In Reddit’s infamous r/LetsNotMeet community, anonymous people on the internet share the true stories about their run-ins with creepy real life people. There’s something unsettling about the fact that all these scary stories (and the stories are scary) come from flesh and blood people. There’s no aliens or demons or boogeymen, just people that you or I may come across one day.

In the sub’s history, one story posted 7 years ago stands out as the as the creepiest, in my opinion anyway. The story is told by a 22-year-old woman who goes by the name “u/myhra” about a time when she was living alone in an apartment. She left her apartment momentarily to get her mail and returned while on the phone with her boyfriend. The horror starts when she drops the phone on the floor and reaches to pick it up when something under her bed catches her eye:

“I am 22 and this incident happened a year and a half ago. I had just moved into my first apartment and was in the process of moving in. The door that led into my apartment locks itself automatically when closed. So, I was going to the entrance of the apartment complex to get my mail while talking on the phone with my boyfriend. I returned to my apartment and sat on the bed while opening the mail while using the phone, I dropped the phone on the floor and it landed under the bed so I had to lie on the floor and stretch for it. I saw something that caught my eye, there was someone under my bed… My eyes widened and I choked the urge to scream. The person under my bed was lying still with his back towards me and his head to his chest, so I couldn’t see his face. And he didn’t see me, trying to be rational while so many thoughts rushed through my head, I picked up the phone, said “Sorry I dropped my phone, I’m just gonna take a shower and call you back.”

The bathroom is right by my bed so I hastily walked in, quietly locked the door, turned the shower on, jumped out my window (my apartment is on the first floor) and called the police. They told me to wait nearby, but to go to across the street and see if anyone comes out the door to the apartment complex. This was during summer and it was still light out, I placed myself across the street, hiding behind a car while watching my open bathroom window and the entry door. I called my boyfriend and he came to me just before the police. I gave them my keys and they went inside. Only moments later two cops came out holding a thin and tired looking man. His eyes looked crazy, but he didn’t try to get away. The policeman that had stood beside me and comforted me while the police searched through my house (I was a mess, shivering and crying) told me that the man stood outside my bathroom door with one of my kitchen knives waiting for me to come out.

This man had somehow crept in my entry door while I was getting my mail and hid under the bed.The man that was trying to hurt me turned out to be a homeless person and was placed in a mental hospital. My boyfriend moved in with me the very next day.

Thanks for reading! I just wanted to share my story so that others might know what to do if a situation like this occurs! The police told me that what I did was truly amazing and rational, if I had screamed, this could’ve ended really badly for me.”

This story is completely traumatizing, especially if you’re also a woman who lives alone. Unfortunately, it isn’t even the only one of it’s kind on the forum (or in real life!) A similar story was told by awoman who goes by the name “u/heartx3jess” who lived with her boyfriend. The woman had gotten in a big fight with her boyfriend and uncharacteristically, they hadn’t spoken all day while he was at work in another town and she was working from home. When she heard noises downstairs, she expected them to be her boyfriend. It wasn’t.

“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.”

This woman never found out who was in her house. She called her boyfriend and he called the police. After a careful search, the couple realized the only thing missing from their house was a pair of kitchen scissors.

Anyway, in unrelated news I will be boarding up the space underneath my bed tonight. It’s also a good time of the year to think about keeping prowlers out if you keep your windows open at night. We don’t want to end up as another story on r/LetsNotMeet.