When Home Turns Into a Nightmare | True Late Night Visitor Encounters - Scary Stories from Bad Vibes

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
I've never told the story in full before, not even
to my friends. It's one of those things that people
shrug off and turn into a joke, and honestly, I'd
rather keep it buried. But with Halloween around the corner
and everyone sharing true scary stories, I figured maybe it's
time this happened. When I was sixteen, my parents were

(00:29):
out of town for the weekend, not far, just visiting
my aunt about two hours away. They asked if I
wanted to come, but I had a big test Monday
and thought i'd usually quiet time to study and maybe
enjoy having the house to myself. We lived in a
two story house in a quiet part of town, not

(00:49):
completely rural, but far enough from the city that things
got pretty still at night. Our back yard ran up
against a small patch of woods, nothing creepy. The first
night alone, everything was fine. I stayed up late, gaming, snacking,
and half heartily reviewing notes. Around one thirty in the morning,

(01:11):
I finally shut things off and crawled into bed, but
the house was day quiet, the kind of silence that
makes your ears ring a little. That's when I first
heard it, three tapping sounds. It was soft, but deliberate,
not like a branch in the wind, but rhythmic close.

(01:33):
At first I thought it might be our house settling,
or maybe a tree brushing against the side. I pulled
my phone off the charger to check the time, one
forty seven a m. Then three more taps. This time
I realized it was coming from my window. Now my
room is on the second floor. There's no easy way

(01:55):
to reach my window unless you have a ladder or something.
The idea of some one something tapping from outside my
window made my skin crawl. I froze. Every instinct told
me not to look, but I also couldn't ignore it.
I anched out of bed, slowly walked over and peeled

(02:15):
back to my curtains. Just a sliver nothing, just a
moonlit backyard and the tops of trees swaying slightly. I
pressed my face closer to the glass. Still nothing. I
stood there a bit longer, convincing myself it had to
be a squirrel or a bird, something stupid. Eventually I

(02:36):
went back to bed, leaving a small night lay on,
even though I hadn't used that one in years. I
finally fell asleep with the blanket over my head. The
next thing I remember was waking up with the driest
mouth I've ever had. My throat fell like sandpaper. I
sat up, groggy and looked at my phone. Four thirteen am.

(02:59):
Still dark. It's still dead, silent. I was about to
head downstairs for some water when something stopped me. It
wasn't a sound exactly, more like a feeling like I
wasn't alone in the house. That's when I heard the
floor creak, not from my room, from downstairs. I froze midstep.

(03:21):
Every hard movie I have ever watched started flooding my brain.
I didn't want to believe it, but I couldn't explain
it either. My parents weren't too back until the next evening.
Nobody else had a key. And then I heard another sound,
a drawer opening, a low scrape, like wood on wood.
It was coming from my dad's office. Now. My dad's

(03:45):
office is tucked in the corner of the first floor,
behind the kitchen. It's not locked, but we know not
to mess around in there. He's kind of private about
his work. I grabbed my phone and gently turned off
the nightlight. My heart was pounding so loud. I thought,
whoever was downstairs could hear it. I crept towards the

(04:06):
stairs Honestly, each step felt like it took a year.
When I peeked over the railing, I didn't see anything
at first, just the dim glow of the stove clock
and the usual shadows the light under the office door.
It was on, and it was never on a night.
I crouched there, trying to decide what the hell to do.

(04:29):
Call the cops, text my parents, just hide in my room.
Before I could move, the door creaked open and a
tall figure stepped out. Not rushed, not sneaky, just casual,
like he belonged there. He was wearing a dark jacket
and jeans, and he had gloves on. In one hand

(04:50):
he held a flashlight and in the other something I
couldn't make out. I was still frozen half way down
the stairs, hoping to god he hadn't seen me. But
then he turned and looked right up at me. We
locked eyes on'll ever forget his face. He was older,
probably mid forties, thin, pale, with a strange smirk, like

(05:14):
he had been expecting me. I bolted. I don't even
remember turning. I just ran back into my room and
locked the door behind me. I shut my dresser against
it and crawled into my closet. Clutching my phone, I
immediately dialed down on one. The dispatcher stand in the
line with me as I whispered what was going on.

