3 Hours of True Home Alone Horror Stories

I live by myself in an apartment. I live on the second floor of what I would say is a pretty standard apartment building; there are four floors total, and the building is very long with straight hallways on each floor. It's fairly close to the city, maybe like 10 minutes away, and in a decently populated area. I've lived here for about 2 years now, and I like it a lot, but there's one thing that happened several months ago that made me question moving. It was an ordinary night, and I was home alone. My apartment has

one bedroom and then a living room, kitchen, and bathroom. I was in the living room, sitting on my couch and watching TV. I don't remember the time, but it was a little bit later at night, probably after 10 p.m. I had only gotten home from work about an hour earlier. As I was sitting there watching TV, I heard some noises. I thought that it was coming from my next-door neighbor's apartment; that's what I assumed, and I didn't pay it much thought. Some time went by, maybe like 30 minutes. Out of nowhere, though, I had a

really weird feeling. It's hard to describe, but I suddenly became uncomfortable and started to look around. When I looked over my shoulder, I saw my bedroom doorway, which was only about 5 feet away. There was a man sticking his head around the corner of the doorway, looking right at me. We made eye contact just for a split second before he quickly ducked back around the corner. I got up from the couch and, in a panic, ran directly out of my apartment. I couldn't believe what was going on; some random guy was in my apartment! After

getting out into my hallway, I didn't really know what to do. I wanted to call the police but soon realized that I had left my phone inside on the couch. I thought about driving away, but I had also left my keys on the counter. Not knowing what else I could do, I remembered there was one person who lived in my building that I was friendly with. It was a woman named Courtney who lived down the hallway. I went to her door and knocked; unfortunately, she didn't answer. She was probably sleeping because it was pretty late

at that time. That's when I decided to try to go back into my apartment just to get my phone and keys. Maybe the guy had either left or was hiding, or maybe I had just imagined the whole thing. It all happened so fast! I was even questioning myself if I really saw it. I felt like I was going crazy. I mean, I didn't know how on Earth this guy would even get in; my apartment door was always locked, and I didn't think I forgot to lock it that day or anything. When I got back to

my door, I finally got up the nerve and opened it. My plan was to quickly run to the couch, grab my phone, and then run back to the door, on the way there grabbing my keys right off the counter. It would probably take me less than 10 seconds total. However, when I opened up the door, the first thing that I saw was the man standing in my living room and facing me. I shut the door just about as fast as I had opened it and sprinted away. I ran down the hallway and to the stairs,

and then ran downstairs until I made it to the first floor. Then I left the building. I couldn't get to my car because I didn't have my keys, so I walked out to the sidewalk that went along the road. I walked along that road until I saw a gas station that was open. When I got there, I went inside and asked the clerk to call the police. Then I waited until they arrived. When they got there, we went back to my apartment, but when we got there, the man was gone. They searched all around the

building and in my place; he had stolen my laptop, my wallet, and a couple of other things. My phone was still there, but probably only because it had fallen between the couch cushions and he didn't see it. I'm not sure if the man was ever found. My best guess as to how he got in was by somehow getting onto my balcony. I had a small balcony, and it would be difficult but not impossible to get to it from the ground level. The door to the balcony was closed, but I never locked it. He must have

entered there when I was at work. I didn't really think that anybody would get to it from outside. Since that experience, everything has been good; I haven't had any break-ins or attempted break-ins. I got a new laptop and credit cards, but I still wonder how that man chose to go into my place. Did he watch me before or something? I don't know, but I would never forget seeing him that night. This happened back when I was in high school. It was the summertime, and my parents were going on a weekend trip with some of their

friends. This meant that I would be staying home alone by myself for the weekend. I didn't really have any plans other than to just play video games and hang out. Our house was nice, but nothing too crazy. When my parents left, I thought that it was kind of cool I was the only one in the house; this didn't happen too often. I was enjoying it right up until the second night. It was a Friday night, and I stayed up pretty late. I'd been playing PlayStation and finally got tired at about 2 a.m. I turned off

all the lights and... Got into my bed when I was just starting to feel relaxed and about to fall asleep. I heard a noise; it sounded like a knocking at the window in my bedroom. It was quiet, but I was sure of what I had heard. I sat up in bed and looked around; everything was silent. Now I didn't hear anything, and when I looked to my window, I didn't see anything either. I thought that I was just being paranoid. I stayed up looking around and listening for a few minutes, though without hearing anything. Finally,

I calmed down and told myself that I was just worried for no reason. I lay back down and closed my eyes. Within probably five minutes, I was relaxed again, but then I heard the knocking once more. This time it was louder, and there was no mistaking it. I sat up faster and looked to the window; that's when I thought I saw something move out of sight. I really didn't know what it was, though. I only saw it for a split second. My window was next to a tree, and I was just trying to tell myself

it was just a branch or something. Still, it didn't really seem like it to me. This time I got up and turned on my bedroom light, then I moved out into the living room; it just felt safer in there to me. I looked out the window; I didn't see anybody, but when I looked out to the street, I did notice a car there. It was a car that I had never seen before, and it was parked sort of in front of our house. I got really suspicious. I watched the car, wondering if anybody was inside

of it, but then I heard a noise coming from the backside of the house. It wasn't a knocking though; this time it sounded like somebody was trying to open up the back door. When I heard this, I ran back into my bedroom. I got in my bed and covered myself with my blankets, then I called the police. I told them everything that had happened, and I didn't plan on moving from under the covers until the police got there. I was really scared. I tried my best to just hide and distract myself until then. The whole

time I didn't hear any loud noises or anything. Finally, when the police arrived, I got up, but what they told me gave me the chills. They said that when they arrived at my house, they saw a man running away out of the backyard. When they got around, they saw that the back door was open. That meant that the man was able to get inside. I hadn't even known he ran away when the police got there, but his car was still parked on the street. He ended up being located within the hour, and I felt much

better after that. For a little bit of background, I live alone in a two-bedroom house in a usually quiet neighborhood. One night, I was home by myself, and it was pretty late. In fact, I was just about to go to bed and starting to get really tired; that's when there was a knock at my front door. My first reaction was wondering who on earth would be at my door at this hour, but even aside from that, people rarely came knocking on my door. So because of this, I was kind of on edge. I walked to

the living room, which was at the front end of the house. All of my windows were covered, including the window to the front door. When I got to the front door, I pulled back the curtain and looked. I didn't see anybody, though. Then I carefully opened the front door and looked outside; nobody was there. I walked out and looked all around, but whoever had knocked was gone. I did notice something on the ground, though: on the front step, there was an envelope. I picked it up and took it inside. Once I was in, I opened

it up. The envelope did not have anything written on it, but inside was a piece of paper folded up, and on that was writing. I read what was a very cryptic-looking note. The letter mentioned me by name in the beginning and was very creepy. Basically, whoever wrote it was just saying that they knew who I was and where I lived, and I better be aware of my surroundings. They didn't directly threaten me or anything, but the letter was also not very well written at all; that’s what I gathered from it. But I honestly had no

clue what it meant. The handwriting was really sloppy as well, and I couldn't make out some of the words. After reading it, I threw it away, really creeped out. I looked back out of all the windows but didn't see anyone. It just seemed like a typical quiet night. I wanted to go to bed, but now I wasn't that tired anymore. I went into my bedroom and put something on the TV to try to relax. I would say about three minutes later, I was starting to, but that's when I heard knocking again. It wasn't coming from

the front door this time, but the back. Immediately, I got my phone and called the police. I told them what was happening and what had already happened. I was told that someone would be there shortly. After that, I got up and walked over to a window that looked out to the backyard. When I did, I couldn't see anybody. The police got there relatively fast; whoever had knocked was gone. Though the police searched my property and asked me a few questions. After that, they just told me to call again if anything else happened. There wasn't a

whole... lot that could be done, aside from showing them the letter. I had never seen the person, so I couldn't give any kind of description. After the police left, I was able to fall asleep, although it took a while. Since that night, there were no more strange events or knocks on my door. I still wonder who did that and why. The letter was very strange; it may have all been some dumb prank or something just to try to scare me. I really don't know anyone who would do that or why, though. I'm just glad that

nothing like that has happened since. I live with a roommate, and this is something that happened not too long ago. We live in a smaller house, pretty close to the city. The rent is cheap, and up until the point of the story, everything had gone really well. My roommate's name is Matt, and we get along well, but I would not call us best friends. We have different work schedules as well, so sometimes we don't really see each other for a few days. A couple of months ago, I got home from work one night. It was

probably around 6:00 p.m. or so, and when I got inside the house, I first went to the kitchen to get something to drink. As I was leaving the kitchen and going into the living room, I saw that the back door to the house had been left open. I don't mean "left open" as in "unlocked," but literally "left open." I walked over and shut it, figuring that Matt had left it open. Both Matt and I were a little bit sloppy sometimes, here and there, but between the two of us, this is something that he might do.

I shut the door and locked it, then shook my head. After that, I went upstairs to my bedroom. I was there for probably 30 minutes before hearing the sound of someone walking up the stairs. I was 100% sure that it was Matt; I never even considered the possibility that somebody else could have been inside. Matt, or at least who I thought was Matt, got to the top of the stairs and began walking down the hallway. After he walked past my bedroom door, which was closed, I yelled to him. I said, "Matt!" I didn't immediately get

a response. Then I said to him, "You left the back door open." Still, he didn't say anything back to me. This was a little strange because I knew that he had heard me. It seemed like he had either gone to the bathroom, the spare bedroom, or most likely his bedroom. I walked over and opened my door. When I did, I didn't see Matt; instead, I saw a different man. This guy had longer blonde hair, a slight reddish beard, and was tall and thin. He looked over at me, and as soon as he did, I made

a run for the stairs. To my surprise, the guy started running after me. This made me panic, and after getting downstairs, I didn't feel like I could get to the front or back door quickly enough. I would have to stop, unlock it, and then open it. Instead, in a split-second decision, I chose to run down into the basement. I know how dumb this sounded looking back, but in a moment of panic, this is what I chose. The basement door was right by the bottom of the stairs and already open a little. The guy was running

behind me, probably about 20 feet back or so. When I was running to the basement stairs, I could see that it was pitch black down there. Our basement was unfinished; all that we really had down there was our washer and dryer. Aside from that, there were just random pipes and beams. There were also a few storage containers and boxes—not very many, though. I didn't bother to turn on the light. When I got downstairs, I immediately went to the left and then went behind the stairs, which I felt was my best hiding spot. There was literally

no visibility down there at all. I heard the guy running down the stairs, and he got down shortly after I had gotten behind the stairs. After he got down there, I heard him walking around. He didn't say anything, and I didn't know what he was capable of. The man then pushed over one of the boxes. He was definitely looking for me, but for what reason, I didn't know. When it sounded like he had walked further away, I thought about leaving my hiding spot; however, I guess I chickened out, and I just couldn't bring myself to

do it. The area I was hiding in was a pretty good spot, to be honest, and was not that obvious if you had never been in the basement before. I was just hoping that the guy wouldn't decide to look back here. He kept walking around, and at one point, he walked pretty close to me, but he didn't look to where I was. Somehow, he stayed down there for probably 10 or 15 minutes. Finally, he went back upstairs. When he did that, I wasn't quite sure what to do. I felt relieved that he was gone, but

if I decided to go upstairs, I was worried that he would be right there waiting for me. Luckily, I had my phone on me. This was the first time that I thought to call the police or really even had the opportunity to. I dialed 911 but tried to be as quiet as possible. It was really silent down there, and I didn't want the guy to hear me wherever he was. When the operator answered, I told them some guy was in my house chasing me around, and I was told the… Police would be there shortly. I

hung up after that. Not to make too much noise, I didn't move from my hiding place. About ten minutes went by. I was feeling better until I heard the basement door open again. The guy then walked back down into the basement again. He was walking very slowly and was only down there for like a minute. Then he started to walk upstairs again. I didn't know what was going on, but luckily there was a knock on the door. After that, it had to be the police. I heard the guy running through the house. I got out

from where I was and I ran back upstairs to let the police in. Sure enough, it was them, and I heard the guy leaving out the back door. When I got to the top of the stairs, I told the police the guy was running away and they were able to track him down a short time later. The guy had in fact entered through the back door after Matt had left it unlocked. I didn't know what he wanted, though. He seemed to be after me for some reason. I'm hoping that I never see the guy again.

I'm also hoping that Matt never leaves the back door unlocked again. I remember that last year, I got home after a trip being out of town for a few days. It was a work thing, and I have my own little apartment in the city. After getting back, it was nighttime, and I got into my place and started to unpack. I have just one bedroom, a living room, a kitchen, and one and a half bathrooms. Each room has a decent amount of space. I unpacked a few things and then went into my bedroom to continue. Now,

most of the time my apartment is pretty neat, but I had left for my trip in a bit of a rush. I had been meaning to wash one of the comforters for my bed, and it was lying on the ground in the corner of my bedroom; the other one was on my bed. I just hadn't washed the one yet. As I was in my bedroom, I was taking clothes out of my suitcase. I was putting some in the hamper and some back in my drawers. As I was doing this, I was sure I saw the

blanket on the ground in the corner move. I wasn't looking directly at it when it happened, and I stopped what I was doing and focused my attention on it. I was sure that I saw it moving ever so slightly. This was really weird. There was no way that it could move like that on its own. I stared at it for probably a minute or so and it was completely still. I then got up and left the room. I was kind of in disbelief. I paced around in my living room for a few moments. Then I

walked back inside my room and looked at the blanket in the corner again. It was completely still and didn't move for the few moments that I looked at it. I left my bedroom again, wondering if I had gone crazy. I walked over into my half bathroom, which was at the opposite side of my apartment and near the front door. When I got inside, I shut the door and splashed some cold water on my face. Maybe I was suffering from a lack of sleep, but as I was there in the bathroom, I heard footsteps coming from

my bedroom area. I quickly locked the bathroom door. The footsteps went all the way to right outside of the bathroom door, then somebody tried opening it. I was so glad that I locked it. After the person tried opening the door, I then heard my front door to the apartment open and then shut. Then things were silent. I was still freaking out. I had no idea what was happening. After a few minutes, I left the bathroom and locked the front door to my apartment. I then searched all around to make sure that whoever had been there

had actually left. Thankfully, nobody else was inside. I did see that the blanket that had been in the corner of my bedroom on the floor was no longer in the corner the way that it had been; it was spread out in the middle of the room. This is something that took place back when I was in high school. I was a sophomore at the time, and I should mention that I have an older brother, but he was already in college at the time of this story. Every day, I would ride the bus home from school.

It would stop at the end of my street and then I would walk the rest of the way home, and be back by about 2:45 p.m. Our house was about halfway down the street. One day, just like any other, I got off the bus, walked home, entered my house through the front door, and went inside. My parents were not home from work yet, as they rarely were when I got home from school. Sometimes, on Fridays, they would leave work early, but this day was a Thursday. I would be home alone for usually anywhere from one

to three hours. I didn't mind and would just do whatever I wanted, really. When I got inside, I had some homework to do that day, and I wanted to get it done and out of the way. I remembered that I went upstairs to my bedroom to do it. We had a two-story house, and my bedroom was upstairs. Probably like thirty minutes after I got home, I was doing homework when I heard a knock at the front door. I wasn't really sure what it could be. We didn't get people at our front door very often. I

got up from my desk and walked downstairs to check the front door. By the time I got down there, I kind of expected whoever had knocked to be gone. They didn't knock twice or anything, but when I arrived at the front door, I saw that there was a man standing there. He looked pretty average; he was wearing what looked like some kind of business uniform and was carrying a briefcase. I unlocked the front door and opened it. The man said hi, and I asked him what he wanted. That's when he told me that he was

some kind of insurance person. I really don't remember exactly what he said; he spoke kind of fast, and the only word I really remembered was "insurance." He asked me if I was the homeowner. I told him no and said my parents were not home right now. The guy said sorry to bother me and then goodbye. I watched him walk back down the driveway, and I went back upstairs to my room. When I got up there, I continued doing my homework. There was a window in my bedroom that overlooked the backyard. Maybe about ten minutes later,

something caught my eye out of the window. I walked closer to the window and saw the same insurance guy; he was now in our backyard. That's when I got a bad feeling. There was really no reason why he should be back there. I watched him walk over to where one of our back windows was. I saw the guy look around when he got there, almost as if he was trying to make sure that nobody was watching him. When he did, I ducked down below my window. I waited for a few seconds and then looked up

again. The man was still there at the window. He set his briefcase down and then opened it. There were what looked like tools inside. He looked inside the back window, putting his hands up to the glass next to his face. Then he went back to his briefcase. He picked something up out of it and then walked over to another window and looked inside that one. After that, he returned to the first window that he had been at. I then watched him take the kind of tool, and I was sure that he was going to try

to break in. As I watched the man putting his tool to the window area to do who knows what, I got an idea. My parents clearly weren't home yet, and I had no idea when they would be, so I ran out of my bedroom down the stairs, trying to do it quietly. Then I got to our garage door that led from our pantry to the garage. I opened up the door and then pressed the button to open the front garage door. When I did, I carefully went to the doorway of the dining room and looked

to the window where the man was at. I was just in time to see him scrambling away. I watched him run to the opposite side of our house. I then went back to the garage and closed the open garage door. I had hoped to make the man think that my parents had gotten home by opening the garage door, and luckily, it worked. The man ran into our neighbor's backyard, and after that, I lost sight of him, but I think he kept going. I kept a close watch on the backyard, and the man didn't return. When

my parents got back, I told them everything. They were impressed with how I handled the situation. After that, the guy never showed up again, though I'm glad he wasn't able to get into the house. I had a really scary experience just two weeks ago. It all happened on a Thursday night as I got home from work. Up until that point, it had been a pretty typical day. I got up, went to the gym, came back home, got ready for work, and then headed out. I worked a late shift that day, so I wouldn't get off

