I'm going to start off by saying that none of this is melodramatic crap. I'm sure it will sound like it, but it's not.

My grandmother died when my older sister was three, two years before I was born. My mother was her favorite, and the two were very close. My grandmother had been suffering from Multiple Myeloma for many years at that point, and was bedridden on the verge of death. She was good to my mother, but my grandfather was not good to her and it made her unhappy. I was born shortly after she died and I'm sure a few times over the years I've prayed a few prayers or thought a few thoughts wishing that I could just meet her and get to know her (my mom always said I would've been my grandmother's "cup of tea"). Well there's an old clock in our house that came from my grandparents' house after my grandfather was moved to a home (hey, cut us some slack, he had dementia and he wasn't a very nice father... I'm not sure if any of his children wanted to be around him... probably why he died alone). The clock has been here my entire life (my grandfather died when I was roughly two weeks old). On random days it releases a strong scent of woodsmoke. No, I don't mean lingering smoke after we have a fire that seems to be coming from the clock, I mean that it pours the scent over the entire ground floor of my house on random days from sunny and humid summer days to icy and dry winter days.

Well one time I was walking on the island I go to in Maine (which is VERY haunted IMO... it's littered with WWI and WWII battlements and my house is haunted by some unknown spirit which we name Mrs Cushings) and felt something bad. No, I don't mean "I'm walking in the dark on a rural island with nobody around me so I'll act like there's a ghost," because I am pretty much nocturnal up there. I mean I felt it creeping up on me. I was being stalked like prey and it was starting to freak me out a little. It's pretty damn hard to freak me out... I don't have any particular fears just pet peeves I like to avoid. For instance, I don't fear spiders but i'd rather be far from one than close to it just because they're not something I'm partial to. Anyway, this wasn't scaring me because that island is my spiritual center... it carries a piece of me even when I'm in Rome, Eleuthra, Carmel, or any other city I've been to. The point is that I knew I could deal with most things up there. However I was a little anxious. The alarm bells going off in my head weren't alarm bells like what happens when I walk down a city street at night, they were primal, basic instincts telling me I was going to die. I wasn't afraid because I don't fear death, but I was... displeased at the prospect of whatever this thing was desecrating my island with a murder. I was prepared to deal with it, but I wasn't sure I would win. I glimpsed a large mound of shadow creeping alongside the path just a ways behind me. I wasn't sure what to do (this was before my "formal" introduction to the occult; I could perform basic elemental magic but it wasn't really under my control, and my purifying powers were more limited at that point), so I started to walk a little faster. I suddenly felt something press against my back and my throat being squeezed, not enough to choke me but too much for comfort. I started to freak a little when the scent of woodsmoke smashed into me like a wall and I distinctly remember thinking "grammy." Then the feeling disappeared, not gradually but immediately. I walked home with woodsmoke drifting around me like a blanket. Before you say "smoke from another house," I would like to say that there are a total of sixteen houses on the island (so few I can count them) and none of them were anywhere near me, nor are we allowed to build fires during a drought, which it was. This was really my first intense "experience" with the paranormal aside from the occasional ghost sighting (I have a strange sort of sight that I've not heard about from anyone else... not relevant to this post specifically but if you want to know I'm more than willing to share). Let me know what you think!!
Thanks.