[SPEAKER_00]: Story number one, I spent 24 years in the fire service, and people always assume the things that haunt me are the ones involving blood or bodies.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: The call that still sticks under my ribs happened early one winter morning, long before the sun even bothered to show up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Back when I was still a captain, we were dispatched to a fully involved house fire with reports of a trap child.
[SPEAKER_00]: The kind of call that makes every firefighter move faster than their brain can keep up.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we pulled up, the roof was already breached, and two second floor windows were throwing fire into the dark.
[SPEAKER_00]: The snow in the yard was glowing orange, and the parents were on the lawn screaming for their daughter.
[SPEAKER_00]: The father's hands and forearms were blistered raw from trying to reach her himself.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her room was supposed to be upstairs, second door on the right, straight shot, simple layout, except nothing about that house felt simple once we crossed the threshold.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even with the roof open, the thermocline set about two feet from the floor, hotter above, breathable below.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not great, but workable.
[SPEAKER_00]: My hand-line man and I advanced toward the stairs with short bursts to the ceiling, clearing enough smoke to keep visibility at maybe four feet.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't pretty, but it was workable.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I saw it, movement.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not upstairs where the girl was supposed to be, downstairs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just to my left on the main floor, half shrouded in the soup of smoke, legs only legs, a pair of adult male legs wearing olive-green trousers and old-fashioned leather shoes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Walking calmly, purposefully, as if the fire didn't even exist.
[SPEAKER_00]: I froze hard enough that the nozzle man bumped into me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I pointed and he nodded.
[SPEAKER_00]: He saw it too.
[SPEAKER_00]: We both watch those legs stroll across the living room and disappear into a doorway on the right side of a short hallway.
[SPEAKER_00]: No hesitation, no stumbling, no sign of panic, just movement, deliberate and almost beckoning.
[SPEAKER_00]: I redirected us immediately.
[SPEAKER_00]: If someone was still inside and mobile, we needed to get them out.
[SPEAKER_00]: We pushed through the hallway and reached the door the legs had gone into.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was closed.
[SPEAKER_00]: I laid my glove against it.
[SPEAKER_00]: No heat.
[SPEAKER_00]: Odd, considering the house around us was cooking like an oven.
[SPEAKER_00]: I signaled to make entry.
[SPEAKER_00]: We swung the door open, bathroom, bright light on, white walls, no smoke inside, and in the tub, curled tight like she'd been hiding from a monster under her bed, was the missing girl, alive, shaking, barely conscious.
[SPEAKER_00]: No sign of the man, no footprints in the suit, no wet tracks on the tiles, no space big enough for anyone to hide.
[SPEAKER_00]: just a child who shouldn't have been in that room and no one who could have led her there.
[SPEAKER_00]: We broke the window, handed her off to the second crew working exposure control, and checked the bathroom again, because neither of us wanted to accept what we hadn't seen.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: No attic access, no crawl space, no man.
[SPEAKER_00]: We continued sweeping the house, but it was already a losing battle.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fire had eaten through the living room and was ready to take the rest.
[SPEAKER_00]: We backed out and transitioned to protecting the neighboring home.
[SPEAKER_00]: The parents rode with their daughter to the hospital.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was cleared later that morning, shaken and soot covered but fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: The father had only minor burns, a miracle.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone chalked it up to luck.
[SPEAKER_00]: The right place at the right time.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it didn't feel like luck.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not when both of us had seen the same thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: What shook me more came later after the fire was out and we were doing overhaul.
[SPEAKER_00]: The bathroom, the one where we found the girl, had one weird detail I hadn't noticed during the rescue.
[SPEAKER_00]: The foot pattern on the floor around the tub formed a thin curved line, a perfect arc, like someone had been standing there shielding her.
[SPEAKER_00]: You work long enough in fire scenes, you learn to identify patterns, burns, tell stories, suit leaves, clues.
[SPEAKER_00]: That shape wasn't caused by heat or airflow or suppression water.
[SPEAKER_00]: It looked like the outline of someone's legs positioned between the girl and the door.
[SPEAKER_00]: As if guarding her, I didn't say it out loud, neither did my hand linemen, but he looked at the floor, then it me and the hairs on the back of his neck stood straight up.
[SPEAKER_00]: I saw it happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: We didn't talk about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Weeks passed, reports were filed, investigation concluded, electrical fault in the attic.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing unusual, except I couldn't shake the picture.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those olive-green trousers disappearing into the hallway.
[SPEAKER_00]: A few months later, I ran into the mother in a grocery store.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her daughter was with her, clutching her hand,
[SPEAKER_00]: The mother thanked me again.
[SPEAKER_00]: She said they told her we found the girl in the hallway bathroom, and she still had no idea how the child got there.
[SPEAKER_00]: The bathroom door had been stuck shut for months, swollen frame, they used the master bathroom instead.
[SPEAKER_00]: She said they didn't even have the key anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: I asked casually if her daughter remembered anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: The mother said the girl told her she woke up to a man standing in her doorway.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not her father, a different man, tall wearing dark pants.
[SPEAKER_00]: She said he didn't speak.
[SPEAKER_00]: He just reached out his hand and she followed him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then the mother added something that made my stomach twist so hard I had to grip the shopping cart to steady myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: She said her daughter described the man as the same one from the picture in the basement.
[SPEAKER_00]: I asked what picture.
[SPEAKER_00]: The mother said they had found an old family photo tucked behind a beam while cleaning out water damage boxes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her grandfather's brother apparently.
[SPEAKER_00]: He died in that house during a fire in the 1950s, back when the property looked completely different.
[SPEAKER_00]: He tried to get to a child trapped upstairs but didn't make it out.
[SPEAKER_00]: She said the girl pointed at him and said he was the man who helped her.
