Mimicing Rachael

I have always been interested in the paranormal and ghosts but had never really thought that I would have an experience of my own.

In January of this year I experienced a rather unsettling occurrence in the house that I rented at the time with my best friend. It was a renovated house but would have dated back to around the 1950's, maybe a little earlier. Myself and my friend Rachael (not her actual name) were quite happy with this house. I did experience some strange feelings of unease in my bedroom over the year I was there and always oddly felt it coming from the same corner of my room. I have to admit I spent many a night with my bedside lamp on, but one event in particular still makes me uneasy.

One evening I was standing in the kitchen (our living room and kitchen where one room, my bedroom was the only other room on the ground floor and the door that led into the living room/kitchen was beside the stairs). I'd been making myself some tea and from the corner of my eye seen Rachael come into the room. I turned to ask her if she wanted anything and was more than a little shocked to find she wasn't there. I thought she was playing games with me so went to check my room and the stairs which would have taken me a few seconds. If anyone was running or hiding they wouldn't have had a lot of time. She wasn't there. I was convinced I had seen her, I was even half expecting her still to laugh and yet nothing.

I called her mobile phone only to hear it ringing from her room (upstairs and down a little hallway) where she answered it sleepily and wondered what was going on. I explained what had happened and of course she thought I was just trying to wind her up. I wasn't. I told her I was serious and of course this made us both freak out a little (a lot).

I know that people say oh it was just your eyes/mind playing tricks on you but this seemed different. I was convinced she was there and when she'd disappeared my stomach sort of dropped because I think I sensed something wasn't quite right.

After the experience in the kitchen, Rachael told me that she experienced sleep paralysis more in this house than she had in our previous two properties combined. (She has suffered from sleep paralysis since her early teens and in various quite unsettling ways.) Now, I know most people would say she could just be saying this to go along with the story but Rachael is not that kind of person. She is logical and incredibly level headed. To think something strangely paranormal and unexplained is happening to her in equal measures scares and annoys her because she can't find a logical explanation for it.

I feel that our old house may have been haunted not by something angry and malevolent but someone who was a little unsettled at us being there and so we felt unsettled and uneasy being there at times ourselves. I wouldn't out and out claim that I'd seen a ghost because I genuinely don't know but I have read about people claiming ghosts taking the shape of their loved ones and friends and thought maybe this could have been the same thing?