My own experiences... I've been lucky to experience a few.
My g.grandad died when my mum was pregnant. I never knew him.
But throughout my childhood was told I had an old head on my shoulders and someone watching out for me.
There were lots of odd things that caused my parents to move from where we lived but I can't bear witness because I was just a baby.
But when I got old enough... I remember having an old lady telling me things that I would retell and made people think I had an old head on young shoulders.
One night I went to get in my mum and dads bed to find a man in a white suit standing in the hallway. He tried to grab me. I was 3.
I was screaming so much that my parents wouldn't even go into the hall to check who it was. In a 2nd floor flat, there's very few exits and both door chain and balcony were secure.
It stuck with me for my entire life.
At about age 26, I was talking to my friends hubby and he told me about him and his friend causing a major police investigation.
They had been playing in the woods at the back of the flats I has lived in. It would have been about 4 years after my experience. He and his friend had seen a man in a painters suit with what they thought was an axe.
He had apparently chased them and they had told their parents who had called the police.
The police hadn't found anyone.
But as he is telling me all this, I couldn't help but related it to the man in the suit.
Two years later, I went to the local library to look up something my dad had told me and came across an article reporting a murder in the 50s in the same woods where a painter, in his white overalls had beaten an old lady to death, in those woods with a wooden chair leg. Something 2 boys could have easily seen as an axe.
I'm convicted they're all related.
*
Being watched over, relates to my great grandad.
When I was 9 my mum left and I saw a man walk through my bedroom. It really scared me..but that was it until I was 11 and the next door neighbours dad and son saw a man on their outhouse roof going in the same direction.
When I was 16, I was in a relationship with that son and we were walking toward college where I went to study hotel catering and management.
We were just passing a house when I saw a man walking next to us like he was going to pass us so we moved over but instead the man kinda leaned round like he was going to look closeup at my face.. still kind of only out of the corner of my eye. I'd not looked directly at him.
I seriously jumped and my bf pulled me away to find absolutely no-one there.
We moved into a house nearby and then got a council flat due to our housing agency being shut down for fraud.
He was going into the bedroom one night when I was working and saw a man standing in the corner of the room. From that point on refused to sleep in there or go in without me.
My mum had convinced him that this man was my gr grandad from my dad's side... even though she did not get on with any of them (mum is half caste and her dad was from ghana and dads lot didn't like the "darkies")
When I was near 19, we split. Sadly as he's a right nice bloke but I was dealing with stuff I was struggling to cope with and he was depressed.
He moved in a few doors from my mum and started dating and one day asked my mum to tell me.. can you tell #### to ask her friend to stop visiting, it's freaking me out.
I did and he did. I began to like having him around. It was nice to have someone watching over me but it was at this point things started getting a bit nasty.
I got a new man and straight away he saw him, again in the corner of my bedroom. Not doing anything but emitting a feeling that was described as terrifying.
Occasionally I would glimpse him in the back of the car and jump but feel a little reassured. Things would go missing and turn up playfully somewhere else, especially right after me saying please put them back. I quite liked the little games. But the more reassured I felt, the worse things got for others.
I split with that man after 1 child and being pregnant so I was happy I had "my friend"... I felt scared but secure when my son called me crying from his room whe he was 3 because there was a man flying over his bed.
He was looking out for him too.
When I met my next partner my children were 5 and 9 months. He had gone down in the night for a smoke and seen a man in the lounge, from the hall out of the corner of his eye. He had decided it was imagination (until he told me about it) When he got in the kitchen all the cupboard doors were open. He closed them and went to the shed to smoke and when he came out, 2 of them were open again and we regularly heard the doors slamming.
We split in 05 and in 06, I met my current partner. Stranger things happened early on.
I'd been round but had to leave without my scarf. The following day he messaged to tell me I'd put it in the KETTLE! In the kettle!
I've put my phone in the fridge while getting something else but I don't think anyone could accidentally do that.
Then he said he thought his flat was haunted. It was in an old church but his reasoning was because he kept finding the cupboard doors open.
The night after, he said he'd seen it. He'd woken up feeling that someone was watching him and shit himself when he saw a man leaning over him, looking him in the face about a foot away.
This was 2 weeks approx into our relationship so I told him about my friend and told him next time to just say hi.
He first stayed at my house about 6 weeks in and all was fine for a few stops. Then the banging cupboard doors started.
A few visits in and my fella woke me up to tell me he was worried.
We had been DTD so the door was shut and locked but he had woken up and it was open.
When he woke me up it was to tell me he was sure it had been locked but had got up and locked it before going back to sleep a second time. He KNEW it was locked then but was waking me to tell me it was now open again!
He said it wasn't the fact it had happened because that was normal now but instead it was the bad feeling that was "around"
I snuggled him up and as we were dropping off to sleep something swoosh ed the hangers in the wardrobe and for the first time I was so scared.
I ended up travelling to burnley to visit a "Christian witch" who said she could feel a man with me and sent him away. But added that I must want him to be gone or she would have no strength to get rid of him and I must never ask for him to come back.
She died about a year later after an operation and the lady that took me died in February.
I guess that was the end of him!
In July, I was 9 days overdue and my teen and her idiot boyfriend were giving me grief. I was very stressed and tired and she was arguing stupid points, and I asked my daughter if she was mental.
She said she must be, and that she needs help because she's seeing things...
She said she woke up and there was a man watching her at the end of her bed.
:/
One day I will write it out properly and publish it.