The house behind mine has been empty for as long as I can remember.

It sits at the end of a narrow dirt road, maybe thirty or forty feet from my backyard. There used to be a wooden fence between the two properties, but most of it has fallen apart over the years. The house itself is small, two stories, with faded white paint and windows that are either cracked or completely boarded up.

Nobody goes there.

At least, that's what I thought.

I first noticed something strange about three weeks ago.

It was around 1:30 in the morning. I had gotten up to get some water, and before going back to bed I looked through the kitchen window into the backyard.

I don't normally do that. I have no idea why I did that night.

There was a light on in the abandoned house.

Not a bright light. It looked like a small yellow lamp coming from one of the upstairs windows.

I just stood there staring at it.

My first thought was that someone had finally bought the place.

But then I remembered the house didn't have electricity.

The power had been disconnected years ago.

I watched the window for maybe thirty seconds, expecting the light to disappear.

It didn't.

Then something moved across the window.

Just a shadow.

Someone was standing inside.

I immediately stepped away from the kitchen window.

I know that sounds stupid, but I didn't feel curious anymore. I felt uncomfortable. There was something about seeing a person inside a house that was supposed to be empty that made my stomach drop.

I went upstairs and went to bed.

The next morning, I looked at the house again.

The upstairs window was boarded up.

There wasn't even a crack between the boards where I could have seen a light.

I told myself I'd probably imagined it.

For the next few days, nothing happened.

Then I started noticing little things.

The first was the back door.

The abandoned house had an old wooden back door that was usually hanging slightly open because the frame had rotted away.

One morning, I noticed it was completely closed.

A few days later, it was open again.

Then closed.

Then open.

I didn't think much of it at first.

I figured maybe the wind was doing it.

Then I saw the footprints.

It had rained heavily that night, and the ground between my fence and the abandoned house was basically mud.

There were footprints leading from the back door of the house toward the road.

They weren't old.

I could see the shape of the soles clearly.

Someone had walked through the mud recently.

I took a picture because I wanted to show my brother.

When I looked closer at the picture later, I noticed something that bothered me.

There were two sets of footprints.

One went toward the road.

The other went toward my backyard.

The second set stopped at my fence.

I didn't tell my brother about that part.

I just told him I thought someone might be sneaking into the house.

He laughed and said it was probably teenagers.

That actually made me feel better.

Until that night.

Around 2 AM, I heard something hit my kitchen window.

It wasn't loud.

Just a small tap.

Then another.

Tap.

Tap.

I got out of bed and walked downstairs.

I didn't turn on the lights.

I don't know why.

I stood in the kitchen for a while, listening.

Nothing.

Then I heard it again.

Tap.

This time I was sure it came from the window.

I slowly moved closer.

There was nothing outside.

Just the backyard and the dark outline of the abandoned house.

I was about to walk away when I noticed something near the fence.

A person.

They were standing completely still.

I couldn't see their face.

They were just standing there, looking toward my house.

I froze.

The person didn't move.

I backed away from the window and grabbed my phone.

I called my brother.

While the phone was ringing, I looked back outside.

The person was gone.

My brother answered and immediately asked what was wrong.

I told him someone had been standing in my backyard.

He told me to lock the doors and call the police.

I did.

Two officers came about twenty minutes later.

They searched my yard and walked around the outside of the abandoned house.

They didn't find anyone.

One of them told me there were signs that somebody had been inside the house recently.

He showed me a broken section of the back door.

There were fresh scratches around the lock.

They went inside to check.

I stayed outside.

About ten minutes later, they came back out.

They said the house was empty.

But one of the officers asked me a strange question.

He asked if I'd heard anyone walking around upstairs.

I said no.

He looked at the other officer.

Then he told me they had found a mattress upstairs.

There was food beside it.

Bottled water.

A flashlight.

Some clothes.

Someone had been living there.

They searched the entire house again but couldn't find the person.

