My boyfriend Jake and I had just graduated from college, and we were pretty much broke.
We'd been apartment hunting for almost a month. Everything was either way too expensive or so tiny we could barely fit two desks inside.
Then we found this place that was almost suspiciously cheap.
Two bedrooms, a huge living room, and the rent was nearly a third less than other apartments in the area.
I actually joked with Jake, "What's the catch? Is the place haunted or something?"
Yeah. I really wish I hadn't said that.
The day we toured it, the weather was beautiful. Sunny and warm.
But the second we walked into the building, something felt off.
The hallway was dead quiet. We didn't hear a single person.
The leasing agent took us upstairs, and when the elevator doors opened, this freezing cold air hit us.
I figured someone had cranked up the AC.
But when we stepped inside the apartment, it was even weirder.
All the curtains were open, but somehow the whole place looked dark and gloomy. It honestly didn't feel like the same sunny day we'd just walked in from.
I asked the agent, "Is it always this cold in here?"
She laughed and said it was probably because the apartment had been empty for a while.
Then she mentioned that the building didn't have many tenants and nobody was currently living on that floor.
Jake actually got excited.
"Wait, so we'd basically have the whole floor to ourselves?"
"Pretty much," she said.
I wasn't nearly as excited.
But we'd just graduated, money was tight, and the apartment was huge.
So we signed the lease.
Looking back, I really wish we'd kept looking.
Moving day was a complete nightmare.
The moving truck we rented broke down halfway there.
After we finally got roadside assistance and made it to the building, Jake dropped our TV while unloading it.
And somehow, I managed to lock the keys inside the truck.
Jake was so frustrated he just sat on the curb without saying a word.
I tried to cheer him up.
"Come on, moving is always stressful. It'll be fine."
I really wish I'd kept my mouth shut.
The first night in that apartment, I barely slept.
Sometime in the middle of the night, I woke up feeling someone breathing right next to my ear.
Not warm breath, either.
It was freezing cold.
Like someone was leaning over me and slowly blowing air against my skin.
I turned around so fast because I thought Jake was messing with me.
But he was sound asleep on the other side of the bed.
I figured it had to be the AC.
Except it happened again the next night.
And the night after that.
No matter what we did with the thermostat, the bedroom always felt way colder than the rest of the apartment.
A couple of times, I even felt like the cold air was coming up from underneath the mattress.
Which brings me to the bed.
The apartment came with this weird, low platform bed.
The landlord said the previous tenant had it custom-built.
It was kind of like a tatami-style bed, with a solid rectangular wooden base that went all the way down to the floor.
No legs. No space underneath.
At first we actually liked it because, hey, free bed.
Then one afternoon, Jake mentioned there was a strange smell in the bedroom.
We looked everywhere and couldn't figure out where it was coming from.
Eventually he said, "What if there's mold under the mattress?"
So he lifted it up.
And underneath was a wooden hatch.
Not a regular storage drawer.
An actual rectangular hatch built into the platform, with a metal handle and a padlock.
We just stared at it.
I asked, "What the hell is that?"
Jake had no idea.
We sent the landlord a picture.
He replied pretty quickly, saying it was an old storage compartment that wasn't being used anymore, and told us not to open it.
That didn't exactly make me feel better.
Especially because the weird smell seemed to be coming from the edges of that hatch.
Over the next few days, I was barely functioning.
I was exhausted at work, but every night I dreaded going to bed.
One night, around 2 a.m., I ended up Googling protective symbols and stuff people use to feel safer at home.
Somehow I found this website.
I'm honestly not usually into anything like that, but I was so desperate for a decent night's sleep that I figured, why not?
So I ordered one of the paper talismans from here.
When it arrived, I put it on my nightstand.
The next morning, one corner had curled up a little.
I didn't think much of it.
A couple of days later, the paper felt slightly damp.
By the fourth morning, there were actual little droplets of water on it.
The weird part was that everything else on the nightstand was completely dry.
I showed Jake.
He touched it and said, "Maybe the room's just really humid."
Honestly, I hoped he was right.
But that night, I woke up to that freezing breath against my ear again.
I opened my eyes.
Then I heard something from underneath the bed.
Thump.
I stopped breathing.
A few seconds later, another one.
Thump.
Then a third.
Thump.
It didn't sound like wood settling or the bed frame creaking.
It sounded like someone was knocking on a wooden door from underneath us.
I was completely frozen.
And then I felt the mattress move.
Just once.
Like something had pushed up against it from below.
I screamed and shook Jake awake.
Before he even knew what was happening, I'd grabbed my phone and run into the living room.
We sat on the couch until morning.
That's when Jake admitted he'd heard noises from under the bed a few nights earlier.
He just hadn't told me because he didn't want to scare me.
The next day, we called the landlord and told him we wanted to break the lease.
At first, he refused.
But when we mentioned the bed, he suddenly asked,
"You didn't open that thing underneath it, did you?"
I said no.
There was this awkward silence.
Then he said, "Good."
I swear my stomach dropped.
I asked what he meant.
He just said that if we really wanted to leave, he'd let us out of the lease and return our security deposit.
No argument. Nothing.
That was honestly enough for us.
We moved out two days later.
Our new apartment is smaller, and the rent is a little higher.
But at least we can sleep at night.
Something else was weird, though.
I'd kept that little paper talisman in my bag while we were moving.
When I took it out at the new place, it was completely dry, and the curled edges had started flattening out.
We've been here for four months now.
No strange noises. No icy breath against my ear in the middle of the night.
And the streak of bad luck we were having? That seems to have stopped, too.
There's just one thing I never told Jake.
Before we left, I went back into the bedroom to make sure we hadn't forgotten anything.
We'd already moved our mattress out, so that wooden hatch was exposed again.
I noticed something I hadn't seen before.
There were deep scratches all around the edges.
And stuck in one of the cracks was a tiny piece of what looked like a broken fingernail.
I didn't touch it.
I just shut the bedroom door and left.
I still have no idea what was inside that storage compartment.
And I really don't want to find out.
