7 Disturbing Cases of Strangers Living in the Walls
#Horror #Story #Stories #Scary #Ghost # Haunted #Fright #Nightmare #Real #True #Paranormal
#Horror #Story #Stories #Scary #Ghost # Haunted #Fright #Nightmare #Real #True #Paranormal
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00In 1986, in the quiet town of Pepperell, Massachusetts, the Bowen family moved into
00:09an old colonial house. Frank Bowen was raising his two daughters alone after the tragic loss
00:14of their mother. Tina was 16 and her younger sister Karen was just 9. They were a close-knit
00:21family trying to heal. Not long after moving in, strange things started happening around
00:27the house. It began with small stuff, tapping noises in the walls, lights turning on and
00:33off by themselves, and furniture appearing slightly out of place. The family dismissed
00:38it as the quirks of an old home. Then things escalated. One night, Tina and Karen attempted
00:45to use a Ouija board for fun. They laughed at first, but their faces dropped when the board
00:50began to respond. Moments later, they heard three distinct knocks coming from inside the
00:56wall. That's when the fear started to take root. More nights passed, and more things
01:02went wrong. Objects went missing. The TV would turn on in the middle of the night. Frank began
01:08to feel watched, but nothing prepared them for what came next. Frank came home one evening
01:14to complete chaos. The house was freezing cold despite the heat being on. Radios blared static.
01:21The television was on with no signal. He climbed the stairs and found something horrifying.
01:27Standing in the hallway was a teenage boy he didn't recognize. He wore a wig and wedding
01:32dress. His face was smeared with makeup. In his hand, he held a hatchet. It was Daniel LaPlante.
01:40He had been living in the walls of the Bowen house. He'd broken in months earlier after becoming
01:45obsessed with Tina. He'd installed peepholes to spy on her and her family. He moved around the
01:51walls and crawl spaces like a rat, coming out only when no one was looking. The noises, the missing
01:57items, and the feelings of being watched. It was all him. Frank was able to escape with his daughters
02:03and alert the police. When officers searched the house, they found Daniel hiding in a narrow wall
02:08cavity, crouched and silent. There were tunnels carved out behind the walls, complete with blankets,
02:14food wrappers, and peepholes. LaPlante was arrested, but later released on bail. Not long after,
02:21he broke into another home and brutally murdered a pregnant woman and her two children. He was later
02:26convicted and sentenced to life in prison. The Bowen family never returned to that house.
02:31Ohio State in 2013. A group of college students rented a house off-campus near Ohio State University.
02:44It was an old place, but cheap, and ten people shared it. Like most college rentals, it had quirks,
02:51bad wiring, flickering lights, and strange noises. No one thought much of it at first, but one tenant,
02:58Brett, started noticing odd things. Cabinets were left open. The fridge seemed emptier than it should
03:04be. Lights were turned on that no one remembered using. The basement had a door that was always
03:09locked, labeled as a utility closet. The landlord said not to worry about it. Then, one night,
03:16Brett went down to reset the breaker after a power surge. When he turned the corner, he saw a man
03:21walking out of the basement. The man was barefoot and calm, like he belonged there. Brett froze and
03:28asked, who are you? The man said his name was Jeremy and walked away. Brett and his roommates broke
03:34into the locked door. What they found was shocking. Inside was a small, makeshift room. A mattress,
03:42personal photos, books, a guitar. Jeremy had been living in there, undetected, for weeks, maybe even
03:49longer. He ate their food, used their bathroom, and moved quietly to avoid being found. Turns out,
03:56Jeremy had a copy of the house key from a previous tenant and had never officially left. He just
04:02started living in the basement after everyone thought he was gone. The police were called,
04:06but Jeremy didn't resist. He packed up and left. No charges were filed, but the roommates were deeply
04:13shaken. After that, no one felt safe in the house again. Not long after Jeremy left, another group of
04:20students moved into that same house. They'd heard stories, but assumed it was just an urban legend.
04:27Soon enough, they started to experience the same things. Missing food, footsteps at night,
04:33doors left open. Eventually, one of the roommates ventured into the basement to investigate.