(05:35):
I kept expecting to hear footsteps on the stairs with
the sound of my door being forced open, but there
was nothing, no movement or noise that I could hear.
By the time the cops got there, which felt like
forever but was probably under ten minutes, the guy was gone.
They found the back door unlocked, which I swore I

(05:58):
checked earlier. My dad's office had been rifled through, but
nothing obvious was missing. Just a few doors opened and
paper scattered, no fingerprints, no forced entry, nothing on the
front cameras either, because of course the one in the
backwarch had been disabled. The police said it was probably

(06:19):
a burglar who thought the house was empty and maybe
ran off when you realized someone was home, and I
really wanted to believe that, but I kept thinking about
the tapping on the windows. How do you know my
room was up there unless he had been watching. After
that night, I couldn't probably sleep for weeks. My parents

(06:40):
installed better security, floodlights, motion sensors, the works, but nothing
ever came of it. No one was caught, no leads,
just one long, terrifying night and the face I'll never forget.
I just still wonder what would have happened if I
hadn't woken up for water, if I hadn't froze on

(07:01):
the stairs. Sometimes I think about that tap tap tap
sound and wonder if he was checking which room was mine,
just to make sure. Early Sunday morning, around five a m.
I woke up to this violent banging and shaking on

(07:23):
my door. I live alone on the second floor of
an old apartment building down town, in a very small town.
I've been taking Bannadryl to sleep for the past few months,
and sometimes I sleep weird. So for a moment, I thought,
did that just really happen? And then I heard whoever

(07:44):
it was start doing it again. This time it was
super loud bangs, like they were charging the door. That's
when I realized that both my fan and AC unit
were off, meaning the power was off. It stopped after
the second time, and I heard someone stop down the stairs.

(08:05):
I just laid here processing what just happened. It was
dead quiet without the fan, and I heard a guy's
voice outside saying, no, we were just walking I'm still
laying motionless in fear and trying to think of someone
to call. A few months ago, my downstairs neighbor got
a package of mine by mistake and messaged me on

(08:27):
Facebook about it after seeing my name. I've seen her
a few times. I know that she has two absolutely
ripped pippoles, so I messaged her, thinking that she wouldn't
see it until she wakes up. Nope, she immediately starts
calling me. She said she saw two guys come out
of the building after trying her door, mine and the

(08:48):
person across the hall from me, and then try to
lie and say it wasn't them. She already called the
police at this point and the intruders are gone, So
I go to downstairs to meet her, and we find
the breaker box door ripped off and all the switches off,
which sucks because there's a camera outside, but our landlord

(09:09):
said he's trying to back up the footage to see
if it caught them. Our other neighbor wakes up, she
had no idea what is happening. Finally, the downstairs neighbor
gets the power turned back on and the cops showed
up within like twenty minutes to get our statements. Apparently
the downstairs girl was awake the whole time and heard

(09:30):
them trying her door. Her dogs were doing the low
growthing instead of barking. She gave the cops to the description,
but the cops haven't updated us on anything yet. Some
of my coworkers said it might be a TikTok trend
where they tried to kick the door in. Thankfully, my

(09:50):
door opens outward and not inward if that's the case.
But I feel like cutting the power and trying to
open three units seems more like an actual break in.
I barely slept since it happened, and I'm about to
try now. To the two guys that try to break
in at five am, consider yourself lucky that you aren't

(10:12):
being crapped out by a pipol right now, and let's
never ever meet again. For some context, we were just
three college girls trying to get through midterms. Our apartment
was about a ten minute walk from campus in one

(10:34):
of those older off campus buildings that's been divided up
into units, a little rundown, criky floors, paper thin walls,
but it was cheap and honestly we were lucky to
get it. There was meek Kayla, a laid back art major,
Jess pre med and one of those kind of people
who color coats everything. And then there was Brook, Bold, funny,

(10:59):
brutally honest, and always the one to say exactly what
everyone else was thinking. We were close, not just roommates,
but actual friends. We cooked together, pulled all nighters, even
had a shared playlist for cleaning days. That fall semester,
things were chaotic. The weather had just started turning cold,

