Stacy's Attic

My friend had this new apartment, it was duplex style, two apartments per building, and had a small storage area in the attic.

Late one night, Stacy heard a thump upstairs, so she freaked out and instead of calling 911 she called her dad who came over to look around. He opened the attic door and looked around with a flashlight, said he saw nothing unusual. They figured maybe the neighbor, who had been moving out, was upstairs grabbing something on their side of the duplex.

Stacy tried to shrug it off, but remained tormented for a few months, she had trouble sleeping and started having some weird dreams. Occasionally, she'd hear thumping noises from the attic, but her dad assured her that it was nothing. Stacy became convinced that her house was haunted, she invited some friends over who were into spirit communication and they tried to contact the ghost to ask it to leave.

One night, I called Stacy's house, I had her phone number on speed dial, and I pressed "dial" and number 2 (she was my number 2). A man answered the phone, and I asked for her, I thought it was her dad or something. He said, "No, she doesn't live here sorry." I thought it was a case of crossed wires, or some weird call forwarding error on the part of the phone company, so I called back. This time I punched in her phone number directly, and the man answered again. "No, Stacy doesn't live here, don't call again."

I was freaked out, I really needed to tell her something. I waited a few hours and called back by using my speed dial once again. Stacy answered this time, and I told her that some man had answered her phone. She didn't believe me and asked if I'd been drinking, and then she checked the caller id.

My phone number came up three times on her caller ID. I had indeed called the right number, there was no strange call forwarding error, someone else had answered her phone.

My friend still did not call 911, at this point it was likely she avoided it because there was pot in her house and she didn't want the legal trouble. She went about her business trying to pretend nothing happened. Stacy isn't the smartest person around, and she was still convinced that somehow, I was making it up. She didn't believe me that a man had answered the phone, and even taunted me, telling me I was hallucinating.

As she left the house the next night, her new neighbor was in the yard, he waved to her and said, "Well it's nice to meet you finally, I met your dad yesterday."

"Yesterday?" she asked.

"Yeah, older guy, long coat, white hair and a long beard, seemed a little grumpy. He had a key so I figured it was your dad."

"That's not my dad," she said, "I don't know anyone fitting that description." she replied as she jumped into her car and drove to my place.

I'll never forget the look on her face...how long had he been there, the night she heard the thumps for the first time? How much had he heard, how much had he seen?

She called the police, but there was no sign of the guy. They did tell her that it appeared someone had recently been in the attic, they found foot prints.

Apparently he'd been accessing from the neighbor's place through a hole in the wall between their attic-spaces.

The police said he must have been someone who knew the previous tenant. All the locks were changed and my friend didn't hear thumps in the attic anymore.