True Creepiest Haunted House Stories to Fall Asleep to

True Creepiest Haunted House Stories to Fall Asleep to

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Story #1 Even years later, everytime I think about that night, a
cold wave runs down my spine. This is my brother's story, not
mine. But I was the one who found him
the next morning, drenched in sweat, his eyes wide open,
sitting upright on his bed as ifhe had been guarding himself
from something unseen all night.We had gone on a short family

(00:21):
vacation to the hills, but my brother Leo decided to stay
back. He said he had work to finish
and needed some time alone. He was always like that, more of
an introvert, quiet and practical to the point of being
boring. He didn't believe in ghosts,
superstitions, or anything remotely strange.
If it wasn't logical, it didn't exist for him.

(00:43):
Which is why when he told me what happened that night, I
couldn't brush it off as imagination.
He said the night was completelyordinary until around 1:00 AM.
He had dozed off watching a movie on his laptop.
The room was dimly lit, curtainsdrawn, the fan humming softly.
And then, without any reason, hewoke up.
Not fully, just that strange half sleep state where you're

(01:06):
not sure if you're dreaming or awake.
He said it felt like someone wasin the room with him, not
moving, not breathing loudly, just there.
When he blinked to clear his eyes, he saw her.
A woman, pale, almost glowing inthe dim light that seeped in
from the window. She stood near the door with a
small suitcase beside her, dressed in white, her face

(01:27):
expressionless. Leo said.
She looked like she had been crying, her eyes puffy but her
expression oddly blank. She wasn't looking at him.
She was looking at the door, whispering something under her
breath. He couldn't make out the words,
but it sounded like she was repeating the same line over and
over again. Something about not wanting to
stay there anymore. His first thought was that he

(01:49):
was dreaming. His second thought was that
someone had broken in. He sat up and turned on the lamp
beside his bed. But the moment the light came
on, she was gone. Just like that.
The suitcase, the woman, the whisper, all gone.
Only the door of his room was slightly open.
He told me later that he always locked his door before sleeping.

(02:10):
He even double checked it because he lived alone most of
the time. So when he saw that small crack
of darkness between the door andthe frame, it unsettled him.
But he still tried to be logical.
He got up, checked the house, and convinced himself that maybe
he hadn't latched it properly. He went back to bed, laughing at
himself for being jumpy. But then the second part

(02:30):
started. Just as he was drifting back
into sleep, he heard laughter, soft at first, like children
playing outside. It didn't make sense, because it
was past 1:00 AM and there were no families with kids nearby.
The sound was faint, muffled, but it seemed to move, sometimes
from the living room, sometimes from just beyond his door.

(02:51):
He tried to turn on the lights again, but this time nothing
worked. The switch clicked, but the room
stayed pitch dark. The only sound was that
laughter, giggling, running, whispering, and the occasional
faint thumb, like someone dropping a toy.
He lay still, trying to convincehimself it was the neighbors
maybe ATV left on, but then he heard the sound of his own door

(03:14):
creaking open again. He said he froze, the kind of
fear where you can't even move your fingers.
He could hear footsteps, tiny light ones padding across the
floor, and then he saw a faint orange glow, like a small flame.
A child walked into his room, holding a candle.
Leo said it was a boy, maybe sixor seven years old, wearing old

(03:36):
fashioned clothes, his face too pale, eyes too hollow.
The candle's light flickered over his features, and it wasn't
the face of a living child. The boy didn't move, he just
stood there at the foot of the bed, staring.
The flame burned lower, drippingwax onto the floor, and the
smell of smoke filled the room. Leo couldn't move.

(03:57):
He said it was like his body hadturned to stone, his breathing
shallow, his heart hammering so loud it drowned everything else.
And then suddenly, the lights came back on.
The room was empty, No candle, no child, no footprints,
nothing. But the smell of smoke was still
there. He got up to open the windows,

(04:17):
thinking maybe there was a shortcircuit, but the bulb didn't
even flicker. Everything worked fine, except
the faint marks of something like melted wax on the wooden
floor near the bed. He sat awake for hours after
that, trying to calm down. He told himself it was a lucid
dream, sleep paralysis or exhaustion playing tricks on his

(04:37):
mind. But the laughter didn't stop.
It came and went all night, sometimes from far away,
sometimes right outside the door.
Once he swore he heard someone running down the corridor and
then pounding on his door. But every time he opened it,
there was nothing, only the still air of a sleeping
neighborhood. When morning finally came, he

(04:59):
hadn't slept a second. When we returned home that day,
the first thing I noticed was the smell.
A faint burnt wax scent lingering in the air, mixed with
something metallic like old rust.
Leo was sitting on his bed, drenched in sweat, staring at
the wall. He didn't even notice us at
first. It took a while before he spoke,
and even then he refused to leave the room for hours.