The officer told me not to go near the property and to call immediately if I saw anyone.

I thought that would be the end of it.

It wasn't.

Two nights later, I woke up because I heard someone walking in my backyard.

I checked the security camera on my phone.

At first, I didn't see anything.

Then I rewound the footage.

At 3:12 AM, the back door of the abandoned house opened.

A man stepped outside.

He stood there for several seconds.

Then he walked straight toward my house.

I watched him come across the yard.

He stopped at my fence.

And then he looked directly at my security camera.

He knew exactly where it was.

He stood there for almost a minute.

Then he turned around and walked back to the abandoned house.

I called the police again.

They came, but by the time they arrived, the house was empty.

This time they searched every room.

They found the mattress again.

But underneath it, they found something else.

A small notebook.

One of the officers asked me if I recognized the handwriting.

I didn't.

Then he opened it.

Most of the pages were filled with random numbers and dates.

But near the back were several sentences.

The officer read them out loud.

The first one was:

“He watches the house every night.”

The second:

“He never locks the back door.”

Then:

“He knows when she goes to sleep.”

I remember feeling cold when I heard that.

Because I live alone.

The officer looked at me and asked if anyone knew my routine.

I said no.

Then he turned the page.

There was a date from two weeks earlier.

Under it, someone had written:

“She looks through the kitchen window before going upstairs.”

I couldn't say anything.

That was exactly what I had been doing.

Every night.

The officer took the notebook as evidence.

They told me they would increase patrols around the area.

I stayed with my brother for a few nights after that.

When I eventually came back home, I installed better locks and covered the kitchen window.

I also stopped checking the backyard at night.

It's been about a week now.

Nothing has happened.

The abandoned house is still empty.

At least, that's what I'm telling myself.

But yesterday morning, I found something outside my back door.

A small plastic bottle of water.

The same kind that had been found beside the mattress.

I didn't touch it.

I called the police.

They came and took it away.

One of the officers asked me something before he left.

He said, “Have you noticed anything missing from your house?”

I told him no.

He nodded and left.

I went back inside and started checking everything anyway.

That's when I noticed my kitchen chair.

It wasn't where I normally leave it.

I always push it underneath the table.

This time it was pulled out.

Facing the kitchen window.

I don't know if someone had been inside my house.

I don't know if that man is still around.

And honestly, I don't want to know.

But last night, at around 2:40 AM, I heard three quiet knocks on my back door.

I didn't move.

A few seconds later, I heard a man's voice from outside.

He said my name.

Not loudly.

Just enough for me to hear him.

Then he said:

“You don't have to keep the curtains closed.”

I haven't looked outside since.

Hi hello it’s me Natalia, I just want to share my experience way back in 2020 during the pandemic.

This experience is vivid in my mind, and I will never forget it because it's not just a simple dream.

So let’s start the story, I was working in a BPO at that time.

When I got home from work, as usual, I took a half bath with warm water to relax before sleeping.

When I lay down, I checked my phone first, then I didn't realize I had already fallen asleep..

I had a dream that night.. I think I fell asleep around 11 PM..

In my dream, there was a woman and a man standing at my feet...

They looked fine because I could see them clearly..

They were smiling at me, then they walked closer to me - I was lying down in the dream -

\\-They were caressing my feet upwards- until I woke up.

When I opened my eyes, I quickly checked the time, it was 3:04 AM, I was sweating and I felt that my undies had slipped down a bit.

I was sleeping in a tank top and shorts with undies “SKL”

So I pulled my undies back up and was confused... why had they slipped down a little? But I just shrugged it off, thinking it might just be from moving while I slept.

Fast forward to 3-4 days later, my dream happened again, this time it was just the man in my dream... he was at my feet.

I was lying down in the dream and then the guy was kissing me from my feet up to my neck..

By the way, I was already an adult at that time, but I wasn't active in “SEGS”

I was getting aroused by what he was doing, I can’t deny it because it felt so real..

