What I Saw While Home Alone Still Keeps Me Awake
I never thought of myself as someone afraid of being home alone. The usual unease, sure, the vague paranoia of footsteps in the hallway, or the thought of a break-in late at night. But real fear? The kind that lingers, that rots your sense of safety from the inside out? That didn’t touch me. Not until that night alone was the word ‘safe’ stripped from me.
Before you understand the fear, you need to understand what my life was like before.
The apartment was small, but just enough. One bedroom, one bathroom, a living room, and a kitchen. It sat on the edge of an old block of brick buildings, the kind you see stacked tight along the narrow streets near Lawrenceville. Above me, no one. Just the roof and night. To the side, an empty unit. And directly across the hall, a silence I can’t forget.
That silence belonged to a man who had recently passed away. His furniture was still in place, gathering dust behind locked doors. No family came, no friends to clear the rooms. Just that apartment full of the dead man’s life, left to sit in the dark.
The woman who had lived in the apartment beside me found a new job out of state and moved. It left me in an odd pocket of emptiness, alone in a row of buildings that should’ve been full of voices, TVs, footsteps. Instead, my nights carried only the hum of the city outside. The faint rush of cars on the bridge, the whistle of trains near the river, the occasional clatter from the steel bones of a city that never fully rests.
I had recently ended things with my fiancée. Six years together, and then it was over. She left me the dog when she moved out, a mid-sized mutt with a calm face and restless eyes. I never asked her to leave him behind, but maybe she knew I wouldn’t argue. He was the one part of the apartment that didn’t feel empty when she was gone.
It was strange, learning how to live alone at twenty-seven. I’d never done it before. At nineteen, I still lived with my parents, and by twenty-one, I was here, in this same apartment, sharing it with her. Six years later, she was gone, and for the first time in my life, I was completely alone.
The building itself was old brick, one of those relics tucked into Pittsburgh’s narrow streets. No gates, no guards, just the ordinary locks on the doors and the tired eyes of whoever happened to be awake on the block. If something went wrong, all you could do is call the police and hope they make it quickly.
Our building had a superintendent, a quiet man who lived on the ground floor and carried the ring of spare keys. He fixed the leaking pipes and unclogged drains, the kind of person you didn’t think much about until you had to. He was steady in the way old buildings need someone steady.
By the time this happened, I’d been living alone for three months. I’m a night owl by nature, always have been. Most nights, I stayed up late, tinkering with small projects or scrolling on my phone through things I didn’t need to see, then winding down watching sports highlights until midnight. By two in the morning, I’d usually force myself to bed.
That night, it was just past midnight when I settled into the couch. Made myself drink, the kind of ritual that made the place feel steady, and let the highlights play in the background. The dog jumped up onto the couch beside me, circling twice before pressing into my leg. He’d been clingy since she left, as if he knew something in the air of the place had shifted.
It felt like any other night, quiet, predictable, safe.
But that safety didn’t last.
That’s when I heard a heavy thud from one of the neighboring units. At first, I brushed it off. Maybe some old pipes shifted in the walls. This building had a way of settling and groaning at night.
But then it came again. Louder.
I paused the TV, and the apartment dropped into silence so sharp I could hear my own breath. A third noise followed, clearer this time, the dull impact of something dropped onto a floor that should’ve been empty.
That apartment was supposed to be vacant. The man who’d lived there had died months earlier, his furniture still locked inside, untouched.
I picked up my phone and called the superintendent. He told me to stay put and called the police. A few minutes later, I heard the Superintendent’s keys jangling as he met the officers outside. He carried the ring like it was part of his hand.
From my doorway, I watched the Superintendent unlock the door to that empty unit. The officers went in, flashlights cutting through the dark like blades. For a moment, I was sure they’d drag someone out, some stranger who had made their way inside.
But no. The lights passed across old furniture, boxes, and dust. Everything was exactly as it had been. They came back shaking their heads, telling me the place was sealed, untouched.
I nodded along, but unease had already taken root. I couldn’t shake the weight of those thuds. I knew what I’d heard, and the dog knew too. He wouldn’t settle when I sat back down. His ears twitched at nothing, and he refused to curl up in his usual spot. Instead, he looked around, eyes fixed into the dark.
That’s when the night had shifted. I felt it pressing in from every wall.
About an hour later, I heard it again. Not a thud this time, but a long, deliberate scrape, like something heavy being dragged across a wooden floor. I sat upright, muting the television before the sound could vanish into its chatter.
