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Plan B is a backup birth control option that's there for you when things don't go according to plan. It specifically works after unprotected sex and before pregnancy occurs by temporarily delaying ovulation. Plan B is available nationwide at all major retailers and through delivery apps like DoorDash, no ID, prescription or age requirement. It's the number one OBGYN recommended brand of emergency contraception and it won't impact your future fertility. That's freedom to be Use as directed hey, before this episode begins, I just want to let everyone know that my film that I've been producing for the last two years, Gale Yellow Brick Road, is now streaming on Chilling. So if you weren't able to go see it in theaters a couple months ago, no worries. Click the link in the description to this video or just search Chilling in your app store and you can watch Gale Yellow Brick Road tonight at home. I really hope you enjoy. Please leave an honest rating and review on IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes. Thanks again. Hey, welcome back to the podcast. I really hope you enjoy this episode and if you'd like to hear more stories like these with a different background sound, please check the description to check out my other two podcasts. And if you want to get rid of all of the ads, you can subscribe for just 2.99amonth. Last thing I really appreciate you being here and I'd really love if you would follow the podcast and come back again soon. Thank you so much. I hope you enjoy. A few years ago I was a young single mom living with my toddler son in an apartment complex at the edge of town. I was working a crappy full time office job to pay the bills and get us back on our feet after divorcing my son's father. This is a small northeastern town where little to nothing ever happens, but when something does, it is big news. That is why everyone was buzzing when I walked into work one day and I asked what was going on. My co workers informed me that someone had managed to escape from the psych ward at our local hospital and the authorities could not find him. I would have just shrugged this off, considering that does not really happen outside of a horror movie. But my co worker showed me a news article with a photo of someone that looked very familiar. I recognized the guy that had escaped as he and I had gone to high school together several years prior. We were not friends, not even acquaintances really, but I remembered him as being an athletic, popular guy from a wealthy family with lots of friends. I skimmed through the article that explained that he had been involuntarily committed and had somehow managed to leave the hospital. He had been gone for a few hours before someone raised the alarm, and the authorities were asking the public to keep an eye out. But be careful, as they did not know of his mental state. I shared with my co workers that I knew the guy told them I remembered him as being a normal, happy kid. But of course, things can change over the years. One of my co workers piped up and said, hey, they think he was spotted heading towards Creek Road. Isn't that by your house? This gave me a pause that was by my house, but honestly did not really bother me much. Surely he would have kept going to avoid detection as I lived less than a mile from the hospital. I shrugged it off, went to work, and forgot about it. For the next few days, I went into work and heard my co workers discussing the escaped patient again. They caught me up on the story, letting me know evidence was found that he had broken into the house of someone he vaguely knew, slept in their attic for a day or two, and then left. He was spotted leaving the property, but was long gone by the time the police arrived. I went to my desk and googled his name immediately, pulling up several news articles. What really caught my attention was not that my co workers had told the truth, which they had, but that the house he broke into was right next to mine, two streets away from my apartment complex. I mentioned this quietly to my co workers, one of which replied, whoa, wouldn't it be weird if he broke into your apartment to hide? He laughed and went back to work. I laughed too, because that was absurd. He certainly would not remember me and would not know where I lived. But the thought did spook me just a little bit. Anything was possible, right? That night, I returned home with my son. We had dinner, I gave him a bath and put him to bed, as was our regular routine. I was sitting on the couch in the living room watching television when I heard a thump. I assumed it was one of my neighbors shutting a door or something, so I ignored it and went back to my show. A few minutes later, I heard another thump. Now the noise caught my attention. Being a paranoid young mom, I went immediately upstairs to check on my son. As I climbed the stairs to our second floor, my coworker's comment popped into my head. Could someone be in my apartment? No, that is insane. I shook off the idea and went into my son's room to see him sleeping soundly in his crib. Seeing he was safe, I adjusted his blankets and headed back down to the couch. I was just being jumpy for no reason. I needed to stop watching so many scary movies. I sat back on the couch, turned my show back on and tried to relax. It was then that I saw a shadow pass over the living room. Our apartment was two floors, more like a townhouse I suppose, with the kitchen, dining room, and living room on the bottom floor, with two bedrooms and a bathroom on the second floor. The living room was at the back of the apartment and had a set of glass doors leading out to a large grassy area that spanned the length of the complex and was sandwiched between the back of our building and the back of the building across from us. It served as a backyard to all the residents. Anyway, I had some long sheer white curtains covering the glass because it freaked me out at night to have them uncovered. I turned my head and once again saw a dark shadow glide across the window, visible through the sheer curtains. The logical part of my brain said that it was just someone walking their dog back there, but then remembered the entire complex had a no pets policy. This, coupled with the realization that I had literally never seen anyone walking out there in the year that I had lived there, made my heartbeat pick up a bit. I had my co workers comment in the back of my head as I watched the shadow pass by the doors again slowly as if it were pacing. I was frozen in place, completely unprepared for this event and thinking that if a deranged guy was able to escape a secure hospital unit, certainly it was possible for him to randomly choose to break into my apartment out of the 20 that were available in the complex. The shadow passed once again, then came to a stop outside the door. I stopped breathing, gripping the blanket on my lap with white knuckles. Just as I was thinking I had officially lost it and had to be hallucinating this event. The door handle rattled at that moment my son began to cry upstairs. The rattling immediately stopped and the shadow disappeared. I walked over and pulled the curtains apart, looking from side to side across the expanse of dark grass. Nothing. I let out a breath I did not know I was holding, pulled the curtains shut and hurried up the stairs to attend to my son. I have no idea who was outside my apartment that night. I do not know if it was the guy who had escaped the hospital or some other run of the mill psycho, but I could not get my coworker's comment out of my head. I put an extra lock on the glass doors, got opaque crack curtains and after a while I was comfortable sitting in My living room at night again. I no longer live in that apartment or even that town, nor do I have that office job anymore. But as for the guy who managed to sneak out of the hospital, he was eventually apprehended in a town two hours from here and was readmitted to the hospital under 247 supervision. I have no idea where he is now. This happened when I was 14 and my friend David was 15. We had sleepovers all the time and tonight was no different. His parents weren't home, so we were being as loud as we wanted in the den, playing video games and having music playing loudly while eating an unhealthy amount of junk food. I'll skip most of the details in order to keep this story on the shorter side. The music and video games continued until around 4 in the morning. That's when we began to settle down. David had the idea of taking a walk around the neighborhood to help calm us down, and I agreed. We returned about 10 minutes later. David's basement is kind of weird. I'll try to explain it here. His house has a bit of a hill in his front yard. So half the basement was above ground, which was where the den we hung out in was, and the other half was a room with a TV and couches, which is where we were going to sleep. David turned on a movie and threw me in a blanket. I got comfortable on the couch closest to the basement staircase and he slept on the couch furthest from them across from me. I didn't watch the movie for long before falling asleep. I woke up with a jolt. David was crouched next to me. Shaking my shoulder, he told me to be quiet and listen upstairs. It couldn't have been more than an hour after we fell asleep since it was still completely dark outside and the movie was still playing. Although muted now. I was still in that half asleep state, so I had to strain my hearing to notice what he was talking about. It sounded like someone was rummaging through a drawer, following by two cracks of pressure on the upstairs floorboards. I think someone is up there, David whispered. I was now fully awake and I sat up. I thought it could have been his cats running around upstairs and that he was overreacting. The next thing that happened is, hands down, the most terrifying thing that I have ever witnessed. 