(05:22):
For days after, he refused to sleep with the lights off, he
said every time he closed his eyes he could see the faint
flicker of that candle and the pale child's face glowing in the
dark. We tried to find explanations,
the logical ones. Maybe a neighbor's TV was the
source of the laughter. Maybe he had a vivid nightmare
and the door had been left unlatched by mistake.

(05:45):
Maybe the wax was just old residue from some earlier time.
He went as far as checking the power circuit for any faults.
There were none. The lights were perfectly fine.
It could have ended there, but one last thing made it harder to
dismiss. A few days later, my mother
noticed something strange in thecorner of the same room, behind
the wardrobe, she found old luggage tags, brittle, yellowed

(06:09):
with age, tied to a piece of torn leather. 1 tag had a faded
name printed on it, a woman's name.
We looked it up out of curiosity.
Turned out years before we rented the place, there had been
a small fire in one of the upperapartments.
A woman and her child had died there, the building records
showed they've been staying temporarily with their luggage

(06:31):
packed, ready to leave. The coincidence felt too
specific, but no one said it aloud.
Leo refused to talk about it after that.
He said, believing it made it worse, that maybe by
acknowledging it he'd be inviting it back.
He moved out soon after, and theroom stayed empty for months.
Sometimes when I pass by that house, I still get the urge to

(06:53):
peek inside. The curtains are drawn now, but
once, when the light hit the window just right, I could have
sworn I saw a faint silhouette by the door.
A woman maybe holding something small like a suitcase.
I didn't look twice because somethings, even if they can be
explained, never stop feeling wrong.
Story #2 I still have that old TV from 1986, the one my parents

(07:16):
bought when they were living in Germany.
It's one of those thick boxy sets with a curved glass screen
and chunky wooden panels on the sides.
Heavy as hell. My parents had it before I was
even born. When we moved back to Australia
they brought it along, mostly because it still worked and my
dad was too sentimental to throwit out.

(07:37):
When I was about 8 they got a new flat screen and move the old
TV to the basement, which also happened to be where my room
was. I didn't mind, I actually liked
being down there. It was cooler, quieter, and that
TV kept me company. I can't explain how it started,
but I remember waking up in the middle of the night, sometimes
around 1:00 or 2:00 AM and finding the TV already on.

(08:01):
It would be softly playing some kind of instrumental music, not
anything I recognized, more likea mix of static and faint old
timey tunes. It never scared me back then.
I just crawl out of bed, curl upon the couch and fall asleep to
it. Every night it was the same
thing. Over time it started feeling
like it knew when I couldn't sleep.

(08:23):
Even when I was older, if I was restless or having a nightmare,
it would flicker on, showing faint shapes in the snow of the
static. Not faces, exactly, just
movements, like someone was pacing around behind the glass,
blurred and grainy. I used to tell myself it was
just tricks of light. When I finally moved out for
college, I insisted on taking the TV with me.

(08:46):
My parents were happy to get ridof it.
My mom even joked that the ghostin the box could go live with me
now. I laughed at that, but sometimes
I think she wasn't really joking.
The first strange thing that happened after I moved was when
my toaster caught fire. I was in my bedroom and the
smoke alarm didn't even go off, but the TV, which was turned

(09:07):
off, unplugged, even, suddenly blasted on with ear splitting
static. That shrieking white noise made
me drop everything and run to the living room.
I saw smoke pouring from the kitchen.
If it hadn't turned on, my apartment probably would have
burned down. For a few months after that it
went quiet. I almost started thinking
whatever thing was in there had gone dormant, but it wasn't.

(09:31):
Last winter I moved again, a newapartment on the outskirts of
the city. This place had one of those
cold, echoing ambiance that makes every sound feel closer
than it should. I set up the TV in my bedroom
corner, mostly out of habit. It looked ridiculous next to
Modern furniture, but I couldn'tbring myself to get rid of it.
The first few nights were fine. Then one evening I woke up

(09:53):
suddenly around 2:17 AM. The room was freezing, though
the heater was on. The TV screen was glowing
faintly, but this time there wasno sound, just a dim bluish
light on. The screen was static, but only
in the middle. The edges were completely black.
I stared at it for a while and then realized the static wasn't

(10:15):
random, it was pulsing. It almost looked like something
breathing. I remember sitting up slowly,
every hair on my body standing up.
The pulsing got faster, matchingmy heartbeat.
I thought maybe it was interference or electrical noise
from another device, so I reached for my phone.
But my phone was dead, even though it had been charging.

