Story 1
This story was sent in by Emily R. from New York.
I’ve lived in the same tiny third‑floor apartment for almost five years, and most nights follow the exact same rhythm. I work late shifts at a small café a few blocks from my building, so by the time I get home, shower, and settle in, it’s usually somewhere between midnight and one in the morning. I’m used to falling asleep to the sounds of the city—distant traffic, muffled conversations in the hallway, the occasional door slamming somewhere on another floor. New York has a way of making noise feel normal.
That night, though, I remember feeling unusually tired. I’d pulled a double shift and hadn’t eaten much, and by the time I crawled into bed it was a little after 1:30 a.m. My apartment was warm from the radiator and smelled faintly like the lavender spray I always use on my pillows. I was half-asleep within minutes, drifting in that fuzzy in-between place where sounds feel far away.
The first weird detail was so soft I wasn’t sure I actually heard it. It sounded like a whisper—I mean the faintest trace of one—coming from somewhere near my bedroom door. I remember blinking awake, listening, and convincing myself it was probably someone in the hallway talking quietly while they passed. The walls in older buildings like mine carry noise in strange ways. Sometimes voices climb through vents or echo around corners.
But then I noticed something that didn’t make sense: the whisper wasn’t moving. It stayed right by my door.
I stayed lying on my side, my cheek against the pillow, trying to slow my breathing. My first thought was that someone upstairs might’ve left a radio on low, or maybe I was catching part of a late-night phone call. I’ve lived alone long enough to know not to jump to conclusions.
Still, something about the sound made my body tense. It wasn’t a full voice, just these short, broken murmurs. Like someone trying to form words but stopping halfway through. It had a strange rhythm—too deliberate to be pipes or the building settling.
I lifted my head to listen more clearly. The whispering didn’t get louder, but it became unmistakable. A steady, breathy pattern right outside my bedroom door.
I stared at the door handle. I could see its faint outline from the glow of the streetlamp outside my window. My heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat. My phone was on the opposite side of the room on my dresser—stupid, I know, but I always plug it in there because I don’t trust myself not to scroll until sunrise.
I tried to think rationally. Maybe someone on my floor was drunk and got turned around. People mix up floors sometimes. My landlord had mentioned a new tenant moving in downstairs earlier that week. Maybe they didn’t realize they were at the wrong apartment.
The rational explanation was almost comforting until I realized the whispering wasn’t slurred or confused. It had intention. Pauses. Starts and stops. Like someone leaning close to the door, trying to get my attention without wanting to be heard by anyone else.
I thought about getting up to grab my phone, but every time I moved even slightly, the whispering seemed to shift, almost reacting. Maybe I imagined that part, but in the moment it felt real enough to keep me frozen.
After what felt like five minutes—though it could’ve been less—the whispering stopped. Not faded. Stopped. Like someone holding their breath.
I lay there for a long time, staring at the door. Every so often, I thought I heard a faint creak in the hallway, but it could’ve been anything. Eventually, I worked up the nerve to slide out of bed. I stayed pressed against the wall as I moved to my dresser and grabbed my phone. I turned on the screen, half expecting a shadow to show under the door, but there was nothing.
I opened the door carefully, expecting at least to hear footsteps retreating down the hall. But the hallway was empty. The air felt still, like nobody had been out there for hours.
I checked the front door next, making sure the deadbolt was secured and that the small chain lock was still in place. They were. I remember standing there for a long moment, looking through the peephole. The hallway looked normal: dim lights, peeling paint, the same crooked fire extinguisher box.
I barely slept the rest of the night. Every tiny noise made me jump. In the morning, I told myself I must’ve been overly tired. Maybe my brain scrambled the sound of a TV or someone whispering on the phone. People hear things when they’re half-asleep.
But about a week later, I came home from work and noticed something off on my front door: a faint, greasy-looking smudge right near the handle, like someone had pressed their fingers there. It might have been from the maintenance guy—he was checking radiator valves earlier that month—but I kept staring at it, remembering the whispering. I cleaned it off, but the sight of it made my stomach twist.
After that, little things kept happening. Not dramatic things. More like barely-there reminders that someone might’ve been too close to my door at some point. Once, I found an envelope slipped under the doormat of my floor that wasn’t addressed to anyone, and everyone on the floor swore it wasn’t theirs. Another night, I heard someone slowly walking past my apartment at around two in the morning, stopping right outside for a few seconds before moving again.
