Horror Stories

00:05 Hello everyone and welcome back to Horror Stories. 00:08 I know many of you use these episodes to fall asleep so before you drift off, I'd love it if you could leave a comment letting me know where you're listening from around the world. 00:17 Also don't forget to like and subscribe if you're enjoying the episodes. 00:26 Story 1 I moved into that house during the first week of July. 00:32 It was supposed to be the beginning of something quiet after the divorce. 00:37 I kept telling myself I wasn't going to give in again. 00:40 I wanted a silent street, a simple garden, and a place where I could actually hear myself think. 00:48 A space that felt like mine. 00:51 The neighborhood seemed exactly like that. 00:53 It was tucked along the edge of southeast Boise, where the city starts to fade and gives way to trees and trails. 01:01 It had a stillness I hadn't felt in years. 01:04 My house had a blue door, a small porch with just enough room for a chair and a plant, and large windows that let in the afternoon light. 01:13 The place smelled like old wood and fresh paint. 01:17 For the first time in more than a year, I slept through the night without the television playing in the background. 01:23 The neighbors were quiet, mostly older people, a couple of families with children, a few retirees who kept their lawns trimmed to near perfection. 01:34 There were wind chimes, small gnome statues, patio chairs that looked untouched. 01:40 I really only got to know the guy next door, Ron. 01:44 Maybe in his early 60s he lived alone, always wore a polo tucked into his shorts and walked with a slight limp. 01:53 He waved a lot, the kind of man who probably plays golf every weekend and still reads the newspaper from beginning to end. 02:00 He didn't say much beyond the required neighborly greetings. 02:04 One afternoon, about a week after I moved in, there was a knock at my door. It was Ron. 02:11 He was smiling, but it was a forced smile, as if his eyes hadn't gotten the memo. 02:17 Did you hear the knocking last night? He asked. 02:20 I raised an eyebrow. 02:22 Knocking? 02:24 Yes, it usually starts around 2, sometimes earlier. 02:28 Don't worry, it'll come back. 02:30 I waited for him to laugh. 02:32 He didn't. 02:34 He just nodded and turned back toward his porch. 02:37 There was no further explanation. 02:40 That night I stayed up late watching something dumb on TV. 02:44 Around midnight I turned everything off and got ready for bed. 02:48 I wasn't thinking about what Ron had said, not really. 02:51 Maybe he had met a raccoon or something like that. 02:55 It didn't seem like anything to worry about. 02:58 But at 2.12am I heard it. 03:01 A soft tapping. Barely three or four quick knocks. 03:05 I sat up in bed and listened. 03:07 Silence. I told myself it was probably a tree branch or maybe sound traveling from a couple of houses away. 03:16 I had left a window cracked open to let in the breeze. I didn't want to overthink it. 03:22 The next night it happened again. 03:25 Not loud, but clear. 03:27 Four knocks, then a pause and two more. 03:30 Not on the front door, but somewhere around the house. 03:34 It had that strange quality where you can't tell if it's coming from the walls or from outside, but either way, it was wrong. 03:42 I got up and walked around, checked the windows, the front door. 03:46 Nothing disturbed. 03:48 Nothing there. 03:50 The third night it got louder, almost rhythmic, as if someone were walking around the outside of the house, knocking as they moved along. 04:00 It felt coordinated, not like an animal, not like wood settling. 04:05 There was intention behind it. 04:08 I texted a friend about it. She asked if maybe someone was messing with me and suggested putting up a camera. 04:15 I told her it was probably the house settling, but I knew it wasn't. 04:19 Something didn't fit. 04:22 I started sleeping with a light on, just a lamp beside the bed. 04:26 I told myself it was for comfort. 04:28 I didn't want to admit it was because I was afraid. 04:32 On the fourth night I went outside when I heard it. Just after two again. 04:37 The sky was dark but clear, and everything was absolutely silent. 04:42 No crickets, no cars. 04:45 Even the air felt still, as if the whole world had suddenly gone quiet. 04:51 I looked across the lawn toward Ron's house. 04:54 He was standing at the front window, just standing there, with his hands pressed against the glass, staring straight at me. 05:02 Then, without breaking eye contact, he lifted one hand and knocked three times on his own window. 05:09 The next morning I tried to downplay it. I convinced myself he was probably just a strange, lonely old man. 05:16 Maybe sleepwalking. Maybe he had confused me with someone else. 05:21 But it stayed with me. 05:23 That stillness, that knock. 05:26 I couldn't get the image out of my head. 05:29 I avoided him after that. 05:31 I didn't wave when he was outside. I stopped checking the mail during the day. 05:35 I kept the blinds closed more often. 05:38 But the knocking continued. 05:41 Sometimes it came earlier. Sometimes right after I turned off the lights. 05:46 Other nights around 3am. 05:49 Always short bursts, always followed by silence. 05:53 Never aggressive, but always intentional. 05:56 I tried sleeping in the guest room. The knocking followed me. 06:00 I tried white noise. 06:02 I still heard it. 06:04 Until one night the pattern changed. I was lying down trying to fall asleep when I realized I hadn't heard it in two nights. 06:12 I should have felt relieved. 06:14 Instead I was tense, as if something were missing. As if I were waiting for a drop that never came. 06:22 That night the knocking didn't come from the wall. 06:25 It came from the ceiling. 06:27 Soft but real, as if someone were walking through the attic, testing where to step. 06:33 My attic didn't have a floor. 06:35 I had never even gone up there. 06:38 I didn't even have a ladder yet. 06:40 I didn't sleep. 06:42 I sat there with the lights on, staring at the ceiling. Nothing else happened. 06:48 Until 2.43 a.m. A single knock on the window beside my bed. 06:54 I froze. The curtains were drawn. 06:57 I didn't move. I stayed there listening, waiting. 07:02 Another knock. I got up and carefully pulled the curtain back, barely an inch. 07:08 Ron's window was dark. No lights, no movement. 07:12 But in my yard, beneath the side window, there was someone. 07:16 It was too dark to see clearly, but I recognized the silhouette, the posture. 07:22 It was Ron simply standing there, not moving. 07:25 I stepped back, grabbed my phone and called the police. 07:29 By the time they arrived he was gone. 07:32 They said he probably hadn't done anything illegal, that it was just a misunderstanding. 07:37 The next morning I went outside and saw them, tiny scuff marks beneath each of the windows, as if someone had walked the perimeter of the house, knocking, testing, looking for something. 07:50 I went to Ron's house. It was empty. 07:53 His car was already gone. 07:56 I asked a neighbor and he told me Ron had moved out in the middle of the night. 08:00 No warning. No goodbye. 08:03 I never saw him again. 08:06 But every now and then, Around 2 or 3 in the morning I hear it again. 08:10 Just one knock against the wall or the floor. 08:14 And I don't know if it's in my head or if it actually never stopped. 08:18 All I know is that Ron heard it before I did, and he was right. It came back. 08:29 Story 2 The townhouse wasn't ideal, but it made sense. I was 27, working as a personal trainer, squeezing clients in early in the morning and during late afternoon sessions. 08:44 My plan was to grind for a year, save up a good amount of money, build a solid base of private clients, and then start looking for a place where I could truly settle down. 08:55 maybe a condo nothing too big just something quiet where i didn't have to share walls with anyone but until then i needed something cheap and temporary this place checked both boxes the rent was month to month the listing photos didn't look too sketchy and it was on a halfway decent block in south philadelphia An old row house split into two narrow town homes. The whole place had that slightly crooked, slightly damp feeling old houses carry. 09:28 As if time had settled into the floorboards. 09:31 Creaking stairs, slanted floors. 09:34 Paint that didn't quite match along the walls. 09:37 The deciding detail. 09:39 The walls were paper thin. 09:42 I discovered that on the first night. 09:44 I was unpacking some boxes in the living room when I heard the guy next door sneeze. Not a tiny sound, but a full wet sneeze, followed by throat clearing and, I think, him muttering something about antihistamines. 10:00 It felt like he was three feet away. 10:03 At first, I laughed and sent a voice note to a friend. 10:07 Bro, I can literally hear this guy breathing. 10:10 But the novelty wore off fast. 10:13 Within a few days, I realized I could hear everything. 10:17 TV shows, phone calls, the microwave beeping. 10:21 and from the sound of it, him humming along to commercials. 10:25 His voice had a strange low tone, as if he were speaking through a fan. 10:31 At first, I thought he simply talked to himself a lot. 10:34 Weird, but okay. 10:36 I would catch these little muttered rants or phone calls where I couldn't hear the other person, only him, and it always sounded like he was right up against the wall. 10:46 I had never seen the guy. No one came in or out. No packages. No trash cans out on the curb. 10:54 About a week in, I was cleaning up after dinner when I heard him clearly. 10:59 Matt. 11:00 I froze. He repeated it, slower this time, as if testing how it sounded. 11:07 Matt. 11:08 I set the sponge down, walked over to the shared wall and stood there, waiting. 11:13 Nothing else came. 11:15 I told myself I must have heard wrong. 11:18 Maybe he was on the phone with another Matt. 11:21 Pretty common, right? 11:23 But the next night was worse. 11:25 I was on the couch tossing around dinner ideas with my girlfriend. 11:29 We had been texting all day, but I was getting tired of typing. 11:34 So I sent her a quick voice message. 11:37 Let's go to that Thai place on 10th, I said, the one with the red chairs. 11:43 A couple of minutes later I heard the voice through the wall again, low and muffled but clear enough to understand. Thai sounds good, he said. 11:53 I sat up. 11:55 It could have been a coincidence, I tried to keep telling myself, but the timing was too specific. 12:01 Then I heard him, almost in a whisper. 12:04 That place on 10th. 12:07 That was when my stomach turned. 12:09 I didn't move, I just stared at the wall as if it were going to say something else. 12:15 I turned up my phone and sat in silence, waiting. 12:19 My apartment suddenly felt tiny. 12:22 That was the moment it stopped feeling like a coincidence. 12:25 I started coming home later, trying to time things so I wouldn't hear him. 12:30 I stopped playing music. 12:32 I would sit in silence waiting to hear him talk. 12:36 And every night he did. 12:38 Only now he was talking about me. 12:41 He started listing things. 12:43 What time I woke up, when I showered, when I left for work, when I came back. 12:49 He knew my clients' names, what I ate, what clothes I wore. 12:54 One night he muttered, he skipped arms today, weird. 12:58 It wasn't loud. It was that subtle, monotone murmur. 13:03 But I always heard it. 13:05 I started losing sleep. 13:07 I missed work one day and stayed home just to see what he would do. 13:12 Around 11.15 a.m. I was lying on the couch when I heard him again. 13:16 He's still here. 13:18 Why is he still here? 13:21 I got up, walked to the wall and pressed my ear against it. 13:25 A faint rustling, like someone adjusting his shirt or walking slowly in socks. 13:30 Then breathing. 13:32 Slow. Deep. 13:34 I knocked three times. 13:36 Silence. 13:38 Then three knocks back. 13:40 I took three steps back, staring at the partition as if it could split open. 13:45 That night I stayed awake late trying to catch anything else. 13:49 Most of it was complete silence but at one point I heard him. 13:54 He's listening. 13:55 And after a pause, he thinks I don't know. 13:59 The same voice, the same low murmur. 14:03 It was as if he were right on the other side of the wall talking to me, even though he couldn't possibly know I was listening. 14:11 A few days later I tried again. 14:14 I called out louder, more aggressively. 14:17 Nothing. So I wrote a note, one simple sentence. 14:21 Hey, could you keep it down at night? The walls are super thin. 14:26 I stuck it to his door and went to work. The note was gone when I came back that night. 14:32 Around 2.03am I heard a whisper through the vent in my bedroom. 14:36 You shouldn't have written that. 14:39 He said it calmly, without emotion, as if reading from a page. 14:44 I jumped out of bed and slammed the vent shut using a chair. 14:48 I felt like I was losing my mind. 14:50 Then he laughed. 14:52 Low long, like a recording of someone laughing played at half speed. 14:57 It continued until I grabbed my keys and left. 15:01 I stayed at my girlfriend's place for three nights. 15:04 I told her my neighbor was acting weird. I didn't go into detail. 15:09 I didn't know how to explain it without sounding crazy. 15:13 When I finally came back to grab more of my things, I noticed something else. 15:18 The lights on the other side never turned off. 15:21 Not during the day, not at night. 15:24 Always the same glow behind the blinds. 15:27 I checked the front door. It was still dusty. There were no footprints in the snow along the shared walkway. No sign of life. 15:36 And then it hit me. 15:38 I had never seen him. 15:40 Not once. Not outside, not through the window, not even a shadow. 15:46 I called the landlord the next day and told him I was breaking the lease. He sighed and said, yeah, okay, I understand. 15:55 I hesitated and then asked, hey, just out of curiosity, what's the deal with the guy next door? 16:03 On the other end, there was a pause longer than I expected. 16:06 Finally, he said, Honestly, I never met him. 16:10 The last guy who rented your unit asked the same thing. Said the neighbor next door was scaring him. 16:17 I didn't say anything. I just waited. 16:20 The landlord continued. 16:23 I tried to look into it back then. 16:25 I went over, knocked on the door several times, but nobody answered. 16:30 It seemed quiet, but the rent always came in on time, so he let the sentence hang there as if that explained everything. 16:39 It didn't. 16:41 I didn't add anything else. 16:43 I packed the rest of my things in two hours, timed exactly, and left. 16:48 On the way out, I checked the door of the other townhouse. The lock was rusted. The mailbox was jammed with flyers. The windows were dull with dust. 16:59 But even so, the lights were still on. 17:02 The last night I spent there before I was completely sure, I remember I was falling asleep on the couch just before dawn, and I swear I heard a whisper through the wall one last time. 17:14 Where are you going? 17:21 Story 3 I live in a quiet neighborhood near the edge of Flagstaff, far enough from downtown for the nights to be silent and dark, but close enough to buy groceries or order a pizza for delivery. 17:36 Just a handful of houses tucked between pines and long stretches of desert. 17:41 Everyone keeps to themselves. We wave, smile, nod, but nobody asks questions. 17:48 And for someone like me, that was perfect. 