2 coughs from upstairs triggered a fight or flight response in both of us. Footsteps began to approach the basement staircase. David looked absolutely petrified. I scrambled off the couch, frantically searching for my phone on the floor. David rushed over to the TV to turn it off and we very quietly made a break for the den door across the basement. We passed the basement staircase, but I didn't even look to see if anyone was there. David swung the old door open and we sprinted across the street to hide in the neighbor's bushes. David called the police while I watched the windows in the front of his house. Despite the darkness, the scant moonlight provided just enough for me to notice a tall silhouette moving in the huge living room window. David told this to the dispatcher and they said police were en route. It felt like we were waiting for hours before the sound of police sirens wailing pierced the night. A pair of squad cars barreled down the cul de sac and pulled up in front of David's house. We ran over to the officers and told them everything. Two officers went inside to search the house. The third officer searched the yard and surrounding areas while the fourth officer stayed with us. He asked us questions you would expect, like did we see the person? How did we know that someone was inside? Did we know if anything was taken? Stuff like that. We knew very little, just that someone was inside the house. After about five minutes I could hear an officer's shout followed by footsteps running into the woods behind David's backyard. The officer talking to us rushed over to his open backyard gate. The man who broke in was trying to escape into the woods but was caught when the officer in the back shined his light through there. He was cuffed and arrested. When the man was being walked back to the squad car, we noticed how massive he was. Was like 6, 7 and 300 pounds. The officers inside searched every nook and cranny of the house and confirmed nobody else was inside. The man didn't steal anything either and that still makes me wonder what his motives were. Needless to say, we didn't get any sleep for the rest of the night. We were just too scared, jumping at every noise and patrolling the house to make sure nobody else broke in. That is the story of when someone broke into my friend David's house early in the morning while I was sleeping over. It is the most terrifying thing I have ever gone through. On one night I decided to go for a walk. It was around 9pm and it was a nice night. Mind you that I was just an 18 year old female on the petite side, but my town was quite safe and small. My mistake. As I was walking and listening to music, I realized that I was thirsty and a little store was just around the block. I quickly made my way to the store but it was closed and unfortunately, there were no other stores closer, but I tried my luck and called out to the owner. Usually this store would close around midnight and I found it very strange for it to be closed at this time. After calling out a few more times, I decided to just turn around and walk back home, seeing that no one answered and all the lights were off outside. Just as I turned around to walk away, I heard a door open behind me and I turned around with the hopes to be able to buy some water. The porch light had been turned on at the store and I could make out a figure by the now half opened door. At first I was happy and rushed to the store, but my happiness soon turned to a fearful butterfly in my stomach as I saw the man looking back at me through the door with a wild look in his eyes and a shiny knife in his hand. I slowly backed away with my eyes fixated on the knife. He cleared his throat and said something along the lines of sorry. I was busy in the kitchen. As soon as he spoke, I calmed down and thought it was okay and so I gave him money for the water. He took a minute before reappearing with my water still. Still clutching the knife in his hand and the wild look in his eyes. I brushed it off again and walked back home. I turned my music louder to stop thinking about the weird encounter. A couple of minutes into walking, I could feel someone watching me from the back and so I turned around. No one. I started to jog so that I could reach my house faster. I stopped as I was taking tired and caught my breath as I opened my water bottle. I tugged on my earphones and just as they fell to the ground, I heard running behind me. And just as I turned to look about 10ft from me, I could make out the shiny knife and the man from the store. As tired as I was, I ran. I ran as fast as I could. I could feel him closing on me, but he must have tripped because I heard a laugh loud crash on the ground right behind me. I made it home safely and my parents called the police. A few days later, the police informed my parents that the store owner was arrested. He was involved with murdering and the selling of human organs and human trafficking. They found freezers packed with human organs that he had harvested from his previous victims. For a little context, I'm a guy and I live in a small town in Nevada. Now, this town can get a little boring sometimes, especially if you're not into the whole gambling nightlife thing. However, there are a couple of things I enjoy doing. Like off Roading in my ATV or going for long hikes with my dogs, Buddy and Snoopy. Now, right behind my house is a desert that stretches out for miles and miles, which makes it super convenient for me to walk my dogs because I don't have to worry about traffic or other civilians. I can just let them run loose and enjoy the open space. Now, there is also two large mountains a couple of miles from my house that I like to hike up. These mountains are only separated by less than half a mile. Now, during the winter, these mountains can be pretty rough. I labeled these mountains A and B. Mountain A was easier to hike because of the clear trail leading up to it. And Mountain B is more rocky and steep. Now, the day before I went for this particular hike, the weather was horrendous. Almost everything was snowed in and the wind was powerful enough to knock a semi truck over. But by the morning, a lot of it had cleared and the wind had settled down. Not the perfect weather, but I still decided to go for my hike. My dad didn't think it was a good idea to go alone, so he and my aunt had joined in. Instead of taking my usual route to Mountain A, my aunt wanted to hike up Mountain B because the sun was hitting that side. I was hesitant at first because of the steepness of the mountain, but finally agreed and we were on our way. The desert ground was pretty muddy and the bushes were covered in snow. Light snowflakes were hitting our face and the sky was finally starting to clear up. As we approached Mountain B, we noticed tire tracks on the snowy trail that looked like they had been there for more than a day. We thought it was pretty strange because who would be out here driving in this weather? But we brushed it off. Now, one thing that intimidated me about this mountain were the sharp rocks on the trail that we had to cross. These rocks look even more intimidating covered in ice and snow. Luckily, we carefully crossed these rocks and made it to the top of the mountain exhausted. But we were just happy we achieved our goal. The top of the mountain did not look as how I'd expected it would look. There were food wrappers, beer bottles, and dead bushes everywhere. I still enjoyed the view and I started snapping pics of the dogs and the scenery. With the town in the background. However, I noticed both of my dogs examining and sniffing around a dead bush. I called them over, but they wouldn't listen. So I went to grab them and that's when I noticed of what looked like burnt pieces of cardboard scattered around the dirt and some on the bush I thought it was trash at first. When I picked up and examined one of the burnt pieces, I noticed it was only a piece of what looked like to be a photograph. Like one of those really old face portraits with no color. I could make out an eye in the piece I picked up. Now what was really strange was that this eye looked familiar. Like I swear I had seen it before. It sort of creeped me out. My dad and my aunt thought it was a little weird, but did not think much of it and they were ready to head back home. We got about three minutes down the mountain, but something made me want to go back and examine the pieces again. My dad and aunt agreed. We all grabbed the pieces and struggled to match them together because of how burnt and damaged they were. It was sort of like solving a puzzle. Now with all the pieces assembled together, this made out about an 18x20 photograph. So this was a pretty big photograph. I matched the last two pieces of the portrait and stepped back to examine the photo. When I did, I was horrified. It was a photo of my deceased grandfather. I was speechless. I mean, who would do something like this? It was like living out that scene in a horror movie where all the viewers yell to run. I did not know what to think. Then my mind started racing. We had this exact photo in our house and I thought it was the only one that existed. So seeing this photograph here, I thought someone had broken into our house and stole the picture and was trying to send us a message. I thought my family back home were in danger or someone was trying to play a sick joke on us. We picked up all the pieces and got out of there. I tried to call my mom as we scurried down the mountain, but my phone had no signal. My dad and aunt weren't as freaked out as me, but were still pretty spooked. We had no energy to run, so we jogged back home. As the wind was starting to pick up again and the sun was so slowly fading away, the only thing on my mind was making sure my family was okay. I kept looking behind me just because I was so freaked out at the situation. Thankfully, nothing happened to us and we made it home and I saw my mom in the kitchen and my brother playing video games. I was relieved and gave my mom a big hug. She was confused as to why I was hugging her. That's when I finally explained the situation. I assembled all the pieces of the photograph for her and she was terrified. I mean, this was her father. She was as freaked out as me. I went to her room because I knew that's where she kept the photograph of my grandpa. And it was still hanging on the walls undamaged. So this puzzled me and my mom even more because she thought there was only one of these photos photographs in existence too. My grandpa had lived all his life in California and was tragically killed in