I’m currently writing this from my phone in the ER. The doctors told me that I’m lucky to be alive. I guess I should’ve fixed the noose to something more durable. My right hand is hooked up to the side of the hospital bed by a pair of handcuffs. I’m pretty much lying on the right side of the bed trying to type all of this up with the shitty wi-fi connection while the TV is playing the same damn commercial for the fifth time in the past 20 minutes. That’s enough of a description though, my battery only has so much life left.
It all started about 1 month ago when I rented out the top level of a duplex. I’m a broke 20-year-old who just got fired from a full-time a few weeks prior only to quickly find a new one. Which in turn led to me starting to live off of my life savings due to waiting for the first set of checks to come in. Usually, duplexes are more expensive than apartments in most cases, but this wasn’t one of those cases. This duplex was part of a low-income area where the crime rate and lack of jobs made it an undesirable area to live in. I didn’t really have much of an option with my savings when it came to places to live. I found this listing on a site like Craigslist, but shadier. The rent was only $550 a month which sounded too good to be true. I would come to find out that it was.
This duplex had been “closed down” due to renovations and a lack of clients. The last person to live in it was a person in a situation similar to mine 2 years ago. Broke, desperate, and taking any chance they could get. The reason it had a lack of residents for so long is because of its history. I was told that it was “haunted” according to past tenants reporting a man that stalked the house at night. He would mainly be outside most of the time but would appear in the house roaming the halls and rarely show up in the bedroom watching the person sleep. Past residents would pass it off as hallucinations at first but slowly go insane from it. Most people moved out within 3 months or less and there were 2 cases of people killing themselves.
Digging deeper I would find out that they all had traces of mental illness and stress so it wasn’t a surprise that they would have high anxiety from the place. I accepted the lease for 3 months to start off with and moved in. The first 3 days went well as everything was seemingly normal. It wasn’t until day 4 that things went downhill. Days 4-7 Started off with seeing shadows around the house at night and what I thought was a person circling my house every few hours coming by a window out of the corner of my eye. Days 8-14 were worse. I heard knocking in the middle of the night only to see nobody outside. I would soon grow tired of it and wouldn’t bother to even answer it. I work full-time at my new job during the day and my shits range from around 9 in the morning to about 6 or 7 pm on a good day. I would sometimes work paid overtime just for the extra cash. I’m young, I can handle the stress for now since it’s worth the money.
I started trying to contact some of the previous tenants that were still alive to get any info from them to know what I getting into fully. They either weren’t the same after their experience here or left the state and dropped from the grid. I didn’t know what was coming for me. Letters started arriving in my mailbox every few days and were unmarked aside from my name on them. I would tear them up and throw them up not even bothering to read them. That only went on for so long before a pile of them showed up in my mailbox after a few days. I decided to finally read it. The message was as follows:
“I’m glad someone has finally moved into this fine home my great-grandfather built decades ago. I sure hope you enjoy your stay and plan to live here for a while. My name is Edward, I’m the watcher of this house and protect it. I’ve sworn to protect this house and watch over its future residents since my father…retired. I am now carrying the torch and promise to let no harm come to the home. Don’t worry about me coming in sometimes, I merely wish to admire the home every once and a while, along with its owners. Looking forward to seeing this home have its warmth come back now that it has a new resident.”
I would set the letter off to the side and struggle to give any verbal reaction. Great, I have a stalker around this house. No wonder nobody could live here long. It had a sicko breaking into the house at night watching people sleep and doing god knows what else. I later reported this to the police and landlord only to be told that I’m overreacting. This was nothing more than some neighbor playing a prank of some sort. They probably got my name from my mail and decided to give a weird welcome. That made me feel slightly sane, maybe that’s what it was.
I couldn’t have been further from the truth. The following days would get worse as the man would watch me from the windows. Knock on the door various times throughout the night. And I even caught him inside the house a few times before he vanished out of sight. The police never could find evidence of a break-in and told me that I’m wasting their time. I felt like I was going insane. Even during the daytime and at work I felt like I was being watched. It could be anyone in public following me and doing this. Maybe even one of my coworkers could be behind this. I eventually bought an aluminum bat for protection and kept it near my bed.
The man vanished for about a week and I thought it was now over. That was spoiled a few days later when I heard the door open in the middle of the night, that’s when I finally caught the man breaking in. In his hand was a gun which he didn’t have enough time to use against me as I swung the bat at him. He attempted a few shots only for my bat to hit him. It hit his arm making him drop the gun while the next swing hit him on the head. I hit him until he stopped moving. I didn’t kill him but he wasn’t conscious anymore. I just wanted to get this nightmare over with
I sat around for about 10 minutes before hearing sirens in the distance. I would take a rope and attach it to the ceiling fan that was firmly implanted in the wall and make a noose out of it while tying it to the ceiling fan. I took a chair and stood on it while putting the noose around my neck. I took a deep breath and kicked the chair aside leaving me with no object under my legs to turn back on this decision. It wouldn’t take long before 2 squad cars and an ambulance pulled up in front of my house. The officers broke into the front door to quickly call the paramedics over. I pissed myself in fear and struggled against the rope trying to make my death go faster.
The fan would break with all of my weight shifting around making me land on the floor as I hit my head on the chair. I blacked out from the hit on the head and a lack of oxygen. I don’t remember the ambulance ride. I only remember waking up in the bed I now lie on with my hand handcuffed to the side of it. I asked to get my phone in order to make my 1 phone call. But I don’t have a phone call to make anyone. I’m just getting all of this down in order to get my story out. I’ll probably be released as they get my side of the story and realize that he was the stalker that I was talking about and put it together as a self-defense case. I don’t think that I’ll be the same after this. I know one thing for sure, I’m moving the fuck out of that duplex.