"Above"/"below" before/after a noun

I first began seeing "the below email" in emails from non-native speakers of English. but now I even see it coming from native speakers of the language in the UK. I can only conclude, from my experience and serial observation, that the former are influencing the semi-literate latter.

A prompt response I once received had just once sentence with a citation: "With reference to your above, please see my below."

I couldn't find any evidence suggesting that either form is incorrect, although from my experience, it would seem that "The reference above. " would be far more common usage than "The above reference. ". Above can also be used either way when separated by a comma, "Above, the reference. " and "The reference, above, . ". Without a specific citation, though, I'll leave this to the experts.

Consider how you cannot swap in below for any adjective in “Their eager young eyes stared at the stormy grey sea.” Because it cannot substitute for an adjective in syntactic tests such as these without yielding an ungrammatical result, this failure provides strong evidence that below is not an adjective at all.