(11:20):
and people were stressed and sleep deprived. So when weird
little things started happening, we brushed it off. The first
thing was small. Brooke's phone charger disappeared. She swore she
left it plugged in on the kitchen counter, but it
was just gone. We teased her about being forgetful. Then

(11:43):
just noticed food missing from the fridge, not a lot,
just to yoga. Hear a string cheese there. We figured
maybe one of us had eaten it and forgot again,
no big deal, But then things escalated. We were sure
that we turned off would be on again. The bathroom

(12:05):
mirror had conversation on it when no one had showered.
Brooke joked that we had a ghost. One night, around
two am, we heard footsteps above us slow. The problem
was we were on the top floor. We went silent,
listening the footsteps stopped. We didn't call the cops. What

(12:27):
would we have said. We were college girls paranoid. Probably
just the wind, old pipes, something normal, But deep down
I think we all felt it, the uneasy shift in
the air when you recognize something might not be right.
Fast forward to the night it happened. I had fallen
asleep on the couch watching Netflix. Jess was studying in

(12:50):
her room, and Brooke had gone a bit early. I
think she had laps early the next day or something.
At three twelve am, I was woken up to screaming,
not just a startled yell, fool body, blood curdling screaming.
It was Brooke. I jumped up and ran towards the hallway,

(13:10):
just as Brook came flying down the hallway in the panic, eyes,
wild sobbing and screaming. There's someone in the kitchen. He
has a knife. I froze. Then I heard it footsteps, heavy,
moving fast. Brooks shoved past me, grabbed Jests from her room,
and the three of us slammed ourselves into the bathroom,

(13:31):
locking the door. We huddled in the tub, trying to
control our shaking, trying to keep quiet. We could still
hear him moving around out there, cabinets opening, something dropped,
maybe a plate, then silence. Jesse was whispering with nine
one one on the phone. I still remember her voice

(13:53):
cracked when she gave our address. Please someone broke in.
He has a knife. We're hiding in the bathroom. Please hurry.
The dispatcher told us to stay on the line and
stay quiet. Officers were already on the way. We waited
five minutes ten. I kept expecting the bathroom doorknob to jiggle,

(14:15):
for the lights to go out. Friends start banging on
the door, but none of that happened. When the police arrived,
we didn't hear them knock. We heard them shout, this
is the police. Come out with your hands up. But
they didn't find anyone in the apartment. But the back
door that we always kept locked was wide open. There's

(14:38):
a knife on the kitchen counter, one of ours from
the drawer, and a small pile of half Enis snacks,
trail mix, an apple, a granola bar wrapper. Like he
had been there for a while, like he was comfortable.
They found so much footprints near the door, a little
mud from the rain earlier in the week. They said

(15:02):
it looked like he came through the back, maybe during
the day, maybe earlier that night. No broken locks, though
no signs of force entry. He might have been inside
while we were all home. We didn't sleep that night.
We just sat in the living room, wrapped in blankets,
jumping at every sound. Every creek felt louder. The paranoia

(15:25):
was just wild. The apartment never felt the same after that.
We replaced the locks, bought some cheap, affordable security cameras,
slept with knights under a pillow for a while. I
know it's stupid, but it made us feel better. The
cops never caught him, no suspects, no prints, just a

(15:45):
fag possible transient theory, like somehow that made it better.
A few weeks later, just found something in the attic,
a sleeping bag, a pack of crackers, an empty bottle
water in a flashlight. Now we hadn't been up there
in months, but I'm not crazy. Someone was living up there,

(16:08):
watching us, listening to us, moving through our spaces, like
we were part of the furniture. We moved out around
a month later. We broke her lease, paid the fee
didn't care. None of us wanted to stay there another second.
Sometimes I still think about what would have happened if
Brooke hadn't have woken up, if she hadn't gone down

(16:30):
to the kitchen for whatever she went for, if she
had screamed just a few seconds later, would he have left.
When my brother and I were little, this terrifying thing
happened to my mom. We were already in bed when

(16:51):
this happened, but we both heard about it from my mom.
It was almost eleven PM. My mom was watching tea
in the living room and my dad was in the
basement on his computer. My parents didn't lock the doors
until they went to bed because it was a safe neighborhood. Suddenly,
a man barged into the house. My mom was so

