He Lived in My House...

Hi, this is the first time I’m sharing something here, so I hope my story will be easy to understand (by the way, this isn’t my account).

For privacy reasons, I won’t give my name or age.

For a bit of context, this happened about two years ago, a few weeks after my little brother was born. Ever since we moved into this house, there’s been this small room in the basement that’s always locked. To show you how little anyone uses it, I don’t even know what’s in there, but I’ve always assumed it’s just utility stuff like meters or something. The room is really tiny, barely big enough to lie down in.

Now, let’s get into it. My parents went away for a weekend together, leaving me, my older sister, and my baby brother (who was just a few weeks old at the time) at home. My parents trusted us to take care of ourselves since they’d done this before. Anyway, that night my sister went out with friends and wasn’t planning to come back until 4 or 5 in the morning. I watched a good movie and, since it was already getting late, I decided to put my little brother to bed in his room upstairs. I did that and came back down to watch another movie, but I ended up falling asleep.

About two or three hours later, around midnight, I woke up to these strange noises coming from upstairs. At first, I thought it was just the neighbors since they can be pretty loud and the walls are thin. But then I looked at the time and realized it was too late for them to still be awake, let alone making that kind of noise. So, I got closer to the stairs to investigate, and just as I was about to go up the first step, I heard the sound of something metal falling on the ground. Guess what? It was the key to the small room in the basement.

I immediately grabbed my phone, and instead of calling the police, I texted my friends to tell them what was happening. One of my friends had the brilliant idea of calling the police for me. Suddenly, I heard the bathroom door slam shut. I knew it was that door because it makes a very specific creaking noise when it closes. I remembered my brother was sleeping upstairs, so I carefully went up to check if he was okay. Thankfully, he was fine.

Still not fully grasping how much danger I was in, I went to the bathroom door. Since it opens inward, I decided to violently push it open—and I heard a man scream. I immediately shut the door and held it closed to keep him from getting out. He broke the window, and outside the bathroom, there’s this sort of balcony—not a proper one, but you get the idea—that connects to the balconies of the neighboring houses, which are all really close together. He used that to escape.

I grabbed my brother in my arms, ran to the kitchen, and noticed that one of the knives was missing from the knife block. I picked up another knife and crouched in a corner of the living room, crying like never before. The police arrived, and I opened the door for them.

When they searched the house, they confirmed that the bathroom window was broken, and I had hit the guy so hard that there was blood on the floor. But the most shocking and traumatizing part was what they found in that small basement room. There were blankets and cans of food. They concluded that he had been living there for several days...

That’s it. I hesitated a lot before posting this because it really affected me, and I’m sorry if the story isn’t super clear—some of the details are still jumbled in my head. Anyway, I hope you found it interesting!