[SPEAKER_00]: All of trousers, leather shoes, silent, moving through smoke like it wasn't even there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I never saw that girl again, but that call has clung to me like the smell of burned insulation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some things you can explain with training, science, experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some things follow a different rulebook, and some men don't stop helping people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even decades after they die trying.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story number two, back in 1989 during my National Service Stint, I was posted to the East Coast Park Police Post.
[SPEAKER_00]: People always joke that nighttime patrols there were easy, just stray cyclists, stray dogs, and the occasional drunk fishing enthusiasts.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the older officers used to mention that the park got different after 3 a.m. when the last joggers disappeared and the shoreline turned
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought they were just trying to spook the rookies.
[SPEAKER_00]: I found out the hard way that they weren't.
[SPEAKER_00]: It happened during one of my night shifts.
[SPEAKER_00]: It had been drizzling since sunset.
[SPEAKER_00]: The kind of thin, persistent rain that never fully stops.
[SPEAKER_00]: The sky had that washed out gray glow that comes from clouds reflecting the city lights.
[SPEAKER_00]: We were patrolling in an open-top police Jeep along one of the bicycle paths near the yellow lighthouse.
[SPEAKER_00]: A place everyone called Notorious, but never explained why.
[SPEAKER_00]: I sat in the back, watching the trees sway under the drizzle, listening to the tires crushed wet sand and gravel.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we turned a corner, the headlights washed over something that shouldn't have been there.
[SPEAKER_00]: A thick fallen tree trunk blocking the entire path.
[SPEAKER_00]: It looked fresh, bark still slick with rain, leaves still trembling even though there was no win.
[SPEAKER_00]: The regular break-tard, he told us we needed to clear it so the Jeep could pass through.
[SPEAKER_00]: Back then, I was still young, still eager, still convinced nothing supernatural ever happened to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: so I hopped out of the Jeep without thinking twice.
[SPEAKER_00]: The drizzle felt colder than before, like the air suddenly dropped a few degrees.
[SPEAKER_00]: I went to the lower end of the trunk and bent down to lift it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Usually branches and fallen trees are straight forward.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lift, drag, done.
[SPEAKER_00]: This one felt heavier than it should have, heavier than simple wet wood.
[SPEAKER_00]: As I braced myself, I heard a sharp intake of breath from somewhere behind me, then the sound of leaves rustling violently overhead, like something big and fast had moved through the branches.
[SPEAKER_00]: Before I could even process it, something changed in the atmosphere.
[SPEAKER_00]: The air felt wrong, thicker as if it had weight.
[SPEAKER_00]: My skin prickled, a cold shiver ran down my spine so suddenly, it nearly buckled my knees.
[SPEAKER_00]: At that exact moment, my teammates dropped the trunk as if it had shocked them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I heard someone let out a short, strangled cry and the slap of boots scrambling backward on wet ground.
[SPEAKER_00]: The regular shouted for us to get back into the Jeep immediately.
[SPEAKER_00]: His tone wasn't the usual annoyed or impatient one.
[SPEAKER_00]: This was pure, unfiltered fear.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't question him.
[SPEAKER_00]: The moment I heard the rustling stop, the silence that followed was so unnatural, it felt like the whole park was holding its breath.
[SPEAKER_00]: I climbed into the Jeep, and within seconds the regular slammed it into reverse.
[SPEAKER_00]: We tore down the bicycle path backward, the Jeep bouncing and fish tailing in the wet sand.
[SPEAKER_00]: Before he spun us around and sped straight for the expressway.
[SPEAKER_00]: Only when we hit the asphalt did the regular slow down, but even then, his shoulders were stiff, and his hands clenched the steering wheel so tight his knuckles turned pale.
[SPEAKER_00]: All three of them started speaking rapidly in Malay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't understand much, but the tone alone told me they weren't joking, weren't exaggerating, weren't trying to scare me.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were genuinely terrified.
[SPEAKER_00]: I asked what happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: I felt I deserved to know.
[SPEAKER_00]: After all, I'd been at the Treetrung 2.
[SPEAKER_00]: The regular asked whether I had seen anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: I told him I saw nothing, only heard the rustling from the branches above me.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said something then that made the hairs on the back of my neck rise, even though the Jeep was warm, and the drizzle had finally stopped.
[SPEAKER_00]: He told me, in a low-shaken voice, that when they were lifting the trunk, a ponte anac had emerged from the hollow underside of the fallen tree.
[SPEAKER_00]: not walked out, not crawled out, emerged, straight upward, like a whisp turning solid, a pale, contorted shape unfolding itself from inside the trunk.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then it leapt up into the nearest tree, disappearing among the branches just seconds before I heard the rustling.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't want to believe him, but the detail that struck me was that all three of them had reacted at the exact same moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Three grown men, three trained officers, all recorling and scrambling backward in the same second before the rustling reached me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fear like that doesn't synchronize by accident.
[SPEAKER_00]: Over the next few weeks, I kept replaying that moment at the trunk.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remembered the odd weight of it, the cold that soaked through my shirt all at once, the rustling overhead that started exactly when they screamed.
[SPEAKER_00]: The way the leaves shook, violently, not like wind, but like something heavy had landed on them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I started noticing small things during later night shifts.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing dramatic, nothing cinematic.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just little signs that made the edges of my vision feel unreliable.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes I'd hear soft giggling echoing through the trees when no one was around.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes the smell of Franja Panne would drift through the humid air, even when we were far from any flowering trees.
[SPEAKER_00]: Once, while patrolling alone on foot, I found long strands of hair snagged on a branch at shoulder height.
[SPEAKER_00]: Black, glossy, far too long to be humanly natural.