04:38What he found was disturbing. Someone else had moved in, again. Another man, older this time,
04:45had quietly taken up residence in the dark corners of the basement. His name was Jared. Like Jeremy,
04:51he'd gotten a copy of the key and slipped in without being noticed. He wasn't hostile. In fact,
04:57he apologized and offered to leave. But the idea that he had been there, sleeping beneath them,
05:02listening and watching, it left the house in a state of paranoia. The house was never the same.
05:08The students started locking every door, adding cameras, and avoiding the basement altogether.
05:13They later learned that there was a term for this. Frogging, when someone secretly lives in another
05:19person's home without them knowing. But for them, it wasn't a story or concept. It was real,
05:26and it changed the rest of their living experience in the house.
05:34This story was sent to me by a girl named Ashley. She lives alone in a small one-bedroom house outside
05:40Spokane, Washington. She moved in last winter. The place is old, but charming. Quiet street and
05:46decent size. Her friends warned her about living alone in a house that backed up the thick woods,
05:52but she liked the privacy. At first, everything was fine. She settled in, decorated, and worked from
05:59home as a freelance graphic designer. Weeks went by without incident, until mid-February.
06:05It started small and unnoticeable, the kind of things you'd shrug off. A spoon in the sink when
06:11she swore she had cleaned it. Her shampoo bottle moved slightly, lights flickering once or twice.
06:17She thought maybe she was just tired, maybe she was slipping. Then she started hearing things.
06:23At night, while watching TV in bed, she'd hear soft tapping in the walls.
06:27It wasn't mice. It was slow and rhythmic, almost like knuckles. At first, she assumed it was old
06:39pipes or maybe the wood settling, but the tapping would happen after midnight, sometimes right after
06:44she turned off the TV, like it was waiting. A few nights later, she heard something new, scraping,
06:51coming from the air vent near the ceiling in her bedroom. It only lasted a second, and then silence.
06:58She stood on a chair and shined her phone flashlight into the vents, but saw nothing,
07:03just darkness. She didn't think much of it until one day, about three weeks after the noises started,
07:09when she woke up and found her back door wide open. No signs of forced entry or anything missing.
07:15The door was just wide open, like someone had left in a hurry, or entered quietly.
07:23She called the police, and they looked around and said the lock may have malfunctioned.
07:28They advised her to get a new one. She replaced all the locks that day, but something still felt wrong.
07:34That night, as she was lying in bed, she heard the scraping again, then footsteps. Not in the
07:40livable space of her house, but above her, in the crawl space between the ceiling and the roof.
07:46It stopped as soon as she grabbed her phone. She didn't sleep that night, and the next morning,
07:51she climbed into the attic through the hallway panel. It was mostly insulation, dead bugs, and old boards.
07:58But in one far corner, she found something that didn't belong. A plastic water bottle, an empty
08:04granola wrapper, and the unmistakable shape of a rolled-up sleeping bag. Someone had been living
08:10up there. She bolted, called the police, and refused to go back in. This time, the officers did a full
08:17sweep, and they found him. The man was hiding inside the wall cavity behind her bedroom closet.
08:23He had built himself a narrow tunnel, accessed through a loose panel behind the furnace in the
08:28laundry room. There was a small camp light, bags of food, and a pile of clothes. They said it looked
08:34like he'd been there for weeks, at least a month. He had cut a small peephole through the drywall,
08:40covered by a vent grate. From there, he had a perfect view of her bed. He watched her sleep
08:46every night. They arrested him, but he had no ID and no explanation. Just some random drifter,
08:53likely homeless. But they think he had been watching her even before she moved in.
08:57There were scuff marks in the crawlspace, like he'd been using it long before she noticed anything
09:02wrong. Ashley moved out that same week. The landlord tried to patch up the walls and make
09:07the place feel new again, but apparently no one wanted to rent it. The idea that someone could
09:12live just inches away from you in the walls, in the dark, is enough to make anyone's skin crawl.
09:18Ashley says according to the neighbors, a young couple moved into the house a few months later,
09:22and they quickly moved out within under a month. They never got an explanation why.
09:27As far as she knows, the house sits vacant today.
