It was last winter and I was living alone in a small neighborhood home. It was one of those places where everything beyond the backyard turned into trees and undeveloped land. I'd lived there for about a year by then and never really had any issues.
It was quiet, which I liked. And even though it was on the older side, it still felt like a nice cozy home. This happened over a long weekend where it was snowing on and off and extremely cold outside, often below zero, so I was at home and inside all day.
This night, after eating dinner and cleaning up around the house, I watched TV for a bit and eventually turned everything off and went to bed around 11:00. One thing I have to mention about the bedroom is that for the last 3 or so months before this happened, the lock on my bedroom door had been broken. It was one of those push locks.
And I just noticed one night that it didn't work. The door would still click open from both sides. But I had put it off for all that time because it just didn't seem important.
I lived alone, so I didn't have family members or roommates that I was trying to keep out of my room. As long as all the main entrance doors were locked, my bedroom door really shouldn't matter. The hassle of buying a new one and changing it out just seemed really unnecessary.
That being said, sometime later in the night, I woke up suddenly. My heart was beating quickly for some reason. And although the house was pitch black and quiet, I could faintly see that my bedroom door was cracked open.
I could feel the alarms going off in my head. But at the same time, I knew there was a chance the door just didn't close properly and happened to make its way open. Maybe the cold winds slightly shifting the house caused it.
I got out of bed and walked over, not wanting to turn the lights on, hoping I could just close it and get back to sleep. I shut it and double checked it was latched in the doorway, then got back in bed. But as I laid there, I could tell something in me wasn't satisfied.
Like my gut knew there was more to this. I kept opening my eyes and looking around the room, although seeing nothing but shadows filling every corner. I probably stubbornly laid there hoping to pass out eventually for 30 minutes before something moved in the house.
I heard it like a shuffle on the floorboards either downstairs or in the hall outside my room. I leaned my body up and tried to listen, but there wasn't anything else. I was frozen, sitting up in my bed and not making a sound for a while.
I was worried that if I got up and moved, then I wouldn't hear it again or wouldn't be able to determine what it was. And eventually, I continued listening, but laid back down. I waited and listened for a long time and don't even remember falling asleep.
Didn't realize it until I woke up suddenly again, heartbeating quickly just like before. And when my eyes adjusted to the dark, I saw the same thing. My bedroom door was cracked open.
I laid there staring at the gap in the doorway, looking at the darkness beyond it. Obviously, the hallway light was off, so it was just a deeper black outside of my room. I tried to tell myself it must have been the house again, or that maybe it didn't latch the way I thought it did.
But that explanation didn't sit right this time because I was very aware of how intentionally I closed it last time I got up. I started to get out of bed to walk over there again. But just as I swung my legs out of the covers, something shifted behind the door frame like someone had moved out of the darkness between the crack and the doorway.
I froze up again. I didn't hear anything though. No footsteps walking away, nothing.
Just the wind making the house creek. I didn't know if whoever the hell was right outside that door was still there or if they were watching me or what they were going to do. I stood motionless and quiet for five whole minutes, but it felt like hours before I quickly ran to the door and slammed it closed, pressing all of my body weight into it to keep them out.
But he didn't try to push it back open. There were maybe 15 seconds of silence and then I heard soft dull footsteps slowly move down the hallway and down the stairs. Sounded like he went toward the back door and then it was quiet again.
I quickly called the police and thankfully I can say nothing else happened during the 10-ish minutes I waited for the police to make it and searched the house. They took down a lengthy report of the whole night and everything I knew, which wasn't much, and they searched the home, but found nothing. However, as we were standing in the kitchen talking about what happened, I glanced toward the back door, explaining that's where I last heard his footsteps moving toward, and I saw him again, his silhouette standing in the trees behind my backyard.
He moved away quickly before the officers could look. He was probably standing out there watching us through the windows from afar, which is insanely creepy and unsettling. I spent that night at a friend's house as well as the next few days.
Over the few weeks afterward, I didn't really get any more news from the police, but the snow cleared up a bit, and I found some even more unsettling things in the back forest behind my home. There were these faint and rugged trails through the woods, like from someone having walked the same way over and over, and the trail led right up to the back of my house. Whoever this guy was, he'd been stalking me for a while.
long enough to have even naturally made a foot path in the forest. And probably the most disturbing find was that the way he broke in was likely through one of the back windows, which I found didn't lock correctly. Kind of like my bedroom door.
