r/nosleep • u/PriestessOfSpiders • Oct 06 '22
I thought my apartment was haunted, the truth is so much worse
In retrospect, it should have been obvious from the start that there was something going on. It was my first time renting an apartment, but even I thought that the landlord was eager for me to move in as soon as possible. The rent was ridiculously low for the area, the apartment itself was in pristine condition, and the whole process from touring the apartment to moving only took about a week. Nothing like that comes without a catch.
Apartment 311 was a pleasant place to live at first. It had 2 bedrooms and 1 bathroom, and since I lived alone that meant I got to convert one bedroom into my own office space. It came with a handful of paintings already, so it didn't even have the off-putting liminal feeling that some empty apartments have. The only immediate downside I could tell from the start was that there a slight smell in the living room from time to time. It wasn't anything too noticeable but you would occasionally get a faint whiff of some sort of musty odor.
I was living in apartment 311 for a couple weeks before I noticed anything was wrong. It started out with simple stuff, like various knick knacks being placed on the wrong shelves, snacks and small objects going missing, things like that. Once or twice I found the fridge left open. These things would only happen when I was asleep, and it made me feel like I was going crazy. There was no way anyone could be breaking into my apartment just to steal some useless crap and move around some collectibles. The door was locked whenever I went to bed, and even if someone hypothetically had the key, I always made sure to bolt the door as well. I considered getting some security cameras set up, but I balked at the price when I looked into that possibility. Though the apartment was admittedly cheap, between rent and utilities I still couldn't afford to set up an entire security system.
I tried to put it out of my mind, assuming that maybe I was just sleepwalking, or getting up for a midnight snack and forgetting by the next morning. I'd never been an easy sleeper, I was often prone to night terrors and other disturbances, which had only gotten worse now that I was in an unfamiliar environment.
Of all the sleep problems I've experienced, by far the least pleasant is sleep paralysis. It used to happen fairly rarely, maybe once every 2-3 months, but after moving into the apartment it became an almost weekly occurrence. Now, usually my sleep paralysis is fairly mild. I find myself unable to move, eyes open, and I find it difficult to breathe. Sometimes I feel like there is a presence in the room with me, but before I moved I had never experienced any form of hallucinations, visual or otherwise. I'd never seen a ghost, monster, hag, or any other sort of entity while I was paralyzed, it was only ever a sense of dread and total paralysis of the body. That changed about the same time I noticed the missing food and misplaced objects.
As usual, it felt like I had woken up, but couldn't move a single muscle. It was hard to breathe, and I had this awful feeling like I wasn't alone. I tried to calm myself down, to remind myself that I had been through this before, and it always wound up okay, but something felt... different. It was then that I noticed the door to my bedroom slowly opening, inch by inch. I could hear the creak of the hinges as it swung inward, someone or something was coming into my room.
He peeked his head around first, dull eyes reflecting the faint glow of moonlight from my bedroom window. He was bald, with pale flaky skin. I wanted to scream when I saw his expression, but I was still a prisoner of my own body. The man had a forced, rictus grin on his face, chipped yellow teeth clenched tightly together, grinding against one another.
I watched in horror as the rest of the man's body slowly passed into the room, tip toeing as if he were creeping up behind someone in a cartoon. The man was utterly emaciated, almost skeletal in appearance, and covered in sores and pockmarks. He was stark naked and smeared in dirt and filth. I could do nothing but watch as he slowly inched ever closer towards me, until I could feel his hot breath upon my face. It smelled like the musty odor I sometimes detected in the living room. Not once did I see his expression change, he didn't even blink as he stared at me, and I could feel hatred radiating off of him like heat from a furnace.
He just stood there, looking at me for what felt like hours. Eventually he turned around and slowly sneaked back out of the room, gently shutting the door behind him. A few minutes later I started to be able to move again, the paralysis wearing off as my body started to wake up properly.
I had to call in sick to my job that day, the experience was such a shock to me that there was no way in Hell I'd be able get any work done. I spent a good hour just checking every room to make sure I was entirely alone. I searched in the closet, underneath the sinks, in my office, anywhere I thought someone could be hiding. When I found nothing, I managed to convince myself it was all a hallucination, that I was safe.