front of his home by gang members. My mom was really small when he was killed. The guys who did it were after my mom's older brothers also. So my family left town and settled here in Nevada. So the only explanation that we had was that these guys had found out where we lived and were trying to send us a message with the destroyed photograph of my grandpa. That whole month we slept with one eye open and were very cautious of the things we did throughout the day. I no longer hiked up those mountains. We would rarely come outside. I just wanted an answer as to who did this and what their intentions were. My mom had wanted to tell my grandma about the situation, but did not want to scare her. But eventually she explained everything to her and found out that my grandma had owned a copy of that same photograph too. But what my grandma told my mom about the photo shocked her. My grandma said that she was responsible for the photo being out there. She said that on the night before we took that walk, she told one of my uncles to take the photo and destroy it. Because she felt a strange presence with the photo being in the house. House. She said anytime she would look at the photo, she would catch the eyes staring back at her no matter where in the room she was. That's why when I saw that eye from the picture out in the desert, it creeped me out because I knew I had seen those eyes before. One thing I still sort of question is how my uncle drove all the way up that mountain in that weather, in the pitch black. We told him the story and he verified it. He claimed that he and his brother went out drinking and drove all the way up the mountain in the dark. And there they tried to get rid of the photo. He said he tried burning it, but the wind was really strong. So he resorted to just tearing it apart with his hands. He said it was really tough getting up the mountain, but had wanted to get the photograph as as far far away from my grandma as he could. One thing that's still strange to me is how we ended up finding the pieces of the photo like it was fate. I mean, I never would have climbed this mountain if it wasn't for my aunt. It's almost like the photo had wanted to remain in the family Like I said, the wind was really strong the night before and it snowed a lot. Yet the pieces didn't fly away. They weren't covered in snow, they were just laying there all close to each other. It's weird. It's like the photo had wanted to remain together in one piece. This story is a compilation of certain events that happened in a house that I lived in for 10 years, along with my younger brother, my mother and father. My brother and I were born seven years apart from each other, me being the oldest. For the purpose of this story, I will call him G. When I was 9 and G was 2, my dad had traveled to another country for work where he would stay for a year. So at home it was just me giving she and Mom. We would often sleep in my mom's room with her as she never liked sleeping alone being the scaredy cat that she is. Plus I would get to watch a lot of TV since it was always on. Mom thought the light was comforting opposed to the dark room where she would always get too creeped out to be able to fall asleep. In a time when Netflix was not a thing and even Internet was barely a thing, we would have to plan watching movies on the time that aired on TV. So this particular night around 9pm we gathered in my mom's room to watch a movie. Now keep in mind that my brother is two and at this point he is still getting the hang of crawling. The bed is made and we're about to get under the covers when my mom and I noticed something missing. Potato chips and Doritos. How can you have a movie night without those? So we decided to sprint to the kitchen. Now for a little context it might be relevant to describe a little of the layout of the house, which by any means was a big one. The house had about 30ft in width and almost 200ft in length, so it was a fairly narrow but long house. The house itself was surrounded by walls and even though it was about 10ft above the street level, the houses surrounding it were even taller. Once you went up the stairs and opened the front door, you would arrive in the living room which was also the dining room facing a wall with two doors, one in the far right corner and one in the far left corner. The one on the right was the outside corridor which led you past all the room's windows, two windows on the corridor and to get to the third window you had to go all way the the way to the end and turn left and that was my parents room window the door to the left was the inside corridor. Once inside it, there were three doors on the right. My room, my brother's room and the bathroom. And the fourth door was at the end of the corridor and facing the corridor itself. My mom's room. The inside corridor directly faced the kitchen's entrance. It was a straight line from my mom's room to the kitchen. Back to the story. Craving the snacks, my mom and I ran to the kitchen leaving my brother laying in the middle of the bed, knowing exactly where the snacks were and in a full out sprint. We accomplished this mission in 30 seconds max. But when we got back to the room, confusion quickly struck us hard. My brother was still where we left him, not having moved an inch. But he is now laughing for no apparent reason. And it would have been cute if not for the bed covers now that not only had been undone, but they were also folded at the foot of the bed. Confused, mom and I looked at each other and decided that the best option was to believe that it was already like that and we just didn't notice. After checking under the bed and inside the closet just for good measure, we locked the door, enjoyed a good movie and went to sleep with the TV on. Nothing else happened that night. Fast forward four years, I am now 13, Dad's back home and we are all gathered in my parents room just waiting on my mom to put on her earrings as we are about to leave for an amusement park. But when suddenly we are startled by this loud banging and an awful screeching sound coming from just outside the kitchen in a little area that is considered external but still inside the house. We all go to investigate as it's around 9am, blazing hot sun and it just didn't feel ominous. And also dad was home so there was a great sense of safety. Once we opened the kitchen door that led to the outside area, we were met by an out of control washing machine. The banging that we heard was the washing machine working and the screeching was it dragging itself across the floor as it was violently shaking. It just wasn't working as it usually did obviously. My dad chuckled and asked my mom if she forgot that she programmed it. Mom looked kind of spooked and said that she didn't. My dad was scared, skeptical and went to shut it off believing it was the timer. He turned the button as to click it in place and what do you know, it worked. It all came to a stop. Everyone laughed for being so jumpy and quick to jump to supernatural conclusions. And my dad with that I'm the man look on his face now. Well, that lasted about 10 seconds. As we were about to go back in that house, the machine starts again, but this time it's shaking and banging so hard that it's literally jumping around. My dad immediately went for the timer button again, but nothing happened. He went for the off button. Nothing. He opened the lid as it usually stops spinning once it's opened. No luck. It only came to a stop once. My mom unplugged it with me and my dad trying to hold it in place. Not only did we not laugh this time, but we stood there actually waiting for it to turn back on, even though it had no power source. After about a minute or so of silence and lots of staring towards the machine, we came out of what felt like a trance and went on our trip. Three more years go by and I am now 16. G is 9. It's probably around 11am when my mom asks us if we want to go to the supermarket with her. G says he's good and I make his answer my own as I am more interested in the computer in front of me. The supermarket is about eight houses down the block, so if my mom needed help bringing the groceries back, she only needed to call me and I would sprint there to help. As it usually was. Mom would say she was just going to grab some and she would end up buying enough stuff for 10 families. So I'm browsing the Internet, listening to my brother playing his PS2 in his room and getting angry as he is clearly having a hard time with whatever level he's on. All the doors are opened, so every sound is pretty clear. And there it was. Someone's at the gate. Since you can hear someone messing with the padlock, I presumed it was my mom back from the supermarket and my brother must have heard her too, because he paused his game and I saw him sprint past my door. A little annoyed. I knew that I had to go help with whatever groceries mom was bringing in, so I get up and make my way to the front door. When I opened it, my brother had already beaten me to it. But something was off. And that's when this dreadful feeling hit me, a chill rising through my spine. My mom was still trying to unlock the padlock, but my brother, he was on the other side of the gate with my mother locked outside. Had he went out to meet her and locked the gate behind him? I thought. So I asked, when did G leave the house? And the answer I got made my head spin. My mom said that he changed his mind the last Last second, as she was leaving. And he had been with her this whole time. I lived in that house for 10 years. And throughout that time, it was normal to hear my name being called. The sensation of not being alone in the room and that hallway. Once the light was turned off, you could not see the light getting dimmer towards the room at the end. But the darkness coming out of that room and engulfing the light. And it always, always felt like there was someone staring back at you. I don't know why, but even after I saw what seemed like a kid running in that house, the image that was built in my head of whatever presence was there was that of a woman with long black hair, dressed in white. I really don't know why. Maybe I associated it with some movie I saw, some story I heard. But every time I looked down that hall, I always pictured