Speaker 1: Me and my best friend, who I'll call Alex for privacy,
decided to rent a house together. We talked about being
roommates for a while because neither of us wanted to
live with our parents anymore. We were attending community college
and had jobs, so it felt like moving out was
just the next step. We found this really small, but
still somewhat nice home that was only a ten minute
drive to school. This was last year when COVID was
still big, so we were able to schedule a self
tour and look at it ourselves. We both thought it
was that perfect kind of crappy yet cheap house for
us to spend our college years in. It even had
a decent yard and wasn't crammed together with neighbors all around.
One thing that caught our attention, though, was this creepy
old shed in the backyard. I mean, it just looked
like a regular shed, I guess, but it had a
padlock on it, and in the description of the house
online it didn't mention it anywhere. Neither of us cared
to use it anyway, so we ignored it and signed
the lease. I was super pumped, and I could tell
Alex was too. A month later, we moved in the
first week was great. This was both of our first
times living on our own, so the freedom of it
was amazing. On a normal Saturday night, I was in
the living room watching TV waiting for Alex to come
home from work. It was only seven and Alex got
off at eight. Through the TV playing I heard what
I could have sworn was a large door shutting. It
came from outside, and my first thought was the shed.
There was absolutely no way I was going out there
to check by myself. When Alex got back, I told
him what I heard. He asked me over and over
if I was sure it wasn't from the TV or something,
but I knew it wasn't. All right, Let's take a look.
Then we turned our phone flashlights on and went outside.
We were maybe twenty feet away from the front of
the shed and everything looked exactly how it was before.
The lock was still on the front, so there was
no way someone could have gone inside and locked it
from the outside. Alex gave me a look like I
was crazy. We went back inside and watched TV for
a while. I couldn't stop thinking about what I heard, though,
I was starting to question whether or not the sound
was even real. At one point, while watching TV, I
looked to my side and a figure was standing outside
the window, staring at us. Alex didn't see him, but
he heard his footsteps running away, so we were on
the same page this time. Alex asked what we should do,
and I didn't know. We'd never had to deal with
something like this before. I wasn't sure if that guy
had something to do with the sound I heard earlier either.
We kept our eyes and ears open for a couple hours,
and with no further strange sightings, we went to bed.
It took a bit for me to fall asleep, but
I think I finally dozed off around ten pm. I
woke up in the middle of the night to a strange,
bright red glow flickering across the walls in my room.
It was coming through the slits in my window. As
I became more awake, I realized I was hearing something too,
a soft crackling sound also coming from outside. I was
still tired and my head wasn't fully awake, but then
I heard Alex call my name from the hallway outside
my room, Hey, wake up. As I was about to
ask what was going on, I was interrupted by something eerie, horrifying,
and loud. I turned my head to the window, pushing
aside the covers when the shed was in flames and
had just fallen over. The huge fire was getting close
to the house. Alex called nine one one and we
both took his car and drove across the street. The
fire department was able to get the fire extinguished before
it got too serious. Only minor burned damage was done
to the side of the house. We told the police
about what we'd heard and the man I saw, thinking
maybe he had done this, but there was nothing to
go off of. Everything that was inside the shed was
ashes except a few old metal tools. It makes me
think that someone was doing something in there and probably
burned it down to hide evidence of their doings as
soon as we moved in. It all just seems like
too much of a coincidence. I don't think we'll ever
know what exactly happened that night, though, or what was
going on inside that shed. My lease agreement was coming
to an end and the owners of the home decided
they wanted to sell the house after this lease, so
I was forced to find a new place instead of
renewing the lease like I'd planned. On. It's unfortunate because
they only gave me a month's notice, which is not
a lot of time to find a new house. I
worked full time, which only made things harder. The first
two weeks blew by, and I only had the next
two weeks to find a house, pack and move in.
I was stressed out of my mind with time running out,
I just applied to three houses nearby without even touring them.
Two of them declined me, but I got accepted by
the third. From the pictures, it didn't look nearly as
nice as the house I was staying at, but I
did the best I could with the shy situation I
was given. I rented a U haul and got my
stuff over as soon as possible. After getting all the
boxes inside and all the furniture where I needed to be,
I finally had a chance to look at the house.
It was a lot worse than the pictures had shown.
The walls had paint peeling, and everything just looked aged
and outdated. The rent was cheap, but not enough to
make up for the trashy condition of the place. I
was too tired to take care of anything right away, though,
so I got my bed ready and crashed for a
quick nap. I slept a lot longer than I wanted to,
and woke up well rested. Around nine p m. I
checked my phone and saw I had a text from
the landlord. He just greeted me and told me to
call him if I needed anything. It was already pretty late, though,
so my angry call was gonna have to wait until tomorrow.
I closed my phone and went downstairs to make myself
something to eat. Right when I turned the corner into
the kitchen, I jumped back. A man was standing in
the middle of the living room looking right at me.
What the fuck, I said under my breath, not sure
what to do yet. It was really dark and I
couldn't read his face. He was just kind of blank.
What are you doing here? I said. The man turned
around and walked out the front door in no hurry
at all. My first instinct was to run up and
lock the door. Then I called the landlord, but he
didn't pick up. I looked out the windows to see
if he was still around, but he seemed to have
left for good. Calling the police crossed my mind, but
I was just so confused by the whole interaction. I
didn't even feel threatened really. I didn't see anyone outside
for a while, so I left the windows and sat
on the couch. I didn't have my TV set up yet,
so I had nothing better to do than start packing.