[SPEAKER_00]: I never saw anything directly, not once, but I felt watched, especially in the early morning hours, when the park was empty and the air thickened with mist.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would walk past the same grove of trees and feel the same cold prickle, spread up my spine, the same sensation of something observing from just above eye level.
[SPEAKER_00]: I kept telling myself it was imagination, left over fear from that night, or just the eerie mood of empty parks at dawn, but the truth settled heavier each time it happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: Something had been there that night, something that reacted to our presence, something that
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know why it was inside the trunk.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what it was waiting for, or what we interrupted, but I do know this.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I heard that rustling before anyone said a word, my body reacted before my brain did.
[SPEAKER_00]: A deep, primal instinct that warned me something unnatural had moved just inches above my head.
[SPEAKER_00]: That wasn't my last encounter, but it was the one that opened the door, and once that door opened, it never fully closed again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some things in ECP don't sleep, even when the rest of Singapore does.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story number three, I've done weakens shifts at my local police station for years.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mostly clerical stuff, logging reports, organizing evidence tags, answering phones that barely ring after midnight.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's usually quiet enough that the hum of the fluorescent lights becomes the loudest thing in the entire building.
[SPEAKER_00]: Most nights it's just me and whichever officer is on duty.
[SPEAKER_00]: We keep each other company between calls, drink terrible coffee, and complain about the leaky AC vent above the breakroom microwave.
[SPEAKER_00]: That night though, the on duty officer stepped out for a calm.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing dramatic, just patrolling, a quick sweep of the nearby blocks, something routine.
[SPEAKER_00]: I watched him leave through the back lot, saw the squad car pull out, saw the tail lights disappear past the chain length fence.
[SPEAKER_00]: I knew I was alone, it didn't bother me, at least it shouldn't have.
[SPEAKER_00]: The station always settles into a certain stillness once the door closes behind the last person.
[SPEAKER_00]: The air feels heavier, like the silence has weight to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got used to that a long time ago, but around 30 minutes after he left, something cut through that silence.
[SPEAKER_00]: The unmistakable sound of keys jingling just a few feet behind me?
[SPEAKER_00]: Metal tapping metal, quick and loose, as if someone had just turned a corner with them swinging in hand.
[SPEAKER_00]: I spun around so fast my chair rolled back.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just the hallway stretching empty in both directions, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead.
[SPEAKER_00]: My first thought was that another officer had come in through the back, so I instinctively glance at the camera screen behind the desk.
[SPEAKER_00]: The feed from the rear lot was crystal clear, empty, no headlights, no squad car, no personal car, no movement, not even the shadow of someone passing by.
[SPEAKER_00]: The building was mine alone, that was when the smell hit me.
[SPEAKER_00]: At first, I thought the AC had decided to spit out more dust, but this wasn't dust.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't the mustiness of old paperwork or the chemical tank of disinfectant wipes.
[SPEAKER_00]: This was a human scent.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sweat, salt, worn fabric, the faint metallic undertone of someone who'd spent too long and heavy gear, and not just any sweat.
[SPEAKER_00]: I knew immediately it was a man.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a distinct difference in the way men smell when they're drenched, and this was unmistakable.
[SPEAKER_00]: It came from behind me, heavy, humid, close.
[SPEAKER_00]: My entire body reacted at once.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not fear exactly, more like my nerve suddenly overloaded.
[SPEAKER_00]: My arms buzzed with pins and needles.
[SPEAKER_00]: My knees softened as if my legs forgot how to hold me up.
[SPEAKER_00]: My breath caught halfway in my chest.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was as if something had drained the strength straight out of my muscles, leaving me hollow and weirdly weightless.
[SPEAKER_00]: My heartbeat didn't even spike.
[SPEAKER_00]: It just slowed, thick and sluggish, like I'd slipped underwater without realizing it.
[SPEAKER_00]: The smell grew stronger, hotter, almost like someone was leaning over me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't move it first.
[SPEAKER_00]: My fingers felt disconnected, like they were floating somewhere far from my hands.
[SPEAKER_00]: It took nearly five minutes, long crawling minutes, before the sensation faded enough for me to breathe normally again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even then, my head felt light, as if I'd stood up too fast or skipped a meal.
[SPEAKER_00]: By the time I forced myself to turn fully around, the smell was already thinning into nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: The air returned to its usual cold, stale stillness.
[SPEAKER_00]: No keys clinking, no footsteps, no sound.
[SPEAKER_00]: I tried to rationalize it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: They drill that into you at the station.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything has a logical explanation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Someone could have come in and left fast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe the smell drifted from someone's abandoned gear bag.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe the vents kicked up something old.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe my mind just filled silence with noise.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the keys I heard weren't echoes.
[SPEAKER_00]: They weren't imagination.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were right behind me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the scent doesn't just appear out of nowhere like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was fresh, close.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like someone had been standing almost shoulder to shoulder with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: It hit exactly the way a person's presence does.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not a memory, not old sweat baked into fabric.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the live warmth of a body that had been there seconds earlier.
[SPEAKER_00]: I went through the security logs, no door had opened, no motion sensors had tripped.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: The building claimed no one had come inside.
[SPEAKER_00]: Later that night, when I got up to stretch my legs, I passed by the holding quarter.
[SPEAKER_00]: The line of empty cells sat quiet in the dim yellow bulbs.
[SPEAKER_00]: That hallway always feels colder than the rest of the building, but that night it felt inhabited.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like someone was standing just out of sight inside one of the cells, watching, waiting.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't linger.
[SPEAKER_00]: I went back to the front desk trying to focus on paperwork, but every few minutes, a faint whiff of that same sweat drifted in again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Never strong, never long enough to catch.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just the ghost of it brushing past me.
[SPEAKER_00]: It would appear for a second, vanish, then return from a slightly different direction.
