Full transcript of “3 Disturbing TRUE "Being Watched" Horror Stories”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:11 [Music] I used to live in a small studio apartment in Chicago when I finished college. It was not fancy, just a single room space on the top floor of a three-story building. I chose it because rent was cheap and it was close to work. And as a 23-year-old with student loans and no savings, I didn't have the luxury of being picky. The apartment was clean, functional, and most importantly, mine. The only window in the place looked out over a narrow alley. Across the way was another apartment building, nearly identical to mine. The alley was tight, barely wide enough for a single car to squeeze through, and during the day, it barely got any sunlight. At night, it was pitch black. That never really bothered me much. I was working late
0:57 nights at the time, bartending at a lounge on the north side. I usually got home around 2:30 or 3:00 in the morning. Then I'd make a quick meal and zone out on my phone until I passed out. One night, about a month into living there, I noticed something odd. I had just walked in, kicked off my shoes, and turned on the overhead light when I thought I saw something move in the window across the alley. Just a flicker, a curtain twitching, maybe. I froze for a second. But when I looked again, there was nothing. The window was dark and still. I shrugged it off. Maybe I startled someone. Or maybe it was just a draft. The next night, it happened again. As soon as I turned on the lights, I saw the curtain shift in that
1:43 same window. This time, I was sure I saw it. A hand pulling the curtain back just slightly before letting it fall. I couldn't see the person behind it. The lights in the other apartment were off. It was just a sliver of movement in an otherwise black void. But the reason this really caught my attention was because I had never seen the lights on in that apartment. I always assumed that nobody had lived there. That night, I didn't sleep well. I kept thinking about that attic and the hand. Over the next week, I started paying closer attention. Every night, without fail, the curtain would move within seconds of me turning on my lights. It was subtle but unmistakable. It was the same thing every time. There was a slow parting in the curtain. I had a glimpse of the dark space beyond it and then the curtain
2:30 would close again. I began testing it. Some nights I would leave my lights off and sit silently by the window. When I did, nothing happened. But the moment I turned them on, even just the dim light by my couch, the curtain across the alley would shift. Someone was watching me, it was obvious. I tried to rationalize it. Like maybe someone just liked looking out their window at night, but that didn't explain the timing. It didn't explain the way it always coincided with my arrival. That was too big of a coincidence. I asked my landlord about the unit across the alley, and he told me it was vacant and had been for months. I pressed him, asked if maybe someone had moved in recently, but he shook his head. He even joked that I was being paranoid. I considered calling the police, but
3:16 ultimately didn't because I felt like reporting someone possibly looking at me through a window in an empty apartment sounded ridiculous. There was no crime or proof, just a feeling that grew worse every night. Then one night, everything escalated when I came home later than usual around 4:00 a.m. The bar had hosted a private event and cleanup ran long, so I was exhausted and not thinking clearly. When I reached my door, I noticed something stuck in the frame. At first, I thought it was junk mail or a flyer. But when I pulled it free, I realized it was a crumpled note. It simply said, "Hey," written in pen. My legs went weak because the first thought I had was the apartment across the alley. So, I ran to the window and looked across. The
4:02 curtain was drawn and there was no movement. I called my friend Jamie, panicking. She lived across town but told me to come over right away. I grabbed a backpack, stuffed some essentials into it, and got out. The next day, I confronted the landlord again. This time, I demanded to see the apartment across the alley. He hesitated, but eventually agreed to meet there with the key. The place was dusty and completely empty with not a single piece of furniture. The walls were bare, and the floor creaked with every step as if the place were 100 years old. But there in the back room facing my window was a single metal folding chair. It was positioned directly in front of the window and they had access to an apartment that was supposed to be locked
4:49 and empty. The police were called and they searched the place. I'm pretty sure they took fingerprints, but nothing came of it. The fact that my paranoia was correct the entire time and that I was in fact being watched, it made me sick wondering how long the stretches of time that that sicko would watch me would be. I moved out that week. To this day, I have no idea who was watching me, how they got in, or how long it would have gone on if I hadn't found that note saying, "Hey." I've considered the possibility of it being the landlord. But ultimately, I had to drop that theory because there's no way in hell he wouldn't have went over there to remove that chair before bringing me over there. I still dream about that window. And sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night certain that someone somewhere