that it was a woman staring back at me. This brings me to my last event. I am now 26, living in another country. After a normal day, I'm ready to go to bed, put on some cooking show on the tv, set the sleep timer and drift off. When I awake, I have this pit in my stomach. That eerie feeling that something is just not right. The only light in the room is coming from the tv. I feel so drowsy and I can't seem to move at all. So I scan the room with my eyes just to find my parents sleeping on a bed next to me. Wait. This isn't my room. I'm back in that room. Back in the house we left years ago. And as I asked my myself why, that's when I noticed the woman standing by the door. She had black hair covering most of her face. She was wearing what seemed to be a white nightgown. Even though I could barely see her eyes, I knew she was staring at me. Unable to move and feeling like I had been drugged. My eyes turned to my parents, still asleep, and I noticed that the woman's attention only also turned towards them. But now I could feel anger coming from her towards them. In that moment, I thought I would cry, I would tremble, I would lose my voice. That thought was quickly extinguished as pure, thick rage started pouring out of me. The woman seemed surprised that I started cursing at her as I was unable to talk a second ago. Even more when I started to lift myself up on two feet. As I charged her, still groggy, I remember thinking to myself in a rageful manner, sleep paralysis, right? I am the only one allowed in my head. She blocks the door which is opened with her body and I push her to the side. As soon as we come in contact with each other for a second, the rage ends, instantly disappears. Every other feeling disappears except for one. An endless dark ocean of loneliness. The woman hits the wall and I run towards the end of the corridor. When I open the door I wake up in my room. The TV is off, daylight pouring in the room through the thin curtains. I am not one to have such vivid dreams, so this one got me thinking and reflecting for weeks now. This happened when I was nine or so. Who can remember exact years? It wasn't the first or last time I've seen weird stuff, but now the scene that I remember perfectly. It was early in the morning, maybe late spring or early summer. Sunlight filled the room from my bedside window, but it still had the grayish, almost misty quality to it. I had just woken up maybe a bit earlier than normal, but it wasn't like I was jolted awake by the sound of an axe murderer or anything. No, at first there was really nothing to see. The room was basically empty, my bed beside the window facing the open door, revealing the hallway and my parents room on the other side. Not much more to see there. Everyone was already out of the house. I was just lying there, wondering if I should get up or try to get back to sleep, when something lurched into the door frame. Darker than the shadowed hall. It was about 5ft tall and seemed to writhe like a bundle of stubby tendrils, each trying to fly off in different directions. Confusion was followed a split second later by icy dread as the thing gave another lurch. It was not floating but walking. A person's head to be clearer. A really happy person by the looks of it, but not like any I'd ever seen. In fact, everything about it contradicted. Its general shape resembled a man with an old style wide brimmed hat, but its outline was jagged, like a poorly cut out paper doll. The random edges sprouting from it were the tendrils I had been seeing, but they seemed razor sharp to my eyes. Were those fingers or claws? Was it solid or missed? Was it even there? I quickly realized, dark and unsubstantial as it was, it had to be a shadow. The comfort of this thought was dashed instantly when I realized that something must be casting the shadow, and then again when it finally lurched in front of my parents room. Because you see, it did not fall from the wall to lie on the floor and what passed for its feet were clearly visible. It was not some intruder's shadow. Small blessing though, that was Whatever this thing was, it was walking upright inside the hallway. Pressure built in my skull as I tried to comprehend what I was seeing. It wasn't just its dark color or or the vaguely translucent quality it had that led me to think it was a shadow. This thing was unmistakably flat. Yet there it was, skulking around in all three dimensions in complete defiance of logical possibility. There was also the fact that while it seemed to be grinning, it had no mouth or eyes, merely holes imitating those features. I guessed it would continue to the end of the hall near my older sister's room. But then it did the single worst thing it had done to that point. It turned slowly, with the same lurching quality. Its head and neck began to swivel. I might have expected to hear stiff cracking noises, if it were making any sound at all. In fact, everything seemed strangely muffled ever since it showed up. Gradually at first, then all of a sudden it was glaring right at me. Its head flickered in and out, apparently depending on the exact angle I viewed it from. I was not exaggerating when I said it was flat. I was also not hopeful enough to believe it couldn't see me. I wanted to hide or maybe stand and try running past when it came inside, but I literally could not move. It wasn't that I was indecisive. I was willing myself forward, but the thoughts just never seemed to reach my limbs. It took a step forward. The spell was broken, and by this point I was so desperate I threw the covers over my head. Maybe that's the childlike logic of the blanket will protect me from the monsters, but I honestly don't know that I expected expected it to do anything other than shield me from the sight of the impending end. It's really surreal to be that age and think that you're probably about to die violently. I imagined it reaching me any second and wondered what it would be like, a cold, tearing stab, like being impaled by a knife. Or maybe my flesh would sear away at its smoky touch. But nothing happened. For who knows how long. I shivered in my makeshift fort, wondering if it was really gone or just standing there, waiting for me to look. Perhaps with its horrible excuse for a face hovering an inch from mine. Maybe I wouldn't even know at first until it shifted position, materializing from nowhere. Either way, this clearly wasn't going to end until I did something. So I slowly lowered the blankets to look out at an ordinary room. The dread was lessened, the chirping birds returning to their normal volume. I climbed out of bed, fidgeting this way and that, constantly looking over my shoulder to make sure it wasn't hiding somewhere with its unnatural lack of depth. Creeping to the door, I took a deep breath and stuck my head out, looking to my sister's room, the main house and back as quickly as I could. Nothing. Her door was shut, but I wasn't sure that would stop whatever this was. I also slightly preferred running headlong into it than it getting the drop on me again. So I peeked inside. Still nothing. What followed was more of the same. I would look all over the house and the outside yard, expecting it around every corner, under every piece of furniture, or maybe to just burst from beneath my feet. But it never came. I suppose I could have searched the forest, but I couldn't decide whether that was paranoia or tempting fate at that point. Years passed and I still did not encounter it, though I no longer felt comfortable being in my room with the door open. I'm sure you have a lot of lingering questions. So did I, but they were never answered. It's not like I could call the thing back, or would even if I could. You may also have suggestions. Maybe it was a ghost or a demon from another dimension. Maybe sleep paralysis. You may feel free to offer your suggestions, but no offense, I hope I never find out. In 2017, my husband was away frequently for weeks at a time, working in another city. At this time we lived in an apartment complex in a large city in a one bedroom unit on the first floor. I have always been pretty independent and was used to him being away, but for some reason in the weeks leading up to this event, I had become increasingly paranoid. Or so I thought at the time. In retrospect, I think my intuition was trying to trying to warn me that something wasn't right. This all happened a few weeks before Christmas, and despite the holiday cheer all around, I had a sense of dread or melancholy. Almost everywhere I went. I began to have strange occurrences which I tried to find explanations for. First were the nightmares. I am no stranger to sleep paralysis, which has plagued me off and on since I was a teenager. During one of these episodes, my body numb and trying desperately to wake myself, I saw the typical threatening figure in my room at the foot of my bed. A young girl, maybe 10 years old, in a white nightgown, just staring at me with hollow black eyes. Her arms were down by her side, but in her right hand she held a small, small teddy bear. She didn't speak or hug the bear. She just held him there, dangling. I managed to wake myself and although the image was terrifying, I calmed myself and dismissed it as another awful sleep paralysis episode. I managed to go back to sleep with the light on. I have had a few episodes which stuck with me and that one definitely did. The image of that girl and her teddy bear haunted me for days. Around the same time, I started to see a black cat stalking me while I walked my dog. I don't mind cats, and I don't think black cats are particularly bad or anything. But for some odd reason, this cat scared me. It seemed like a normal cat, but different in a way I cannot put my finger on. It was too interested in me. Oddly, I never saw it in the daytime. My dog was old and I would have to take him out frequently in the middle of the night. It never failed that during our nighttime walks, this cat would show up and follow us at a distance in the shadows. I love animals and this next part will sound crazy, but. But something about this cat made me think it was a personification of death. I had the thought that if it caught up to us, it would take my dog's life. An odd thought which I tried to put out of my mind. I