Speaker 1: This happened in twenty fifteen. I had just moved to
a small house far from my hometown the year before,
so I was still getting used to the area and
hadn't met many people yet. I worked from home as well,
which made it even harder anyway, for Christmas, I had
no plans at all. My family was too far and
I didn't have enough vacation time to go out and
see them, so this was actually going to be my
first Christmas alone. On Christmas Eve, I stayed up working,
figuring i'd just get ahead on some things so I
didn't have to worry about doing anything. On Christmas Day,
I was working in the living room listening to music
as well, when through it I heard something coming from outside.
I pulled out one of the earbuds and listened, but
didn't hear anything else, so I got up and looked
around with my earbuds in. It was hard to know
what direction it came from, but I was pretty sure
it was outside the house, not inside. I looked out
the back window, not seeing anything, then moved to the
front window and again saw nothing. But then I looked
out the front door on the porch, where a set
of shoe prints in the snow. They led right up
to my doorstep and then back out to the driveway.
There was no mail dropped off or anything at all
on the porch, just the shoe prints. It was really
strange and made me feel a little anxious, not knowing
why anyone would be walking up to my doorstep. At
eleven pm on Christmas Eve, I made sure the door
was locked and went back to work, then got in
bed soon after. It was a bit strange waking up
on Christmas morning feeling like it was any other day.
I brewed a cup of coffee and sat on my
chair to watch TV. I think I spent the whole
morning just sitting there and watching shows and movies. I
gave my parents a call and talked to them for
a bit, but that was really about all I did.
I thought about going out, but it was really cold
and the wind was really strong, so I just stayed
in for the day. By six pm, I had basically
done nothing all day and made some dinner, planning on
going to bed early, but then I heard something outside.
It was the shuffling sound of footsteps in the snow
coming toward the front door. I stayed quiet, knowing nobody
should be here. After a few seconds, the footsteps sounded
again walking away from the house. I went up and checked,
seeing almost an identical scene to what I saw the
previous night. After that, I forced myself to stay up. Later.
I kept my eyes open until probably around ten before
or I guess I fell asleep on the couch. I
remember getting really tired and trying to stay up, but
I didn't plan on falling asleep out there. When I
woke up, the TV was still on and flashing light
throughout the dark room. I sat up and paused it,
then got up to go to my bedroom. As I
walked down the hallway, though, my eyes instantly locked on
my bedroom door. It was open, but I knew I
always kept it closed. I walked over and pushed it
open wider, then flicked on the light. Wet shoeprints were
scattered around the floor going to and from the window.
In a complete state of shock, I spun around and
turned on the hallway light, now seeing more shoe prints
going down toward the living room. I followed them, but
they stopped right outside the living room, looking like they
turned and went back right after seeing me on the couch.
The shoe prints were nowhere else in the house. Police
did what they could, but if I'm being honest, they
weren't of much help. The current theory is that the
man had come by the previous two nights to see
if I was home after not answering the door, though
he likely thought I was away for the holidays. I
know it's likely that he only broke into my house
to rob me, but still it's extremely disturbing, especially since
I was at home sleeping when it all happened. Whoever
it was, though they never came back. Last December, I
traveled across the country to meet my parents and siblings
for Christmas. My parents had a decent sized house, so
we would usually just all stay there and sleep on
the couch or in the spare bedrooms. That being said,
I didn't rent any hotels, even for the drive. It
was ten hours long, but I just didn't see a
need in stopping halfway there and wasting a whole night.
I left early on the twenty third, planning it out
to get to the house around dinner time. As I
started the drive, snow was lightly coming down, nothing crazy,
but enough to cause a bit of traffic. This went
on for a few hours until it suddenly started pouring down.
It happened over just thirty minutes, going from a very
light downfall to an extremely heavy storm. Along with the winds,
it was nearly impossible to see anything in front of me.
Most other cars started to pull off to the side
of the road, but I really wanted to keep going.
I drove in these horrible conditions for the better part
of an hour, having a few close calls, before deciding
enough was enough. I pulled into a motel and sat
in the parking lot waiting for the snow to clear up.
There were a lot of other cars in the parking lot,
but I think most were probably trying to wait it
out like I was. But as the sun started to set,
there was no chance of that happening anytime soon. I
reluctantly went in and got a room. I went to
my room and lay down on the bed. It was
around eight o'clock at this point, and I'd figured I'd
just sleep now and see if it was clear in
a few hours. I set an alarm on my phone
for eleven then passed out. But when I woke up,
I immediately knew something was wrong. I turned and looked
at my phone. Seeing it was just before two AM,
my alarm didn't go off. Quickly got out of bed
and ran up to the window. The parking lot was
almost empty now, but it was still snowing pretty bad.
