The Apartment Above

James Lockwood had lived in the old building for three months before the footsteps began. At first, he thought nothing of it. The wooden floors creaked, the radiators hissed, and the pipes clanged whenever the heat came on. It was an old place, and old places had a way of whispering through the night.

But one midnight in November, he woke with the distinct sound of heavy, deliberate footsteps moving across the ceiling above his bed. He blinked into the dark, listening as they traveled from one end of the room to the other, pacing, stopping, pacing again.

It wasn’t until the next morning that James remembered—his landlord had told him the unit above was empty.

He mentioned it casually when paying rent. “Thought you said nobody’s upstairs,” he said, half-smiling.

Mr. Hanley, the landlord, paused. His eyes flicked up toward the ceiling before he cleared his throat. “That’s right. Been empty for years.”

James waited for more, but none came.

That night, the footsteps returned. They were slower this time, dragging almost, like someone exhausted. James lay still, his breath shallow, the sheets pulled to his chin. He tried to rationalize it: maybe kids had broken in, maybe Mr. Hanley was hiding something. Yet as the footsteps passed over him, the air in his room grew inexplicably colder.

On the third night, curiosity overcame fear. He climbed the stairwell to the locked apartment above. Dust covered the hallway carpet, untouched. He placed his ear against the door. Nothing. Just silence and the faint smell of mildew. He almost laughed at himself—until something knocked back from the other side.

James stumbled away, heart racing. He didn’t sleep at all.

By the fifth night, exhaustion left him desperate. At 2:13 a.m., the pacing resumed, but this time it didn’t stay overhead. Slowly, steadily, the footsteps moved toward the corner of the ceiling—right above the wall he shared with the stairwell. Then came the sound of the upstairs door opening.

James grabbed his phone, ready to call someone, anyone. But the footsteps didn’t go down the stairs. Instead, they descended inside the wall, as if the building itself had hollow veins. The thuds moved lower, closer, until they seemed to scrape along the inside of his bedroom wall.

And then they stopped.

Silence stretched long into dawn.

The next morning, James stormed into Hanley’s office. “What the hell is going on here?” he demanded. “There’s someone upstairs. Don’t tell me it’s empty—I’ve heard them!”

For a long while, Hanley just stared at him. Finally, he sighed. “You should move out,” he said quietly. “Soon.”

James pressed him, but Hanley shook his head and refused to say more.

That night, James sat awake in bed, waiting. When the footsteps began again, instead of fear, anger took him. He grabbed a flashlight and a kitchen knife, marched up the stairs, and forced the old lock with a screwdriver.

The apartment was bare. Dust lay thick across the floor. His flashlight beam cut through stagnant air, illuminating peeling wallpaper and cracked tiles. No furniture. No footprints. No sign of life.

Yet above the silence came a sudden creak. He tilted the light upward.

In the far corner of the ceiling, dark stains spread outward like veins. A slow drip fell, landing with a faint pat on the dusty floorboards.

He stepped closer. The air grew cold again, sharper this time, like walking into a freezer. Then—without warning—the pacing resumed directly above him, though there was no floor above this one. The sound thundered, closer, closer, until it seemed to be coming from the ceiling itself.

The light flickered.

And then James heard it—a whisper, right against his ear though no one stood beside him.

“You shouldn’t have come up here.”

The flashlight went out.

No one saw James Lockwood leave the building again. The landlord eventually rented out his apartment, but not the one above. That door stayed locked, dust thickening year after year, footsteps echoing for anyone foolish enough to listen.