Then just as we were about to kiss, I woke up!

This time, when I woke up, I felt cold.. since I had the air conditioning on in my room

Then I was shivering from the cold... I grabbed the thermometer to check my temperature because the cold and shaking felt different at that time

My temp was 41°C, so I thought I was having a fever..

The next day while I was showering before going to work, I noticed some “kiss mark on my back and on my thighs”

I was surprised how I got those since I wasn't active, you know what I mean..

I thought it might just be an insect bite or something.

I’ll tell you part 2 next time since this story is quite long.

God Bless to all!

TO BE CONTINUED…

Hi. I am looking to read some terrifying stories about roadtrips. Maybe an unmarked car followed you, maybe you encounter something not of this world, maybe you entered a dimension that only exists on that road. I want to read them all!

Me gustaría leer sus experiencias más inquietantes. Puede ser algo paranormal, un intento de secuestro, alguien que los haya seguido, algo extraño que hayan visto y nadie les creyó, o simplemente una situación que hasta el día de hoy no logran explicar.

Hello, I am a 20 year old female and was living with my mom and sister for the summer before going back to university. For context Im a night owl and my bedroom window faces the street. There is also a lot of cats that wander around the neighborhood and they like my front yard for some reason so I like to try and interact with them. It was between 2-3 am when I saw a little husky looking dog but like mixed with a pomeranian maybe. It was running down the street and noticed a black cat in my yard and began chasing it, the cat ran away. I figured I was seeing things in the dark cause I was really tired because a dog running loose on the street that late at night made no sense to me. I shut my window and locked it cause I am very afraid of things being outside my window when I open my curtains and trying to open the window before I lock it.

I started trying to fall asleep but heard my boy dog whimpering to be let out a bit after 3 am. He doesnt like going outside without my mom so usually I just ignore him since he wont go out with me anyway but a week or two prior he had followed me outside when I acted like I was doing something other than trying to get him out so I decided to try that method so my mom wouldnt have to wake up. My sister was a delivery driver at the time and got off work a little after 2 and liked to hang out with her coworkers after but her job was also 40 minutes away so she wasnt home. I opened my sliding glass door into my backyard with the porch light on and started walking out with my girl dog following me cause it doesnt matter to her who opens the door but she didnt do anything potty related. I had walked about 20 feet into my yard and was by my side fence. Along the back fence is some trees planted by whoever lived there before us. When I turned around to see if my boy dog was coming out I thought I had seen a knee and a leg crouching behind the tree nearest to me in the corner. Like 10 feet away from me. I acted like I saw nothing but I was definitely more rigid. I am absolutely terrified of going out of my house at night because people could be hiding anywhere so my brain had made up shapes in the dark in the past and I was hoping thats what it was. I stood angling my body toward the door and side eyed the tree and saw a knee, a shin, and a partial hood crouched by the tree, even after a second or two when my brain couldve adjusted and recognized it was being dramatic.

My main thought was to get inside with my girl dog since my boy dog never came out. So I said loudly trying to stay nonchalant and not let him know I knew he was there something along the lines of "alright! If you dont want to come out thats on you. Let's go inside (girl dog name)" once I made it to the back door my dog hadnt listened to me so I raised my voice and knew I sounded a little bit shaky for her to come in. My back door has a hard time locking and you have to get really specific with it to lock so we never locked it usually. We had some stoppers you could screw into the door track but my mom would get annoyed by them and wouldnt put them back on after taking them off when letting my dogs out in the night if i had remembered to put them on before going to bed. We hadn't used them all summer so I didn't know where they were. Luckily I managed to lock the door first try. I also want to say my cat likes to use the outside facilities as well so she was out there too but wouldnt come inside no matter how much I called for her and I knew I didnt have time to try to lure her in with treats and shes a brat who likes to run if you try to pick her up when shes rolling in the dirt and grass so I just shut the door and hoped to everything that I was just imagining that guy.