[SPEAKER_00]: As if someone were pacing slowly around the edges of the room, I thought maybe it was in my head.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then the chair beside mine shifted.
[SPEAKER_00]: Only by an inch or two, but enough for the wheel to squeak softly, enough for the cushion to dip the tiniest amount.
[SPEAKER_00]: Enough to feel like someone had leaned on to it, or brushed past it.
[SPEAKER_00]: After that I kept my eyes on the monitors, but the monitors didn't make me feel any safer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every empty hallway looked like it had something just out of frame, every shadow looked a little too sharp.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every camera angle felt incomplete, like whatever was moving around me wasn't interested in being seen.
[SPEAKER_00]: The rest of the shift dragged on painfully.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing else happened, but nothing felt normal anymore either.
[SPEAKER_00]: The building had the quiet of a place that wasn't empty, just pretending to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: When the officer finally returned near Dawn, the air cleared, the smell evaporated completely.
[SPEAKER_00]: The weakness in my limbs faded as if someone had flipped a switch.
[SPEAKER_00]: The station felt like a station again, cold, fluorescent, boring.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't tell him what happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't even know why.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe because saying it out loud made it feel more real.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe because I wasn't scared, just drained like something had passed through me and taken something with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've thought about that night a lot since then.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not the keys, not the smell, not the chair.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those things were obvious, physical.
[SPEAKER_00]: What stuck with me most was the sudden loss of strength.
[SPEAKER_00]: The way my body shut down like something invisible had pressed a hand against my spine and leaned in until my nerves buckled.
[SPEAKER_00]: People always talk about spirits showing themselves, knocking things over, whispering in ears.
[SPEAKER_00]: But whatever passed through that station didn't want to be seen or heard.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wanted to be felt.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wanted presence.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wanted energy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whether it fed on mine or just brushed through me on its way somewhere else, I still don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: But sometimes on slower nights, when the quarters go still, and the cameras show nothing but empty rooms waiting for morning, I swear I catch a faint scent in the air.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sweat, heat, old fabric, and feel that same weakness tug at my muscles.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just for a second.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just long enough for me to know I'm not alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story number four, I never used to believe in hauntings.
[SPEAKER_00]: In my line of work, you see enough real violence to know the living are far more dangerous than anything paranormal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Adore slamming or a ceramic spoon flying off a counter was never going to shake me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd always assume people who quit because of ghosts just couldn't handle night duty.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then came the noise complaint that ended my career.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was some time after midnight.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dispatch sent me a loan to check out of disturbance in a quiet neighborhood.
[SPEAKER_00]: No name given for privacy, and honestly, that's fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: If the residents knew what happened there, every house on that street would be up for sale by morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I pulled up, the road was empty.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dead silent.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not even a porch light on.
[SPEAKER_00]: The whole street looked like it had been vacuum sealed into stillness.
[SPEAKER_00]: I stepped out the gravel crunching under my boots too loudly and approached the house that had placed the complaint.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing obvious from the outside.
[SPEAKER_00]: No lights, no movement.
[SPEAKER_00]: The air felt dense, like a storm was waiting for permission to form.
[SPEAKER_00]: I knocked on the door, announced my presence, and waited.
[SPEAKER_00]: The porch light remained off, the window stayed black.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then I heard soft footsteps inside, small ones like a child's.
[SPEAKER_00]: The door cracked open a few inches and a little girl peaked out.
[SPEAKER_00]: I estimated eight or nine, hair falling messily around her shoulders, eyes glassy like she had been crying or hadn't slept in days.
[SPEAKER_00]: I took a step back to make myself less imposing, and asked if her parents were home.
[SPEAKER_00]: She shook her head.
[SPEAKER_00]: My mind went straight to the standard explanations.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe she turned the TV up too loud.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe she knocked something over.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe the neighbors were jumpy.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was ready to tell her to stay inside and lock the doors while I wrote up the call as unsubstantiated, but something crashed inside the house before I could finish the thought.
[SPEAKER_00]: Silverware, a whole drawer is worth.
[SPEAKER_00]: metal clattering against tile in a sharp, unnatural burst.
[SPEAKER_00]: It didn't sound like an accident.
[SPEAKER_00]: It sounded like someone had grabbed the entire tray and hurled it across the room.
[SPEAKER_00]: The girl didn't even flinch.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was the first thing that bothered me.
[SPEAKER_00]: The house behind her was nearly pitch black.
[SPEAKER_00]: Without a warrant, I couldn't legally enter, but if someone was inside tossing knives around, that counted as a threat.
[SPEAKER_00]: I asked her to wait outside on the porch and stepped into the doorway just enough to scan the interior.
[SPEAKER_00]: Darkness.
[SPEAKER_00]: thicker than it should have been, as if the house didn't reflect light correctly.
[SPEAKER_00]: I called out a standard warning in case someone was lurking inside.
[SPEAKER_00]: Silent answered, the kitchen was too far to see clearly, but nothing moved.
[SPEAKER_00]: No breathing, no shifting shadows, nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I backed out gradually, not willing to push my luck without probable cause.
[SPEAKER_00]: The girls stood exactly where I left her, staring at me with those same glassy eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I told her quietly to wait by my patrol car where she'd be safe.
[SPEAKER_00]: I turned to walk her back.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the living room TV blared to life behind me, full volume, static.
[SPEAKER_00]: The kind of jagged, violent white noise that sounds like pressure in your ears.
[SPEAKER_00]: I spun around, the screen was glowing hard enough to silhouette the furniture, but the room itself remains soaked in darkness as if the light couldn't touch anything fully.
[SPEAKER_00]: I brought the girl to the back seat of my patrol car, securing the child lock.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't want her running back inside, and frankly I didn't want her behind me where I couldn't see her.