Could just be a coincidence, but seeing as he'd been stalking me for a while, there's a chance that that night wasn't the first time he was in my house. And the broken lock on my bedroom door might have not been some random unrelated occurrence either. Needless to say, I moved out and far away from there.
I just really hope I wasn't followed. I know right now as I'm writing this, it's the middle of winter, but this actually happened a few months ago on Halloween. I wasn't sure if I wanted to share this, but after debating it for a while, I decided I might as well just in case it helped someone else not fall for the same situation I did.
I live in a really old apartment building on the outskirts of town, which wasn't necessarily a bad area, but it was definitely far from being nice. It was where most who couldn't afford to live in the city end up settling down at since all the houses and buildings were built in the early 1900s, so they were cheap. My apartment had been renovated a few times, but overall it was still noticeably in bad shape.
A ton of the people living in the other units moved out in just the last couple years, and all the rooms were left vacant. I don't think whoever owned the building ever tried to rent out the rooms. Maybe they wanted people to move out.
I don't know. They just left the empty rooms there. And after a while, I genuinely think I was the only one still living in that building.
It felt like every time I walked in or out through the halls, I never heard a single sound or saw anyone at all. It was just an empty, forgotten building that somehow I was the only one still living in. I distinctly remember a month or so before this event, I had tossed some stuff in the dryer before walking out of the building to head to work.
And down all three stories of the building, I could hear my dryer rumbling through the walls, filling the silence in the staircase and the hallways. That's how quiet and vacant it was. Anyway, I worked on Halloween, and being older and living in an apartment, there wasn't much for me to celebrate.
Obviously, kids don't go trick-or-treating inside apartment complexes. Not that anyone else lived here anyway, so I tossed my work stuff on the floor and just sat on the couch to maybe watch a horror movie or pull up a Halloween themed video on YouTube. It was around 900 p.
m. when the sudden knock at the door to my unit nearly had me paralyzed from how much it startled me. Three loud knocks and then it was just quiet and they were definitely at my door.
I got up, still shaken and confused that not only was this the first I'd heard of anyone being in the building for months, but also that they were at my door. I walked over and cracked the door open and was even more confused. There was a kid.
She was wearing a Halloween costume and holding up a bag. I must have stared at her for a whole 10 seconds, frozen and trying to figure out what the hell was going on. The girl didn't say anything either.
She just stood there looking at me through her mask. The bag she held up was empty. No candy in it.
And I felt bad that I didn't have any to hand out, but I was more focused on figuring out where she even came from. How did you get in here? Do your parents live in this building?
>> She didn't speak. Didn't really seem phased by the question either. Honestly, had no emotion.
I leaned my head into the hallway and looked down past the girl. No one else was out there. No parents, no other kids.
It was dead silent in the whole building. I was about to ask another question, but she suddenly turned away and walked down the hall to the staircase and left. I stood there for a minute, hearing her go down the stairs and seemingly out of the building.
Didn't knock on any other doors or stop at any rooms. Something was really strange about that. I closed and locked my door behind me, but I felt like I needed answers.
All these months of not hearing or seeing a single person or sign that anyone else was in this building and then suddenly one night a girl shows up at my door. It just didn't seem right. I spent a few minutes trying to look out the windows at the parking lot in front of the building, but my car was the only one there, just like it always was, and no one else was outside.
It was dark and vacant. After a few more minutes of thinking about it, I threw on my jacket and decided to head out to look around. I went into the hallway, stopping to listen for a moment, then walked down to the staircase.
As I walked downstairs, the building seemed just as dead as usual. No signs of anyone else on any of the other floors. When I got down to the bottom, I looked outside from the front door.
The girl was definitely gone now and there was no one near the building whatsoever. I know it was Halloween, but this kind of had me legitimately creeped out. And as I was closing the front door, I noticed something else.
The keypad next to the door had a blinking light. Now, this was just one of those old keypads with the buzzers that I guess used to work, but since I'd been there, it wasn't functional. I always used my physical key, and even if you press the buttons on the keypad, it wouldn't light up or show any signs that it was working.
