Apparition At The Foot Of The Bed

We have been living in rented accommodation in the old servants quarters of a big old manor house in West Sussex, England since January.

Our accommodation is a two bedroom cottage that is attached to the main house; it is so old that the stone steps inside the house have been worn down to show the grooves where people's feet have trodden over the ages. There is a fireplace in the living room and another in the master bedroom (the master bedroom sits directly above the living room), these are the areas of the house we feel most uneasy.

Since we have moved here my boyfriend James has started sleepwalking. It is usually around three or four in the morning and he can be very rude and out of character when I tell him to come back to bed. He rarely has any recollections of the incidents and it usually involves him getting out of bed or eerily feeling my face with his hands. We got the sleep talking app that is meant to record everything, but bizarrely the app never ever records the sleepwalking incidents, just some buzzing and the bed squeaking, even on the rare occasions James remembers waking up and us having a "get back into bed" conversation.

One night the sleepwalking got so bad we agreed it would be better for him to sleep downstairs. I was by myself in the bedroom, I switched off the light and settled down and just before I closed my eyes I heard a breathy "goodnight" very close to my face. It sounded satisfied. I immediately sat up and put the light on, there wasn't anyone there. I felt a bit sick but concluded that James had probably said it downstairs and the sound had carried up through the chimney. The next morning we tried to reproduce the sound but failed, someone needed to be really close for me to hear it in that way.

That was a couple of months ago. Since then we've both had uncomfortable feelings, feelings like we were being watched etc. But nothing really nasty, until last night.

Last night I woke up and thought I saw James, poised, facing me in a tense position at the foot of the bed. I said, "James, come on now, it's the middle of the night, get back into bed..." as I tried to pull myself up into a sitting position I felt an arm beside me, panicking I started to realise that James was, in fact, right next to me in the bed. A feeling of dread washed over me, if James was here what was watching me from the foot of the bed?

I started to scream and whimper, James held me and yelled "What? What? What?" I looked back at whatever it was, screaming for all I was worth. It had moved closer and was moving its hands up and down like when people are trying to say "calm". It was also shaking its head. I was hysterical and just repeated in a scream to James, "Turn the light on, turn the light on, turn the light on" then I reached over and tried to turn my light on. The thing seemed to lumber towards me and I finally turned the light on, tearing my eyes off of it to find the switch, when I looked back it was gone.

Last night we kept the light on and slept little, anxiety passing in waves. James said that before I had woken up he had been wide awake, with the overwhelming sick feeling that someone was watching him, crouched in the corner of the room. As he couldn't see anything for sure, he just told himself he was just being silly and rolled over, a couple of minutes later I woke up and saw what I saw.

We don't know what to do about it, we are both dreading trying to sleep. We've both singled out how strange his sleepwalking episodes are - is something trying to get him away from me at night? Is it influencing him? Is that why I was spoken to when we did give in and sleep separately? Or, even more disturbing, have there been other incidents where I thought I was seeing James sleepwalking but was in fact watching something else?