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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Slow_Ad1827 on 2025-05-22 01:40:43+00:00.

I live in a small, older apartment complex in central Oregon. The kind of place with popcorn ceilings, weird plumbing, and tenants who mind their own business. You hear the occasional couple fighting through the walls, maybe a dog barking two floors down, but otherwise it’s quiet. Uneventful.

My neighbor across the hall, Leah, was like most people here—polite, a little distant, and always tired. She worked night shifts at the hospital and usually came home around 4 in the morning. I’d sometimes run into her in the stairwell or outside grabbing mail. We weren’t close, but we exchanged smiles and small talk. It was comfortable.

That changed about three weeks ago.

She started looking… off. Like something was wearing her face too tightly. Her eyes were always darting. Her smile got tighter. One night, I passed her in the hall and asked if she was okay. She looked over her shoulder, paused for a long moment, and then said, “If something knocks, don’t answer it.” Then she walked away without another word.

I didn’t sleep well that night.

At 2:02 AM, I heard a knock on my door.

Three soft, precise taps.

I looked through the peephole. No one. The hallway was empty. I opened the door and checked anyway. Still nothing. But there was a folded note tucked under the edge of my doormat. It was from Leah.

It said:

“If you hear knocking at 3:17 AM, do not open the door. Do not respond. Do not move. Do not make a sound. And whatever you do, do NOT look at it.”

Her handwriting was clean. Focused. It didn’t feel like a prank or a breakdown. It felt like a warning. I taped it to my fridge.

The next night, I stayed up. Sat on the floor with all the lights off. No TV. No sound.

At 3:17 AM on the dot, it happened.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

I froze. My mouth went dry. It was just like before—three soft taps. Deliberate. Like someone wanted me to know they were there.

Then another three. And another. Slower. Heavier.

I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. My entire body felt like a tuning fork for dread.

Eventually, the knocking stopped.

In the morning, I went to Leah’s apartment. I knocked. Nothing. I called out. Nothing.

Later that day, the landlord came by with a master key to check on her. Her door was unlocked. Inside… the place was wrong. Not ransacked. Not abandoned. Just empty, like she evaporated mid-move.

Cabinets open. Drawers pulled out. No food. No clothes. Her phone was on the counter with 17 missed calls. And on the kitchen wall, written in ash or soot or something worse, was a single sentence:

“It saw me see it.”

No one’s seen Leah since.

The police took a report. Said there were no signs of forced entry. No signs of anything. Just another person who vanished.

That should’ve been the end of it.

But last night, another note appeared under my door.

Same handwriting. No envelope. Just a single line:

“It knocks louder when it knows you’re awake.”

And as I write this—my hands shaking, every hair on my neck standing—I just heard it again.

Three knocks. Right now.

It’s 3:17 AM.

And I think I’m going to look.