It’s just past 11PM and I can’t fall asleep because of the knocks. Our apartment is at the end of the building, it’s a corner unit with a pretty open floor plan. While we get a great cross-breeze by opening up the balcony door and kitchen window, it also means we’re right by one of the two stairwells. Since our building was built in the 80s, it’s all concrete which has been great at soundproofing. But it also means direct knocks or bangs travel somewhat well through the building. Basically, we can’t hear the upstairs neighbours talking but we can hear pretty well make out their dogs nails clicking on the floor.
But lately I’ve heard sounds coming from the living room wall, which borders the stairwell. When I’m sitting on the couch I used to hear what sounded like a vibrating phone on the other side of the wall, but it quickly turned into these really distorted and muffled crashes. It was like I was listening to a gun range that was on the other side of 99% soundproof wall. For weeks I rarely ever heard anything, only the odd time when the TV wasn’t on and I was sitting on the couch. But about a month, ago I started hearing a knock every know and again. It was still muffled, but I swore every time that someone was knocking on my neighbours door, directly across the hall from my door. But when I’d look through my peephole it would always be an empty hallway. And it sounded clearer when I was in my living room than if I were in the kitchen or hallway. Plus, that neighbour left for work around 6PM and generally wouldn’t get home until the early morning, whereas I usually always heard the knocks and sounds when I was relaxing in the evening and at night.
I got worried once I realized that the lights in the stairwell are always out when I hear the knocks. Since my apartment is at the end of the hallway, the door to the stairwell is immediately outside my door to the left. There’s a little, vertical window in the door that lets you see in just a bit. Whenever I would hear the knocks, I tried to look through my peephole to see if it was my neighbour making the noise. One night when I went to look, I noticed that the light in the window to the stairwell had gone out. That was definitely odd, since it was basically our emergency evacuation route and was normally lit 24/7, and had backup emergency lights. During a power outage once, the hallways still had light and the stairwell definitely did since we had to walk down it. I only wish I had been paying closer attention to other times it might have been dark in there.
I tried keeping track of the times I saw the lights in the stairwell out, but it happened infrequently enough that I can barely keep a timeline. I know that 3 weeks ago, I first noticed the lights going out when I heard a knock and went to see if it was my neighbour. A couple days after it happened again, and I really made a note to remember. It was 6:49 on the Tuesday, I heard a knock that was barely audible, except I could definitely tell that I only heard it in my right ear. When I’m sitting on the couch, my back is to the wall bordering the stairwell, and our apartment door is on my left. So if the knocking was coming from anywhere, it was either outside the building, on our balcony, or in the stairwell. As always I check my balcony, and it is always completely empty because we live in Canada and it’s currently winter. And it never sounds like it’s actually coming from the far wall with the balcony, I swear it’s coming from the wall that I have my back to and which borders the stairwell. I checked the peephole and sure enough, the stairwell was dark again. And I mean pitch black, not even the light from our hallways seems to light it up in the slightest. I checked sporadically throughout the evening, and the light had come on sometime before 8PM.
The following Saturday at about quarter past 6 in the evening, I heard our neighbour leaving. At about 9:20-9:25 there was a muted knock that sounded like it came from behind the light in the corner of the living room. I checked the hall and the light was out in the stairwell. Sometime between 10-ish and 10:44, the lights came back on. It was probably about an hour that they had been out, leaving the stairwell in what looked like complete darkness from what I could see through my peephole and that little window in the stairwell door. That was it for the night though.
The following week on Thursday, I heard a dull whining sound while I was sitting on the couch. It lasted long enough to make me notice fully and then I heard a knock, quite a bit louder than the last one but that may have been just because it was right next to my head. I checked the time and it was 10:43PM. The light was on in the stairwell, which at this point kind of defied my expectations. Out of curiosity I checked again a moment later, and it was still on. I left the peephole, chalking it up to random chance and most likely a false assumption of causation on my part. I thought to go check the stairwell sometimes, whenever I heard the knocks. I had always thought it was just a loud kid running down the stairs. We do have a lot of families in our building. But we’re on the 14th floor, and there are only 16 floors plus a penthouse. So it’s not like there should normally be a done of traffic going up or down the stairs at any given time, much less the evening. Especially because we have 3 elevators and the wait is never more than a minute or two. But I’ve never opened our apartment door when I see the lights out. For some reason I always just double check the locks and try to check again for when they come back on. Curiosity got the better of me, and at 10:47PM the lights in the stairwell were out, even though I hadn’t heard another knock since the first four minutes earlier.
I didn’t hear anything until the following Wednesday, which is four days ago as of posting this. It was 8:57PM when I heard a series of five or six quick knocks that somehow sounded like they were made by different hands all in the same spot. It was seemingly lower this time, made near the floor but still coming from the wall. It couldn’t have been our downstairs neighbours, because the apartment below ours is vacant. We like to entertain a lot and have games nights so not having downstairs neighbours works out great, same with being a corner unit with only one shared wall. Well, to an apartment. The other shared walls are to the hallways and then the stairwell, but noise doesn’t really impact people there. We did as our landlord to notify us when new residents move in, so we could limit ourselves and how much we stomp around. Having a dog above us motivates us to be great upstairs neighbours lol. Anyways, if those knocks came from anywhere they must have come from the stairwell. The clarity too made me sure it wasn’t sound travelling through the concrete, they all sounded so focused. Sure enough too the lights in the stairwell were out again, and were until about 10:15PM.
That brings us to now, the first night my partner is away at a week long conference in the US as part of a uni thing. I’ve been hearing a knock every few minutes since 7PM sharp. It’s currently 11:09 and they haven’t slowed or quieted in any way. Over four hours and it’s incessant. And it sounds all scattered across the living room wall, but only the section that borders the stairwell. Not even the little weird cutout section immediately left of our door, which on the other side is about a foot of hallway before you hit the stairwell door. They are exclusively coming from the section of wall that has the stairwell itself on the other side. I’m pretty sure my neighbour left a fair while before they started. I can’t fall asleep, and I’m honestly getting freaked out. What’s worse is the stairwell door’s window. It looks like the interior of the stairwell, but the proportions are just barely off and it looks partially off angled in some parts. And the lighting is just slightly too dark, it honestly looks like a fabric picture of the stairwell interior pinned up just about right in the window of the door. I’m too petrified to even unlock the front door, I’m almost positive the lights are out behind the false image in the window.