until 7:00 p.m. Work went by as usual, and then I drove the roughly fifteen minutes it took to get back home. After arriving back, I parked my car in the driveway and got out. I currently live alone in a two-bedroom house on half an acre of land. I walked up to my front door and went inside. After getting inside, my plan was to change and then make something to eat. I had only made it halfway to my bedroom, though, when I heard the doorknob turning to my front door. I stopped where I was and suddenly

had a bad feeling. Obviously, I wasn't expecting anybody to come over. I started to turn around and walk back, then whoever was there started knocking on the door. I walked back over but was kind of suspicious. When I got within view of the front door, I carefully looked out of a window. There was a man standing there on my front step, and he was right against the door. I didn't want to answer it, but he kept knocking. Then I heard him yell something. I didn't know who this guy was; maybe he was at the wrong

house. I thought about answering the door in case that was true, but the way he was aggressively banging on the door caused me not to. I stayed there just a few feet away, hoping that he would leave. He demanded to be let inside, then he said my name. I couldn't believe that he knew who I was. I was positive that I had never seen him before. I yelled to the other side as loud as I could that I was calling. The police if he didn't leave right now. Now, however, that didn't seem to have much

of an effect; he stayed there and kept banging on my front door. I also noticed that he had parked his car right in my driveway. I got out my phone to call the police and dialed as quickly as I could. My heart was racing, and I told the 911 operator the situation. My biggest fear was that the man would try to break in somehow and get into my house. At almost the end of my conversation on the phone, the man stopped, and I noticed him running back to his car. Then he got in and drove

away. I watched closely and made sure that his car left my street. I felt a little bit better and told the 911 operator this new information. They sent an officer out anyway so that I could tell them what happened and stuff. After that, the guy was still gone, and after looking around a little bit and talking to me, the officer left as well. It was a little bit scary being home by myself that night, and I had a difficult time trying to go to sleep, but eventually, I was able to. I woke up the next

morning at about 7:00 a.m. At first, I had forgotten about the craziness of the night before. I made my way to the kitchen, though, and passed by a window. I happened to notice a car parked right out front by the driveway. It was the same car as the night before; the guy was back. I noticed that he appeared to be inside of it. I didn't hesitate, and I called the police immediately. I told them that the man had returned, then I carefully watched out the window for a couple of minutes. The man remained inside. I

watched him open up his door and leave the vehicle. He made his way up to my front door again, and then he started knocking. I couldn't believe this guy. I still didn't know who he was or what he wanted, and I didn't know how he knew who I was. He stayed at my door, knocking every so often. I went to the back of the house. After maybe five minutes, the police got there. When they did, the man tried running away; he wasn't able to make it that far, though, and was caught by the police. When

he was questioned, he didn't even reveal how he knew me or what his reasoning was. All he would say was that he just wanted to talk to me. He claimed that we were old friends, which was not true at all. I'm just glad that I noticed him that morning. I think that he followed me home from work the previous night, and I simply hadn't noticed when I walked to my front door. He must have followed but was a little ways back. This was one of the scariest experiences of my life, and hopefully, I'll never see

that guy again. This is something that happened back when I was in high school. During that time, I lived at home with my parents and brother. We also had two dogs. Usually, just about every day, the dogs would be walked. It would either be me, my brother, or my parents walking them. One night, it was probably like 8:00 p.m., and the sun was setting. The weather was pretty nice, though, and the dogs needed to go for their walk. My parents decided to take them, and my brother was at his friend's house. I was having a

hard time with my homework, so I stayed home alone when they left. When my parents walked the dogs, I never really quite knew how long it would be. Our neighborhood was pretty quiet, but it was also pretty large. There were lots of streets and houses in the general area, and there was also a park not that far away. Sometimes it would be like 20 to 30 minutes for the walk, and other times it would be over an hour. I was up in my bedroom when my parents told me they were leaving, and I said bye

from up in my bedroom and then heard them walk out. After that, I tried hard to focus on my homework. It was some math assignment, and I just couldn't seem to understand it. I was trying my best to figure it out, though, and I lost track of time. The next thing I knew, I heard the front door downstairs opening. I automatically assumed that it was my parents getting back, and I remained focused on what I was doing. But several moments later, I realized that that wasn't right. If my parents were home, I would have heard

the dogs with them. The only thing that I had heard when the door opened was somebody walking inside. I never heard my parents' voices or the dogs or anything. I stopped doing my homework, then I stood up and walked to the doorway. I listened closely to who was inside of our house. I heard nothing but silence. Now, I didn't know what was going on. Clearly, it wasn't either of my parents, and I knew that it wasn't my brother either. I thought about going downstairs to look around, but for some reason, I just felt like that

was a really bad idea. Instead, I quietly shut my door and went back inside of my room. I couldn't really focus anymore on schoolwork. I was replaying in my head hearing the door open and close and wondering if I had imagined the whole thing. Looking back, I was starting to question myself. Then, out of nowhere, I heard the sound of somebody walking up the stairs. The footsteps reached the top and then started to approach my bedroom. I began to panic. And I was really scared that whoever it was would go into my room. I did

not have a lock on my door, so they would be able to just walk right in if they wanted. When the footsteps reached my room, they walked right past. Whoever it was was going to the end of the hallway; back there was a bathroom and my parents' bedroom, as well as the guest bedroom. My brother's room was right across the hall. I heard whoever it was reach near where my parents' bedroom and the guest bedroom were, and without even giving it much thought, I ran to my doorway, opened it, and sprinted for the stairs. I

didn't look at all to see who was actually inside the house. I felt like this was my best opportunity to get away. When I raced down the stairs, I ran directly for the front door. I then went outside and started running for the street. I couldn't tell you if whoever was in the house with me went after me or not; my memory of it all is just a blur. When I got back out to the street, I just started jogging until I saw my parents with the dogs. They saw me running and wanted to know

what was up. I told them that somebody went inside the house. My dad called the police, and we waited a distance away until they arrived. My parents had left the door unlocked; after all, our neighborhood was not known to have crime, really, so this was a big deal. The police got there, and only then did we return to our house. When we got back, whoever had been inside the house was now gone; they didn't even steal anything. After that experience, we always locked our doors. In the weeks that followed, there were two reports of burglaries

just a few blocks away. I think that it was probably the same person. I know a guy was caught in connection with them, but I really don't know if he was the same person who went inside our house or not. I don't really know if there's a way to prove it either. I'm just glad I got out of there when I did. There was no way I was going to stay in the house with the guy just down the hallway from me. That was one of the scariest moments of my life. A couple of years

ago, I lived alone in an apartment. It was on the fourth floor of the building, which was a pretty typical apartment building. I think it had five floors total and was relatively old and close to the city. My apartment was one bedroom and one bathroom, with a kitchen and a living room. It wasn't that big, but it had everything that I needed for just me living there. I'd guess that after about three or four months of being there, one night I woke up in the middle of the night. I remembered that immediately I heard some

sounds, as if there was somebody else in my apartment. I thought I heard footsteps of somebody walking near the front door. I sat up and turned my light on; the noises seemed to stop after that. I sat in bed for a while before I felt brave enough to get up and open my bedroom door. Eventually, I did. I looked out into my dark living room and kitchen. I turned on the lights, and everything seemed normal. I must have been hearing things or something. After looking around my apartment and double-checking to see that the door was

still locked, I went back to bed. Nothing else that was strange happened for like a month, but then almost the exact same thing happened again. I was woken up in the night hearing noises inside my apartment. This time, I sat laying in bed trying hard to listen to the noises to detect what exactly they were. They really weren't that loud, but it did sound like somebody was walking inside my apartment. All of my lights were off inside, including my bedroom, so I really couldn't see a thing. I thought about reaching over and turning on the

light, but I was just really focused on listening to the noise. Was there somehow a chance that I was hearing something other than what it sounded like? Maybe I was hearing someone on the floor above or below my apartment, or maybe I was just hearing random noises that the building makes. But no, this was for sure the sound of somebody walking around in my apartment, and now it sounded like the footsteps were right outside my bedroom door. Then I heard the door handle start to turn, and I heard the creak of my door opening. I

thought my heart would pound right out of my chest. I got really hot and sweaty as the door opened. I looked right at the opening. The door got about halfway open, and I saw the figure of a man standing in the doorway. He appeared to be looking right at me, but I couldn't tell any details about him at all in the dark, just that he was there. I was sitting up in my bed, and he stood there for maybe ten seconds before I couldn't help but let out a scream. When I did, the man backed

up and shut the door. I was screaming like a crazy person for like a minute straight. By the time I composed myself, I grabbed my phone and called the police. They arrived in my apartment a while later, and when they looked around, whoever had been in my apartment was now gone. There was no evidence left behind, and there were no signs of forced entry. My door was still even locked; none of my windows were open or anything like that either. I was so puzzled by this. I knew what I had seen, though; all I was

able to give was the description of a man that was sort of tall. I couldn't tell anything about him, really. It was like 2:00 in the morning, and the police left. I barely slept at all for the rest of the night. I didn't know what to do. I worried that I was going insane. Over the next few days, things got a little bit back to normal, but I was worried something like this would happen again. Then an idea came to me. I went to the store and got two things: the first was a lock for

my bedroom door, and the second was a motion-detecting security camera. It was a little bit expensive, but I needed answers. I set it up inside my apartment, facing the door and most of the kitchen area, where I had heard the footsteps. I hid the camera as best as I could on my bookshelf, then I set up a lock on my bedroom door so I would feel safer as I slept. I set the camera every night before bed, but for the longest time, nothing happened. Of course, I was happy about this, but at the same time,

I was always a little bit worried about whoever it was returning. I would say it was maybe three weeks since the last incident, and then something happened. I was once again woken up to hear what sounded like the door to my apartment opening. I heard footsteps once again, but this time they were really fast. They went straight toward my bedroom door and were much louder than before. Whoever it was tried opening the door, but this time it was locked. They tried violently and quickly turning the knob several more times before stopping. I screamed that I

was calling the police. This caused whoever was there to walk back and straight out my door. As soon as they left, I got up and ran out to get my camera. I went back into my bedroom and locked the door again. From there, I watched the footage it had recorded; it had recorded the entire thing. When I played the video, I saw a man walking right into my apartment as if the front door wasn't even locked. When the man walked in, I recognized him: it was my next-door neighbor. I didn't know the guy well at

all, but I knew that his name was Jim. I had only briefly said hi to him one time in the hallway. After seeing this, I called the police again. They arrived and remembered me from before. This time, I had evidence to show them. When they watched the video, they went next door and confronted Jim. At first, he pretended to be asleep and claimed the police woke him up, but when he was told there was video evidence, he seemed to get angry. He flat-out claimed it wasn't him and denied it, but then later changed his story

to say that he must have been sleepwalking. However, the police weren't buying it and took him in. I’m really glad they did because he later admitted to being awake the whole time, and the way he was able to get inside my apartment was because he somehow had a spare key. How he had an extra key to my place, I'm not sure, but I’m glad I don’t have to worry about him anymore. This happened just about a week ago. I’m 20 years old, and I live with my parents during the summer. However, they went out of

town for some friends' wedding, and I wasn't invited. This was fine with me, though, because I didn’t really know the people anyway, and it’s kind of fun to have the whole house to myself. We have a split-level house, and my bedroom is at the front end of it. On Friday night, I stayed up really late watching a movie in the living room. I like that TV better because it's much bigger than mine. The couch in the living room is also super comfortable, so I just decided to sleep there for the night. Anyway, I woke up

Saturday morning, and it was still super dark in the house. In the living room, we had a sliding glass door that connects to the deck in the back. The blinds were covering most of it, and that's the main source of light, but there was maybe a 5-ft gap to look out, and I saw that it was raining. I then looked at the clock, and it was almost 9:30 a.m. I was just sitting on the couch, turned on the TV, when all of a sudden, I heard two knocks at the front door. They weren't really hard

knocks; sort of light. Immediately, my heart started pounding. I know it's not a big deal just to get knocks on the door, but we lived towards the end of a dead-end road, and our neighborhood was very quiet. It wasn't very big, and it was extremely rare for anybody to knock on our doors for any reason. Maybe it's also because I'm a shy person, but it made me really nervous for some reason. From where I was sitting on the couch, I was just barely around the corner, and I couldn't see the front door. Whoever was at

the front door probably couldn't see me; at least I was hoping they couldn't see me. I was wondering who it could possibly be, especially in the middle of pouring rain. Then I remembered something: I had ordered an Amazon package and was expecting it today. Suddenly, I felt so much better and started to relax. I opened up my Amazon app on my phone and clicked on my orders, expecting... to see that it was delivered. But when I looked, it said it wouldn't arrive until 5:00 p.m. that day. Suddenly, I went back to being super nervous. I

decided to carefully look out and see if anyone was at the door. It had now been maybe a minute or two since they had originally knocked, and they hadn't knocked again. I slowly moved to look out the window, and when I did, I saw that nobody was there. Now, this made me feel a little better now that they were gone, but right at that moment, I heard the noise of somebody walking up the stairs of our back deck. I couldn't see because of the lines covering most of the sliding glass door, but I then heard

footsteps on the deck. I started shaking, and the next thing I knew, I saw a man appear in the opening of the sliding glass door where you could see outside. He was staring right at me but had no expression on his face. He was bald and wore a black jacket and black pants. The guy then tried sliding the door open; thankfully, it was locked, but I knew if he really wanted to, he could probably break the glass between us. I ran away into the bathroom that was just down the hall. I had no idea who

this guy was or what he was doing here. I had been right to be so nervous about this for seemingly no reason. As I closed the bathroom door and locked it, that's when I heard the first loud bang against the window, as if he was going to try to break it. I knew I needed to call the police, but then I realized that I didn't have my phone; I had left it back out in the living room. I heard another loud bang from the window, but I didn't hear glass breaking. I knew it was a

risk, but I opened the door back up and ran out to the living room couch. I looked around frantically and finally saw my phone. Then I made another mad dash for the bathroom. As I was running, another bang came from the window. I looked back at the man as I ran; I saw he had been kicking at the glass and trying to break it. I got back into the bathroom and locked the door again. Then I called 911 on my phone. As soon as the operator answered, I told them everything. They told me to slow

down and repeat what was going on. That's when I heard the sound of glass breaking. I repeated what was happening as best as I could, and just after that, I heard the sound of the man starting to walk inside the house. He was walking straight for the bathroom that I was in. When he got to the doorway, he tried the door, and it wouldn't open because it was locked. I backed away from it and went into the shower. The 911 operator said that they would stay on the line with me, which made me feel a

little bit better because I was terrified. The man then started to bang on the bathroom door, and my phone suddenly went silent. I looked at it and saw that it had died; I hadn't plugged it in the previous night. I figured the man was kicking on the door the same way he had been kicking on the sliding glass door, and I knew he would probably break this as well. I heard him walk away for a minute and then go down the stairs that we had. He was gone for maybe a full minute, and then I

heard him return. There was another loud bang against the bathroom door, but this one sounded much harder. I think he had found one of the baseball bats we had in our house or something. This made me even more terrified than I already was. I grabbed the towels we had in the bathroom and covered myself. I then went into the small bathroom closet we had and closed that door. I just barely fit in there, but I had to do what I could. The guy hit at the door a few more times, and it really sounded like

he was breaking it now, but that noise was interrupted by another one. It was the noise of a loud knock on the front door. I could barely hear someone shouting, "Police!" I hoped they would be able to get inside fast, and just after that, I heard the man walking away towards the back of the house where we had gotten in. I stayed hidden, and a short time later, I heard a bunch of shouting. Eventually, I heard someone yelling, "Put it down!" When I finally heard the voice of multiple officers inside my house, I finally came

out of the bathroom. They had literally gotten there just in the nick of time, and the man had been caught. I'm really lucky how fast the police were to arrive that day. This was very recent, and I'm still a little shook up about it, but I'm just happy to be okay. Last year, I was at home by myself one night. I live in a smaller house in a quiet neighborhood. It was probably about 10:00 at night when I heard a knocking at my front door. Obviously, it was strange to have somebody knocking on the door

at this hour. I walked over and looked out the window to the front door. I saw a small woman who appeared to be 25 to 30 standing there. I had never seen her before and was not sure as to what she was doing here. After thinking about it for a few seconds, I decided to answer the door. I opened it up, and the woman said hi and said that... Her car broke down on my street. She said that she was just down the road. Then she said that she knocked on two of my other neighbors'

doors, and nobody answered. I asked her if she had called her roadside service, and she told me that she couldn't get any signal around here. I looked over in the direction that she had pointed; her car was in. At first, I didn't see anything. I asked her where exactly her car was. She told me to follow her and asked if I knew anything about cars. I actually did; I wouldn't call myself a car expert, but I have fixed a couple of things on my own cars a few times. I've always had an interest in cars

and how they work, and I was curious. I asked what she thought happened to her car. As we were talking, she started walking back over to it and said that her power and everything in the car just started going off, and then it died. I followed her down my driveway and into the street. When I got onto the quiet road, I saw a little ways down a car parked on the side of it. It was what looked to be a fairly new Honda CR-V. The location the car was parked was past my next-door neighbor's house.

