True Creepiest Haunted House Stories to Fall Asleep to

True Creepiest Haunted House Stories to Fall Asleep to

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Story #1 Addicts have always been the kind of space people
pass by with a quick laugh or a nervous look.
The place where old things go todie.
When I took the job as a live inHousemaid, the family said the
attic would be mine. That was the first line in a
long list of small things I would later try to explain away.
The attic was colder than the rest of the house, like a room

(00:21):
kept behind a different season. The light there was thin and
yellow, leaking through a singlebulb that hummed instead of
buzzed. The air smelled of old paper
would faintly damp dust covered the floors and walls when I
moved. At first, everything was
workable. I kept my chores, fed the
children iron shirts, stacked plates.

(00:42):
I told myself I was lucky to have a roof and pay at the end
of the month. That phrase kept me steady for a
while. Then the hands came.
It was a night that had the kindof stillness which makes sounds
too loud. I had woken with my heart
thudding and the strange taste of copper in my mouth.
My clothes were torn in a way that suggested struggle and also

(01:03):
something clumsy. Fabric rifled with fingers that
did not care for neatness. The door to the attic was locked
from the inside. There were no windows up there,
only that thin bulb in the smallvent that never really opened.
I checked the latch was shaking fingers and found it secure and
unbroken. The mattress had impressions,
like someone had been there and then slid away.

(01:26):
It would have been easy to tell myself I had been dreaming.
That is the practical explanation everyone prefers.
Dreams are safe to hold up and examine.
But dreams do not leave that smell on the sheets, the faint
smudges of dirt under the nails,or the wetness that tracked from
the hems of my dress. They do not leave a scrap of

(01:47):
fabric stuck in the teeth of oneof the attic nails.
There were other things while the family was out one afternoon
and I was alone washing clothes downstairs.
That's when I heard the high, brittle sound of glass breaking.
The house went still afterward, as if holding its breath.
I hurried to the kitchen to findthe biggest cabinet door open

(02:08):
and the pile of drinking glasseson the floor, tiny sharp pieces
scattered across the tiles. The sound of them had been
clear, No mistaking it. I had the broom in my hand
before I understood anything, but when I reached the floor was
tidy. Every glass stood in its place
on the shelf, dustless, uncracked.

(02:28):
For a minute I stood with the broom like a person caught mid
gesture. Sometimes I felt watched,
objects moved from where I left them and then slipped back when
I blinked. The night that finished whatever
threat of denial I had left was a Thunder night.
It was raining heavily. I was done with my work and
found myself still near the hallwhen something at the end of it

(02:48):
registered is wrong. It was the silhouette of a
person standing too still, too quiet.
I could not say why. I called for someone to come,
but only my voice echoed. There was no answer.
The figure turned. The face was wrong in a way that
made my stomach drop. Skin pulled too tight, eyes too
dark. It had a human shape, but it

(03:10):
didn't look like one. It moves slow.
Watching me. I ran.
The floor creaked under my weight.
I reached the attic stair and something took my ankles.
The tug was sudden and impossible to describe.
A cold, thin pressure that tightened like a strap and then,
with the deliberate force, pulled.

(03:30):
I did not have time to think. It dragged me backward and down.
My screams echoed the morning after I found myself a few
meters away from the front door.My head throbbed, I pushed
myself up and my body felt too heavy.
The attic was not where it had been.
In its place was only a plain wall, painted the same color as

(03:50):
the corridor. No hatch, no stairs.
I stood there with the house breathing around me, my mind's
still unable to believe what hadhappened.
The family looked at me like I was a psycho when I told them
about what happened last night. They said my room was in the
staff quarters upstairs. They said I had been sleeping
there all along. I resigned that day.

(04:11):
In other people's lives, it might have been the end of a
strange episode, a sleepwalking,a panic, a vivid dream
misremembered. That was the reasonable story I
tried to tell myself on the bus as the city blurred past the
window. But I kept finding small traces,
a thin smear of dirt on the ankle of my dress that could not

(04:31):
be explained by any walk I had taken.
Once, 3 weeks later, while cleaning another place, I paused
because of the sudden sensation of being watched from directly
above. I looked up, nothing, but there
was a crack and for a moment I think I saw eyes staring at me
before they vanished. I tell myself I am being

(04:52):
ridiculous. Perhaps the attic was never
there. Perhaps I fractured when I slept
and my mind invented a house forme to stay in.
Maybe the family really did movethings into staff rooms.
Maybe the house remembered differently.
The thing I cannot talk myself out is that small scrap of
fabric I pulled from the nail months ago.
I have no reason to keep it, only the obstinate need to hold

(05:15):
on to something that says something happened.
And sometimes when it rains, I wake to that light, thin and
yellow, and the sound of the house settling, as if someone
heavy has turned in the rafters.I do not know whether the thing
that touched me in the attic belongs to the house or to a
person who once lived there. I only know that sometimes the
world rearranges itself around what has happened and people

(05:38):
rearrange themselves around the story they prefer.
The doubt sits like a weight notheavy enough to crush and not
small enough to ignore. The attic, whether real or not,
left something in me that does not belong to any explanation I
can carry. Story #2 This happened when I
was 10 years old, and even all these years later I still feel a

(05:59):
cold sweat every time I rememberthat night.
We lived in a small town where everyone basically knew everyone
else, but there was this house, a hulking Victorian mansion with
three stories and turrets and dark, heavy curtains.
It belonged to Missus Herridge, a very wealthy woman.
She threw these huge parties allthe time, and my parents always

(06:20):
talked about how kind and generous she was.
I guess I was just a kid, fascinated by the sheer size of
that place and the fact that it felt completely out of place on
our street, like it had sproutedfrom another era.
When we got an invite to one of her parties, all I could think
about was finally seeing inside her house.
The night of the party, my mom dressed me up in neat clothes

(06:42):
and we walked over. Up close, the mansion looked
even bigger, it's windows dark like watchful eyes.
My mom squeezed my hand, but I felt weirdly floaty.
Probably just nerves. Inside, the place was crowded.
Crystal chandeliers hung from high, shadowy ceilings.
The rooms flickered with dim yellow light.