17:51 I'm a veterinarian for small animals, mostly dogs, cats, and occasionally an injured bird. 17:58 It's the kind of job where you see people at their most desperate and animals at their most vulnerable. 18:04 I've always felt more comfortable with animals. They're honest in a way people aren't. 18:09 You earn their trust and they give it to you. 18:12 You break it and they remember. 18:15 Luna came into my life three years ago, after a particularly hard year. 18:20 She was a rescue I couldn't bring myself to put up for adoption. 18:24 Half German Shepherd, maybe with some husky. 18:28 Smart, attentive, with dark brown eyes that seem to read you. 18:33 She didn't trust easily, but she trusted me. 18:36 She followed me everywhere. Slept at the foot of my bed. Sat beside me while I read. 18:42 Waited by the bathroom door when I showered. 18:45 Always close, loyal to a fault. 18:49 One afternoon in late July, the heat was heavy and dry. 18:53 I finished lunch and let Luna out into the yard. 18:56 I remember the sound of the door closing behind her, the way she always paused at the edge of the porch before launching herself into the garden. 19:05 She liked to sleep beside the rosemary bushes or chase the shadows of bees. 19:10 I gave her twenty minutes, then thirty. 19:13 At first I didn't think anything was wrong. When I went to call her back inside, she wasn't there. 19:19 I checked the fence. 19:21 The gate was locked. No gaps under the boards. Nothing seemed disturbed. 19:27 I walked the perimeter twice. Nothing. 19:31 I started calling her name, once, twice louder each time. No response. 19:37 That was when panic set in. 19:39 I spent the rest of the afternoon walking through the neighborhood, knocking on doors, showing photos, leaving flyers and mailboxes. 19:49 Most people hadn't seen her. Some took the flyer and nodded sympathetically. 19:54 Others didn't even open the door. 19:57 By nightfall, I had called every shelter within a 50-mile radius, left messages at veterinary clinics, and filed reports online. 20:07 I barely slept. 20:09 I got up to check the backyard every hour, as if she might somehow be sitting there. 20:14 Day two was worse. 20:17 I expanded the search radius, posted in every Facebook group I could find, and begged my friends to spread the word. 20:25 I drove for hours with her favorite toy in the passenger seat, calling her name out the open window. 20:31 But the streets were silent. 20:33 By the third night I was numb, sitting on the couch, staring at the blank television. 20:40 I couldn't stop looking toward the back door with hope and dread. 20:44 That was when I heard scratching. 20:47 A faint familiar sound. 20:49 I ran to the door and pulled it open. 20:52 There she was. 20:54 Luna. But she didn't run inside. She stood still. 20:59 Her ears were pinned back, her body low, her tail tucked. Her eyes. 21:05 Those warm, searching eyes. 21:08 We're empty. 21:10 She looked through me. 21:12 I knelt down and called her name. 21:14 She flinched. She came in slowly. 21:17 She moved like a punished animal, as if she expected something bad to happen. 21:23 I reached out gently and she moved away. 21:26 I sat on the floor and waited. 21:28 Eventually, she lay down against the far wall with her back to me. 21:33 The next morning I examined her the way I would have examined any traumatized dog. She had no external injuries. Her coat was clean. Her nails were trimmed. Her paw pads showed nowhere. 21:46 She hadn't been wandering. 21:48 Someone had been taking care of her. 21:51 But something didn't fit. 21:53 She refused her food, sniffing it as if it were unfamiliar. 21:57 She wouldn't go near her bed. She curled up under the kitchen table. 22:02 She wouldn't take treats from my hand, wouldn't even look at me when I spoke to her. 22:07 When I brushed her gently she was fine until I reached her tail. 22:12 Then she jumped and ran into the bathroom where she stayed curled up for hours. 22:17 I knew that behavior. 22:19 It was fear. 22:21 Deep learned fear. 22:23 And it was directed toward me. 22:26 I kept hoping it was just the stress of being lost, that something had been triggered and all she needed was time. 22:33 But there was something about her that felt unfamiliar. 22:36 It was as if she were still herself, but not completely. 22:41 She stopped following me everywhere. Stopped responding to her name. 22:46 She no longer wagged her tail. 22:49 She didn't bark when the doorbell rang. She simply existed. 22:53 Separate from me. 22:55 In the same space we used to share. 22:58 On the fourth day after her return, I saw Cliff. 23:02 He was the neighbor on the left. 23:04 Older, maybe in his early sixties. Retired, I think. 23:09 Reserved. 23:10 We had exchanged nods before, but we had never really spoken. 23:15 I was unloading groceries from the car when he came out, nodded and said, Glad to see your dog came back. 23:22 I turned startled. 23:24 Yeah, thanks. 23:25 I still don't know how she got out. 23:28 He tilted his head in that subtle way people do when they notice something doesn't add up. 23:33 She was crying that first night, poor thing. 23:37 I could hear her all the way from my house. 23:40 I didn't respond. I just nodded and forced a thin smile. But inside, my stomach tightened. 23:47 I had never told anyone the time she disappeared. 23:51 I hadn't posted the time, only the date. 23:54 I never said it was the first night. 23:57 So how did he know? 23:59 That night I remembered the old security camera I had mounted above the back gate the year before. 24:05 I had never bothered to take it down, even though I hadn't checked it in months. I opened the recordings on my laptop and rewound to the date she disappeared. 24:15 Timestamp, 2.18pm. 24:19 The angle was a little crooked, but the view was clear. 24:23 There was Cliff kneeling beside the fence, white t-shirt, khaki shorts. 24:28 He was holding something in his hand. It looked like leftover chicken. 24:33 He was calling her. 24:35 Luna approached slowly. Her tail wagged once, then twice. 24:40 She looked toward the house and took a step forward. 24:43 He opened the gate. She walked out. 24:47 He closed it behind her. 24:49 Next clip. 24:51 Timestamp. 12.19am, three days later. 24:55 Cliff again. 24:57 Same shirt, same gesture with his hand. 25:01 He opened the gate. Luna came back inside, head lowered, shoulders hunched. He gave her a gentle pat and stepped out of frame. 25:09 I watched the video ten times, then I downloaded it, and then I watched it again. 25:16 The next morning I took it to the police. They asked if there was any evidence of harm. 25:22 I said no, but that she wasn't the same. 25:25 They told me that since the dog had been returned unharmed and I couldn't prove malicious intent, it was a civil matter. 25:33 No charges, nothing they could do. 25:36 So I did the only thing I could. 25:38 I changed the locks, replaced the back gate, installed new motion sensor cameras with night vision and backup batteries. 25:46 I reinforced the windows, bought blackout curtains, and I kept Luna inside always. 25:53 But even so, she won't sleep in my room. She won't eat unless I set the bowl down and walk away. 26:00 Sometimes I catch her staring at the door. 26:03 Sometimes I hear her growling at nothing, a low guttural sound from deep in her chest. 26:09 Once I tried to pet her while she was sleeping. 26:12 She woke with a start and ran away. 26:16 I don't know what happened during those three days. 26:19 I don't know what Cliff said to her, what he did to her, or what he made her believe. 26:25 But I see it in her eyes every day. 26:27 She came back, but something stayed behind. 26:31 And I'm not only afraid of what Cliff did to her, I'm also afraid he thinks this isn't over. 26:42 Story 4 I didn't want anything big, not a huge house to maintain, not a fancy loft downtown. 26:52 I just wanted peace, normalcy. 26:55 I found a modest one-story house in a cul-de-sac on the outskirts of Spokane. 27:00 It had a tiny porch, an aging fence, a shed that leaned just enough in a yard I could mow in under 20 minutes. 27:08 It wasn't much, but it was mine. 27:11 The price was reasonable, the neighborhood was peaceful, and most importantly it felt like a place where I could start over. 27:18 The neighbors were pleasant. The retired couple across the street waved whenever they saw me, and sometimes left tomatoes on my porch in a paper bag. 27:29 A young family two houses down had kids who drew chalk dragons and sons on the sidewalk and a beagle that barked at the clouds. 27:38 It had that middle-class American cul-de-sac feeling, sprinklers ticking in the afternoon, the smell of grilling on weekends, nothing too close and nothing too distant. 27:50 Then there was Carol. She lived in the house right next to mine. 27:54 I met her on my second day. 27:57 I was edging the lawn when she appeared by the fence with a covered dish. 28:01 Welcome to the neighborhood, she said with a warm smile. 28:05 I made a blueberry cobbler. 28:08 If you ever need anything, I'm always around. 28:11 That stuck with me. She really was always around. 28:15 I work from home, mostly with numbers and logistics for midsize companies. 28:20 It's lonely work, which means I notice things. 28:24 Carol always seemed to be doing something outside, sweeping the walkway even though it was spotless, rearranging flower pots, trimming hedges that were already perfect. 28:35 And when she wasn't outside, I would sometimes catch her through her living room window, doing nothing, just watching. 28:43 I chalked it up to loneliness. Some people become curious when they live alone for too long, but there were details that didn't sit right with me. 28:53 Two weeks in, we had another chat over the fence. 28:56 I was collecting the mail and she asked what I thought of the house. 29:00 I told her it was quiet and I appreciated that. 29:04 She nodded, tilted her head and said, You still haven't found the creaky board in the hallway? The one by the laundry room? 29:13 That one always gave me away. 29:15 I froze for a second. 29:18 Have you been inside? I asked, more confused than anything. 29:22 She laughed softly. 29:24 I used to help the previous owners with cleaning. 29:27 I did it for years. 29:29 I miss being in there. 29:31 I wish I still did it. 29:33 I gave a small laugh and let it go, but the conversation circled in my head for days. 29:39 A few days later she showed up with another plate, this time chocolate chip cookies. 29:45 We sat on my front porch. She looked around naturally and then nodded toward the back of my house. 29:51 Your laundry room is a little cramped, isn't it? 29:54 I always thought they should have swapped it with the office. It would have made better use of the space. 30:00 I didn't answer right away because that couldn't be guessed from outside. My office didn't even have windows, and the laundry room only had a small frosted glass pane. 30:11 There was no way to know that without having been inside. 30:15 That night I walked through the house slowly, imagining how it looked from her observation points. 30:21 I stood in the backyard. 30:23 I looked from the side door. 30:25 You couldn't see much, unless you were very, very close. 30:30 So I did something small, just to put my mind at ease. I placed a broom upright against the inside of the back door. One of those old doors with opaque glass and no exterior handle. 30:42 It couldn't be opened unless you were already inside. 30:46 The broom wasn't exactly a trap, more like a witness. 30:50 I went out to get groceries and when I came back, the broom wasn't where I had left it. 30:56 It hadn't fallen over. 30:58 It wasn't broken or lying on the floor. 31:01 It was simply leaning against the opposite wall, carefully moved aside as if someone had come in, moved it, and then left. 31:11 There were no signs of forced entry. No scratches, no forced locks, nothing missing. 31:17 Just the broom discreetly out of place. 31:21 That was the first night I locked my bedroom door before going to sleep. 31:25 Then came the ladder. 31:27 One morning I went outside to water the plants and saw an aluminum ladder leading against the fence that separated our yards. 31:35 I didn't think much of it, until I noticed where it was placed, perfectly aligned with my bathroom window. 31:43 I stood there staring at it. 31:45 Later that same day I mentioned it casually when I crossed paths with Carol out front. 31:51 She smiled. 31:53 Oh that old thing. I was pruning some branches. 31:57 There were no branches. Nothing even close. 32:01 That night I ordered motion sensor lights and two small security cameras. 32:06 One for the back door and one for the side of the yard. 32:09 Three nights later at 3.07am one of them sent me an alert. 32:14 Motion detected. 32:16 I opened the app and checked the feed. 32:18 There was Carol standing along the side of the yard. 32:22 Not on my property, not exactly, but just on the other side of the fence, right beneath the bathroom window. 32:29 She stood there for five minutes, then she turned around and left. 32:34 I didn't move all night. I lay there staring at the corner of the ceiling trying to hear any sound. 32:40 There was nothing. 32:42 The next morning I called the police and showed them the footage. They took some notes. 32:48 Technically she's on her side, one officer said. 32:52 You'd need something that proves she actually crossed onto your property. 32:56 I asked if they could talk to her. They said they would stop by. 33:01 I don't think they did. 33:03 After that, I stopped opening the blinds, installed blackout curtains, and started locking every door even during the day. 33:11 But the cameras kept sending alerts. 33:14 Not every night, but often enough. 33:17 Always between 2 and 3 in the morning. Always in the same spot. 33:22 Always watching. 33:24 Once I saw her slowly tilt her head to the side as if trying to hear something inside. 33:29 And she stayed like that, motionless, listening. 33:34 I broke the lease a month early. I paid movers to pack what mattered. I left behind furniture, a few boxes, even a TV. 33:43 I just wanted to leave. 33:45 You never know what someone is capable of. 33:48 Sometimes I wonder if she knew I was watching her through the camera that last night, because right before she turned to leave, she looked directly into the lens and smiled. 34:04 Story 5 When I first moved into my new house, it felt like a fresh start. 34:11 After years of renting tiny apartments, I finally had a place of my own. 34:16 A cozy little house in a quiet neighborhood. 34:20 It was not luxurious, but it was mine. 34:23 And the mix of pride and excitement I felt was hard to put into words. 34:27 The street was lined with beautiful old trees and most of the homes belonged to families or older couples who had lived there for decades. 34:36 It was the kind of place where everyone waved from their porch, where kids played in the yards, and where I thought I would finally find some peace. 34:46 I spent weekends working in the yard, getting to know the neighbors. and settling into a comfortable routine. 34:54 The house next door was empty when I arrived, so I did not have anyone right on the other side of the wall, until one day I saw a moving truck pull into that driveway. 35:04 A man got out, probably in his early 50s, tall, broad-shouldered, with a gray beard and a hard expression. 