told myself I was being ridiculous and this was just a cat. I saw it almost every night leading up to the major event. One evening a a few weeks after this sleep paralysis incident, I awoke to what I thought was my doorbell ringing in the middle of the night. I wasn't even sure whether I had actually heard it or dreamed. Was about 2:45am this made my heart pound and the fear set in. I am a very private person and did not know any of my neighbors well enough that they would likely ring my doorbell for for any reason at all, much less at almost 3 o' clock in the morning. I am very introverted and not the type to have guests, so most of my friends and acquaintances didn't even know where my apartment was. Much less would arrive unannounced in the middle of the night. I got up tentatively, trying to be as quiet as possible, and peeked out of the peephole in my front door. I saw nothing. Then I checked through the front window again. Nothing. I was creeped out, but everything appeared normal. I decided that I had either dreamt the whole thing or the doorbell wiring malfunctioned. Even though I was still on edge, I calmed myself and tried to sleep. Meanwhile, Teddy bear. Teddy bears, oddly, seemed to be popping up everywhere. My toddler niece told me she wanted a teddy bear for Christmas. She normally liked dolls or plastic animals like dinosaurs or snakes. But she just kept saying she wanted a teddy bear. Odd, because she already has several of them. Then one morning driving down the freeway on my way to work, I passed a pile of clothing that had been somehow lost on the road, scattered all across the lanes by passing cars. As I slowed down and weaved around it, I saw one of the items was actually a teddy bear. Dirty and mangled from being run over countless times. Hair matted with grit and mud, one eye missing. Once I went to use the bathroom at a gas station and someone had put a teddy bear sticker on the bathroom mirror over the sink. I think it was a Grateful Dead sticker, but still. Teddy bears. I just started noticing them everywhere I went. But I attributed this to the frequency bias phenomenon. Until one Wednesday night again, I was awakened by the sound of my doorbell ringing shortly after 3am I wasn't sure if I had dreamed it or not, but I woke with my heart pounding. I sat up and listened for a few minutes for something, anything. But I heard nothing. After a while I got up out of bed and checked outside my bedroom window. Nothing. I went to the front door peephole and nothing. I don't know what made me do it, tiredness or curiosity, I don't know. But I opened the front door to peek onto my front porch. My front gate was shut securely. I looked down at the ground next to the front door and what I saw made me feel like all the breath was sucked out of me. A giant tan colored teddy bear sat up against the wall right next to my front door, staring straight ahead. I could see that it was not a new bear, but it looked old and worn. A red bow was tied around its neck. This thing probably came up to my waist. It was so big. I never knew a stuffed animal could look so sinister. I quickly snapped out of it and scanned the rest of the porch and sidewalk beyond. I saw nothing and no one. I slammed the door and locked it, trying to figure out what to do next. Call the police and say what? There's a teddy bear threatening me? It would sound ridiculous. I quickly tried to think of who would possibly leave this on my doorstep. I came up empty. My husband was 200 miles away. I called him hysterical, and he confirmed that he had nothing to do with it. No one I knew would do this. I did not know what to do, so I decided to just wait it out until morning. Of course, I did not sleep the rest of that night. In the morning I had to use my front door to leave for work. I dreaded opening it and seeing that thing sitting there with its beady eyes. In the light I could see that it was definitely not some gift someone left for me. There was no card or note, no indication of why it was left. It was tattered with dirt and dried grass in the fur and some kind of red stains here and there. Stuffing spilled from the seams and places. I didn't want to leave it there, but I definitely didn't want to touch it either. I decided just to go to work and deal with it later. My co workers convinced me it was most likely a random prank by neighborhood kids. By the time I got home, the sun was shining brightly and I had built up the nerve to get rid of it. I put on some rubber gloves and took it to the dumpster, never to be seen again. Fast forward to December 23rd. After work, I stopped by the grocery store to pick up a few last minute items we need for our Christmas celebrations before I leave town. In typical fashion, I decide that I don't need a cart to carry my stuff to the car despite having a few larger items like packs of paper towels. Upon getting to my car and clicking the remote door locks, I realized I could not open the hatchback door with my hands full. A man who was walking nearby saw me struggling. He offered to help but I declined because I'm super independent and that's what I do. He insisted. And as he walked over to me, I noticed that he looked a little rough around the edges. Dirty work clothes, messy hair, flannel overshirt work type boots. I recall him having very clear blue eyes that looked a little too deep into my soul. I wasn't comfortable accepting his help, but before I knew it, he was reaching for my back door handle and pulling it open. The parking lot wasn't exactly empty, so even though I was uncomfortable, I didn't feel like I was in immediate danger. I thanked him and tossed my stuff in the hatchback back and slammed it shut. He still stood there, so I said merry Christmas, have a good night and started to step to the driver's side door. He smiled at me and said Merry Christmas to you too and held his hand out to me. I did not want to shake his hand, but not wanting to be rude, I looked down at it. He was giving me a tiny Christmas teddy bear with a single Santa hat. I was dumbfounded. I did not want to take it, did not know him and did not know what to say. So many thoughts went through my mind at that moment. Was he responsible for the bear on my porch? Was he following me Was I just being crazy? He was just smiling at me like he knew. Again, not wanting to be rude but thoroughly freaked out, I searched for the right response. Oh no thanks was all I said. I don't have any kids. I turned and got in my car and pulled out. Watching him in my rear view, just watching me drive away with an angry look on his face. Thankfully I wasn't far from home and I got there in record time. My paranoia was at an all time high for the next few weeks, but I didn't see any more teddy bears for a while and eventually I stopped obsessing about it. However, I still get creeped out when I do come across one from time to time. I will never see them as harmless children's toys. At 19 I moved out for the first time with an old friend, Nathan. We rented a two bedroom basement level apartment for a year together and at first things were great. It was like having a long term sleepover with your best friend and we were able to have our own alone time in the apartment because we worked opposite schedules. I worked a retail job during the day and Nathan worked overnight for a month or two. We had a good thing going. He would work and I would be home and vice versa. We would stay up late playing video games when our schedules aligned. The first thing that I noticed that was odd was the closet in my bedroom. In the master bedroom there was a small walk in closet and I noticed the carpet in the corners looked as if it had been dug out by an animal. There were also several gaps in the walls along the edges of the carpet. At first this seemed no different really from the general cheap apartment disarray and maintenance issues. This didn't scare me at first. I figured someone had an overexcited pup and I left it alone. It started off with little things. At first I would think that I would hear Nathan calling my name and I would respond only to realize that he had been at work work for hours. Leading to our bedrooms was a long hallway that seemed to make us both uncomfortable. The hallway light would be left on as often as possible and we would laugh it off as a childhood fear of the dark. I think we were both too skeptical to talk about how we would occasionally think that we had seen the other walk out of the hallway only to realize we were alone. On more than one occasion I would have a friend friends sleepover who would complain they were kept awake at night by the constant flickering of the hallway light. My roommates and I tried our best to be respectful of each other's schedules. If I knew he had just come home in the morning and was sleeping, I would try my best to stay quiet when heading to work. One morning, Nathan told me that while he'd been relaxing in his room after work getting ready to sleep, he had heard footsteps in the hallway and the door to my room being shaken. At first he thought it was just me rushing around getting ready for work, but he was concerned because I was being much louder than normal. He looked over at his alarm clock and realized that I should have been at work by this time and says he decided to check on me. He opened his door and looked down the hall towards my room. He says that he frequently froze when he saw a dark figure standing outside my door in that moment. He said that he rationalized it by saying he thought I was just running late for work and had gotten embarrassed at being caught and ducked into my room. He retreated back to his room and said that he hadn't heard anything else for the rest of the day. He had never heard me say anything or leave and opted to forget about it even when I came home later and confirmed that I had not been late that morning. As time progressed in that apartment, we were both constantly irritable and tired. It felt impossible to rest in that apartment, especially when I was alone. Nathan would sometimes chalk this up to me being nervous as a woman alone in an apartment at night. I would spend my nights huddled on the end of the couch furthest from the hallway, tucked in a blanket under the lamp. On more than one occasion, this