(07:03):
Old portraits lined the walls. Every room smelled like old
perfume, wine, and something faintly metallic.
People laughed and gossiped, butit was obvious to me no one else
fully belong there. The adults all seemed only half
comfortable, constantly glancingaround.
There must have been over 100 people there.

(07:24):
Kids were running around with punch and snacks, and so I
joined them. After a while, curiosity got the
better of me and I drifted away from the grown-ups.
I found a grand staircase that curved downward toward what must
have been the basement I used tolove exploring.
So without really thinking, I started down.
Halfway down, I stopped. The temperature dropped like I'd

(07:47):
entered a fridge. The air got heavy and an awful
stench oozed up from below. It was thicker than anything I'd
ever smelled, like raw meat kepttoo long, mixed with something
coppery and sweet that stuck to the back of your throat.
I gagged. I still remember thinking maybe
there was a dead animal down there, a big rat or something.

(08:07):
I patted softly into a hallway, the carpeting muffling my steps.
The lights flickered, buzzing with electrical static, and it
felt like the Gray walls were breathing with me, inhaling and
exhaling in time. There was a single door at the
end, heavy and carved with strange symbols.
A circle, a bloody line, weird abstract ruins, or maybe just

(08:30):
deep scratches. I gripped the brass knob, but it
was locked and ice cold to the touch.
As I leaned in, the smell got somuch worse.
It felt wrong. So I was about to leave when I
heard it. The faint, desperate sound of
muffled voices. Not one, but several groans and
snatches of some babbling language rising and falling as

(08:53):
if someone was singing in agony.My skin prickled.
It could have been ATVI tried toreason, or maybe just plumbing,
but the more I listened, the less that made sense.
It sounded like real people shuffling and choking back
actual pain. And then a sudden sharp scream
knife through everything echoingfrom behind that door.

(09:15):
My entire body froze, but just as I was about to bolt up the
stairs, the knob in my hand twisted all by itself.
The lock clicked open. For a full 4 seconds I just
stood there, sweaty and numb. I don't remember walking inside,
but suddenly I was in that basement room and the smell hit
me like a wave. My mouth flooded with saliva and

(09:37):
I threw up right on the rug. Dim red bulbs dangled from low
ceilings, barely illuminating the space.
I could make out dark shapes, making strange, jerky movements
on the other side. I blinked and realized they were
people, maybe six or seven of them, chained to iron rings on
the wall. Their limbs were raw, bruised,

(09:58):
too thin. Their faces all blurred
together, mouths stretched in silent screams.
One had empty sockets, as if something had clawed out their
eyes. Another was missing most of
their fingers. On the damp stone floor I saw
bodies, some fully clothed but slashed open, and some barely
more than skeletons. It occurred to me that the

(10:21):
stains on the floor might be blood, old and new.
I can't honestly say if the people looked at me, my memory's
fuzzy there, but I remember a horrible quiet, a sort of
scraping hush, and I know something in that room saw me.
Suddenly I heard steps behind me, slow and deliberate in the
dimness. Misses Herridge's silhouette

(10:42):
took shape in the doorway. Her hair looked too neat for
this hellish place, pinned up tight, but her grin had
stretched too wide, showing far too many teeth.
She gripped A gleaming kitchen knife in her fist, the blade so
shiny it's shown even in the weak red light.
Her eyes, they had gone all white, pupils rolled back and

(11:03):
she started drooling, making wetgrowls in the back of her
throat. For a moment she just stood
there, grinning, and then with aflicker of her wrist, she lunged
straight for me, knife raised atthroat level.
Panic finally took over. I scrambled sideways, my shoes
slipping in the filth. I dodged behind a stack of

(11:24):
crates, heart beating so hard I thought it would burst.
She came closer, her steps making this clacking sound on
the stone. She was muttering in a deeper,
raspier voice now, almost guttural, like her whole body
had changed with her face. I peeked out from behind the
crates just a sliver, enough to see her white eyes scanning the

(11:44):
shadows, knife dripping something dark onto her sleeve.
Her movements. This is what stuck with me.
Most weren't quite right. She jerked like each step had to
be forced, like her body was a puppet being dragged by
invisible strings. Eventually, after what felt like
hours but was probably only a moment, she slipped out of the

(12:04):
room, knife still gripped tight.The second I thought she might
be gone, I bolted back upstairs,nearly falling twice.
My legs wouldn't stop shaking. Back in the party, everything
was normal. Music, voices, the clink of
glasses. No one looked at me twice.
I found my mom and whispered that I didn't feel well and
wanted to go home. She frowned but grabbed our

(12:27):
coats. On the way out, I glanced up at
Missus Herridge, who was greeting guests at the door.
She looked perfectly normal, polite and smiling.
Hairpin, just so. No blood, no knife.
I spent years trying not to think about that night.
My parents never really believedmy story.
They called it a nightmare, the sort of overactive imagination

(12:48):
kids have. No police ever showed up at
Misses Herridge's door, that I know of.
No missing persons reports. She lived there for a few years
after that party, then died suddenly.
Heart attack, they said. Sometimes I try to convince
myself I really did just see a movie, or dreamt it all up.
Maybe I was sleepwalking or hallucinating from party food,

(13:10):
or secretly terrified of that house and let my brain play
tricks. That's what a grown up mind
tells you. But I can still smell that rot
sometimes when I pass an old house or see meat left too long
in the fridge. I still hear the metallic ring
of her knife, the way her eyes went blank and shining.
Maybe there's a logical explanation for all of it.

