3 Disturbing TRUE Stories Where Police Couldn't Help

[Music] This happened in the fall of 2021 when I was living alone in a rented townhouse in southern Illinois. It was my first time ever living by myself. And even though I was technically an adult, 27, with a full-time job and a stable routine, I still had a lot of nerves about the idea.

I'd just gone through a rough breakup and I thought the silence and solitude might help me process everything. The townhouse was part of a small row of identical units, kind of plain but clean and quiet, tucked away in a sleepy culde-sac just off a rural highway. The neighborhood had that sterile suburban vibe.

Lots of beige vinyl sighting, trimmed hedges, windchimes, and mailboxes with family names stencled on them. Mostly older folk, but a few young families. I didn't know any of my neighbors well, but I liked it that way.

I kept to myself. But almost right away, I noticed one person who stood out from the rest. He lived three doors down.

A tall, heavy set man, probably in his mid-40s with a scruffy beard and a weird habit of standing outside his house at night, sometimes just pacing or smoking, sometimes doing nothing at all, just staring. I'd pull into my driveway after work around 9 or 10 p. m.

and there he'd be, leaning against his porch rail or just standing at the edge of his driveway facing the street. He never waved, never smiled. He just stared even if I looked directly at him.

I tried to ignore it. A couple of times I mentioned it to friends or my mom and they said maybe he was just a night owl or had insomnia, but there was something unsettling about him, like he was always watching but never participating. It wasn't just that he was there.

It was the stillness. He didn't fidget or check his phone or shift his weight. He just stood there like a statue.

I told myself not to be paranoid, but the more time passed, the more that gnawing feeling in my gut grew. Then the noises started. It was around midepptember when I first heard it.

I had just gotten home from work after a long shift. I worked late hours managing inventory at a distribution center, and I usually got in around 10:30 p. m.

exhausted, grabbing a bite to eat, and crashing. That night, I fell asleep around midnight. At exactly 2:37 a.

m. , I woke up to a sound I can only describe as metal scraping against wood. At first, I thought I had dreamed it, but then I heard it again.

A long, slow creaking noise, like an old gate opening. My bedroom was on the first floor at the back of the unit, and I had a sliding glass door with vertical blinds that led to a small fenced in backyard. I sat up in bed, heart racing, and listened.

There was a pause. Then I heard footsteps, soft crunching sounds, like someone walking slowly across gravel. My entire backyard was lined with decorative rock instead of grass, so you could hear every footstep clearly.

These weren't animal sounds. I grabbed my phone and crept out of bed. I didn't have a weapon, just a dull kitchen knife I kept in my nightstand just in case, which at the time felt kind of ridiculous.

I crouched by the edge of the window and peaked through the blinds. I couldn't see anything. The motion light wasn't on, which meant either they were out of range or had come in a different way.

I dialed 911. The dispatcher was calm, asked for my address, and told me officers were in route. I stayed crouched in the dark, barely breathing.

About 10 minutes later, red and blue lights flickered through my front window. I got up, opened the door, and met the two officers outside. I explained everything, what I heard, what time it started.

One of them walked around the back while the other stayed with me and asked a few questions. The officer in the yard came back and said the gate was closed and there were no signs of tampering, but said he'd write up a report just in case. They didn't see anyone, no footprints or damage, basically no crime.

One of them actually said, "Probably just a raccoon. " And gave me a look that clearly said, "You're wasting our time. " I didn't argue.

They left after about 10 minutes. I didn't sleep the rest of that night. The next morning, I went outside to check the backyard myself.

That's when I noticed something strange. There was a flat stone about the size of a paperback book wedged under the bottom edge of the wooden fence gate. I hadn't noticed it before.

The gate had a heavy spring that made it swing closed automatically, but the stone looked like it had been placed there specifically to stop it from closing all the way. It was subtle, like something someone would do if they wanted to come back later and slip in without making noise. I picked up the rock and tossed it across the yard.

I called the police again and told them what I had found. They told me they'd note it in the report, but again said there wasn't much they could do. I asked if they could talk to any of the neighbors or check for cameras.

They said no, unless a crime was committed, they couldn't investigate. I felt like I was losing my mind. Two nights later, it escalated.

At exactly 2:14 a. m. , I woke up again, this time to the sound of my back door handle turning.

The handle rattled gently at first, like someone testing it, then a harder jiggle, like someone trying to open it. I sat up in bed, heart hammering. I couldn't see anything through the blinds, but I could feel someone standing on the other side.

My mouth went dry. I picked up my phone with shaking hands and called the police again. While I waited, I crouched in the hallway out of view.

I didn't have a gun or dog, just that stupid kitchen knife. My motion light clicked on and through a tiny gap in the blinds, I saw a shadow move across the window. It was a man.