And twice—this is what unsettled me the most—I woke up to faint murmuring again. Not as close as that first night, but close enough that I sat up immediately, my skin prickling. I couldn’t make out words, and maybe there weren’t any. Maybe it was just breathing filtered through a door. But the cadence felt familiar. That same strange half-voice, as if someone was speaking to themselves.
The second time it happened, I grabbed my phone and stood right behind the front door, listening. I thought about yanking it open to catch whoever it was, but my hands were shaking too much. And honestly, I didn’t want to know what—or who—I’d find standing there.
I never called the police because I didn’t have anything solid to tell them. A whisper. A smudge. A feeling. In New York, that barely qualifies as strange.
But it changed me. I started triple-checking my locks every night—deadbolt, chain, the small sliding latch I bought online. I keep my phone on the nightstand within reach now. I sleep with a small light on in the hall.
And still, on some nights when the building is dead quiet and the traffic outside dips for a moment, I swear I hear that same soft murmur somewhere beyond my door, like someone is standing in the hallway, leaning close, waiting for me to fall asleep again.
Story 2
This story was sent in by Jason M. from Bakersfield, California.
I’ve never been a great sleeper, especially on weeknights. I work early shifts at a warehouse on the outskirts of Bakersfield, and by the time I get home, eat something simple, and shower, I’m usually fighting to stay awake. Most nights I end up dozing off with some random YouTube video playing on low volume, just enough noise to keep my mind from spinning. That was exactly what I was doing on a Thursday night last spring. It was a little after 1:00 a.m., and I remember because I checked the clock twice, annoyed that I wasn’t asleep yet even though my eyes kept drifting shut.
It was warm for that early in the year, the kind of dry heat that hangs around even after midnight. I had cracked my bedroom window about an inch to get some airflow. Outside, the neighborhood was quiet—no traffic, no dogs barking, nothing. The only light came from the moon and a weak streetlamp a few houses down. My curtains were open just enough for the moonlight to spill across the floor.
Right before I drifted off, I noticed something strange. The shadow of my window frame on the wall looked darker than usual, heavier in one spot, as if something outside was blocking part of the light. At first, I didn’t think much of it. I figured it was the big pepper tree in my neighbor’s yard moving in the breeze. I’ve seen the branches cast weird shapes at night before. But something about it felt… off. The shadow wasn’t shifting at all. It was just a solid, unmoving mass where it shouldn’t be.
Half-asleep, I told myself I was imagining it. When you’re tired enough, your brain fills in blanks with nonsense. But the more I stared at it, the more I realized that the shape almost looked like a person standing just outside the window. Not close enough for me to see a face, but close enough that the outline was undeniably human.
I didn’t move. I didn’t even breathe for a few seconds. I remember the sudden drop in my stomach, the kind you get when you miss a step in the dark. My first instinct was that it had to be a trick of the light—maybe the neighbor’s trash bins, or a tall plant, or something I’d never noticed before. I kept telling myself that because the alternative didn’t make sense. Who would be standing in my yard at one in the morning? And why would they just stay still like that?
Another minute passed. The shadow didn’t shift. It didn’t lean. It didn’t waver. It was perfectly still, like whoever it belonged to was holding their breath the same way I was.
I tried to convince myself to roll over, grab my phone, do something—anything—but I couldn’t bring myself to look away. I had this small, irrational-feeling thought that if I moved even a little, the figure might react to it. Might turn. Might get closer.
I don’t know how long I stared at that shadow. It could’ve been thirty seconds or five minutes. Time does weird things when you’re scared. Eventually, I blinked, just once, and when I opened my eyes again, the shape was gone. Not faded or shifted—gone completely, like someone had stepped backward out of the moonlight.
I lay there frozen long after I realized it wasn’t there anymore. Even when I finally reached for my phone, my hand was shaking so much I dropped it on the carpet. I didn’t go to the window. I didn’t even cross the room. I just sat with my back pressed against the headboard, staring at the space where the shadow had been.
Around three in the morning, exhaustion finally dragged me under.
The next morning, everything looked normal. The yard was empty. My window screen was still in place, the latch untouched. The ground under the window is mostly hard-packed dirt, and I didn’t see any fresh footprints. No signs of someone climbing over the low gate on the side of the house. Nothing out of place at all.