(13:32):
But every so often the thought returns in the middle of the
night that somewhere in that house something terrible
happened and I was the only person to see its doors swing
open. Story #3 My neighbors Karen and
Josh asked me to house sit for them while they went out of
town. They left Friday evening after
dropping off some spare keys andinstructions.

(13:53):
I wasn't doing much that weekend, so I agreed.
They mentioned their dog Frankiegets really anxious during
storms, but since the forecast said clear skies and sunshine, I
didn't think much of it. Just food, walks, Give him
company and everything would be fine.
The first evening was ordinary. Frankie, a golden retriever with

(14:13):
more white fur around his eyes than gold, seemed relaxed as I
set up in the guest bedroom upstairs.
He knows my knee. Hoping for some of the pizza I'd
ordered, circled the living roomand flopped down with a groan.
I half watched TV, scrolled on my phone, phoned a friend.
Nothing weird at all. Everything changed after
midnight. I woke to rumbling Thunder.

(14:36):
Loud rain lashed at the windows.I sat up, confused.
I had checked the weather obsessively, just in case, and
there hadn't been any mention ofa storm.
Frankie's bark echoed from somewhere downstairs, agitated,
rapid, echoing. My stomach nodded.
I got up, still groggy, stumbling down the hallway into

(14:57):
pitch blackness but for the blueflicker of lightning outside.
Downstairs, the barking had stopped.
Frankie wasn't in the living room, or in the kitchen, or by
the back door, or his favorite spot behind the sofa.
With each room I checked, my panic rose.
The whole house felt wrong, colder, silent after the storm's

(15:17):
noise. I checked closets, bathrooms,
even open the pantry to peer in,almost laughing at myself.
If he'd gotten out, I reasoned, I'd have heard scrambling at the
door something. But there was nothing.
No paw prints on the floor, Not a sound.
The only thing unusual was how strong the scent of wet dogs

(15:38):
suddenly was, as if he'd been running through rain.
But the house was locked. I checked the side yard too,
with a torch. No fur, no footprints.
I ran back upstairs, heart beating way too fast.
I told myself Frankie would turnup any second, lock all doors,
blame it on old houses, strange layouts, unfamiliar sounds.

(15:59):
When I reached the guest room, he was there, panting, staring
intensely at the closet. My heart almost stopped.
The closet door straight ahead, was open an inch, even though I
remembered specifically closing and locking it since it was
packed with Karen and Josh's stuff.
Frankie's ears were flat. His entire body shook.

(16:20):
Lightning flashed, shadows bloomed.
The only thing I could hear was his low, rattling bark.
I forced myself to cross the room.
Every step took effort. I was hyper aware of the air
feeling wrong, heavy, sticky like before, a fever tinged with
coppery metal. I reached for the door.
It creaked another inch, as if pressed from the inside.

(16:42):
I told myself it was the storm'swind through some crack, but the
window was closed. Frankie didn't budget, just
barked and barked at the darkness inside the closet.
The storm began to move away, Thunder rolling further, and the
house fell silent. Frankie turned, stared at me.
I'll never forget his eyes too bright, reflecting a strange

(17:04):
shimmer, as if something was shining inside them.
It sent a jolt up my spine. I stepped back, something primal
telling me not to get closer. I turned and bolted, feeling
ridiculous but unable to stop myself.
In the living room, I nearly tripped.
The sudden sound of barking behind made me spin.
Frankie was behind me again, this time standing stock still,

(17:26):
facing the TV, hackles up. The television was off the
screen, glossy, reflecting a warped image of the room, and
for a heartbeat I saw another shape there, behind my shoulder,
Just a glimmer of a small pale figure.
Then nothing. The barking stopped.
The room seemed to exhale, as ifsomething had left.

(17:49):
Before I could move, the lights flickered, then died completely.
Rain battered the glass. I tried my phone's flash and
swept it across the room. Frankie was there, yes, but
wrong. Too tall, hunched over, a
glistening line of saliva stretching from his lower jaws.
His mouth yawned wide, and for asplit second it seemed his teeth

(18:10):
were elongated, grotesquely large, catching the light,
almost cracked yellow. His fur bristled, wrong
proportions in the shadows. Then my phone died, too.
The next instant, all the lightssnapped back on, harsh and
yellow and ordinary. The house seems smaller,
familiar, not frightening. Frankie lay by the living room,

(18:33):
curled, snoring lightly, as if nothing had happened.
I stood there for a long time, shaking.
By morning the storm had passed.I got coffee fed.
Frankie tried to laugh it off. Must have been a panic attack.
Bad pizza, tricks of the lightning.
I didn't let myself even look atthe closet.
The next night, hoping to catch up on sleep.

(18:54):
I binge watch reality shows withthe sound up.
Then I realized Frankie was goneagain.
No noise, no barking, just silence.
A thickness pressing on my ears that didn't feel right.
Every clock in the house had stopped at a different time.
Maybe a power surge, I thought. I switched on every light,
checked every room. Nothing.