35:12 He looked like someone who had spent years working with his hands, and there was something about the way he moved, the way he carried himself, that made me uneasy. 35:23 He did not wave or smile when he saw me watching from the window. 35:27 He just looked in my direction for a moment and then went inside the house. 35:32 At the time, I did not think much of it. After all, people move in and out of neighborhoods all the time. 35:39 But there was something about the way he looked at me. That cold, distant stare that stayed with me. 35:47 A couple of weeks after he arrived, I had my first real interaction with him. 35:51 I was in my yard trimming the bushes by the fence when I saw him standing on his porch watching me. 35:58 He did not say anything. He just stood there with his arms crossed, following my every move with his eyes. 36:05 Hey, I called out, trying to break the tension with a friendly smile. 36:10 How's it going? 36:12 He did not answer at first. 36:14 He just held my gaze as if he were sizing me up. 36:18 Finally, after what felt like forever, he nodded. 36:22 Do you live alone? He asked in a deep, rough voice. 36:26 I hesitated, caught off guard. 36:29 Oh, yeah, just me. 36:31 He nodded again, narrowing his eyes slightly. 36:35 That's good, he muttered. 36:38 Makes things easier. 36:40 I did not know how to respond to that, so I let out a forced laugh and went back to trimming. 36:46 The rest of the afternoon I felt his eyes on me, even after he went back inside. 36:52 There was something unsettling about the way he watched me. 36:55 As if he were trying to figure me out. 36:58 As if he were waiting for something. 37:01 That night, lying in bed, I could not stop thinking about the encounter. 37:06 I tried to convince myself that I was overreacting, that my imagination was playing tricks on me. 37:13 But deep down, I knew something was not right. 37:17 As the weeks went by, the neighbor, whose name I later learned was John, became more and more unpredictable. 37:25 At first, I would see him pacing up and down his driveway at odd hours, muttering to himself. 37:31 He would leave his trash cans out for days after pickup, and sometimes he threw random objects into my yard. 37:38 I even caught him once standing by the fence, staring at my house in the middle of the night. 37:44 But it was not just the strange behavior. 37:47 There was something darker, more threatening, that began creeping into my daily life. 37:54 One night I came home and found my mailbox smashed. 37:57 It had been fine when I left for work, and now it looked like someone had taken a bat to it. 38:03 I could not prove John had done it, but my gut told me he was involved. 38:09 After that everything escalated. 38:11 There were nights when I heard him outside yelling at someone, even though I never saw anyone else. 38:18 His voice carried through the thin walls of my house, shouting incoherent furious words that made my skin crawl. 38:26 Sometimes it sounded like he was arguing with himself. shifting from low mutters to sharp piercing screams. 38:33 I kept telling myself I would talk to him, that I would try to smooth things over, but every time I thought about confronting him, the memory of that icy calculating stare froze me in place. 38:46 I did not know what he was capable of, and I did not want to find out. 38:52 The final straw came on a Saturday afternoon. 38:55 I was sitting on my porch reading, trying to enjoy a quiet day, when I clearly heard the sound of glass shattering. 39:03 I looked up, startled, and saw John standing in his yard with a beer bottle still in his hand. 39:10 The remains of another bottle lay shattered on the ground between our houses. 39:14 I stood up ready to say something when he looked at me. There was something in his eyes that made my blood run cold. Something unhinged. 39:24 What's your problem? He shouted, his voice thick with rage and alcohol. 39:29 You think you're better than me, huh? Sitting there pretending you don't see me. 39:35 I froze, my heart pounding in my chest. 39:38 I... I don't know what you're talking about, I stammered. 39:42 He staggered toward me, his face twisted with fury. 39:47 Don't play dumb, he snapped. 39:49 I know the way you look at me. 39:51 You think I'm some kind of freak, don't you? 39:54 I did not know what to say. 39:57 Every instinct told me to go inside, lock the door and call the police. But I stood there, rooted in the spot, my mind racing. 40:07 Look, I managed to say, trying to keep my voice steady. 40:11 I don't want any trouble. Let's just forget about this, okay? 40:16 He stopped a few steps away, his fists clenched at his sides, his chest rising and falling with heavy breaths. 40:24 For a second I thought he was going to hit me. 40:27 The tension crackled in the air, and then just as suddenly as it had started, he backed off. 40:34 Yeah, sure, he muttered turning away. Forget it. 40:38 But as he walked back toward his house, I knew it was not over. 40:43 The look in his eyes, the anger barely held in check. 40:46 It was only a matter of time before things got worse. 40:50 From that day on, I could not shake the fear. 40:53 I tried to go on with my life as normal, but every time I stepped outside, every time I set foot beyond my door, I found myself looking over my shoulder, expecting John to appear out of nowhere. 41:07 His presence became a constant shadow hanging over me, making even the simplest tasks feel dangerous. 41:14 The shouting did not stop either. 41:17 At night I would hear him outside screaming. 41:20 Sometimes it was meaningless babbling, Other times he shouted my name, taunting me, daring me to come out and face him. 41:29 I never did. 41:31 I stayed inside in the dark, praying you would not try to come in. 41:35 One night I was jolted awake by violin pounding on my front door. 41:39 My heart leapt into my throat as I sat up in bed, listening for any sound. 41:45 The pounding was relentless, like someone was trying to break it down. 41:50 I grabbed my phone with shaking hands and dialed 911. The operator spoke calmly, but I could barely hear her over the noise of my own fear. 41:59 There's someone at my door, I whispered barely audible. 42:03 He's trying to get in. 42:06 Stay on the line, she said. 42:08 Officers are on the way. 42:11 I stayed in the bedroom curled up against the wall, breathing in short, shallow gasps. 42:16 The pounding went on for what felt like forever until finally it stopped. 42:22 The silence that followed was almost worse. with my mind racing through what John might do next. 42:28 When the police arrived they found nothing. John was in his house, in the dark, as if nothing had happened. 42:36 They advised me to file a report but without concrete evidence there was not much they could do. 42:42 The tension between us reached a breaking point weeks later. 42:46 It was late in the afternoon and I was getting ready to leave for work when I heard another crash outside. 42:53 I ran to the window and saw John standing by the fence with a brick in his hand. My car window was shattered. 43:00 That was the end of my patience. 43:02 I grabbed my phone and stormed outside, calling the police as I walked. 43:07 What the hell is wrong with you? I shouted, my voice shaking with anger and fear. 43:14 John stood there, a crooked smile on his face and his eyes gleaming with malice. 43:19 You think you can call them and have me arrested, he mocked. 43:23 You think they're going to stop me? 43:26 I've been through worse and I always come out on top. 43:30 I took a step back, absorbing the weight of his words. 43:34 He was not just angry, he was dangerous, and I had no idea how far he might go. 43:41 The police arrived within minutes, but by then John had already retreated into his house. 43:47 They arrested him for property damage, but I knew that would not be the end of it. 43:51 That night, lying in bed, I realized I could not stay there anymore. Fear had taken over everything. turning my home into a prison. 44:01 I could not bear the constant threat of John's anger, nor the uncertainty of what he might do next. 44:08 The next morning I put the house up for sale. I did not care about losing money or dealing with the hassle of another move. 44:15 I just needed to get away. 44:18 It took a few months, but eventually I found a buyer. 44:21 I packed up my things, locked the door for the last time, and left the neighborhood behind. 44:27 But even now, in my new home, I still do not trust my neighbors. 44:32 And I do not think I ever will. 44:39 Story 6 When my wife and I moved into our new house, we thought it was a dream come true. 44:46 It was a charming two-story home, exactly the kind of place we had been looking for for a long time. 44:53 The neighbors were friendly, the streets were clean, and we had more than enough space to start a family. 45:00 The first few weeks passed in a blur of boxes, introductions, and settling in. 45:05 Everyone seemed welcoming, and we quickly felt at home. 45:09 But there was one neighbor who stood out above the rest. 45:12 Her name was Mrs. Hathaway, an older woman who lived next door. 45:17 She was a little intrusive, though she seemed sweet enough. 45:21 The day we arrived, she introduced herself with a casserole and an enthusiasm that bordered on excessive. 45:28 "'I've been here for more than 30 years,' she said in a shrill, broken voice." I've seen families come and go, but I always make sure to welcome new people. 45:39 If you need anything, anything at all, count on me. 45:43 My wife and I exchanged polite smiles and thanked her for the casserole. 45:48 At first I thought it was just simple neighborly kindness, but over the next few days, Mrs. Hathaway became a constant presence in our lives. 45:58 Every time my wife went out to water the plants or get the mail, there she was, waving and calling out to us, asking how we were doing or offering unsolicited advice about everything from gardening to home repairs. 46:13 At first it was harmless, even a little endearing, but soon it began to feel invasive, as if she always knew what we were doing, where we were going. even when all we wanted was a little peace and quiet in our own home. 46:29 A few weeks after we moved in, Mrs. Hathaway's visits became more frequent. 46:34 She started showing up at odd hours, sometimes very early in the morning, other times late at night. 46:42 She knocked on the door uninvited and brought random things. Freshly baked cookies, gardening tools, magazines. 46:49 At first we did not think too much of it. 46:52 Maybe she was lonely, but one night she knocked at almost 10pm. 46:57 My wife and I had just settled in to watch a movie and the knock at the door startled us. 47:03 I opened it and found her standing there with a basket of muffins. 47:08 I thought you might like these, she said with a sweet smile, though there was something in her expression that sent a chill down my spine. 47:16 I forced a grateful smile, but I could not completely hide the irritation in my voice. 47:23 My wife gave me a look, and I knew she felt the same way. 47:27 We were trying to have a quiet night, and her uninvited visit felt like an intrusion. 47:33 After I closed the door, I looked at my wife. 47:37 This is getting weird, right? 47:39 She nodded, frowning. 47:41 I guess she's just trying to be nice, but showing up this late, it's strange. 47:47 In the days that followed, the visits continued. Sometimes she knocked just to ask if we needed anything. 47:54 Other times she left random objects, like old books or trinkets. 47:59 It was not the gifts that bothered us, but the constant, relentless attention. 48:05 One Saturday afternoon, my wife and I were working in the yard. Mrs. Hathaway, of course, was watching us from her porch. 48:14 Every time we looked over, she was still there, her eyes fixed on us, making no effort to hide it. 48:21 After a while, my wife whispered to me, she's giving me the creeps. 48:27 i had had enough by then there was something about her that felt wrong as if she were trying too hard to insert herself into our lives we decided to start creating some distance to be polite but firm whenever she approached us it did not work one afternoon when we came home we found mrs hathaway in our backyard she was not doing anything just standing there looking around as if the place belonged to her. 48:56 I froze unsure how to react. 48:58 My wife standing behind me grabbed my arm. 49:02 What is she doing here? She whispered, her voice filled with fear. 49:08 I stepped outside and called out to her. 49:10 Mrs. Hathaway, what are you doing? 49:13 She turned toward me with a wide smile. 49:17 I was just checking on the garden, she replied. 49:20 I thought you might need help with those roses. 49:24 My patient snapped. 49:26 You cannot just come into our yard like this, I managed to say, trying to keep my voice steady. 49:32 We appreciate your help, but this is our home. You need to respect our privacy. 49:39 For a moment her smile faltered. Her eyes darkened and her expression became unreadable. 49:45 But just as quickly as it changed, her usual sweetness returned. 49:50 I didn't mean any harm, dear, she said softly. 49:54 I just want to help. 49:56 That night, my wife and I talked for hours. We did not want to be rude, but her behavior was crossing a line. 50:04 It was no longer simple friendliness. It felt invasive, as if she were trying to control every aspect of our lives. 50:12 We decided to set clear boundaries. 50:14 The next time she came by, I explained, politely but without any ambiguity, that while we appreciated her kindness, we needed our space. 50:24 She seemed to understand. 50:26 She nodded and smiled as always. 50:29 But that was not the end of it. 50:32 A few days later, my wife came to me with a horrified expression. 50:37 You need to see this, she said, her voice trembling. 50:42 She led me into the living room where she had been dusting the shelves. 50:46 Hidden behind a stack of books, she found a small, old-looking camera. 50:50 I stared at it, my mind racing. 50:54 Where did this come from? I asked, though I already suspected the answer. 50:59 There are more, she added, almost in a whisper. 51:03 She showed me two others, one hidden in the kitchen and another in the hallway. 51:08 They were tiny, almost invisible unless you knew where to look. 51:12 My stomach twisted into a knot. 51:15 Mrs. Hathaway had been inside our house. 51:18 She had planted cameras. 51:20 She had been watching us, recording us. 51:24 I felt sick. 51:27 Without saying a word I grabbed the cameras and went straight to her front door. 51:32 I pounded on it, anger boiling inside me. 51:35 When she opened it I held up the devices with trembling hands. 51:40 What the hell is this? I demanded. 51:43 Her expression did not change. 51:45 She did not seem surprised or worried. 51:48 She smiled, that same unsettling smile she always wore. 51:53 I was just taking care of you, she said calmly, making sure you were safe. 51:59 I could not believe what I was hearing. 52:02 You were spying on us. 52:04 She tilted her head, never losing her smile. 52:08 I care about you, dear. I'm only trying to protect you. 52:12 I did not say anything else. 52:15 I turned around and walked away, my heart pounding. 52:18 As soon as I got back inside, I called the police. The officers came and took my statement, but they did not arrest Mrs. Hathaway. 52:28 There was no proof that she had placed the cameras, nothing directly linking her to that invasion of our privacy. 52:35 All we had were suspicions, and that was not enough. 