Let's Not Meet~ Reddit Horror Stories

It Gave Him A Thrill

This was ten years ago, just after my parents divorced and were in the process of selling my childhood home. My mom had moved across town and my dad, who traveled for a living, was gone for long stretches of time, leaving my older brother and I alone often. As teenagers, we didn't mind.

Even with this upheaval at home, our lives were fairly routine. Both of us worked and were in school, so we left and got home at the same times each day. At night, we'd go to the gym just outside of our neighborhood for a couple of hours. My brother's friend, James, would join us.

One night, James, my brother, and another one of their friends, Christopher, were hanging out at our house, washing their cars in preparation for the weekend. Since it was dark, my brother had borrowed my car keys to illuminate the driveway with my headlights so they could see. When they were finished, my brother asked me if I felt like going to the gym with them, and I declined. I wasn't feeling up to it. So they left me home alone.

Before I went upstairs to my bedroom to blare music now the house was empty, I'd noticed that the front door was unlocked and the back door was locked. This detail didn't particularly alarm me because we lived in a safe neighborhood centered by golf courses and a country club--in other words, I had nothing to worry about.

I went to my room and listened to loud music for about half an hour with my door shut. Then, hungry, I went downstairs to fix myself something to eat. That's when I noticed the front door was locked. I wasn't too concerned at this point. Perhaps I had locked it before I went upstairs? I didn't remember locking it, but it was the most rational explanation. Then, I noticed the back door was unlocked.

I definitely didn't unlock the back door.

As irrational, then, as it seemed, it hit me with a jolt: Somebody was in our house.

My brother had left my car keys on the counter in the kitchen. I grabbed them and ran out the front door to my car. I put the keys in the ignition and--it didn't start. My brother had left the lights on. The battery was dead. Motherfucker.

It was like being in a horror movie.

Frantic, I called my brother. Since he had his headphones plugged into his phone listening to music while he worked out, he was forced to answer.

"I think somebody is or was in our house," I said. I told him about the front door and how I didn't lock it, so either somebody was in in our house or in the backyard. "Can you please come home r--"

And as I said this, a man with a miniature baseball bat comes from the side-yard of our house. His pace was quick--as if he didn't want to be seen--but it slowed once he reached the road, where he walked normally, as if nothing had happened.

I told my brother what I just saw. "I recognize him," I said. "It's our neighbor."

My brother and his friends came rushing home about ten minutes later. I repeated the story.

"Okay," my brother, a hothead, said. "We're going over to his house."

I sat back at home after the four of us had checked every room in the house with my dad's gun. It was clear. No one was there.

When they came back, they told me that they'd knocked on the front door and an older woman had answered.

"The look on her face," James said later, "was like she'd been expecting us."

"And that's when her middle-aged son, the guy with the bat, came down," my brother said. "Before we even spoke, he yelled out, 'I didn't break into anybody's house!'"

"We never said that," my brother had said. "We just wanted to tell you that somebody was in our house just now."

The mother had taken on a protective, though somewhat submissive, stance. "Listen, I'm so sorry. It won't happen again. I promise it."

My brother and his friends saw in her eyes that she knew they were telling the truth, that her son wasn't.

"It better not," my brother had said, looking up at her son behind her.

When they got home, they recounted this story for me, and we began to dissect what had happened. We'd seen this man before. He was older, late thirties early forties, and lived with his elderly parents. He only seemed to come out at night, when he would go on long walks around the neighborhood, muttering to himself, carrying a miniature baseball bat to "fend off dogs," as he'd been overheard telling a neighbor. He obviously had mental problems of some kind.

And he'd obviously been watching our house. He knew our routine.

We determined that he may have mistaken my brother's friend Christopher for me and, thinking the house empty, entered through the unlocked front door. When he realized that I was home, he then left through the backdoor and had hidden in the backyard until he thought the coast was clear. How long he'd been inside we weren't sure, but I'd been in my room for at least half an hour.

Why he was breaking into our house, we didn't know. But we guessed it wasn't the first time he'd done something like this. And it may have been the overactive and speculative imaginations of a bunch of teenagers, but we guessed he did it because running around someone's empty house, unbeknownst to them, gave him some kind of sick thrill. Perhaps stalking people gave him something to do? And it was clear to us that he probably couldn't help himself. That he'd probably do it again.d