I tried to brush it off as fatigue, or the moon hitting the glass at a weird angle, or maybe even a neighbor walking past at the perfect moment. But two things kept digging at me. First, the shape was too close—right outside the window, not out by the fence. And second, I remembered something I had noticed earlier that week and completely forgotten about. On Monday night, when I took the trash out around eleven, I thought I heard someone walking slowly on the sidewalk behind me. Not just footsteps—more like the sound of someone stopping and starting in a way that didn’t sound casual. When I looked back, no one was there. I chalked it up to my nerves and moved on.
That little detail came rushing back after the shadow incident, and suddenly the idea that it had all been in my head didn’t feel as solid as it had the night before.
For the next few days, I caught myself checking the window every time I walked past it, just glancing out without meaning to. I didn’t see anything, no person lurking around, no weird silhouettes. But at night, especially when the house got quiet, I kept thinking about how still that shape had been. Not tree-branch still. Not trash-can still. Deliberately still.
About a week later, something else happened. I came home from work one afternoon and noticed the side gate—usually propped open a few inches by the warped hinge—was fully shut. Not latched, just pushed inward so it looked closed at a distance. I asked my landlord if he’d been around, and he said no. It was such a tiny thing that I almost didn’t connect it, but the timing made my skin crawl. That gate barely moves in the wind.
The odd part is, nothing else ever came of it. No break-in, no trespassing report from neighbors, no strange noises in the following weeks. If someone had been out there that night, they didn’t try again—or they were better at staying hidden the next time.
I don’t sleep with the window cracked anymore. I keep the curtains drawn tight and the bedroom light on low, even if it makes the room stuffy. I know it sounds paranoid, but once you’ve stared at a human-shaped shadow that shouldn’t be there, you stop caring about whether your habits seem dramatic. You just want to feel like there’s a barrier between you and whatever might be outside.
Even now, on the nights when the moon is bright and the house is quiet, I can still picture that unmoving outline standing just beyond the glass, as if it never really left—just stepped back far enough to wait.
Story 3
This story was sent in by Samantha L. from Midwestern United States.
I’ve lived in the same mid-range apartment building for a few years now, the kind where people actually greet each other in the hallways and bring packages in for neighbors when it rains. It’s not fancy, but it’s comfortable, and for a long time I felt completely safe there. I work early mornings at a small accounting office, so I’m usually in bed before midnight, and by the time three a.m. rolls around, our hallway is normally silent.
That night, I’d gone to bed around ten. I was exhausted from month-end reports, the kind where you stare at spreadsheets long enough that you still see numbers when you close your eyes. I remember waking up to my humidifier clicking as it cycled back on, and realizing I felt parched. When I sat up to get a drink, I heard something else—a soft, slow pattern of footsteps in the hallway just outside my door.
At first, it didn’t register as strange. People come home late sometimes. My upstairs neighbor works at a casino an hour away; he gets back at weird times. But these steps felt… hesitant. Like someone trying not to disturb anyone. The building hallway has that specific hollow echo, and the sound was tight and close, like the person was standing right in front of my door.
I considered looking through the peephole, but the idea of putting my eye right up against it suddenly felt stupid. Instead, I sat still, listening. The footsteps stopped. I waited for a door to open or close, but nothing happened. After about a minute, I didn’t hear anything at all—no movement, no retreating steps, just silence. Eventually, I convinced myself I’d imagined most of it and went back to sleep.
The next morning, around six, I stepped out to take the trash down before leaving for work. That’s when I saw it. The metal plate around my lock had thin scratches etched into it, almost like someone had dragged a tool back and forth while trying to line something up. At first I thought it was just wear and tear, but then I glanced down at the small wall-mounted key box by my door—the one I keep a couple spare keys in for dog sitters or maintenance workers.
It was open.
Completely open. The little flap was hanging crooked, and the latch looked forced, bent slightly outward.
The strange thing was, nothing was missing. The keys were still there. My apartment door was still locked. I checked the inside carefully—nothing out of place, nothing touched. It didn’t make sense. I stood there in the hallway for a good thirty seconds trying to figure out if maybe the maintenance crew had come by, but they always leave notes. And besides, nobody had submitted any request.
It wasn’t until I remembered those soft footsteps from the night before that my stomach dropped. Because if someone had been messing with my door, they would have been doing it right when I was awake, listening on the other side.