I assumed it was completely disconnected. So, seeing the light suddenly on and blinking was pretty strange. I closed the door and tested to see if it locked, thinking maybe the blinking light meant the door wasn't locking properly, but it seemed to lock just as usual.
So, I started heading back up to my unit. I didn't like the feeling of being outside of my room, not with the strange things going on this night. I walked up past the first floor and then the second, but stopped in my tracks as I passed the hallway.
I backed up and looked down it, confirming what I saw out the corner of my eye. One of the unit doors was open. That had just happened during the couple minutes between me walking downstairs and coming back up.
>> Hello. My voice echoed down the hall and there was not a sound in response. A chill hit my body and I quickly hurried up to my room, getting in and closing the door behind me.
I felt like my whole body went into panic mode for a second. I took a deep breath and started to walk into the living room before sudden loud knocks hit the door behind me. I hadn't even been inside for 10 seconds.
I called out hello again as I stared at the door. The person knocked again, but didn't say anything. I quietly walked up to the other side of the door and I looked out the peepphole.
I saw a man. He had full black clothing and a hood draped over his face. He hit the door again and stood right up to the door like he was pressing on it so that as soon as I turned the handle, the door would fly open.
I took a few steps back and suddenly I heard something else. Footsteps from the outside hallway. There was more than one.
I heard them start whispering, but all I could hear were low mumbles through the thin walls. I could feel that whatever this was wasn't over. I got my phone and dialed 911, then tried to find a place to hide.
It was just a one-bedroom tiny apartment, so my options weren't great. I decided to go out onto the balcony, which had blinds covering it. And not a minute later, there was a slight thump inside the building.
And then I saw light slowly shine into the room as the door creaked open. I was looking through the small cracks between the blinds. Two men walked in and started looking around.
My heart was racing. They were inside for a while, even coming right up near the blinds to the balcony, but eventually left. I waited out there in the cold for 10 minutes before cops got there.
No one else was inside the building. And from the investigation, I did find out that I was the only one living in the building still, at least legally. No one else should have had access aside from the owner.
But I didn't get many answers as to what was really going on. It felt like the men had used the little girl to condition me to open the door. so that when they knocked I wouldn't think twice and would just open the door.
I moved out in the following days and it seemed like after moving away everything died out. The police stopped giving any updates and the whole situation faded into nothing. I don't know what those men wanted from me or what was really going on in that building.
And I'm thankful I didn't have to find out that night. I used to work the night shift at a small shipping warehouse right outside of town. It wasn't a big place, just a long concrete building with three loading docks, a tiny office, and endless rows of metal shelving.
Most nights, it was only me and one or two other guys. But the company cut hours during the slow season, so for a few weeks, I was completely alone from midnight to 6:00 a. m.
I didn't think much of it at first. I guess the peace and quiet was nice, and the job was easy enough. I kept my earbuds in most of the night and tried to not think about how quiet it was.
Heavy machines that ran all day were silent at night, so even the smallest noise echoed. This night in particular was very quiet. No cars driving on the highway outside or even wind hitting the building.
From inside, I could hear the soft sound of crickets in the forest that was just beside the building because there was nothing to drown out the noise. At some point early in my shift, I put my earbuds in and worked for a good while without stopping. I was in the far back corner scanning a pallet when I heard something that made me stop.
Footsteps, light ones, not hurried or heavy, but almost definitely footsteps. They came from the front of the warehouse near the office. At first, I thought my boss might have stopped by without texting me, which has happened before and gave me as good of a scare as you'd imagine.
I took my earbuds out and listened again, but now there was nothing. After a minute, I told myself I imagined it. But then, just as I started getting back to work, I heard them again.
Just a few footsteps, slow and spaced out, like whoever it was wasn't sure where they were going. >> John, that you? >> I called out my boss's name, but he didn't call back.
and the footsteps seemed to stop, too. I walked toward the front, trying to act like I wasn't nervous. The warehouse lights didn't reach the office area that well, leaving that part of the building dim and shadowy.
I flipped on the office light and checked inside. I even checked the break room and found nothing. Didn't know what else to do other than shake it off and get back to work.
