighbour in town. We went for a coffee and I said, you'll never guess what, and related the story. The room in question had been her son's room. She said they had never experienced anything and we had a bit of a laugh about it.
Last Saturday I had a call from my old neighbour. She had seen her son that morning (he is now married with two children) and jokingly said did he know that his old bedroom was haunted. To her shock he replied yes! He said that he had sensed a presence many times and for some reason he always pictured in his head a man with a leather apron. She asked why he had never mentioned it and he said he thought he would be ridiculed by the rest of the family. However, he had been concerned enough about it to speak to our local vicar at the time who came and said a prayer in the room whilst my friend was out.
New neighbour and old neighbour met once, on moving day, and the son had never met them.
Even stranger. Back in the day, the site where the house is used to be occupied by the village blacksmith/farrier. We are now trying to find any old photos of the village that might show the forge/blacksmith.
Make of that what you will.