(17:15):
scared that she froze. He didn't say anything. She barely
got out what do you want? When he started walking
towards her. She started yelling my dad's name, and for
the first time, my dad didn't ask what was up
or anything. He just came upstairs, and as soon as
the man saw that my mom wasn't alone, he left

(17:38):
very quickly. They called the police, but nothing came of it.
My mom was convinced that my dad immediately came upstairs
because he could tell something was wrong by her voice.
She always thought that the man meant to assault her,
and finding out that my dad was there made him leave.
She never saw him again. For context, it was summer

(18:08):
and I was a teenager. Classes were ending soon and
I was going on vacation. My brother had surgery, and
that will be important later. It started off after a
long day of classes on Monday. I finished earlier than
my parents and my brother, so I was alone at home.

(18:30):
I'm happy about it because it means video games galore.
I go to get the keys as usual, and the
garden shed is open. It's not normal, but someone must
have forgot to close the door. So I take the
keys and then go to the door and I open it,
but I can't turn the key. It was already open.

(18:52):
I would like to point out that we always close
and lock the door, and omissions are very rare. I
go upstairs and steadily, but I'm uncomfortable because I'm focusing
more on the noises in the house, and that is
making me anxious. The next day was brief. The only
thing was I didn't sleep at home because my brother

(19:12):
was having surgery. I slept at a friend's house. I
was responsible for closing the door, and I made sure
that I closed it properly. The following evening, after soccer practice,
I come home before my parents. As soon as I
get into the house, I had this horrible gut feeling
like something inside was warning me not to go in.

(19:35):
The door was open again. I froze, unable to move.
When my parents finally got home from the hospital, I
went in, but the oppress of feeling didn't go away. Later,
when I was making dinner, I noticed the big kitchen
knife was missing. My mom couldn't find it for several days.

(19:57):
That night, I barely slept, and I had several things
I attacks. For the rest of the weeks before the holidays,
I kept a knife with me every evening. The strange
thing was the house always smelled faintly like leather. My
mom swere she locked the door every morning, but I
kept finding it open when I came home. Once we

(20:20):
left for vacation in the South, everything changed. I relaxed
completely and had one of the best holidays of my life.
When we came back, I had almost forgotten everything that
had happened. Until our neighbor told my parents about a
stranger that had been wandering around in our garden. My
parents panicked, and that's when I found the missing kitchen knife.

(20:43):
It was laying on the work bench outside. No one
in my family put it there. A few days later,
I heard some running through the garden at night, and
after that, all the strange sensations, the anxiety, the smell
of leather just stopped. To this day, I still don't
know what to think. Was it a squatter or just

(21:04):
my imagination running wild. I moved alone two years ago
into an apartment building. Everything was quite normal, but there
was this man on the ground floor who seemed pretty weird.

(21:25):
He never really spoke to me. He seemed to have
some kind of mental issue, but every time I entered
the building, he opens his door and closes it immediately
after I passed by. It was weird, but I brushed
it off. Now, every time I leave, I see him
looking through his window. I see him looking at me

(21:46):
on the street. The last time I saw him, he's
walking towards the building and he noticed me. He sat
on the bench in front of the door. So I
decided to keep on walking ten meters after I passed him,
I looked back and he's entering the building. I am
creeped out about him, and I'm not sure what to do.

(22:16):
This happened about six months ago, and I still can't
stop thinking about it or trying to make sense of it.
I was dog sitting for my parents while they were
on a trip. About an hour after they left, my
boyfriend came over, so it was just the two of
us in the house when a car parked out fright
and a man maybe in his forties, got out and

(22:37):
walked up to the door. He knocked. I don't usually
answer the door for strangers, especially when it's just me
and my boyfriend home, so I ignored it at first, but
he kept knocking. Then a doorbell rang. I could faintly
hear him say something like hello, Hello, Hello, but the

(23:00):
dogs were barking so loud that I couldn't make it out.
Clearly they were losing their minds, barking and jumping at
the door, clearly freaking out. My boyfriend and I started
pulling them back to calm them down. That turned out
to be a mistake because the window was right next
to the door. As we moved around, he must have

(23:21):
seen me, and that's when things got really weird. He
started saying my first name, like calling out, is that Amy?
Are you Amy? Is this Amy's home? At this point,
it was dark outside, and hearing a stranger say my
name made my stomach drop. I had no idea who

(23:43):
this guy was, or how he knew my name, and
why he wasn't leaving. We took the dogs downstairs, where
there's a window that overlooks the front of the house.
I had my boyfriend opened the window to talk to him,
partly because I wanted the guy to see that there
was another man there and that I wasn't home alone.