[SPEAKER_00]: Something about her presence felt wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like she wasn't reacting to anything a child should react to.
[SPEAKER_00]: I returned to the house alone, against my better judgment, but walking away from potential danger wasn't something I could justify.
[SPEAKER_00]: Inside, none of the switches worked, not a single light turned on.
[SPEAKER_00]: My flashlight skimmed over empty walls and furniture that look staged rather than lived in.
[SPEAKER_00]: No family photos, no shoes by the door, no clutter.
[SPEAKER_00]: The house felt abandoned, except for the heavy hum of the static and the metallic scent of the scattered cutlery.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a mirror in the hallway, old dust coated.
[SPEAKER_00]: When my flashlight hit it, something flashed behind me, a silhouette, human-shaped, tall, two-tall, standing right in the reflection.
[SPEAKER_00]: I spun around instantly, nothing there.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I look back at the mirror, the reflection showed only me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I moved deeper into the house every nerve in my body tightening.
[SPEAKER_00]: That pressure, more than fear, was what unnerved me.
[SPEAKER_00]: It felt like walking through water that resisted my steps.
[SPEAKER_00]: The kind of heaviness that suggests someone is very close behind you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Breathing in your direction, but not touching you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I reached the hallway near the bedrooms when I heard running, fast, barefoot, slapping against the floor and rapid succession.
[SPEAKER_00]: It came straight toward me, but nothing occupied the space in front of me.
[SPEAKER_00]: The footsteps rushed past, right through where I stood, and continued toward the front door.
[SPEAKER_00]: A cold force clipped my shoulder as if something brushed through my body instead of around it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every object in the hallway flew sideways, lamps toppled, frames crashed, a chair tipped over, skidding several feet without anyone touching it.
[SPEAKER_00]: The mirror at the end of the hall rattled violently as if something struck it from behind.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't wait.
[SPEAKER_00]: My instincts overpowered every ounce of training.
[SPEAKER_00]: I sprinted out of the house and onto the lawn, gasping for air that suddenly felt
[SPEAKER_00]: That was when the siren on my patrol car erupted.
[SPEAKER_00]: Loud, piercing, impossible to ignore.
[SPEAKER_00]: I ran to shut it off, heart hammering.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I did, I glanced into the back seat to check on the girl.
[SPEAKER_00]: She was gone.
[SPEAKER_00]: The door was still locked.
[SPEAKER_00]: The windows were closed, no sign of forced exit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just an empty seat where a small child had been moments earlier.
[SPEAKER_00]: When backup eventually arrived, the camera's mounted on my car had captured nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: The footage cut out the moment I stepped into the house and resumed only after the siren stopped.
[SPEAKER_00]: No girl, no footsteps, no static, no shadow.
[SPEAKER_00]: They believed I saw a runaway child.
[SPEAKER_00]: They believed the noise was squatters.
[SPEAKER_00]: They believed everything except the truth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the truth was simple and terrifying.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing in that house was alive, and whatever ran down that hallway wasn't running to escape me.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was running to reach her.
[SPEAKER_00]: I turned in my badge at the same week.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pride is replaceable.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sanity isn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: If a mirror shows you a person who isn't behind you, don't look twice.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just run.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story number five.
[SPEAKER_00]: I used to work at a juvenile detention center.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not the glamorous kind you see in documentaries, just concrete floors, flickering fluorescent lights, and reinforced doors that echoed no matter how softly they closed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Night shifts were the worst.
[SPEAKER_00]: The building felt heavy in the dark, like the air itself grew thicker once the sun went down.
[SPEAKER_00]: Most nights the kids slept through without incident.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paperwork, rounds, coffee, routine.
[SPEAKER_00]: Until the night I learned that routine means nothing when something else moves with you in the halls.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was a boy, 14, maybe 15.
[SPEAKER_00]: Brought in after a gang initiation gone wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: He'd killed someone.
[SPEAKER_00]: I never got the full story because I didn't want it.
[SPEAKER_00]: At that age, knowing too much about what someone had done made it harder to look them in the eyes while handing them lunch trays.
[SPEAKER_00]: He arrived quiet, kept to himself, didn't react to the usual taunts or the restless noise that came from the other teens after lights out.
[SPEAKER_00]: But on his second night something changed.
[SPEAKER_00]: He refused to sleep, sat on the edge of his bunk staring into the corner.
[SPEAKER_00]: I noticed during my rounds that his eyes followed something I couldn't see, tracking movement across the room that wasn't there.
[SPEAKER_00]: At first, I chalked it up to stress, kids hear things in these halls, vents rattling, distant shouting from a different block, the hum of old pipes.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the longer I watched him on camera, the more an easier film.
[SPEAKER_00]: He would suddenly jerk back against the wall, pressing himself into the concrete as if something unseen had lunched at him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then he'd stare at the cell door, wide-eyed, like he expected it to rattle.
[SPEAKER_00]: I tried to shake it off.
[SPEAKER_00]: New arrivals often had nightmares or hallucinations.
[SPEAKER_00]: Trauma did strange things to people, especially kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: The third night, though, everything crossed the line.
[SPEAKER_00]: The detention center had a row of old cameras.
[SPEAKER_00]: Grany black and white feeds that glitched every now and then.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometime around three in the morning, I was reviewing an incident report from earlier that evening when something flickered in the corner of the monitor.
[SPEAKER_00]: A blur, a distortion, like fog catching light in a place that had no light.
[SPEAKER_00]: I leaned closer.
[SPEAKER_00]: The screen for his cell block was static free, which was rare in itself, but the hallway outside his cell wasn't empty.
[SPEAKER_00]: Something was standing there, a shape, misty, human-sized, but blurred around the edges as if it hadn't fully formed.
