The Basement Tenant - Reddit Horror Stories

The Basement Tenant - Reddit Horror Stories

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm posting this because I can't talk about it with
anyone in my family. They just tell me I'm being
dramatic or worse, that I imagined the whole thing, but
I didn't. My name's Tyler. I'm thirty, and this happened
two years ago in Pittsburgh. I had just gotten divorced
and needed a cheap place to live. A friend of

(00:21):
a friend hooked me up with a rental a two
story house split into three units, one upstairs, one main floor,
in a small basement apartment. I took the main floor.
The rent was ridiculously cheap, and the landlord told me
the basement was technically unoccupied waiting for renovations. Still, there

(00:42):
was a door in my kitchen that led down to it.
He gave me a key, just in case. From day one,
I hated that door. At night, sitting on the couch,
I could swear I heard movement below me. Not pipes
or creeks, actual shuffling, like someone pacing barefoot on concrete.

(01:04):
I chalked it up to an old house making old
house sounds. The first real incident happened to week in.
I came home laid from work, dropped my bag and
noticed the kitchen light was on. I was sure I
had turned it off that morning. Then I saw the
basement door was open a crack. I locked it immediately

(01:24):
and told myself I had just forgotten. But after that,
small things kept happening. A plate on the counter moved
an inch. My shoes, which I always left by the door,
were placed neatly in front of the basement entrance. One morning.
One night, around two a m I woke to what

(01:46):
sounded like whispering. I froze in bed, straining to hear.
The whispers were muffled, but they were below me in
the basement. I sat there for an hour until it
went quiet. The next morning I decided to check it out.
I unlocked the basement door, flicked the light on, and

(02:06):
went down the steps. The air was damp, heavy with
that earthy basement smell. At the bottom was a small apartment, kitchenette, bathroom,
and a living area, completely empty, no furniture, no signs
anyone lived there. But in the dust on the floor

(02:26):
I saw footprints, bare footprints. I told the landlord. He
brushed me off, said I was imagining things. Nobody's got
access but you and me. He said. Two nights later,
I woke to a sound I'll never forget. The basement
door creaking open slowly. I grabbed the bat I kept

(02:49):
under my bed, and crept into the hallway. The door
was open two inches from the darkness below. I heard breathing, deep,
steady breathing, like someone standing just out of sight. I
slammed it shut, locked it, and pushed a chair against it.
I didn't sleep until the sun came up. The final

(03:11):
night I spent in that house still makes my stomach tone.
I had started staying out late just to avoid being home,
but I had no choice. That night, around three a m.
I woke up to footsteps not below me in my kitchen.
I stayed in bed, clutching the bat until I heard
the basement door creak shut. By the time I got

(03:34):
the courage to move, the kitchen was empty, but the
footprints were back, this time leading across the kitchen floor
and stopping right outside my bedroom door. I moved out
two days later, broke my lease, lost my deposit. I
didn't care, but here's the pot that keeps me up
at night. A few months later, I ran into a

(03:57):
neighbor who had lived across the street for years. When
I told her where I'd been renting, her face went pale.
That house, honey, The basement's been locked up since the nineties.
A tenant went missing down there. They never found her.
I don't know if she was telling the truth or

(04:18):
just repeating rumors. But sometimes when I wake up in
the middle of the night in my new place, I
swear I can still hear it. That's slow, steady breathing,
just beyond a door that isn't there any more.