(10:36):
Then the TV went pitch black. In that darkness, I heard
something faint, not from the screen, but from inside the TV
itself, like scratching. Slow, deliberate scraping on the
inner glass. That was the first time I felt
genuine fear from it. The next morning, I checked
every cordon circuit. Nothing was wrong.

(10:58):
The plug wasn't even in the socket when I found it that
night, I told myself I was overtired, maybe sleepwalking,
maybe hallucinating. I even tried leaving the TV
unplugged permanently, but that didn't stop it.
One night I woke up to the faintsound of static again.
I told myself it couldn't be theTV since it wasn't plugged in.

(11:19):
The sound was muffled but persistent, like it was coming
from inside the room. I sat up and saw the glow again,
but it wasn't the TV this time. It was the reflection of static,
flickering across the walls, bouncing off my mirror.
The power was out across the neighborhood that night.
I checked the fuse box myself. No electricity at all.

(11:41):
But that screen kept glowing, faint and Gray, showing
something that looked like a person standing behind the
static. A dark silhouette, motionless,
like it was watching me. When the lights came back on in
the morning, the TV was off again, but the glass front had
smudges. Not fingerprints exactly, they
didn't even look like handprints.

(12:02):
Whatever it was, it was from theinside, and honestly, that
scared me more. After that, I moved the TV to
the hallway and covered it with a cloth.
I couldn't bring myself to throwit away.
Every time I considered it, something would happen.
A sudden blackout, or a loud popfrom the power line, or even a
weird cold spot right where it stood.

(12:23):
It's sitting in my living room now, covered again.
I don't turn it on, but sometimes at night, I hear that
faint static hum from underneaththe cover.
Not loud, but enough to remind me that it's still there.
I know what most people would say.
Faulty wiring, residual static, old electronics picking up stray
frequencies, the human brain filling gaps with patterns it

(12:46):
wants to see. But I know this thing.
I've lived with it for years. It's not just a machine.
It watches, it waits. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it
warns, and sometimes it just reminds me that I'm never really
alone. I haven't turned it on in weeks,
but last night when I walked past it in the dark, I swear I

(13:09):
heard faint music again. That same tune from when I was a
kid. Soft humming almost, comforting
almost, because this time I could hear breathing in it too,
and I'm starting to think it's not the TV that's been watching
me all these years. It's whatever's inside it story
#3 a true account. Or at least I hope it wasn't

(13:32):
something else. When my family bought that old
property out on the Devil's Backbone in Texas, I didn't
think much of it. My grandpa had always loved old
country land. Dusty pastures, wind, twisted
trees. The kind of place that felt
quiet in a way the city never could be.
The property was about 15 acres,stretching from the main road

(13:53):
all the way back to a cluster ofcedar trees and an old barn that
leaned like it was exhausted. The previous owners hadn't moved
out yet when we signed the papers, they said they'd stay a
few weeks to get their things inorder.
My grandpa, being friendly as always, rode his four Wheeler
around the property one evening and spotted a man in the
distance. White shirt, suspenders, black

(14:16):
slacks. He thought it was the previous
owner and waved, but the guy didn't wave back.
He just walked casually toward aMesquite Bush, disappeared
behind it, and never came out the other side.
Grandpa said he rode over there,expecting to see the guy
crouched or something, but therewas no one.
The land was flat, no ditches, no place to hide, just open

(14:37):
field. He didn't tell anyone at first,
said it didn't feel worth mentioning, but he looked shaken
when he did finally mention it over coffee the next morning,
like he was trying to convince himself it was some trick of
light. Months later when I first
visited, I started to understandwhat he meant.
It was summer and my cousin and I were staying at the house for

(14:58):
a week. We'd spend all day outside
riding bikes and all night inside playing PS2.
The living room had this massivesliding glass door that faced
the backyard in the barn. At night that glass turned into
a Black Mirror, our reflections faint against the nothing
outside. It was close to midnight when I
noticed them, two figures walking slowly through the yard.

(15:19):
They had long rifles and wore what looked like Civil War caps.
Their silhouettes were clear against the faint glow of the
barn light, Broad shoulders, straight backs and a rhythm to
their steps, almost like a March.
I thought maybe they were re enactors or something, but it
was pitch black and the propertywas fenced off.
No one should have been out there.