[SPEAKER_00]: The more I stared, the more wrong it looked, not quite transparent, not quite solid, like smoke sculpted into the faint outline of a person.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't visible on any of the other camera angles, only that one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Only outside is cell.
[SPEAKER_00]: My chest tightened as the figure shifted.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's arm, or the thing resembling an arm, extended toward the bars.
[SPEAKER_00]: The mist thinned as it stretched, drifting into the cell like water seeping through cracks.
[SPEAKER_00]: My heart slammed in my throat.
[SPEAKER_00]: For a moment I thought maybe the camera was malfunctioning, maybe condensation or dust created an illusion.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then the boy sat bolt up right on his bunk.
[SPEAKER_00]: His head snapped toward the door.
[SPEAKER_00]: His gaze followed something that the camera's blur hinted at, but didn't fully capture.
[SPEAKER_00]: He tried pressing himself back again, flattening into the wall.
[SPEAKER_00]: The bruise on his cheekbone, faint the day before, looked darker now as if someone had struck him overnight.
[SPEAKER_00]: He lifted his hand as if trying to shield his face, and then his body jolted sharply to the side.
[SPEAKER_00]: I shot up from my chair for a second I thought someone was in the hallway and I just missed them during the last round, but the silence of the facility weighed down on me, like a hand pressing over my mouth, no footsteps, no sounds, just the hum of the security monitors.
[SPEAKER_00]: I check the other screens.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: All the other feeds showed empty quarters, still cells, sleeping inmates.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the feet outside his door still showed the misty silhouette reaching inward.
[SPEAKER_00]: I grabbed my keys, steadying my breath.
[SPEAKER_00]: Procedure demanded I check on him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Procedure didn't include supernatural loopholes.
[SPEAKER_00]: As I walked through the block, each step echoed too loudly.
[SPEAKER_00]: The walls felt narrower, as though the building itself was shrinking around me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every cell I passed seemed colder than the last.
[SPEAKER_00]: I felt it before I saw anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: An unnatural drop in temperature, like stepping into a freezer.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I reached his cell, he was curled on the bunk, shielding his face with his arm.
[SPEAKER_00]: The bruise was darker, larger, almost the shape of a long object, like a pipe swung with force, but the cell was empty except for him.
[SPEAKER_00]: No smuggled metal, no blunt items, nothing he could have heard himself with.
[SPEAKER_00]: The hallway behind me was empty.
[SPEAKER_00]: I opened the door just enough to check him visually.
[SPEAKER_00]: He whispered something under his breath.
[SPEAKER_00]: Too faint to decipher.
[SPEAKER_00]: And his eyes darted to the corner of the room behind me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I followed his gaze but saw nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just shadows.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ordinary shadows that somehow felt stretched too long.
[SPEAKER_00]: I backed out and closed the door.
[SPEAKER_00]: My hands trembling even though I tried to keep them steady.
[SPEAKER_00]: The camera feed outside his cell returned to normal as soon as I made it back to the control room.
[SPEAKER_00]: The misty figure was gone.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like it had never been there at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the boy didn't sleep the rest of the night.
[SPEAKER_00]: He paced.
[SPEAKER_00]: He stared into the corner.
[SPEAKER_00]: He kept touching the bruise on his face as if expecting the pain to return.
[SPEAKER_00]: The following morning, medical staff confirmed the bruise looked consistent with blunt-force trauma, not self-inflicted, not accidental, and the surveillance footage?
[SPEAKER_00]: When the review team pulled the recordings, that entire section of the feed glitched out, static, black screens, corrupted data, except for a single frame, just one.
[SPEAKER_00]: The silhouette clearer than it had been live, a blurred head, a faint outline of shoulders, an arm stretching through the bars in a way that defied solid form.
[SPEAKER_00]: They dismissed it as interference, a camera artifact, something that only looked humanoid because the brain tries to create patterns.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I knew better, I'd watched it move, I'd seen the kid react.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd walk through air cold enough to numb bone, even now I can still feel that cold on the inside of my wrists where the breeze hits skin first.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've witnessed fights, escapes, breakdowns, and violence in that facility, but nothing ever frightened me the way that quiet, shapeless figure did.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not because of how it looked, there was barely a shape to fear, but because of what it did.
[SPEAKER_00]: because it chose him, because it reached for him as if it already owned him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some nights now, when I can't sleep, I think about that single frame, how you can stare at something barely visible and still feel it watching you back, how something with no face can still look like it's smiling.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I pray that whatever followed him into that cell didn't follow him out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story number six, I used to be a police officer in a small Michigan town that barely registered on most maps.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not much happened there for decades, some bar fights, a few missing pets, the usual small town noise.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the kind of place where people didn't bother locking their doors, and nearly everyone knew each other by name, voice, and silhouette.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then people started disappearing.
[SPEAKER_00]: At first, it was one person every couple of months.
[SPEAKER_00]: Someone wouldn't show up for work, and by sunset, their family would file a report.
[SPEAKER_00]: We assumed the usual explanations, runaways, domestic disputes, someone's skipping town to dodge debts.
[SPEAKER_00]: That comfort lasted maybe half a year.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then it became routine.
[SPEAKER_00]: Someone gone every three to four weeks.
[SPEAKER_00]: No patterns, no connections, no traces.
[SPEAKER_00]: We searched for us, riverbeds, addicts, basements, abandoned barns that hadn't housed anything except dust since the 60s.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not even a shoe print out a place.
[SPEAKER_00]: It felt like the people dissolved the moment no one was looking.
[SPEAKER_00]: The department hit walls every time, but someone else was never hitting walls.
[SPEAKER_00]: The woman who wrote for the town's local paper.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her name doesn't matter now.
[SPEAKER_00]: The less I say about her, the safer I feel.