He didn't run or try to hide. He just stood there. The same two officers showed up again.

This time they actually found footprints in the gravel. Big ones heading right up to the door. But again, they said since no entry had been made, there wasn't enough to go on.

They promised to patrol the area more often and told me to keep my doors locked. The next day, I installed the camera. It was one of those mid-range Wi-Fi security cams.

I set one up above the back door and another above the front porch. That night, I didn't go to bed. I sat in the living room with the lights off, watching the live feed on my phone.

2:14 a. m. came and went.

Nothing happened. Then at 2:23, the back camera triggered. A man stepped into frame.

He walked in through the gate like he knew exactly how to move to avoid the motion sensor until the last second. He was tall and broad, wearing a black hoodie with the hood up, jeans, and gloves. He walked up to the door, looked up directly at the camera, and smiled, a slow, stretched out grin.

Then he backed up, still staring, and disappeared into the dark. I called the police again, and they came back, watched the clip, and admitted that yes, it was unsettling. But since he didn't break in, didn't damage property, and didn't appear to be armed, there was still allegedly nothing they could do.

They wouldn't even ask the guy down the street to check his doorbell cam. I begged them. They said their hands were tied.

That night, I packed a bag and slept at a hotel. When I came back the next day, I found four muddy handprints on the glass door. Two high up and two low, like someone had crouched down and just rested their hands there for a while, staring in.

I moved out a week later. I broke my lease and forfeited my deposit. I didn't care.

I couldn't stay there another night. The final straw was the note I found wedged in my mailbox the day I left. It was handwritten in small cramped letters on lined notebook paper.

It said, "The cops leave, but I don't. " I filed one last report. The officer I spoke to that time looked genuinely disturbed by the note.

He promised they'd do a wellness check on the neighborhood, but it was too late. I never went back. About a month later, I got a message on Facebook from a girl named Kayla.

She said she was the new tenant who had moved into the unit after me. Her message said, "Hi, sorry to bother you. I think you used to live here.

Did you ever have someone in a black hoodie hanging around the backyard? I keep hearing footsteps at night. And last night, someone knocked on the glass door around 2:00 a.

m. and just stood there. I didn't reply.

I didn't want to know what happened [Music] next. I work for a property preservation company. Basically, we handle foreclosed homes, securing them, cleaning them out, winterizing them, sometimes even boarding them up if there's been vandalism.

It's not glamorous work, but it pays well. And for the most part, it's quiet. You spend a lot of time alone in houses that used to belong to people who are long gone.

Sometimes it's sad, sometimes it's just boring, but every once in a while, you get a house that feels unsettling. This happened in 2020 when I was assigned to clear out a property in a rural part of upstate New York. It was one of those dying places.

Only one gas station, half the businesses shuttered, roads cracked and overgrown. The house itself was a small one-story place off a dirt road, surrounded by overgrown brush and woods on three sides. No other homes nearby, just trees and silence.

According to the file, the house had been foreclosed after the owner, an elderly woman, passed away, and no hairs had stepped forward to claim the estate. The utilities had been shut off for over a year. Our job was to catalog any remaining property, empty it out, and secure it for winter.

I drove up on a Monday morning around 9:00 a. m. with a small box truck and all my gear.

From the outside, the house looked intact. Windows closed, door locked, roof fine, just a lot of weeds and vines climbing up the porch. I had to shove the front door open because it had swollen in the frame.

But once inside, everything looked pretty standard. It was dusty, stale air and faded furniture. Then my work phone rang.

It startled me because I had no signal out there. I'd already checked and noticed I had no bars, but the phone buzzed anyway. There was no number on the caller ID.

It just said unknown caller. I answered and there was nothing. Just a low crackling sound like static.

I said hello twice, then hung up, chalked it up to a glitch. I got to work. I always start with photos documenting every room, every item.

The living room was cluttered with old furniture. Lace curtains, some framed paintings. It reminded me of my grandma's house.

Heavy furniture, doilies, porcelain figures. The hallway had a smell. Not rot, more like mildew and dust, and something faintly metallic.

There were three bedrooms. One had been stripped bare except for a sagging mattress on the floor. Another was clearly a sewing room with thread spools everywhere and a dusty machine on the desk.

I took a closer look and there was a corkboard filled with old newspaper clippings. They were mostly obituaries. Dozens of them all clipped out with scissors and pinned carefully to the board.

No names I recognized. All local. I moved on.

In the master bedroom, there was a rotary phone on the nightstand. I remember stopping and staring at it for a second because I hadn't seen one in years. It was off-white, yellowed with age with a long coiled cord, the kind of phone that would never ring again because the line had been cut long ago.