52:39 But the fear did not go away. 52:42 If anything, it grew stronger. 52:45 Mrs. Hathaway stopped visiting us, stopped bringing casseroles or tools, but we could feel her presence lingering on the other side of the walls. 52:54 Every time we went outside, we saw her behind the curtains watching us. 52:59 The police recommended that we install security cameras, but even that did not get rid of the persistent feeling that she was still there, always alert, always watching. 53:12 One night my wife woke up screaming. 53:15 I ran to her side, my heart nearly pounding out of my chest, and she told me she had seen someone standing in the doorway. 53:23 I searched the house and there was no one there. That was the final straw. 53:28 The next morning we packed our bags and left. 53:32 We stayed in a hotel for a while, trying to decide what to do. 53:36 I knew we could not keep living like that, trapped in a house that felt more like a prison than a home. 53:43 A few weeks later we sold the house. 53:46 We never looked back. 53:48 It has been more than a year since we got out of that neighborhood. 53:52 I do not know what Mrs. Hathaway's true intentions were, and I would rather not find out. 53:58 All I know is that she was obsessed, obsessed with us, with interfering in every aspect of our lives. 54:06 And I will never allow something like that to happen again. 54:14 Story 7 I had been living in my house for nearly a year before I started noticing that something was off. 54:22 At first it was nothing obvious, just little things. 54:26 I would come home from work and find the living room blind slightly open, even though I was sure I had closed them before leaving. 54:34 Sometimes the kitchen light would be on, even though I clearly remembered turning it off that morning. 54:40 I blamed it on forgetfulness. 54:42 Working long hours and living alone makes it easy to overlook details. 54:47 But over time, those little details started to add up. 54:51 One day I came back after an especially long shift and found the front door slightly ajar, not enough to set off immediate alarm bells but enough to make my blood run cold. 55:02 I stood on the porch staring at the door, wondering if maybe I had not shut it properly that morning. 55:09 My neighborhood was quiet and safe, the kind of place where people left their doors unlocked without thinking twice. 55:16 Even so, I could not shake the feeling that something was wrong. 55:21 I pushed the door open carefully and stepped inside. 55:24 The house was quiet just as I had left it. 55:28 Everything looked normal, but that lingering uneasiness would not go away. 55:34 I checked the windows, double checked the locks and did my best to calm myself down. 55:39 It was probably just exhaustion. 55:42 Maybe I had left the door slightly open. 55:45 After all, I usually leave in a rush in the mornings. 55:49 But a few days later it happened again. 55:52 This time I was sure I had locked it. 55:55 I remember standing in the hallway, keys in hand, turning the deadbolt before leaving for work. 56:01 Yet when I came back at dusk, the door was unlocked. My world seemed to drop out from under me right there on the porch, my pulse racing. 56:11 I tried to rationalize it. Maybe the lock was faulty. Maybe I had not turned it all the way. 56:18 I stepped inside carefully, senses on high alert, watching for anything out of place. 56:25 The house was quiet. 56:27 Too quiet. 56:28 I moved through each room, checking the windows, testing the back door, trying to convince myself that nothing was wrong. 56:36 Then I saw it. The kitchen drawers where I keep the silverware were open. 56:41 Not all the way, but enough to show that someone had gone through them. 56:46 I froze. 56:47 That morning I had left in a hurry, yes, but I never leave the drawers like that. 56:53 I always close them. 56:55 I stepped closer, scanning the countertop with my eyes. 56:59 It did not look like anything was missing, but the feeling of dread was undeniable. 57:05 Someone had been in my house. 57:08 As the days went by, the strange incidents continued. I would come home and find things slightly out of place. A chair pulled away from the dining room table, a book moved from its usual spot. 57:21 The shower curtain opened when I was sure I had left it closed. 57:25 It was as if someone was going through my things without taking anything, just disturbing the order of my home. 57:32 I became paranoid. 57:34 Every time I left for work, I checked the locks over and over to make sure they were secure. 57:39 I shut all the windows, pulled the curtains tightly closed, and even started placing small objects in strategic places so I would know if someone had come inside. 57:50 It did not take long before I started suspecting my neighbor Frank. 57:55 He lived in the house next door, and although he seemed friendly, there was something about him that unsettled me. 58:01 He was always outside, tinkering in his garage or sitting on his porch, watching the neighborhood. 58:08 He had a way of making small talk that felt intrusive, as if he knew more about me than he should. 58:15 He would comment on what time I left for work, when I came back, when I had visitors. 58:22 At first I thought he was just overly friendly, but I was not so sure anymore. 58:28 One afternoon I came home and found the lights in my bedroom on. I never leave them on, not even when I am in a rush. 58:36 With my heart pounding I move slowly through the house, room by room, trying to stay calm. 58:42 Everything was in place except for the bedroom. 58:46 On the nightstand was a small object I did not recognize, a keychain with a tiny built-in flashlight. 58:53 It was not mine. 58:55 I had not bought it, and I had not had anyone over in weeks. 58:59 I stood there staring at it for a long time, my mind spinning. 59:04 Had Frank been inside my house? 59:07 Was he messing with me? 59:09 The thought alone made my skin crawl. 59:12 I grabbed the keychain and marched over to his house, adrenaline surging. 59:17 Frank was on the porch as usual, drinking a beer. 59:21 He smiled when I walked up, but there was something strange about that smile, something that made me want to turn around and leave. 59:29 Hey, he said, shifting in his chair. 59:32 Everything okay? 59:34 I held up the keychain. 59:37 Did you leave this in my house? 59:39 He looked at it, his expression blank for a second, then let out a little laugh. 59:44 I have no idea what you're talking about. 59:48 Someone has been coming into my house, I said, my voice shaking with anger. 59:53 And I think it was you. 59:56 He raised his hands in a theatrical gesture of surrender. 60:00 Hey, hey, calm down. 60:02 I don't know what's going on in your house, but I promise it wasn't me. 60:06 Sometimes people forget things. Stress does that, you know. 60:11 I wanted to believe him, but the smirk on his lips and the way his eyes lingered just a little too long told me everything I needed to know. 60:19 The next day I bought security cameras. If Frank was coming in I was going to catch him. 60:25 I installed them around the perimeter, making sure to cover every angle. 60:30 That night I slept with my phone beside me, ready to check the footage at the first sign of anything. 60:37 For several nights nothing happened. 60:39 No signs of entry, nothing missing, nothing out of place. 60:45 I started to relax, thinking maybe I had scared him off by confronting him. But then one night the motion detector went off. 60:54 The buzz of my phone on the nightstand pulled me out of a light sleep. 60:58 I grabbed it, my heart pounding, and opened the app to check the video. 61:04 The grainy image showed the side of the house, dark shadows stretching across the grass. 61:10 And then I saw him. 61:12 Frank. 61:14 He was crouched by the side window, the one I always kept locked. 61:19 He was struggling with the latch trying to force it open. 61:23 My stomach twisted with fear and rage as I watched him. 61:27 So it had been him all along. 61:30 I dialed 911, my voice shaking as I explained the situation to the operator. 61:36 Without hanging up, I kept watching the live feed. 61:39 Frank finally managed to push the window open and slid inside with practiced ease, as if he had done it a hundred times before. 61:48 I did not wait any longer. 61:51 I grabbed the baseball bat I keep under the bed and crept down the hallway, my heart hammering in my chest. 61:58 My mind was racing with fear and fury. How dare he come into my house, into my space, as if it belonged to him. 62:07 I heard him before I saw him. 62:10 Soft footsteps on the carpet moving through the house. 62:14 He was in the kitchen, his back to me, rummaging through the drawers. 62:19 Without thinking I swung the bat. 62:22 The hit landed with a sickening crack and Frank collapsed, groaning in pain. 62:28 I stood there shaking, adrenaline flooding through me while in the distance. 62:34 I heard the sirens getting closer. 62:37 The police arrived within minutes. They pulled him off the floor and put him in handcuffs. 62:43 I stood in the doorway watching as they led him to the patrol car. 62:47 He did not say a word. 62:49 He just fixed me with a cold calculating stare. 62:53 The officers took my statement, reviewed the footage and confirmed what I already knew. 62:59 Frank had been breaking into my house for weeks, maybe longer. 63:04 They charged him with trespassing and burglary. 63:07 Even so, the feeling of being watched never went away. 63:11 I changed the locks, added more cameras and even installed a full security system. 63:18 My home, once a refuge, started to feel like a cage, a place where I lived on edge, waiting for the next intrusion. 63:27 A few months later I moved. 63:29 I could not stay there, not with the memories of Frank and the way he violated my space. 63:35 I found another place, a small apartment in the city, where I could disappear into the crowd. 63:42 But even now the uneasiness remains. 63:45 I still check the locks three times before leaving. 63:49 And every night before going to sleep, I take one more look at the security cameras. 63:59 Story 8 Moving into my new place had me excited. 64:05 It was right within my budget, but it still felt like a step up. 64:09 I spent the first few weeks unpacking and decorating. The house was not big, though it did have a backyard and the neighborhood seemed quiet. 64:20 Very quickly I fell into a routine. 64:23 Work. 64:24 Come home. Relax. Repeat. 64:28 It was everything I had always wanted. Or at least that was how it felt at first. 64:34 It did not take long for me to notice him. 64:37 My neighbor. 64:38 An older man who lived directly across the street. 64:42 He was always around. 64:44 Every time I pulled into the driveway after work I saw him there, sitting on his porch or standing in his yard. 64:51 At first I thought it was a coincidence. Maybe he was retired or just like spending time outside. But then I realized something strange. 65:01 No matter what time I came home, very early late at night or on the weekend, He was always there watching. 65:09 I would park and there he was on his porch staring at my house. 65:14 His gaze was unsettling, unwavering. 65:17 It was not the casual glance of a neighbor watching life go by. 65:22 It felt deliberate, intense. 65:24 He never waved, never smiled. He just stared. 65:29 At first I tried to brush it off. 65:32 People can be weird, right? 65:34 Maybe he was lonely. 65:36 Maybe he did not realize how unsettling he was. 65:39 But the more I saw him, the more his constant presence started to eat away at me. 65:45 The first time I mentioned it to a friend, he laughed. 65:48 Old guys get bored, he said. 65:51 He probably has nothing better to do. 65:54 It made sense and I tried to believe it. 65:57 But as the days went by, that constant watchfulness became impossible to ignore. 66:04 One afternoon after a long day, I came home and found him in his usual spot, sitting on the porch with a cup of coffee. 66:12 The sun was already going down. 66:15 I tried to act like I did not see him as I got out of the car. 66:19 My keys jingled in my hand and I could feel his eyes following me all the way to the door. 66:24 But this time something was different. 66:27 His stare felt more focused, more intense. 66:31 I glanced over my shoulder to confirm my suspicion. 66:34 Now he was standing. 66:36 I froze for a second, my heart starting to race. 66:40 He did not say anything. 66:42 He just stood there, his eyes locked on me, his face expressionless. I hurried inside, locked the door and tried to shake the feeling of being watched. 66:53 Even inside the house the uneasiness would not go away. 66:58 I went through my usual routine, making dinner, watching TV, trying to relax, but I could not stop thinking about him. 67:07 Later, when I was ready for bed, I looked out the window. 67:11 The street was dark, lit only by dim street lights. 67:15 His house looked completely dark, but I knew he was there somewhere, probably watching. 67:22 Things escalated over the following weeks. 67:25 At first it was only the feeling that I was being watched from across the street. 67:30 Then I started noticing details in my own yard. 67:34 Small things out of place. 67:36 A hose moved from where I had left it. Footprints in the dirt by the side of the house. The back gate opened when I was sure I had closed it. 67:45 One Saturday morning I was mowing the lawn when I felt that familiar prickling at the back of my neck. 67:51 I looked up, and there he was, standing at the edge of his driveway, staring at me again. 67:58 I hesitated, gripping the lawn mower handle tightly. 68:02 I had spent weeks trying to ignore him, hoping he would get the message and leave me alone, but I could not take it anymore. 68:10 I turned off the mower and walked to the edge of my yard. 68:14 Hey, I called out trying to sound casual. Can I help you with something? 68:20 He did not answer. He just stood there staring at me. 68:24 Look, I said, feeling my frustration rise. 68:28 I've noticed you watching me a lot. Is there a problem? 68:32 Still he did not say a word. 68:35 The silence was suffocating. 68:38 I opened my mouth to say something else, but then he turned around and went back into his house without making a sound. 68:45 I stood there, confused, my heart pounding. 68:49 It was as if I did not exist to him, as if I did not even deserve to be spoken to. 68:56 From that moment on I started avoiding the front of the house. 69:00 I spent more time inside with the blinds closed and only went out when I had to. 69:06 Every time I parked I scanned his porch to see if he was there watching. 69:11 Sometimes he was, sometimes he was not. 69:15 But the feeling never left me. 69:17 everything got worse one night i woke up to the sound of footsteps near my window it was late past midnight and the house was silent at first i thought it was my imagination i stayed still listening my heart pounding in my chest then again the soft crunch of gravel like someone walking along the side of the house I grabbed my phone from the nightstand with trembling hands and turned on the flashlight. 69:49 I did not want to look. 69:51 I did not want to know. 69:53 But I could not help it. 69:55 Carefully I pulled the curtains aside. 69:58 For a second I thought no one was there. The yard looked empty, washed in the faint glow of the street lights. 70:05 Then I saw him. 70:07 I gasped and stumbled backward, dropping my phone in fright. 