(15:41):
They just walked across the yard, rifles at their sides,
until the darkness swallowed them.
We didn't move. We didn't even breathe.
My cousin finally whispered something about calling Grandpa,
but we both knew we wouldn't be able to explain it.
There weren't any footprints thenext morning.
For years, that was the story wedidn't talk about.
Every once in a while, small things would happen.

(16:03):
Footsteps in the hallway at night.
The faint sound of a chair scraping across the kitchen
floor. Once I woke up and heard someone
walking into the kitchen. Loud, slow steps, the kind that
make you picture boots on tile. I assumed it was grandpa getting
water, so I waited until the sound stopped and got up to grab
a snack. The house was dark, silent,

(16:25):
everyone was asleep. There were no wet footprints, no
open cabinets, nothing. I went back to my room, heart
pounding, trying to tell myself that old house is creak and
shift. But it didn't sound like
creaking, it sounded like someone walking.
After that I avoided being aloneat night.
Years passed and I eventually moved into a small cabin on the

(16:46):
same property while I went to college.
It was a cool setup at first. Privacy, nature, peace.
The cabin sat about 1/4 mile down a gravel Rd. away from the
main house. The kind of quiet that's almost
too quiet. It was early spring when I
started noticing things again. First it was the smell of smoke
at night, like someone burning wood or brush, but no one nearby

(17:09):
was. Then came the knocks. 3 Hard
Knocks on the side of the cabin,always around 2:00 or 3:00 AM.
At first I figured it was the wind or a raccoon, but the
knocks always came in threes, perfectly spaced.
One night a friend of mine stayed over.
We were up late, playing cards and talking about how weirdly
empty the place felt. Around midnight, we heard

(17:31):
crunching gravel outside. Footsteps.
They were deliberate, slow, getting closer.
Then came the sound of someone stepping onto the porch boards
creaking under their weight. We froze, listening.
I turned off the light and peered through the window.
There was a shape moving outside, tall, human like, just

(17:51):
pacing back and forth on the porch.
The porch light was off, but I could see its outline against
the faint moonlight. I couldn't make out a face, just
the dark silhouette of a man. I grabbed my flashlight, took a
deep breath, and swung the door open.
There was no one there. The air outside felt heavier
than it should have been. The gravel Rd. stretched out on

(18:11):
both sides, wide open, no trees,no cover, nowhere to hide.
Yet the sound of footsteps echoed faintly from the
distance, fading slowly, like someone walking away without
making sense of direction. We didn't sleep that night.
Every sound felt amplified. The wind against the siding, the
faint groan of the wooden floor,even the ticking of my old wall

(18:34):
clock. The next morning I checked the
porch, dusty as ever. No footprints.
Over the next few weeks, I triednot to think about it, but weird
things started piling up. Tools from the shed went missing
and showed up days later in strange spots, like on top of
the roof or inside the chicken coop.
My phone would lose signal in specific parts of the cabin,

(18:56):
even though it worked fine everywhere else.
Once I woke up to find all the cabinet doors in the kitchen
wide open. Every single one.
I told myself I must have forgotten to close them, but
that didn't explain why my car keys were inside the freezer.
After I moved to the city, grandpa passed away and the
property was sold. I visited once years later just

(19:19):
to see it. The new owners had torn down the
cabin and build a modern farmhouse.
Everything looked normal, peaceful even.
But as I stood by the fence line, staring toward where the
barn used to be, I caught a glimpse of movement.
A man in a white shirt and suspenders walking slowly along
the tree line. I blinked and he was gone.

(19:39):
Maybe it was a trick of the sun or heat waves off the dirt Rd.
That's what I tell myself, anyway.
But sometimes when I close my eyes, I still hear the sound of
footsteps on gravel moving closer, stopping just outside
the door. And every time the wind rattles
my window at night, I think about that property on the
Devil's Backbone, how the land never really belonged to us.

(20:01):
Maybe it never will. Story #4 I wish I could forget
this happened around 8 years ago, back when my girlfriend and
I had just moved into a small rented house on the edge of
town. We were both in our mid 20s,
happy, religious, the kind of people who believe that kindness
always came back to you. That belief changed because of

(20:22):
one man, the man in the yellow coat.
It was early winter, I remember,because it had rained that
evening and the ground still glistened under the
streetlights. Around 8:30 PM, someone knocked
on our door. It was a soft, polite knock, not
the kind you associate with trouble.
When I opened the door, there hestood, A tall, thin man, maybe

