u/Hot-Box5680

This happened a couple years ago when I was in college. I was a sophomore living in an off-campus apartment with three other guys. It wasn't the best place but at the time it was all we could find, especially for that good of a price. My bedroom was on the second floor, at the end of the hallway. I had a window in my room facing the side of the neighboring house, maybe eight feet away. Their windows were always dark and nobody seemed to live there, that was until I noticed an older man taking out the trash every once in a while. The weird stuff started with my alarm.For about a week, I would wake up five or ten minutes before it went off. I didn't really question it, I just got annoyed. One night however I woke up at 3:17 a.m. to my phone screen lighting up the room. It wasn’t ringing or vibrating, It was just on. I got up and looked at it and I noticed my alarm app was open, and my usual 7:30 alarm had been changed to 3:17. I thought that maybe I accidentally went on my phone while half asleep not thinking much of it. The next night, I put my phone under my pillow. At 3:17, I woke up again. This time, it wasn't because of my phone. It was because I heard a noise. I tried to ignore it thinking it was some kids being stupid after the bar and after a while I heard three soft knocks coming from downstairs. I froze and listened. Our apartment was never completely quiet. Pipes clicked, cars passed, one roommate snored through the wall. But after the knocks, everything felt too quiet all of a sudden. Then I heard a floorboard creak downstairs. I texted our group chat: “is anyone up?” No one answered. I then checked everyone's location and no one had been active for at least 2 hours. I grabbed my phone and crouched right next to my door listening. I decided to look out the hallway and I saw Josh's (one of my roommates) door was cracked open, and I could hear him snoring. Same with Dylan. Jake’s room was empty because he stayed with his girlfriend most nights. I decided to go downstairs thinking he had come back or something. Then I noticed the basement door was open. We always kept it closed because the basement was gross and cold. I stood there for maybe ten seconds, staring down into the dark, waiting to hear breathing or movement or anything. Nothing. I closed it, put a chair in front of it like an idiot, and went back upstairs. In the morning, I told Josh, and he laughed and said that my melatonin was getting to me. That would’ve been the end of it, except for what happened two days later. We were watching TV around midnight when we heard the knock. It was three soft, distinct knocks. This time, it came from inside the basement. Josh muted the TV. We both kinda just sat there. Then it happened again. Knock. Knock. Knock. Josh whispered, “Is Dylan down there?” Dylan was sitting on the couch behind us. None of us moved for a while. Then Josh, trying to act tough, grabbed a kitchen knife and opened the basement door. The light switch was at the top of the stairs. He flipped it on. The bulb flickered twice and stayed on. The basement looked normal. Washer. Dryer. Boxes. Old paint cans. That nasty little window near the ground. Then Dylan said, “Why is there a chair down there?” At the bottom of the stairs, facing up toward us, was one of our dining chairs. None of us had put it there. We didn’t sleep much that night. The next morning, we called the landlord. He barely listened and said old houses make noise. When we mentioned the chair, he said maybe one of us was sleepwalking. After that, we started locking the basement door from the outside with a cheap latch from the hardware store. For a week, nothing happened. Then finals came around, and everyone was busy. One night I came home late from the library. It was snowing lightly, and I remember being in a weirdly good mood because the campus was quiet and pretty. When I got to the apartment, the front door was unlocked. Not open. Just unlocked. I knew I had locked it because I always did the stupid lift-the-door thing. Inside, all the lights were off. I called out, “Hello?” No answer. I checked my roommates' locations on Snapchat. Josh was at the bar, Dylan was at work, and Jake was across town. I turned on every light on the first floor. Then I saw it. On the kitchen counter was my phone charger.  That doesn’t sound scary until I explain: I had lost that charger three weeks earlier. I had searched everywhere for it. Desk, backpack, under my bed, laundry, couch cushions. Gone. Now it was sitting in the middle of the counter, wrapped neatly around itself. Next to it was a folded piece of paper. I didn’t want to touch it. I stood there looking at it like it might move. I finally decided to take a look at it. It said: “Stop locking it.” That was when I called the police. They came, walked through the house, checked the basement, checked the doors and windows. No sign of forced entry. The basement latch was still locked. They basically told me to talk to my roommates and maybe get a camera. So we did. We bought two cheap motion cameras. One facing the front door, one facing the basement door. For three nights, nothing seemed to happen.  On the fourth night, the basement camera went offline at 3:16 a.m. At 3:17, my phone lit up. This time again it wasn’t my alarm. It was a notification from the front door camera. Motion detected. The video showed our front door opening from the inside. From what I could see nobody walked out. The door just opened slowly, stayed open for about twenty seconds, then closed. At first I thought the lock had failed. Wind, bad frame, old house. But then I watched it again. Right before the door closed, I could see a hand. Just a hand. Pale, thin, gripping the edge of the door from inside the house. I quickly got up and woke everyone up showing them what I saw. We all got up and searched the house (together) but again found nothing. We moved out that week. Not officially because we still had the lease, but we slept at friends’ places and only came back during the day to pack. The landlord was angry until Josh's dad threatened legal action, and suddenly he became very cooperative. A month later, Jake found something online. He was trying to see if anyone else was experiencing what we were in this house from reviews but instead he found our rental had a crawlspace behind the basement wall. From what I heard It had been sealed years earlier after some plumbing work, but there was still access from the neighboring house because the two buildings used to share a coal chute or storage area. I don’t know all the details. I just know someone could get from that old man’s basement into ours through a narrow, hidden space behind the washer. The police came back after the landlord finally admitted there was an access panel. They found blankets in there. Food wrappers. Empty water bottles. A little battery-powered light. And my missing hoodie. Now maybe I just wasn't spying enough attention to him but it seemed to me that the old man next door had disappeared. I never saw him take out the trash, not at his usual times and when I told the police they said that house was vacant. Nobody knew where he went and the landlord claimed he had no idea anything like that was possible, which maybe was true and maybe wasn’t. The part I still think about most isn’t the hand in the video or the note. It’s the chair. Because whoever was in our basement didn’t just sneak in to steal stuff. He sat at the bottom of the stairs in the dark, facing up toward our door, waiting for us to hear him. Now to this day idk how close I came to truly finding out but im just thankful I didnt have to. I haven't heard much about that place now and from what I see as of May 2026 that apartment hasn't been renovated and is still being rented.