Posting this from my car down the street because my hands are still shaking and I honestly don’t know what else to do right now.
It started about three weeks ago. I kept hearing light, rhythmic tapping directly above my bedroom ceiling late at night. At first, I assumed it was just roof rats or possums crawling around in the insulation. I set a few humane traps near the attic access hatch inside my bedroom, dropped some peanut butter inside, and figured that would be the end of it.
Three days later, I went to check the traps. They were completely untouched, but something else was wrong: the small wooden ladder that folds out from the ceiling hatch was hanging down about an inch, resting unlatched.
I’m positive I had latched it shut.
I pushed the ladder back up, hooked the latch, and tried to convince myself I had just been careless. But that night, around 2:00 AM, the sound changed. It wasn’t scratching anymore. It was slow, measured, and deliberate—like someone lightly knocking on the floorboards directly above my bed.
*Knock. Knock. Knock.* Then silence for five minutes. Then three more knocks, slightly closer to the ceiling hatch.
Last night, I finally built up the courage to investigate. I grabbed a heavy flashlight, unlatched the hatch, and climbed up three rungs of the ladder. The air in the attic was thick, dusty, and ice-cold. I swept the beam of the flashlight across the rafters, expecting to see insulation or maybe old storage boxes.
Instead, about ten feet away from the opening, I saw a neat circle cleared out in the dust. Inside the circle sat a single wooden kitchen chair positioned right near the edge of the opening. On the seat was a small pocket mirror angled upwards so that whoever sat there could look straight down through the open gap in the hatch and directly onto my bed.
As the realization hit me, I heard a wet, raspy breath coming from the dark corner behind the water heater.
I didn’t wait to see what it was. I scrambled down the ladder, slammed the hatch shut, and bolted it from the bottom. As soon as the latch clicked, three heavy, frantic thuds hit the top of the trapdoor right above my head—as if something had just lunged onto it.
I stayed locked in my room for an hour listening to the quiet sound of something gently trying to turn the metal latch from the upper side.
I eventually grabbed my keys, packed a quick bag, and bolted out the front door. I’m sitting in my car a few blocks away right now waiting for a friend to meet me.
Has anyone experienced anything like this?