I've had all kinds of interesting and mystifying thing happen to me, ever since I was fairly young, in my teens. These experiences run the range from knowing what's going to happen next, LOTS of deja vu, precognitive dreams, and what I believe are spirit visitations. (I am not into the occult and never went looking for these experiences, and I also tend toward the scientific, rational explanations I can find for these phenomena.) But there are always one or two that escape explanation.

My husband and I were renovating the house we now live in. It was a clear, sunny, cool early Summer day. We were bringing drywall panels into the one back bedroom. The rest of the house was basically empty, but we figured that room, off the beaten path, would be best to store big panels like this, and handiest at the same time.

We had about half the truckload in, when from out of nowhere, we both smelled the unmistakable waft of a freshly-lit cigarette. You know, that sweet fresh singular smell, that fades and changes as the cigarette is smoked-down. No one else was around, the windows were closed, and any air coming in through the back door would had to have traveled quite a way to reach us in that back room. He kept staring at me for a time, while we were both inhaling deeply the described smell. I peeked out the window---no one was around.

Suddenly, within seconds, the smell was gone, vanished...the way cigarette smoke smell does NOT behave.

We cracked up laughing. He was a bit more rattled by it than I was---I'd had things happen to me in the past. But this was a first for him. He just kept shaking his head---there was no need for him to say anything.

The people who owned the home before us were known to be massive chain smokers. The owner's wife had only passed away shortly before we were offered the house.