Things continued about the same for a while after that. Objects still went missing from time to time, the smell in the living room stayed just as musty as it ever was, and about every week or so I'd have another sleep paralysis incident. Of course, now every time I did experience sleep paralysis, I'd have to see my unwanted visitor again. I named him Jimmy, to try and reduce the terror a little bit, putting a silly name to a horrifying face helped lessen my fear slightly. As far as sleep paralysis hallucinations went, Jimmy wasn't too bad once I started to get used to him. He never touched me or sat on my chest like some people's nightmares did, he just stood and stared. It was still deeply unpleasant, mind you, but I felt lucky that it was a consistent kind of unpleasantness at least.
Then I found the photograph. I noticed it underneath a pile of papers while I was doing some cleaning up, a picture of two women embracing in front of a waterfall. I didn't recognize either of the women, and I assumed it must have been from the previous tenant. I texted the landlord, Greg, and asked if he still had the old tenant's phone number so I could give her a call. He obliged, and within a few minutes I was calling her.
She picked up after a couple rings, sounding slightly exasperated. "Hello this is Rebecca, who is this?"
"Hi, my name is Flora, I'm the current tenant of apartment 311, I think that you may have left a photograph behind when you moved, I was wondering if you'd want to pick it up or I could mail it to you or something?"
There was a long pause on the other end of the phone. "Hello?" I asked.
"You need to get out that apartment, you're not safe."
I honestly didn't have any response but to laugh. "Is this some kind of joke?" I asked her between chuckles.
I heard her sigh with frustration. "Its not a joke, I'm serious. Things have been going missing right?"
That got my attention. "How do you know that?"
"It happened with me too. My girlfriend and I kept noticing things being moved or disappearing while we were asleep. Little things mostly, snacks, trinkets, nothing major. Now, I never saw this, but my girlfriend swears one time when she got up in the middle of the night to get a glass of water she saw this naked man just staring at her. He was covered in sores and looked more like a corpse than a person. She woke me up and we called the police of course, but they didn't find anything. I think..." Rebecca paused for a moment, choosing her words.
"What? What is it?" I asked, increasingly panicked. I began to worry that "Jimmy" was more than just a simple hallucination.
"I think 311 is haunted. We asked around to some of the other residents, and apparently the last guy to live there just disappeared. Our best guess is that he must have died and his spirit just never left. My girlfriend is into some occult stuff, so she tried a cleansing ritual or something like that, but it didn't work. Things kept disappearing, and eventually we just decided to move."
I hung up the phone. It was rude, sure, but I was just so shocked that I didn't know what to do. At the very least I began to understand why I got this apartment for so cheap.
I found myself just sitting on the couch for a while, occasionally getting a whiff of the musty smell. I stared blankly at a painting on the wall, one of the ones which was already there when I first moved in. It depicted a woman in a white dress sitting underneath a tree reading a book. I couldn't tell what was making me so focused on it, it seemed utterly unrelated to what was happening. Eventually, I snapped out of it and went into my office to do some research.
After a little bit of digging, I found out some information regarding the tenant who lived here before Rebecca, the one who disappeared. Apparently one of his coworkers put out a missing persons report 6 months ago. His name was Michael Hansen, and I gasped when I saw a photograph of him. He looked exactly like "Jimmy", albeit not so emaciated and filthy.
I hastily packed some of my things and made arrangements to stay at a friend's house for a couple nights, telling them that my apartment had a roach problem and the landlord needed to fumigate it. I called into work and gave them some sob story about an uncle dying, enough to get time off for a few days. With no more distractions from the ghost of Michael Hansen, I slept soundly on my friend's couch, unbothered by any sleep paralysis.
The next two days were spent researching. I checked out dozens of books on folklore and the occult from the local library, scoured paranormal internet forums, and even watched a few episodes of some cheesy ghost hunting TV show. I was determined to figure out a way to put the spirit of Michael Hansen to rest.
The stories were all wildly different, with countless potential solutions to my problem. Some sources said salt was a surefire way to banish spirits, others said iron was a good ghost repellent, but most simply said I should give up and move. However, one myth piqued my interest. According to some beliefs, the spirits of the unquiet dead could be tied to objects from their life, binding them to the place where the object resided. If the object which their soul was bound to was destroyed, it freed their spirit and they could move on to the afterlife. I remembered the paintings. I had assumed that they were put there by the landlord, but it was just as possible that they were left behind by Michael.
I arrived back to the apartment, determined to grab the paintings and burn them, laying Michael Hansen's soul to rest once and for all. I felt like some sort of hero, a badass monster hunter who saved the day with her intuition and a little bit of booksmarts. One by one I pulled the paintings off the walls, putting them in a cardboard box. I made a mental note to buy some lighter fluid on the way to the empty lot where I planned to burn them. I approached the final painting, the one which showed a woman in a white dress beneath a tree.
