I believe you. I've experienced it first hand too and it was very real.
Growing up, we lived in a council house, fairly nice area, house was about 10 years old. I had the larger room and my younger brother the box room. In the large room, at night I used to fall asleep feeling like someone was holding my hand and caressing it with their thumb, which I found comforting. In my young brain, raised as a Catholic, I just thought it was Jesus saying goodnight. blush
A few years later, at the age of puberty, while settling to sleep, I started hearing voices, definitely not in my head, I heard them in the room, it was a couple of people talking in a low whisper, I couldn't ever make out more than a word here or there as they spoke over each other. The more I strained to hear what was being said, the more voices I would hear. More voices joined in, all whispering / muttering over each other and the more voices I heard the louder it got, until it became a cacophony. I'd end up putting my hands over my ears and shout at them to stop. I'd take my hands off my ears and all was quiet again.
It was really frightening and to this day I've no idea who was talking. But it was not my imagination. I was a teenager, a sensible one at that.
Anyway, a few months later, my mum said it was time for me to move into the box room, it was only fair that my brother got a few years in the big room. I'd never really gone into my brother's room before, as it was so tiny, we used to always play in my room.
When I moved in, all it fitted was a wardrobe, single bed and dressing table. From the door threshold it was a few steps to the bed.
The odd thing about this room was you'd step over the threshold and it was like walking into a fridge. It was a terraced house and a small room, so made no sense. It also felt oppressive and like I was being watched, by something not friendly.
One day I was at my dressing table and put a hairbrush down on it, then turned around to get something from my wardrobe, turned back and my brush was on my bed, confused, I put it back on the dresser, turned back to my clothes in the wardrobe, picked out a top, turned back and the brush was on the bed again.
I was really freaked out and started questioning my sanity, so I used to 'test' it, whatever 'it' was and my belongings kept being moved. Nobody else was in my room except me.
My room was at the top of the stairs and whenever I needed to go downstairs I used to run down them as it felt like someone / something was behind me at the top and I felt that they would push me.
It was so scary, that I confided in my best friend, she lived a two minute walk from me and she didn't mock me, she said that she'd experienced strange goings on in her family home too, things moving and when she was in the bathroom she'd hear feet shuffling outside the door!
Difference being, she actually spoke to her parents (I didn't speak to mine or my family about it) and they got a spritualist in. The spiritualist said their house was haunted by a monk, rather randomly he was a disgraced monk and there were a number of them that had been disgraced in his group of monks, not sure what the collective noun for monks is! They had to get a priest in to bless the house and get rid of him.
Anyway, we eventually moved house and in my late teens I was watching TV with my mum and brother and something about spirits / ghosts came on. My brother piped up and went, "Mum, look! Just like our last house!" My mum shot him a stern look to shush him, I asked what was going on, she said they hadn't wanted to scare me, but the last house had spirit activity, my mum kept seeing a tall shadow pass along down the hallway at night, after we were in bed and get this....
My brother saw a hooded figure at the top of the stairs outside the box room, he told mum that it looked like a monk.
I was speechless and utterly freaked out.
Fast forward years later, I since learn there's an ancient abbey / monestary 1-2 miles from our old house!
I hated that house. Wouldn't ever want to go back there.