After his house, the road curved, and there were no houses for a little stretch, just woods on both sides. We finally got within maybe 15 feet of her vehicle. I noticed that the windows were tinted very dark. The woman walked over towards the driver's door and unlocked the car. It was at that very moment when I saw the back two doors opening to her car and two men getting out, one at each door. I was only 10 feet away from them. The very instant that I saw them, I turned around and sprinted as fast as

I could in the opposite direction. There were two of them and one of me, and I had nothing to defend myself, so I wasn't going to stay there. I heard the men starting to run after me. I didn't even know that I could run as fast as I did. When I was going back to my house, I somehow got back to my front door and was able to get inside and lock the door. Probably less than a second later, the men reached it and tried going inside. When I got inside, I wasted no time finding

my phone and calling the police. Unfortunately, the men left within a minute and were gone by the time the police got there. Everybody was gone. I told them everything that happened but did not get the license plate of the car. I gave a description of the people, but the car is pretty common, and I really didn't get a good look at the men at all, so I don't know if they were ever located. At the end of the day, though, I'm just glad to be alright. I came within seconds of who knows what. I feel

kind of dumb for being set up like that, and I'm more suspicious of people now. About a year ago, I lived in an apartment by myself. I'm in a new apartment now, and the one I lived in last year wasn't the greatest. It was a small one-bedroom place, and I lived on the second floor. I had a very small balcony, which was nice. One night, I was by myself at home cooking dinner. I cook quite often, and I was at the stove in the kitchen. It was the early springtime, and the weather was still sort

of cold out. I remember that I started to get really hot while cooking, which I often do. I walked over to the sliding door in my balcony at the end of my apartment and opened it. When I did, I felt the cool air rush in. Then I went back to work. Probably about 20 minutes later, I was still in the kitchen cooking. That's when I heard a noise. I looked over and saw somebody standing there in the opening of my sliding glass door. It was some guy. I didn't know who he was. When I saw

him at first, I was too confused and surprised to say or do anything. The man was just standing there, and then he walked right inside and went into my bedroom. He then shut the door. Finally, I spoke. I yelled, "Who are you?" I yelled it again, louder than the first time. Whoever had just entered my bedroom did not answer me, but I did hear noises inside. I was still kind of standing in the kitchen, which is right by the front door. Then my bedroom door started to open. When this happened, I opened my front door

and left. I ran down the hallway into the stairs. I wanted to call the police, but it wasn't until I was at the stairs that I realized I did not have my cell phone with me. I had left it on my kitchen counter. Instead, I decided to keep going; I did not want to go back in there. I left the building and went out to my car in the parking lot. I sat inside my car and thought about what I could do. I considered driving to a friend's house or the police station or something like

that, but I didn't know where the police station was, and I didn't want to go to my friend's house without letting them know. I didn't have my phone on me to help out with either of these things. After about an hour, I decided that I would go back inside my apartment. Whatever that guy was doing there, he was probably gone by now. I left my car. And went back inside. When I got to my apartment, I opened the door and saw my whole place was all messed up. My stuff was all over the floor, and

the furniture was all out of place. However, I didn't see or hear anybody. I noticed that my balcony door was now closed. I went further inside, but as soon as I got to my bedroom doorway, I saw the guy again. I turned and ran out of my apartment. This time, I banged on my next-door neighbor's door. I had never met my neighbors, but I didn't care; they actually opened, and I told them someone had broken into my apartment and to call the police. They let me inside their apartment, and we waited for the police to

show up. When they got there, the man was still inside my apartment and was caught. He had taken my phone and had a backpack with a bunch of my stuff that he was intending to steal. I really can't believe that he stayed in my apartment for so long. He got in by climbing up to my balcony and going in through the open door. I guess he had seen my door open from a ways away. I'm just glad he was caught. This is my scariest experience of being at home by myself. It happened back when I

was 12 years old. It was a long time ago now, but I still remember it really well. During this time, I lived with my parents, older sister, and younger brother. It was very rare that I would be at home by myself, but somehow it happened. It was a Friday evening, and my dad was out of town until the next morning for work. He didn't travel for work a whole lot, but every now and then, he did. I remember that my sister was at her best friend's house and was going to be sleeping over there. As

for my mom and brother, they were at a birthday party my brother was invited to. I was not invited, and my mom went with my brother because she was basically helping the birthday kid's mom with the party. So that left me home alone, all by myself, on a Friday night. My big plans were to just relax and play video games. I was excited about it, though, because I rarely got the entire place to myself. Our house was pretty average for the most part; there were two levels, with all the bedrooms being upstairs. Downstairs was the

living room, dining room, and kitchen. So after my mom left that afternoon, shortly after I got back from school, she gave me instructions on how to make a frozen pizza. I had never cooked before, but I loved frozen pizza. At about 7:00 p.m., I cooked it. Everything went pretty well, and then I went into the living room, sat in an office chair right in front of the TV, and started playing on my PlayStation. This went on for several hours. At about 9:00 at night, I heard the sound of somebody stepping onto the front step where

our door was. The living room was at the front of the house, so it really wasn't that far away. When I heard the person walk onto the front step, I assumed that it was my mom and brother returning from the birthday party. I kept playing, expecting to hear the door open at any point, but after several minutes went by, nothing happened. Nobody entered the house. I got curious, so I got up and walked over to the front door to look outside. When I did, I didn't see anybody there. There was no one at the front

door, and my mom's car was not in the driveway either. As I was looking there, though, something caught my eye to the left. I looked and saw what appeared to be a man walking through the front yard. He was just barely in my sight for about a second before disappearing past what I could see. He had gone towards the side of the house or maybe the neighbor's yard. I was a little nervous after this, but I assumed that the man had left. I didn't really know who he was or what he was doing. I kept

watching around the front yard for a minute or so and saw nothing more. So after that, I returned to my video games. I couldn't help but be creeped out by what I had seen, so I was trying to take my mind off of it, and after about 10 minutes, it was starting to work. That is until suddenly I heard the sound of somebody trying to open the back door to the house. Our back door was connected to the kitchen and went out to the patio. This sound was much louder, and I instantly stood up. I

ran over to the phone and called my mom's number. During this time, I didn't hear any more noises. I told my mom that somebody tried coming in the back door, and she told me to call the police. She told me that she would be home as soon as she could, but the birthday party was still going on. So after that, I quickly ran upstairs and then went into my bedroom. Once I was there, I called the police and told them that I thought somebody was trying to break in. After giving them my address, I went

and hid behind my bed. I covered myself with tons of blankets. I was really too scared to want to know what was going on. As I waited for the police to arrive, I was hoping that the man had just left and not tried breaking in. I wasn't hearing anything, but then again, I was covered in blankets. It felt like forever. But maybe ten minutes later, the police got there. I remember that I got a call on the phone and was told that they were there. I never would have gone down and left my bedroom on

my own when that happened. I got up but heard people talking, so I stayed in my bedroom. I remember a while later there was a knock at my bedroom door. I was terrified until I heard a voice on the other side say, "Police." Then I answered the door, and there was an officer there. He told me that they had caught a man who had just broken in. I was told that the police got there in the nick of time, and they really did. The man had somehow gotten the back door of the house open; he

had literally just entered when the police arrived. The man was arrested and, luckily, didn't get far into the house. I was honestly shocked when I heard it, but luckily everything turned out fine. He wasn't able to steal anything or do any damage. The back door needed a little bit of fixing, but it wasn't a huge deal. After that, though, I didn't want to stay home by myself for a while. This is something that happened when I was a kid; I was probably around twelve. Back then, I would ride the bus to and from school every

day. My parents both worked until 5:00 and would get home between 5:30 and 6:00. But I would get home at about 2:45 to 3:00 p.m. from school every day, so usually, I had a few hours by myself. One day, the school bus dropped me off at the end of my street like every other day. I walked on the sidewalk until I got to my house and then went inside. My after-school routine was usually to go to my room and try to get my homework out of the way first. Then I would relax and do whatever

I wanted until my parents got home. This time, I did my homework at the kitchen table. As I was doing it, I remember looking outside the window and seeing a man walking out front on the sidewalk. He walked past our house, and I didn't think much of it. We usually wouldn't get too many people walking down the sidewalk, but an occasional person wasn't a big deal. Then I later saw him walking by the other way again, like ten minutes later, and he kind of looked over. Still, it wasn't a huge deal. The kitchen was at

the front of the house, and after I finished my homework, it was probably around 4:00 p.m. Then I moved into the living room and turned on the TV. Just a few minutes later, I heard our front door opening. Now I knew instantly that it probably wasn't either of my parents. I'm not sure how I knew that, but I just had a bad feeling. They were rarely home that early, and when they were, they would usually let me know. Then I realized that I had forgotten to lock the front door when I got home that day.

I jumped up off the couch and didn't know what to do. I ended up going right behind the couch to hide; I had no time to go anywhere else. The person walked inside, and I was in the kitchen for about a minute. Then I heard their footsteps moving closer, and then they entered the living room where I was. My heart was beating like crazy. There was a little bit of space between the couch and the walls behind it, and that's where I was laying on the carpet. I couldn't see anything, and my head was down.

Now that the person was walking on carpet, I couldn't hear their footsteps anymore. I tried my best to be as silent as I possibly could. The seconds felt like minutes. I didn't hear anything. I was afraid that whoever was in there knew that I was there. But then I heard footsteps again in the kitchen. The footsteps soon moved to the stairs, and I heard the person walking up. I was slightly relieved, but there was still somebody in our house. I thought about hiding there until the person left, but when they reached the top of the

stairs, I realized that I could probably leave if I got up and ran now; I should be able to reach the front door before the person could. I couldn't really hear their footsteps anymore now that they were upstairs, so I didn't know exactly where they were. I carefully got out from behind the couch and stood up. Then, as quietly as I could, I ran for the front door. I opened it and went outside. From there, I ran down the street to one neighbor that my family was pretty good friends with. I knocked on her door,

and luckily, she answered. She let me come inside, and then she called the police. It was great to finally be safe again, but the person was still in my house. The police response time was really fast; they were there within probably five minutes. My neighbor and I watched from her window when they got there. They soon entered our house and searched it. Unfortunately, the person was gone. I went back to the house with the police, and everything was in order except for my bedroom door upstairs, which was open. That gave me an eerie feeling. Then,

not too long after, I found out that the police had found a suspicious man in another neighbor's backyard. When I saw what he looked like, it was the same guy that I had seen walking on the sidewalk earlier. I couldn't believe it. He later admitted to being inside our house. My parents got home a short time later. And the police stayed for a while, talking with everyone. Soon they left, though, and things got back to normal for the most part. That experience made me not want to be home by myself for a while; though, it

also made me remember to always lock the door. A strange thing happened to me a couple of years ago. At the time, I lived in an apartment by myself. It was a one-bedroom place, and I lived on the second floor of the building. Overall, the apartment was not the nicest, and it didn't have that many units in it either. I knew a few of my neighbors, but not all of them. One night, I was at home by myself, like usual. It was sometime at night; I really don't know exactly the time, but there was a

knock on my door. I walked over and answered it without giving it that much thought. A man was standing there; he was kind of short and had dark brown hair. The man told me that he was my neighbor from down the hallway and he pointed a ways to the left. He asked me if he could come inside my apartment to make a phone call. He said that his Wi-Fi was not working and he didn't have any service on his phone at the time, so without the Wi-Fi, he couldn't make any calls. I was not comfortable

with this. I told the man, "Sorry, but no." He said that he would be really fast, and I told him that I really couldn't help him. He kind of came across as a little bit sketchy to me for some reason. The man turned to walk away and I closed my door. I was really curious afterwards; I had never seen the man before and had seen most of the people who lived in the building because it wasn't all that big. I thought maybe the guy would knock on another person's door, and I quietly opened my door

and looked around the corner to see him walking away. He walked all the way to the end of the hall and then he went inside of the elevator. I was suspicious that he didn't even live here. At one point or another, I had seen just about everyone that lived on my floor. After the man left, I went to one of the windows in my place. I looked out of it into the guest parking lot where the main doors opened up to. Now, there are assigned parking spaces for all the residents, and those are under the

building. There's a small guest parking lot with like ten spaces out front. I saw the man leave the building and then walk to an older-looking car in the guest parking lot and drive away. He definitely didn't live here, so why would he lie to me and claim that he did? I didn't know, but the fact that he wanted me to let him inside my apartment kind of creeped me out. He certainly made up the whole story about his Wi-Fi being down and him not having any cell phone service. I'm not sure how he got into

the building in the first place, but most likely, somebody else let him in when they were entering. After that night, I never saw him again. That pretty much confirmed for me that he didn't live there. I'm really glad that I didn't let him inside my apartment. When I was a kid, my parents used to leave me home alone sometimes. Both my parents worked, and they stopped getting a babysitter for me when I was around ten. I'm an only child, so I got used to being home alone pretty quickly. I was able to make several foods

for myself and have snacks, but most of the time, I would just sit and watch TV or hang out in my room. The house that we lived in was one level and had a basement as well. There were three bedrooms and two bathrooms on the main floor, as well as the living room and kitchen. It wasn't a very big house, but it also was not tiny, and it never felt like we didn't have enough space. At the time of this story, I was probably about twelve years old. So one night, I was home by myself.

I really don't remember where exactly my parents were that night, but they were both gone. My mom had cooked me some food before they left, so I had it while watching TV in the living room. Then I went into my bedroom. Afterwards, for the next hour or so, I just kind of hung out in there, playing on my Nintendo DS and watching the smaller TV that was in my bedroom. It was probably like 8:30 or 9:00 p.m. at this point, and it was completely dark outside. That's when I heard our sliding glass door opening. I

was used to hearing that noise because my parents went in and out to the patio all the time. The sliding glass door was connected to the dining room area by the kitchen, and it was at the back corner of the house. We had a little patio with a table and a grill and stuff like that. It was like five seconds after I heard this noise that I realized it was strange. None of my parents were home, so who could have done that? We didn't have any neighbors who would just come over or anything like that,

and I suddenly became very worried very quickly. I started to panic, and I didn't know what to do. This kind of situation had never happened to me before, and in fact, I had never really thought about it being a possibility. The neighborhood was always quiet and calm, and it seemed just like... Any other to me, I tried thinking quickly of who would be there, but I couldn't think of anybody. My bedroom door was not completely closed either, but open about a foot. I thought about getting up and closing it, but I didn't want to make

any noise, so I stayed where I was, sitting on top of my bed. One thing I noticed, though, was that I didn't hear anybody walking around inside the house. We had wood floors in the living room and dining room, so I probably would have heard whoever was there walking. My TV was playing with the volume pretty low, so I knew I would have heard the footsteps. I sat there on my bed, not moving, listening closely for any noise, but I didn't hear anything. After a few moments, I grabbed my TV remote, which was next to

me, and turned the volume all the way down. I listened very closely for probably another 30 seconds to a minute; I still heard nothing. I wondered if I actually had heard the sliding door close. I definitely had. This was really strange, but after not hearing anything for a while longer, I started to feel better. I was convincing myself that nothing was wrong. Soon, I decided that I would have a look for myself. I got up from my bed and walked over to the doorway. My bedroom led into the hallway, and to the right was the

living room. The dining room and kitchen were not in view from the hallway; you had to walk through the living room and then take a right to get to it. After looking around in the living room and seeing nothing, I stepped out. I walked through the living room and then to the dining room and kitchen. Still, I didn't see or hear anybody. This made me think that nobody was there. When I looked to the sliding glass door, it was closed but not locked. Now, this was a little bit concerning, but nobody seemed to be inside

the house. Possibly a neighbor saw that it was open and closed it or something. That was bizarre, but that was the thought that came to my head. I don't know why I tried thinking if the door had been open or closed when I had been out in the living room and kitchen before. I couldn't remember, though, to be honest. Most of the time, I wouldn't even notice. Maybe one of my parents had forgotten to close it or lock it. I walked over to the door and then I locked it. Then, I looked around into the

patio and backyard. Our yard was pretty small, but we did have a bit of grass and a few plants and trees. Everything seemed fine from what I could see, and after that, I walked back over to my bedroom. I really didn't know how to explain the bizarre sound that I heard, but I guessed that it could be nothing. After returning to my bedroom, though, I decided to look outside to my backyard from my bedroom window. I usually had the window covered with blinds, as it was on this night. I lifted them up and looked out.

Everything seemed fine from what I could see. About right after this, I returned to my bed, but I was thirsty, and my water glass was empty, so I picked it up and headed to the kitchen to get a refill. After I walked to the fridge, I was filling my glass when I heard another sound. It was coming from the living room; somebody was definitely in there, and I started to hear footsteps. The closest exit that I was near was the sliding glass door, and I sprinted for it right away. I unlocked it, opened the door,

and ran out without even closing it behind me. I was probably the scaredest I had ever been. I didn't see whoever was there at all, but I knew somebody was inside the house. When I got outside, I sprinted out of the yard and around the house to the street. Then, I started running down the street, just trying to get as far away from my house as I could. I'm not really sure where I was planning to go, but as long as I was away from my house, I felt safe. Luckily, at this time, I had

recently gotten my first cell phone. I had it with me in my pocket, and I took it out and called my mom. When I told her what had happened, she said that she was calling the police and my parents would head home immediately. I'm pretty sure, in the meantime, I just kind of walked around the streets of my neighborhood. Eventually, I got another call from my mom asking where I was, and when I told her, she and my dad were there within a minute or two to pick me up. I got inside their car, and

we drove to our house, which had several police cars in front of it now. I waited in the car with my mom as my dad talked to the officers to know the situation. When he came back, he said that the guy who had been inside the house was gone. The police hadn't found anybody inside; however, the house had several things in it that were messed up. One of the blankets that was on the couch was now on the floor, and I hadn't put it there. The doors to my parents' bedroom and the basement were also

left open and had been closed before, but surprisingly, nothing was stolen from the house at all. We all went back inside a short time later, and I was pretty scared for the rest of the night. The guy never came back, though, and I never saw him again. I'm just glad that I left. When I did and got out of there, this happened back when I was younger. I believe that I was about 14 at the time. I remember it pretty well, and it all started on a Friday night. My parents were going out of town

to go to a wedding that I was not invited to. I didn't care, though; I found weddings boring and would rather stay home and play video games. My parents left on Friday afternoon after I got back from school. I was sort of excited to have the house to myself for a little while. My mom let me order a pizza to be delivered that night, and I got it and then watched TV in the living room. Maybe an hour into that, at like 8:00 p.m. or so, there was a knock at the front door. I didn't

know who it could possibly be. I felt a little bit nervous as I got up from the couch to go check. I looked out of a window and saw a man standing there. He was not a neighbor, and I didn't know him at all. The man was wearing a black jacket and like a winter hat; he also had a slight beard. There was no way that I was answering the door, though. He knocked again, and I just stood there waiting for him to go away. I was pretty confident that he couldn't see me from where

I was. Eventually, I saw the man turn and walk away. I was a little bit creeped out, and I didn't know who the guy was or why he came to our house, but I figured that was that, and I went back to what I was doing. Maybe 30 minutes to an hour later, I decided to go up to my room and play some video games. I went upstairs, got in my bedroom, shut off the lights, and closed the door. Then I got in my gaming chair and put my headset on. I had a pretty good

setup in there and really enjoyed it. Probably 30 minutes into that, I was interrupted, though. I heard a knock on the door, but it wasn't the front door to the house; it was coming from my bedroom door. My heart started racing like crazy instantly, and I became as scared as can be. I didn't know what to do. Very quietly, I got up from my chair, then I turned the TV off. Now it was completely dark in there, and I could see very little. I was kind of expecting the door to just open, but it didn't.