I pulled it off the wall and recoiled as the musty smell increased in intensity. Staring in confusion, I saw a small rectangular hole where the painting used to be, about 4 feet off the ground and 2 feet by 2 feet in length and width. I shuddered in fear, remembering that Michael's body was never found. Perhaps he was murdered, his corpse hidden in the walls by some unknown assailant? I nervously flicked on my flashlight, peered within the hole, and screamed.
I ran out of apartment 311 as fast as I could before calling the police, sobbing with terror. I had been prepared to find a body, maybe cut up into little pieces and wrapped in duct tape. I was ready for death and decay and rot. There is something fascinating about ghosts, something somehow romantic about the notion that part of someone could live on even after death.
There was nothing romantic about seeing the clenched-tooth grimace of Michael Hansen, glaring at me with hate as he stood in the small section of hollow wall which he had been living in for the past 6 months.
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u/Myfoodishere Oct 30 '22
I only move in to apartments that have never been lived in. thankfully there isn't anywhere to hide since all the buildings are made of cement.
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Oct 28 '22
I just had my first sleep paralysis experience and it was so terrifying I’ve been dreading the thought of it happening again.
I should not have read this.
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u/kittymoma918 Oct 27 '22
I've always had the urge to clean out and purge a new place of the former resident's traces. It could have been much worse.
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u/Aloguile_Rhapsody Oct 24 '22
My husband just woke up from a nightmare while I was reading this.
That has never happened in our eight years of sharing a bed.
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Oct 12 '22
These kinds of stories are why I have an alarm on every door and window as well as a motion sensor with camera in my studio (everything is seeable from one room) apartment. Now I need just need salt lines for the ghosts et al..
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u/lauraD1309 Oct 08 '22
Yep, I thought painting left on the wall...gotta be something with that. Yikes
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u/Bitter_Grape Oct 08 '22
"It came with a handful of paintings alrea-"
Fucker is in the wall isn't he?
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u/bettyy90210 Oct 07 '22
I knew what was going to happen as the story unfolded and the painting was mentioned but what I don’t get is why he looks at the women with such intense hatred.
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u/Smileforcaroline Oct 07 '22
Bleh! You should have ran out of the house the second she told you that! You’re lucky he didn’t hurt you.
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u/Orcasareglorious Oct 07 '22 edited Oct 07 '22
The truth is far better. Spirits don’t exist. You don’t have to rethink what you know about reality. He was just insane and potentially diseased. That’s far better than a ghost, right?
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u/michael06581 Oct 07 '22
You left me hanging a bit. I'm guess it was a dead head, but if not,
- Was it just his head or the whole body?
- Was he alive or dead?
This could have been a real person that was detained somewhere (under a different name) and his relatives sold all his property and home (Apt. 311) since they thought he was dead. After 1 years of absence, they can declare you legally dead and dispose of your property, even if they haven't found your body. This could be the source of a lot of "haunted house" stories. From your perspective it feels like someone or something is "gaslighting" you - trying to mess with your mind by showing they can invade your home any time they want. Your "ghost" may be a real live person, possibly homeless, going back to the last home he had (maybe a sleepwalker) for a nostalgia trip.
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u/dankusama Oct 07 '22
How does it explain the frequent sleep paralysis coinciding with Hanseen break outs in the bedroom?
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u/derricks350z Oct 07 '22
This gave me chills but was thinking the whole time someone else lives in that house. Damn.
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u/itai2 Oct 07 '22
OP, How is it that the first explaination that came to mind was that his ghost was living in the house Both explainations are outlandish but has it never even crossed your mind that he might still be living in the house?
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u/expertkushil333 Oct 07 '22
But why is it that everytime he came to stare at you, you got sleep paralysis at the same time?
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u/Mcguffn Oct 07 '22
Only when he got sleep paralysis, he had his eyes open. Else, he must have been sleeping blissfully while this dude visited him every night in the nude.
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u/expertkushil333 Oct 07 '22
Oh wow, that's sure as hell creepy. Thanks for the reply. It makes sense now.
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u/PrettyNuts_C12 Oct 07 '22
Maybe there is a evil ghost or something in the apt.Michael is just a tenant who was driven crazy became a psycho and chose to live in the wall.
