Hi Krisked, I would like to tell you my experiences when I lived alone in my first flat.
After 10 days of living there a shelf fell down and the three brackets on a six foot alcove were stacked on top of each other in the left hand corner. Thought this was odd. Two weeks after that I lay in bed trying to get to sleep and heard scratching/aggitation. Couldn't understand it and thought I was over tired, then three heavy footsteps then nothing. Got up and investigated and nothing askew. A few days later I bought a laundry basket with a lid and put in my laundry. In the morning the lid was up. I looked at it as I sat on my bed and just knew I had a visitor./spirit/soemthing. That was three incidents in 7 weeks. My grandmother had died one month before I completed on the flat and I wondered if it was her saying she was okay. Then I remembered the shelf falling down and the books everywhere and I knew it wasn't her as she was very tidy.
I rang a friend who put me in touch with a spiritualist who called me straight away. He asked me questions and I told him it felt male, unhappy and I did feel as though I was being watched, ie I wasn't alone. I also could smell very fragrant smells in the hallway or cooking smells and there was a shop below me and the flat above was vacant. He came over the next evening and prayed, put eggs in corners of rooms, put a bowl of water next to my bedside. The whole thing was weird and things calmed down and I had to tell the whatever it was to move on out loud. I used to go to bed wondering what would happen that night and would wake up feeling relieved when nothing had happened...but...I told myself, it could happen that night...
Things started happening a few weeks later when I stopped telling it to move on and I would have this white mist on one wall where I would blink and think to myself "I can't see properly, I must be tired, but I can see properly in that room...". I didn't know this was common poltergeist behaviour. I would lie in bed trying to get to sleep and I would hear creaking outside my bedroom door. And it wasn't the central heating as I would switch it off at 7pm.
I got to the stage where I became very frightened and my friends couldn't understand how I could live there. I must admit I was scared to go "home" but my attitude was that it was my very first home that I owned and I was not going to let it get the better of me. One day when I felt desperate, this was about four months after moving in, I called the local vicar who said he would need to exorcise the flat. He asked me if I had held seances there or if I had an interest in the occult and I told him I hadn't. He asked me about the previous owner and I told him I didn't have a clue. He came over and prayed and said things which I couldn't believe ie "God bless ChicPea's flat and all surrounding it and we call upon Jesus Christ, etc, etc." It sounded very victorian. As he was saying this in all seriousness I did have to pinch myself in case I was imagining the whole thing. That night I went to bed and the whole oppressive atmosphere had changed to what I can only describe as a happy summer's day.
So the spiritualist concluded that it was somebody who had lived and died there who had difficulty moving on and the vicar concluded that it was poltergeist brought in by somebody who had held a seance or who was interested in the occult. Perhaps the previous owner?
I moved in March 1996, my boyfriend moved in the October (who thought it was all in my mind) and we left in March 1997. I then rented it out twice and when I went back to tidy up before handing over the keys on both occasions I wondered if I would see anything and on both occasions the night before I saw that white mist which made my stomach lurch. I couldn't get out quick enough. I did sell it after the second tenants and thankfully I made a super profit.
Since then I have had that feeling of being watched, ie not alone in two other properties - friends' houses - and I have always got out fast as this is the feeling. I would NEVER hold a seance and I consider these things very dangerous. I do believe that if you take an interest in this you open yourself up to something which you cannot control/understand.
I am sorry to write such a long post but I just wanted to share my experience with you. It became terrifying but I got through it. If you are scared maybe you could call your local vicar so he can pray in your house and see if it makes a difference. He will take it seriously.
Good luck.