I got down on the ground, careful not to make any noise. My gaming chair was sort of in the corner of the room away from the door. My closet was half open and just a few feet from me. I crawled over there quietly and careful not to make a sound. Then they knocked again. Somebody was right outside my door, and I figured that it was probably the man who had knocked on the front door earlier in the night. I was able to crawl my way into my bedroom closet. It was not that big of a

closet, but enough space for me to fit inside of it. Plus, my room was pretty messy; as a teenager, I had clothes and stuff laying all around the floor and basically a huge pile of clothes in my closet. As I went inside of it, I carefully covered myself in clothes. In the middle of doing this, I heard the door start to open. I froze and just hoped that I was not visible. I did not hear the guy walk inside but could tell that he was in there. Then he took a couple of steps inside my

bedroom. I was terrified and held my breath. He was in there for maybe 30 seconds, then he turned and left the room, and I heard him walk out. I had just gotten a cell phone at that point, just a few months prior. I got it out and quietly dialed for the police. I was sure to make it so the guy couldn't hear me wherever he was. I whispered to the 911 operator what was going on and then hung up because I was worried that the guy would hear me. He was still upstairs, but I couldn't

tell where he was. I went deeper into my closet in case the guy came back. He didn't come back in my room, though. After waiting for what felt like a really long time and not hearing anything else, the police arrived. I left my closet and bedroom and saw that the police had actually caught the man. He was back downstairs, and I was told that he had been hiding in the basement. I hadn't heard him go downstairs at all, but then again, I was under a bunch of clothes in my closet. It was a huge relief.

My parents were called and told about it, and they ended up coming back home that night. They got me and made me go to the wedding with them anyways because they didn't want to leave me alone. I didn't really want to be alone either. That was probably the craziest night of my life, and I will never forget it. This happened many years ago, probably about 15, and I would say that I was about 10 years old at the time. I lived with my parents and my older brother. I think it was a Friday, and I

remember after getting home from school, my parents and brother were going to go shopping. They asked me if I wanted to come with, and I said no because I really wanted to play video games at that moment, and I wasn't really interested in going with. When they left, I... I figured they would be gone for maybe a couple of hours, so I went upstairs to my room and started playing video games. It was kind of my after-school thing to do back then. I started it up, and my game hadn't even loaded yet when, all of

a sudden, I heard a noise coming from the hallway. It was the upstairs hallway, right outside my bedroom. This was really strange, and I remembered I listened, but I didn't hear anything for a few more seconds. Then there was another noise; it was definitely coming from right outside my bedroom door. My door was already open, but not all the way—maybe 3 feet or so—so I decided to look out. I walked over to the doorway, leaned my head just out, and looked. As soon as I did, I saw a man climbing down the ladder that we

had, which led up to the attic. I pulled my head back into the room; he hadn't seen me because his back was facing me when he was climbing down, but I just hoped he hadn't heard me. At first, I was really confused. I knew our house wasn't being worked on, so why was there a guy coming down from our attic? I heard him begin to walk down the hallway towards my door. As quietly as I could, I got onto the ground and slid underneath my bed. The man walked right past my room and then headed

down the stairs. I got as far underneath my bed as I could and hoped that the man wouldn't come back. I heard him move around a little bit downstairs, especially because my ear was up against the floor. I was too scared to get up or move. It felt like forever that I was laying there. I couldn't call the police because I didn't have a cell phone back then. We had a home phone, but that was downstairs. In my mind, my best bet was to just stay hidden. I kept laying there, and I really have no

idea how long it was, but I remember eventually hearing him walking back up the stairs. I closed my eyes and held my breath. When he got to the top of the stairs, he once again just walked right past my door and then seemingly went back up into the attic. When things were quiet once again, I thought about leaving my hiding place, but ultimately was too scared. I remained there until I heard our front door unlock and then heard the voices of my parents and brother downstairs. At that time, I ran down as fast as I

could and told them what had happened. At first, they didn't believe me, and my dad seemed to think it was funny, but eventually, when my dad went up into the attic, he said he immediately saw signs that someone had been up there. He didn't see the guy himself, but enough to know that there was somebody in there. He closed it, and we called the police. We went outside and waited, and eventually, when the police got there, they were able to catch the man. He had been living in our attic for several days. We rarely went

up to our attic or used it back then; it was just really a storage place for us. I don't know how the man didn't hear me in my room at first, but I always feel lucky that he didn't. This story happened when I was much younger; I was in high school at the time and a freshman. This was during the fall semester. I had just gotten home from school and was all by myself. I have a brother, but he played football and would get home much later. I would ride the bus home from school and

get back at like 3:00 p.m. Usually, after I got home, I had about 2 hours or so until my parents would get back from work. In that time, I usually just played video games or watched TV; every now and then, I did homework. On this day, I made some pizza rolls and then went upstairs into my room to play some video games. I was up there for probably like an hour playing when I heard the sound of the front door opening and closing coming from downstairs. I knew it was more than likely either my mom

or my dad getting home, and I paused the game and went downstairs to say hi and ask what we were having for dinner. I went down the hall outside my bedroom and started to walk down the stairs. I got maybe like three steps down when I noticed something. There was someone in the house, but it wasn't either of my parents; it was just some guy. He had sort of long curly light brown hair and was walking through the end of the kitchen into the dining room. I paused and immediately turned around; thankfully, the man hadn't

seen me. I ran back into my bedroom and quietly shut the door. Once I was inside, I started panicking. I was pretty scared and had no idea what to do. Back then, I didn't have a cell phone, and the only phones that we did have were downstairs in the kitchen and in the living room. I was definitely not going down there. I was afraid whoever the guy was was going to come upstairs. I went around my bedroom, took everything big I could find, and stacked it up against my bedroom door. Then, I went and hid

in the back corner of the room. I couldn't really hear anything, so I had no idea where the guy was downstairs. I got a blanket and covered myself up because I was so scared. I waited there in my room for what felt like forever. Eventually... I heard the sound of one of my parents coming home. I got up and went over to my door to listen. As I listened, I heard the front door to the house opening and then heard my dad's voice. I couldn't quite make out what he was saying, so I moved all

the junk away from my front door and went out. I saw that my dad was standing in the kitchen, and most of the downstairs was all messed up. He saw me and asked what was going on. I ran downstairs and told him about what had happened. We both left the house and called the police. When they got there and searched the house, whoever had been inside was gone. The guy that I had seen had been able to enter the house because I guess I forgot to lock the front door when I got home. The guy

went inside and basically just messed the place up and didn't really steal anything; he then left before my dad got home. I felt bad for being sort of responsible, but at the same time, my parents weren't mad at me and were just glad that I was okay. This happened to me when I was 15 years old. I'm an only child, and I lived at home with my parents at that time. I was in high school, and this was a Friday night. My parents went out with some friends, and I had nothing going on. They told

me that they would be out until somewhat later, and my parents got some food for me before they left. I had stayed home quite a few times before by myself, and I didn't mind it at all. It wasn't something that happened every week, but I was very much used to it by that age. So when my parents left, I just had dinner and then finished up my homework for the weekend. Then I went up to my bedroom and started playing video games. I was gaming for probably an hour or two before I heard something downstairs.

It was the sound of glass breaking. At first, I thought maybe a plate or something fell from the cabinet, but it didn't really sound like that. I think I was kind of in denial that it was possible somebody could have broken in. I always thought my neighborhood was so safe, and nothing ever happened. After a few seconds, though, I realized that it was a possibility, especially after I heard footsteps inside. I could barely hear them because they were far away, but I heard just enough. Whoever was inside was in the kitchen area, and I was

on the second floor in my bedroom. Then I ran to my door and locked it, and then grabbed my phone. I dialed 911, and the operator answered. I told her somebody had broken into my house. I then gave her the address and was told that the police would be there shortly. She said that she would stay on the line with me until they got there. Now I was talking as quietly as I could and hiding in the back corner of my bedroom. I was underneath my desk and covered myself with a blanket as well. The

woman on the other end of the phone asked me if I knew where within the house the intruder was. I tried to listen to hear the footsteps again; I didn't hear anything, though. I honestly had no clue as to where the person was; they could have even left for all I knew. For the next several minutes, I heard nothing. I started to feel better and was told that the police were very close by, but then out of nowhere, I heard noises in the upstairs hallway. It sounded like whoever was in the house had just reached

the top of the stairs. The footsteps walked to just outside my door, and then they stopped. It was like they knew I was in there. My heart was racing, and then whoever it was tried opening the door. I'm really glad that my door had a lock on it. That's when the woman said the police were arriving. I very faintly heard the sounds of cars pulling into the driveway. At that point, the footsteps upstairs quickly walked away, then they went back down the stairs. I stayed where I was, though the police entered the house and actually

caught the guy as he tried to leave out the back. It was a bit of a scene, and a bunch more police vehicles arrived. My parents were called, and they came home as soon as they found out about it. The man that had broken in I had never seen before; he was sort of younger looking, tall, thin, and had longer dark brown hair. I'm not sure what his intentions were or why he chose our house. The police really got there in the nick of time, though. Sometimes I still can't believe that it happened. I will

always feel lucky that it turned out as well as it did. When I was back in high school, I lived at home with my mom. It was just her and I after my parents got divorced when I was younger. My mom had a pretty good job and occasionally would get to travel. I remember in the summer, she brought me with her to New York once and another time to Chicago. However, during the school year, I wouldn't be able to go with her and had to stay home because of school. During my sophomore year of high

school, my mom had to go to Dallas for a couple of days, and I would be staying home by myself. She left me with money for food and gave me some instructions on how to take care of several of our house plants. She left, and the first few days went by very smoothly. Then it got to Friday night. I thought it was kind of cool to be on my own and have an entire house to myself. On Friday night, I stayed up pretty late; it was probably like midnight, and I was up in my bedroom

watching a movie. That's when I heard a knock at the front door. I was terrified—who on Earth would be knocking on the door at midnight? It was rare that people even knocked on our door during the day. There was no way I was going to answer it, and I hoped that it would just go away. Whoever was there knocked maybe two more times, and then it stopped. After a few moments, I was confident that whoever had been knocking had left, and I unpaused the movie. Then, probably 30 minutes later, there was knocking again. It was

almost exactly the same as before. My heart sank as soon as I heard it. They knocked and then waited about 10 seconds and knocked again. It sounded like they weren't going to go away unless I answered the door; however, I had no plans on doing so. I quietly left my bedroom and walked over to my mom's office on the upstairs. This is a room that actually had a view of outside near the front door, where whoever was knocking was. I crawled to the window and then peeked outside. I saw some guy standing there, and I

didn't recognize him. He was wearing a hooded sweatshirt with the hood up, and I watched him knock on the door. I ducked down again, careful so that he didn't see me. He kept on knocking, though. I just wanted the guy to go away. Who was he, and what did he want? I was sitting there on the floor in my mom's office thinking about the possibilities. I even considered answering the door, even though I didn't want to. Then the knocking stopped. After not hearing it for a few seconds, I was hoping that the guy had gone

away. I wanted to look and see if he was gone, but I was terrified. After a minute or so, I mustered up the courage to look out of the window again. This time, I saw the man was still there, and he was looking right at me. I jumped back and ran all the way back to my bedroom. Shortly after getting back inside, I heard the sound of glass breaking coming from somewhere downstairs. I will never forget it; it was probably the most scared I've ever been. I closed my bedroom door, but sadly, it didn't have

a lock on it. I had no idea what to do. As I was inside, I heard the guy walking downstairs. It seemed like he went straight towards the stairs and then started walking up. I began to panic. I had no idea what I was going to do. The only thing that came to my mind was to climb out of my bedroom window, but it was pretty high up from the ground. I went over and opened it. There was a tree close by with a large branch, and as I looked at it, I heard the man's

footsteps coming down the hallway and headed right towards my bedroom. I took a deep breath and then climbed out of my window onto the tree branch. I was able to sort of climb down it, and it wiggled a little, but overall seemed stable. As I was going down, I saw out of the corner of my eye my bedroom door opening. I went faster, and when I was close enough, I jumped down. I got to the ground, and I was all right. Whoever the guy was, was now in my bedroom, though, and I sprinted as quickly

as I could down the street. I found a neighbor's house that my mom and I knew pretty well and banged on their door like crazy. Thankfully, they were still up and answered the door. They called the police for me and let me stay in the house. When the police got there, the man was gone, though. I called my mom as well, who came back home the next day. After that experience, I didn't want to be home alone for a long time. I live alone in a small one-bedroom house; for me, it's the perfect size, and

I've lived here for about a year. But shortly after I first moved in, I had a terrifying experience. I was sitting in the living room one night and watching TV. I was very comfortable on my couch, and I think it was about 10:30 at night. Out of nowhere, I started to hear a noise coming from the other end of the house. It was kind of quiet and sort of sounded like it was coming from inside the wall. Immediately, I started to fear what I thought was the worst at the time, which was that there would

be mice in my house. But I would eventually find out that it was something different. I turned the volume down on my TV to listen closely. Eventually, I did hear the noise again; I just couldn't quite tell what it was, so I walked over to where I was hearing it. I went through the end of the living room towards the pantry and then the attached garage. I realized that's where the noise was coming from. I could hear somebody walking around in there. I was a little scared, but I opened my garage door and looked around.

It was a one-car garage and really dark in there. I turned on the light, which wasn't that bright, but I could now see; however, I didn't see anybody at all. I looked all around, and there was nothing there. wasn't really a whole lot of space, but the longer I had the door open and was looking around, the more freaked out I was feeling. I shut the door and then went back inside. I listened for more noise and just hoped whoever was in there would leave and not try to go in the house as I was

inside. I kept listening for a while, but I didn't hear anything else now, so I thought maybe looking in the garage had scared off whoever was there. Eventually, I was able to go back to watching TV and later got tired and went to sleep. The next morning, when I woke up, I had forgotten all about what had happened the previous night. I left my room and walked into the kitchen but froze. As I did, I noticed that my front door to the house was wide open. I walked over to the garage door and saw that

that was open as well. This was extremely creepy to me because obviously I had closed and locked them the night before. I looked all around the house, everywhere, but nobody was there. Somebody had been in my house the previous night. I don't know who they were or how they got in, but I'm just glad they left. Since then, I haven't had any problems. One time I got back from work a little bit later at night. I lived alone in an apartment on the second floor during this time. After getting back home, I changed and then

went into the living room. I was sitting on the couch eating when I heard this loud noise coming from next door. It sounded like the next-door neighbor was banging on the wall. It was extremely loud and went on for almost a minute. I was really confused when I heard this. I wasn't making any loud noises or anything; the TV was on, but the volume was really not that high at all. Yet, the neighbor was pounding on the wall as if I was being really noisy and he wanted me to be quiet. I didn't really know

why else he would be banging on the wall like that, and even if he was bothered by the TV, I didn't even think it was loud enough for my neighbor to be able to hear it. I wasn't hearing any other loud noises from anywhere else. Just to be sure, though, I muted the television for a short time. Everything was quiet, but then the loud banging on the wall started up again. I really had no idea why my neighbor would be doing this. I wasn't aware of making them angry or anything, and to be honest, I

didn't even know who my next-door neighbor was on that side. I never really saw them. I'd been living in my apartment for like six months, but I had never met or seen hardly any of my neighbors. The banging stopped after a short time. I didn't know what to make of this, but for the next couple of minutes, everything was quiet, so I just kind of moved on from that. Except about five minutes later, there was suddenly a loud knocking coming from my front door. It seemed as though whoever had been banging on my wall had

now moved to my front door. After it continued for about 30 straight seconds, I decided to get up. I walked over to the door and when I approached, the banging stopped. I looked through my peephole to the other side, but nobody was there. Whoever had been knocking had now left, and I had no idea who it was. I was just assuming that it was my next-door neighbor, but I didn't even know what they looked like. I considered going over there and asking them what the deal was, but I decided not to based on how hard

they were pounding on the walls and door. I just had a bad feeling about it, so instead I just moved on again and tried to ignore it. I was hoping that there would be no more banging on my walls or door that night, and luckily, there wasn't. So the next day when I was leaving for work, I walked out of my apartment and went down the hallway. There was an elevator and a set of stairs right next to it. Now I was always in the habit of just taking the stairs, and I very rarely used

the elevator. So after walking down the hallway, I had passed by my next-door neighbor's door. A moment later, I heard the door open. This was the same neighbor who had seemingly been banging on the walls and my door last night. I remembered the previous night, but I just kept walking. When I made it to the stairs and started to go down, I heard whoever it was walking behind me. The stairs turned, and I went around the corner and glanced up. I saw a man walking down the stairs, but I did not directly look at him.

