Darkest Mysteries Online — The Strange and Unusual Podcast 2026
THEY BROKE IN MY APARTMENT ｜ 10 True Scary REDDIT Stories
06 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
What's up everyone. Welcome to the story. Settle in and enjoy. My boyfriend is a nurse who works a lot of night shift, which means I'm often alone from 6pm to 6am. Now, being 411 and 120 pounds means that I have to be slightly more security conscious than your average Joe.
So once I realized that there would be long stretches of time where I'd be totally home alone at night, I realized that I had to be extra vigilant when it came to home security. We didn't live in the best of neighborhoods, and after one of our neighbors got their apartment broken into while they were home in the middle of the day, the threat became very real and very frightening to us.
We beefed up the locks on the front door, and my boyfriend insisted I go down to the range with him so I could learn how to use his handgun. I always made sure the front door was double locked at night, and I always made sure the gun was loaded and ready in the safe under our bed, especially when I was alone.
Chapter 2: What precautions did the narrator take for home security?
All this is why it seems so inexplicable to me that our safety could have been compromised in any way. And what makes what I'm about to tell you so incredibly scary to me? It was one of those weeks where my husband was working nights so I was home alone for the evening.
I finished my bedtime routine, turned on my electric blanket, then settled into a half hour or so of Nintendo Switch until I felt sleepy enough to drift off. Just like every night, I made sure all the external windows and doors were locked and I went to sleep with my bedroom door open so I'd be able to hear if anyone tried to break in at some point.
I remember waking up and almost immediately seeing someone walk past our bedroom and into the living room. I figured it's my boyfriend, who was maybe home a few hours earlier than usual, and I roll over to check my phone and see what time it is, 3.36am. I swear I'll never forget those numbers for as long as I live.
Usually after my husband came home from a shift, I'd get up and have some breakfast with him. Then he'd go to bed, and I'd go about the rest of my morning routine. It was still pretty early when he arrived home that night, and so I figured that I'd just drift off back to sleep until he came to bed. But as I lay there, I realized that I was listening to nothing but silence.
Even my boyfriend was trying his very best to be quiet. There's no hiding the beeping of the microwave or the sounds of silverware coming out. And he was always hungry when he got back from his shift. So the fact that I couldn't hear him at all just kind of bothered me. So instead of going back to sleep, I got up, put on my bathrobe and walked into the kitchen to see if he was okay.
We had an open plan kitchen slash television room back then. But as I stepped out of the bedroom, I see no lights coming from the room that I thought my boyfriend was in. I looked over my shoulder, making sure the bathroom was empty. Then right when I see that it was dark and deserted. I hear the soft sound of sobbing coming from the dark TV vision room. As creepy as that sounds.
Fear wasn't my first emotion the way I saw it. My boyfriend was crying in the dark room, so all I wanted to do was comfort him. I didn't hesitate to flick the light on, walk in and ask if he was okay. But when I did, I let out the biggest gasp of my life. Someone who was definitely not my boyfriend was sitting on the carpet in the corner of the television room.
They were sitting on their butt, knees up, tucking their face against their thighs so I couldn't see what they looked like, but I could see their body trembling gently from the sobbing. They were half naked. They were filthy. And even in this curled up posture, I could see that they were very tall. The run back into my bedroom was a total blur.
And then remember this bolt of fear going through me when I initially struggled with locking the door? Once it was secure, I ducked down to the safe, grabbed our gun and called the cops. I sat on the window ledge of our bedroom, opening up the window, as I talked to the dispatcher.
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Chapter 3: What terrifying event happened while the narrator was home alone?
I'm not saying that the guy had superpowers and could walk through walls or something, but no copy of our front door key was ever found either on the guy's person or there at the scene. So in my mind, something else had to have been going on. We don't live in that apartment anymore. so that's not really an issue for us.
But all the unanswered questions really bug me sometimes, and it sucks that I'll never know the whole truth. I just came across this subreddit and gosh, some of these are terrifying. I do have a story of something that happened to me from a long while ago, but in hindsight, it was really dumb of me, and I feel terribly dumb now, so I've always been hesitant to tell. This was a few years ago.
It was pretty late past, about 130 or 2am. I was living with this boy who was pretty abusive, and he had gotten really jealous of his party that we were at earlier that night, not even an hour after we had gone home. He tossed me out onto our front porch and locked the door behind me. I was knocking and pleading for him to please let me back inside.