(24:04):
My boyfriend asked what he wanted. The man just kept
saying that he needed to see me or talk to me.
Then he said he had something of mine, something he
needed to give me personally. When my boyfriend asked what
it was, the guy dodged the question. He kept insisting
he needed to give it to me directly, so my

(24:26):
boyfriend said, you can leave it at the door, but
the man pushed back, asking how will I know if
she gets it if I don't see her. My boyfriend
asked again how he even knew me, and the man
said I know her. At that point, the whole thing
was just wrong. My boyfriend told him that we were

(24:47):
calling the cops, and that finally made the guy leave,
though he didn't look happy about it. I know the
Internet always jumps to sex trafficking or stalkers and stories
like this, but I'm real list enough to know that's
not how those things usually happen. Still, I can't figure
out how he knew my name. I checked everything afterward,

(25:10):
my ID, my passport, mail packages, nothing missing, nothing left behind,
and I still have a new idea who he was.
I'm writing this partly for entertainment, partly for closure. I've

(25:34):
never put this story on paper, and I'm hoping that
doing so might fill in the black hole in my memory.
I've never been able to recall what happened next. After college,
I wanted to do something meaningful, so I became a
volunteer at the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Training took place
every Saturday for two months, and it was intense emotionally

(25:58):
and mentally, but once I started answering calls, I felt empowered.
It was heartbreaking work but rewarding, and I did my
best to show up with compassion for every single caller.
My fellow volunteers were a huge part of what made
it bearable, as they provided support and encouragement and sometimes

(26:21):
ideas on what to say. We were pretty tight knit
in my class of volunteers, and I assumed that anyone
else who worked or volunteered there was as compassionate, loving,
and trustworthy as the people I had trained with. That
included Greg, a volunteer who wasn't in my group, but

(26:42):
I started to casually get to know him through working
a lot of the same shifts. He was about fifty
something to my mid twenties. I'm a female. He was
somewhat of a legend lifeline, as he had volunteered there
steadily for decades and was both the military veteran and
a recovering alcoholic. He was able to reach and help

(27:05):
so many people through his story, or so I always
heard so, and Greg asked me to dog sit for
him for a few hours one night. I happily obliged.
I loved dogs, and he had to be at least
a decent person for all the good things I've heard
about him. He gave me his home address and we

(27:25):
arranged for me to come by Friday night to meet
his dogs and get all the usual instructions before he left.
I made my way to his neighborhood and parked in
front of a very normal, nice looking tea story home.
Greg met me at the front door with his two
sweet Golden Retrievers, whom I loved immediately. He showed me

(27:48):
the food and said they've already been for a walk twice,
so I could just let the dogs into the fence
backyard if they had to pee. He was going to
leave and I would basically hang out there with the
dogs for a few hours and then leave for the night,
and Greg would be coming home early the next day.
As he pointed things out to me in the house,

(28:09):
Greg was super friendly and enthusiastic, just like I've always
seen him at the crisis center. He was a round
man with a greg go t, a white smile with
gap teeth. He seemed a little dressed up to me
with his shiny collared shirt, but I thought maybe he
was going to a fancy event. Just when I'm wondering

(28:32):
when Greg is actually gonna leave, he asked me if
I would like to see the upstairs of the house.
It strikes me as a little weird, but I thought, Hey,
he's house proud. That's cool, I said, and he led
me up the carpeted stairs and down a dark hole.
He opened his bedroom door, which had only been slightly cracked.

(28:54):
He walked into the room and turned around and said, yeah,
so this is my bedroom. In bed took up most
of the room and had a red velvet canopy. There's
black lace all over on the curtains, the pillows, the comforter,
that the core was like French boudoir, when the rest
of the house was the style of a single dude.