70:12 In my panic, there he was, less than ten feet from the window, standing there just staring. 70:19 I fumbled for the phone, my mind racing, and called the police. My voice shook as I explained what was happening. 70:26 He's in my yard, I whispered, my heart ready to burst. 70:31 My neighbor, he's outside staring at me. 70:35 The operator assured me they would send patrol units, but the minutes felt endless. 70:41 I stayed hidden in a corner of the room clutching the phone, my eyes fixed on the window. 70:47 When the officers arrived and checked the yard, he was already gone. 70:51 There were no footprints, no signs of forced entry. 70:56 Nothing to prove he had been there. 70:59 I knew what I had seen but without evidence the police could not do much. 71:03 They took my statement and left. 71:06 The fear though stayed behind. 71:09 I tried to keep living my life but by then the paranoia had already taken hold. 71:14 Every night I checked the doors twice, made sure the windows were shut and left the lights on in every room. 71:22 I could not shake the certainty that he was always there, watching from the shadows. 71:27 One afternoon I got home late from work, exhausted and stressed. 71:31 I parked in the driveway with that familiar sense of dread crawling up my spine as I looked toward his house. 71:38 The porch light was on, but he was nowhere to be seen. 71:42 I hurried inside, locked the door and let out a breath I had not realized I was holding. 71:48 For a moment I thought maybe that night would be different, that maybe I would finally get a little peace. 71:55 Then I saw it. 71:57 On the kitchen table where I always leave my keys there was a note, a crumpled piece of paper carefully folded. 72:04 I froze. 72:06 I was sure I had not left anything there. 72:09 With shaking hands I opened the paper. 72:12 The words, crooked and shaky, written in handwriting that looked almost childish, said, I see you. 72:21 My breath caught in my throat and I stumbled backward, knocking over a chair in fright. 72:27 My mind was spinning. 72:29 How had he gotten in? 72:31 How long had he been entering my house? 72:33 I saw no signs of forced entry, but the note was undeniable. 72:38 I called the police again. I could not stay there. I could not live like that. 72:44 They came, took my statement, and searched the house from top to bottom. 72:49 Again. 72:50 Nothing. 72:52 No signs of entry, no fingerprints, no evidence. 72:56 It was as if he knew exactly how to leave no trace, and what made my blood run cold was having no idea who exactly I was dealing with. 73:06 That very night I packed a bag and left. 73:09 I could not spend another minute in that house, not with the constant feeling of being watched, of being hunted. 73:16 I stayed with a friend for a few weeks while I looked for a new place, far from that neighborhood, far from him. 73:24 I never saw my creepy neighbor again, but the memory of his cold fixed eyes has never left me. 73:30 I will never forget how he made me feel. 73:38 Story 9 This happened to someone I know when she was still a teenager, sometime around 2007 to 2008. 73:48 She lived in one of those tiny quiet neighborhoods where everyone more or less knows who everyone is. 73:53 But usually it is just a wave from the garage entrance and that is it. 73:58 Picture identical houses that all look like they were cut from the same mold, a couple of dogs barking at dusk and kids riding their bikes around the cul-de-sac. 74:08 Her family's life was pretty normal, until one neighbor completely lost his mind over something so stupid that, looking back now, it is almost laughable. 74:19 A trivial issue involving a garden hose ended up turning into two years of pure harassment that led to hearings, a restraining order, and a Christmas gift that still gives me chills. 74:32 It all started when this guy, let's call him Kevin for the sake of the story, got into an argument with someone else on the same street and reacted like a cartoon villain. 74:43 He dragged out every hose he could find and flooded their yard as revenge, which obviously did not go over well with the local water district. 74:53 It turned out that one of my friend's parents worked for that same district. 74:57 So when Kevin got fined for wasting water, he drove over, burst into the house and started yelling that he was that parent's best friend. 75:07 No one believed that story, especially not when he started shouting that now this is personal. 75:12 That may have been the first sign that Kevin was missing a few screws. 75:17 Not long after that little stunt, Kevin started showing up everywhere. 75:21 At the Department of Motor Vehicles, at the grocery store, at the kids' workplaces, always lurking around. 75:30 At first it was just strange, like the kind of coincidence you might overlook once or twice. 75:35 but very quickly it turned into a pattern that was impossible to ignore. 75:39 Then the anonymous phone calls started, the classic heavy breathing, the occasional whisper, or sometimes they would just hang up. 75:49 As strange as it was, the family tried to laugh it off for a while, but that ended pretty quickly. 75:56 Kevin started parking in front of their house almost every night, not for a few minutes but for hours. 76:02 I am talking from 6pm to 4am sitting in his car with the windows down, the music blasting, staring at the house like he was waiting for something. 76:13 No one knew what he wanted. He would just stay there, watching. 76:18 Sometimes he would pace outside the car or pretend to be on the phone, loudly saying things like he knew what school the kids went to or how easy it would be to follow them. 76:28 And follow them he did. 76:30 One night he almost ran over my friend's brother and his partner by driving onto the sidewalk as they were coming home. 76:37 They literally had to jump out of the way. 76:40 Another time he made disgusting gestures at my friend while she was just trying to take the dog outside. 76:46 She burst into tears and ran back inside. 76:49 And still every time the police got involved they would shrug and say they could not do anything until someone actually got hurt. 76:56 Things got even darker close to Christmas that year. One of the parents had just survived a brain aneurysm and was in the middle of recovery, so the atmosphere in the house was already full of stress and fear. 77:09 One night, there was a knock at the door. A disheveled man holding a beat-up gift bag said he had a present for the family, but would not say who it was from. 77:19 They were rightfully on guard, but curiosity got the better of them. 77:24 Inside the box was a fake 17-page legal document. Kevin had typed it himself. 77:31 It was page after page of spelling errors and delusional accusations. trying to sue the parent who was still recovering. 77:39 If the document had not been so disturbing, it would have been funny, but the fact that he took the time to put it together and send it like that, disguised as a gift, was what made it truly terrifying. 77:51 After that, Kevin doubled down. He kept showing up, kept following them, Kept muttering unsettling things under his breath like he was looking for an excuse to snap. 78:02 He was relentless. 78:04 In the end, through a mutual friend, they managed to get in touch with a district attorney who agreed to take the case pro bono. 78:11 Finally, they had someone with real authority on their side to fight back. 78:16 The court process was brutal. 78:18 Everyone had to relive every single incident, one by one, with no support in the courtroom. 78:25 No comforting words, no hugs, just sitting there in silence while the lawyers tried to paint them as liars. 78:33 But in the end, Kevin was found guilty and sentenced to around a year and a half behind bars. 78:38 along with a felony restraining order. 78:41 While he was locked up, the family moved away, hoping that would finally be the end of it. 78:46 But not even jail stopped him. 78:49 As soon as he got out, my friend's sister died in an accident that had absolutely nothing to do with any of this. 78:56 And Kevin tried to sue her estate. She was only 21 years old. 79:01 He claimed that she had lied on the witness stand and that he deserved the donations collected during her memorial event. 79:07 That was the level of obsession and cruelty this man operated on. 79:16 Story 10 When I was in my early twenties, I was renting an old two-bedroom flat in a quiet row of terraced houses somewhere in the Midlands. 79:26 Nothing special, just one of those very long stretches where every house looks exactly the same, with floorboards that creak under your feet and freezing bathroom tiles. 79:37 One odd feature of those houses was that, years earlier, all the attics had been connected. 79:43 Apparently, someone once thought it was a good idea to leave one open crawl space running above the entire row. 79:49 Over time, brick walls were built between each property to prevent things like fires or burglars from moving freely from house to house. 79:58 At least that is what I was told. 80:00 For the first few months, the place was fine, drafty but quiet. 80:05 Then I started noticing a strange noise above the bathroom, like crawling or something dragging itself along. 80:12 At first I blamed the birds, or maybe a squirrel that had gotten in up there. 80:17 Still it only seemed to happen when I was getting changed or taking a shower, which made it harder to ignore. 80:24 A co-worker poked his head into the attic for me, but he did not see anything. 80:29 He just shrugged and said it was probably nothing. 80:32 I stopped thinking about it for a while. But a few weeks later something happened that made it impossible to brush off. 80:39 I was home alone, getting ready to go out for the evening. 80:43 While I was gathering my things in the bathroom, the noise started again. 80:49 This time my dog, who is normally incredibly calm, completely lost it. Barking, pacing back and forth, tail stiff, staring straight at the ceiling like something was moving right above our heads. 81:04 That was when I grabbed my stuff and left for a friend's house to finish getting ready there. 81:09 I did not want to stay in that house alone anymore, especially not with that sound stuck in my head. 81:16 The next day I was outside watering the small flower bed when the neighbor two doors down called out to me. 81:22 He was the kind of person you instinctively avoid. Poor hygiene, unpredictable energy, and a way of speaking that made your skin crawl. 81:32 I stayed polite, tried not to show that I was uncomfortable, and just as I was about to head back inside, he said something that completely froze me. 81:41 He asked whether I had managed to get to my friend's house. Now to be clear, I had not told anyone where I was going. 81:49 The only time I mentioned it was in a whisper over the phone the night before in the bathroom with the door shut. 81:55 That was the moment I realized something was seriously wrong. 81:59 That night I called my father and a few relatives and they came over to check the house. 82:05 My father is the kind of man who does not mess around and he immediately went into investigation mode. 82:11 We turned on the bathroom light and left the rest of the house dark. That was when we saw two tiny glints above the shower. 82:19 It turned out there were holes in the ceiling, small enough to overlook but just large enough for someone to look through. 82:26 My father went up into the attic and took longer than expected to come back down. When he finally did, he did not say a word. 82:34 He stormed straight out of the house and started pounding on the creepy neighbor's door, yelling for him to come outside. 82:41 No one answered. 82:42 One of my cousins offered to go up and see for himself, and when he came back down he looked shaken. 82:49 He said the dividing wall between my attic and the neighbor's attic had been smashed through from the other side, with bricks scattered across my insulation. 82:57 In other words, whoever had done it had opened a gap into my house, not the other way around. 83:03 We reported it to the police, but they did nothing because according to them, there was no direct proof. 83:10 The neighbor of course claimed he did not even use his attic and blamed someone who had lived there before him. 83:16 Standard denial. 83:18 There is no way to explain how disgusting it feels to know that someone has been watching you while you showered or got dressed. 83:25 I did not spend another night there. 83:27 I packed my things, moved out shortly after, and never looked back. 83:36 Story 11 I moved to the United Kingdom a couple of years ago to start university. 83:43 Mainly to get out of my family home because things had become very tense there. 83:48 That first year was exactly what I needed. 83:51 I met a couple of people I could trust, settled into student housing and finally felt like I could breathe. 83:58 Toward the end of that year I started dating my boyfriend and for once life felt pretty good. 84:03 When second year came around, several of us decided to skip the typical tiny flat and move into a proper student house instead, with actual space and a bit more freedom. 84:14 I ended up with the ground floor bedroom, which was perfect for me, especially because it opened directly onto a little patio where I could smoke in peace. 84:24 That small patio ended in a narrow wooden gate. one of those strange old ones that opened onto the back alley where everyone left their trash or broken furniture. 84:33 It could only be locked from the patio side, so we kept it shut with a piece of rope tied around the handles. 84:40 It was cheap and flimsy, but it worked. 84:43 We were surrounded by other student houses and families, and everything felt fairly normal, until we started noticing strange vibes from the men in the house next door on the right. 84:53 There were five older men living there who definitely did not look like students. 84:58 And one night the whole street found out why. 85:02 There was an explosion of chaos inside their house and suddenly police cars showed up. 85:07 We saw one of the men come out with the blood pouring down his arm and a gash on his head. 85:12 It turned out that one of his housemates had attacked all of them and had even tried to set part of the kitchen on fire. 85:19 My housemates and I saw everything. 85:22 Well, not the attack itself, but the aftermath. 85:25 We helped clean up the injured man a little and gave him a t-shirt because his was soaked in blood. 85:31 He was shaking and rambling, saying things that made no sense, and I felt extremely uncomfortable with the way he spoke to me, trying to touch my arm or stand far too close. 85:42 It did not help that his breath smelled strongly of weed and something else I could not identify. 85:48 We brushed it off as a disturbing situation and decided to keep our distance from then on. 85:54 I tried to avoid him as much as I could, but he kept showing up. 85:59 I would run into him coming back from class or when I was walking to the store to pick something up. 86:04 I never said anything, just looked down and walked faster. 86:09 One day, though, he followed me to the store and started talking to me as if we were friends. 86:14 When I politely brushed him off, he smiled and told me he would wait outside my house so we could talk properly. 