That’s when it hit me, when the sound settled into my bones, that I had been wrong earlier. The noise hadn’t come from the furnished apartment across the hall. It was from the other one. The one beside me that was supposed to be empty.
I called the Superintendent again, embarrassed but certain now. His tone carried that practiced patience, but within twenty minutes, there were footsteps on the stairwell, the police, and then the jangle of keys as the Super arrived, eyes half-asleep, shoulders heavy. He slid the key into the lock while I waited at my door, the dog pressed to my leg, ears raised.
The officers swept through the empty unit with flashlights, their beams sliding across bare walls and dusty floors. I braced myself for the sound of someone being dragged out, an intruder cornered. But nothing. No furniture. No boxes. No sign that anyone had stepped inside.
They came back with the same flat words as before, nothing there. I could feel the weight of their glances, the slight edge of annoyance. The Superintendent muttered that I should try to get some rest, maybe take something to calm my nerves.
I didn’t like that. It felt like dismissal. Like they thought I was chasing shadows. But they agreed to let me look for myself. Together we stepped inside, the beams of their lights bouncing along the blank walls. They weren’t wrong; the place was stripped bare. Just emptiness. No footprints, no scuffs, nothing that could’ve scraped or thudded in the night.
I promised I wouldn’t disturb them again, and we all drifted back to our corners of the building. The Superintendent locked the door and shuffled back downstairs. The officers left without a word.
Back on my sofa, the glow of the television suddenly felt thin. My dog sat upright beside me, ears flicking toward the hallway, unwilling to relax. I told myself they were right, that I just needed to let the night pass, calm myself, and sleep.
But under it all, the unease had rooted itself. I could still feel the scrape in my chest, as if it hadn’t been heard with my ears at all, but carved into me.
Hours passed in silence. The livingroom television droned until about three in the morning, when I finally admitted I needed sleep. The dog was still awake. He was restless walking the length of the apartment, nails clicking on the old wood, nose twitching at corners as if he was searching for something he couldn’t quite pin down. Every so often, he froze and stared toward the wall we shared with the vacant apartment.
I told him not to wake me, half a joke, half a plea. Then I moved toward the bedroom.
Then I heard it. Another thump, this one sharp, unmistakable, landing against the shared wall. I stood there for a moment, listening. My stomach tightened. This wasn’t distant or muffled. It came from right beside me, where my cabinet pressed against that wall.
I walked slowly toward it, every step measured. My dog stayed behind, a low growl rumbling in his throat. I pressed my ear against the plaster, straining to catch the faintest sound, some clue of what could be moving in that dead space next door.
For a few moments, there was nothing. The silence was so deep it hummed. I almost pulled back, convincing myself it had stopped.
And then it came.
A slam, so violent the cabinet rattled, items on top shivering against one another. The force of it reverberated through me, knocking in my chest, echoing in the soles of my shoes.
I stepped back, my chest thudded with each heartbeat as I waited, staring, braced for something to push through. The dog was rigid, teeth bared, eyes fixed not on the wall anymore but on the far corner of the room.
The fur along his back stood straight, his growl deepening into something I had never heard before. It was the sound of recognition, not confusion. As if he could see something I couldn’t. I waited, nerves strung tight, but nothing else came.
Eventually, exhaustion wore me down. I turned the TV in my bedroom on, some late-night station murmuring in the background, and crawled into bed. The dog followed, finally curling at the foot like he used to, though his ears twitched every few seconds.
The noise of the television worked its way into my thoughts, and before long, I slipped under.
When I woke, the first thing I noticed was the silence. The television was off. I blinked at the clock; barely an hour had passed. I didn’t remember shutting it off, and the dog hadn’t moved. He lay still at the end of the bed, head raised, eyes open, staring at the door.
I didn’t think too hard about it, rolled over, and let myself sink back into sleep.
That lasted thirty minutes.
Then, without warning, I went from sleeping to fully awake, eyes wide, heart already racing.
I lay still, listening. The apartment was silent. Silence like that wasn’t normal in Pittsburgh. The city never truly slept, traffic hummed, sirens wailed, voices carried down the street. But now, it was hollow. It put me on edge. Unsure of what had awakened me.
It was that strange, unnatural awareness, the kind that drags you up from deep sleep in an instant. I checked the clock. Just before five. Still dark.