09:35The case of Theodore Coney's in Denver, Colorado, 1941. Philip Peters was a 73-year-old retired
09:42railroad auditor who lived alone while his wife recovered in the hospital. He was known to be
09:47polite and quiet, a man of strict routines and old-world values. His home was a small Victorian
09:53structure, built decades earlier, with tight eaves and an attic space that most would consider
09:59uninhabitable. Peters had lived in that house for decades, and he knew its creeks, drafts,
10:04and shifting shadows. But what he didn't know was that someone else was learning those things too.
10:09Someone who had been living right above his head.
10:11Theodore Coney's, a local man in his early 60s, had once been acquainted with Peters.
10:19Desperately ill and homeless, Coney's decided to visit the home unannounced. Finding it empty,
10:25he let himself in. When he saw that the attic had a small crawl space barely large enough for a grown
10:31man to squeeze into, he made a decision that would define his life and also end another's.
10:36Coney's lived in the attic for weeks, maybe longer, without ever being seen. He crept down only when
10:43he was certain Peters was out, stealing small amounts of food, water, and newspapers. He left
10:49little evidence of his presence, except for odd creaks and faint footsteps Peters chalked up to the old
10:54bones of the house. But one night, everything changed. Peters came home early from a hospital visit
11:01and heard movement upstairs. Investigating, he climbed the staircase and was met by Coney's, who was emerging
11:08from the attic hatch. Startled and desperate, Coney's attacked Peter with an old iron stove shaker. He beat
11:15him to death and disappeared back into the attic. When police arrived, they were at a loss. There was no
11:22forced entry, no missing valuables. The doors were locked from the inside. They called it the Ghost House
11:29murder. The case went cold for months. Meanwhile, Coney stayed in the attic, living feet above the
11:35place he'd turned into a crime scene. Eventually, neighbors saw signs of movement in the supposedly
11:41abandoned home. The police were called again. When they heard a noise above, they climbed into the attic.
11:48There, in a cramped blackened crawlspace, they found Coney's. He was filthy, emaciated,
11:55and seemed like he'd gone insane. He'd been living in the walls of that house for over five weeks after
12:00the murder, surviving off stored food and tap water, emerging only to pace and stare through the
12:06ventilation grates. He confessed on the spot. The press dubbed him the Denver Spider-Man,
12:12and he was sentenced to life in prison. The house was never occupied again.
12:16South Carolina, 2012. A woman living with her five children began to notice strange things around
12:28the house. She had just ended a long and rocky relationship with a man who had a history of
12:34erratic behavior, including multiple stints in jail. But she had moved on and tried to rebuild her life,
12:40focusing on her kids and her home. One night, as she lay in bed, she noticed something odd.
12:48Nails from the ceiling began to push downward. It looked as if someone were trying to remove them
12:53from above. She heard scratching and faint thumps, and what she thought was whispering.
12:59She dismissed it at first as stress or imagination, but then things escalated. Objects would move slightly
13:06from where they had been placed. Her food disappeared faster than it should. One morning,
13:11she woke to find insulation debris on her bed. Finally, she sent her nephew to investigate the
13:17attic. What he found shocked them all. Her ex-boyfriend was living up there. He had carved out a tiny
13:24makeshift living space beside the heating unit. He made a bed fashioned from coats and blankets,
13:30and he had been spying on her through a vent directly above her bed. There were plastic cups filled
13:35with urine and feces, indicating he hadn't left the attic for days. He admitted he had been up there
13:41for over two weeks. He came down, apologized, and calmly left before the police could arrest him.
13:48But the woman was traumatized, knowing that someone she once trusted had watched her and her children
13:53sleep, mere feet above their heads. The woman stated she would be shaken for life.
14:06In February of 2020, a man in Oklahoma City started to notice some small things around his home were
14:12out of place, like a cereal box was half empty when it should have been full. The back door was unlocked
14:18one morning. The thermostat was changed in the night. His first thought was a memory lapse,
14:23then maybe an animal or even a prank by a neighbor. But the disturbances continued, always subtle but
14:30just enough to be unsettling. One day, he finally decided to investigate the attic. He expected to
14:37find a dead raccoon or maybe some birds. Instead, as he poked his head through the hatch, his flashlight
14:43landed on something horrifying. A mattress, a pile of clothing, and a man fast asleep.