86:21 I thought maybe he was joking around, but when I turned the corner onto my street, there he was with one of his shady housemates, sitting on my front step like it was their own doorway. 86:32 I did not know what to do. 86:34 I turned around and went back toward the store, then called the only guy I lived with and asked him to come help me, but he was not home. 86:42 Neither was anyone else. 86:44 I spent almost an hour wandering around waiting for them to leave. 86:48 When they finally got up and went away, I ran home and locked the door behind me. 86:54 Our front door had one of those long glass panels where you can sort of see through it, and I remember feeling completely exposed every time I walked past it after that. 87:04 From that day on, I did everything I could to avoid those men. 87:08 A couple of weeks later, I went out to the patio for a cigarette and noticed something strange. 87:14 The wooden gate to the alley was wide open. 87:17 The ropes we always used to tie it shut had been cleanly cut through. 87:22 For a second, I thought maybe someone had taken out the trash bins and forgotten to tie it back up properly, so I did not think too much of it. 87:30 I tied it shut again with a new piece of rope and went back inside. 87:34 The house next door was like a war zone. 87:37 Some nights there would be screaming, banging, sometimes even what sounded like punches. 87:43 At first it scared us, but over time we got used to waking up in the middle of the night to yelling. 87:50 One night though, my boyfriend stayed over. 87:53 Nothing unusual there. He is a very heavy sleeper and does not wake up for anything. Not even alarms. 88:00 But that night he shook me awake and whispered that he had heard something right outside the window. 88:05 I sat up and we stayed still, listening. 88:09 Then suddenly there was a loud thud and the crunch of footsteps on the gravel just a couple of feet from where we were lying. 88:16 The wooden gate had been broken open again. 88:19 Then we heard someone testing the patio door as if they were checking it. 88:24 No kicking or banging, just deliberate pressure over and over again. 88:29 Our bedroom window was slightly open because it had been too hot that night and we both froze when we heard the frame creak. 88:37 Someone was pushing it open farther. 88:39 One of the men muttered something in a language we did not recognize. We could hear them breathing while they tried to slide the window upward. We did not wait to find out what they were planning. 88:50 We grabbed our clothes, my phone and ran out of the bedroom, out of the house and straight into the street. 88:57 I called my housemates and told them to lock their bedroom doors. 89:01 Then I called the police, and they arrived in less than five minutes because the station was nearby. 89:07 After that I do not remember much. I think I was too far gone. 89:12 Everything felt blurred. 89:14 The officers managed to catch one man hiding in a shed a few houses away, and they found the other shortly afterward, standing in the street lighting a joint as if nothing had happened. 89:25 When they searched the neighbor's house, they found a stash of heroin and meth, as well as a huge kitchen knife that one of them had brought that night. 89:33 Later, we were told that one of them got two years in prison for intent to cause harm with a weapon. 89:39 And that was basically it. We were never given any more information. 89:44 No updates, just silence. I moved back home a few months later because I could not bear staying in that house any longer. 89:52 It stayed with me for a long time. 89:55 What could have happened if my boyfriend had not woken up? 89:58 What their plan was? 90:00 To this day, I still do not sleep well. 90:03 I wake up at the slightest noise, and I still have very vivid nightmares that feel far too real. 90:09 But I am still with my boyfriend, and talking about it with him helps more than anything else. 90:19 Story 12 When I still lived in my family's apartment, the same one I had grown up in since I was a child, I never thought anything truly strange could happen there. 90:31 It was one of those apartment complexes where everyone knows everyone's name and you see the same families year after year. You know who plays music at full volume, who has barbecues every weekend, who overwaters their plants. 90:47 It was that kind of place. Routine, familiar, boring in the best possible way. 90:53 There was, however, one unit on the far back corner that always felt separate from the rest. 90:59 Two older brothers lived there, and they barely spoke to anyone. 91:03 Then, seemingly out of nowhere, someone new started showing up at their apartment. 91:09 Later I found out he was one of their sons, although no one had ever seen him before. 91:14 He looked to be about my age somewhere in his early 20s, but you could barely ever see his face. 91:21 He always wore his hood up as if he did not want to be recognized. 91:26 And he moved quickly, literally sprinting across the parking lot or climbing in through the window of his ground floor apartment instead of using the front door. 91:36 At first I did not think much of it. Between school and work I kept a busy schedule so we hardly ever crossed paths. 91:43 That changed when I started seeing him sitting at the top of the stairs that led to my apartment. 91:49 His apartment was not even close to mine, so there was no reason for him to be on that side of the building. But there he was, every day. 91:57 At first I tried to ignore him, but it started to feel like he was waiting for me. 92:02 He never said a word, never looked directly at me. He would just sit there for hours. 92:08 I would leave for class and see him there. 92:11 I would come back after spending time with my boyfriend, and he would still be there, in the exact same spot. 92:17 My boyfriend noticed it too. 92:20 After that, he always walked me to the door whenever he dropped me off. 92:24 Oddly enough, after a couple of nights of that, the guy disappeared from the stairs. 92:30 and I thought the whole thing was over. 92:32 But before long, he started showing up at the bus stop where I got off when I came home from school. 92:38 He would stand there without even trying to hide it, then follow me on the short walk back to the complex, only to go sit on the stairs again. 92:47 Eventually he started hanging around when I took the dog out for walks. 92:51 I told my parents and my mom ended up warning a few neighbors about what was going on. 92:57 Everyone started keeping an eye out and it turned into this quiet neighborhood effort to make sure I was not left alone for too long. 93:05 Then one night I got a friend request from him on Facebook. 93:09 That completely threw me off because we had never even spoken. and I had never mentioned his name or anything about him on social media. 93:17 I have no idea how he found my profile. 93:20 My mom tried knocking on their door to speak with his father, but they never answered. 93:26 We assumed they were trying to avoid the conversation. 93:29 One night when I got back from my boyfriend's apartment my mom told me something that gave me chills. 93:36 She said she had gotten up to get a glass of water from the kitchen when she noticed movement outside the large window that faced the tree in front of our apartment. 93:45 At first she thought it might be a bird or something like that but when she looked more Closely, she realized there was someone sitting in the tree. 93:53 It was him wedged between the branches, staring directly into our apartment through the glass. 93:59 My dad came into the room, saw what was happening and the guy jumped down and ran off before they could even make it to the door. 94:08 We called the police immediately. 94:10 When they checked the tree, they found some food wrappers and a blanket tucked between the branches, hidden among the leaves. 94:17 It looked like he had been there more than once. 94:20 That was the part that really shook me, thinking about how many nights he might have been up there watching us without our knowing it. 94:28 It has been six months and no one has seen him again. 94:31 His father still lives here, but there has been no sign of him. 94:35 The police never found him, and they did not tell us much beyond the initial report. 94:41 I went on with my life, but that experience still lingers in my mind, especially when I am home alone. 94:47 I just hope I never run into him again. 94:54 Story 13 When I was around 12 years old, maybe just turning 13, we spent almost every weekend at my grandmother's house. 95:05 She lived in a cozy place with a big yard, and in the summer it was almost a tradition for all the cousins to get together, especially when it was hot enough to bring out the inflatable pools. 95:16 That day it was just my brother, two cousins and me. 95:20 We were all soaked, laughing and splashing around like it was the best day in the world. 95:25 The kind of day when everything feels carefree, like nothing bad could possibly happen. 95:31 The boy next door was peeking over the fence watching us. Since he was a little older, maybe 15 or 16, he had that kind of confidence that seems cool when you are younger. 95:43 My brother knew him a little and waved him over. With my grandmother's permission, he jumped the fence and joined us in the yard. 95:50 At first, it was still fun. He cracked jokes and messed around, and I tried to get over my usual nerves because I always felt a little awkward around older boys. 96:01 when my cousins and my brother went inside to help with drinks or food, or whatever it was. 96:07 I did not love being left alone, but I wanted to act like I was fine. 96:12 That was when everything changed. 96:14 He started throwing strange insults at me, little cutting remarks, mean in a way that still came with a smirk, like he thought the whole thing was a game. 96:24 I tried to keep things light by joking back, thinking maybe I was overreacting. 96:30 We started splashing each other, which was normal, but suddenly he got out of control and kept drenching me over and over without giving me even a second to breathe. 96:39 I tried to look away and told him to ease up, still laughing because I wanted to play it down, but he would not stop. 96:47 When I finally told him seriously to quit, he paused for a second. 96:53 I was wiping the water out of my eyes when suddenly he grabbed a plastic bucket that was sitting next to the pool, filled it and shoved it over my head. 97:01 I was already confused, but before I could pull it off, he pushed me down and held me there. 97:08 That was when panic hit me. 97:10 I tried to fight free, scratching and flailing, but he had me in a position where I could not reach him to hit him. 97:17 My chest was burning and I remember thinking I was going to pass out right there in that tiny backyard pool. 97:24 Then suddenly I felt his grip give way. 97:27 My brother had come running out and pulled him off me. 97:30 I came up coughing and gasping like breaking the surface after being underwater far too long. 97:36 My brother did not hesitate for even a second. He stepped in front of me and confronted him, demanding to know what the hell he thought he was doing. 97:45 The neighbor just smiled and tried to brush it off. saying we were playing. 97:50 My brother did not believe a word of it. 97:53 The boy tried again to minimize it, but this time my brother told him directly that he was not welcome and needed to leave. 98:00 As he walked away, the guy muttered something about us being boring, as if that somehow justified what he had just done. 98:08 For some reason none of us told the adults right away. 98:11 Maybe because we did not want to cause a scene, or because we did not fully understand how serious it had been. 98:18 But before long he started provoking us from his yard and even brought another boy with him to join in on the taunting. 98:25 Eventually, things got bad enough that we had to tell the family what was happening. 98:30 As soon as the adults stepped in, the harassment stopped almost immediately. 98:34 The neighbor tried to act innocent and claimed we were lying but no one believed him, especially after everything that had happened. 98:42 Not long after that, his family moved away and we never had to deal with him again. 98:48 Looking back, I know I will never forget how quickly that situation turned dangerous. 98:53 If my brother had not come back at exactly the right moment, I do not know what would have happened. 98:59 He has always looked out for me, even when we were kids. 99:03 He is more than a brother. He is the reason I felt safe growing up. 99:12 Story 14 After my last place basically fell apart, literally it was declared unsafe and shut down. 99:21 I have been sort of bouncing back and forth between staying with my brother and spending nights at my boyfriend's place. 99:28 He moved into a tiny rental just a few months ago. 99:32 And while it is not the worst place in the world, it comes with some interesting neighbors. 99:37 The house next door shares the backyard, and since the same landlord owns both properties, there is no clear boundary between the spaces. 99:46 At first I did not think much of it. They seemed like a kind of mixed family. A couple, a teenage daughter, and another man who was always around. though it was never really clear who he was. 99:59 The first thing that caught my attention was something you do not expect to hear in a quiet neighborhood. 100:05 Bedroom noises. 100:07 Loud, frequent, and honestly way too clear if you were sitting outside. 100:12 Still, that was their business. They were not hurting anyone, so I let it go. 100:18 Then one night happened that completely changed the way I saw them. 100:22 Sometime after midnight we suddenly heard something that sounded like a chainsaw revving, along with shouting from inside their house. 100:30 My boyfriend was about to go straight over there and confront them, but I told him it made much more sense to call the police. 100:37 I have no idea what came of it because no one was taken away and the next morning all four of them were walking around like nothing strange had happened. 100:45 But the atmosphere felt off after that. 100:48 A couple of days later while I was leaving for work I ran into the wife in the yard. 100:53 She was sweeping as calmly as could be, wearing only sweatpants. 100:58 No top, no bra, nothing else. Completely bare from the waist up as if it were the most normal thing in the world. 101:06 I did not say anything. I just left and tried to forget about it. 101:11 The following week got even stranger. 101:14 My boyfriend and I were trying to sleep when we started hearing heavy footsteps coming from their side of the house. 101:20 It was not just two or three steps. It was rhythmic, almost like a pattern, and it came with muttering or chanting. 101:28 He got fed up and the next day he went over to speak with the husband. 101:33 The couple looked completely confused and acted as though they had no idea what he was talking about. 101:39 They swore they did not use drugs, although by that point both of us were almost convinced they were on something. 101:45 The conversation went nowhere and ended with my boyfriend asking them to stay on their side and keep the noise down. 101:52 That peace lasted barely 24 hours. 101:55 The next night I saw the wife again. This time she was passed out next to the backyard fire pit, wearing little more than a sports bra and shorts. 102:05 She was not moving at all, and when I got closer, I realized she was not breathing. 