Apparently, that was the guy who lived next to me. After walking down the stairs, I went through the lobby and then left out the front door. The guy that was walking behind me did exactly the same thing; he followed me out the door and was walking behind me as I was on the sidewalk. I parked in the large parking lot that was at the complex. After getting to my vehicle, I got inside. I then saw the guy kind of standing there and looking in my direction. He was about 50 feet away, and I didn't know

what his deal was. He just stood there as I drove off and went to work. I had never seen that guy before, but I guessed that was my next door. Neighbor, so I worked that day, and when I arrived home afterwards, it was a little bit later at night. Once again, by the time I arrived back, I think that it was about 10:00, so I went inside of my apartment building and then walked up the stairs. When I made it to the top, I walked down the hallway towards my door. Right after I passed by

my next-door neighbor's door, I heard it opening. Again, I just had a bad feeling, and I walked faster to get to my door. I heard his footsteps enter the hallway. When I arrived at my front door, I quickly unlocked it and opened it up. As I was closing the door behind me, I heard the footsteps still approaching. I closed and locked my door, and probably five seconds later, my neighbor actually tried opening it. Then there was once again more really loud banging coming from the other side of it. I really couldn't believe this guy! I

looked out and saw him relentlessly pounding at my front door. I moved away from it then and was about to call the police. I went and got my phone, but then he stopped. At that point, I put the phone down; I didn't want to get in some war with my next-door neighbor. Clearly, he had some problems with me, and he had tried entering my apartment, but I also didn't know if maybe it was just a misunderstanding or something. I decided that if I heard any more banging on the door or walls or anything, I was

going to go over and give him a piece of my mind, and hopefully, he wasn't dangerous. But after that, nothing else happened. So, I would say about a week later, one day, I saw another neighbor in the hallway. I went over and introduced myself to her. I had seen her a couple of times before and knew that she lived here. I told her about what happened and asked her if she knew the guy who lived next to me. She told me that nobody lived there and that the apartment had been vacant for a while. This

was crazy to hear! I then went to the offices of the apartment complex and asked one of the agents. They confirmed that the unit next to mine was vacant and had been for several weeks. My mind was blown after hearing that. I never saw that guy again or heard anything else. I don't live there anymore, but I still get the creeps thinking back to that. This scary situation happened to me many summers ago. At the time, I was living in low-income housing funded by the government. I had just graduated college and still did not have

much money, so I was able to qualify for the small two-story living space, which I was in. The way the low-income housing was set up, there were many units in a row, sort of like a motel style, and I shared a wall with the neighbor to both my right and my left. This particular night, I had gotten off of work at 11 p.m. I got home, made something quick to eat, and then got in the shower to get ready for bed. I had only been in the shower for about five minutes when I heard banging

at my front door downstairs. I hurriedly dried off and threw on some clothes. Then I cautiously went downstairs and approached the door. As I rounded the corner, I was hit with a bright light and told to put my hands up as a policeman pointed a gun directly towards me through the glass window on the door. Terrified, I threw my hands up and followed their orders as they told me to open the door. After they got inside, the officers had to settle me down a bit from the shock I had from seeing a gun pointed at

me through the door window. They went on to explain to me that they were looking for someone who was suspected in a murder. The police had received a call from a witness that the person had been seen attempting to enter units in my stretch of building, and the witness had directed the police towards my place as one of the places that the suspect had attempted to enter. The police requested to search my unit, but I was exhausted at this point and ready for bed. I assured them that I had been home for over an hour

now and that everything was fine in my unit. The police apologized for the scare and moved on to check the other units in my area. It was after midnight by now, and after the police encounter, I was tired and ready for bed. I fell asleep quickly that night but then woke up in the middle of the night for what I thought at first was random. I checked my phone and saw that it was close to 3:30 a.m. As I was in bed about to drift back to sleep, I heard some odd noises coming from the

bedroom across the hall. When I had first moved into this unit, I had a roommate, but they had moved out a couple of months prior, so I mostly used their bedroom for storage purposes. I went out into the hall to check it out because the noises, although quiet, were continuing. The walls were thin, so sometimes you could hear stuff the neighbors were doing through the walls. I had to pee anyway, so I went into the hallway. I still couldn't tell if the noises were coming from inside the closed door of the spare bedroom or the

neighbor's wall, which was shared with that bedroom. I stood right outside of my bedroom door and said hello in my normal voice. The noises stopped immediately. the front door, he hesitated for a moment before turning around and walking away. I found this odd but thought nothing of it and returned to my game. A few minutes later, I heard another car door shut, this time from the direction of the neighbors' house. I looked back out the window and saw another man getting out of a car and heading toward the front door of my aunt and uncle's

house. This man was wearing a hoodie, and I felt a chill run down my spine as he approached the door. I kept watching, feeling increasingly uneasy. To my surprise, he knocked on the door. I was about to go downstairs to tell my parents about the visitor when I noticed that the man had peeked through the window to see if anyone was home. I quickly ducked down out of sight, my heart racing. I remained crouched on the floor for what felt like an eternity, listening intently. I could hear the faint sound of the man knocking again

and calling out, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. After a few minutes, he finally turned and walked back down the driveway. I watched him get into his car and drive off. I didn't see where he went, but I felt a pang of paranoia wash over me. What was that man doing? Why was he so interested in my aunt and uncle's house? I decided it would be best to go check on my parents, so I cautiously made my way downstairs. As I walked through the house, every creak of the floorboards felt amplified in

the stillness. When I reached the living room, my parents were still gone, but my aunt and uncle were in the kitchen preparing dinner. I told them about the two men who had come to the house, and they exchanged worried looks. My uncle assured me that everything was fine and that they were just delivery people or something similar. I tried to brush it off, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. After dinner, I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I kept glancing out the windows, half-expecting to see the men return. The night grew darker, and

I felt increasingly restless. Eventually, my aunt suggested I play video games or watch TV to take my mind off things. I spent the rest of the evening in my room, but I kept the door locked, just in case. Later that night, after everyone had gone to bed, I heard a noise outside my window. It sounded like whispering. I froze, straining to hear. My heart raced as I got up and peeked through the curtains. To my relief, it was just the wind rustling the branches of the trees. I let out a nervous laugh, chastising myself for

being so jumpy. The trip went on without incident after that, but I never forgot about those two men. To this day, I still wonder who they were and what they wanted. It was a trip that started out pleasant but quickly became a lesson in vigilance and awareness, reminding me that sometimes, even in the safest of places, there can be a hint of danger lurking just out of sight. the front door. He didn't knock; he appeared to just look inside and then walked around the side of the house towards the back. Suddenly, I got a bad

feeling. Why would this man want to go into the backyard? The only details I could really make out about him were that he was wearing a black jacket and jeans with a camouflage baseball cap. I went out of the room and into the bathroom across the hall, which had a little window in it overlooking the backyard. I looked around for the man, and then I saw him. He was walking fairly close to the house and went to the back door. I saw him look inside it and then appear to try the handle. To my surprise,

I saw the door open and the man walk right inside. I think I went into shock for a couple of seconds when I saw this because I really didn't think the door would be left unlocked. I heard noise coming from downstairs—the sound of the man coming inside. I didn't have a cell phone at the time, and the only house phone I knew of was downstairs, so I ran back into my bedroom and hid under my bed. I hoped the man wouldn't come upstairs and would just leave. I could sort of hear noises from downstairs of

the man moving around; he seemed to be walking around near the kitchen and the living room. Then, I heard him start to walk up the stairs. This scared me more than anything. He got up the stairs and walked down the hall. I heard him open a door nearby and then the door next to my room. Finally, my door got opened. I held my breath as it did, but as quickly as it opened, it was shut. I didn't know if the man was inside my room or outside because I was facing the wall. Until finally, I

heard the door to my uncle's bedroom open. The man appeared to stay in there for a while and then walked back down the hallway and downstairs again. I kept hiding under the bed and hoped he wouldn't come back upstairs. I was feeling slightly relieved until I heard the footsteps come back up the stairs once again. They seemingly stopped directly in front of the bedroom door that I was in. Then came one of the scariest moments of my life. I heard the man on the other side of the door say, "I know you're in there and

under the bed." Then, the man told me to come out in a very creepy way. I didn't move, however, probably because I was frozen with fear. I was thinking of what I could possibly do when I heard a voice come from downstairs. It was the voice of another man, and he was yelling. I heard him say, "Hey! What's going on?" I heard the man upstairs then walk back down to the base of the stairs and down them. I stayed in hiding. I heard some yelling come from downstairs and then heard the voice of the second

man yell he had called the police. About 10 minutes later, while I was shaking under the bed, I heard sirens and the police entered the house. I came out and talked to a lady police officer about what happened. The man that had broken in had left, but the other man had stayed. He turned out to be the next-door neighbor. My parents arrived about 20 minutes later. I was told that the next-door neighbor had seen the suspicious man enter the house and went inside to investigate. When he saw that the man had broken in, he yelled

at him. The man that had broken into the house used to work for my uncle and had been fired about a year earlier. It was truly a miracle that the neighbor came in the house when he did because he possibly saved my life. This happened about 10 years ago when I was, I think, about 12 or 13 at the time. One night on a Friday, after I got home from school, my parents told me they were going to dinner with some friends. That meant I would be home alone for the night. I was the only

child, and my parents would occasionally leave me alone. I always enjoyed it because I felt cool and grown up to have the whole house to myself. I asked my parents if I could have my friend Ryan over, and he came over a little bit later. We played some basketball, and then my parents left. Ryan and I played some video games for a few hours after that, and then he left to go home. I stayed in my room playing Madden on my PlayStation. About 20 minutes later, I thought I heard a noise coming from downstairs. It

was now around 9:00 p.m., so I assumed it was my parents and thought nothing of it. However, not too long after that, I got a call from my mom on the phone, and she told me that they wouldn't be home for about another hour still. I had forgotten about the noise at that point, and I kept playing video games. That is until, out of the corner of my eye, I was sure I saw somebody walk past my bedroom and down the hall. I had my bedroom door open only about a foot or two, but I

was sure I had seen somebody walk by. I tried to convince myself that it was just our cat or something, but suddenly I got really creeped out, and I wasn't feeling safe in my bedroom anymore. I wanted to get out of the house, but I was afraid of what I had seen. I waited in silence to see if I could hear. Anything else, but there was no noise. Then I heard the floor creak at the end of the hall, past my bedroom. My door didn't have a lock on it and was on the second floor,

so I felt if I made a run for it, I would be able to safely get downstairs and outside. I just didn't know who or what was at the end of my hallway. I was too scared to make any noise or look down the hall. I just sat there in my chair, staring at the crack in my door to see if whoever was there would walk by again. After a couple of minutes, I finally got enough courage to walk over to the door. I did it as quietly as possible and then stood next to the

door and listened. I didn't hear anything, so I decided that on the count of three, I would quickly walk out of my room and down the stairs as quietly as possible, and then go out of my house. I took a deep breath and quickly left my room, but as I did, I guess my curiosity got the better of me and I looked to the end of the hallway. I saw a dirty woman with really messy hair crouched down against the wall with her hands over her face. As soon as she saw me, she started to

scream. I was more than freaked out, and I ran as fast as I could down the stairs and out the front door. As I did, I heard her screaming getting louder and louder. When I got outside, I immediately took out my phone and called my parents. They told me to call the police, so I did, and then I ran to Ryan's house, which was about five minutes away. My parents picked me up from Ryan's, and then we all went back to my house where we saw multiple police cars with flashing lights, as well as an

ambulance. I had to talk to the police, and my parents did for a while too. I guess when Ryan left out the front door, he left it open, and a lady who was messed up on drugs walked right in. It was something I will never forget. In the fall of 2018, I was going into my junior year of college. After living in the dorms for the first two years, I decided to rent a house with a few of my friends. We attended a very large and old college, and this house was sort of rundown and

very old, but it was close to the campus and cheap, so we were more than happy to rent it. There was going to be four of us living there total, and when we first got the place, we all moved some furniture in and then went back home. When August came around, I was the first one to move back into the house for the school year, and the others were going to move in the next week. I moved the rest of my stuff in, then had the whole place to myself for a few days. It was

a house with two floors and a basement and, for the most part, was a typical rundown old college house. The first night when I got back, I was too tired to really do anything and just went to bed. The next day, I mostly just played video games, but at night, I decided to go all around the house and make sure everything was good because none of us had been there for a couple of months. I went upstairs and on the main floor, and then went down into the basement. The basement was unfinished, and we really

didn't have a plan on using it for anything. It had hardly any lighting at all and was just overall not a very livable space. When I got down there, I turned on a light and saw what appeared to be something moving from about 20 feet away. I didn't get a good look at it at all as to what it was. I was afraid it could possibly be a rat, so I took out my flashlight on my phone and looked around. I went all around the basement slowly but didn't see anything at all. But when I

was on the wall next to the stairs, I heard the sound of something falling. I looked over and saw an empty box that had fallen over. It was a rather large box, and I didn't understand how this could happen. It gave me the chills, and without hesitating, I ran back for the stairs and all the way up. Once I got upstairs, I shut the door and stood there. I wasn't sure what to do. I told myself I was 20 years old and I shouldn't be afraid of this. I didn't know if there was some sort

of animal downstairs or, worse yet, a person. I decided to text my friends who would live there about the situation. As I got out my phone, I heard the sound of a woman screaming coming from downstairs. It sounded extremely disturbing. I literally ran all the way upstairs to my bedroom and then called the police. I told them what I had heard and what I had seen, and they said they would send somebody over right away. I sat in my bedroom with the door locked, sitting on my bed. As I did, I heard a door open

from downstairs and then another door slam shut violently. I slowly went out of my room to look around and see if anything was down there, but I didn't see anything at all. The police arrived a few minutes later. They came in and searched the entire house but couldn't find anybody at all. We all assumed whoever it was... left. I just don't know how they got in there, who it was, and to know that I lived there for a whole day with somebody possibly living in the basement really creeps me out. This story happened a long

time ago when I was 10. I don't remember all the details, but I know that on this night, I was left home alone. I was not left alone all that much as a child at that age; it had to be one of the first times. But I believe that I had been left alone a few times prior. My parents usually wouldn't leave me home alone for more than a few hours at most. I'm an only child, and we lived in a two-story house with all the bedrooms being upstairs. So, at this time, I believe it

was the late afternoon or the early evening. I was inside of my bedroom, and my parents had been gone for a while. I just remember that I heard a knock on the front door. We occasionally had people knocking on the door, and usually it was just somebody trying to sell us stuff or whatever. When I got downstairs and into the kitchen, I looked at the front door. I remember seeing a man standing there, and we made eye contact for a second. He was looking at me through the window, and the guy was wearing a black

jacket and jeans, and he seemed pretty average looking. I walked over to the door and answered it. I was curious as to who he was, and I didn't think anything could go wrong. I'm sure that at some point my parents had told me not to talk to people I don't know or answer the door for them; I really can't remember it though, and I guess I just didn't know any better. The man said hi to me and asked me if my parents were home. I told him no, and the man then asked to come inside.

I remember asking him why, and he said that his car broke down and he needed to make a phone call. I believed him, and I said that he could come in to use the phone. When I opened up the door, he walked in and into the kitchen. Our phone was hanging on the wall in the kitchen, and I pointed it out to him. Although I remember when he entered the house, I had a bad feeling about it. I'm not really sure why I did at the time, but I just did. The man picked up the

phone and started to dial a number. I stood there inside the kitchen with him about 10 feet away. The next thing I remember is the guy messing around with the phone and then saying that nobody was answering. He then hung up the phone but did not leave. I expected him to make the call and leave, and if nobody answered it, then too bad, but he kept standing there in the kitchen. Then I remember he started to walk out of the kitchen towards the living room in the back of the house. I was wondering where he

was going, and then right as he was walking into the other room, I heard my parents pulling into the driveway. When they did, the man suddenly turned and started running. He sprinted past me and ran for the front door. He then opened it up and bolted out the door into our yard. After sprinting through our yard, he cut through the neighbor's front yard and then went onto the street. After that, he went out of sight. Our driveway was at the opposite side of the house that he ran. My parents parked their car and soon got

out and walked up to me, asking me what was going on. They said they saw a guy running through the yard and asked me if I was okay and what had happened. I told them the story, and they said that I never should have let the man inside. I learned a valuable lesson that day. At that age, I should have known better, but I didn't. I feel really lucky that my parents got home when they did. I'm not sure if that man was planning to rob our house or what; luckily, I never saw him again

after that. Something weird happened to me last week. I was having a movie night by myself in my apartment. I live alone and on the second floor. My apartment building is fairly new, and I really like it. The place I live in has one bedroom, one bathroom, a living room, and a kitchen. I was on my second movie of the night, and the time was about midnight. It was Saturday, so I didn't have work or anything the next morning. My apartment happened to be on the far end of the hallway, and it was right next

to the stairs that people would occasionally use. The elevator was in the center of the hallway, which is much more common for people to use. I heard the door to the stairs open and then close. It sounded like somebody was walking by down the hallway, and I didn't think anything of it. But I realized soon that it sounded like more than one person, maybe almost 10. I thought it was a little weird but expected them all to pass by. It seemed like they all stopped right outside of my doorway though. Maybe they were going to

the place across the hall from me. The apartment across the hall, though, was not lined up with my door but was a little ways down. I just got curious for some reason, so I paused the movie and got up. I walked over to the door and looked out the peephole. What I saw shocked me. There was... like 10 guys standing in the hallway right outside my apartment, and they were all facing my door. I was instantly creeped out; I didn't know who any of these guys were, and they were all wearing all black and had