is where I slept, as it felt more secure than walking down that hallway to my room. I am awoken one morning in my bed by the sound of someone trying to beat down my bedroom door, and ice settles in my veins. The banging on the door sounds desperate and I can see the door shaking under the weight of the hit. Immediately I'm concerned that our apartment floor flooded, we have been robbed, or something has happened to Nathan. I bolt out of bed and rip open my door and once again I am met with sudden silence in an empty hallway. Fearful that I have misheard where the knocks were, I go down the hall to the main door and check outside, and there's no one. Yet again, I sit down on the couch in the living room, unable to go back to sleep even if I wanted to. When I realized Nathan had been home, I chalked it up as him sleepwalking, and he confesses later that he had had repetitive nightmares that morning, but doesn't believe that he was walking in his sleep. His room was small, and he had taken up most of the main space with a weight set that he would have to crawl over to enter and leave. I later had to reason as well that in the time it had taken me to open the door, he would have had to sprint back to his room and slam the door shut to avoid me seeing or hearing it. As weird as this was, the worst was yet to come. We had had a disagreement before Nathan went to work and I had been laying in my bed, still a little angry and watching videos on my phone until I could doze off. When he worked overnights, his job was close enough to a apartment that he would come home for lunch, or what they called lunch almost every night. So when I heard the door creak open at 3am I wasn't uneasy at first. I hear the various sounds of him in the apartment opening cabinets and walking around. I roll over, upset because he's being much louder than normal, and immediately I feel my heart drop into my stomach. Nathan would always turn the lights on when he came home. It was reassuring on the nights I was in my room to see the hallway light seep through the door frame to let me know I wasn't alone in the apartment anymore. But this night when I rolled over, there was no reassuring light coming from underneath the closed door. It was pitch black. My heartbeat quickened immediately and I messaged Nathan to ask if he had come home. But I got no response. I strained my ears to listen and what I hear sounds nothing like normal. There's footsteps running around the apartment and coming down the hall to my door, then running away, doors opening and closing and cabinets creaking. In that moment, I was so absolutely sure that we were being robbed. I began to shake. I didn't know how to deal with this and what I had heard sounded so angry and chaotic outside my door. Tearfully, I grabbed a knife that I kept under my pillow. Because the apartment walls and door were so thin, I couldn't have called 911 quietly enough to save myself. My instinct in that moment was to fight and deal with the consequences later. I stood just behind the door, listened to the footsteps run towards me, braced myself, and when I heard them start to fade down the hall, I ripped open the door to surprise my attacker. I am met with absolutely nothing but silence and darkness. I stare down the black, empty hallway, adamant that they are hiding from me. I am frozen in place, staring down the hall, waiting to hear anything. The front door is in clear view from my position and it's still closed. Whoever it was has to still be here. I scan the room at the end of the hall. I feel a lump in my throat as I lock my eyes on a large dark figure peering around the corner at the end of the hall. I take off down the hall and whip around the corner, ready again to fight. But there's no one in my apartment. When I turned on all the lights, I checked. The door was shut and locked. All the windows are locked. Nathan's room is empty and there's nothing out of place. All the cabinets and drawers I had heard being ripped open are closed, all the tables still upright. My body in this moment, reacts in a wave I wouldn't expect. I go from overwhelming fear to complete calm. I shove what has happened to the back of my mind, walk in my room, lock the door, and go to bed, dead asleep within seconds. To cope, my brain shoved this memory to the depths and it only resurfaced months later, after I had moved out, when Nathan and I finally, finally divulged all our experiences together. For the remainder of my time in the apartment, the tiredness and irritability continues. Even my sanctuary of the living room is compromised, as I would awake many times in the middle of the night to see a dark figure walking out of the hallway towards the couch, disappearing. When I would turn my head to look, things would fall over. I would hear knocks on my bedroom door, and more and more I was questioning my own sanity. Eventually, when I couldn't take it anymore and things financially weren't well with the apartment, I decided to move back home. Within a month I was back to feeling like myself again. We are still not entirely sure what was in that apartment, but we have some theories. I feel it important to preface our theory with. Not too long after moving into this apartment, I had taken to practicing Wicca. I don't say this to add horror, but rather to explain what we believe happened. In my early practicing, I would fill my room with cleansing materials like quartz stones and sage to cleanse before spells and maintain an energy in my room. We suspected whatever was in our apartment had originated in my closet and that whoever was in my room before had done something sinister in there. The rips in the carpet and the gaps in the wall with small objects just out of view. We were too scared of finds we could get for destroying the closet to lift up the carpet and check what may have been underneath. It's been theorized that I had unknowingly driven whatever darkness lived in that closet out and it spent the rest of the time I lived there desperate to come back in. The longer it was kept out, the angrier it got and the more that we took it out on each other. Later, when I moved out, things continued to worsen for my roommate who remained. He was constantly tired and angry and fell into a dark headspace. The spirit we think was in there was able to go back into my room when I left, and the girl who lived in my room after me said she was plagued with nightmares and had been locked out of the room on many occasions, even though the door locked from inside. She would try it and the door would be locked. Then later she would try it again and the door would somehow open. Nathan would send me videos of doors opening in the apartment on their own and the TV suddenly showing black and white camera cable static in the middle of DVDs and YouTube videos. My roommate was able to move out of the apartment a while ago and we have both been doing better slowly as time went on. We have shared a lot of our experiences that we had in that apartment with each other and we are both glad that we came out of it okay. It made quite the believer out of my roommate as well, who remained reluctant to acknowledge it until his final few months. Once there Apartments are funny places. You never really know how many people have lived their lives in that exact same space, what they may have left behind or done in the room where you lay your head at night. Maybe there was something in that apartment, something left over from whoever came before. Or maybe it can all be chopped up to late nights, bad dreams and miscommunication. In the end, what you choose to believe is up to you. In October of 2019, I went to a Halloween costume ball hosted at our local art gallery, which was organized by a Unitarian Universalist spiritual center. It was a typical party, but had a few ceremonial attributes to celebrate Samhain. I dressed up as the Red Death from the Phantom of the Opera and basically went alone, thus waiting for a friend who did eventually come to meet up with me later in the night. Before that, I have had the most bizarre experience. Bizarre as in I was unable to imagine a clear explanation behind this certain circumstance. I still can't think of one to this day. So after dancing to the music and sipping a couple of drinks, I was interested enough to purchase a photographic aura reading from this lady at a little booth. I sat down and she instructed me to take off my skull mask and firmly lie my palms on a flat silver machine linked to her laptop. I was then instructed to look into the camera and after a few minutes my image appeared on the screen with a mix of transparent colors along with various measuring charts. I was further intrigued and listened to the lady's explanations concerning chakras and the like. As I was trying to pay attention to her, something in my peripheral vision distracted me a bit. I I decided to look directly ahead and to my surprise, a group of four sitting at a table were staring and smiling at me. Three men and a woman. If their expressions weren't friendly, they were incredibly creepy. They never even blinked. I was a bit weirded out, especially since I was wearing my skull mask. I didn't even think to wave back a hello. So I just ignored them and listened further to the lady's interesting lecture, helping me examine my aura. At the same time, I couldn't help but feel being stared down from the distance. I looked ahead again and it was the same group staring at me, smiling. They kept their gaze without signaling me to walk over or anything. I knew I wasn't hallucinating because I blinked and the group was still there, not making a single move. To be honest, I swear I have never met this group before. I had no idea who any of them were, so I really have no idea why they would be staring at me like they were while not making a big deal. The lady finished up what she wanted to teach me. I paid her and just got up to go to the restroom. I did my best to brush off that strange experience as nothing. Afterward, my friend found me and we just chatted until he had to leave for his mother's birthday outing. Interestingly enough, I then realized that the group never approached me after my aura session. I will always wonder what that was all about. Out of stubborn curiosity, I searched