very interesting to me that this sort of thing should show up now.

three nights ago i got out of the shower to be met by the strongest smell of cherry pipe tobacco. the bathroom was just filled, permeated by the smell of pipe tobacco. not burning tobacco, not smoke, but the actual leaf. it's a smell i adore. it's musky, and earthy and sweet and deep.

but it was so thick in the bathroom, i immediately thought there had too be someone else in the house. a thought which i dismissed because i knew i had locked up before i got into the shower. then i though there's someone outside - we've had some prowlers in my neighborhood lately - so i opened the window and took a breath: nothing but pure fresh air.

so i googled 'cherry pipe tobacco phantom' and came up with the word 'phantosmia' which is the word for olfactory hallucinations. apparently cherry pipe tobacco is a favorite to hallucinate.

so then i googled phantosmia and oh, boy! yeah, there were paranormal, mystical spiritual takes on what it could be. but more importantly, phantosmia can actually be a significant symptom for a few medical conditions. apparently people can be epilectic for years, their seizures manifesting only as phantosmia. or it can be any number of neurological disorders, including neuroblastomas. people with MS experience phantosmia, as do people suffering from migraines.

so i suggest you do a lot of googling, metaphysical as well as medical, paranormal as well 'normal'.
here's the wiki on it, to start you off: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantosmia

as for me, cherry tobacco holds great spiritual importance for me; once i rode it into another state of being where i got a lot of good info for me. what i experienced in the bathroom i think might be the spirit of tobacco, which is an extraordinarily powerful being.

but i also think if it happens a second time, i'm going to the doctor.

and the next morning i recalled i had watched the new sherlock episode, the abominable bride, a couple of times the night before. in this victorian episode, sherlock and watson are shown smoking pipes, which i experienced favorably at the time. i like pipe smoking. and i think that might have tripped a kind of calling for the experience i had. my phantosmia was not of something i had never smelled before, like a particular cologne such as you had, but of one of my most favorite smells in the world. and like you it wasn't a remembrance of the smell, it was the actual, real-time experience of the smell.