That’s when I noticed the bathroom light was on. The door sat cracked open, the yellow glow spilling into the bedroom. From where I lay, I could see straight in. The room was empty, but the light shouldn’t have been on. I hadn’t touched it.
The dog stirred at the foot of the bed, ears twitching, but he didn’t bark. He just stared. Not at the bathroom, but in the space between it and me. At the dark.
My skin prickled. The longer I lay there, the more certain I became that I wasn’t alone. It was the feeling of being watched, though there was nothing to see. I sat up, observing the room, but my eyes kept being drawn back toward that bathroom door.
I couldn’t look away. The dog couldn’t either. His head rose, nose angled toward the glow, body stiff, hackles raised.
Then the air shifted. The atmosphere itself seemed to bend, as if the light in the doorway had warped around something too dark to see.
A shape began to form. Head… Shoulders.
Tall enough that it almost filled the frame of the doorway, blotting out the light behind it.
My chest tightened. The dog growling low, pressing himself into the mattress.
I blinked, but the shadow didn’t break. It held, solid in a way shadows shouldn’t be. And then, with a flicker so slight I might have doubted myself, it moved. One step. Closer.
Toward the bottom of the bed. Toward me.
For a heartbeat, I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move, paralysed. The weight of it pressed me into place.
And then, just as suddenly as it had come, it was gone. The light spilled clean again into the room. Empty.
But I knew what I had seen.
A man in a hat
Standing at the bottom of my bed.
I felt a rush of air sweep across me, cold and sharp. The dog barked, panicked, and bolted from the bed, nails scraping against the floor. My chest locked tight, heart climbing into my throat.
Then came another bang from the empty apartment next door. It rattled through the wall, and for a moment, it felt like ice had shattered over me, spreading through every vein. And yet, after that impact, a strange relief crept in, as if whatever had pressed into my room had slipped back into its own.
The adrenaline drained from my body all at once. My shoulders loosened, my breath steadied. But sleep wouldn’t return. I knew what I had felt. What I had seen. There was no certainty it had left.
Staying in bed wasn’t an option. I was alone here. No one to rely on but myself. On my toes, I moved through the apartment, checking each corner, each door. When I reached the kitchen, the television suddenly turned on. Loud, jarring, as if someone had slapped the volume to its limit. I ran back into the bedroom to shut it off, and that’s when I noticed…
The bathroom light was out.
Dark now. Where only minutes ago it had burned bright.
I stood in that doorway with the switch under my fingers, but I didn’t touch it. I’ve never felt more alone in my life than I did in that moment, caught between the silence of the building and the hum of a refrigerator.
So I did the only thing I could. I turned on every light in the apartment. Kitchen, living room, hallway, bedroom. No corner left dark. I brewed coffee with trembling hands and stood in the kitchen.
It was an imitation of safety. But I took it, because it was all I had.
To this day, I don’t know what I saw. But I know it was real. The shape, the presence, the weight of the Hat Man standing at the bottom of my bed, those things don’t feel like dreams. They carve themselves too deeply.
The nights haven’t been the same since. I get regular nightmares, always the same theme. The door creaks, the TV dies, the shadows shift, and he’s there again, waiting. Sometimes when I come home, the television is on, though I never touched it. Other times, I find a light on in the kitchen that I know I shut off. Once, I walked in, and every cabinet in the apartment was open. Kitchen, bedroom, bathroom.
I’m planning to move as soon as I can scrape together enough money. This place doesn’t feel like mine anymore. It feels borrowed, like I’ve been intruding on something else’s territory all along. Maybe I never noticed it because I wasn’t alone. Or maybe it’s because I’m alone now, it’s showing itself.
I haven’t told anyone the full story. I can’t. They wouldn’t believe me. But I hear the thumping next door even now, steady, deliberate, impossible to explain. And I keep the TV on, or the radio, or both, just so I’m not left with silence.
If you’ve been through something similar, I’ll give you one piece of advice. Don’t try to catch proof of it. Never leave a recording device to run overnight. Trust me, I thought I wanted to know, but when I played it back, I heard something speak. A voice that wasn’t mine, wasn’t anyone’s, caught between words and the hiss of static.
And once you’ve heard it, you’ll never feel safe in the dark again.
This has been Pale Lantern Media.
If the TV in your apartment turns itself on…
If the bathroom light flickers, revealing a shadow too solid…
If you wake to find the Hat Man standing at the foot of your bed…
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And we’ll keep the lantern lit, for as long as we can.