(20:45):
in his 50s, wearing a bright yellow raincoat.
His face was long and pale, hairslicked back like he'd been
standing in the rain for hours. He smiled faintly, but it didn't
reach his eyes. He didn't introduce himself
properly, just said he was passing through and wanted to
rest for a bit. I felt a twinge of hesitation,

(21:05):
but my girlfriend was quicker toact.
She invited him inside and offered him tea.
That's just how she was. He barely spoke during the time
he was there, just sat on the edge of the sofa, dripping
slightly, hands clasped tightly like he was holding something
invisible. When I tried to make small talk,
his answers were vague. No last name, no job, no reason

(21:27):
for being there. He didn't even touch his teeth.
After about 15 minutes, he just stood up and left.
No goodbye. I shrugged it off.
Weird guy, sure, but we live near a highway, maybe he was
just some traveller. Then a week later he came back.
This time we had friends over. It was a Saturday night, board

(21:49):
games, some light drinks, music in the background.
Around 10 there was that same knock again.
I didn't even need to check the peephole to know it was him.
I don't know why, but I felt a cold pull in my stomach.
When I opened the door, there hewas again.
Same yellow coat, still spotless, like it hadn't aged a

(22:09):
day. My girlfriend froze when she saw
him. I felt awkward, but I didn't
want to be rude, so I invited him in.
That's when things got strange. As soon as he stepped into the
living room, the entire atmosphere changed.
I can't explain it, but it felt like all the air had gone stale.
Our friends went silent, like someone had turned off the fun.

(22:31):
One by one they began finding excuses to leave the room,
checking their phones, going to the kitchen, stepping outside
for a smoke. Within 5 minutes it was just him
and me in the room. He was sitting in the same spot
as before, staring at the blank TV screen like it was showing
something only he could see. I remember the faint smell of

(22:54):
damp earth and something else, something metallic like rust or
old blood. It clung to the air around him.
I tried to act normal, asked himif he needed anything, but he
just turned and smiled. His teeth were too white, almost
fake looking like they didn't belong in his mouth.
He left without a word again. Later, when I checked on my

(23:16):
friends, every single one of them said the same thing.
They couldn't stay in the same room with him.
One said her chest felt tight. Another said he thought he heard
whispering when he looked at hisreflection in the window.
My girlfriend said she felt likesomething inside her was
shrinking, like being near him was making her soul smaller.

(23:36):
After that night, he kept showing up.
Not regularly, just enough to keep us on edge.
Some nights he'd knock and disappear before we could open
the door. Sometimes we'd find faint, muddy
footprints leading up to the porch and stopping right at the
doormat. Once we found the footprints
leading away from the back door,even though we never heard him
come in, I stopped answering thedoor all together.

(23:59):
Then came the letter. My girlfriend went to collect
the mail one morning, and there it was.
A single envelope. No stamp, no return address,
just our names written in a messy scrawl that pressed so
hard it almost tore the paper. Inside was a note written in the
same jagged handwriting. It's said that he was going to
kill both of us, that no matter how much we begged or cried, it

(24:23):
wouldn't change anything, that we would burn in hell for
letting him in. There were more words, rambling
ones about the promise, the knocking and the ones who open
the door. Some of the words were
underlined multiple times, as ifwritten in anger.
We went to the police, of course.
They took the letter, asked a few questions, but nothing came

(24:43):
of it. There was no way to track him,
no CCTV near the porch, no fingerprints on the paper.
The cop who took the report actually asked if maybe it was
some prank by a friend. A week passed, Nothing.
Then one night I woke up around 4:00 AM to the sound of
something tapping on the living room window.
It wasn't the usual knocking. It was softer, rhythmic, almost

(25:08):
like a finger tracing along the glass.
I froze in bed, listening. My girlfriend stirred beside me,
but thankfully didn't wake up. When I finally got up to check,
there was no one outside, just condensation on the glass and on
the inside of the window, a faint smear like someone had
pressed their forehead there. After that, I couldn't sleep

(25:30):
properly for weeks. Every time I saw someone in a
yellow raincoat, I'd freeze. Once I swore I saw him at the
grocery store, standing near thefrozen section, staring straight
at my reflection in the glass door.
When I turned, he was gone. Another time we came home and
found the back gate open even though it was always padlocked.