I was still wearing what I had worn to the party and it was freezing out. I wasn't sure what to do and he had my phone person wallet in the house with him. Though I just sat in the porch crying when he turned off the lights both inside and outside of the house. I knew that he wasn't going to let me back in. I felt so helpless and cold.
I thought about knocking on a neighbor's door, though he didn't have many, but I had anxiety about waking any of them up and causing trouble for my boyfriend. So instead, I decided I would try to walk to the gas station and motel, which was like a little less than a mile away, so I could use their phone to try to call a girlfriend of mine to see if I could sleep over with her.
Ironically enough, the road I was walking on was Donner Pass Road, so the freezing cold was fitting. But anyway, a little bit into the walk, this tall white pickup truck was approaching on the opposite side of the road that I was on. I tried not to make eye contact for obvious reasons but then I heard the truck stopping and beginning to make a u-turn and my heart just started pounding.
I just about froze up but forced myself to speed walk. At the very least. The truck pulled up to me and this guy rolled down his window and asked what I was doing out this late. I told him how I was going to meet my friend at the gas station and then she was expecting me. He sort of smiled and offered me a ride. I said, No thank you citing that I shouldn't hitchhike.
He told me, well, good I don't pick up hitchhikers in anyone. You don't look like a hitchhiker though. You just look like you need some help. He just kept driving next to me and told me that I shouldn't think that he was a creep and he pulled out what looked like a police badge and told me that he had just gotten off of duty which is why he was in civilian clothes. Not so late.
He said he wouldn't mind driving next to me just to make sure I get to where I was heading safely. I was naive and a bit too trusting of his kindness and credentials. When he offered me a ride again, I said that it would be nice because the gas station wasn't that far anyway. He popped the door open for me and I hopped in. The radio was low.
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Chapter 4: How did the narrator react to finding an intruder in their home?
He turned off the lights and everything just looked dark blue. He stared at the steering wheel for what felt like years before, lighting a cigar and looking out his window and back at me, then back out his window. He heard me shuffling my feet on the newspapers.
I was just adjusting my legs, but while still staring out his window, told me, if I thought about running, he'd had a quick way to get where he wanted me. And oddly enough, I was sort of thinking of running minutes before that, but reasoned that if he wanted me out of the car, then I definitely should stay in. Otherwise he would chase me or shoot me in case he had his hunting rifle in the back.
I didn't dare look. I'm glad I was right. I think at that point I sort of hit some sort of bottom in my reserve, and instead of panic, there was sort of an ominous and exhaustion. There was still an occasional hot tears or two but I just remember being numb. I talked to a psychiatrist about this sort of thing and he thinks it just came from my ex-boyfriend's giving me piste.
It was dead quiet but I finally just barely audibly told him that my friend was still waiting for me and asked about his wife and children and he flatly said that he didn't have a wife for children and that his house was empty. I asked him what he was thinking about. You said, I'm thinking about what to do with you. He didn't say it angrily.
He just said it flatly and coldly, which sort of scared me more. I did start getting work back up to cry, and at that point he told me not to cry and turned the car on, offering me some heat. I just cried and said I wanted to go home. Eventually he started driving and kept driving until we were approaching a gas station. I was gauging the right time to reach for the wheel before I could.
He started slowing down by pulling up. He told me not to tell anyone or he would find me. Then he told me all that he was doing was teaching me a lesson to not attack with strangers. It was almost coming to a complete stop when he told me to get out before he changes his mind, before he could even get another look at me to assess my understanding.
I was already down, out of the truck and sprinting towards the gas station. The panic was overwhelming me, but then I stopped and remembered to try to see his license plate. I turned around, but only caught the blur of the last three numbers as he was driving off. I ran inside and asked the clerk behind the counter to please call the police.
I waited until the police officer got there and I'll be honest, I was a little scared that it would end up being John. My fears melted away when the new-faced police officer got there. I gave him the description of John, his appearance, the vehicle color and type, the parts of the license plate number I had caught, the fact that he was an off-duty cop, just basically anything I could.
I asked him if I could look at the camera, and the officer disappeared in the back for a little bit, then came back out saying that there was nothing on them. I asked if I would be able to look in. The officer said no and asked me if I didn't trust him, and I told him, of course I did.
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Chapter 5: What did the police discover about the intruder's entry?
Obviously this was weird. I mentioned what happened to my wife telling her that we should be more mindful about security. When I told her the type of truck my wife said that same truck drove by and the guy stared at me. When I got home this afternoon I thought he was just being creepy and checking me out.