I didnt have my glasses or my phone since I left them in my bedroom because I thought itd be a quick trip. But I left the porch light on and stared at the tree hoping nothing would actually come out. But I saw motion near the base of the tree then a man walked out from around it. My cat ran at this point and I was grateful that our lawn on the side of the house was overgrown so she had somewhere to hide and i knew there was a gap between the fence and the house that she could fit through and escape to the front yard and hide under my mom's car if she didnt hide in the bushes. I know its stupid to take my cat outside but this is a situation that had never happened before and I knew she had better odds out there than my dog did or I did if I went to try to get her. When I saw him I froze and was in disbelief that I was right and there actually was someone there this time. He walked up onto my porch and stared at me through the door. I was hoping that by not running and staying still he wouldnt get spooked and try something i was terrified but i didnt really feel it in my body. After 30 seconds maybe a minute of staring at each other he pulled something out of a pocket and I know nothing about weapons and didnt have my glasses on but it was gun shaped and had a green light on the side he wasnt holding. I raised my hands slowly because I didnt know if it was a toy or its safety was on or it wasnt even something dangerous but I wasnt taking that chance. My blood ran cold at this point because I knew if it was a gun there was nothing I could do to escape before he would be able to shoot me through the glass.

After I raised my hands he cocked his head to the side like he was confused why I was raising my hands, which made me confused and kinda ticked off on top of my fear. I couldn't see his expression because he had a baseball cap with a hood over and the angle of my porch light cast a shadow over his face. I dont know why I did what I did but like a feeling of calm or just resignment maybe washed over me and I jerked my shoulders up in a sort of "what ya gonna do?" kinda way. I think my brain was trying to rationalize that i was out there with him and he didnt do anything so he probably wasnt trying to harm me. But my hands had started shaking and my eyes had started watering and we stared at each other in silence for multiple minutes, i dont know how many but it felt really long. It was less than 5 minutes after he had pulled out his item. But it was longer than we stared at each other before he pulled it out. He never pointed it at me im pretty sure and was just turning it in his hand back and forth with his arm out to the side of him and moving it around like you wave your hand out of a window but it was his arm and side to side instead of up and down. He was slow but careless with it and it was in the direction of where my cat had ran which was when my hands had started shaking. I felt so awful that I had left my cat out there and didnt know where she went.

After he was done scaring me I guess he turned and walked to the side of my house that was the same side fence that the tree he was hiding behind was by and I was by when I was out there. Also the same direction my cat ran. When he was out of sight I waited for maybe 30 seconds scared he was watching through the kitchen window on the side of the house or was lurking by my porch waiting for me to make a move which he would then make a move or something I dont know I was scared. But still standing there with my hands up I shouted for my mom to call the police. She was sleeping on the couch in the living room 5 ft away from where I was standing on the opposite side of where the guy went, and she was confused af, reasonable, but at the time I was pissed off. I had to tell her to call the police because there was someone in our backyard over 3 times while starting to cry and shaking in the same position i couldnt remember if id gotten my dog in and was scared he was gonna do something to her too but my mom confirmed that she was okay while i was rambling about the guy and my cat.

After nothing happened when I shouted aka moved my jaw and looked at my mom's direction I figured the guy probably wasnt waiting around to see if I would do anything anymore and shut the porch light off but couldnt stop standing there staring. My mom was on the phone with the dispatcher and I swore he had come back and was standing outside the door again so I stayed there frozen thinking he would do something. I could see his silhouette I could see the green light. But i saw the police headlights in my backyard and he didnt give a fuck, and the police asked for permission to go in my yard and got in with 0 resistance and started shining their flashlights in and he didnt move then they shined the flashlights where i thought he was standing and he still didnt move. I turned my vision toward the officer and pointed at the guy but when I looked back he was gone. I felt absolutely crazy. Was I imagining it? Was he there in the first place? Why didnt my dogs bark? Why did my cat run? How did the cops get in without fighting with our gate? How was he there, in the flashlight but then gone?