(29:15):
And most concerning of all, there's at least four candles light.
He proceeded to then sit on his bed and smile
at me, expectantly, wagging his bushy eyebrows. I laughed, backing
up a little. I think, I said something like I
think he've got the wrong idea, to which he brought

(29:36):
up some flirty comments he had overheard me say to
a fellow volunteer, and I had a little crush on
something dumb, like I like making out. Then he smiled
again and patted the bed next to him. My mouth
fell open as I realized that because he overheard me
say something that was maybe a little risque. He really

(29:56):
thought I was open to some kind of dog sitting fling,
and not to toot my own horn. But I was
young and cute then, and he was well not. I
thought he was rather beastly and old, and in no
way have I ever flirted with him. I wish I

(30:17):
could say I had some zinger to shut down his
gross attempt at romance, but I was too shocked to
do anything other than crossed my arms over my chest
and shake my head. No. His face dropped its letterman
sue smile, and it was like a cold chill came
into the room. Well i'd better be going, he said,

(30:38):
and looked at me in almost absolute darkness and disdain,
barely trying to conceal his disappointment. I could tell you
it was embarrassed. I was too, he grumbled, as he
hastily blew out the candles and started walking me towards
the bedroom door to leave. I quickly scooted it out
of the room before him, almost jumped out on the stairs.

(31:01):
Within minutes, Greg had grabbed his keys and left through
the garage, closing it after him. Before he left, he
bitterly said to call him if I had any problems.
When he was gone, it was deftly silent, except for
the click of the dog's nails on the linoleum as
they danced around me. My heart was still pounding. I

(31:23):
wanted to get out of there, but I also wanted
to make sure the dogs were okay. Plus I did
feel better with him out of the house. The next
few hours passed uneventfully. When it was about eight or
nine at night, I was ready to leave. Then I
realized Greg had not left me with any key. I

(31:43):
checked the front door and hoped that it would be
the kind that you don't need a key to lock,
you know, the push in lock type. But it was
a dead bowl. I had this weird, sinking feeling in
my chest. I went out the sliding glass door to
the backyard. I called Greg. He sounded amused again when

(32:04):
he answered, Greg, you forgot to leave me a key
to lock up your house, I said, in when I
tried to make a calm, almost joking voice, Oh whoops,
he replied, not sounded surprised at all. He chuckled a
little bit. Maybe he can get out through the garage,

(32:25):
he suggested, And I liked that idea. Or if that
doesn't work. You can just sleep in my bed, he suggested,
casually cross I did not like that idea and ignored it.
He told me to call him back if he needed
to come home. I assured him that I would be fine.

(32:46):
I went to the dark garage, turned on the light,
shut myself in so the dogs would be in the
house and not escape. Then I opened the garage door
and did that thing where you close it and right
underneath it. Only I hadn't done the maneuver for decades,
and this was a new safe version of a garage
door that would detect the objects underneath and not close.

(33:10):
As the door bounced back, I thought, fucking Greg knew
this would happen. I felt it. My last memory is
letting the Golden Retrievers, who had been whinting and scratching
out the door, into the garage with me after the
garage door closed, and hugging them as I cried into
the fur of their necks. I had enough and I

(33:30):
couldn't stop the tears. And then, try as I might,
I can't remember what happened next. Did I call Greg back,
did he come home? Did I call someone else? Did
I just leave the door unlocked despite my people, pleaser personality.
I have tried and tried to remember, but it's almost
like I blocked out after that moment in the garage.

(33:53):
Maybe my brain is protecting me. I don't know if
I ever saw Greg again, just can't remember. He died
suddenly of a heart attack a few years later, which
I found out through a mutual volunteer friend on Facebook.
I got an ugly pit in my stomach when I
heard the news and was kind of angry seeing everyone
praising him. I kept picturing him patting the bed next

(34:17):
to him in his bedroom with that smirk on his face.
I'm glad he helped all the people he did, but
I was a naive young woman who was doing him
a favor and didn't expect nor deserved to be hit on.
I also realized that he probably didn't need a dog
sitter at all and just was trying to get lucky.

(34:38):
When I rebuffed him, I reckon. He went and sat
at Arby's

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}When Home Turns Into a Nightmare | True Late Night Visitor Encounters