(19:16):
When I went upstairs, I found the guest room door ajar.
Frankie was there, frantically scratching at the closet.
Not barking now, just this whimper that felt like nails in
my head. I grabbed the closet handle.
Cautiously. I opened it.
Inside it was chaos. Extra sheets, shoes, boxes, and

(19:37):
lying on top, a faded Polaroid photo.
I picked it up. It showed a little girl, maybe
6, grinning on a patch of grass next to her.
A dog. Frankie, maybe, but younger,
thinner, and strangely, with a collar I'd never seen on him.
The background looked like the yard Outback, except something

(19:58):
about the shadows gave me goosebumps.
I wondered if the house had another family long before Karen
and Josh, if it was their kid. But then why would the photo be
hidden? I left the closet door wide
open. After that, the rest of the
weekend blurred into a repetitive cycle.
Frankie would vanish for long stretches, then reappear barking

(20:18):
at dark corners. Under the basement stairs, the
attic hatch, the bathroom mirror.
Sometimes I'd catch movement just at the edge of my vision in
a reflection. Nothing there when I turned.
Worst was Sunday night. Just as I was about to go to
bed. I heard little feet skittering
above me, right across the ceiling.
Then nothing for hours. A soft scratching, always coming

(20:42):
from just out of sight, no matter where I was.
Once I thought I heard a child'sgiggle when I walked past the
coat closet. Monday morning came.
Sunlight streamed in too bright,making my headache.
Everything looked normal. Frankie wagged, happy.
Karen and Josh returned later that morning.

(21:02):
Frankie licked their hands, pressed close as children do
when they come home. I left quickly.
When Karen texted later asking how things went, I just said
Frankie had been nervous, but I managed.
I never mentioned the storms or the closet or the photo, which I
left exactly where I found it. They never asked if I'd seen
anything weird. I don't know what I saw or

(21:24):
imagined. I could say it was all stress.
Dogs reading my anxiety, reflections playing tricks, old
houses groaning in storms, powerflickers.
But sometimes at night, in my own place, when I see a shape in
the TV screen or my own closet door rattles a bit, I remember
that weekend. There's a sense I can't quite

(21:45):
shake, a feeling like something looked back at me.
And maybe it still does. Story #4 I've always been a
light sleeper, the kind who'll jolt awake if a car door slams
on the street at 2:00 AM. When I got assigned to a new
city for work, I found a rental in an old brownstone third floor
end of the hallway. It wasn't fancy peeling paint

(22:08):
thin walls, but it was close to everything and the rent wasn't
extortionate. The guy who showed me the
apartment, not the landlord, just the supers teenager, just
handed me the keys and left. No big welcome speech, just a
warning about not letting the front door slam.
First night I noticed the bedroom window didn't quite line

(22:28):
up with the sill. There was a small gap at the
bottom and one side. When I closed and latched it I
saw a faint outline where old locks must have been replaced.
The wood splintered and painted over.
It bugged me a bit, but I figured it was just an old
building thing. Still, before bed I made sure to
press the window down hard and click the latch.

(22:49):
Within a couple nights I realized the window kept coming
unlatched. Like every morning I'd wake up
and it was cracked open again, even on windless nights.
I told myself maybe the counterweights inside the frame
were jammed up or slipping, but after a while it kept gnawing at
me. The night time in that room just
felt weird, even though I alwaystry to see the best in places, I

(23:11):
couldn't shake the sense I wasn't really alone.
The air seemed chillier near thewindow, even with the heating
on. I'd wake up randomly at 3:00 or
4:00 AM, heart pounding, no sounds except the occasional
radiator ping. There was this faint, almost
coppery Tang in the air, like blood or old pennies.
Sometimes I'd see my breath whenI woke up, even though it was

(23:34):
only September. One night I woke up shivering,
like the Arctic had blown through the walls.
For a second I thought maybe my mom had called me.
I could swear I felt someone lean in and whisper right in my
ear, so close I could feel the breath brush the little hairs on
my neck. Swallowed by panic, I flailed in
the sheets, heart blasting off. There was nobody in the room,

(23:57):
obviously, just my own shadow thrown huge across the wall by
the street light outside. But then I saw it.
On the inside of the window, pressed right up against the
condensation from my shallow breathing, was a handprint.
A full hand, long fingered, palewhere it fogged the glass.
My heart hammered as I realized it wasn't a finger smudgy print,

(24:19):
but look pressed on, detailed enough to see the world's on the
fingertips. I forced myself to think it was
just me, maybe sleepwalking, butthe palm was so much larger than
mine, the fingers stretched at angles.
My own hands are short and stubby.
This one was, well, it was nothing like mine.
And this was the third floor. No balcony, no fire escape, no

(24:43):
ledge. The ground outside was way, way
down. I inched over, half expecting
everything from a jump scare to some hobo suddenly swinging in,
but the street was empty, just adumpster in a thin line of
trees. I wiped the glass and checked
the latch, tried to convince myself I missed a draft or
forgot to lock it. After that stuff started

(25:06):
escalating. I'd wake up to that window every
night, sometimes wide open, sometimes just enough for the
cold to leach in. The smell would be strong, then
old metal rot and dirt. It never got easier.
Some nights I saw flies gathering near the frame, other
nights my lamp would flicker even though the bulb was new.

(25:26):
But what snapped me were the things that left physical
evidence. One morning I was brushing my
teeth and in the half steam bathroom mirror I saw a
handprint show up behind me. Except it wasn't on the mirror
itself at first, but sort of within the fog, red streaks
forming at the lines where the hand should be.
I wiped the surface, smearing the faint rust red into almost

(25:49):
bloody swirls. I tried telling myself it might
be lipstick residue or rust froman old razor blade nearby, but
the cold dread in my gut wouldn't subside.
I checked the window again. As ever, it was open this time.
What was different was the window sill, a fat brown rat,
dead stiff and curled in the edge.

(26:10):
It hadn't been there last night,and I checked obsessively before
I went to bed. There was no blood around the
rat, just it's glassy eyes in a patch of fur missing, as if
something had padded or gripped it.
After that night, I started taping the window shut before
going to sleep, propping my dresser tight against the frame
with a pile of old magazines. I covered the window with a

(26:32):
thick bed sheet duct taped around the edges, as if I could
shut whatever it was out by brute force.
But it kept happening. Every night there would be a new
handprint, sometimes pressed against the glass, sometimes
high on the pain, so I had to stand on tiptoe to touch the
same spot. Once I found a brown mottled
feather wedged inside the closedframe.