(25:50):
The same faint smell of wet earth lingered near the
threshold. We moved out six months later.
I tried to convince my girlfriend it was some lunatic,
maybe someone who was mentally unwell or fixated on us for some
twisted reason. But even now I can't explain
some things, like how he always seemed to know when we were
home, or why none of the neighbors ever saw him even

(26:13):
though we lived in a semi busy St.
Years passed. We eventually broke up, though
not directly because of that. She said she couldn't shake the
feeling of being watched even after we moved.
Last year I was visiting a nearby town for work and saw
something that made my stomach drop.
It was raining heavily and threwthe blur of water on my

(26:33):
windshield. I saw a man crossing the road,
tall, thin, wearing a bright yellow coat.
He paused halfway, turned his head just slightly, as if he
knew I was watching. His face looked older, but the
smile, that faint, lifeless smile, was exactly the same.
When I blinked, he was gone. I sat there for a long time

(26:55):
after that, engine running, rainpounding on the car roof.
Maybe it was just a coincidence,maybe it wasn't even the same
man. But that night, when I returned
to my hotel room, there was a wet footprint near the door,
just one facing inward. Story #5 I was staying at my
girlfriend's house while her family was away on vacation.

(27:17):
It was supposed to be an easy gig, feed the dogs, water the
plants, watch the place and get paid for it.
I was broke and unemployed so the deal sounded perfect.
They had two dogs, a big German shepherd named Luna and a fat,
lazy black lab named Duke. The mom even left me some cash,
groceries, and beer as a thank you.

(27:38):
The first night went great. I hooked up my desktop to their
big TV game with my friends online, ate junk food, and let
the dog sleep wherever they wanted.
The house was big, cozy, and quiet except for the occasional
sound of the fridge clicking or the dog shifting around.
It was on the second night that things started getting weird.

(27:59):
Around 11 PMI noticed Luna sitting at the bathroom door
down the hall. Her ears were perked up, tail
stiff. At first I didn't think much of
it. She was a guard dog, always
alert. But she wasn't just listening,
she was staring. Staring straight at the bathroom
window. Now this window was kind of
strange. Originally it used to face the

(28:20):
backyard, but after her dad built a covered deck, it looked
out onto a dark empty space, more like a shadow box than a
window to the outside. I always found it a little
creepy at night, so I made sure to keep the blinds closed.
But now I noticed the blinds were up.
I figured maybe the wind moved them somehow, or maybe I forgot
to pull them down the previous night.

(28:41):
Luna started whining, a low, drawn out sound that made the
hair on my arms rise. Duke was snoring near the couch,
completely useless, but Luna wouldn't take her eyes off that
window. When I started walking toward
the bathroom, she suddenly stoodup, her body tense and growled.
Not at me, but at the window. It wasn't the kind of growl dogs

(29:03):
make when they see a cat or something.
They have this deep, vibrating rumble that feels more like a
warning than aggression. I told myself it was probably a
raccoon or a bat caught between the deck and the wall.
I reached for the drawstring to pull the blinds down, but Luna
barked a sharp, explosive sound and lunged between me and the

(29:23):
window. She physically blocked me.
When I tried to sidestep her, she jumped up on me, pushing me
back, her paws on my chest. I'd never seen her act like that
before. She kept looking up at the
window, trembling, whining underher breath.
I finally managed to close the blinds, despite her protests.
I gave her a pat to calm her, then walked back to the couch,

(29:46):
telling myself it was nothing, just a weird night and an
overprotective dog. Then I heard it.
The faint sound of plastic sliding against glass, the soft
rattle of a drawstring moving. I turned my head toward the
hallway. The blinds were rising.
Not fast, not jerky, just slow and steady, like someone was

(30:07):
deliberately pulling them up inch by inch.
The sound was so soft I could almost convince myself I was
imagining it until Luna started growling again, her first
standing on end. I froze.
My brain was screaming don't move and every inch of me wanted
to pretend it wasn't happening. The blinds reached the top and
stopped. Silence.

(30:29):
I don't know how long I stood there.
I could feel my heart in my throat, my breath shallow.
Finally, I forced myself to move.
I grabbed my phone's flashlight and crept toward the bathroom.
Luna followed, pressing so closeagainst my leg I could feel her
shaking. The blinds were fully up.
The window looked out into the deck, a black, empty space.

(30:51):
The light from my phone barely reached the far end.
For a second, I thought I saw something.
Just a faint shape, like a person standing behind the
frosted glass. But when I blinked, it was gone.
I told myself I was seeing reflections.
That had to be it. I stepped inside to pull the
blinds down again, and before I even touched them, they started

(31:12):
to move. They went down this time.
Slowly. The drawstring lifted taut and
straight, like someone invisiblewas pulling it upward.
No sway, no slack, no hand. Just perfect, smooth movement.
Luna started whining louder, hertail tucked between her legs,
backing away. I stepped back too.

