I can't remember if I have shared this on here before, but I have one. Sorry, this will be super long.
When I was a child I had an imaginary friend Thomas. My mum used to get quite cross as I would always be talking to him late at night when I was supposed to be asleep, but I would tell her he only came out at night. My mum was called into the school one day by my teacher who told her they were a bit concerned because I was telling everyone that my friend Thomas was dead, so she asked if there had been a death in the family that I might be working through. There hadn't been, so my mum tried sitting me down and talking a bit about death. Apparently I wasn't phased at all and told her that Thomas was the dead boy who came to play with me at night. I don't remember any of this at all, but I was only 5, so that's probably why.
My sleep was getting worse and worse and finally my mum finally got cross and told me that he wasn't real and I needed to stop being silly. She told me that she fell asleep downstairs that night in front of the television and woke up later. As she woke, she saw a teenage boy leaning over her with a horrible expression on his face - she said it was real malevolence and she was terrified. He was only there for a second and then he was gone. She figured it was just a leftover nightmare, but then she heard a smash from the kitchen. She ran out there and saw three glasses slide from the draining board and each break on the floor. She said it was really slow and deliberate, as though someone was trying to frighten her. She was pretty freaked out, so any time I mentioned Thomas from then on, she would tell me to stop talking about him and eventually I did. The important point here is my mum is insistent she never told anyone about this at all, no one in the family or her friends as it was just too weird.
When I was a bit older I still used to have problems falling asleep, but sometimes when I lay there I could almost feel a hand in my hair stroking it, which would often help me drift off. There was always a bit of a weird atmosphere in my room, it was always freezing cold even though I had brand new radiators and sometimes I would feel quite uncomfortable in there. I told my mum this in a, aren't I weird, way and she told me I used to say that when I was a child too and then she told me about Thomas.
I still kept feeling the hand in my hair sometimes, but I figured that mum had placed the subconscious idea of Thomas in my head by now and I didn't think that much about it. Years later we went to a spiritualist with my grandmother, who really wanted to go, but didn't want to go alone. The woman was supposed to be doing a reading or whatever it is called for her, but she kept looking at me. I know all about cold readings and am quite sceptical about them, so I was waiting for her to give me some generic message. But she then said that a male ghost was attached to me. She said that he didn't mean me any harm, he was just lonely. She offered to do some sort of cleansing for me, but I saw it as an attempt to get money and declined. As we were leaving she told me that Thomas would follow me wherever I went unless I did something about it.
Really strange, but to be honest I just assumed my mum had fibbed and had told my grandmother, who'd passed it on to the 'psychic'. I moved out of home soon after and in with a partner, who wasn't especially nice to me. We had so much weird stuff happen in our flat/house over the next ten years and my partner often found his things missing or broken completely. Our friends hated the flat/house and refused to stay overnight. I split up with him eventually and from what he said, all activity stopped as soon as I left the house. I would still wake up sometimes and feel as though someone was stroking my hair.
A few years later I was walking through town in an area I had never been to before when a woman came chasing after me up the street. I assumed I had dropped something, but she grabbed my hand and said she had a message for me. I assumed she was going to try and sell me some charm or something, but she said, 'Thomas is so happy you finally left him.' She didn't ask for money and there is no logical way she could have known anything about it as I was on the other side of the country from my home town. Some time after that I was dragged to a fortune teller in a fair and she also told me that a male ghost was following me.
I find it all a bit freaky to be honest. Three people have now told me the same thing and I can't deny the weird stuff that happened while I was with my abusive partner. I also can't deny I still wake up and feel someone stroking my hair. I am now married and thankfully if something is following me, he seems to like this one, which is good, as I do too.