hoods on, so I couldn't see much of their faces. This was really bizarre, to say the least. Nobody had knocked on my door, though, and it didn't seem as though they were going to; they were just standing there. I considered, for only a second, opening the door and asking what was going on, but I thought better of it. I quickly walked away and decided to just ignore them. Still, I couldn't feel comfortable as long as they were all standing there. I was hoping, and sort of expecting, them all to move along and keep walking away

down the hallway. I listened for them to move away, but they didn't. I waited for a little longer before unpausing the movie, but I still didn't hear them walking away. The guys had to all still be there. I tried to distract myself by watching the film, but in doing so, I turned the volume down significantly. I didn't want the people outside to hear or know that I was home. As the movie played, though, I still couldn't focus; it wasn't helping to distract me from the strange men standing outside my door. Then I heard what I

was sure sounded like my doorknob turning. It was very quiet, and the only reason I had heard it was because, number one, I was already thinking about the guys at the door, and number two, my TV volume was now very quiet. This made me feel really creeped out, even more than I already was. I also started to feel like possibly I was in danger. I stayed where I was, not sure of what to do. For the next probably 10 minutes, I didn't hear any other noises or anything. I got up to see if the men

were gone, and I was really hoping that they were. When I got to the door and looked out, though, they were all still there. I ran back as quietly as possible, sat back down on my couch, and had no clue what to do in this situation. I didn't think I could call the police for this; they were just standing in my hallway. Yes, I thought they tried opening my door, but it's not like they were trying over and over or banging on the door. Looking back, I probably should have, but I was just hoping I

wouldn't have to. After maybe 5 more minutes or so, I went back to look again. This time when I looked out, they were all gone. I couldn't believe it! I hadn't even heard them walking away or anything. I was so paranoid that I kept looking back out my peephole every 10 minutes or so. Luckily, I didn't see them, but before going to bed, I was so worried about it that I left my apartment and walked the hallways, just making sure that the men were gone. I went throughout the whole entire building just about without seeing

them. After that, I was finally able to go to bed. By now, it was past 2:00 in the morning, and I was really tired. I fell asleep pretty quickly. However, at some point, I was woken up in the night. I just remember waking up to the sounds of somebody knocking on my front door. They knocked about two times after I woke up. I knew it was probably the same guys, and I was terrified. I stayed in my bed and didn't even bother to get up. What could I do? Then there was just silence. I was

afraid they would break in or something. I couldn't believe that they were back if that's in fact who was at the door. I really didn't want to get up and check, though. I laid there in my bed for the longest time. It was probably about 30 minutes or so. I finally looked at the clock and saw that it was almost 4:00 a.m. Then I got up and checked the door. Nobody was outside in the hallway, though; whoever had knocked was gone. I went back to sleep after that and heard nothing more. Since then, everything's been

fine. This happened when I was home alone as a kid. It was the summertime, and I was home during summer break. Both my parents were at work, and I think I was about 12 years old. I have an older brother, and he went to one of his friend's houses that day. When I was home alone, I would just hang out and do whatever. Usually, I would go on the computer that we had and play Minecraft or something like that. It was probably sometime in the early afternoon, and I had been on the computer in the

living room for a while. I moved into the kitchen to get something to eat. The kitchen was at the back side of the house, and we lived in a split level. I will also mention that the neighborhood was pretty average and a little bit on the quieter side. It was when I was standing in the kitchen that I saw something out the window. I just barely saw movement at first, but it looked like somebody was walking by. I moved over to another window to see; that's when I saw a man walking to the back side

of the house. He was wearing a sort of construction vest and had a hat on. I realized that it must be the meter reader. I remember that they came around every so often to our house. I calmed down almost immediately; I had been a little worried seeing a guy walking into. Our backyard. He went to the very back side of our house, near one of the basement windows. I went back to finding some food in the kitchen. After I was in the kitchen for a good five minutes, though, I looked over and noticed that the

guy was still there. Usually, they would come and go really quick and only be there for like a minute at most. I went back into the living room to go back on the computer, but a short time later, I just had the feeling that I should get up and make sure that the man was now gone. Maybe it was because I was home alone and a kid, so I was a little bit paranoid. I carefully walked back over to the window and could see that the man was actually still there. I couldn't believe it! I

couldn't tell exactly what he was doing because I could only see part of him from the angle that I was at, which was higher up than he was. He seemed to be doing something and was near the basement window, but I couldn't tell what exactly he was doing. I thought about going downstairs and looking out of that window, but I knew that the man would see me right away if I did. I went to walk over to another window upstairs that would have a better angle, but I had to be careful so the guy wouldn't

see me. Unfortunately, I really messed up. As I was walking over, I accidentally hit a can that was near the edge of a counter in the kitchen. I knocked it over, and it fell onto the ground. This made a loud noise, and the next thing I knew, I saw the man quickly walking away. He moved back to the side of the house. I moved to the front of the house and watched the man casually walking down the street until I could no longer see him. I felt like he was really suspicious. I questioned whether he

was even a meter reader or not. Why would he leave so suddenly like that? For the most part, though, I was just happy that he was now gone. I went back to the computer and stayed there for the most part until my brother and parents came back home. When they did, I didn't even think to tell them about the guy that had been there. I thought he was gone for good. My brother's bedroom, as well as mine, happened to be in the basement, and my parents' bedroom was upstairs. Because it was summertime, we could stay

up pretty much as late as we wanted. I remember that on this night, my parents went to bed and my brother went down to his bedroom. I stayed up and was on the computer. All of the lights in the house were off except for a small lamp in the living room near me. I stayed up on the computer until I got really tired, which was probably at about 1:00 a.m. Then I turned off the lamp and went downstairs to go to bed. When I got downstairs, I had to walk past a little living room that

was in the basement in order to get to my bedroom. As I was walking past, I happened to see something in the window. The man was back. I could only see a figure of a man, but I could guess who it was. This was the same window that he had been at earlier in the day. I then heard noises coming from the window as if it was going to come open. I was suddenly really afraid. It was really dark down there, and I hit the light switch, which I happened to be really close to. When

this happened, it lit up the whole room, and I could no longer see the man very well. I heard some noise from right outside the window, though, and then it sounded like he was running away. I went running as well, but back upstairs into my parents' bedroom. I knocked on their door and yelled for them to wake up. About a minute later, my dad came out asking what was going on. By the time I explained it all, the man was long gone. My dad went out and inspected the house all around, and he was able

to find that the back window the man kept messing with had quite a bit of damage. It had almost come off; it was like the man had been trying to remove the window and get inside the house, and he was really close to succeeding. After that night, though, the man never came back. I remember being really scared for a while that he would, and I slept upstairs on the couch because I felt safer there. Luckily, he never did. This happened just last year. I live alone in a house with two floors and three bedrooms total.

One of the bedrooms I use as a guest room, and the other as my home office. So one night, I got home from work. It was maybe like 7:00 p.m. or so, I would say. After arriving back, I went inside and then started to cook some food. The kitchen was at the back center of my house. I listened to the radio as I was cooking, and it took me maybe 30 minutes. When I was done, I decided to go upstairs and change and then go back down to eat. So I walked upstairs and was going

to my bedroom, but I noticed that the door to the guest bedroom was closed. I always left the doors open, and I didn't recall closing it. This was really strange to me, so I went over and opened up the door and took a step inside. The lights were off, but before I could reach the light switch, I saw something. There was a woman standing in the back side of the room, looking at me. It was really dark in there, so I didn't get a good look at her at all. But after about a second, she

started to charge at me. I stepped back and closed the door, then ran back down the hallway. When I made it to the stairs, I heard the woman opening the bedroom door. I didn't have any time to think and guess why there was a random woman in my house and why she was now chasing after me. After going down the stairs, I really wasn't thinking at all. I don't know why, but I ran to the door next to it, which led to the basement. Then I went in there and closed the door behind me. I

was standing at the top of the stairs, and it was completely dark down there. I guess I thought it would be a good hiding place. When I was there, I heard the woman go down the stairs, but then she seemed to turn and go in another direction instead of heading toward the basement. I started to feel just slightly better. I took out my phone to call the police, and when I did, it lit up the surrounding area of where I was. I was still standing at the top of the stairs, and I saw that there

appeared to be a man standing in the basement at the bottom of the stairs, and he was walking toward me. When I saw this, I opened the door back up and left the basement. Then I just ran for the front door. I honestly don't know where the woman was, but thankfully I did not see her. I left the house and ran for my car. Once there, I got inside and called the police. I then drove away from my house and did not come back until the cops were there. When the police got there, they went

inside my house and were able to locate both the woman and the man. The crime couple was arrested. I'm not sure how, but they were able to get inside my house. There was no sign of a break-in, so I never found out where they entered. Maybe I left a door unlocked, but I really don't know. Apparently, they both entered together, though, and for some reason, the woman hid upstairs and the man hid downstairs. I'm not sure if I surprised them by getting home or what; I think they were planning on robbing me. That was by

far the scariest moment of my life, though. I still live in the house, but since then, I've taken just about every security measure there is, and hopefully, nothing like that ever happens again. In high school, I would earn some extra money over the summers by house sitting. My aunt and uncle were fairly rich, so they took a lot of vacations. They had gone away on a short weekend trip, so I was house sitting for them the entire weekend. My aunt and uncle owned a couple of cats, so they always requested that I stay overnight, and

I didn't mind it anyway since they had a really nice house. This particular Saturday night, it was my friend Tyler's birthday. Our friend group went out for dinner that evening, and we all wanted to hang out afterwards. I offered up my aunt and uncle's house as a place that we could hang out the rest of the night since many people wanted to drink and party a bit, and we couldn't do it at anybody else's house due to their parents being home. It was a pretty normal night, and we played many card games and drinking games

together and enjoyed celebrating Tyler's birthday. We wrapped up close to 2:00 a.m., and everybody began leaving. There were enough people who stayed sober, so everyone had a ride home, and nobody needed to crash on my aunt and uncle's couch for the night. I said goodbye to everybody, then headed back into the kitchen to clean up some of the cans and glasses. It felt like it had been barely 3 or 4 minutes since everybody had left that the doorbell rang. I assumed that one of my friends had forgotten something important at the house, so I went

to answer the door without thinking much about it. I opened the door and was surprised to see nobody there. I was pretty drunk and didn't think too much of it, thinking my friends were playing a prank on me before leaving into the night darkness. I yelled, "Real funny, guys! Go home!" I went back inside and then went to sleep on the couch. Later that night, I was woken up to the sound of the doorbell being repeatedly rung about four or five times in a row, very quickly. I didn't know what the time was, but I

was pretty angry at being woken up, and I had a feeling that it most likely wasn't my friends ringing the doorbell. I didn't open the door this time but peeked out the front window through the curtains. My aunt and uncle's house was in a nicer part of town where there was a lot of space for yards and not that many street lights. I couldn't see anybody through the window because of how dark it was. I didn't call the cops because there was a possibility that it could have been my friends, so I figured I’d better

not call. I went back to sleep and didn't have any more problems for the rest of the night. The next morning, I texted my group chat of friends and asked them if they had played a prank on me. Last night, with ringing the doorbell, they all swore that they had not, as they all went home and went to bed after I had cleaned up the rest of the mess from the night before. Before I opened the front door to leave, I saw a piece of paper taped down to the door. The note said, “If you

want a really fun night, leave the door unlocked next time.” To me, the whole situation seemed more like a weird, messed-up prank by someone, but either way, it was creepy. I told my aunt and uncle about the night once they returned and also asked not to stay overnight when I house-sat for them in the future. They ended up installing a Ring doorbell camera after that and have had no problems since that night. But I still feel uneasy sometimes if I'm house-sitting for them, and I'm there while it's dark out. As a kid, my parents used

to go out of town for business all the time. I used to have to stay at my aunt's house when they were gone, but when I turned 13, my parents finally trusted me enough to stay home by myself. I was excited for this because I felt like I was being an adult living by myself. For three days, my parents went over everything I needed and told me to lock all the doors and windows. When my parents left, I mainly watched TV and played video games. It was a Friday night, so I stayed up pretty late,

and at about 2:00 in the morning, I finally got sleepy and decided to go to bed. I went around the house making sure every window and door was locked, and then I covered all the windows with blinds and shades. After that, I got ready for bed and turned out all the lights. I got in bed, closed my eyes, and tried to fall asleep. I was lying there for maybe two or three minutes when I heard the sound of a car slowly driving down our street. We lived in a very quiet neighborhood, and we were at

the end of a street, so we didn't get much traffic often. I kept my eyes closed until I heard the car seemingly stop directly in front of our house. I heard the engine idling but didn't hear the sound of a door opening or anything. After about a minute of this, I got curious, so I carefully raised my blinds and looked out. I could see there was a pickup truck parked right in front of our mailbox, just sitting there with the engine running. I didn't recognize the truck and stayed watching it for a little while. Finally,

I saw the door open and a man get out. He walked around the truck towards my yard. Our yard was pretty big; in fact, it was about five acres, and most of it was just wood that went from the side of our house all the way to the back and beyond our property. The man paced around a little bit, halfway in the street and halfway in our driveway. He seemed to be looking around, and then out of nowhere, he just walked into the side of my yard and into the woods. I started freaking out inside

and wanted to call my parents, but with it being nearly 3:00 in the morning, I knew they would be sleeping. I considered calling the police, but I also thought maybe the man had a logical explanation. I feared the man was going to try to break into our house or something, though. I got up and once again checked every door and window to make sure that it was locked. I then turned on every light in the house to make it look like there were people home. After that, I went back up to my room and locked

the door. I peeked out of the window again. When I did, after just about 30 seconds, I heard noises coming from the woods. I was very careful not to let myself be seen from the window. I saw the man come out of the woods; he jogged towards his truck and got inside. Then the truck sped off rather fast—so fast, in fact, that I heard skid marks as it drove away. I was left with many questions. It took me a long time to fall asleep, and the rest of the weekend I was on edge. I'm happy

to say that the man never came back, but I still wonder to this day what he was doing. This story took place in December of last year. My parents took my sisters to my aunt's house about 30 minutes away from mine, and I didn't want to go, so my parents left me home alone with my dog. It was around 8:30 p.m. and, in the winter time, so it was already pitch black by now. I was in the middle of playing a game on my TV in my room when I heard a noise. This was unusual,

but being the 15-year-old that I was, I decided not to pay any attention to it. A few minutes later, though, I heard another noise, but it sounded closer this time. I decided to pause my game and go investigate a bit. I did a full sweep of the house and found nothing. This sort of creeped me out, but there wasn't much I could do, so I just went back and kept playing. Some time went by, and I recall the time being around 10:20 p.m. My dog had come up to me and started getting all excited and

jumping around for a bit. This was her way of saying that she needed to go to the bathroom, which meant I had to let her outside and then let her back inside when she... Was done. I was skeptical about this, but I hesitantly took her out to the back of the house to let her out. I was about to open the back door when I suddenly got this fearful urge to go and look out the window first. I cautiously looked out the window, making sure to only move the blinds by a centimeter. I saw nothing

at first, but when I looked at the back of my yard, what I saw made my blood turn to ice. It was a man in his late thirties, with a scruffy beard and long, disgusting hair, looking right at me. I took my dog, locked the door, ran upstairs, and went into the bathroom. Then I locked the door there. I called my parents, and they were home in 20 minutes. The cops were called, but they never found the guy. I still wonder to this day what would have happened if I didn't look out the window first.