I mentioned it to one of my neighbors later that evening, the older woman across the hall who always waters her plants in the lobby. She frowned and said she hadn’t heard anything unusual, but she had noticed the hallway lights flickering around two-thirty that morning. She said it offhandedly, but the detail stuck with me. Our lights don’t flicker. They’re LED strips installed just last year. I didn’t say it out loud, but in the back of my mind I couldn’t help wondering if someone had been trying to kill the lights to avoid being seen.
For the next couple of nights, I tried to shrug it off. I told myself maybe it was a prank, or maybe someone had the wrong unit. I mean, everyone’s doors look identical. Maybe someone drunk stumbled into the wrong floor. I kept trying to grab onto some normal explanation, but none of them fit the combination of things—the timing, the quiet, the careful scratching around the lock, the opened key box.
About a week later, something else happened that made it clear it wasn’t a one-time mistake.
I had gotten up around two in the morning to use the bathroom. When I stepped back into my bedroom, I noticed something strange: the thin slice of hallway light under my door wasn’t steady. It pulsed slightly, like someone was casting a faint moving shadow just inches from the threshold.
I froze where I was. It wasn’t a trick of my eyes. The shadow shifted, paused, then shifted again.
Someone was standing right outside my door.
I didn’t hear anything—not a breath, not a shuffle. Whoever it was stood completely still. The shadow stayed there for maybe fifteen seconds, long enough for me to feel my heartbeat pick up in that slow, sinking way that doesn’t even feel like panic at first. I reached for my phone and very quietly started typing out a text to the building office, but before I could finish, the shadow slid away like the person just walked calmly down the hall.
I waited several minutes before I worked up the nerve to look through the peephole. The hallway was empty.
I didn’t sleep the rest of the night.
The next morning, I checked the door again. More scratches—fresh ones, deeper this time, almost like someone was getting more confident. Or more frustrated.
I didn’t report it to the police. I probably should have, but I knew what they’d tell me: without footage, without evidence of forced entry, without something taken, there wasn’t much to do. My building’s cameras only cover the lobby and stairwell. The hallways themselves are blind spots.
Instead, I bought a door reinforcement bar and a small baseball bat and kept both by my bed. The first night I used the bar, I slept like I was waiting for something to happen. Every little sound in the building felt amplified—the elevator ding, pipes settling, even the hum of the fridge.
Nothing happened for several weeks. But that didn’t make me feel better. It almost felt worse, like whoever it was had just backed off to wait.
One night in early spring, I was coming home later than usual after helping a coworker prep for tax season. I walked up the stairs, turned down my hallway, and noticed something immediately: a faint metallic smell. Like cold metal and dust. It reminded me of the scent you get from old tools.
My door looked normal from a distance. But as I got closer, I saw that the key box was closed again—too neatly, considering it had been bent before. Someone had pressed it back into place. There was a fresh dent near the corner.
I didn’t open it. I just went inside, locked the door, and double-checked every room. I don’t know if they were inside earlier that day or if they came right before I arrived. Nothing was missing, but at that point, missing items felt low on the list of things to worry about.
I still live here, even though I’ve thought about leaving more than once. But the strange thing is, part of me wants to know what they were after. Why they stopped. Why they didn’t go further. And whether they plan to try again.
I sleep with the bat beside my bed now, angled so I can grab it without fumbling. I reinforced the door, added extra locks, even put a chair under the doorknob on the worst nights.
But every once in a while, when I wake up unexpectedly at three or four in the morning, I still catch myself holding my breath, listening for those soft, careful footsteps in the hallway—hoping I don’t hear them, and somehow, at the same time, bracing for the moment I do.
Story 4
This story was sent in by Mark D. from the Northeastern United States.
I’ve always kept odd hours because of my job. I’m a copyeditor for a small online publication, which sounds more glamorous than it is, but mostly it means I’m working through the night when the rest of my building is asleep. By two or three in the morning, everything in my apartment complex turns silent except for the occasional radiator clank or someone’s distant TV hum through the walls. My floor especially is full of people who are up early for work, so late at night the hallway feels like a dead zone.
That’s why, the first time my doorbell rang at around two in the morning, I jumped out of my chair. It wasn’t a single press either—it was this slow, deliberate ring that echoed through the whole apartment. I thought maybe it was a delivery at the wrong door or a drunk neighbor mixing up units. But when I opened the door, the hallway was empty, and the stairwell door at the end of the corridor wasn’t moving.
