Don't judge but I'm quite a heavy smoker, please before you jump to conclusions this story has no "smoky entities" in it.
I was round a friend's house quite late one night; it must have been well past midnight. My friend's windowsill is large enough to comfortably sit on and it's a tall sliding window so you can sit right out of it with your legs on his kitchen roof.
It was fairly cold and we were alone in the house. We only the window open a foot or so and were sitting on his bed underneath the windowsill. Ironically enough, we were chatting about our favourite tobaccos, whether we thought we could ever give up and smoking roll-ups when we both quite clearly heard a hacking cough coming from behind us, from what seemed his bathroom across the landing. We sat in silence for a minute but shrugged it off as someone walking past. My friend has no neighbours, it's a country house but there is a pedestrian pathway. Bear in mind it was past midnight.
Then it happened again but louder.
I know sound can be deceptive but we both could have sworn it was definitely coming from the bathroom and being the only ones in the house we put both our cigarettes in the holder bits of the ashtray and went to have a look. Now, we always leave pillows at the bottom of the door to stop the smoke from wafting out of his room so we made sure to shut his bedroom door behind us. We crossed the landing and for the first time ever in that house we had to push the door quite hard to get it open.
In the bathroom, it was clear, no mist, no dripping tap, no face in the mirror, no intruder; nothing seemed out of the ordinary, except one thing. The distinct and very heavy smell of tobacco, not our everyday roll up baccy but very strong pipe tobacco, almost woody and very thick (my grandfather used to smoke a pipe so I believe I'm familiar with it). The stranger thing is as soon as I asked my friend if he could smell it, he replied yes then it vanished.
I smelt my hair, yes, smoky but nothing like what we just experienced. Nervously we shrugged it off and went back into the bedroom to find my friend's cigarette had disappeared completely and mine had been extinguished, the end was literally stubbed but there was no mark on the ashtray, windowsill or anywhere else and even stranger still, the window was pulled completely up. My Zippo lighter was also open and hasn't worked since
Ok, my theories.
Its an old country house and my friends family only bought it a few years ago, there was an abandoned, dilapidated stony bungalow at the bottom of his garden (I say garden, more like a field). That was torn down about two months before this happened. There's an old barn on the property too that is being converting so obviously it probably was a farm house at one point. If I wanted to get hysterical and cry ghost then I think it would be someone to do with that and it's either a compassionate victim of a smoking related disease or someone who doesn't like us smoking on "their" property.
As for my friend's cigarette vanishing, it could have blown out the window. It is winter but a very hard frost and from what I remember, no wind. However, it is more likely that's what it was. Still have no idea how mine could have got stubbed out though (it was only half smoked and I'm not one for wasting nicotine) or how the window opened further, it's a damn creaky window by the way and we didn't hear it when we were out of the room. As for my favorite lighter, well I'm gutted it doesn't work anymore.
The cough, like I said, old house. Could have been the boiler or wood settling but hand on my heart it sounded very much like someone hacking something up in a sharp short burst. The smell, I honestly don't know and have never known such a strong smell suddenly vanish like that.
Thanks for reading
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