(26:53):
Another time 3 neat parallel scratches appeared on the part
of the sill facing inside where my dresser had stood guard.
Sometimes I heard something I couldn't explain, like the soft
scrape of nails on glass or the feather light tap tapping just
as I slipped towards sleep. My phone's audio would sometimes
catch faint gurgling static during the worst nights recorded

(27:16):
while I slept as proof for myself, but there was nothing
conclusive. No voices, only shifting shadows
and brief sharp bursts of white noise.
I reasoned it could have been interference or me
subconsciously making noises. I stopped sleeping with
headphones in. I lasted 6 months there.
I never saw any faces at the window, never caught anyone in

(27:38):
the act. the Super didn't care when I showed him the open
window, shrugged and said the wind could be weird Up on the
3rd floor. A friend suggested I had mice or
birds living in the wall. I thought about cameras but
chickened out. Part of me didn't want to see
what might turn up, but I kept the prints.
I took photos. A fingerprint with impossibly

(27:59):
long fingers, a bloody mark, anda crude child's drawing of a
hand. And once something that looked
almost like a face pressed cheekand half the nose into the fog
around the window, but too distorted to prove anything.
I deleted them before moving out.
Wanted nothing to do with it. By the time my 6 month lease was

(28:19):
up, I was sleeping on the couch in the living room, refusing to
even step in the bedroom at night.
My world was shrinking, ruled bya window I couldn't control.
When I finally left, the window was wide open, handprint pressed
higher than ever before, as if whatever was outside had almost
managed to reach in. I never saw anyone climb those

(28:39):
walls. No graffiti, no ladders, nothing
but the echoes and stairs from pitted brick and peeling paint.
I hope whoever rents that room next is a deeper sleeper than
me, or at least isn't bothered by the way the light never quite
reaches the far corners, by the way the window always finds its
way open. I still wake up sometimes,

(29:00):
swearing. I feel cold air and the faintest
brush of someone's fingers against my face, as if some part
of that apartment came with me. Maybe it's just nerves or
nightmares. I really, really hope so.
Story #5 I've never really believed in the paranormal.
Even now, believe feels like thewrong word because when you lay

(29:21):
it all out, there's always a logical explanation.
Or there should be, but something stick in your head and
you know you'll never totally shake the feeling.
So I moved into this crumbling 2story rental about six months
ago. Cheapest place in town for a
reason. The back of the living room.
Well, if you could call it that.It was more like a stretched out

(29:41):
storage space looked out over a broken playground.
This was the kind of old school lot nobody had cared about in
decades. The faded wood was splintered
and the slide had rust stains that bled orange down into the
snowdrifts. Even in daylight, you'd never
call it cheerful at night. It was just a patch of deeper
blackness in a world that had all the color sucked out of it.

(30:03):
It started a few days after a heavy snowstorm.
The ground had that thick, undisturbed blanket, soft as
cake icing, with no animal tracks or tire marks.
The night was so quiet I could hear the ticking of my heat
pipes echoing around the empty house.
Anyway, I was half watching the snow fall outside when I saw
her. A little girl, 5 maybe four,

(30:26):
bundled up in one of those old fashioned red coats, the kind
they sell at thrift stores. She was swinging, tiny boots,
kicking through the powder. Her movements didn't make sense,
too steady, too measured, almostlike she was being pushed.
But I could see there was no onebehind her, and it was almost
1:00 AM. My gut twisted.

(30:47):
Everyone knows those true crime stories about lost kids.
I threw on my jacket, barely laced up my boots.
I'm not going to just watch a child freeze to death out there.
I yanked open the door, trudge through the yard, boots biting
through the drifts. But as I stepped off my porch,
she wasn't there. The swing was moving, pendulum

(31:08):
perfect, but no child on it. I followed the only evidence
left. Tiny, sharp depressions in the
snow. I followed them until the
footprints just stopped, right there in the open, 5 feet from
the swing set. Not faded out, not buried by
more snow, just gone. The rest of the field was

(31:28):
smooth, perfect. My footsteps were the only other
ones, I told myself The wind could have covered her tracks,
or she ran off, but the air was dead still, and the only
movement was my own breathing, sharp and fogged in the cold.
I tried laughing it off, but my laugh just sounded odd, too thin
out there. Nothing happened for a day or

(31:50):
two. I left the blinds closed, gave
myself a break from looking at the old swings.
The power in the house kept flickering, maybe from the
storm, I told myself. It's a bad neighborhood.
Old plumbing, drafty seals, that's all.
One night I woke up to the soundof metal screeching.
Not a scream, not a crash, but that steady rusty noise, like

(32:13):
steel scraping steel in slow motion.
I pulled aside the edge of the curtain and the swings were
moving back and forth, back and forth, sharp arcs that cut
through the darkness, the kind of movement that doesn't fit
with wind no matter how hard yousquint.
There wasn't the faintest whisper of wind anyway.

(32:33):
The big pine outside the window was still as grave markers, snow
frozen on every branch. That night I must have dozed off
on the couch, book in my lap. When I woke up maybe 3 in the
morning, my socks were soaked through.
I scrambled up and realized there was water all around the
base of the couch, pulling out in a dark shape.