5:35 is still watching me. [Music] When I was 12, my family moved to a rural area in Oregon, miles from the nearest town. We lived on a large piece of land surrounded by dense pine forest. It was peaceful, quiet, and completely isolating. The house itself was built in the 1940s. It had the old house starter pack with things like creaky floors, a creepy attic, and a detached run-down shed that sat about 30 ft from the back door. The shed was packed with old tools and junk from the previous owner. My dad always meant to clean it out, but he never did. For the most part, we stayed away from it. I remember the first time
6:22 I noticed something strange. It was a week night, close to midnight. I was up reading with the flashlight under the covers when I heard our dog Max barking uncontrollably. Max was a golden retriever, super friendly but alert. When he barked like that, it meant something was wrong. I crept out of bed and peaked out the window. He was facing the shed, barking into the darkness. The motion sensor light by the back door was on, casting long shadows across the lawn. I couldn't see anyone, but Max wouldn't stop. I didn't go out there. I just watched for a bit until he calmed down. Then I walked away. The next morning, we found deep bootprints in the dirt between the house and the shed. My dad dismissed it, saying it was probably a neighbor or a drifter passing through, but I couldn't
7:07 stop thinking about it. Over the next few weeks, Max barked at that shed multiple times. Every time we'd look outside and find nothing, but the footprints would be back, and they always led to the shed, never away from it. One night around 2:00 a.m., I woke up to the sound of footsteps on the gravel outside my window. I froze. The footsteps stopped then resumed, moving toward the shed. I peaked through the blinds and the light by the back door flicked on and for just a second I saw him, a tall man standing beside the shed door. He was wearing what looked like a dirty gray coat. His face was obscured by shadows and then the light went out. My heart pounded to my chest as I backed away from the window. I woke my parents.
7:54 My dad grabbed his rifle and went outside, but the man was gone. The footprints were fresh, though, right up to the shed. This time, my dad decided to check inside. He unlocked the padlock and pulled the doors open, but all there was were just rusty tools and old tarps. He added a new lock and reinforced the doors. For a while, things were quiet. Then a month later, Max went missing. We searched everywhere through the woods, up and down the road, even asked neighbors. He was gone. I was completely heartbroken. I held out hope that he'd return and he just got lost in the woods. That night, I couldn't sleep at all. I kept thinking about the shed and
8:40 Max, about the man I'd seen. Around 3:00 a.m., I heard the back door creek. I got out of bed and tiptoed into the hallway. My dad was already up holding his rifle. We moved to the back door just in time to see the motion light flicker on. There, standing by the shed, was the man again. Only this time, he was holding something. In one hand, a knife. In the other, Max's collar. When I saw this, I felt like my life was half sucked out of my body, like this horrible weightlessness in which I almost felt like I was going to fall down. My dad shouted and raised the rifle, but the man turned and ran into the woods. We called the police and they searched the area, but found no trace of him.
9:25 What they did find inside the shed made me sick. The floor had been cleared. In the dirt, someone had carved symbols, crude, disturbing images. In the corner was a pile of bones. Animal bones, hopefully. It got worse. Behind a false panel in the shed wall, the officers found a backpack filled with items that weren't ours. Wallets, watches, and a few pieces of worn clothing. Things that must have belonged to someone. Multiple someone's. The strangest thing was a notebook. Pages and pages of strange symbols, incoherent rambling, and jagged handwriting, and crude drawings of houses, families, and eyes. I believe that this was some kind of message to us
10:12 saying he was watching us like he's watched other families. The police took all the items that were found. That night while packing to leave, I looked out my window one last time to the shed. The police tape fluttered in the breeze and all was quiet. But just beyond it, maybe 10 ft into the treeine, I saw a person's face, but the moment I blinked, it was gone. I screamed my dad's name in a desperate panic, yelling, "He's back." My dad stormed into the room and looked out the window, asking where he was. I pointed straight at the shed and saw he was to the left, right by the woods. He ran to grab his rifle again, and this time he ran outside and screamed like a maniac while firing around. You can't imagine
10:58 the anger and frustration of having to be chased out of your own home by a crazy, dangerous person who likely killed your dog. My dad was letting his frustration out in that moment. I know my dad wanted to kill that man. We moved out days later to a much less remote part of Oregon. [Music] In the summer of 2018, my friends and I, Abby, Marcus, his younger brother Tim, Tim's girlfriend Hannah, and me, planned a weekend trip in the Blue Ridge Mountains. We were all in our early 20s, fresh out of college, and eager to unplug from everything. We picked a spot far off the grid, deep into the national park, where the trees grew thick, the