through the entire venue and did not find any of them. So this happened to me on Thursday, April 25 and I still can't shake off how terrifying and strange it was. So I was home alone getting ready for my 12 o' clock call college class that morning and I opened my blinds to let some natural light in. I glanced out my window to see a man in his mid-30s wearing a baseball cap roaming around my property with his hands on his hips, walking with a lot of weird confidence. Our yard is kind of like a cliff and it looks over onto our five acres of property down below. I live in the pnw so it's a pretty scenic view. I was really confused and thought maybe it was a worker that my mom had hired for our renovations on the house. Admiring the view. I'm a little bit uncomfortable at this point cause the dude Walks to the side of my house out of sight. I head upstairs to see him now roaming around my front yard and my driveway, looking at things, checking out my house, etc. He still hasn't seen me at this point. I call my dad and ask him if we had hired anyone to come by the house and he says not that he knows of and tells me that he's going to call my mom and ask her and then call me back. I'm waiting for the cop when I notice this strange dude's car. It's a white Honda with no license plates, just parked parallel to my front door. The dude still hasn't seen me and he's still wandering around. So I take this as an opportunity to remember that we have a security system and I armed it so that if he did try to break in, it would immediately alert the police. If this was some sort of professional or worker, he would have rang my doorbell or knocked at least once. He didn't either. Just then I get a call back from my dad saying neither him or my mom hired anyone to come by today and that I need to call our local police station immediately. I went back downstairs after making sure to lock every door and window upstairs and called my city's police station. I explained to a woman on the other end what is happening and she decides that she's not going to send an officer out and instead gives me a number to call their emergency dispatch line and told me to talk to them. I call the number she gave me and immediately I get an automated message saying thank you for calling the non emergency hotline. Nobody is available to take your call right now. If this is an emergency, please hang up and dial 91 1. At this point I'm really irritated cause 15 minutes has passed and this weird dude is still lurking around my house while I'm home alone. And apparently that wasn't enough to warrant an emergency. To the lady I called at my local police department, I hung up and decided to call 911. After getting in touch with a 911 operator, I was asked a series of questions about his appearance before they would even alert officers near me to start heading towards my house. The whole thing seemed really weird. Nobody was in a hurry to have officers come up to my place. When I was a younger girl home alone with a strange dude, I asked the officer if I could stay on the line with her when she finally, after what seemed like forever, alerted police to come to where I was. She agreed and I went back upstairs to check on the weird guy and he is now sitting in his unplated Honda, either listening to a radio show extremely loud or on a phone call with someone through his car. It was a very prominent loud male voice coming from his car. Car. Then all of a sudden I hear the tone you hear when someone hangs up on you and the operator was no longer on the line. I was really confused when my thoughts were interrupted by an unrecognized phone number calling me. I assumed it was the operator calling me back so I picked it up. Instead, I was greeted by really creepy heavy breathing. I am not sure who it was, but it really freaked me out. I hung up immediately and dialed back 911. I had been pretty calm up to this point, but that phone call put me in panic mode. I got on the phone with another operator who already knew my situation and address. Before I could even explain it to her, she said the cops were on their way. 20 minutes had passed. At this point. The dude is still here in his car and the cops aren't. Keep in mind I live in a smaller town so there is no reason why it took the cops as long as it did to come down. Finally this dude is leaving my driveway right as the cops pull in and they stop him and ask him a few questions. A cop then comes to my door and hands me a sketchy looking flyer saying it was just a landscaper. He said he had an appointment. I was really relieved and irritated that it was just a dude my mom had hired until I realized it wasn't. I called my mom back and said the cop said that it was just a landscaper that you hired and that he had an appointment. My mom replies with I can assure you we never hired a landscaper. We don't even need one. This happened when I was 13. I lived in a duplex with my dad and brother. It was a two bedroom and I shared a room with my dad while my older brother had his own room. It was not uncommon for both of them to have plans at night while I stayed home to play video games alone. This night was no different. My dad was probably at some bar and my brother who knows where he was. I was playing the original Resident Evil on PlayStation and at around midnight my eyelids were getting too heavy and I decided to go to bed. I slept with my bedroom door wide open. Now, not one time in the years that we lived in this place place did my dad or brother come home by entering through the back sliding glass door a couple times. My brother didn't have his key for one reason or another and he would knock on my bedroom window and ask me to let him in. My dad always had his key and would always come home through the front door. On this night, I heard the back door slide open. It was an old door and sliding it open wasn't easy. It was also very loud, so I heard it crystal clearly. I lay in bed wide eyed, my imagination going crazy. I heard whoever it was walk through the dining room, through the kitchen and then into the living room. They made no attempt to be quiet. After a brief silent pause, I saw someone walk by my bedroom doorway. This scared me so much as you can imagine, and my heart throbbed. Whoever was in my house walked into the bathroom right next to my bedroom and flipped the light on. The light poured into my bedroom and I was laying there terrified, completely exposed by the light from the bathroom. Why didn't I shout out for my brother or my dad? Because like I mentioned, I. I knew it wasn't them. And there was no one else that it could have been that would have made sense. Not a family member, not a friend. I knew it was someone that did not belong. The person then walked out of the bathroom, left the light on and went into my brother's room and started making a ton of noise. It sounded like they were searching for something. All I did was lay there shivering. After a few more minutes, the person walked by my bedroom again. I expected at any moment a stranger would walk into my room, but they didn't. I heard them making noise in the living room, walking around, huffing and puffing. Then they started walking back and forth by my bedroom repeatedly into the bathroom and back out, over and over. At the time, I was 100% sure they were messing with me. For some reason they knew I was there. Whoever they were. I heard the person making noises. By this and by the huge figure that I saw walking back and forth, I knew that it was a man. They continued walking around each room except the one that I was in. And then suddenly I heard them walk back through the house to the backsliding door, open it and then leave. I lay there in bed terrified, wondering what just happened. After a while, out of sheer exhaustion, I fell asleep. In the morning, I found that my dad and brother were both home. I have asked both of them dozens of times and they both promise it was not them. Plus again, why would they go through the back door and then leave again through the back door? This was 21 years ago and I will never know who it was or why they were there. Nothing was missing either. What really makes me wonder to this day, why did they never come into my bedroom? The door was wide open and they walked by it at least 20 times. So this happened about 10 years ago in Manitou Springs, Colorado. I was living in a friend's trailer on her couch and there was very limited space and I was looking for a place of my own. I ran into this guy that lived a few trailers down from her and and he was telling me that he was looking to rent out part of his trailer. So I went over to take a look. This guy seemed really off in a creepy sort of way, but at the time I was really desperate to give my friend her living room couch back and get out of there. So I was willing to go pretty much anywhere. When I went over there, he told me he would rent out a small space inside of this ridiculously small trailer. Or he was also willing to rent out a small cubby that he had underneath his trailer that he also showed to me. It looked like about a 10x10 crawl space under his trailer. That alone should have been the red flag that made me turn him down flat. But like I said, I was desperate and that red flag was one of many to come. So I hesitantly and very reluctantly agreed to rent the small space inside and moved my stuff over that night. Almost immediately he started going on about a curfew that I would have to abide by if I was to live there and a bunch of other nonsense that I wasn't about to sit and listen to. So I left. When I came back, I found him sprawled out on his front porch mumbling about how he had just taken a bunch of pills and he was holding onto a half empty bottle of booze. I had to step over him to get in the door as he began screaming about how I hadn't minded his warning about my new curfew. At this point, I flat out told him that if I was going to be paying him money to stay there, I would be coming and going as I pleased since I was an adult, not a child and certainly not his child. To this he reacted by having quite the outburst of rage, at which point I was sure that this was not going to to work. He then gets up and starts flinging my stuff out onto the street and this is all happening at like 