I’m starting to get the creeps with my neighbor(s?) and felt compelled to blurb everything here. I’m pretty new to Reddit and social media in general so please bear with me.
I live in a lower-middle class apartment complex. It’s very mediocre and borderline trashy (there’s some REALLY busted apartments a little ways down the street), but my room is affordable and practical. I’ve rarely had issues aside from the occasional ceiling leak; I’m a comfortable distance from my job and I get a good safety-net of serene rural landscape before hitting the city on the drive to work. I’ve lived here for a handful of months now- I believe since late January of this year. I rarely socialize and admittedly avoid meeting anyone, and have successfully avoided the neighbors up until three-ish weeks ago.
Coming home from work, I swung open my apartment door and did my usual routine; I quickly showered to get the warehouse grime off of me and did a little skimming through my finance portfolio before crashing into bed. From bed, I noticed a white little index card that had been slid underneath my door, and to be honest I don’t know if it was there when I first entered or if it had been sitting there for just a few seconds. Either way, I kind of just shimmied out of bed and scooped it up. In fairly neat handwriting (neater than mine for sure) it read “Hello! (:”. I kind of just assumed someone new might have moved in nearby and might’ve seen me come home and thought to say hello, I guess? That’s the only thing that really made sense.
Anyways I didn’t pay much mind to it. For the next few days of chain-working 12 hour shifts I never ran into any other tenants and life was quiet. One day, about a week after the first index card, another card greeted me on my way into my apartment. Closing the door behind me, I scooped it up and it simply had “A12, say Hello! (:” on it. This was actually somewhat comforting at first, because I lived in room A11, and this must’ve meant that my initial thoughts of a new neighbor introducing themselves were pretty much confirmed at this point. I actually immediately dropped my overtime shift for tomorrow via our company app so that I could make some time to meet them tomorrow and maybe offer to hangout for a short while.
Well, I came over around noon the next day and gently knocked on the door. After holding my breath for about half a minute with no answer I firmly knocked twice. Shockingly an index card popped out of the bottom of the door, and I kind of just looked at it very confusedly. It was slightly embarrassing to bend down in the middle of this tight dingy hallway to scoop up this card, as I imagined other tenants staring out of their doors’ peep-holes, and thinking to themselves, “What is this dumbass up to?”. Embarrassment was swiftly followed by genuine confusion- the card read “Don’t knock so loudly. Just say, Hello! (:”. My eyes quickly met the little peephole in the door and someone on the other side reacted with a stark gasp, followed by frantic rustling. Mouth hanging agape, my inner voice kept shouting what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck. Eventually I performed the mental gymnastics to come to the conclusion that my neighbor was probably just really awkward or had some sorta something-something that prevented them from speaking to me normally. Nonetheless, out of sheer awkward panic, I retreated to my apartment and shut the door quietly behind me. Back against the door, I dramatically slid to the floor and pulled my hands to my face, and kind of giggled to myself at how awkward that was.
An index card popped right under my door next to me. I pulled my hands away from my face and it read “Do not laugh at me. ): !!”. Suddenly this felt more weird and invading rather than just plain awkward? I mean, to hear me giggling you would have had to have your ear pressed to the door; it was seriously such a brief and under-my-breath laugh. How did they open their door, get into the hallway, press their ear against the door, and write that note so quickly? It was such a quick-shock sequence that I could feel the adrenaline prickling up through my skin.
Regardless of that happening, I managed to comfort myself out of thinking about it and life was very quiet yet again, until yesterday. In the morning, around 6am, there was an index card at the door waiting for me before I left for work. Needless to say it ruined my mood and the note was somewhat alarming? All it said was “Scratchy scratchy scratch!”. Like, what the fuck? I go to work, come home, all is good. For context for what follows, my room is arranged so that my bed in up against the wall that A12 is on the other side of. I always sleep on the inside of the bed and usually end up with my forehead against the wall when I sleep (I know it sounds stupid but it comforts me). Halfway on my journey to sleepyland I begin to feel soft taps from the other side of the wall. This has NEVER happened before. As insignificant as it was, it definitely woke me up a little bit, and slowly my eyes began to pry open out of distress. Eventually, the tapping stopped, and a fury of scratches lashed out right on the other side of the wall, so much so that I could feel the tension from the grinding of whatever was scraping the wall against my forehead.
What do I even do. This is so bizarre that like… what? Is this an emergency? Can I call the police? Or do I just go through nonemergency? Do I report it to the complex staff? I’m very lost and uncomfortable.