11:45 air smelled of pine and damp soil, and there was no cell signal for miles. The first night was normal. We hiked in with our gear, found a clearing by a lake with just enough space for three tents, started a fire, and cooked hot dogs and marshmallows. We told stories, drank, and stayed up late watching the stars. The silence of the forest was relaxing. It wasn't until the second night that things started to feel wrong. At around 11 p.m., we were still sitting around the fire laughing when Marcus suddenly stiffened and pointed towards the woods, asking if we saw that as well. We all looked, but nothing was there. He swore he saw movement, a figure ducking behind a tree, maybe 30 or 40 yard away. Tim
12:31 dismissed it as a deer, but then 20 minutes later, we heard a stick snap in the same direction. This time, it was loud. Abby was clearly spooked and said she wanted to go to bed. Everyone agreed to call it a night. We dowsed the fire, zipped up the tents, and tried to sleep. That night, I woke up to something that still haunts me. Breathing from just outside, probably not even 10 ft from my head. At first, I thought I was still in a half dream state. But it continued. I was with four other people, though. It could have maybe been one of them going outside to pee, but I didn't hear the sound of a stream, just the breathing. The breathing also almost sounded like an older person, someone who was short of breath from smoking too much. I
13:16 reached for my flashlight, but didn't dare turn it on. The breathing moved from one side of the tent to the other. Then it stopped. I waited without saying a word because it was the only thing I could do. Since the breathing stopped rather suddenly, I felt a sense of relief that my original thought of it being one of my friends peeing was accurate. So eventually, I fell asleep. In the morning, I said nothing. Neither did Abby. But when we met up for breakfast, Marcus had a concerned look on his face like he was antsy to tell us something. He said someone was outside our tent last night. Hannah nodded and said she heard it too and noted that whoever it was walked around the tent more than once and it could have been more than one person. I asked the entire group if anyone got up to pee last night
14:03 and that maybe that's what we heard. Tim responded that he did go pee, but that he thought he saw a figure crouched near the fire pit around 4:00 a.m. We searched the area, and we found footprints in the ground circling all three tents. But in a spot where the dirt was a little wetter, more like mud, one of the footprints was very clearly from a bare human foot, not shoes or boots. This made the whole thing even stranger. They led into the woods and vanished. We tried to joke about it, saying maybe it was a crazy hiker or prankster, but it didn't feel like a joke. That night, we stayed up later, talking nervously around a much bigger fire. We kept our flashlights close. Around 2:00 a.m., we heard that awful sound of the crunching of leaves in the
14:48 distance, but this time there was a voice. It was a low voice, too quiet to understand, but definitely human. Marcus snapped on his flashlight and for a split second we saw who it was. It was a man fully naked crouched behind one of the trees nearby. He scrambled back into the trees like an animal that just got exposed. All of us were completely shook. We were too scared to even break off to go into our tents. Staying out in the open with all five of us together just felt safer. Hannah suggested packing up and leaving, but Marcus and I said that was a horrible idea. Packing up camp this late and finding our way back to the car would not only be extremely difficult, but also extremely terrifying. Worrying that that man was
15:34 behind us following us. That night was the worst night yet and maybe one of the worst nights of my life. I didn't get a single second of sleep. I was wide awake and perhaps that may have saved me or my belongings at the very least. However many hours had passed before I heard the distant sound of a stick snapping or a leaf crunching. I said out loud, "Please let it be a deer." under my breath. A few moments of silence passed before a voice from out in the woods said, "I see you guys." It was not any of my friends. I didn't know if any of my friends were awake and also heard it, but I heard none of them react. So, I guess I was too scared to be the only one reacting. What happened next, I never would have expected, though. I heard my tent shift
16:19 ever so slightly, which caused me to shoot up and look at the tent zipper and it started to slowly move down. I started to scream at the top of my lungs, causing my friends to also start screaming. Whoever was on the other side of my tent took off, I presume, but I can't know for sure. All I know is all of us yelled at each other to communicate through the tents. I zipped the zipper back up fully, and I didn't hear breathing or footsteps again that night. I didn't fall asleep. I watched as the morning sun slowly started lighting up the place. At dawn, we packed everything and left. On the hike back to the car, the tension didn't leave us. At the ranger station, we told them everything. The ranger listened carefully, then said they've had reports. A man, maybe more than one,
17:06 living out there. Some said they steal things and others said worse. I don't know what worse mess. We didn't ask. We laughed it off in the car, but it didn't really feel funny to me. I don't think I could ever go camping again after that, especially after the zipper thing.
