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.