(32:54):
My first thought was busted pipes.
Again. Expecting to see water bursting
out from somewhere, I checked under the sink in the bathroom,
pulled back the bath panel, Nothing.
Pipes bone dry, no dripping fromthe ceiling, water just sitting
there for no reason. I mopped it up, cracked a window

(33:15):
to let the cold air in, and didn't sleep again that night.
After that, I saw her almost every night, always at around
the same time, late, when the world felt thin and brittle.
She'd be back at the swings, herform fog by condensation on the
pains. Sometimes she just stand beside
the slide, head cast down, or I'd catch the red shape of her

(33:37):
coat at the edge of the street light, the color too vivid, too
certain in the white and Gray ofwinter.
Once I thought I caught her staring up at my window, but her
face was lost in the shadows. Those nights bled together,
uneasy. Not quite panic, but a kind of
low, persistent anxiety. I'd sit on my old couch,

(33:58):
heartbeat ticking in my throat, listening for that metallic
shriek in the ghost thud of boots on snow.
Then one night, while the world held its breath under a fresh
coat of snow, I saw something else.
Just beyond where the orange pool of street light ended and
the darkness began. Shapes flickered, thin, taller
than a person, vague, as if someone was playing with the

(34:21):
focus dial on an old Tvi blinked, pressed my forehead to
the cold glass, but they didn't resolve into anything.
They just skittered at the edge of vision, lost to the night
before you could get a real look.
It was the next evening that things got worse.
I decided to stay up, just to watch so I wouldn't get caught
off guard. The house was silent, just the

(34:43):
hum of my fridge and the creak of the radiator.
I kept my phone on, scrolling mindlessly to keep myself
distracted. It started as a soft,
rhythmically spaced knocking. You'd think you could ignore it,
convince yourself it was branches or boards shifting, but
my window faces the empty lot. There's no tree close enough to
reach it, and the air was so still not even a breeze could

(35:06):
move a branch. The knocking got louder,
sharper, insistent. Adrenaline set my hands
tingling. I tried to peer through the
window. There was no one there, not even
a shadow, just an undisturbed blanket of snow in the swings,
dead still. I felt ridiculous, fever, shaky,
sleep deprived and skittish. I stepped back, breathing,

(35:28):
fogging up the glass. Then pain, sudden and cold,
exploded on my left wrist. It felt exactly like a small
hand, ice cold, closing tight, crushing the blood out of my
skin. I yanked back, stumbled, hit the
corner of the coffee table. Every nerve in my arm throbbed,

(35:49):
claw marks blooming red on my wrist.
When I managed to look down, there was nothing, nothing at
all gripping me. I look back at the glass and
there she was, just on the otherside of the window, face tilted
upwards. Except she didn't have a face,
just smooth skin where eyes, nose and mouth should have been,
like wet clay wiped away. I must have blacked out for a

(36:12):
second because then she was justgone.
I haven't seen her again since that night.
The water comes back sometimes seeping under the floorboards.
The swing set still moves in total dead air just after
midnight. I keep telling myself it's the
sleep deprivation, maybe some stress induced hallucination,
maybe weird plumbing, maybe justnerves because I watched too

(36:35):
many late night horror videos. The bruises on my wrist faded
and I keep the blinds closed now, but sometimes I wake up
hearing the rhythmic creak of a swing in perfect stillness and
somehow that feels much worse. It could just be the house or my
head. Nothing lasts forever, right?
I'm moving out next week, but I bet the swing set keeps moving

(36:58):
long after I'm gone. Story number six.
This is the kind of thing I would usually just laugh off if
someone else posted it, but I still think about it sometimes,
usually at like 2:00 AM when thehouse creaks and nothing feels
right. I don't believe in ghosts or
whatever, but this one job stillfreaks me out and for what it's
worth, I'm just putting it out there.

(37:19):
If anyone wants to call it an old house settling, fine by me.
I'm really just looking to get it off my chest.
I do handyman work, painting, patching plaster, fixing creaky
stairs, the usual. This job was an old brownstone
Manor kind of tucked off a country Rd. somewhere between
Lansing and nowhere. Some couple from the city had

(37:40):
bought it and wanted to restore it to look authentic again, so
my company got called in for allthe finicky bits.
Ornate crown moldings, built in cabinets, everything creaking,
everything ancient. The place looks straight out of
a faded Halloween postcard. 3 stories, big wrap around porch
half choked with weeds, Maple trees that look like hands.

(38:03):
Place hadn't been lived in for decades, according to the
couple, and that seemed about right.
One of those houses where the corners felt too dark, even
during the day. My partner Bry, who did
electrical, kept making Amityville jokes.
Even our boss, who's worked on historic houses for 40 years,
muttered about bad air in some of the rooms.

(38:24):
I'm used to old houses feeling alittle off.
Funky smells, weird cold spots, unexplained noises.
All normal, honestly. I shrugged it off for the first
couple days, chalked it up to old floorboards and animal nests
in the attic. The first weird thing happened
end of week one. I was on my own upstairs,
patching cracks in the massive master bedroom.

(38:45):
It faced E with one of those bigcurving Bay windows where you
could practically camp out. The sun would streak across the
floor, except the glass was kindof spectrum stained so
everything was weirdly yellow. I noticed some plaster flaking
above the window ledge and thought, great.
Another stretch of laugh messed up from the freeze thaw.

