Transcript
A (0:01)
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B (0:24)
So good, so good, so good.
A (0:27)
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B (0:48)
My name is Jared, and this happened when I was 19 years old. It was years ago now, but I still remember it clearly, especially whenever winter comes back around. It was January. Deep winter, the kind where the cold doesn't just bite, it settles into your bones and refuses to leave. Snow covered everything outside, thick and heavy, muting the world and making the nights feel longer than they should have been. At the time, I lived alone in a small apartment complex on the edge of town. It wasn't a bad place, just old. The hallways were narrow, the carpet worn thin, and the walls were so thin you could hear people coughing in the next unit. The building always smelled faintly, like dust and old heat vents. Most of the tenants kept to themselves. People nodded but rarely talked to one another. I honestly liked it that way. I was 19, fresh out of high school, working odd shifts and trying to save money. My life was pretty quiet. I went to work, came home, ate cheap food, and spent most nights playing games or watching videos while the wind howled outside. Winter made everything feel smaller, like my whole world was just that apartment in the parking lot, buried under the snow. I didn't really notice my neighbor at first. She lived directly across the hall from me. The only reason I even realized someone lived there was because her door would sometimes open right as I was locking mine. She was a woman, probably late 20s or early 30s, with dark hair. She always wore her hair pulled back. She dressed heavily, even indoors, long coats, scarves and gloves. She smiled often, but there was something about it that felt forced, like she was trying too hard to seem friendly. At first, our interactions were really nothing, just small nods, a quick hey or Good morning. Normal neighbor stuff. I didn't really think about her after that. Then one night, things shifted. I came home late from work, tired and cold, snow clinging to my boots as I unlocked my door. Hers opened, too. She asked if I had a spare trash bag. I did, so I handed one over to her she thanked me repeatedly, more than necessary, holding onto the bag like it mattered way too much to her. She asked my name, and without even thinking, I told her. She smiled wider than before and said, it's nice to finally know. That should have been the end of it, but after that night, I had kind of just started noticing her everywhere. When I left for work early in the morning, she'd be in the hallway, usually pretending to dig through her purse or check her phone. Whenever I came home, she'd step out of her apartment within minutes. Sometimes she'd already be outside, standing by the stairwell, even when it was bitterly cold. Now, of course, I tried to just brush it all off as a coincidence. I mean, we lived across from each other. Our schedules were probably overlapped. Still, something about it felt off to me. She began slowly commenting on my routine. She asked if I worked later shifts. Now she mentioned seeing me come home with fast food one time. She joked about how I always carried my keys in my right hand. That one kind of stuck with me. It was such a small detail, but it meant that she was watching closely, really paying attention. The building felt different after that. Smaller and quieter. The snow outside never stopped. It piled higher each day, turning the parking lot into uneven white hills. At night, everything felt sealed off. No traffic noise, no distant sounds. Just wind and the occasional creak of the building settling. That's when I started hearing things at night. Soft sounds moving in the hallway. Footsteps stopping near my door. I'd sit up in bed, holding my breath, listening. Sometimes I thought I heard breathing. Other times, it sounded like someone shifting their weight back and forth. Every time I checked the door, though, no one was there. I kind of just told myself I was just imagining it. I mean, what could it really be? Winter messes with your head. Isolation does, too. Then I found the first note. It was slipped under my door, folded neatly inside. It said something simple. I hope today treats you well. No name. No explanation. My chest tightened when I read it. I stood there for a long time, just staring at the paper, feeling uneasy. For reasons that I couldn't fully explain, I threw it away. A few days later, there was another note. This one mentioned the snow and hoped that I was staying warm during the winter season. Another appeared after that, saying she liked hearing my music through the wall at night. Now that one really freaked me out. I didn't play my music loudly. She would have had to be listening closely. I started avoiding the hallway. Whenever I could, I waited before leaving my apartment, listening for movement. I changed the times. I came and went but it didn't really help. She still appeared, still smiled, still acted like nothing was wrong. One evening, as I unlocked my door, I had heard her voice behind me. Hey, Jared. I froze. I slowly turned around. She was standing far too close. I hadn't heard her door open. She said that she felt like we were really getting to know each other without even trying to. She said that it was rare to feel that kind of connection. Her eyes stay locked on mine the entire time, unblinking. I mumbled something and just went inside, locking the door behind me as quickly as I could. After that, I barely even slept. I left the lights on at night. I checked the lock over and over. I avoided the peephole because I was afraid I'd see someone standing there, staring back at me. The sounds in the hallway seemed louder now, more deliberate. One night, there was knocking. Soft. Slow. Careful. I sat on my bed, heart racing, not moving. The knocking continued for what felt like forever. Eventually, it stopped. I didn't open the door until morning. That day, there was another note. This one said she was worried about me. Said she felt hurt that I was avoiding her. Said she hoped I was making the right choices. That was the moment I realized that this wasn't just uncomfortable. It was dangerous. She had become obsessed with me. I reported everything to the building manager. He seemed skeptical at first, but when I showed him all the notes, his expression changed. A few days later, I had noticed her apartment looked empty. No lights, no movement. Eventually, I'd learned she'd been asked to leave after other tenants had shared similar