102:11 My nurse instincts kicked in immediately. 102:14 I called emergency services. 102:17 When the paramedics arrived, they ended up finding two other people unconscious inside the house. 102:22 Later, while we were trying to piece together what could have caused it, my boyfriend remembered something she had told him the day they met. That their windows had been painted shut and could not be opened. 102:34 It turned out they had a carbon monoxide leak. 102:37 It was serious, but somehow all of them survived. 102:41 I have not seen them since then, and I really doubt they will come back to live there after what happened. 102:47 Now we are having my boyfriend's house inspected to make sure there is nothing dangerous in it. 102:52 After everything that happened, we are not taking any chances. 102:56 It is wild how something that starts as weird neighbors can escalate into an almost deadly situation like that. 103:08 Story 15 When I was about nine years old, I used to hang out after school with a girl. I'll call her Liv. 103:17 She lived just a few houses down from mine in a quiet cul-de-sac where every family knew the others by name. 103:23 It was one of those neighborhoods where people did not worry much about security. They left their doors unlocked and kids ran around until dinner time without thinking twice about it. 103:33 Liv's house, like many others, had that setup where the garage was basically treated as the front door. 103:39 Almost nobody used the official entrance. They would drive in, leave the garage door partially open so the pets could come and go, and enter through the side door that led straight into the kitchen. 103:50 Across from Liv's house lived a couple with two sons. The older one was in high school, and the younger one, Tim, was around 20 and had some developmental difficulties. 104:00 He was always outside, smiling and waving at cars as if it made his day. 104:05 The whole neighborhood knew Tim. He was harmless, always cheerful, and kept to himself. 104:11 One day Liv came down with a nasty bug and stayed home from school. Her mom worked a half day and would be back around 2 o'clock, so Liv stayed in bed resting. 104:21 She locked the house except for the garage door, which she left slightly open so her stray cat could come and go. 104:27 That detail might not have mattered much, except that later Liv thought it might have been the thing that made all the difference. 104:34 In the middle of the morning, loud knocking at the front door woke her up. She looked through the people and saw Tim standing there. She opened the door just a little, and Tim told her he had noticed she was home alone and wanted to watch the house for her. 104:48 Liv thanked him, told him she was fine and wished him a good day. But something in his expression changed. His smile disappeared and he said something like, You think I can't help because of how I am, but I'm not stupid. You'll see. 105:03 She tried to explain that was not what she meant. 105:06 Then she closed the door and went back to bed, still groggy. 105:10 It was not long before a noise coming from the kitchen downstairs jolted her awake again. 105:15 At first she thought maybe her mom had come home early, but when she looked at the clock, it was only a little after 10 o'clock. 105:23 She stayed still, listening. 105:25 There were footsteps. 105:27 Heavy footsteps. 105:29 She ran to her parents' bathroom, but then remembered that door did not have a lock. 105:34 So she slipped into their walk-in closet, tucked herself behind the hanging clothes, and held her breath. 105:40 Through the slats in the closet doors she could see when someone entered the bedroom. It was Tim. 105:46 Tall, lanky and only a few steps from where she was hiding. 105:50 And he had a kitchen knife in his hand. 105:53 He did not say anything. He just started looking around the room as if he were searching for something. 105:59 Then he went into the bathroom where Liv had been seconds earlier. She could hear him muttering to himself. The kind of muttering that turns your stomach. 106:08 And then he started pacing, heavy angry footsteps all across the upstairs. 106:14 She did not move an inch, not even when the front door finally slammed shut and the house went quiet again. 106:20 She stayed in that closet until she heard her mother calling her name from downstairs. 106:25 When her mom found her, she was a sobbing mess. Liv told her everything. Her mother almost brushed it off, as if it were confusion from the fever, until she saw a knife by the front door, one that definitely had not been there before. 106:40 The police came and took a report. Liv never talked about it again. 106:45 Years later, we ended up living together for a short time in college. She never mentioned what happened, but I noticed small things. She checked the locks more than once every night. She added an extra deadbolt to her bedroom door. 106:59 Even living on the seventh floor of a secured building, she checked the windows three times. It was as if something deep inside her had never fully come back from that day. 107:09 Sometimes I wonder if there was more than what she told me. 107:12 We were just little girls, and maybe she did not know how to explain all of it, but I never forgot what she told me, and I have never looked at unlocked doors the same way again. 107:28 Story 16. 107:30 This happened a few weeks ago, and it still replays in my head more often than I would like. 107:35 I live in a mostly quiet area in the south, the kind of place people describe as comfortable, with neighborhoods tucked between farmland and strip malls. The most scandalous thing you used to hear about was someone getting their mailbox knocked over. 107:49 But lately, things have been changing. Several apartment complexes started going up nearby, and with them came a noticeable rise in reports of break-ins, missing minors. 107:59 and shady situations that used to be the kind of thing you only saw on the news. 108:04 I work at a small veterinary clinic just a few blocks from my house. It is a simple job as a kennel tech. Basically, I clean up after dogs and cats, keep everything tidy, and do whatever needs to be done. 108:18 I am 17 years old and still live with my mom and stepdad. 108:22 Since I do not drive, someone usually drops me off and picks me up from work. But not that night. 108:28 That night I walked. 108:30 Greg, who was supposed to help with the evening shift, bailed at the last minute so I ended up staying much later than usual. 108:36 After scrubbing cages, mopping floors, and handling the whole clinic full of animals by myself, I was exhausted. 108:44 My boss had already left, and I was the last one there locking everything up. 108:49 It was around 8pm when I finally got outside. 108:53 At this time of year, with daylight saving time, it was already completely dark. 108:58 The only light came from the parking lot lamps and a couple of street lights. 109:02 I had just locked the front door when I noticed three guys standing near the mailbox across the parking lot. 109:08 At first, they were far enough away that I could not make out much, but close enough to make my stomach not up. 109:14 This is not a commercial area, just houses next to a park, so there was no reason for anyone to be hanging around the clinic that late. 109:23 They were not talking. They were lingering, watching. 109:27 I tried not to make eye contact and started walking, sticking close to the sidewalk as if I had not noticed them. but after only a few steps I heard quick footsteps behind me. 109:37 I did not wait to see who it was. 109:40 I already had my keys in my hand, wedged between my fingers the way my mom taught me for self-defense. 109:46 I spun around, ran back to the door and fumbled with the lock. 109:50 Just as I managed to turn the key and push the door open, I felt someone grab my sleeve. 109:56 The door slammed shut behind me, catching whoever it was by the hand. He let out a horrible guttural scream, and I did not even stop to look. 110:05 I tripped over the threshold and hit the tile floor face first. 110:10 After that, everything became a blur of adrenaline and fear. 110:13 I dragged myself away from the entrance. 110:16 My heart was pounding so hard I could barely think straight. I tasted blood and realized I had split my lip and eyebrow in the fall. The alarm was blaring, echoing through the building, while the dogs started barking like crazy. 110:29 Outside, those guys were pounding on the back door and shouting the filthiest things I have ever heard. 110:35 One of them looked me straight in the eyes through the glass, and I had never seen someone look at another person like that, as if I was not even human. 110:43 I crawled under the front desk and stayed there, frozen. 110:47 I could not move, could not breathe right. I was just trying to disappear. 110:53 It did not even occur to me to turn off the alarm. 110:56 In the end, that was the one good decision I made by doing nothing. 111:00 After about 15 minutes of yelling and banging, everything stopped. It turned out the alarm company had called my boss when I did not enter the code, and she told them to send help. 111:12 The police found me in shock still under the desk, barely aware of what was happening around me. 111:17 From that point on, I do not remember much. Flashes, officers, lights, and my parents arriving. 111:24 Later, they told me all three of them were caught nearby at the CVS on the corner, trying to buy finger splints. 111:30 The one who grabbed me broke at least two fingers when that heavy door slammed shut. 111:35 Another one apparently smashed his face trying to run after me. 111:39 I am not going to lie, that part gave me a little satisfaction. 111:43 When they checked the security footage, we found out they had been circling the clinic off and on all week, probably waiting for a moment like this when I would be alone. 111:52 I never noticed because I usually had a ride or stayed late with coworkers. 111:56 All three of them had active warrants, drugs, assaults, whatever you can think of. 112:01 And one of them was connected to a string of break-ins not far from my neighborhood. 112:06 I am supposed to testify in court soon, so I have the hearing date saved in my calendar. 112:11 That night could have gone in a completely different direction if I had not managed to get back inside when I did. 112:17 I do not walk home alone anymore, not even a few blocks. 112:21 I always make sure someone knows where I am. And if I have to stay late, I wait for a ride. 112:27 I never thought something like that could happen where I live, but now I know better. 112:36 Story 17 I had not really planned on moving out of my old apartment. If life had gone a different way, I would probably still be living there. But last year hit me like a truck. 112:48 I lost my mom and my fiancé only a few months apart. Trying to carry on as if everything were fine was not fooling anyone, least of all my closest friend. 112:58 She would not stand for it. 113:00 One day out of nowhere she told me to pack my things and come live with her. 113:04 At first I resisted because leaving the apartment I had shared with my fiancé for more than ten years felt like letting go of everything. 113:11 But being alone all the time had become unbearable. 113:14 So I agreed. 113:16 Her house was in a quieter neighborhood and a nicer one too. And once I settled in, I realized how badly I had needed that change. 113:24 Our schedules hardly lined up. She worked nights, and I worked during the day, but we always made time for each other on the days off we shared. 113:33 I even started walking to work because it was just a short stroll through a small park. 113:38 It felt like one of those little benefits that comes with change. That sense that maybe things were starting to get better, even if only a little. 113:46 Except that 10 minute walk introduced me to something I honestly did not need. 113:51 One afternoon I decided to sit on a bench in the park on my way home from work. It had been a long day, and I just wanted to sit for a while, look at my phone, maybe listen to a podcast. That was when a man approached me. He looked worn down, but not threatening. 114:09 His face might have been considered handsome under different circumstances. He was in his 40s, unshaven with skin weathered by the sun. 114:17 At first glance, I thought he was just another person passing through. 114:21 I looked back down at my phone, assuming he would keep walking. 114:25 Instead, he stopped in front of me and asked me what time it was. 114:29 I looked up to answer, and that was when I noticed all the strange things he was carrying. 114:34 A broken CD case, an old whiteboard covered in meaningless scribbles, and a paper bag stuffed with magazines and loose papers. 114:43 He was barefoot and his hands were covered in dirt. 114:46 That was when I realized he was not just passing by. 114:50 He launched into a chaotic monologue, half rambling, half unsettlingly lucid. 114:55 He mentioned that he had recently been released from prison. He said he was looking for a tattoo shop that could tattoo F the Doc on him because he had racked up 34 infractions while he was incarcerated. 115:08 He wanted the Department of Corrections to pay for it. Then his eyes locked onto a pin I had on my bag. The logo of a local LGBTQ bar. 115:18 That changed his energy. 115:20 He told me he had been to that bar and that he had once hooked up with a guy there, but that young ladies were his real problem. 115:27 He said it in a way that made every hair on the back of my neck stand up. 115:31 I grabbed my bag and left without saying another word. That should have been the end of it. Just a strange encounter with someone who was clearly troubled. But things escalated in a way I never expected. 115:43 My bedroom has a sliding glass door that opens onto a fenced patio facing the street. 115:49 In the summer, it is great for sitting outside, grilling or just enjoying the breeze. But after what came next, I started seeing it as one huge security weakness. 115:59 One morning around 5am, I was jolted awake by a loud voice shouting, What the hell are you doing? 116:06 It sounded like it was coming from inside my bedroom. 116:09 I sat straight up with my heart pounding until I realized it was coming from outside. 116:15 A neighbor who left early for work had found someone, him, curled up asleep against my sliding door. 116:21 The same man from the park. The neighbor scared him off and then came to check on me. I was frightened, but I chalked it up to a horrible coincidence. 116:30 Maybe he had not even realized it was my apartment, but two weeks later he came back. 116:36 It was around 2am when the sound of tapping on the glass woke me up. 116:40 I did not move. 116:42 I lay there in the dark, listening, trying to stay completely still. 116:46 The tapping got louder, more aggressive, until he started kicking the door. 116:51 Real kicks like he was trying to break it down. 116:55 I turned on the light, grabbed my phone and he ran. 116:58 When the police arrived, they checked the building cameras and confirmed what I had feared. Not only had he been on my patio more than once, but he had also slipped into the building behind other residents several times. 117:09 He had sat in the lobby for hours, wandered the hallways, and even tried the doorknobs on my apartment and my neighbors. 