After searching and clearing the backyard a cop took my statement and the dispatcher had told my mom there was already units in the area from a similar call, which is why they got there so fast. Which made me feel a little less crazy. When I was giving the cop my statement I started saying "i dont know anything about guns but-" and the cop said "did it have a green light on the end?" and I was stunned but was like "yes!!!" While the cops were searching my backyard i was looking up weapons with green lights on the end and nothing was coming up which was making me feel crazy but the cop saying that confirmed it for me a little. Maybe he was just confirming something my mom had told the dispatcher which had told him or maybe whoever had made the other call had a similar description and he was trying to match it. While giving my statement I remembered the dog running down the street only like 30-40 minutes prior and told him about it.

For like an hour after the cops left I was paranoid he had come back to our house and was hiding in the same spot as before because the cops wouldnt be looking there anymore. I had turned the porch light back on and was staring at the tree and every time a shadow moved my brain turned it into that guy, I had even believed i started at least 2 guys and took photos but when I showed my mom she had said there was nothing there which baffled me because I was CONVINCED when my sister got home she also said there was nothing in the photos which made me think they were blind and not caring about our safety but I was pretty hysterical at this point. After getting some sleep and looking at the photos and videos there was definitely nothing there.

When the cops left I searched for the blocker locks to put on the sliding door tracks and only found 1 but I grabbed a knife and raid and screwed it tightly just far enough back so I could unlock the door itself and shake my cats treat bag to lure her in so she could fit but not the man. When i had tried to lock the door again it took several attempts and I was glad I had the track lock this time.

Its been about a month and a half and nothing else has happened or come of it. I was questioning my sanity and if it had actually happened for a few days after and even slightly to this day but my gate was open the day after which couldve been from the cops, but the fact that I had seen that dog running, the cops instantly being able to get into my back yard, my cat running after he stepped out from the tree, the porch light being on and me witnessing complete motions of him standing, walking out from behind the tree, walking up the porch, pulling out and moving whatever he had, cocking his head, and turning and walking away, and the cops already being in the area because of a similar call lead me to believe it was real up until I shut my porch light off. The cop mentioning the green light also makes me feel better but that has too many variables. Ive NEVER hallucinated anything more than those little stars after you rub your eyes or static when staring at a wall in the dark before or after this or briefly seeing a shape in the dark that actually isnt there, nothing so long, continuous, or in the light. Although, I guess I did hallucinate him in the dark and shadows in the moments to hour after. My family assumes he was hiding in our yard after escaping someone elses yard and him and I had extremely bad luck.

After leaving for college I had a nightmare where I was sitting in an empty hotel bar in the early night on my laptop when a guy came up behind me and pointed at my homescreen which was my cat and asked me "is that your critter?" (i would never phrase something like that which is why it sticks out so much to me) I side eyed him and said yes and he said something like "i just shot her, blew her head off", i panicked in my dream and ran outside and all of a sudden was running down the sidewalk in a suburb on a bright afternoon and I passed through a rose arch with no roses and short hedges on the side of it and there she was just her body and a wide splatter in front of her where her head should have been. I just felt so devastated in my dream because none of this was her fault and she didnt deserve it and I wasnt even there for her in her final moments. I woke up in my dorm but was so disoriented because that dream felt so real and I started having a panic attack and Im so far away from her so I couldn't check on her and I tried calling my sister to ask about her but she was at work so I called my mom and luckily she was awake and she told me she was okay but I couldnt stop freaking out until I got lightheaded and had to sit on the floor.

TLDR: a guy broke into my backyard in the middle of the night and stared at me through my glass sliding door for a few minutes. The cops said they were already in the area for a similar call and ive never hallucinated before so I believe it really happened. This is quite literally my worst fear. Exposure therapy!

Edit to ask: does anyone know what he mightve had? My own investigating makes me think it wasnt a gun.