I went through four boxes and was working on the
fifth when someone knocked on the door. I walked over
cautiously and turned on the porch light, then called out,
asking who was there. There was a long wait before
they answered, it's me, your landlord. I opened the door
a bit and looked at him. He looked really similar
to the man I'd just seen in my house, but
I wasn't sure. Hey, did you need something. I'm just
here to make sure you settled in nicely, he said,
with a big smile, leaning his hand on the door. Yeah.
I was just about to go to bed. I'll talk
to you tomorrow, I said, pushing the door, but the
man outside tapped his hand on the door, not letting
me close it. I stopped pushing for a moment, and
the man smiled again. Then it all hit me at once,
the fear and creepiness of the situation. I slammed my
body into the door, closing it too quickly for him
to react, then turned the boat lock. I heard the
door handle turn and the man outside bash against it.
There was another long wait before the man sprinted away
from the porch. I called the police, then got my
car keys and put them in my pocket to prepare
for a quick escape if I needed to. I waited
for a couple minutes, still just standing by the front door,
before I heard leaves crunching around the house. They went
to the back door and stopped. I walked up a
bit and peered around the corner, and right in front
of the back door was that same man standing outside
with a hammer in his hand. I took this chance
to run for my car. I opened the front door
and ran to my car in the driveway. I got
in and locked the doors, then backed out. I saw
the man on the side of my house watching me
as I drove away. The man was gone when the
police got there. They did a whole investigation and enduring it.
I met the landlord in person. He was not the
man I saw at my door, but he did look
oddly similar. He even talked in a very similar way.
It made me wonder if he had a brother or something.
I don't know. It could also be a creepy neighbor
or a homeless person. Either way, I never encountered the
man again, but once my lease was up, I moved
out and never looked back. This was my first time
ever purchasing a house. I was twenty eight and looking
for a place to settle down. I began my search
for a house five months before my lease ended and
my current residence. This one place that I found was perfect,
but it was pretty far over my budget, so I
had to pass on it and keep searching. I viewed
a ton of other places and even thought I'd found
a good home until that same house came up on
my search again. The price had been lowered tremendously, putting
it in the mid range of my budget. I scheduled
a tour and eventually bought the home. Obviously, I was ecstatic.
It felt like a really big move forward in my life.
It was a two story home with a basement and
large yard with trees all around. The only sly issue
was that it was twenty minutes away from most stores
and shops, but I worked from home, so I didn't
need to go out all that much. Within the first
few days, though, things got a little strange. While working
from the living room. One day, I heard some sounds
coming from the basement, things moving around or dragging on
the floor. I got up and opened the door to
the basement, but the sound stopped. It was silent. I
turned on the light and walked a few steps down,
but nothing was there. I had only a couple boxes
in the basement, so it was entirely empty aside from
the water heater an air conditioner in the far corner.
I'd only been in the place for a couple days,
so I thought I just wasn't used to the sounds
the house made, after all, there wasn't anything in the basement.
But only a day later I heard it again. This
time it was more of a soft, wooden sounding thud,
maybe a piece of wood hitting the wall. I went
down the basement stairs all the way this time and
did a perimeter check around the walls, but again the
basement was empty, so there was nothing to even check. Still,
I blew it off. What could it possibly even be.
I didn't believe in anything paranormal, so logically it had
to be the house. During the first week of staying
in my new house, I had experienced these sounds, probably
six or seven times. By the fourth or fifth time,
I stopped even checking and started ignoring it. That was
until I explored the outside of my house. I was
just walking around, enjoying the nature scene when I noticed
one of the tops of the basement window wells was
missing from the side of my house. It in itself
wasn't an alarming find, but just something I needed to
fix right away before it rained and flooded in my basement.
I went out and got a cover from a hardware
store and installed it that day. That night, I went
to bed early, but woke up at eleven PM to
another wooden thud sound from the basement directly below me.
A second later, I heard something else. This time it
was very distinctly footsteps going from one side of the
basement to the other. I was horrified. Part of me
was absolutely positive there was someone in my basement, but
there was another part of me that thought it could
be something I was imagining, or even somehow another noise
from the house. I needed to know for sure, though.
I took my bat that I kept in my room
and walked downstairs and over to the basement door. Just
before I approached it, though, an extremely loud thud came
from outside the house. I stopped in my tracks, waiting
for anything else. Then I opened the basement door and
walked down slowly. Nothing was there, just the same empty basement.
I looked all around and even waited for a few
minutes for more sounds, but it was just like every
other time when I went to investigate. As soon as
I'd opened the basement door and look around, it would
be silent. I got really uneasy after a few minutes
and went back upstairs. I put a chair in front
of the basement door so that if there was somehow
someone down there, I'd at least have a heads up
if they tried to open the door. The next morning,
I checked the basement again, but something felt different. It
was much brighter than usual. I checked the window well
and could see from the bottom that the top cover
was gone. Again. I went outside and looked around everywhere
for it, but it was completely gone. That was enough
for me to call the police though something was going on.
They sent one officer who took notes from me, then
searched around the basement. He found just as little as
I did. I got a new cover for the well
and hired a handyman to come out and install bars
on the window. From the inside. After that, I never
experienced any more sounds or noises. I don't know what
exactly I was dealing with in my basement, maybe someone
squatting there, or maybe something else. Even now, though three
years later, I still have that fear in the back
of my mind of hearing those sounds again