[SPEAKER_00]: She wrote weekly columns covering small town events like bake sales and parades.
[SPEAKER_00]: But whenever someone went missing, her articles had details we hadn't released.
[SPEAKER_00]: Descriptions of their paths, places they'd visited, hints that made it seem like she knew who they met last, even when we didn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: We questioned her a dozen times.
[SPEAKER_00]: She always brushed off the information, saying she had sources.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the way she said it, calm, rehearsed, detached, felt wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: Most reporters had a fire behind their eyes when digging into tragedy.
[SPEAKER_00]: She didn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: She looked like she was already waiting for us to catch up to something she'd known from the beginning.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every time I worked the case, I felt her shadow leaning over the investigation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Eight years passed like that, eight years of vanishings, eight years of her uncanny articles, eight years of dead ends, then she disappeared.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her car was found abandoned near the same patch of woods where the last missing person had vanished.
[SPEAKER_00]: The engine was still warm, the seat adjusted exactly to her height.
[SPEAKER_00]: But she was gone, not a sound, not a footprint, not a rustled branch nearby.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like she stepped out of her life the same way everyone else had.
[SPEAKER_00]: We searched her house next.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was smaller than I expected.
[SPEAKER_00]: Two bedrooms, one bathroom, walls covered in frame clippings of the newspaper pieces she'd written.
[SPEAKER_00]: All of them organized.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every missing person article placed chronologically.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like she was curating a gallery of loss.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the pantry we found something strange, a hatch in the ceiling, hands smudged, recently moved.
[SPEAKER_00]: We pulled it down, a ladder unfolded, I volunteered to go up first.
[SPEAKER_00]: The attic was silent, untouched by dust, as if someone cleaned it regularly, a single bulb hung from a wire in the center, the pole chains swayed even though the air was still.
[SPEAKER_00]: I turned on the light, shelves lined the walls, dozens of glass jars sat on them.
[SPEAKER_00]: neatly arranged labels written in tiny careful handwriting.
[SPEAKER_00]: Inside each jar floated something pale, soft, and unmistakably organic.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hearts, human hearts, perfectly preserved, suspended in a clear liquid that masked any smell.
[SPEAKER_00]: Next to the shelves were several large ziplock bags stacked inside a crate.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I picked one up, the texture told me everything I didn't want to know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Skin, human skin, thin translucent sheets that shifted like fabric.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd seen horrors on the job, but nothing prepared me for that moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: We sent everything to forensics.
[SPEAKER_00]: They matched the DNA to several of the missing people.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the proof we'd been begging for.
[SPEAKER_00]: Proof that someone had killed them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Proof that someone had kept their hearts, their skin, their last trace of existence, but the woman was never found.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her fingerprints were nowhere except in places that made sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: No blood, no signs of a struggle, no history of mental illness, no indication she had done anything violent in her life.
[SPEAKER_00]: The case went cold, but the disappearance is stopped, just like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Once she vanished, no one else in the town went missing ever again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Most people found comfort in that.
[SPEAKER_00]: They said whatever took all those people must have taken her to.
[SPEAKER_00]: Balance restored, mystery ended, no reason to keep being afraid.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't believe any of those comforting stories.
[SPEAKER_00]: Something bothered me about her house the day we searched it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Something I didn't mention in the report.
[SPEAKER_00]: While everyone crowded around the attic ladder, stunned by what we found, I wandered into her bedroom.
[SPEAKER_00]: The closet door was slightly a jar.
[SPEAKER_00]: Inside closed hung neatly, sorted by season, shoes lined up in perfect order.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what froze me wasn't the organization.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the smell.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not decay, not chemicals.
[SPEAKER_00]: The smell of earth.
[SPEAKER_00]: fresh, damp earth, like dirt recently turned over.
[SPEAKER_00]: I step back, forcing myself not to look for the source.
[SPEAKER_00]: I knew that if I looked too long, if I opened drawers or checked behind the clothes, I'd find something worse.
[SPEAKER_00]: Something I wasn't meant to see.
[SPEAKER_00]: I shut the closet and walked out of that room, trying to convince myself the scent was from outside, but deep down I knew better.
[SPEAKER_00]: For months after she vanished, I had dreams.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dark ones.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dreams of footsteps outside my window at night, slow and deliberate.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dreams of something tapping on the glass with long nails.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dreams of someone standing in the corner of my room, watching, not approaching, just watching.
[SPEAKER_00]: Each time I'd wake up gasping, heart pounding so hard it felt like my ribs might split.
[SPEAKER_00]: Eventually, the dreams faded, but every now and then, random nights, especially when the wind picks up, I feel that same shift inside me.
[SPEAKER_00]: The same pressure in the room, the same feeling I had standing in her bedroom, that sensation of being observed by something patient.
[SPEAKER_00]: Something that didn't leave town at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: People say the disappearances stopped.
[SPEAKER_00]: I say she stopped needing victims.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because whatever was inside that woman, whatever guided her, whatever she served or fed or preserved, it never left.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's still here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Watching.
[SPEAKER_00]: Story number seven, I've been a police officer long enough to know the difference between simple forgetfulness and something that doesn't want to be understood.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've missed place keys, pens, paperwork, normal things under stress.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what started happening in my house these last few months wasn't forgetfulness.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't exhaustion, it was deliberate.
[SPEAKER_00]: Objects weren't just disappearing.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were being moved, repositioned.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hidden in places I had checked half a dozen times.
[SPEAKER_00]: At first it was small stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: My flashlight from my duty belt, a pair of handcuffs, a case file I'd left on the table.
[SPEAKER_00]: They'd vanish and reappear and drawers I hadn't opened, or on shelves too high to reach without a ladder.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then the Objects grew larger, harder to explain, a folded uniform shirt once ended up wedge behind my refrigerator, crumpled and shoved so deep it took me nearly an hour to pull it free.