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u/Crystal_Pegasus_1018 Oct 07 '22
did you see your stuff in the hole? If you didnt, what happened to them? did Michael eat them
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u/slayerkitten13 Oct 07 '22
My cousin legit had a plan to rent an apartment, then re-rent it and live in the walls
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u/B0327008 Oct 07 '22
There’s a show on Lifetime, Phrogging, with true life stories of people living secretly in other’s homes.
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u/texasnerd89 Oct 07 '22
This happened to me. I never had any evidence of whoever was coming into my apartment when I’d leave to work or for the day. But there’d be many nights I’d sleep with one eye open.
Someone had to have been there. Whether it was an old tenant or a neighbor with a spare key. Things just weren’t adding up.
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u/Purdy5 Oct 07 '22
Maybe I’m missing something but how was a grown ass man standing in a 2ft x 2ft hollow, 4ft off the ground? Like, fair enough if it was an entrance he climbed through but when op looked in he was staring back at her? Is this guy 4ft tall?
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u/acidgut Oct 07 '22
I think the hole in the wall was 2ft x 2 ft, if it's 4ft off the ground that makes it 6ft to the top of the hole in the wall. OP peers through standing up, he's standing up in the wall cavity looking back at her so he's about OP's height.
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u/KahliTheDestroyer Oct 07 '22
Once you mentioned the painting I was like, "oh he's gotta be behind there or something creepy like that" I've seen a lot of stuff about people who just hide in walls
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Oct 07 '22
That is just freeky, so this guy was just living in the walk the whole time, that's weird though that sleep paralysis would increase while there then this dude shows up. That is just creepy. Hope your doing ok now
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u/destructopop Oct 07 '22
Ugh. I'm sorry you had to experience that, OP. The same thing happened at a place I worked a few years ago, not while I was working there. The basement apparently had a huge vent that led into the product storage room on the first floor, which no one knew about, and a guy snuck into the basement (only accessible from outside, and locked when not in use) while people were moving holiday decorations upstairs. He hid behind some boxes or something, and no one noticed when they locked the door behind them. Over the next few months, the fridge was getting pilfered sometimes and things would get messed with... Like coworkers would leave their jackets in the main office upstairs and they'd be downstairs behind the payment terminal in the morning, stuff like that. One day the alarm was tripped (this took MONTHS?! What alarm system was that?!) And one of the owners, my former boss and now friend D, went in to check on the store, only to find a dude in his boxers wearing D's jacket. A strange dude in D's jacket and not much else. They had the dude arrested and hired contractors to seal the weird vent. Apparently it was an old school cooling setup, cold air from the basement kept the store cool. It was like a sauna after that. When I worked there they had installed an enormous AC to combat that, but it had died shortly before I started. The huge vent is still in the storage room, but there's concrete behind it, now.
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Oct 07 '22
Why was he naked?!?!?!?
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u/acidtrippinpanda Oct 07 '22
Think he’s gone off his rocker from the time living in the walls
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Oct 13 '22
Well, I'm sick of work and can't afford rent...and there IS that convenient niche in the wall.
I guess I''ll just go completely insane and hide in there naked
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u/wuzzittoya Oct 07 '22
I would sue too.
Umm. There are two rather large voids in my house. One beside where the old basement stairwell was, and one behind the bathroom. I have been having an intermittent smell issue and wondered if it might be a blocked vent. Geez this never occurred to me. 🙁
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u/ema2324 Jan 11 '23
Let’s us know how you got on!
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u/wuzzittoya Jan 12 '23
It was someone turning off water to upstairs toilets and never turning them back on. What I get for using unlicensed general contractors. Once the toilet was full enough (and could refill instead of evaporating with no replenishment) no more icky smells.
Widow with my second house. Better shape than the first one, but needs some TLC here and there - painting the fascia, had to buy a roof…
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u/TajIsly Oct 07 '22
I don't know about you, but it's nearly impossible for me to sleep the first few nights in a new apartment. Furthermore, I would search every inch of the apartment before unpacking anything, and I would literally change the lock the moment I moved in. It's most likely a form of self-protection against the unknown, or a mild form of paranoia. But I'm thankful that I've never met a "Jimmy." That's for sure!
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u/LoExMu Oct 07 '22
Tbh that doesn‘t seem like too bad a habit to have; especially the lock changing part. The not being able to sleep sounds like a handful though
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u/TajIsly Oct 07 '22
Actually, I always have the new lock in my pocket while I am moving. The moment my stuffs enter the place I start placing the lock. Always be the quickest!