I moved on to the bathroom. That's when my phone rang again. It said unknown caller again.

This time I hesitated. I picked it up, stepped out into the hallway, and answered again. Nothing.

But this time, after about 5 seconds, I heard a whisper. Very soft. So quiet I could barely make it out.

It said, "Don't answer the phone in the bedroom. " Then the line went dead. I stood there frozen, heart pounding.

The house was dead silent. I checked the windows, all closed. Nobody was outside and there was no sign of forced entry.

My first thought was that someone had pranked me. It's what anyone would think. Maybe one of the other crew guys was messing with me, but no one else knew I was there that early.

And again, I had no signal. I checked my phone. One bar, then nothing.

Like it flickered in and out of existence. I tried calling my supervisor, but the call failed. I decided to finish the job quickly.

I started boxing up loose items in the living room. Books, figurines, dusty glasswear. But the whole time I felt off, like I was being watched.

I kept glancing toward the hallway, half expecting to see someone standing down there. Then the phone rang a third time. But not my phone.

The rotary phone in the bedroom. I heard it from across the house. A shrill mechanical ring that echoed through the rooms.

That phone should have been dead. The line was disconnected. No dial tone and no service.

But yet, it rang like an old-fashioned bell. I walked slowly down the hallway toward the bedroom. Phone still in my hand.

It rang again and again. I stepped into the doorway. The phone sat on the nightstand, the receiver trembling slightly with each ring.

There was no chance I was picking up that phone. The rings eventually stopped. I backed out of the room.

I wanted to leave, but part of my job was securing the property, and I still had to check the basement. I almost said screw it, but something made me keep going. Maybe it was pride.

Maybe I just didn't want to admit how scared I was. The basement door was in the kitchen. I opened it slowly.

The stairs creaked as I stepped down, flashlight in hand. I smelled mold and something like rust. There were shelves along the wall filled with old paint cans and some broken furniture.

In the back corner, there was a small table. On it, a cordless phone, a newer model. It was gray plastic and covered in dust.

and next to it, a stack of yellowed notebooks. I picked one up and flipped through it. Each page had a name and a date and a short sentence.

Lena H. July 3rd, 2019. Rang once, didn't answer.

Carl M. September 12th, 2019. Picked up, warned him.

It was more like this. Dozens of entries. I dropped the notebook and my heart felt like it completely dropped out of my body as I looked around the basement, fearing I wasn't alone down there and that someone was watching me from any corner in the darkness.

I rushed back up the stairs, looking behind me the whole time, heart in my throat. I didn't finish the job. I drove straight back to the office and turned in my report.

I didn't tell them everything. I just said the property was unsafe and possibly had squatters or interference. They reassigned the job to another crew.

2 days later, I got a text from one of the other guys, Mark. He'd gone out there that morning to finish the job. I hadn't told him specifically what happened.

His message said, "The phone in the bedroom with no service rang while I was in there. What the hell? " I called his work cell phone immediately, and he told me he didn't answer the phone in the house because he was too freaked out.

The next day, Mark apparently quit without notice and never returned to work. He's not dead or anything. I admittedly looked him up on Facebook eventually, and he posted stuff since then, but I never spoke to him again.

I don't know what else he saw in the house, but it must have been something bad enough for him to want to distance himself from this job. My boss did call the police to report the potential squatters after Mark quit, but they found nobody inside of the house. Everything about that house, from its location to its eerie, dilapidated interior to the phone calls to my cell phone and that voice on that line and that damn house phone ringing.

It's like I found myself in a legitimate horror movie. I swear it had to be one of two things. An elaborate sick prank or an equally elaborate trap.

[Music] This happened in 2019. I was in my late 20s, living alone in a rental house in a quiet neighborhood on the edge of town. It wasn't a fancy place, just an older one-story house with creaky floors, thin walls, and a small backyard.

But it was cheap, and it came with a basement, which I used to store extra furniture and tools and stuff. I moved in that spring and for the first few months, nothing strange happened. The house had its quirks.

Some pipes rattled when you turn on the shower and there was this one kitchen cabinet that always swung open on its own, but nothing unusual for a place that old. The only part I didn't like was the basement. The door was in the hallway next to the bathroom.

It was heavy and stuck a little when you opened it, and the light switch for the basement was actually halfway down the stairs, which meant you had to walk down a few steps in total darkness before you could reach it. The first time I went down there, I honestly felt weird. Not scared exactly, but uneasy.

The single bulb didn't do much to light the corners, and the whole place smelt like old wood. But I didn't have any reason to be down there for long, so I stored my things, shut the door, and didn't think much of it. That changed around late October.

I had just gotten home from work. I'm a night shift security guard, so I usually get home around 3:00 a. m.

