The Man in Apartment 6C - By Anonymous

 

I used to think I was good at reading people. I work in property management, so I meet a lot of tenants. Most are normal. Some are difficult. A few are... off. But none ever made me feel the way the man in apartment 6C did.

He moved into our building last winter. A tall, pale guy named Lucas Hart. Early 30s. Always wore the same dark coat, even indoors. His eyes were sunken like he hadn’t slept in weeks, and he spoke in this low, whispery voice that always made me lean in just to hear him. Something about him felt wrong immediately. Not criminal wrong… just off.

But I had no real reason to deny him. His paperwork was spotless. First and last month’s rent in cash. He barely said a word during the lease signing.

Just “I don’t need keys. I won’t be leaving much.”

That should’ve been my first red flag.

The first week, he kept to himself. No complaints, no noise, nothing.

Then tenants on the 5th floor started mentioning strange sounds coming from above at night. Dragging noises. Like furniture scraping across the floor. Sometimes rhythmic tapping. Always between 2 and 4 A.M.

When I brought it up to Lucas, he smiled for the first time—but not in a comforting way. It was thin. Cold.

“Must be the building settling,” he said.

I let it go. Old buildings make sounds, right?

The second week, things got weirder.

An elderly tenant named Mrs. Donnelly told me she saw him in the hallway at 3 A.M., just standing there. Not moving. Not blinking. When she tried to speak to him, he turned and walked back into his apartment without a word.

Then I got a call from a tenant in 6B. She said she heard whispering through the shared wall. Except it wasn’t English. Or any language she recognized. Just breathy syllables, like chanting.

I decided to check the unit myself.

I knocked on 6C late one afternoon. No answer. I used my passkey.

The smell hit me first. Musty, sour… like wet earth and rot. The whole place was dark. Curtains drawn. All the furniture was pushed to the edges of the room, leaving a wide open space in the middle.

In that space, carved into the wood floor, was a massive spiral. Like some kind of ritual symbol. It wasn’t drawn—it was scratched in, deep grooves gouged into the floorboards.

I stepped back, about to leave, when I noticed something worse.

On the far wall, dozens of Polaroid photos. Taped in a perfect grid. All of them were taken from inside the building—through peepholes, elevator cracks, stairwell corners. Some were of tenants sleeping. Some were of me.

I slammed the door shut and reported everything to the landlord, Mark.

But when Mark came with me to inspect the next morning... it was all gone.

The photos, the carvings, even the smell. The place looked empty, like no one had ever moved in. Mark thought I was overworked and told me to take the weekend off.

But I knew what I saw.

That night, I stayed in the building. I had access to the camera feeds. I focused on 6C.

At exactly 2:17 A.M., the hallway camera showed Lucas stepping out of his apartment, barefoot, shirtless. His skin was gray. Not pale—gray. His chest was covered in faint spiral markings. He walked to the stairwell and stared down for almost ten minutes without moving.

Then, slowly, he turned and looked directly into the hallway camera. Not at it—through it.

That was the first time I felt true fear in years. Like something primal in me said: Do not interact with this man again.

I tried to report the footage. But the next morning, the file was corrupted. Just static where the video had been. Every time I tried to redownload it, my computer crashed.

I was ready to break the lease and evict him. But when I went to post the notice... the apartment was empty.

No furniture. No sign anyone had ever lived there. But the air was freezing cold. My breath fogged up. And in the center of the living room, scratched freshly into the floor, was a new spiral.

This one had my name etched into the center.

I moved out a week later. Gave notice. Changed my number.

The building still stands. Last I checked, unit 6C isn’t listed for rent anymore. It’s just unavailable.

But here’s the thing that still keeps me up:

About a month after I left, a neighbor from that building called me. He had no idea what I’d seen. Just said he was worried.

Apparently, his teenage daughter started talking to someone through the wall at night. Someone who whispered in a voice that was too low to be a child’s. Someone who knew things about her—personal things she’d never told anyone.

When he asked what apartment it was coming from, she pointed.

6C.