(39:08):
I chipped off a loose piece and that's when I saw it right
underneath the fresh crack. The sticky reddish run was
trickling down over the drywall.Not a gush, but enough that I
watched it bead and start a slowdescent.
I bent over and instinctively sniffed and immediately gagged.
It was metallic, like nicking your gum at the dentist, but way

(39:31):
sharper. For a split second my mouth
filled with spit, thinking oh God I'm kneeling in front of a
bleeding wall. I wiped it with my sponge,
expecting red to smear off maybea dead mouse in there or rusty
pipe water, but the spot just reformed. 2 minutes later the
wall below it was streaked like an oil painting that cried

(39:52):
blood. I was pissed.
Mostly. I texted bride to come see, but
he was downstairs when I came back up with him.
Nothing. White plaster, dry as bone.
My mind started running circles already.
I left it moved to another room and didn't mention it to the
clients. But next morning alone I picked
at the crack spot again. There it was, not as much as

(40:15):
before, but sure enough, the thin red line emerged right from
the same hairline and started trailing.
I snapped photos, looked all wrong in them, more brown than
red. I thought it had to be a rusty
nail melted into the lath, or a dead bat or something leaking
God knows what. But thing is, the moment anyone
else was in the room, nothing happened.

(40:37):
Bry laughed and called it Schrodinger's Wall.
Three times that week I tried again, the same pattern, a lone
chipping plaster. Get this sickly thin ooze that
stained my tools and left the room reeking.
If I went to fetch someone it had vanished almost instantly
once I left the room when it started.
Waited outside 5 minutes, came back in bone dry.

(41:01):
Another time I set up my phone to record but the angle missed
it and when I tried to check thescreen had this weird crackle
distortion. That was probably just my old
phone being junkie, but it was another thing that gave me a
cold feeling standing in that spot like I was getting away
with something forbidden. The manor's owners came by for a
walkthrough and I blurted out the problem because I didn't

(41:23):
want to get blamed. The husband looks spooked but
interested. They insisted on sending out a
guy to test the liquid. He took a sample in those little
pharmacy vials. Couple days later he showed up
looking more confused than worried.
He said the test was inconclusive.
Not blood, not any known paint, iron or fungus, organic but not.

(41:44):
He shrugged, blamed maybe rodentwaste reacting weirdly with old
insulation. I wasn't satisfied.
I went so far as to cut a big chunk into the plaster right at
that spot, thinking there must be a corroded pipe or maybe a
bird nest oozing God knows what.But behind it was nothing.
Just cracked yellow pine studs, dust and matted insulation that

(42:06):
crumbled under my gloves, bone dry under my flashlight.
It all looked like the inside ofa tomb.
There aren't any pipes in that wall.
It was nowhere near the bathroomor kitchen.
I double checked the blueprints.The wall was a time capsule of
dry rot and stale air, so how was anything coming out for the
rest of the job? I made a point never to patch

(42:27):
that crack alone. Bryce started joking it was my
haunted spot and made this ritual about whistling as we
walked past it together, which always made the hair on my arms
stand up for reasons I couldn't explain.
Some days there'd still be a faint reddish smear on the wall,
other days it dried so completely I wondered if I
dreamt it. A couple afternoons I swear I

(42:49):
heard scampering somewhere in the walls, but there were no
droppings, nothing in traps. Once I worked late and standing
by the Bay window, I got this freezing feeling like someone
was right behind me. I spun around, nearly lost my
balance, but the room was empty.The only person was my own
shadow, huge and black on the warped floorboards, stretched

(43:11):
twice my size as the sunset behind a broken Maple.
That's nothing new. Old houses make weird feelings.
Still, I left early that day. The night before I dreamed about
peeling back the plaster and seeing a watchful eye behind the
crack. So realistic I woke up gasping,
sweat soaking my shirt. Dumb stuff.

(43:31):
Stress, probably. The next week, I coaxed the
owners into hiring a bigger team.
The more people on site, the less weird everything felt.
Still, everyone kind of agreed. The house never warmed up, never
stopped creaking. Nobody else saw the red ooze,
though once or twice I caught Bryce staring at that Bay window
patch like it might bite. I finished up the woodwork,

(43:53):
ended my portion of the job a smidge ahead of schedule.
Couldn't have been happier to walk out that last time.
Next team came in and painted over the master bedroom
completely. I never heard if new cracks
showed up or not. Whole experience made me swear
off solo jobs and old houses forgood.
So yeah. Looking back I keep telling
myself it was some weird chemical reaction in the wall.

(44:16):
Could have been rust or some rare kind of fungus or something
leeching through that science hasn't nailed yet.
The owners test report couldn't pin it down, but maybe their guy
was just incompetent. That's what I want to believe
anyway. Sometimes though, on cold winter
nights when you catch a metallicscent drifting through the vent,
it makes me wonder if you can ever really seal up old walls.

(44:39):
Maybe something from way back isstill leaking through, waiting
to see if you're alone. No clue if any of this checks
out with you folks, but I don't go back to that part of Michigan
if I can help it. Even now I avoid old Bay windows
and never patch cracked plaster alone with the door closed
behind me. Just in case of story #7.

(44:59):
Until a few months ago I thoughthaunted houses and work from
home horror stories were just exaggerations.
I'm not talking about ghosts in a Victorian mansion or
flickering white figures on security cams.
I'm talking about real, explainable things that just
didn't sit right. If I hadn't experienced it

(45:19):
myself, I would have gone on rolling my eyes forever.
I work from home, pretty basic IT job.
After COVID I got used to four walls and screens.
My flat small, just a bedroom, kitchen, the living area and one
spare room that I'd set up as myoffice.
I made it cozy, ergonomic chair,a big desk, functional lamp with

(45:43):
a second hand chunky old printeron the side.
I rarely use the printer but it was there for paperwork.
Mostly gathering dust. Nights tended to be quiet, with
the occasional neighbors TV or dog barking.
The only light after midnight was the blue glow of my monitor
and sometimes headlights throughthe window.
I appreciated the routine, the silence, at least I used to.

(46:08):
Everything started with that buzzing sound.
Not a constant hum, but sharp angry hammering and sudden
bursts. First time it happened I was on
a work call, barely paying attention to it, thinking maybe
it was some appliance acting up.When the call ended, I went
searching for the source. The kitchen, Fridge, fine.