experiences. The silence afterward just felt strange. Too quiet. Even after she was gone, I still couldn't relax. I kept expecting her to be there, watching, waiting. I moved out as soon as winter ended. Years later, I still think about that January. About how fear crept in slowly, quietly, just like the snow. And how sometimes the most terrifying things don't announce themselves at all. They just stand on the other side of the door, waiting for you to notice. A few years back, when I was in my early 20s, I lived in a very quiet part of northern New York. Not quite deep wilderness, but far enough out that neighbors were few and spread apart. The house I rented sat near the edge of a tree line, with thick wood stretching out behind it. During the warmer months, it felt peaceful. During winter, it felt isolating in a way that's hard to explain unless you've actually experienced it. Winter up there is no joke. Snow would fall for days at a time, sometimes so heavily that the roads disappeared completely. At night, everything went silent. No cars no people, just wind, snow, and darkness. I worked during the day and usually spend my evenings inside, trying to stay warm and distracted. Most nights I watched TV or played games. Anything to keep my mind from wandering. That night I was completely alone. My roommate had driven into town earlier that day to visit his family and wasn't planning to be back until the next morning. The weather had been getting worse all afternoon, and by the time it got dark, snow was coming down thick and steady, the kind that makes the sky glow faintly orange from the streetlights, even though the nearest one was far down the road. It was probably around 10:30 at night. I was sitting on the couch, half watching something on tv, half scrolling on my phone. The house made its usual winter noises. Creaking floors, the heater clicking on and off. I tried not to think about how far away everything was, but being alone always made me a little uneasy. I never really liked silence. My mind fills it too easily. That's when I heard it. A sharp crunching sound from outside. At first I thought maybe it was a tree branch snapping under the weight of snow. But then it happened again. Slower this time, more deliberate. It sounded exactly like boots stepping on frozen ground. I muted the tv. Immediately I sat there, barely breathing, listening. Another crunch followed, then another. Each one spaced a few seconds apart. Whatever it was, it was moving closer to the house. My heart started racing. I told myself that it had to be an animal. A deer, maybe. But something about the rhythm felt wrong. Too steady, too heavy. And then I realized something that made my stomach drop. I hadn't heard a car pull into the driveway. No engine, no headlights. Nothing. The footsteps continued. They moved along the side of the house, close enough that I could tell exactly where they were. I slowly stood up and backed away from the living room window. The curtains were thin, and the idea of someone seeing me inside made my skin crawl. I went straight to my bedroom and locked the door. I forgot to mention this at the beginning of the story, but I'm a 22 year old female, by the way. I don't own many weapons, but I did have a shotgun that I kept locked up. My hands were shaking as I took it out. I grabbed my phone, too, and sat at the edge of my bed, staring at the door, listening. I kept telling myself that I'm just overreacting, but none of this felt normal. The crunching stopped. The silence afterward was worse. I sat there for what felt like hours, waiting for another sound. My ears rang from how hard my heart was pounding. Every creak of the house made me flinch. At one point, I thought I heard something brushing against the side of the building, like a hand or sleeve dragging along the wall. I didn't move. Eventually, exhaustion caught up with me. I must have fallen asleep sometime before morning, still fully dressed, shotgun beside the bed, phone clutched in my hand. When I woke up, the house was quiet. Sunlight filtered weakly through the curtains. I checked my phone. No missed calls, no messages. My roommate texted shortly after, saying he was on his way back and asking if the snow was bad. I didn't reply right away. I waited until he got home before I told him what happened. He listened, but he seemed unsure of what to make of it. He suggested that maybe someone got lost, or maybe I imagined part of it. I didn't argue. I just asked him to come outside with me. The snow had stopped early that morning. When we stepped outside, the cold hit us immediately. The yard was covered in untouched snow, smooth and white, except for one area near the woods. There were footprints that came straight out of the tree line. The prints were deep and uneven, like someone had been walking slowly, not rushing. They led toward the house, then curved around the side. Some were partially filled in with snow, but others were clear enough to make out the treadmill. My chest tightened as we followed them. They circled the house once, then again. Near the back of the house, the prints grew closer together, as if the person had stopped for a while, and then they ended right beneath my bedroom window. The snow there was packed down hard. Unlike the other prints, these weren't filled in at all. It looked like someone had stood there for a long time. I felt sick. That window was only a few feet away from my bed. If the blinds hadn't been closed, they would have been able to see straight inside. The thought that someone might have been standing there while I sat, frozen in fear, or even while I slept, made my hands go completely numb. There were no prints leading away. It was like the person had simply vanished. We called the police, but nothing ever came of it. No reports, no evidence, no explanation. They suggested that it might have been someone passing through, or maybe even a prank. But who would wander through deep snow in the middle of the night, miles from town, just to stand outside someone's bedroom? I stopped sleeping well after that. Every sound outside made me jump. I kept the curtains closed all the time. I moved a chair in front of my bedroom door at night. Winter dragged on, and with it, the constant feeling that I wasn't really alone. A few months later, I moved out. To this day, I still think about that night. About those footprints, about how close someone was without ever being seen. And the part that scares me the most is knowing that if I hadn't heard those crunching footsteps, I never would have known they were there at all.