I tried to tease her a bit to lighten the mood, calling her cocky for assuming any guy driving by was checking her out. I didn't want her to freak out, but I was definitely freaked out. We saw the truck a few more times over the next couple of months. either driving by slowly or parked down the block and facing our yard. But one day the truck stopped driving by and we haven't seen it since.
I sort of dismissed the whole thing as me being paranoid, but then other things started happening in the past month or so. My wife and I have been hearing tapping on the windows at the front of our house at night. It's happened two or three times to each of us separately, always at about 10 or 11pm, and always a soft but distinct tap-tap-tap-tap.
It sounds like knocking with a single knuckle on the metal part of a screen door, if that makes sense. The first time that my wife and I heard the tapping together was last weekend, we were in the front room playing with our daughter at around 930, just about to settle down for bed.
Our front room has a large, almost floor-to-ceiling window running the length of the wall next to the front door, which faces the street. We were all sitting on the floor with our backs to the window, reading our daughter a book when we heard it. Tap, tap, tap, tap. Now our house is older. Creaks and cracks are not uncommon.
But this sound was so distinctly intentional that my wife and I immediately looked at each other and bolted up out of the room. I had my wife and daughter lock themselves in the back room while I turned on all the lights and did a sweep around the outside of the house. Of course, I didn't see anything and was ready to dismiss.
The whole thing is more paranoia over something that probably had an innocent explanation until last night. At around 945, we heard her daughter making noises on the baby monitor. I waited a few minutes to see if she would settle down, but when it became clear that she wouldn't, I got up to put her back to sleep. The layout of the room is important to visualize this next part.
This room is on the side of our house, but the exterior wall juts out a bit in an L shape, and the corner of this L is made up of windows.
If you're standing in the door to the room, you're directly across from these windows in one corner, and there's a rocking chair in the other corner pointed towards the front of the house, one window facing the streets and the other faces our neighbour's house. A garden bed planted with small shrubs wraps around the outside of the house, directly underneath.
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Chapter 6: What unusual behavior did the narrator notice from the intruder?
But please let me be wrong. When I was six or seven, I was coming home to Brooklyn from a movie in Manhattan with my friends. I was the only one who lived in BC, so I walked home from the train alone. I was used to being out late by myself. I had a midnight curfew, but I frequently broke it because I thought nothing bad would ever happen to me.
Despite an uptick of assaults in our neighborhood at the time, this night, however, I was actually slated to get home on time for once. It was the summer after I graduated high school, and I was feeling amazing. I'd had a little to drink and a little to smoke, and I felt like I was on top of the world.
It was so hot out and I remember that I was wearing this long, sheer cape thing with a very tight and revealing little dress underneath. Not that anything would have probably been different if I had been wearing shorts and a t-shirt. However, because of my fun little outfit, I was feeling myself and being so stupid.
Taking selfies while I walked down the dark streets and listening to music with both headphones and not paying any attention to my surroundings. and I think I even sang as I walked. I got to my building after finishing my 10-minute walk from the train and walked up to the steps to our apartment. We live in a brownstone with apartments in it, and ours was on the third floor.
We had a gate at the bottom of the steps separating us from the sidewalk. I pulled out my headphones and began to fumble with my keys at the top of the steps, and just as I had found the correct key, still humming to myself and thinking about my great night, I heard the latch on the gate clank as if it were being opened. I turned around and saw a man standing at the gate staring at me.
He was young probably, early November 26, 2025, wearing a grey hoodie with the hood up covering part of his face. But I could see his eyes and immediately I knew something was off, because of how blanket nervous his expression was. One hand was on the handle of the gate as if he were about to open it completely, but stopped once I turned around.
Somehow my fight or flight instinct didn't kick in yet. It was probably the alcohol. I cautiously called down. Can I help you? And he didn't respond. I looked him over more closely and realized then that his other hand, the one not on the gate, was moving fast and low near his waist.
I registered that he was touching himself, gasped, and within milliseconds he was sprinting up the stairs behind me, reaching out his hand to grab me. My brain clicked into place and I started screaming at the top of my lungs as I jammed my key into the door and slammed it behind me. I ran up the stairs to my apartment screaming for my dad not even stopping to make sure the door was locked.
Thinking that if he followed me upstairs it'd soon be met by my very tall father and our very loud dogs who slept in the bedroom next to our apartment door. As I looked over my shoulder while tearing my way up the stairs I saw his face pressed up against the glass window still watching me but now his eyes were furious. I ran into our apartment, still screaming to my parents to call the police.
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