Just discovered these threads - I love reading and sharing true ghost stories and look forward to reading all of your experiences
In the meantime though I have two to share. Here is the first.
When I was a very little kid I had a great aunt, we'll call her Angie as that is the anglicised version of her real name (too long to keep typing out). My mum took me to Angie's house every other Saturday so my mum could clean the house, make her food and help Angie out. Angie frightened me - she was very old, extremely
large (only partly mobile, always sat on the sofa) and her house was very dark, old-fashioned and smelled bad. Most frightening of all was Angie herself, because her eyes were always fastened on me. Wherever I was in the room, no matter what I was doing, whether my mum was talking to her or not - Angie's gaze would follow me silently around the room. I can see her gaze right now in my mind's eye, nearly 60 years later. Her eyes looked...hungry, when she looked at me. It frightened me badly.
When I was 8, Angie died and my mum, my aunts, my cousins and me went to her house to box up all her stuff. My cousin and I were going through one box and I pulled out a yellow knitted toy. It was weird...hand knitted, stuffed and looked like some kind of bird/lizardy thing. I didn't like it, and it smelled bad, but my cousin was egging me on to nick it and given that my cousin was 10 and therefore a goddess in my eight year old eyes, I did so. But the toy for some reason made me feel uneasy, so when we got home I shoved it under my bed so that it would be out of sight.
(Important fact: In my culture we believe that for the first 40 days after a person has died, their soul is still very close to earth and may visit relatives and loved ones with whom the person had unfinished business.)
So that night, I woke up in the night. I was definitely awake and not dreaming. I turned round in bed and saw Angie walking towards me, smiling lovingly. She was grey, translucent and her face was lit up with joy as she walked towards me across my room, her hands held out as if to hug me. I had never seen her walking or smiling in life.
I was terrified and pulled the blankets over my head and cowered. Eventually I went back to sleep.
When I was much older I learned that Angie had a tragic life. All she ever wanted was children, but she had 8 miscarriages. The last one was so late and so bad that the doctors told her any further attempts to get pregnant could kill her. Her husband left her, blaming her for her infertility (patriarchal stupid culture) and she sank into agoraphobia and binge eating disorder. But she was haunted by her love for, and desperation for, children because she could never had one of her own.
I also learned that every time she got pregnant, Angie would excitedly knit a woollen yellow bird for her baby's first toy. She'd kept canaries as a child in our home country and was excited to share the beauty of those birds with her baby. But she never had a baby, and the woollen yellow canaries were carefully stored away but never used.
I believe that what I saw that night was the ghost of my aunt before her soul was finally translated, and that she was happy to see that a child (me) finally had one of the woollen canaries she had so lovingly created.
. I know people will think it was a dream but honest to god I was awake. She’s never been back since no matter how much I’ve asked x
, but I couldn't find an explanation for the bed episode - I had a feeling it was my mum. Don't know why. Who can explain these things. 