[SPEAKER_00]: A pair of boots vanished from the hallway and reappeared inside the lock trunk of my patrol car.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hadn't opened that trunk in three days.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every time something new went missing, it felt like the house was testing me, waiting to see how far it could push before I'd stop trying to rationalize what was happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the phone incident ended any attempt at logic.
[SPEAKER_00]: My old phone was practically a relic, something I kept only because of old photos stored inside.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd left it on my father's office desk the night before, face down, screen cracked, impossible to mistake for anything else.
[SPEAKER_00]: Before leaving the room, I tried to unlock it, failed and dropped it back onto the desk.
[SPEAKER_00]: The house was empty except for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: The desk wasn't cluttered, the phone was in plain sight.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was no chance I overlooked it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I left for my shift assuming it was still there.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: The next day after I was off duty, I got a message from someone who shouldn't have found it at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: My phone had somehow ended up wedge between the seat and passenger door in a locked car.
[SPEAKER_00]: A car that hadn't been opened.
[SPEAKER_00]: A car no one else had the keys to.
[SPEAKER_00]: I checked the doorbell camera footage, nothing in my hands when I left the house, no one near the car, no suspicious motion during the night.
[SPEAKER_00]: My mind circled itself until it tied into a knot.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was no explanation, which left only possibility I spent most of my life dismissing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Something inside that house wanted me to know, it could follow me.
[SPEAKER_00]: The strangest part was that nothing else in the house seemed disturbed, no shadows moving, no temperature drops, no whispers, no footsteps.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just the constant rearranging of my life in ways that made me question my sanity, and all of it grew worse after that old phone disappeared.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now I wasn't afraid easily.
[SPEAKER_00]: My job hardened me years ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: The worst criminals I'd ever dealt with were still bound by physical laws, human limitations,
[SPEAKER_00]: I started noticing details I'd never seen before.
[SPEAKER_00]: Suddle at first, a faint tapping in the walls at exactly 3-12 AM every night, a slow rhythmic pulse, like fingers drumming from inside the plaster.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fossured's turning on to a thin trickle moments before I walked into a room.
[SPEAKER_00]: drawers left open by a fraction of an inch, as if someone wanted me to know they'd been there.
[SPEAKER_00]: One night I came home after a particularly long shift, exhaustion dragging behind me like chains.
[SPEAKER_00]: I dropped my gear on the counter and walked toward my bedroom when I noticed something off.
[SPEAKER_00]: My bedroom door was cracked just slightly.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remembered closing it completely that morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: Out of instinct, I rested my hand on my
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing inside, no movement, no intruder.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the closet door was open.
[SPEAKER_00]: I always kept that door closed, always.
[SPEAKER_00]: Inside the closet, my old case files, ones that had nothing to do with missing objects or strange incidents were stacked neatly on the floor.
[SPEAKER_00]: Files that had been in the station storage room were now aligned in a perfect vertical column in my house.
[SPEAKER_00]: It didn't make sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: None of it did.
[SPEAKER_00]: I closed the closet and backed out slowly, swallowing the rising panic.
[SPEAKER_00]: I told myself I'd deal with it in the morning, file a report, ask a colleague to sweep the house, something, instead the house dealt with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: At around 2 a.m., I woke to the unmistakable sound of something sliding across the floor.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not fast, slow, purposeful, like heavy fabric being dragged.
[SPEAKER_00]: I reached for the bedside lamp, but the switch clicked uselessly.
[SPEAKER_00]: The bulb didn't glow.
[SPEAKER_00]: I sat up and waited.
[SPEAKER_00]: The dragging stopped.
[SPEAKER_00]: Something settled outside my bedroom door, a weight, a presence, not breathing, not moving, just existing in a way that felt unnatural, as if the darkness itself had shape.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't dare move.
[SPEAKER_00]: For minutes, maybe hours, the air pressed against my chest like invisible hands.
[SPEAKER_00]: My senses sharpened until I felt every shift in temperature, every vibration in the floor boards.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever stood on the other side of the door didn't try to come in, it didn't try to leave.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's simply lingered, observing, listening.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then, just as silently as it had come, the weight lifted.
[SPEAKER_00]: The hallway returned to stillness.
[SPEAKER_00]: I stayed awake until sunrise afraid to even blink.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I finally left my room, everything looked unchanged, with one exception.
[SPEAKER_00]: My old phone was back, faced down on the kitchen counter, right where I had first left it.
[SPEAKER_00]: The crack screen was smeared with something dark, not blood, something thicker.
[SPEAKER_00]: a residue that left a faint metallic scent in the air.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wiped it off with a tissue, but a mark remained.
[SPEAKER_00]: Three long streaks across the glass.
[SPEAKER_00]: As if dragged by fingers that weren't entirely solid, I don't think it was trying to hurt me, not yet anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was leaving a message.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything that disappeared was something of mine.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything that reappeared showed up in places I was guaranteed to find.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't chaos.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't random.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was showing me that it knew my routines, my habits, my blind spots.
[SPEAKER_00]: that it could enter places locked to everyone else, that I wasn't safe at home in my patrol car, or anywhere I thought I understood.
[SPEAKER_00]: The disappearances in my house stopped a week ago, but now when I'm on patrol at night, I sometimes find my glove compartment slightly open, or my flashlight turned on by itself, or the back passenger door unlocked, even though I triple-check at every shift.
[SPEAKER_00]: It hasn't stayed in the house, it followed me and worse, it knows exactly where I'll be next.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for watching, don't leave before leaving a like to this video.
[SPEAKER_00]: Also hit the subscribe button to support my work.
[SPEAKER_00]: And as always, have a horrific nightmare, my dear.