Over my life I have always "seen" figures- little boys' old ladies just all walks of human life appear and are gone in a flash. Never has this caused me any problems and never have they interacted or lasted too long. They are not a corner of an eye experience either but quite clear visions of people- I do not know what they are - I did not care as it did not affect me at all.
On one occasion myself and wife at the time went to view her child hood home that had come up for sale- my wife experienced some issues here with apparitions and ghosts and the home frightened her- she wished to return to have another look- She experienced nothing until that evening when she had a terrible nightmare- I initially experienced nothing. I passed the house on the way home from work every evening. The day after a "shadow" flew very fast and aggressively out of the house and into my car- although initially scary there was no further incident.
I moved into a new home in 2007 with my now ex wife. I regularly saw an old lady climbing the stairs and on occasion books would be moved on a shelf all fall off altogether- This "old lady" was the only vision so far that had interacted- it turned towards me and smiled- with granted freaked me out a great deal! I did not stop in this house long as my relationship broke down.
My new home and new partner were even more "haunted". Again though just visions of people in the house I saw figures a couple of times and again it was no issue to me as they did not interact at all.
One night my partner went off to bed and I locked up downstairs and turned off the downstairs lights. As I went to go upstairs a dark figure was standing there. It was huge and filled the stairway- no features but I could make out what appeared to be a dark shadow with a hat. The area went freezing cold. I feared for my wife so I approached the figure and walked through its presence. I got straight in bed. Immediately my wife sensed my fear and felt my freezing cold body (I am always warm). I explained what had happened. As soon as I did this the figure came into the room. We held each other as it "sat" on the bed. The figure then disappeared.
The apparitions and appearances of figures continued and we never spoke of the incident with the huge dark figure. Until it came up with my spiritual "hippy like" mother in a crowded public house. As soon as I started to tell my mother the cold descended on me. I felt surrounded, however the pub emptied in my mind and only me my wife and mother were in the room. As soon as I stopped it went back to normal. Later in the evening we went back to my mother's for coffee. She started to question again. The room again went cold and an overpowering smell of burning flesh and a horrible presence started. The smell was so overpowering I vomited. My mum could smell it a little but- but my wife felt nothing- although she could see I was affected deeply by it!
Since smelling the burning flesh I have not been able to shake a bad chesty cough. I have only been really scared two times in my life and they both involved this figure- I am sure it appeared to me a couple of times as a child- the other apparitions and "ghosts" do not bother me at all. There is something sinister in this black hated giant shadow that I felt I needed to share.