The Door in my Apartment

The first time I noticed the door, I thought it was just a mistake.

I was renting an old apartment on the third floor of a building that had been around since the 1960s. It wasn’t anything special, but the rent was cheap and the location was perfect.

The apartment had one strange feature.

A small storage room at the end of the hallway.

The previous tenant told me it was basically useless because it was too small to fit much inside. I never paid attention to it.

Until one night.

I was sitting on my couch watching TV when I heard a door close.

Not loudly.

Just a quiet click.

I looked toward the hallway and saw the storage room door was open.

I was sure I had closed it earlier.

I walked over, shut it, and went back to watching TV.

About ten minutes later, it opened again.

At first, I thought maybe the latch was broken.

I pushed it closed harder.

The next morning, it was open.

I started leaving random objects in front of it just to see if someone was moving it.

A shoe.

A book.

A small box.

Every morning, the door would be open and the object would be moved slightly to the side.

I assumed the building had maintenance coming in or maybe my landlord had a spare key.

So I bought a cheap camera and pointed it at the hallway.

The next day, I checked the footage.

For the first few hours, nothing happened.

Then at around 3:17 AM, the storage room door slowly opened.

No one was there.

The hallway was empty.

The door just moved by itself.

I watched the footage again and noticed something I missed the first time.

Right before the door opened, the camera glitched.

Only for a second.

When the image came back, the door was already halfway open.

I decided to check inside.

I grabbed a flashlight and looked through the room.

There was nothing unusual.

Old pipes.

Dust.

A few boxes left behind by previous tenants.

Then I noticed writing on the inside of the door.

Carved into the wood.

A sentence.

“DON’T LET IT LEARN YOUR ROUTINE.”

I immediately contacted the landlord.

When he came over, he went silent the second he saw it.

I asked him what it meant.

He told me the storage room used to belong to a tenant who lived there years ago.

The man was convinced someone was entering his apartment every night.

The problem was, every lock was changed, and there were no signs anyone had broken in.

Eventually, he moved out.

Before leaving, he carved that message into the door.

The landlord said he always assumed the guy was paranoid.

Then he looked at the open storage room.

And quietly said something that bothered me more than anything else.

“That's strange.”

I asked what was strange.

He said, “That door has been sealed shut for almost fifteen years.”

I looked back at the storage room.

The door was still open.

But now there was something inside.

A small chair.

Facing the hallway.

I lived there for three more days before leaving.

I never found out who moved the chair.

But the thing I still think about is the camera footage.

Because after I moved out, I checked the recording one last time.

At 3:17 AM on my final night there, the storage room door opened.

And this time, something walked out.