The Smoking Man

My family had just moved into our new forever home. I noticed some things occurring almost immediately that were not normal, but I brushed them off at first thinking they were just in my head or excusable as nothing. It started with the smell of cigarette smoke. We would smell it from time to time in different rooms, mostly in our bedroom. In an attempt to debunk it we looked all around the outside of the house to see if someone was smoking near our property, etc. but found no one. I began having feelings of being pushed or trying to walk downstairs but it felt as if someone was holding onto my ankle and I couldn't move my foot. We were on our way out of the house and I was holding my eight month old. I fell onto the concrete in our garage but was thankfully I was ok as was my child.
Over the next three years activity escalated from the pushing to anything with batteries such as toys and carbon monoxide detectors playing noises between 2-4 am. The toys were in my child's room. I would go in the room thinking my child was playing with them but she was sound asleep through it all, as she slept through everything. One toy was a talking fisher price house that spoke when the doorbell rang etc. It would not shut off so I put it on the front porch outside for the night. It played for some time afterwards. I thought ok the batteries must be going and I waited and didn't change them to see if this would happen again but it did not.
As the activity increased I realized these occurrences were not battery related. In addition we continued to smell cigarette smoke in numerous rooms around the house. The activity increased in nights as well as length of time it would last. One day I was at the movies with my older child and left my then two year old home with my husband for the afternoon . When I got out of the movie, I had numerous missed messages and phone calls on my phone from my husband. I called him back and he said he went upstairs for a minute but didn't tell my child who couldn't find him and so began crying as she laid down on the steps to the upstairs. When my husband heard her he ran down the stairs and smelled cigarette smoke all around her. This increase in activity continued for three years. One night we were at our neighbors house sitting outside enjoying the weather and they mentioned the previous owner was the caretaker for a sick friend who was taken away by ambulance from the house, shortly before the house went up for sale. In those three years we also received estate papers sent to the previous owner with an “on behalf of name of Robert” something, I can't recall the last name now. I began to put two and two together.
I should also mention that when I was a child I used to hear ghosts and one time saw them. I was sleeping and heard a lot of talking noise in my room. I woke up to find many shadowy people standing at the foot of my bed looking at me talking. As I lifted my heard, I heard a woman say “shhh, shhh, she can hear us”, and just like that they disappeared. The door to my bedroom would open at night when I know I shut it every night. After this happened enough times I asked my parents if they opened my door at night, to which they both replied no. So, I placed a group of wire hangers on the inside of my door. Sure enough that night my door opened setting off the hangers, but when I looked, I saw no one. We moved from that house when I was 16 years old, and the activity for me stopped at that time.
Back to our smoking man, as I mentioned the activity increased in occurrences as well as length, and strength. One night my husband and I were sleeping and I was on my side facing my husband. All of a sudden I woke up to what felt like someone shaking me to wake me up. I quickly spun over on my other side, dropping an expletive. As I turned over, I saw a shadowy figure of a man but as I swore in anger, the shadow disappeared slowly to the floor and looked like it crawled away. I was beyond scared and disturbed at this point to have been touched. Thankfully that was the only physical interaction I had after the pushing stopped shortly after we moved in.
As the activity continued, Fall approached of the third year. My kids were playing outside in the leaves as my husband was raking. I was inside the house and headed up to the bedroom to get something. When I entered I smelled cigarette smoke. Thinking this poor soul must be confused as to why we are living there and where did his caretaker in life go, I took the opportunity to address the smell by apologizing to the ghost for what had happened to him and explained what I had heard about him being sick and said I think his name is Robert. I proceeded to tell him that the previous owner had moved and gave the general location as we knew to where she moved. I never said anything to my husband about the occurrence. A year goes by and my husband says to me, "hey I haven't smelled the smoking man in about a year". I looked at him and explained the conversation I had with the smoking man. He apparently passed over or left as it's been 17 years now and we've had zero visits from the smoking man and all activity ceased with his assumed departure.