(31:32):
My chest felt tight, like the air had turned solid.
When the blinds reached halfway,they stopped.
The drawstring twitched once. Then, in one sudden, violent
motion, the blinds snapped all the way down, hitting the window
frame with a sound that echoed through the house.
Duke started barking from the living room, startled awake.
Luna was growling low, pacing back and forth in front of the

(31:55):
door, her eyes locked on that window.
I slammed the bathroom door shutand dragged a heavy cabinet from
the hallway to block it. My hands were shaking so hard I
almost dropped my phone. That night, I didn't sleep.
I put on a stupid comedy movie, turn the volume up, and sat with
both dogs beside me on the couch.
Luna didn't move an inch from the hallway, though she kept her

(32:17):
eyes fixed in that direction allnight, occasionally letting out
a soft growl. Every Creek, every settling
noise from the house felt amplified.
At one point, around 3, AMI heard something tap against the
wall behind the bathroom, evenlyspaced.
Then silence. When morning came, the whole
thing felt like a bad dream. The house looked normal.

(32:39):
Sunlight poured in through the windows.
The dogs were calm again, wagging their tails like nothing
happened. Still, I couldn't shake it off.
I checked the bathroom door, still shut, cabinet still there.
When I finally pushed it aside, I found the blinds perfectly
open again. I swear I had closed them.
I didn't tell my girlfriend or her mom what happened.

(33:00):
I didn't want to sound crazy. The rest of the week went mostly
normal, except for small things that didn't make sense.
Once I woke up to find Luna standing by the bathroom door
again, tail stiff, staring. Another time I found both dogs
sitting at the base of the deck stairs, growling into the
darkness below it. One afternoon while I was
gaming, the lights flickered. The dog started barking like

(33:23):
someone was at the door, but when I checked, nobody was
there. I stepped out onto the deck and
instantly got this strange heavyfeeling in my chest, like
someone was standing behind me. I spun around, but of course,
nothing. The last night I stayed there, I
heard breathing. Not loud, but close, like
someone quietly inhaling just behind the bathroom door.

(33:45):
I turned on every light in the house and didn't turn them off
until morning. When her family came back, I
left as fast as I could. I told her mom everything was
fine. The dogs were great, no issues.
I didn't mention the blinds or the sounds or the breathing.
A week later, my girlfriend texted me.
She said her mom asked if I'd left the blinds in the bathroom

(34:05):
broken. I told her no.
She said they found the drawstring wrapped tight around
the metal rod, like it had been twisted until it snapped.
I've tried to make sense of it. Maybe the string got tangled and
unspooled itself somehow. Maybe there was a draft through
the deck that made it move. But sometimes late at night,
when I'm alone, I still hear that slow plastic rattle in my

(34:27):
head, the sound of the blinds rising inch by inch on their
own. And the thing that keeps me up
the most isn't what I saw. It's what Luna saw that I
didn't. Story number six.
When I was around 12, my mom started dating this guy named
Mark. He was nice enough, friendly,
talkative, the kind of person who always had some story about

(34:50):
fishing or fixing something around his lake house.
After a few months, he invited my mom, my younger brother and
me to spend a weekend at his place up by Lake, MI.
He said it was a quiet spot awayfrom the crowds, perfect for a
relaxing weekend. I remember my mom being excited
about it. I was 2.
At first we drove for hours, thelast stretch through dense woods

(35:13):
where the trees pressed close tothe road and the cell service
dropped out completely. When we finally reached the
house, the sun was already setting.
It was smaller than I expected, kind of narrow and built
vertically, 2 floors in a steep roof with a small attic window
right at the top, like an eye watching everything.
The place was quiet. Too quiet, honestly.

(35:35):
Even the lake behind the house barely made a sound, just the
occasional lap of water against the rocks.
The air smelled different and cold, though.
That's the first unusual thing that struck me.
Inside, the house had that musty, unused smell that made my
nose itch. The floors creaked under every
step and there was a strange coldness even though it was

(35:57):
summer. Mark showed us around.
The main floor had a kitchen, dining area, and living room
with an old TV. The 2nd floor had two bedrooms.
The attic, he said, was just forstorage.
Later he mentioned his dad had been a tailor years ago, which
explains some of the odd things he kept up there.
We went up to grab beach toys from the attic before heading

(36:19):
out to the water. The stairs to the attic were
narrow and steep, and the higherwe climbed, the thicker the air
felt. When the door creaked open, dust
motes swirled in the light like tiny insects.
The place was cluttered with boxes, old tools, and covered
furniture. And then I saw them. 8
mannequins lined up along one wall.