This is a story of the first time I ever remember being left home alone. I'm guessing I was 8 or 9 years old or so. I had two older siblings, so usually when my parents went somewhere, they would stay home with me. But finally, one day, my parents were both at work, and my sisters left to go to a friend's house, so I was home alone for the first time in my life. It was a strange feeling being all alone in our house. I remember I was a little scared, so I even went to all

the windows and shut them and made sure all of our doors were locked. I knew nothing would happen, but still, I did it to make myself feel safer. I remember I went into the living room, turned on the TV, and started watching. I was having a relaxing afternoon until I heard a knock on our front door. I was a very shy kid, and we lived in an area where it was rare to get people at our front door because our house was the only one at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac. I didn't know why

anybody would be knocking at our front door. I wanted to see who it was, but I had no intentions of answering it unless I knew the person. So I quietly went to a window in a nearby room and peeked out of it. I slowly looked out and ducked down so whoever it was couldn't see me. I saw that it was an old lady knocking on our front door, but I didn't recognize her at all. She had white hair, was wearing a hat, and also a jacket. I decided to wait until she left before I went

back to watching TV. She knocked and then waited a few seconds, and then knocked again. She continued this for several minutes; it felt like a long time, and I had no idea what she could possibly want. Then she walked away, but instead of walking back down the driveway, she went around to the side to the back of the house. Now I was feeling a little bit more concerned. I walked to a window at the back of the house and again was very careful not to be seen or heard. She started knocking on the back door

of the house this time. She continued this for several minutes and then walked back to the front of the house when I didn't answer. I was so relieved when I finally saw her start to walk down my driveway to the street. I saw a car parked on the side of the street, kind of hidden behind a tree, and the old lady walked to it. I kept watching her as she opened the passenger's door of the car and got in. I could see in her window from this angle, but as she sat in the passenger seat,

I saw her remove her hat and then reach for the top of her head and remove a mask to reveal that it was not an old lady but a man. My jaw dropped when I saw this. I saw the person throw the mask and hat into the back seat, and then the car drove away. I may never know why a man pretending to be an old lady came knocking on my door, but it gives me the creeps to think about it. This happened when I was a kid; ironically, it was the first time I was

ever left home alone. I remember the year was 2006. I lived with my parents and older sister. Our house was in a pretty normal neighborhood; there were a bunch of houses on our street, and the yards were a decent size, but not that big. The street was usually pretty quiet; mostly, only people who lived there would drive down. On this night, my sister was at her best friend's house, and my parents were going to a movie with friends. I didn't have anything going on, so I was left home alone. Normally, my older sister would be

left home with me, but not tonight. I was a little bit nervous, to be honest, because I was afraid of the basement and really shy in general. But overall, I didn't think it was that big of a deal; my parents were only going to be gone for maybe three hours. Our house was pretty average, and I planned to just hang out in the living room the whole time. When my parents left, everything went well for the first hour or so. I was sitting on the couch, channel surfing, when there was a knock at the front

door. Suddenly, my heart started pounding. I would never answer the door by myself, and I didn't know who could be there. Also, it was like... 8:00 at night, and dark outside, I stayed where I was. After a 10-second pause or so, whoever was there knocked again. I was too scared to even get up and look out the window to see who was there. Our blinds were all closed in the living room, which I had done myself after my parents left. This was exactly the kind of situation that I was afraid of. The person knocked again;

they seemed like they really wanted somebody to answer the door. I just wanted them to leave. After knocking one more time, finally, it seemed to stop for good. I was glad that they stopped, and now, finally, I decided to go look out the window. I got up and looked out, but saw nobody there. The front step, as well as the driveway, were empty, and I didn't see anybody in the street either. I felt a little better after this and then returned to what I was doing. I had no idea who had been knocking or why,

but all that mattered to me was that they were now gone. For the next 20 minutes or so, I stayed in the living room on the couch. Then, I heard what sounded like something hitting up against the back window of the house. It seemed weird to me. I heard the noise for probably like 30 seconds. I decided to get up and see what it was. When I walked over to the kitchen, I saw the window where the noise was coming from and at first saw nothing. Then, when I got closer, I saw there was a

man right on the other side in our backyard. I turned on the light, and the guy ducked down out of my view. I ran away after I saw him. I went all the way to my bedroom and got into my bed. When I got there, I covered myself with blankets and plugged my ears. I couldn't take it anymore, and I didn't want to know what was happening. I remained there for probably another hour, too scared to move. I didn't hear anything and didn't allow myself to hear anything either. For all I knew, our house could

be getting robbed. Finally, when I was able to feel well enough to take the blankets off, everything seemed fine. I didn't hear anything from inside the house. Just minutes later, my parents got home. When they were inside, I went to see them. Everything in the house was fine, and there was no sign of the man anywhere. The windows he had been at were still closed and not broken or anything. I told my parents about it, and they checked all around the house as well as outside. There was no sign of the guy, though I'm guessing

that after the man saw me, he ran away and didn't come back. I think he was trying to break in, though. Quite possibly, he knocked to see if anybody was home, and when there was no answer, he figured the house was empty. After this experience, I didn't want to stay home by myself for a long time. This happened back when I was in college. During the summers, I lived back home with my parents at their house. I had almost the entire basement to myself, and they wouldn't really go down there much when I was gone.

There was a big TV down there, and then my bedroom and a bathroom. It was really nice to have all that space. I drove home from school after I had finished my finals and packed up my stuff from the college dorm. When I arrived back at my parents' house, they happened to be gone. They told me that they would be back in a few hours and were out for the night. That meant that I would be home alone. I did have my own house key, so when I got back, I was able to get inside.

I spent the first bit of time unpacking a bunch of my stuff and putting some of it into storage in the basement. I went down into the basement and stayed in the main room, using the TV for a while. It was then that I thought I heard a noise coming from inside of my bedroom. I hadn't been in there yet, and the door was closed. I didn't know what it could be, but I wasn't scared or anything like that. I casually got up and walked over to the door, then I opened it. When I did,

I heard the sound of my closet door closing. It was kind of out of my view, and when I looked over to it, the door was completely shut. Suddenly, I was now a little bit concerned about what this could be; only a person could close the door like that, and I was home all by myself. I thought about going over and opening the closet door but decided not to. I turned around and walked out of the room instead. I no longer wanted to be downstairs, so I went up into the living room upstairs. As I

was up there, probably 30 minutes went by without anything happening. I was just watching TV and relaxing on the couch. Out of nowhere, I heard the sound of somebody walking up the staircase. I knew that it wasn't my parents because they weren't home yet. I looked over to the stairs; the person was not in my view yet, but I kept looking. Then I saw a man start to come into view, and he was walking up the stairs towards me. This guy looked a little bit older than me, but had a beard and long hair. He

looked like he had to be on some kind of drug or something as... He approached me. I quickly got up, backed away, and asked him who he was. The guy didn't say anything; he just kept walking closer. I told him that he needed to get out of here or I was going to call the police. The guy didn't say anything, though, and kept getting closer and closer to me. I was backed up as much as I could and would soon reach the wall. He continued to approach me. I then ran to the side and was

now in the back corner of the house. The guy kept coming near me. Then he started to charge at me. This guy had to be insane. When he lunged for me, I jumped out of the way. He caught part of my leg, and I fell to the ground. The man fell also. I was able to get to my feet before he did, and I ran to the staircase and went down the stairs as quickly as possible. When I made it to the bottom, I opened the door and left the house. The crazy guy did the

same, but a little bit after me. I went sprinting down the neighborhood street, yelling at the guy to get away from me. He stopped chasing me eventually and kind of wandered off into somebody else's yard. Then I was finally able to compose myself and call 911. When the police got to my street, I didn't know where the guy was anymore. I had walked back to our house and was standing in the front yard. The guy ended up being found about 15 minutes later. I guess he went and hid in somebody's backyard, and they saw him

and called the police. The police happened to already be there, a few houses away, at my place, and picked the guy up. I'm really not sure how he got into my parents' house or how long he had been there. I'm guessing he got in shortly after they left. I do know that he was there the entire time that I was, and that really gives me the creeps. I'm a 29-year-old female, and I live with my husband in a house. Our neighborhood is pretty standard for the most part, and this happened about a year and a

half ago. I worked pretty normal hours then, but my husband's hours are more random. On this night, I recall that he was working late. It was probably sometime after 8:00 PM, and I remember that I was in the living room. I was FaceTiming my sister and young nephew. The three of us were talking until her son had to go to bed, and then I hung up. At that point, I recall looking out the front window and noticing a car starting to pull into our driveway. A couple of things struck me as odd about this, though.

For one, it was not my husband's vehicle, and he wasn't supposed to be home yet. And for two, the vehicle's lights were off as it entered the driveway. Now, our driveway is somewhat long and goes up to the garage. The garage is out of sight of the house, though, because it connects to it. So, the car ended up slowing down, then just barely going out of my sight and parking. I kept watching and was now listening as well, but I didn't hear anybody getting out or anything. I called my husband and let him know what

was going on. I was hoping that maybe this was one of his friends or something, but he had no clue as to who that would be and said that he would leave work as soon as possible. After hanging up with him, I wasn't really sure what to do. I then walked over to the dining room, which had a window that looked out to the backyard. It was very dark back there; however, when I looked, I saw what appeared to be a man walking out from behind the garage and into the backyard. When I saw this,

I left the room and dialed 911. I told the operator my address and explained the situation of what was going on. I was told that police were on the way. After that, I was walking through the living room when I suddenly heard the sound of glass breaking. It sounded like the dining room window was being smashed. I ran the rest of the way to the bedroom and closed the door behind me, locking it. I moved into the bedroom closet and shut the door there as well. Now that I was there, I really couldn't hear too

much. Several minutes went by, and I thought that I was in the clear, but then I heard footsteps in the hallway. When that happened, I held my breath. The man got closer and closer and didn't go into any other rooms. It seemed as though he was heading straight for the bedroom that I was in. He then tried opening the door, which was locked. When it didn't open, there was a very loud bang at the door. Perhaps the man was trying to break the door down by hitting it with something. Then after another loud bang, I

heard police sirens in the distance. This caused the man to move away from the door and go back down the hallway. Within a minute, police were out front of the house. I didn't hear much more until I was sure that the cops were there. Then I left the bedroom and went out into the hallway. The police had found the man leaving through the backyard, and luckily he was caught. The man had in fact broken the glass to the dining room, but nothing in the house was really messed up other than the window. I'm not sure

what the guy's intentions were. The plan was—I’m really grateful that the police got there when they did. My husband and I have been living at this house for about five years now. We lived in a fairly large town, but we lived on the edge of town, so we had a larger property in a wooded area. Our property had a cabin-type vibe with plenty of space for our dogs, two German Shepherds, to run around. We had neighbors close to us, maybe only 500 ft away, but there were enough trees to make us feel secluded. On this

rainy Thursday night, my husband had gone to play poker with some friends, as they occasionally do, and it was at one of his buddy's houses that was about 10 minutes away. I was home alone with the dogs, watching Netflix and enjoying some ice cream. After an episode ended, it sounded like there was a break in the rain, so I got up from the couch and let the dogs out to go to the bathroom in the backyard. I would normally go out with them and stand outside, but since it was still raining lightly, I just watched

the dogs through the window. The dogs do their business pretty quickly most of the time, but this time they were spending a lot of time sniffing and hovering around our old shed close to the woods in the backyard. My dog began barking at the shed and wouldn’t stop, thinking that they had trapped an animal in or near the shed. I stepped out onto the back patio and yelled their names, ordering them to come inside. The dogs would not stop barking. I went back inside, grabbed a rain jacket, a flashlight, and put some shoes on, and

then I walked out towards the shed to check out the scene. As I got closer to the shed, I noticed a horrible smell filling my nostrils. It smelled like a dead animal; almost, it was that bad. As I approached the shed, shining my flashlight towards it, I got within about 20 ft when suddenly the door of the shed burst open, and a small, dirty-looking man jumped out. He couldn’t have been much taller than 5 ft; his clothes were rags, his hair a tangled mess, and he smelled horrible. He had a shovel from our shed in

his hand, and he took a couple of swings at my dogs, attempting to hit them, but thankfully he missed. He locked eyes with me for a split second, then dropped the shovel and ran into the woods behind my house. After he had disappeared into the woods, I ran back inside, called the cops, and then called my husband, telling him to come home right away. The cops came very quickly and searched the wooded area behind my house, where they ended up finding the man hiding in some brush close to my neighbor's house. My husband and I

ended up finding out a couple of days later that it was a homeless man who had been squatting in people's sheds and garages around town. I’m grateful that I had the dogs there with me that night, as I’m not sure what would have happened if I had confronted the crazed man without the safety of my two German Shepherds. I was home alone with my older brother one summer night when I was 11 or 12, and it’s been a long time since this happened. My parents told me and my brother that they were visiting a friend

and would be gone for the night. They entrusted my brother with me; he was 13 or 14 at the time. Our parents left at about 8:00 p.m., and then it was just us. Keep in mind we lived in a one-story house with a kitchen, a living room, and three bedrooms. My brother slept in the bedroom closest to the living room, meaning he was closer to the front door, and I slept in the room farthest from it. When my parents left, me and my brother went to the living room and started up our Xbox. We took

out our controllers and started playing some video games. At some point, I would say around 9:30, it started to rain, and I got bored. I left my brother to play some video games by himself and went back to my room and turned on my tablet to watch some videos with my headphones in. As I was doing that, I suddenly heard some rustling and what I thought were footsteps somewhere outside my window. I didn’t mind; I assumed it was the wind. Keep in mind my house has a pathway with a gate cutting from the front lawn

all the way to the backyard, and it passes by my window. I heard a squeak, and then through the pouring rain, I heard our gate creak open, then thud lightly against the garbage cans right next to it. It was loud enough for me to hear through my headphones, which caused me to pause the video and listen closer. Footsteps sounded on the pathway going to the back door, and that’s when I freaked out. I threw my headphones on the bed and dropped my tablet. Then I sprinted towards the back door and locked it just as soon

as the person tried the handle. The blinds on the door were closed, so I couldn’t see the person clearly, but I saw the shadowy figure of a man facing the door. I backed away slowly and reached my brother in the living room. I whispered to him to get his attention, and I asked him if he had heard what I did. He paused the game and stared at me, bewildered. "No," he said. I took a deep breath before responding, "There’s a man at the back door," I said. Then I asked him if he... had locked the

doors, he nervously glanced at the kitchen door before whispering that no, he didn't. But before I could run into the kitchen and lock the door, I heard the dreaded footsteps headed towards it. I wouldn't be able to lock it on time, so I told my brother to follow me, and we ran terrified into our parents' bedroom and went into their closet. We locked both their bedroom door and the closet door. I heard the terrifying sound of the kitchen door opening, and the pouring rain got even louder. My brother whispered to me that he was going

to call 911 and opened his phone and dialed. He reached the operator as he explained the situation quietly. I heard the intruder stomping around the house, opening doors and closets until he reached our parents' room. He tried the handle but realized it was locked. Then we heard him chuckle. “I know you're in there,” he said in this hollow, raspy voice that sent shivers down my spine. As I heard it in the dark, I saw the terrified gleam in my brother's eyes as the intruder began pounding on the door, letting out screams as he did so,

making it even worse. It made me feel sick. The intruder then stopped, and it was suddenly so silent that I could feel the tension in the air. My brother and I waited until the sounds of police sirens were audible, and it sounded like music to my ears. The police pounded on the front door, but when they realized it was locked, they broke the door down and did a thorough sweep of the house. One of them comforted us and told us to call our parents to come home. When they left, they told us to call again

if anything else happened since the intruder had escaped. Luckily, the intruder didn't come back, but those terrifying moments when the intruder pounded on the door and screamed nonsense will forever haunt me. This took place back when I was a kid; I believe I was 10 years old or so. This was in the late '90s, and during this time, I would ride the bus home from school. It would drop me off at the corner, not far from my house, then I would walk a short distance on the sidewalk and go inside. We lived in a pretty

standard neighborhood in the suburbs, and when I would arrive back home from school, both of my parents would still be gone at work. I had been trusted to be home by myself since I was 9 years old, and I didn't mind it. In the afternoons, I would usually only be by myself for about 2 or 3 hours. I would just hang around the house and do homework or watch TV usually. So one time, I got home from school like always. I was by myself, and it was maybe about 15 minutes or so after I got

back home. I was in the living room, and there was a knock at the front door. I looked over, and from where I was, I could tell that somebody was there, but I couldn't see who they were. Back then, I was a shy kid, and I didn't want the person at the door to see me, so I ducked down. The person at the door then knocked again. I was curious, so I carefully moved to a window and looked out to see who it was. There was a man there, but I did not recognize him, and

he was just standing at the front step. After knocking twice, the guy then tried opening the door, which was locked. Then he finally walked away. I thought that this was really weird. I watched him cut through the front yard and then go out of sight, heading towards the sidewalk. It was very confusing why this guy would be here. I was thinking that he had to be at the wrong house or something. I really couldn't think of any other possible explanation, but after the guy left, I moved on and forgot about it. It was certainly strange

and a bit creepy, but it didn't seem that bad to me. My parents ended up getting home later, and everything was fine. But the very next day, I saw the man again. I remember that I rode the bus home, and I got dropped off shortly after. I stepped off the bus, and I remember noticing the guy. He was a long ways away but walking down the sidewalk. I found it strange to see him here again because until the previous day, I had never seen him before. I was not aware of him living in the area

or anything like that, so I tried to hurry up, and I walked quickly to my house. Then I unlocked the door and went inside. Once I was in, I felt safe, and I didn't really think that the man would do anything. But maybe 5 minutes later, there was a knock at the door again. I looked and saw that the same guy was back. Obviously, I was not going to answer the door. I tried to stay hidden from the view of the man. This time, he only knocked once, and again he tried opening the door, but

after that, I saw him start to walk away. It was pretty much the same thing as the day before, and I saw him go out of my sight. This time, though, I was more creeped out because of the fact that he was here 2 days in a row. Plus, he saw me walk to the house, so there was no mistaking it. But for the next hour or so, nothing else strange happened. I was just hanging out in the living room. Then I decided to go out and water some of the... Flowers in the backyard. I

went to the back of the house where the kitchen was, and then I left through the back door. I took two steps into the backyard and saw the guy coming out from behind a bush. He was walking towards me. I ran back inside as fast as I could, and the man started running after me. I closed the door and locked it just in the nick of time; he nearly stopped me. He tried getting in but couldn't. I ran out of the room and went to the phone in the living room. I dialed 911 and asked

for the police to come to my address. The man ran away at that point, though I was glad he was gone. The police got there a while later and searched the entire property as well as the neighborhood; however, the man was long gone by then. There was a bit of an investigation done. I don't really remember much else other than a neighbor about a block away remembered seeing a work van parked on the side of the road. They didn't know whose it was, and it was thought that maybe that was the guy's vehicle. After that,

though, he never came back. I'm really glad that I was all right. I will never forget that scary experience. It was the holidays, and at this time of year, my family and I would usually go to my aunt's house, given the fact that there would always be a big party there. This year, I decided that I wouldn't go, seeing as I was a 19-year-old male and I would really only want to play games such as 2K and Call of Duty. My parents reluctantly told me I could stay, and off they went to my aunt's house.