Usually, I didn't get worked up about stuff like this, so I knew either tonight I was just feeling off or something was actually off about the warehouse. Another hour went by. And I'd finished scanning what I needed to and headed back to the office to log everything and check on a couple of things.
Like I said before, the office was kind of in the back corner of the building. I sat down and started doing all the boring computer work of just clicking through things and adjusting the numbers from the scans. I was in there no more than 5 minutes when for some reason I looked up at the hallway window, the one that overlooked the warehouse floor.
Someone was walking between the shelving rows. just a silhouette barely visible, but I felt like even from the quick half look I saw, the movement was clearly someone walking. I stood up so fast the chair tipped over and I shouted, "Hey," at them to try to get them to stop.
My voice resonated down the warehouse, but after they disappeared out of view behind the shelf, I didn't see anything. I grabbed the nearest thing I could find to defend myself. some old metal tool from the desk and stepped outside the office.
I started slowly walking down and I kept calling out something along the lines of, "Who's here? " and "You can't be in here. " over and over.
No matter how hard I tried to fake it, my voice didn't sound confident at all. I moved aisle by aisle, checking corners and even looking behind boxes where a grown adult couldn't possibly be hiding. And yet, I still found no one.
Eventually, I made it to the far back wall, and every row behind me was empty. I sort of stared at the warehouse with this blank stare, trying to understand this. The only other place I could look were the couple side hallways that I guess if it really was a person I saw, they could have snuck into, but I felt like I would have heard the heavy metal doors opening and closing.
But there was no way I'd be able to get back to work without checking. I opened one of the doors and looked down. This area I hadn't really been to.
I think it led to all the manager's offices and stuff like that that I had no business ever being in. I didn't see anyone though, so I turned around and let the door start closing behind me. And just when I did, I heard the sound of a door opening from down the corridor.
I quickly spun around and grabbed the door before it shut. Looking down the hall again, there was a man now standing right at the end of the corridor. He looked early 20s, but not like the normal young guy you usually see.
He looked disheveled and crazy, eyes wide open enough for me to see them from all the way down at the other end of the hall. I don't know if he was on something or what, but it was horrifying and disturbing the way he looked at me. I called out asking what he was here for and telling him he needed to go.
The guy didn't even look like he comprehended what I said. I called out again, trying to sound more aggressive and mentioning that I'd called security, which was a lie, but I hoped it would work. He started taking a few steps forward.
I couldn't tell if he was complying with me or just trying to close the distance, so I just stood in the doorway trying to talk to him still. I think it was when he was about 15 to 20 ft away that I noticed something in his hand. And by the time I looked back up at his eyes, he lifted his arm and hurled it at me.
Chucked it with all of his strength, sending it flying right at my head, only missing me by a couple of inches and hitting the door frame beside me. It was a hammer or large metal wrench. The harsh metal echo it made when it hit the door frame felt like it burst my eardrums.
I immediately turned and booked it out of there, hearing the guy chase me like his life depended on it. I looked over my shoulder a couple times, seeing him still just 10 to 15 ft behind me with that horrifying look in his eyes. I made it to the office and locked myself in, hearing him slam his body into the metal door and try opening it.
Luckily, this office was solid, only having that metal door and the window, which was the super sturdy kind, like maybe 4 in thick of heavyduty glass that isn't supposed to shatter in a rough work environment. The guy moved around to the window and started ravagingly slamming his shoulder into it and punching it. He looked absolutely insane, but he eventually realized he couldn't break in and turned around and just walked away, slowly making his way down to the other end of the building and I'm assuming out the back door.
I was already using the office phone to contact the police by this point, but it took forever for them to get to the warehouse, so the guy really could have been anywhere by this point. This wasn't some fancy new warehouse either, so the cameras were awful. It showed us the guy breaking into one of the doors and walking around, almost stalking me during my whole shift, but there were no clear views of his face to identify him with.
Wasn't any way to know why he broke in or was trying to attack me either. I stayed at that job for a while afterward and the event almost started to not even feel real because of how crazy it was. Eventually though, I did leave and get a similar gig somewhere else, figuring it wasn't worth hanging around with the chance the guy could come back looking for me.