14:50The intruder was in his thirties and looked unkempt and exhausted. The homeowner backed away and called
14:56the police, holding the man at gunpoint until they arrived. Investigators later learned the intruder had
15:02climbed an exterior staircase and entered through an unused rear attic door. He had lived in the home for
15:07nearly a week without being noticed. He survived on pantry food, snuck into the bathroom while the
15:13homeowner was out, and returned to his hiding spot like a ghost each time. He had no connection to the
15:19homeowner and offered no clear motive beyond desperation. He was arrested and charged with
15:24unlawful entry. The homeowner, though unharmed, said the experience forever changed how he viewed his own
15:31house. He couldn't sleep in peace knowing how close someone had been to him, completely undetected.
15:37Lisa Leichhardt lives alone in a small 1950s house just outside Portland, Oregon. She bought
15:48the home earlier this year after a breakup, eager to start fresh. It wasn't perfect. It creaked in
15:54the wind and the pipes groaned sometimes, but it was quiet and cozy. And it was just enough space for
16:00her and her dog. At first, she loved the solitude. But about two months in, something started to feel off.
16:07It began at night, when she was in bed. She would hear very soft sounds, like breathing.
16:14Very muffled and low breathing, like someone with a heavy chest cold exhaling slowly through their nose.
16:23And the thing was, it always seemed to come from the same spot, the wall directly beside her bed.
16:29She even moved her nightstand to see if maybe it was a vent or something. There was nothing, just an
16:34old blank wall with faded paint and a strange little square panel about a foot wide, bolted
16:40shut near the baseboard. It didn't seem important, maybe an old utility hatch. But the breathing kept
16:47happening. And then came the other sounds. Late at night, usually between 2 and 4 am, she would hear
16:53quiet tapping, like fingers tapping on wood. One night, she was lying still, staring at the ceiling,
17:01when she heard a whisper.
17:02She couldn't make out the words, but it came from inside the wall. That was the first time she left
17:10the house in the middle of the night to stay at a friend's place. She told her friend about the
17:15noises, and her friend joked that it sounded like her house was haunted, but Lisa didn't think it was
17:20a ghost. It sounded too real. She started sleeping on the couch, and even then, some nights she thought
17:27she'd heard something faint, like someone crawling through insulation. After about a week of avoiding
17:33her bedroom, she finally decided she had to confront it. She took a crowbar to the small square panel on
17:39the wall. It came off easier than expected. As it turned out, the screws weren't even holding it
17:44in place, so it could have been removed with her bare hands. Behind it was a dark cavity.
17:50She turned on her phone flashlight and aimed it into the space. At first, she saw insulation and old
17:57wood. Then she noticed that the space actually opened up further. It wasn't just a hollow wall.
18:03It was a crawl space, roughly three feet wide, stretching back into darkness. She leaned closer.
18:10That's when she saw a man, sitting in the far corner of the space. His knees were to his chest,
18:16and he was filthy, pale, and his eyes wide and locked on hers. He didn't move or speak. All he
18:23did was stare back at her like he had been waiting for her. She screamed, dropped her phone, and ran.
18:29The man didn't come out, but when the police arrived, they searched the crawl space area,
18:34and he was gone. Inside, they found evidence he'd been living there for weeks. A sleeping bag,
18:39plastic bottles filled with urine, food wrappers, and drawings, hundreds of them,
18:44scrawled onto the wood in insulation with pencil and charcoal. Most of them were of a woman, likely
18:50Lisa. The man had accessed the crawl space through a forgotten storage hatch in the basement utility
18:55closet. It led up behind the walls of her bedroom, directly to the spot where the breathing had come
19:01from. He'd likely been watching her, listening to her sleep. The police never caught him. They said
19:07he might have been homeless, or maybe something worse. Someone who had picked her at random.
19:13Someone who knew to stay hidden. Lisa moved out immediately. She's still in therapy,
19:19and she hasn't lived alone ever since this incident.
Be the first to comment