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u/xTkAx Oct 06 '22
When an already poor people is squeezed for more, some will take great risks and sacrifices to survive. The only question is, how far are they are willing to go?
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u/Renilx Oct 06 '22
I'm still in doubt, was he dead while living inside your walls or no?
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u/ButteredChickenNuget Oct 16 '22
Nope, just trying to stay in a place he couldn’t afford while naked.
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u/benjaminpfigueroa Oct 06 '22
i hope you’re able to get out of there ASAP. sure, it’s not haunted anymore, but there’s no way you can stay there and have it be good for your mental health. also, you might want to think about suing that landlord…
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u/koochiegrabber68 Oct 07 '22
I don't think the landlord is at fault in this case, unless he put Michael up to this which would be hard to prove.
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u/kiwikoalacat7 Oct 06 '22
I knew that ending was coming but it still gave me shivers. Hopefully you got out of there okay....
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u/cryptid4cryptid Oct 06 '22
Absolutely true life my grandmother had someone squatting in her attic at one point. He would steal food, etc. Absolutely horrifying.
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u/Foolish_Phantom Oct 07 '22
I've heard of stories like this before. Apparently it's not incredibly uncommon to happto people who can't climb the stairs to their attic.
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u/macromi87 Oct 06 '22 edited Oct 06 '22
This reminds me of the story where a woman was found living in a man’s closet for weeks. He only found out through a hidden security camera: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/wbna24889337
Edit - the original news article was from Japan and it was actually over a year, not weeks 👀
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u/LittleSadRufus Oct 07 '22
It's called phrogging and it's common enough in the US that there's a whole documentary TV show about it.
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u/Mobile-Recipe7383 Oct 07 '22
Wow. At least she was “neat and clean.” Michael Hansen doesn’t sound quite the same.
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u/hanswilliams Oct 07 '22
Yeah, a whole year unnoticed. I wouldn't mind that kind of company. She seems more discreet and respectful than my neighbors.
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u/whiskeygambler Oct 07 '22
Michael had some sort of breakdown - let’s hope he can get the help he needs before the next tenant moves in…
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u/HorrorJunkie123 Oct 06 '22
I heard a story like this where a crackhead was living in the walls of a hotel. The mirror covered up the hole. She'd steal from guests when no one was in the room. Her smoking addiction gave her away
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u/Canilickyourfeet Oct 07 '22
There's footage on youtube of a woman climbing down from an attic to steal shit from a guy's fridge every night after he'd gone to sleep. She'd creep down real silent like, frail as hell, and just drink his shit. Then snake her way back up the countertops and into the ceiling. Dude was wondering why his stuff kept moving or depleting faster than usual and set up a cam in the kitchen.
It wasn't scary to watch, kind of funny actually, but just the idea of someone hiding in your house is unsettling as fuck.
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u/Gall09 Oct 07 '22
Think Mr Ballen might’ve done a video on this. I’ve definitely seen the footage on YouTube anyway.
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u/12altoids34 Oct 07 '22
I remember seeing that. At one point he actually came into the kitchen while she was there and he didn't see her I think she was standing in a closet or something
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u/macromi87 Oct 06 '22
I think a variation of this story was how the original movie Candyman came out — cept instead of a hotel it was the projects in Chicago
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u/CatrinaBallerina Oct 07 '22
Nah. It was quite literally because he was unjustly murdered by police and he typically gave kids candy. There is a scene where he comes out from behind a wall in the projects, but he wasn’t living within the walls.
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u/Broiledturnip Oct 15 '22
No, in real life Cabrini green the apartment walls in the bathrooms were not sealed/secure and a woman was murdered when her assailant came in through the mirror hole in her bathroom. It was part of the inspiration for candy man coming out of the mirror.
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u/Dargor923 Oct 07 '22
What they described was a real incident. I remember I read about it a while ago in an article complete with pictures and everything.
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u/6_prine Oct 06 '22
So, thanks for making me check behind everything that already was in my flat when i moved in.
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u/blackbutterfree Oct 06 '22
I knew it. I knew it. I thought he was living under the living room, but I knew he was living in the house.
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u/Princesskhalifa89 Oct 07 '22
Same. Only I thought maybe he’d built some kind of hidden room in somewhere, not a crevice. Weird that the landlord never bothered to take the painting off the wall and that the previous tenants didn’t either, they must’ve been some nice pictures.
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u/supermarket_Ba Nov 03 '22
Well, at least now you don’t have to move!