I’m Not Alone in My Apartment: Something Watches Me
My grandmother warned me about this, but she had drastically understated the severity.
I’ve been in my new apartment for two weeks, and today, for the first time, I felt the chill down my spine. It started at the nape of my neck and snaked its way down to my lower back, icy and cold, despite the sun that beams through the old windows.
Like others, I thought it was nothing but imagination gone wild. Now I know it is true. I know it because when I turn my back, the sensation remains. It is true what they say about older buildings. Only now I wish I’d listened. Before signing a two-year lease on what was the apartment of my dreams.
Here, in the middle of the city, I realize that I will never feel truly alone in what is meant to be my safe space. My sanctuary is blemished, heavy, and desperate, and there’s no way out for me. It lingers at the edges of my vision. When I enter a room alone, I feel as if I’ve interrupted a conversation, an unwelcome guest, the only guest to this horror.
Distractions worked at first. The television got louder, my phone became a permanent fixture in my hand, even more than usual. But after a while, even that no longer worked. There is something here, its eyes fixated on me, watching every move I make as if I’m part of its study, its research.
If only I could stare back, I might stand a chance, but when I turn around, there’s nothing there. It’s just an empty space bursting at the seams with energy.
I’m a loner at heart. Occasionally, I will leave my home to join friends for an evening of cards or board games, but I’m usually the first to leave, eager to return to my bed, my cat, and all things that are familiar to me.
I didn’t grow up in the city. I grew up in my grandmother’s large country house. She’s one of those home farmer types with a flock of chickens running around and a handful of ambitious vegetable gardens in various stages of success.
Anyway, she would always be awake at all hours of the night, and one day, as a child, I asked her why. She explained that she isn’t comfortable sleeping after dark, and only really can begin to relax closer to sunrise.
I remember pressing her for more information, and her answers being rather vague. It was more the curiosity of a child; I didn’t really think much of it at the time.
But one day, when I was older, we went picking raspberries in the field furthest from the house. Her property was quite large, so we were some distance away from the house when she stopped me and told me that she wanted to tell me something.
There was something about the look in her eye that made me realize, whatever it was, it was serious. “Have you felt anything?” she asked me, as if I was supposed to know what she meant.
I shrugged, unsure of what she was asking me, and carried on picking berries.
“In the house,” she said, looking back at her old country house. “Some days it just feels like I’m constantly being watched.”
I asked her if she thought the neighbors were watching her through the windows, and she shook her head. She told me about the feeling of people walking up behind her when nobody was there, that she could hear footsteps upstairs, and the fact that sometimes she felt as though she was no longer alone in the room.
I didn’t pay it too much attention; she could be a little odd sometimes.
“Just be careful,” she said. “We don’t know what is real and what isn’t, and what the unseen are capable of.”
After that, the conversation ended, and we returned home. The next time I spoke to my mother, I mentioned that my grandmother needed some attention. Now I’m starting to wonder if the only reason I never noticed what my grandmother noticed was because I was almost always in the company of someone else while in that house.
Now that I live alone, and I’m far away, I know exactly what my grandmother meant.
My apartment is small and old. The kitchen feels like it’s losing a battle against modern-day appliances; it was never meant to hold. The living room has windows that overlook the street, and my bedroom is located at the far end with an en-suite bathroom. It isn’t much, but it’s mine, my first home, the first time living alone, and I’m very proud of it.
What drew me to the apartment were the original wooden floors and the high ceilings. It seemed cozy and warm. I remember when I went to view it, the afternoon sun streamed through the large living room windows, shining directly onto an old sofa. It looked like the perfect spot to curl up with a book and waste away the afternoon.
But once I moved in, I started feeling this specific sensation that is difficult to describe, but I will do my best. It’s a pressing feeling, as if something is inches away from your skin. The fabric of your clothing starts to act in ways it shouldn’t, like it no longer has room to move.
Every now and then, something would brush up against me. At first, I thought it was just my cat, brushing up and moving away before I was able to turn around and greet him. However, one day I was walking with my cat in my arms and I felt the same sensation.
After that, I started to feel that “watched” feeling my grandmother had talked about so many years earlier. It started at times when I wasn’t concentrating much, or was zoned out. Then, suddenly, I would be pulled back to reality by the feeling that I needed to be aware of my surroundings.
As if almost instinctive. Everything in my body was telling me that I needed to watch what I was doing, to make sure that I was on high alert, because a predator could see me, stalking me, and lying in wait.
My heart would beat harder, I’d break out into a light sweat, and the hair on the back of my neck would rise. Only calming after finding the next distraction to keep my mind occupied.
Then it started to escalate. Things started happening that I truly couldn’t explain. I remember being on a call with a friend of mine one morning. I said I was going to the refrigerator to get something. When I walked into my kitchen, I found the fridge wide open, as if waiting for me. Everything in the fridge was still cold, so the door wasn’t open long, and I hadn’t been in the kitchen since the night before.
I knew then that something had heard me, and was letting me know that it had heard me too. I still recall how my friend laughed it off when I told her what happened. She thought I was just being paranoid and asked me jokingly what drugs I had gotten into. She thought it was funny, but I was freaked out.