2am So I gather what belongings are still left in his house and take them outside with me while I continue to gather what he had already thrown out and go begging my friend to let me come back into her trailer. And she let me. But that is not where this bizarre story ends. A few days later, after this happened, I see a young girl at his house and they are both getting drunk. And I didn't think much of it. But about a week after that, once I had found another place to stay, my friend that lived in that trailer park called me, panicking, asking if I was okay. After I got her to calm down some and assured her that I was fine, I asked what made her even ask. To begin with, she tells me that they had just pulled a human body from the little cubby under that guy's trailer that had been there for several days. She told me that the guy that lived there had been arrested for trying to rob a convenience store with a machete, and the girl's body he had stashed under his trailer had begun to smell. So the landlord called the police. The young girl that I had seen him drinking with just a few days before, her hand was found wrapped in a quilt under his his trailer. All that was running through my mind as she was telling me all of this was that that would have been me had I not left when I did. I did not step foot in that trailer park again. Even going anywhere near it gave me the creeps so bad. And as badly as I felt for that young girl, I was still very thankful that I walked away from there with my life. This occurred when my roommates and I were working on our bachelor's degree in a prominent university in West Bengal, India. We would live in the university boarding houses for students, or hostels as we call them here. The hostile buildings would were divided into boys and girls blocks and we lived in the girls block. After our semester final exams ended in December 2016, before we left for our homes for the holidays, we decided to stay back for the huge fair that would take place in the town near our university. This fair would attract people from all over the country and abroad. With shops full of traditional arts and crafts and massive threads thrift stores. This fair would go on for six to eight days at a stretch, starting from 22 December every year. So the tiny college town we lived in would be full of all kinds of people. Our university would take extra precautions against strange people entering the university campus. We would have extra barricades around the girls hostels and so on. But people would always roam around the campus campus enjoying its beauty despite the rules. So my roommate stayed back for two days before she left for home and enjoyed the fair with me. We did a lot of shopping for ourselves and our families, and two days later she left. I, on the other hand, did not leave as the holidays were only for 10 days and I instead wanted to stay back and study in the university library with not as many students students around. One day, on my way back from the Library at around 7pm, I noticed that many tourists were roaming around the campus even after it got dark. But I was aware of the tourist situation at the time, so I didn't really care. Now the hostel block had a big gate with four three storied buildings situated inside it in a square format, and there was only one way in and out and female guards would always be standing near the gate as there were tight rules for intruders, especially men. Our rooms were situated the farthest from the entrance. We stayed on the first floor and had windows facing outward onto a back street inside the campus with lots of trees everywhere. So I went to my room, got cleaned up and started cooking dinner. While doing so, I started hearing some rustling sound from the window. I thought perhaps it was the sound of birds in the trees. It was already dark out at that time of winter and I couldn't make out anything outside. Soon I started hearing the noise more and more still. I assumed it was the sound of people walking the road behind our room as there were more visitors at that time. As my food was cooking, I sat on my bed and started reading a book. The bed was right beside a window. Suddenly, I hear a low thud near me next to the window. I look up and there's a man standing right outside the window staring in at me. Stunned with fear, I could not even shout. I sat there motionless, trying to understand if the man was even real. Just then, this intruder, who seemed to be in his early 30s, spoke in a slurring voice. Don't scream or I will be in trouble. I just want some water. Can you give me some water? I am so thirsty. I managed to stand up and as I was on my way to dart out of the room, this man started speaking again, but a bit loud, trying to pronounce his words properly. Just some water. I am your guest. Please give me some water. I could smell a distinct bad alcohol stink coming from him and he looked horrible, somehow managing to keep his eyes open. By this time, the man was basically just hanging by the window panes and thankfully couldn't get in due to the iron barriers. He started sticking his hand in, trying to grab it and anything on the bed. I had had enough and started screaming right then and there. There weren't many people staying back in the hostel during those days, so no one came to help. I ran downstairs and ran up to the guards who were about 50 meters from our building. They frantically ran back with me to my room and by the time we reached it, the man was nowhere to be seen. So the guards call the university security team and they started checking the hostel perimeter and they found the man lying flat on his back on the grass below the window he climbed. I did not leave the room to see any of it as I was still pretty shaken up. But I was told that the man was drunk and unconscious from falling that high up and the guards had to pick him up and take him away to the hospital. I don't know what happened to that man, if he was charged or what, but by the next day two male guards started walking up and down that back road behind our room. I told this story to my roommate once she got back after the holidays and she was pretty worried that I was all alone when I went through this scary experience. She and I then decided to change our rooms as I still had flashbacks of a hand creeping in through the window. It also made me realize how we are never related safe despite how secure we feel in our surroundings. On this particular occurrence, I was home by myself in high school or late junior high and I was in the living room at around 6pm I have eight ADD, so I was reading and had the TV on and had both of our dogs in the living room with me. I made a habit of using all these different stimuli and shutting all the doors inside the house when I'm home alone because it eases my anxiety. The kitchen in my house is behind the living room and when you're sitting on the couch facing our tv, you have to turn all the way around to see only the entrance to the kitchen as well as the back door. You can't see inside of the kitchen from the living room, hardly at all. So I was sitting and reading and all of a sudden I heard creaking from the floorboards in our kitchen, which always happens when someone is walking or moving around in the kitchen. I couldn't hear any footfalls, but it unmistakably was the sound of someone walking on the creaky water warped wood floors. Then a cabinet door slammed. My dad always slams cabinet doors, so I thought maybe he had come home from work early and I just didn't know. So without looking up for my book I called out, dad, when did you get home? No one answered. A few seconds later a couple more cabinet doors slammed, so I turned around on the couch to see the entrance to the kitchen and called out for my dad. Again, no answer. Then I hear repeated slamming of the cabinet doors over and over, extremely loud. They start to slam faster and faster, louder and louder. My pulse picked up and I could feel my heart beating in my ears. Suddenly the dogs stand up in the living room and face the kitchen and start barking. I can see the hair along their spines ripple raise up and despite the menacing nature of their growls, they looked scared. I started to panic and I quickly moved to the carpet to sit behind them in the living room, hoping they would protect me. I guess I was facing the kitchen, my arms wrapped around both of my dogs growling bodies. I was incredibly scared and my heart was beating out of my chest. All of a sudden, the insanely loud slamming stops. For a while all I can hear is the blood rushing in my ears and my own breathing. Then I hear that same familiar creaking coming from the kitchen. The sound of something shifting its weight or walking in the kitchen. I was paralyzed with fear, unblinkingly staring as the source of the sound came closer and closer to exiting the kitchen and entering my view. As the situation became quieter and more tense, the dogs suddenly stopped growling and started whimpering. They were shaking violently and their hair was raised all over. At this point, I'm essentially having a heart attack and preparing myself for the absolute worst. Then suddenly, my mom walks into the house through the door closest to the kitchen. Arriving home from the grocery store, everything stops. The creaking, the dogs, everything. My dogs started wagging their tails and went to greet my mom. I stayed sitting on the carpet in the living room, bewildered and adrenaline still coursing through my veins. Just to explain the situation and demonstrate that I am not making something out of nothing. It could not have been sounds like my mom made from coming into the house. The sounds were nothing like the dull rapid thumps that came from a person walking along our back porch to enter the house. These sounds could only have come from the kitchen, specifically the floors and the cabinets. I knew these sounds well. As I grew up in this house, I tried to tell my mom what happened right before she got home. But she didn't really believe me. I haven't told many people. No one has ever really believed this story. However, I can promise you that I know the house I grew up in very well. I can also promise that the fear and panic that not only myself, but my dogs felt were very, very real.