I remember leaning out, barefoot, still half in work mode, expecting someone to pop out and apologize. Nothing. Just that stale apartment-hall smell and a flickering light above the elevator.
It became easy to shrug off. Every building has quirks. Maybe the wiring was bad. Maybe someone hit the wrong button and hurried off.
But then it happened again the next night. And the night after that.
Always between two and three in the morning. Always the same slow, spaced-out rings—almost like whoever was doing it wanted to draw out the feeling that someone was right on the other side of the door.
The early unsettling detail came on the fourth night. When the bell rang, I was already on edge, so I moved quietly toward the door instead of rushing. I pressed my eye to the peephole.
That’s when I heard something I’d never heard before—a faint scraping, almost like someone dragging a dull key along the metal of the door. It was only for a second, and then it stopped, followed by one final ring.
I opened the door quickly. Again, no one.
I told myself it could’ve been a neighbor’s kid messing around or maybe the pipes vibrating weirdly. I even googled whether old doorbells could “self-ring” because of electrical issues. They can, apparently, but not in such a specific pattern. And not while something scratched my door.
Still, I didn’t want to jump to conclusions. Every strange sound at three in the morning feels sinister when you’re overtired.
By the sixth night, I couldn’t take the uncertainty anymore. I set my phone to record audio and left it by the door before I went back to my desk. Sure enough, around 2:40 a.m., the ringing started.
Listening to the recording the next morning made my stomach twist. It wasn’t just a ring. It was a slow press, hold, release. Pause. Another press. All of it steady, like someone testing how long they could push the button before it stuck.
And right before the last ring, on the recording there was this tiny shuffling sound—close. Too close. Like fabric brushing against my door.
I talked to my neighbors that day. No one had heard a thing. One guy on my floor had been awake with his newborn and swore he didn’t hear any doorbells, let alone someone walking down the hall.
I changed my locks that afternoon and installed a little adhesive camera above my peephole. I figured that would be the end of it. But that night, at almost the exact same time, the doorbell rang again—three slow presses.
My camera didn’t catch anyone. The hallway stayed empty the whole time.
That’s when the threat finally felt real. Not supernatural or anything like that. Just the idea that someone knew exactly when I was awake, exactly when to press the bell, and exactly how to avoid being seen.
The next morning, the building manager knocked on my door. He wasn’t usually around that early, so I knew something was off. He told me he’d been doing a routine walk-through and noticed marks around my door frame. When I opened the door to check, I saw them immediately—thin scratches along the paint near the latch, like someone had run a key or a screwdriver around the edge.
The manager asked if I’d tried to pry the door open myself. When I told him about the doorbell, he got quiet and just said he’d keep an eye out. That didn’t comfort me at all.
That night I stayed up, sitting on the couch with the lights off, staring at the door. I wasn’t waiting to confront anyone; I just didn’t want to be caught off guard again.
At around 2:20 a.m., before the bell even rang, I heard the softest noise from the hallway—like someone shifting their weight, trying not to let the floor creak. My stomach dropped. I moved silently to the door and looked through the peephole.
Nothing. Just the same dim hallway.
But then the bell rang from right underneath my eye. It sounded so loud, so close, like the button was being pushed from inside the apartment rather than outside. My whole body tensed.
I didn’t open the door. I backed toward the living room, grabbed my keys, and slipped out my balcony exit, which connects to the fire escape. I climbed down two floors and waited in the alley behind the building until I felt brave enough to come back up.
By the time I returned, everything was silent. No scratches, no footsteps, no lingering presence—just the same old hallway. But I didn’t sleep at all that night.
The ringing never stopped completely. It still happens once every few weeks, sometimes at different times, sometimes right on schedule. My camera never catches anything. My neighbors still say they don’t hear it.
Whatever the explanation is, I don’t open my door past midnight anymore. I keep my phone recording every night, and I sleep with the balcony door unlocked—not because it feels safer, but because it gives me another way out.
And on the nights when the doorbell rings in that slow, deliberate rhythm, I sit perfectly still, listening to how close it sounds. Close enough that sometimes I honestly can’t tell whether the ringing is coming from the hallway… or just a little too deep inside the walls of my own apartment.