(46:29):
Bathroom, nothing. Bedroom, silent.
Finally, I checked my office. The door was closed, which was
odd. I usually left it open.
Inside was pitch black, even though the bulb was supposed to
be always on. The only thing visible was a
stuttering little green light coming from the printer.
It was blinking on off on off, almost like a heartbeat.

(46:53):
I reach for the switch and flickthe lights on.
The blinking turn to a physical rumble.
The printer word struggled, paper inched out, but the tray
was empty. I thought maybe my phone or
laptop had sent something by accident, so I checked Bluetooth
off. Printer not connected anywhere.
I felt a shot of annoyance. Maybe the thing was just broken.

(47:15):
I pulled the plug out of the wall and heard the fate of
electricity from the machine. Silence fell.
I closed the office and went back to the living room.
An hour later, the buzzing returned.
Same sound, more insistent. I stopped mid episode, remote in
hand, pulse thumping. I marched back, annoyed now.
When I opened the door, I could see faint light flickering under

(47:36):
the crack. The printer again.
How was it powered? The cord still dangled on the
floor, unplugged. I stepped closer and the machine
began to grind, gears twitching,sheet of paper emerging with
jerking stops. The paper landed on the empty
tray, curling as if in pain. I picked it up on the page, in

(47:57):
smeared letters. Only one word.
Leave. Cold sweat broke out on my neck.
I tried to rationalize. Maybe it was some glitch, an old
document in the printer memory. Maybe a neighbor's device was
somehow connecting in the daylight.
It made sense. I replugged the cord, checked
every setting, change the passwords, updated the firmware.

(48:20):
But that night, it happened again.
Buzz were the churn of paper, this time in bold, stark ink.
Go from then, every morning, a new page waited on the tray.
Don't stay. Get out.
Not always in the same font on Wednesday, Block capitals
Friday, childish handwriting slanting awkwardly on the page,

(48:43):
even the paper. Sometimes a fresh A4, sometimes
one already half printed on margins covered in jittery
circular doodles. Scan the flat for cameras or
bugs. Called the building's handyman.
He shrugged. Said maybe I need a new printer.
I tried not to think about it. I ignored the queue of pages
piling up in my trash, even started unplugging the printer

(49:05):
every night, but it didn't matter.
Next morning, another note. My sleep started to get weirdly
broken. Waking up at three O 7 AMA few
nights, heart hammering feeling watched.
The air in the office always felt heavier, but I told myself
it was just paranoia. I tried to justify it all.
Of course. Bad firmware, electromagnetic

(49:27):
interference, maybe even a neighbor hacking my Wi-Fi and
pranking me. After all, nobody else seemed
bothered. It was just tech acting up,
right? But that one night, it got
worse. It had been a long day of calls.
I'd shut down, barely able to keep my eyes open.
Left my laptop on the office desk, printer unplugged, lights

(49:48):
off. Walking past the closed office
door toward my bedroom, I caughtit.
That familiar buzz, but louder, almost angry, like a swarm of
Hornets stuffed inside a shoebox, desperate to get out.
I stopped. The air was cooler than before.
The hair stood up along my arms.I turn the handle and open the
door. The printer's status light,

(50:10):
usually green, flashed A franticred strobe, like my chest
tightened. The printer powered up, somehow
visibly plugged into nothing. The whir was now accompanied by
a strange static, like a distantradio stuck between stations.
I could almost hear something. Words may be broken by

(50:31):
distortion. Paper stuttered out this time,
jagged at the end, as if someonehad torn it from the machine
while it was still printing. My fingers trembled as I grabbed
it. 3 words overlapping like multiple people shouting into
the same void. Look behind you.
Suddenly, the overhead light flickered and went out, plunging

(50:51):
the room Into Darkness except for the blood red glow of the
printer's power button. The air changed suddenly, thick
and cold, pressing down like a hand on my lungs.
I turned, breath hitching. There, by the door frame,
something that hadn't been therebefore.
A woman dressed bright red even in the dark, posture wrong too,

(51:13):
still too close. I couldn't see her face, only a
curtain of tangled black hair obscuring it.
One hand was held out, beckoning, impossibly long
fingers uncurling, slow, stiff. The room got colder, a drop that
felt unnatural. My throat went tight, breath

(51:33):
shallow. It felt like the air itself was
being siphoned from my chest, slowly crushing me from the
inside. I tried to yell.
Nothing came. I remember stumbling, grip gone
from my hands. Everything around me started to
fade, the buzzing growing louder, skin burning cold around
my neck as if invisible claws pressed into it.

(51:55):
That's where my memory ends. Morning sunlight woke me on the
carpet, still in the office, mouth dry, body stiff, printer
quiet as death. I hauled myself up, noticed it
immediately. Ugly, angry bruises ringed
around my neck like the Prince of hands.
I would like to say I packed up my things that minute, but I

(52:17):
didn't. I threw out the printer for what
it's worth called a Doctor Who gently suggested sleep apnea or
maybe I'd had some kind of stress induced episode.
Explain the marks as me scratching up my throat in my
fitful sleep. Possible I guess.
Still it's been weeks since then.
I work from cafes now, but sometimes at night I swear I

(52:39):
hear the faint buzzing, distant or just before sleep.
I feel the air thicken, chest tighten.
Maybe it's just panic, maybe something else.
I wish I could explain it all neatly, blame it on tech gone
wrong or too much isolation. But some nights when I close my
eyes, I see that flash of red, those impossibly long fingers,

(53:02):
and I'm not so sure anymore. I keep telling myself it's over,
that it was just stress and a busted printer.
But if you ever hear that sound,the hum, the buzz, the static in
the walls, do yourself a favor, don't look back.