Let's Not Meet~ Reddit Horror Stories

Thought My Boyfriend Got Home From Work. It Wasn't My Boyfriend.

My boyfriend, who I live with, works as a teacher in a town about 15 minutes away by train. He gets home more or less at the same time every day, give or take an hour or so. I, on the other hand, work from home.

In late January of this year we'd gotten in a pretty big fight about something stupid. I can't even remember what it was about now, but it was one of those fights where we didn't speak to each other, text, call, or anything the whole next day.

So, this afternoon I was lying in bed getting work done. It was a Tuesday, and I was pretty sure his last class finished at 1 PM on Tuesdays, meaning he'd surely be home at 2:30. But around 1 PM I heard the front door open and shut. I thought "huh, I guess he's home an hour early today." It was normal for him to skip his last class every once in a while, so I didn't really think anything of it. In fact, I was mostly mentally preparing for the awkward post-fight "hey how's it going" conversation.

So I continued to lie in bed and do my work and wait for him to come in and change his clothes. The bedroom door was closed and I had earplugs sort of half-in, as I usually do when I'm working, but I could hear the heavy footsteps of him walking around the apartment, as he always does. If we hadn't been mid-fight and I wasn't so preoccupied with the awkwardness of it all, I might have noticed it was strange how slow the footsteps were or how long he spent walking around the living room. But I was caught up in the dramatics of the fight and didn't think about it. I was just lying there, waiting, waiting, waiting for him to finally come in.

Finally, the bedroom door slowly opened just a few inches. I turned my head towards the door and prepared to give him a sort of awkward "we've been fighting for 24 hours, huh?" smile. But the door didn't open more than a few inches. I looked and saw that it was a woman's hand with red nail polish on the doorknob. Whoever was there slowly closed the door just as they had opened it, without entering the room. I jumped out of bed, ripped out my ear plugs, and sort of froze there for a few seconds while thinking rapidly.

My first thought: that was not my boyfriend.

Then I thought "could that have been his mom? His sister? The landlady?"

For some reason I concluded that surely it was his mom or sister. So I opened the bedroom door and walked into the living room. There wasn't anyone there, but the room smelled heavily of women's perfume. Then I came to my senses and realized "his mom and sister don't have keys and have never come over before. The landlady has never entered without permission... this was a stranger"

I ran back into the bedroom and shut the door, now shaking heavily. There is a balcony connected to the bedroom so despite the cold January rain, I stood on the balcony and called my boyfriend. He picked up and I asked him if his mom or sister might come over unannounced. He told me "No. Don't move, I'm calling the police." The police were there in minutes and searched the whole apartment. Of course nobody was there by this point.

It was weird, though. Nothing was missing from the apartment despite us keeping a jar full of money right in the entrance. Nothing was even touched. In fact it seemed like the intruder came straight to the bedroom, saw my legs on the bed, panicked and left. Plus, you can't open that big wooden front door without a key. For a few days, my boyfriend and I were convinced it was just the landlady being nosy. I began to feel better.

Nevertheless, we demanded that the landlady change our locks. When she came to change them with her husband, she made a discovery. There was a square area by the keyhole that had been scratched away with something. The landlady said surely someone used tools to break into the apartment.

Then, a day or two later my boyfriend told me "I have to tell you something, but don't freak out." He told me that the orange kitchen scissors were missing. I obviously freaked out. I tore the apartment apart looking for those scissors. It's been 6 months and those scissors are gone. So the whole thing is just creepy and weird... a stranger breaks into a nice apartment but doesn't touch or take anything valuable (not even the money jar sitting right in the entrance), takes scissors from the kitchen, goes straight to the bedroom, sees someone in bed and immediately leaves.

I never got to meet the person who opened the door that day. I hope I never do.