And I was heading to the bathroom before bed when I heard something. It sounded like a faint knock. Three soft taps.

It came from behind the basement door. I froze in place. At first, I thought maybe I imagined it.

Maybe it was the pipes or the house settling. But as I stood there holding my breath, I heard it again. Three distinct knocks.

I backed up a few steps and stared at the door. And then I waited. There was just silence now.

I remember whispering to myself, "It's just the house. " Even though I didn't really believe it. I didn't open the door.

I went to my bedroom, locked the door, and stayed awake for the next 2 hours listening. Eventually, I fell asleep with the TV on. The next morning, I checked the basement.

I opened the door, went down the stairs, and turned on the light. Everything was exactly the way I left it. No signs of anyone having been down there.

No footprints in the dust, no broken windows. I convinced myself it had to be the house shifting, or maybe a small animal that got in somehow. I moved on.

But a few nights later, it happened again. This time, I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth when I heard the knock. Not three taps this time, just one, but it was loud and it was close, like someone had used their knuckles hard against the basement door.

I opened the bathroom door and looked. The basement door was closed. Nothing moved.

The hallway was quiet. I walked over and put my ear against the wood. At first, I heard nothing, but then very faint, I heard what sounded like breathing.

Slow, steady, as if someone was standing on the other side waiting. I backed away and went to my room again, locking the door. I called my landlord.

I told him something strange was going on in the basement, that I thought someone had maybe gotten into the house somehow. He seemed skeptical, but said he'd come by to check it out. When he arrived in the morning, we both went down into the basement together.

He looked around, checked the windows, the walls, even the foundation. Nothing was damaged or broken. No signs of a break-in or animals.

I didn't say anything. I couldn't explain what I was hearing, and I didn't want to sound crazy. For the next week, things were quiet.

I started to think that maybe I was just overt tired or imagining things. I was working too much after all. But then one night around 2:00 a.

m. , I was sitting on my couch watching TV when I heard the basement door creek. Not a knock or slam, but a creek like it was slowly swinging open.

I sat up straight and turned off the volume. I could hear it, a slow, grinding creek of the hinges moving. I got up and peaked down the hallway and the basement door was wide open.

I hadn't opened it in over a week. I hadn't even touched it. I grabbed a flashlight and slowly walked toward it.

I didn't have a weapon, but I had no choice. I had to know what was going on. I stood at the top of the stairs and shined the light down.

The basement was pitch black. The bulb wasn't on. I reached around the corner and flicked the switch.

Nothing. It was dead. The bulb must have burned out.

That's when I heard footsteps coming up the stairs. They weren't rushing. They were slow, but they were 100% footsteps.

I backed away. My hands were shaking. I slammed the door shut and held the handle tight.

For a moment, I felt the pressure of something on the other side, like it was leaning against the door. Then it stopped. I locked the door and called the police.

I told them someone was in my basement. They showed up about 10 minutes later and two officers cleared the house and went down into the basement. I stood in the front yard waiting and after what felt like forever, they came back up.

They said they didn't find anyone. No signs of forced entry or anyone hiding. Nothing was even disturbed.

One of them even tried to laugh it off, asking if I'd been watching scary movies. I knew what I heard. After they left, I didn't go back inside right away.

I just stood there staring at that house. Finally, I went back in, locked every door and window, and stayed up until the sun came up. That morning, I bought a padlock and installed it on the basement door.

I didn't care if it was allowed or not. I needed it. For the next month, the basement stayed quiet.

No sounds or knocks or anything. I almost let myself relax. Then one night, I got home from work and noticed the basement door was open.

not just unlocked. The padlock was lying on the floor, broken. The door itself was slightly a jar.

I hadn't touched that door in weeks. I stood there staring at it. And for the first time, I realized something.

Every time this had happened, every noise and every knock, it had always happened at night when I was alone. I did not go down. I couldn't.

I packed a bag, left the house, and stayed at a friend's place for a few days. When I came back, I literally nailed the basement door shut. I even wedged a chair against the door.

I didn't care if the landlord got mad. I just couldn't look at that door anymore. A few nights later, around 3:00 a.

m. , I was laying in bed when I heard a sound that I still can't explain. It was a voice.

It wasn't loud. It wasn't even someone speaking. Like the barely audible sound of a rumble of someone's vocal cords.

It came from somewhere beneath the floorboards, directly under my bed. That was it. I called the police again.

They showed up, did their search, and nothing turned up again. So, I packed everything, minus the stuff in the basement, and I left. I didn't even wait for the lease to end.

I don't know what was in that basement. I don't want to know. All I can say is that sometimes when I lie awake at night in my new apartment, I think about all this and I wonder if id waited just a little longer, what would have come up those steps?