I immediately went on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Fast forward to around 2:00 in the morning. I was lying on my bed watching YouTube videos when I heard a knock at the door. It was more of a pound, really. I sat up in fear. "Who could that be?" I thought to myself. I went to a room next to where the door was and I peeked out. I saw no one on the front porch. I was a big car guy, so I immediately recognized the car. It had its lights off, but in the driver's seat sat

a man, probably in his 40s. He had a disgusting goatee, a trucker hat, and what looked like a 20-year-old next to him in the passenger seat. I had a bad feeling ever since the knock on the door, and now I felt even more scared. I immediately went to my bathroom on the first floor and locked the door. All of a sudden, I heard a window getting smashed. I wanted to call the cops, but I left my phone upstairs in my room. I slowly and quietly worked my way upstairs and entered my room. I got my

phone, and as I was leaving, I saw two pairs of boots showing at the bottom part of my dresser where there was an opening. I pretended that I didn't see them and calmly walked downstairs. As soon as I was halfway back down the stairs, I heard a crack—the type of crack that can only be produced if you shut a door really slowly. As soon as I heard that, I bolted the rest of the way, got out of the house, and called the police. "Hi, my name is Jay, and this is the most traumatizing experience of

my life." I was 11 at the time when this occurred. It was just a day like any other. My parents were both doctors, so they constantly went in and out of work, so I was home by myself a lot. I never had a problem being home alone. On this night, it was 8:00, and I was just watching a movie when I started hearing rustling in my bushes. My cat had gone for a walk, so I thought she was coming back and didn't think anything of it. Five minutes passed by, and I had forgotten about the

rustling until I saw my motion light turn on. I again thought it was my cat, so I just kept watching the movie. Some more time went by, and the motion light was still on, so now I was a little interested. I went to look out my window, but I saw nothing. "Okay, weird," I told myself. About ten minutes later, I saw my motion light turn on, and this time I thought it was some kids trying to mess with me. So instead of looking out the window, I turned on my dad's camera system, but what I

saw will haunt me for the rest of my life: three large men wearing Vendetta masks were standing on my patio porch. I immediately turned off my TV and the lights and went into my kitchen to grab the biggest knife I could find. Then I immediately ran into my mom and dad's master bedroom, locked the door, and hid under their bed. I used the bed sheets to cover me. I then dialed 911 and told the officer I needed help. The female officer told me there were two officers in the area and that they were immediately en

route to my house. The officer wanted to keep me on the line, but I wasn't thinking clearly in the heat of the moment, and I hung up. Five minutes felt like hours as I waited in that dark room until I heard glass shattering. The bitter truth then hit me as I realized that they had broken into the living room window and were making their way inside. I then heard them make their way upstairs and towards the master bedroom where I was hiding. I tried the door, and when I saw that it was locked, I broke

it open. When I heard them break the door, I literally peed myself. They went into the bedroom, and I heard them first go to the closet where my dad kept his very important and valuable documents. The closet was at the other side of the room, and I knew I had to think fast. So I took a risk, got out from the other side of the bed, and ran as fast as Usain Bolt, screaming as I ran through the living room and outside. The miraculous sound of police sirens was like music to my ears. As I

flagged them down, they pulled over, and I ran and hugged them, saying that they were in the master bedroom. Some officers ran into my house, and moments later I heard shouting and then three gunshots. Ten minutes later, two ambulances arrived along with my family and some friends who were worried sick. The rest of the night was me making statements and filling out police reports. I then learned two hours later that when the cops went into the house, they saw that the men were making their way upstairs. They told the men to freeze, but one of

the men pulled out a gun and fired it at the officers. It hit the officer in the leg, and the other cop shot two bullets back, killing one of the suspects instantly and causing the other two to surrender. If you're wondering, the cop that was shot did survive. This experience was extremely traumatic, and I had to take therapy for the next eight months to cope with what happened that night. I still get chills running down my spine when I think about what those men would have done to me if they had found me. This happened

when I was younger; I think it was either my last year of middle school or my freshman year of high school. When I was a kid, my parents divorced, and I lived with my mom most of the time. Occasionally, I would go up and stay at my dad's place for a weekend, but usually, I was just at my mom's. I have an older brother who's about five years older than me, and he was in college at the time of the story, so most of the time, it was just my mom and me inside our house.

He lived in a smaller place with a few bedrooms upstairs and the regular kitchen, living room, and bathroom downstairs. On the night of the story, my mom had to work at night, which she would have to do occasionally. This meant that I would be home all by myself, at least until she got off work. I think she got off around 9:00 that night, and at about 7:00 p.m., I was home alone and got bored. My best friend was a kid named Brian who lived in the same neighborhood. He actually lived just down the street, but

our street was really long, and it took about five minutes to walk from his place to mine. I Snapchatted Brian and asked him if he wanted to come over and hang out. I didn't bother to ask my mom if I could have him over because I figured she wouldn't care. Brian wasn't really doing anything either at the time, and he agreed. Normally, when Brian and I hung out, we would just game. I told Brian that I would leave the back door unlocked for him and to come right in. Then I went downstairs, unlocked the back

door for Brian, and turned the light on next to it as well. Then I went back upstairs to my bedroom and started up my PlayStation. A few minutes went by, and I started playing a warm-up game of Call of Duty while waiting for Brian. Then, maybe minutes later, I heard the back door open, then close. I kept playing and didn't really bat an eye; Brian knew where my bedroom was, and I expected him to be up shortly. I kept focusing on my game and got a little bit carried away because like five minutes went by

and Brian still wasn't in my room yet. That's when I realized it was strange. I got up and walked over to my doorway. I yelled out, "Brian!" There was no answer. I headed downstairs to see what Brian was doing. Right when I got to the bottom of the stairs, though, I saw somebody. It was a grown man who I had never seen before in my life. He was standing at the other end of the room and wasn't looking at me. I couldn't believe it. I quickly ran in the opposite direction, but then I heard the

man start to move. I ducked down and hid behind the couch. Then I heard the man start walking. The guy also sounded like he was very quietly talking to himself. I couldn't make out what he was saying, though; it sounded like he was rambling. I was on my hands and knees, crouched down between the wall and the couch. The guy walked over in my direction but seemed to go past me towards the stairs. Then I heard him walking up them. When he reached the top, I used this opportunity to get up and run for the

door. I exited the front door just in time to see Brian walking up the driveway. He saw me leaving the house, and I ran over to him. Brian looked really confused when he saw the look of panic on my face. I told him there was a man in the house and that we had to get out of there. We both ran back to Brian's house down the street. Luckily, his parents were home, so when... We got inside, and we felt much safer. The police were called, and Brian and I stayed at his house. After like

an hour, a police officer showed up at Brian's house. He told us that they had caught a man inside my house, upstairs in my bedroom. My mom heard about it and left work 30 minutes early. She picked me up from Brian's, and we went back to our house. Everything was mostly still in place. Still, I couldn't believe they had found the guy inside my bedroom. I'm so glad I left when I did, and the guy didn't see me hiding from him. I learned a valuable lesson from this: not to leave any doors unlocked. I'm always

very careful about it still to this day. By myself in an apartment, it's really close to downtown in a big city. There are lots of people that live in the area, but I've never witnessed anything that crazy until recently. A few months ago was when the story took place. It had been another long day of work, and I had just gotten home. I worked a long shift, and I love my job, but it can be very tiring. After walking home, I got into my apartment building and up to the fourth floor, where my place was.

I got inside, closed the door, and locked it like I always did, and then headed to take a shower, put on some comfortable clothes, and go to bed. I had made it about 10 feet away from my front door when I heard the knob turning. Somebody was trying to get in. This was strange and something that had never happened before. I stopped in my tracks and then moved over to the door and looked out the peephole into the hallway. Nobody was there. Whoever had tried to enter, I guess, had just left. Maybe it was a

mistake, or maybe it wasn't. Either way, I was really tired and just wanted to take a shower and go to bed. About 20 minutes later, I was in bed and just browsing on my phone before I fell asleep. During this time, all of my lights in my apartment were out, and it was completely silent inside. That's when I heard my doorknob being turned again, but not once this time—multiple times. There was no knock, but I knew whoever had tried to enter before was likely back. I couldn't sleep with the thought of someone trying to enter

my apartment. I got up from bed and tiptoed over to the door to look out once again. This time, I saw somebody—a man. The man stood there just outside of my front door. I kind of freaked out when I saw him. He looked kind of sketchy; he wasn't well-dressed or put together. He was just standing there and looking at my door. Then he tried opening it another time. He sort of looked around the hallway and then back to my door. I kept watching, and he stood there for maybe another minute. Then he turned to the

right and started walking away down the hallway. The hallway led straight down to the stairs and elevator area. I waited to make sure that the guy was leaving, and about 10 seconds after he left my view, I quietly opened my door. I snuck out into the hallway and took a few steps out to make sure that the guy was going to leave. Hopefully, that would give me peace of mind, and I could go back to bed. At first, I saw the man a good distance down the hallway, walking away still. He was almost at the

end of the hall, but then he stopped and turned around and faced me. He started heading towards me, and his walk quickly turned into a sprint. I hurried as quickly as I could to get back inside my apartment and close the door. As soon as I made it inside, I slammed it and locked it. The man reached the door probably a second later and tried opening it again. After he realized it wouldn't open, he pounded on the door a few times. I yelled to the other side, asking what the man wanted. He did not answer

me but kept standing there. I watched still from the peephole inside. He tried opening the door again. I yelled that I was calling the police, and then the man finally turned and left. Still, I wasn't convinced that he was actually gone. I waited around for about an hour, checking out my door every so often. He didn't return, though. Finally, I was able to go back to bed. I haven't seen the man since that night, and looking back, I think he probably followed me home on the street. I might have even led him into my apartment

building without knowing. I didn't really pay that good of attention as I walked home, but now I do. Back in Romania, it was a school day and I had to get prepared. My family and I lived in an apartment, and my room had a faded glass door. You could still see through it, but it's blurry. I was changing into nice clothes, and my mom was out of the apartment. I don't remember exactly where she was, but I was all alone at the time. So, as I was changing, I looked at my door and saw a

white thing pass my room. Immediately my chest fell like it was being poked with a spike, and my heart was pounding really fast. I called my mom and told her about it, but she just told me it was because of all the video games I was playing. However, I've never had nightmares from those games or anything related to that. I hung up and went to investigate. I checked everywhere and saw nothing. I'm very sure. That I saw something, and it even scares me to this day. I did some research, and no one died in the

apartment or anything, but I still don't have any explanation for what happened. This happened back when I was younger; I was probably like 10 or 12 years old, and I remember that I was just old enough that my parents trusted me on my own and I didn't need a babysitter. My parents would go places occasionally, and I was an only child, so I was excited to be trusted alone in the house. This was the very first time that I was left home alone. As a kid, really all I wanted to do was play video games,

and when my parents were gone, I had plans to do just that. I remember that it was a Friday night and my parents left at about 6:00. I was inside my bedroom playing video games on the TV that I hadn't used for a while. At probably 7:30 p.m., I went downstairs and got some food from what my parents had left out for me. Then I went back up to my room to keep playing. I was eating and playing video games for the next 30 minutes or so; it was probably about 8:00 when I heard a

noise coming from downstairs. The noise was the sound of our house back door opening. Right away, I knew this was bad. I knew that my parents wouldn't come in through that way, and they wouldn't be home anytime soon either. The only thing I could think of was that somebody was here who was not supposed to be. My bedroom was upstairs, and my door was open a little. The first thing that I did was run over to the door and close it as quickly, but as quietly, as I could. Then I looked around my room for

a place to hide. All the meanwhile, I heard footsteps roaming around downstairs. I finally decided that I was going to hide in my closet. It was really small, but I could just barely fit inside of it. I couldn't hear as well anymore, but I did hear footsteps moving around downstairs. Soon, though, I stopped hearing them. I stayed hidden in the closet. This was not before cell phones, but I didn't have one. We had a home phone that I could use to call my parents if I needed anything, but that was downstairs. I didn't want to

leave my bedroom or even leave my closet. Things were very quiet for probably a good 30 minutes or so. I was just starting to calm down and feel a little bit better when I heard footsteps coming up the staircase. Now I was anything but calm; I was terrified. The footsteps got to the top of the staircase and were now in the upstairs hallway. My room was the third door on the left. From there, I heard whoever was there slowly walking down the hallway. They seemed to go inside one of the first rooms. About a minute

later, they came out, and then they got closer and closer to my room. They stopped right outside of it, and then the door opened. By this time, I was freaking out inside but trying to keep my composure. I knew that I couldn't make a sound, but whoever was in there would hear me. I was out of sight, and unless they opened my closet, I wouldn't be seen. I did my best to stay silent. After the door opened, footsteps entered the room. They didn't get too far inside, maybe like a couple of feet. They stood there

for an uncomfortable amount of time. I really don't know how long it was—maybe 30 seconds. It felt like a lot longer than that, though. Then I heard another sound; it was the sound of our garage door opening. My parents were home. The footsteps left the room and quickly went back downstairs. I heard them moving around the first floor of the house. Soon after, the back door to the house opened and shut again. Then I heard the sound of the door from the garage open and my parents' voices coming from downstairs. I left my closet and

saw that my bedroom door was left wide open. I ran out of my room and sprinted down the stairs to my parents. They asked me how I did being left alone for the first time. I started crying and told them everything. We ended up calling the police, and my parents realized that the back door had been left unlocked. It was a door that was easy to forget to lock. Our neighborhood wasn't known to have much crime, so you wouldn't think leaving the back door unlocked here and there was a big deal. After this, though, we

were always sure to lock it. I'm not sure if the police ever found out who did it; I couldn't give them a description at all, and I never saw who it was. I didn't stay home alone for a while after that. Luckily, nothing of the sort has happened to me since. This happened many years ago when I was still in college. I was in my junior year at a large university and was rooming with four other people who I had met and become friends with in the dorms. We were renting this older three-story house together

that was just a bit off campus. The house was pretty rundown and not in great condition, as a lot of college houses tend to be. My friends and I didn't mind, though, because the rent was cheap, splitting it between five people, and it was also a short walk to campus, which was nice. This particular night, it was just me in the house, as all my roommates were going out to the... bars. I didn't join them in going to the bars because I wasn't feeling it that night and mostly just didn't usually enjoy myself at the

bars. I had just wanted a relaxing night, so I was up in my room on the third floor, just watching a movie and hanging out on my phone. Sometime close to midnight, I heard the stairs heading up from the first level creaking and then somebody moving around on the second level below me. Being an old house, you could hear a lot of floorboard creaking when somebody was moving around on a stairway or floor. When my roommates would go out to the bars, when they would come back, they'd normally be talking loudly, and I would know

who was back or not, so it was odd to me that I didn't hear any talking. I had always been a bit cautious when I'd hear people downstairs because our door was usually left unlocked, so I got up from my bed to go and see who was in the house. Our house had two separate stairways because of how large it was, so I stood at the top of one of them and peered down to see if I could see anybody. Whoever was down there must have heard me moving around upstairs because they had stopped walking

around and were silent. At this point, I had a feeling that there was somebody in our house who shouldn't have been there. I didn't want to call out and say anything, and I didn't want to move either, so I stood frozen out in the hallway at the top of the stairs. Eventually, after what felt like five minutes, the person downstairs started walking again, and I heard them begin to ascend the second stairway at the other end of the hall from where I was standing. With the stairway right in front of me, I felt comfortable enough

to stay and see who would emerge from the other stairway. A man who looked to be in his fifties or sixties emerged and stopped as he saw me at the end of the hall. He quickly said in a raspy voice that he used to live here and he was just checking the place out. I didn't believe him, so I told him to leave the house now or I was calling the cops. That made him angry, and he started cussing at me and moving towards me down the hall. I ran down the stairway in front of

me quickly and pulled out my phone to call the cops. As I was on the phone explaining the situation, I was also playing a scary type of Ring Around the Rosie game where I could hear the man's movement based on the noise of the stairs and the floorboards. Every time the man would go up or down one stairway, I would go the opposite direction in the other stairway. When he'd pause and stop moving, I would also stop. After a couple of times going up and down the two staircases avoiding him, I heard him descend the

stairs back to the first floor and leave through the back door of the house. The cops showed up, and I described the man to them. I was informed that they would keep an eye out for him and to call right away if he ever came back. From that point on, my roommates and I did a better job always making sure that the doors were locked at all times. One of my roommates had some cash stolen from his room, but otherwise, everything was in order. We lived in that house for the rest of the school year

and didn't ever see that man again. Every year, the village I live in has a weekend-long festival in the fall just to celebrate the town and have a good time. It's just sort of like a miniature fair with a bunch of vendor tents set up, food trucks, live music, and the whole works. The festival takes place in a big park in town, which I happen to live right next to. I've lived on my own for a while now in this place that's had some creepy events take place during the weekend of this festival. Two years

ago, on the first day of the festival, Friday night, I had been sitting out on my balcony outside of my bedroom watching the fireworks, as I do every year. With plenty of light to illuminate my backyard from the fireworks, I saw a hooded figure come up the path from the park and walk down the property line between my house and my neighbor's yard. I assumed that it was somebody from the festival taking a shortcut to get home by going through people's yards. I was shocked when the hooded figure took a sharp turn into my yard,

approached one of my downstairs windows, and looked inside of my house. It appeared that this person didn't know I was up on the balcony, as they continued around the house towards the door, which was directly under my balcony. I couldn't see them from where I was, but I heard my screen door quietly open as the person attempted to open the door. Thankfully, my door was locked. I yelled out from the balcony using some vulgar language for them to get out of here. The hooded figure bolted from the door, ran out of my yard, and back

into the park. Fast forward to exactly one year later to the day. I did my normal routine of going to the festival and then watched the fireworks from my balcony. The fireworks ended close to 11:00 p.m. I went to bed pretty soon after that. I was woken up by the sound of my screen door opening. I quietly descended the stairs down to the living... Room and approached the door. From what I could tell, there was nobody there, but when I turned back around to go upstairs, I saw a hooded figure staring straight at me through

the living room window. I couldn't see much, but I could tell that it was a man. What was scariest about the situation was that when I saw him looking at me, he didn't flinch or duck down out of view; he simply continued to stare at me. At this point, I was truly spooked, remembering the incident from last year, which happened on the same Friday night of the festival. I had my cell phone on me, and I called the police immediately as I was still standing in the living room. Once the hooded man saw I was

talking to somebody on the phone, he finally dipped out of view. The cops came and didn't see anybody still around my property. I explained to them the scenario of the multiple incidents that had happened over the years and how I was convinced that it was the same person, but there wasn't really much that they could do. This year, the village festival is coming up in a couple of weeks, and I've already arranged to have a friend stay over with me at my house that night. I'm hoping that nothing will happen for the third straight year

in a row, but I'm definitely on edge about it as the festival draws near.