I sat back on the bed, and after some thinking,
I decided to take the loss and just spend the
rest of the night there and hope for the best
in the morning. I laid down, closing my eyes. But
now that I was more calm, something caught my attention,
a cold breeze blowing through the room and the clear
sound of wind. I sat up, seeing the window at
the end of the bed was cracked open. I got
up and shut it, but I was almost positive it
was closed when I went to bed. It's something I
definitely would have noticed, being that there was a whole
storm outside. A rush of adrenaline went through me as
I started to worry. I faced the rest of the room,
now looking into the dark and standing still, listening for anything.
Then I slowly walked around, checking for anything missing or
any signs that someone had been inside. I didn't see
or find anything until I went to check out the peopole.
That's when I noticed that both locks on the door
were now open. Someone had unlocked it from the inside.
Blood rushed from my face as I locked the door
and backed away, thinking through every possible horrifying scenario that
I could be caught in right now. I started putting
my things back into my bag and getting ready to leave,
But then there was a sudden shake of the door handle.
I stared at it with wide eyes, seeing the handle
move back and forth like they were trying to force
it open. Then it went silent. I waited for a
long couple minutes before I slowly and quietly crept toward
the door to check if it was safe to make
a run for my car. I looked out the peep hole,
seeing a man leaning against a door like he was listening.
I was frozen, but he must have heard something, because
only a few seconds later he rushed away from the door.
I spent no time waiting, leaving the room soon after
and getting in my car, pulling out and leaving the motel.
I got lucky as nobody else was on the roads
and they seemed to have just been plowed. I drove
through the storm until I got to my parents' house,
taking much longer than it should have. What that man
was trying to do. I can't even begin to think of.
They had obviously been in the room while I was
sleeping and unlocked the door, but what they wanted and
why they had to come back to my room, I
just don't know. But if I hadn't woken up when
I did and stayed asleep for just a minute longer,
I might have never made it to my parents' house.
Two years ago, I spent Christmas with my roommate. We
were both in college and were splitting rent on a
small home in the suburbs outside of the campus. Neither
of our families apparently were really big on Christmas, and
we were also kind of broke, so we stayed home
for winter break. We still did a bit of decorating,
and I'd gotten each other some cheap little gifts so
we could have our own small Christmas, but other than that,
we mostly planned on watching movies and maybe going to
a party at night. On Christmas Day, we opened up
our gifts and hung out and around. My roommate wanted
to go to a party by the campus. I'd planned
on going too, but for some reason, I was just
tired and not really in the mood to go out.
I encouraged him to go if he wanted to, and
he took up on the offer. Heading out by six,
I sat back and ate some junk food, watching TV,
and just relaxing, I guess. But then around eight I
just felt like getting up and doing something. With no
places open, I grabbed my jacket and decided to go
for a walk around to look at the houses with
Christmas lights. It was cold out, but not insanely freezing.
I walked around the neighborhood and through one of the
nearby parks. But while I was walking through a portion
of the path, I passed by a man sitting on
a bench. Now, this part of the path was covered
in trees and not by any houses, and the man
was just sitting there alone. It was actually kind of sad,
But when I passed by, he looked up at me
and just gave me this really cold look. It was
very strange and made me even more curious why he
was out here. I walked quicker, reaching the end of
the path and turning back to go home. The rest
of the walk, all I was thinking about was the
man and what he was up to. Something about his
look just gave me a bad feeling. I got to
the house and opened the front door, closing it behind
me and taking my shoes off. But before I even
started walking away, I heard a thump right outside the door.
It startled me, having come so quickly after I'd gotten inside.
I leaned over and looked through the peep hole. It
was the man from the path, standing on the porch
and staring at the door. His face was completely blank,
no smile or frown, just empty. I cracked open the door.
Are you okay? The man looked at me with his
emotionless eyes and didn't say a word. I asked again
if he was okay or if he needed anything, but
he didn't speak. Getting weirded out, I closed the door
and went back to looking out the peep hole. The
man stayed there for at least a whole minute, then
walked off to the side of the door until he
was out of my view. I looked over, seeing the
window curtains were open, giving the man a view into
my house. For some reason, now I didn't want the
man to see me, so I was afraid to go
close the curtains. All he could probably view though, was
the Christmas tree and the couch, but it was still
really unnerving knowing he was looking into my home. As
I stood in place trying to think of what to
do next, a dull thud came from outside the window.
I quickly stepped back and looked, seeing the man slam
a large rock against the glass. His eyes were still
glazed over with no emotion, making it look even more terrifying.
I ran and locked myself in a room while I
dialed nine one one, hearing the man continue to repeatedly
hit the window. After a few hits, there was a pause,
then it began again, but it sounded like he may
have moved to hitting the front door. This went on
for what felt like several minutes before finally it went quiet.
When police pulled in, the man was nowhere around outside,
though there were multiple cracks in the window and the
door had entire chunks of woods smashed out and laying
on the ground. The police seemed to think that it
was just an entire oxicated person based on the information
I told them, and he likely had no real reason
to target me specifically. Whatever the case, the way he
was acting was just insane, and if he had gotten in,
there's no saying what he would have done.