117:17 There is video of him hiding in the mailroom lounge when he saw my roommate coming home from work, watching her walk by. 117:24 The police think he either recognized me from the park and followed me home, or that he had seen me at some point while I was out on the patio. 117:32 Either way, I have not seen him again since the last incident and none of my neighbors have reported anything suspicious. 117:39 My roommate bought me pepper spray, and our ex-military neighbor, who is more than enthusiastic about security, now checks on me most nights just to make sure everything is quiet. 117:50 It helps a little, but even so, every time I walk through the park or slide open that glass door, I think about him. 117:57 The way he looked at me, the strange things he said, and how determined he seemed to be to find me again. 118:04 I cannot shake the feeling that he was not simply passing through, and I hope that whatever is keeping him away keeps him away forever. 118:16 Story 18. 118:18 I used to cut through a wooded stretch between my neighborhood and the one behind ours. It was not a deep forest or anything like that, just a narrow path tucked between two lines of fences. But it was convenient and I used it all the time. 118:33 I was about 13 and since I was a latchkey kid, I had a lot of independence. 118:38 My parents worked late and as long as I got back by a certain time, no one asked too many questions. 118:45 I often walked that path alone to visit my best friend, who lived a few streets away, almost always with an overnight bag slung over my shoulder. 118:54 One afternoon just as the sun was starting to go down, I was on my way to her house again with my backpack. Just like I had done a dozen times before, the moment I came out of the wooded shortcut and back onto the open residential street, I saw a white van parked nearby. 119:11 It was old, with sun-faded paint and no windows in the back. 119:15 I am not going to lie. It gave off a bad feeling. 119:19 You know, the kind of van that shows up in every safety talk. 119:23 It was that kind of van. 119:25 There were two men sitting in the front, and something about the way they both stared at me without blinking made my stomach twist. 119:33 I tried not to make it obvious that I had noticed them, but every few steps I glanced over from the corner of my eye. 119:40 sure enough the van started moving very slowly rolling along the curve behind me i could hear the tires crunching over the gravel at first i kept walking thinking maybe i was just scaring myself for no reason but the van stayed right behind me it was not subtle the second i turned the corner i took off i ran harder than i ever had in my life And even though my lungs were burning from the asthma I pretended I did not have, I kept going until I reached my friend's porch and started pounding on the door. 120:12 Her dad opened up, saw me gasping for air, and asked what happened. 120:17 I told him what I had seen, and he went out to take a look. But by then, of course, the van was gone. He shrugged it off like I had just scared myself. 120:26 Maybe too many late-night horror movies and nothing more. And that was the end of it. 120:31 I did not expect to ever see that van again. But less than a week later, I was heading to her house again in the same routine. Through the shortcut, out onto the next street, backpack over my shoulder. 120:44 And there it was, parked in a slightly different spot but close enough. 120:49 Same van, same two men. 120:51 This time they did not look away when I saw them. One of them smiled like he had been waiting for me. 120:58 I froze for a second, just long enough to realize I could not turn around. They were too close, and if I did, they would probably catch me before I could make it back through the trees. 121:09 So I ran again, but this time they did not stay behind. The engine roared and the van started chasing after me, picking up speed. 121:18 I ran harder than I thought possible, cutting across the grass between houses. 121:23 I heard the tires skidding behind me. Then the loud screech of the passenger door flying open. 121:29 One of the men jumped out and started chasing me on foot. He was heavyset and moved fast, but not fast enough to be a real sprinter. 121:37 I knew I had a small chance of outrunning him if I did not stop. I panicked and threw my backpack behind me, hoping it would hit him or slow him down. 121:47 I heard him stumble, maybe trip over it, but I did not stop to look. 121:51 I just ran until I reached my friend's porch again, pounding on the door like my life depended on it. 121:58 Her dad opened the door again, this time with his eyes wide as I stumbled through what had just happened. 122:03 He called the police right away. 122:06 When they arrived, they found my backpack in a neighbor's yard, but the van had vanished. 122:11 What still gives me chills is how deliberate it all felt, like they had been watching, like they knew I took that same route at the same time, alone, and were waiting for the perfect day. 122:23 A few weeks passed without incident. I stopped walking that way completely and my friend's parents started picking me up instead. 122:31 I did not hear anything else until a letter came from the local police department. 122:36 It was addressed to my parents and included a neighborhood alert about a man who had recently been arrested for trying to abduct another boy not far from where I had been followed. 122:46 The letter explained that he had a record, that he had moved to our town a few years earlier as a registered offender, and that he had not been monitored closely enough. 122:55 Attached were photographs of both suspects. 122:58 I did not even have to read the names. 123:01 The moment I saw their faces it all came rushing back. It was them. 123:06 Even in the grainy black and white copies, their eyes looked the same. Too fixed, too intense, as if they were not looking at you but through you. 123:15 I never found out what happened after that, whether they stayed in prison or moved somewhere else. But I do not think I ever trusted a quiet street the same way again after that. 123:30 Story 19 That summer I was working full time at a small college in the south and living in a quiet neighborhood not far from campus. 123:40 My days were pretty structured. Classes in the morning, afternoons in the student resources office. Then I would head home around nine o'clock. 123:49 The house I rented with my roommate was a small two-bedroom cottage tucked near the end of a cul-de-sac. The kind of street where nothing ever happens and everyone gives a little wave while mowing the lawn. 124:00 Most of the cars in the area were newer sedans or family SUVs. 124:04 That is why I noticed right away when a beat-up pickup truck showed up. 124:09 It was parked near the entrance to our street one night, just as I was pulling my car into the garage. 124:14 It looked like it had been dragged out of a junkyard, paint peeling off in patches, one headlight dimmer than the other, and the engine making a rough sputtering hum. 124:25 I stayed in the car for a minute or two, watching it in the rearview mirror. 124:29 No one else was around and the truck did not move. It was angled oddly like the driver could not decide whether to turn or stop. 124:37 After a while it finally crept back toward the main road. I did not think much of it beyond deciding it was strange. 124:44 Maybe someone had gotten lost. 124:47 Once inside I locked up the house, fed my dog and made myself a late dinner. 124:52 My roommate still was not home, which was not unusual on Thursdays. Sometimes he worked late or went out for drinks with co-workers. 125:01 Around 11 o'clock I was folding laundry in my room, half listening to a podcast when the power went out. 125:08 There was no storm that night, no wind, no lightning. It had been a hot clear day and the night was just as calm. 125:16 I flipped the light switch a couple of times just to make sure. 125:19 Nothing. I called my roommate to see if he was on his way back, and he told me he would be home at 5. 125:26 That calmed me down a little, so I decided to wait for him and check the fuse box together. 125:31 I hate going down to the basement alone anyway. 125:34 While I waited, I went to the front door, that one with the silly diamond-shaped window right at eye level, and tried to see whether our neighbors had lost power too. But all the porches were still lit. 125:46 Even the streetlight across from our house was on. Only our house was dark. 125:51 I was typing a quick reply to a text from my mom when I looked up and saw him. 125:56 A man was standing under the streetlight just a few yards from the lawn. 126:00 I swear he had not been there a second earlier. 126:03 He was tall, maybe in his late 40s or 50s, wearing jeans that looked like they had not seen a washing machine in weeks and a dirty white t-shirt. 126:12 Messy hair, round glasses, and a smug little smirk, like someone who already knew he had gotten away with something. 126:20 At first he was not doing anything, just standing there. 126:23 Then he started walking slowly with an unsettling calmness, straight toward our porch. 126:29 There was something about the way he moved that made my blood run cold. It was like he knew I was there, even though he could not see me in the dark. 126:37 He kept looking around carefully, as if trying not to get caught. As if he knew the neighborhood's routine. As if he had done this before. My dog, who usually went crazy over every squirrel or car door slam, was completely silent. He did not bark once, which somehow made it worse. 126:56 I felt like I was the only person in the world who knew something was wrong. 127:00 At that moment, my roommate's car turned onto our street. The headlight swept over the man and froze him in place. For a split second, he turned and looked straight at the car. 127:10 And there was something in that look that told me he recognized it. He took off running before the car had even fully pulled into the driveway. 127:19 He bolted into the night, disappearing through a side yard. 127:22 My roommate slammed on the brakes, jumped out of the car without even shutting the door, ran into the house, grabbed the axe we kept in the utility closet and went back outside ready to confront him. 127:34 But the guy was already gone. We called the police and they came to search the area with flashlights, but there was no sign of him. 127:42 The power company also sent someone out. 127:45 Apparently the box on the nearby pole had been manually switched. Only ours, not the neighbors. 127:51 When I asked the technician whether that could have been done on purpose, he shrugged and did not give me a clear answer. 127:57 We were supposed to leave for a trip that weekend anyway, so the next morning we packed early and got out of town. 128:04 I do not know whether that man came back while we were gone, and honestly I do not want to know. 128:10 Since then I made it a rule not to stay home alone at night, and a few months later we moved to another part of the city. 128:21 Story 20 During spring break a few years ago, when I was still 17, I used to visit my older siblings who lived in Tempe, Arizona. 128:32 My hometown was painfully boring, especially during school breaks, so going to the city always felt like a little adventure. 128:40 While they were at work during the day, I would spend my time wandering around by myself, exploring random areas, riding buses and looking for little shops or places to eat. 128:50 One afternoon I decided to go to the mall using the Orbit buses, those free neighborhood shuttles that run in loops around the city. 128:58 To get there I had to transfer halfway through the trip at one of the bus stations. The ride there went perfectly. 129:05 I spent a few hours window shopping, grabbed a bite to eat, and then started heading back before it got too late. 129:12 At the bus station while I was waiting for the connection to the second bus, I started talking to a guy who looked about my age. He seemed friendly, and I asked him which route I needed to take to get back near my brother's house. 129:25 He pointed out the right one and said he was heading the same way. 129:28 We got on together. We chatted for a while on the bus, just casual conversation, until he got off a few stops later. 129:36 I waved goodbye, put my headphones back in, and got lost in the music while I watched the city go by. 129:42 I think I relaxed too much because at some point I started noticing that the streets outside no longer looked familiar. 129:49 The neighborhoods looked completely different from the ones I had seen before. 129:53 I grabbed one of the printed maps from the bus and realized I had gotten on the wrong line. 129:58 It was already getting dark. and my phone was down to 3% battery. 130:03 I knew I had no room for mistakes. I decided to wait it out, figuring the orbit buses run in loops, and I would eventually make it back to the transfer station. 130:13 While I was trying to estimate how long that would take, the last few passengers got off. That was when the driver spoke to me. He called out from the front and asked if I was lost. I explained that I had taken the wrong route and was just waiting for the bus to loop back around. 130:29 At first he nodded. Then he did something that threw me off completely. 130:34 He turned off the main road and drove into a dark empty neighborhood. There were no street lights and no one around. 130:40 The bus stopped along the curb. I assumed he was ahead of schedule and waiting out the time. 130:46 But instead of staying in his seat, he got up and walked back to where I was sitting. 130:51 The guy was tall and broad, probably around six feet and 200 pounds. 130:56 He grabbed one of the maps and sat way too close to me. 131:00 He started asking me all kinds of personal questions. Which route I needed, whether I went to Arizona State University, how old I was. And then finally he asked, is anyone expecting you? 131:13 That made my stomach twist. I told him my brother was waiting for me and would worry if I did not get there soon. 131:19 He stood up and walked back to the front. 131:22 For a second I thought the weirdness was over, but instead of putting the bus back in motion, he shut the doors and turned off the interior lights. 131:30 Everything went dark, and the only sounds were the hum of the engine and my own heart pounding in my ears. I could barely make out his silhouette as he came back and sat down next to me again. 131:41 At that point I could not stay calm anymore. I jumped up, ran as fast as I could to the front, and started slamming against the doors until they finally burst open. 131:52 The second I got out I took off running. 131:54 I did not even look back. 131:57 I ran through that unfamiliar area, past rows of closed businesses and empty intersections, until I finally saw a cell phone store that was still open. 132:06 I went in practically crying and begged to borrow a charger. Thankfully, the person working there let me plug my phone in just long enough to call my brother. 132:15 I gave him the name of the store and told him to come get me right away. 132:19 When he arrived and saw the state I was in, he was furious. 132:23 I told him everything, and he said he was going to report the driver to the transit company. 132:29 I never found out what happened after that, and I wish I had gotten the driver's name or the bus number. 132:35 All I know is that after that night I never rode the orbit buses alone again.