(36:40):
Some were just torsos, others were full bodied but missing
limbs, a few had old cloth draped over them.
They were coated in dust and cobwebs, leaning slightly like
they've been standing there for decades.
I tried to brush it off. Mark's dad had been a tailor, so
it made sense. Still, something about the way
they were positioned angle just slightly toward the door made me

(37:03):
uneasy. Their blank faces caught the dim
light from the single attic bulb, and for a second it looked
like they were watching us. That night, I couldn't shake the
feeling of being watched. The house creaked constantly,
like someone pacing in another room.
The air vents groaned. Even the refrigerator made this
strange humming sound that didn't stop.

(37:23):
Since there weren't enough beds,Mark's son and I slept on the
couch in the living room. The lake wind howled outside,
rattling the thin window panes. We left the TV on low for
comfort. Sometime past midnight, I woke
up. The TV was flickering between
static and a fuzzy channel, casting light across the room.
That's when I heard it. The sound of one of the stairs

(37:44):
creaking, then another. It was a slow, deliberate
rhythm, like someone coming downthe staircase but trying not to
be heard. I thought maybe it was my mom
checking if we were asleep. I pulled the blanket up to my
chin and told Mark's son to stayquiet, but the steps stopped
halfway down. For a few seconds there was
nothing, just the wind and the faint static from the TV.

(38:07):
Then came another sound, a slow dragging noise, like something
heavy being slid across the wooden floor.
I peeked over the blanket. At first I thought my eyes were
playing tricks on me. The light from the TV flickered,
and in the shifting glow I saw movement in the kitchen.
Not people, shapes, Pale, still shapes gliding across the floor.

(38:30):
It took me a second to realize what I was looking at.
Three of the mannequins. They weren't walking.
Their limbs didn't move. It was like they were being
pushed or pulled, sliding over the creaky boards.
Their blank heads tilted slightly as they turned toward
the living room. I froze.
My throat felt tight and I couldhear my heartbeat pounding in my

(38:51):
ears. I ducked back under the blanket,
barely breathing. I could still hear the sound,
the dragging closer. This time it stopped near the
couch. I felt something disturbed the
air, like someone was standing right next to me.
I didn't move, I didn't even blink.
I must have stayed that way for an hour, trembling under the

(39:12):
blanket until exhaustion 1 and Idrifted off.
When I woke up, sunlight was pouring in through the windows.
Everything looked normal. The kitchen was empty, no sign
of anything out of place. Mark and my mom were already
making breakfast like nothing had happened.
I told myself I must have dreamed it, that it was just the
shadows or half asleep imagination.

(39:34):
Later that afternoon we went back up to the attic to return
the beach toys. The air up there felt heavier,
as if no time had passed since the night before.
But the mannequins, they weren'twhere they had been.
Some had moved to the opposite wall, A few had turned slightly,
their blank faces aimed directlytoward the attic stairs.
The cobwebs and dust were gone, their surfaces clean and pale.

(39:58):
I felt my stomach drop. No one else seemed to notice.
My mom brushed past them withouta glance.
Mark said something about cleaning the place.
Soon. I couldn't bring myself to go
near them. That night, I insisted on
sleeping upstairs, but even then, I couldn't shake the
feeling that something was moving around.
After dark, the house made sounds that didn't belong.
Small knocks, faint scuffs, a noise like fabric brushing wood.

(40:23):
I stayed awake most of the night, staring at the ceiling,
trying to catch every sound. Around 3, AMI heard something
faint but unmistakable, soft, deliberate creaks coming from
the attic stairs. I held my breath.
The sound pause then retreated. The next morning, Mark said he'd
found one of the attic boxes at the bottom of the stairs.

(40:44):
He joked that the raccoons must have gotten in.
But the box was intact, not shoot or torn, and the attic
door latch was still locked fromthe inside.
We left that afternoon. As we drove away, I look back at
the house from the road. I could see the attic window.
Something pale was pressed against it, a shape like a face,
or the suggestion of one, smoothand featureless.

(41:07):
Years have passed since that weekend.
My mom and Mark didn't last longafter that, and we never went
back. I've tried to rationalize what I
saw, sleep paralysis and overactive imagination, maybe
even a prank Mark Son pulled, but no explanation sits right.
Sometimes when I pass a store window and catch sight of a
mannequin in the corner of my eye, I get that same sinking

(41:30):
feeling, that quiet awareness that something is watching just
beyond stillness. I tell myself they're just
plastic, just props. But I can't help wondering if in
some dark attic somewhere, one of them still remembers the
sound of my heartbeat under those blankets.