The Apartment Above Mine Was Empty

I spent almost a year hearing someone move around above me before I found out there was no apartment above mine.

I lived on the second floor of an old building in the city. The place was cheap, the walls were thin, and I was used to hearing neighbors.

Footsteps.

Furniture moving.

People talking.

Normal apartment noises.

Except the sounds above me were always the same.

Every night at exactly 11:47 PM, someone would walk across the ceiling.

Six steps.

A pause.

Then six more.

After that, I would hear something heavy being dragged from one side of the room to the other.

At first, I ignored it.

I assumed whoever lived upstairs had a strange routine.

But after a few weeks, I started noticing patterns.

The footsteps only happened when I was home.

If I stayed at a friend's place overnight, there was nothing.

If I came home late, the footsteps would start almost immediately after I entered my apartment.

It felt like whoever was upstairs knew when I was there.

I finally complained to the landlord.

He looked confused.

Then he asked me a question.

"What apartment do you think is above you?"

I told him.

The third floor.

He stared at me for a few seconds.

Then he said:

"There is no third floor."

I laughed because I thought he was joking.

The building had three floors.

I could see the windows from outside.

He took me upstairs.

The hallway ended at a locked door.

Behind it was the roof access.

No apartment.

No rooms.

No one living above me.

I felt embarrassed.

I thought maybe I had been hearing pipes or some kind of building equipment.

Then the landlord noticed something.

There were scratches on the roof access door.

Deep scratches.

On the inside.

He called maintenance, and they opened it.

The roof was empty.

Except for a small wooden chair sitting in the middle.

Facing the door.

Nobody knew where it came from.

The landlord told me the building had never had a third floor.

But after I moved out, I started looking into the history of the place.

I found old construction records from the 1970s.

The original plans showed three floors.

Including an apartment directly above mine.

The apartment was removed from the final version after construction.

There was no explanation why.

I contacted the previous tenants.

One of them told me something I still think about.

He said he used to hear the same footsteps.

The same six steps.

The same dragging sound.

But when he asked the landlord about it, he was told the same thing.

"There is no apartment above you."

I asked him why he never reported it.

His answer was simple.

Because one night, he went outside and looked up.

Through the window above his apartment, he saw someone standing there.

Looking down at him.

The problem was...

The window wasn't part of the building.

It was on the side of a floor that didn't exist.