After that, the sensation of being watched became so overpowering that, eventually, I thought perhaps it was the people who lived in the apartment building opposite mine. I really didn’t know what else to think. I started closing the blinds and curtains of the living room window, suffocating it of any more of that precious afternoon sunlight I so fell in love with.
I was living in the dark, moving carefully and quietly, as if hiding from my own life.
One night, I was cooking dinner. It’s one of the few ways I have left that helps me unwind. Cooking is creative, relaxing, and almost therapeutic for me. Plus, I do love to eat. I was reading the next part of the recipe, with the book placed open on the counter in front of me, when I felt a breath against my cheek.
It felt cold, I could smell cigarette smoke and Scotch. It startled me so much that I moved away, my back against the kitchen wall. I stared at an empty room, completely baffled, certain that someone unseen was actually there with me.
It was as if I could feel them staring back at me, waiting for my reaction, waiting for me to do something, or maybe to see them. But there was just nothing.
The occurrences continued to worsen from there. At some point, the feeling became so common that I eventually got used to it. I started opening the curtains again, coming to peace with the fact that I sometimes felt strange things in my apartment.
I thought that I could simply live with it. I loved the place. I had good friends in the neighborhood. I wasn’t about to uproot my entire life for something I couldn’t see, explain, or prove. So, I moved on.
Once I made peace with it, everything kind of calmed down for a while. Like whatever was there was feeding off my energy, my emotions, and my reaction to its intrusion.
That’s until the night I decided to have a movie night. I dragged my blankets and pillows from the bedroom into the living room. An evening summer thunderstorm was brewing, and I could feel the air pressure building. It was exciting, it reminded me of sitting on the front porch of my grandmother’s house during storms as a child.
I picked out a few adventure movies I had waiting to see, ordered a pizza, grabbed a bottle of red wine, and prepared for a night on the couch. I had planned to watch some movies until I fell asleep there on the couch, allowing the night to carry me away.
I was about halfway through the second movie when the feeling struck. It wasn’t like the other times when I simply felt aware of being watched. It was as if a siren was going off in my head. That’s the only way I can think to describe the feeling of alarm.
I bolted upright, my heart pounded, and I could hear the thump of the blood rushing in my ears. The rushing then turned to ringing, and I was frozen. I felt like a mouse, trapped in a box with nowhere to go while someone else took control of my world.
I didn’t know what to do. I paused the movie so I could hear. I stayed as still as possible, my eyes darting around the room for any sign of something wrong. By then, the storm had broken into full force, and the air was filled with the energy of it. Other than the television, the only light in the room was from the lightning that was now coming in regular bursts.
That’s when I heard it. A creak of my wooden floorboards. I’d been living there so long, I knew exactly which floorboard it was. It was the one right next to my side of the bed, where I stepped, and it creaked every morning when I got out of bed.
Then came another creak and another, and I could follow the sound of footsteps through the apartment. There weren’t that many steps to take between my bed and my living room. My eyes were glued to the bedroom door. I held my breath, staring, waiting to see something, anything.
Seconds felt like minutes as they passed, and the pressure in the apartment seemed to build. I was sweating and panicked. So panicked, in fact, that I was struggling to keep my focus. Blinking rapidly, I searched the room for an intruder or anything that took on a shape, and saw nothing. And then, the bedroom door cracked open slightly. At first, just a sliver, then about halfway.
From my bedroom emerged a dark shadow, tall, almost as tall as the door itself. It waited, as if it wanted me to see it. As I did, it took one step towards me, then darted off into the darkness of the other shadows in the room.
Whatever it was, it was in the room with me. It was as if the air around me was shifting without my control. My mouth dried as I waited for what I was certain would be some form of an attack.
Then, like the crashing of a wave, it was over. It was as if everything settled. Even the storm outside had lost its strength and was now lightly raining. The ringing in my ears stopped, and my breath released. I was finally able to breathe full breaths again.
I rubbed the sweat off my palms against my blankets to dry them and reached for the wine, taking large gulps as I closed my eyes and tried to process what had just happened.
I wish I could say that it was the last time.
Since that night, I feel odd sensations every day. It worsens, and I no longer sleep at night. Like my grandmother, I’m not comfortable being that vulnerable until the early hours of the morning, when the sun just begins to peek over the horizon.
It affects my job, my social life, and my ability to function like a normal adult. My mother is worried about me. Told me I could move out of the apartment and back to my grandmother’s house. It sits abandoned now as she passed some years back, but I know that I’ll feel it there, too. Just like she had.
I know that I’m not alone. My grandmother told me so. If you’re having the same sensations, then I hope you know that you’re not alone, either.
It won’t pass; it’s not in your head, it’s real. We must learn to adapt to these experiences as they will follow us until we’re dead. Then, perhaps, we will become the watchers, the ones that creep unseen in the shadows of dark rooms.
This is Pale Lantern Media.
If you’ve ever walked into an empty room and felt as if you’ve interrupted something, or if the air ever feels too heavy, if your own home feels like it’s listening
Trust that instinct.
Because one day, when you’re too tired to care…It’ll step into view.
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And we’ll keep the lantern lit, for as long as we can.