Hi everyone. My name is Alex. If you have an attic in your house, you might
look at it differently after the story I’m about to tell you. I’ve always had a thing for horror movies. Even when I was a kid, I used to secretly
watch horror movies after my parents went to bed. Of course, I would have trouble sleeping afterwards. The ones that got me the most were the haunted
house movies. I would even feel sad because we lived in
an apartment. I thought, “I wish we lived in a house. Then maybe we would have stuff like this happening
in our house, too.” Years later, my wish came true and I came
to realize it wasn’t something to wish for. It had only been a few weeks since we moved
into our current house. We started living in a single family home
just like I’d been dreaming of. But I wasn’t expecting scary things to happen. Because I was old enough to know haunted house
stories weren’t real. Around that time, my parents won an amazing
vacation in a charity raffle. They were going on a luxury cruise that would
take them to 15 countries. This vacation was the big prize in the raffle. Normally, my folks could never have gone on
an expensive trip like this. Still, they were hesitant at first. They only won two tickets. I wouldn’t be able to go with them. To convince my parents to go, I told them,
“I’m 17 now. I’m starting college next year. You need to learn to trust me. You have to accept that I’m a grown up now.” They agreed with me. So this is how I got to stay home alone for
so long for the first time in my life. By the way, our house has 3 floors. The top floor is the attic. My room is below it. It has that little hatch in the ceiling, which
you open to go up into the attic. I had no idea what the attic even looked like. I’d never gone up there since there was
no ladder. It was the evening after my parents had left. I’d gotten up really early to say goodbye
to them. So I fell asleep even before eating dinner. I woke up hungry in the middle of the night. Just as I was thinking, “I need to get up
and get a snack,” I heard some noises coming from the ceiling, or rather from the attic. It sounded like someone was walking but I
couldn’t really tell because I was still half-asleep. I listened closely. Yes. Someone was definitely walking. Then I heard another noise. It was as if something was being dragged across
the floor. I was super scared. Next came something like the sound of a small
chain jangling. I jumped out of bed and ran downstairs. Could this house be haunted? I knew it was a ridiculous thought but it
was the only thing on my mind as I was running. After I made it downstairs, I held my breath
and listened again. I couldn’t hear anything from there, it
was too far away. I thought, “Should I call the police?” But this was a very old house. It could be a big mouse up there, or even
the sound of the floorboards expanding. If the cops came and they couldn’t find
anything, and then my parents found out about this, they would say,
“We thought you were a grown up. You heard sounds and called the police on
your first night,” and they wouldn’t trust me again. I decided not to call the police. But because I was nervous, I couldn’t get
any sleep. I sat listening to what was going on upstairs. How would I spend 15 days alone in this house? I was working part-time in a store to keep
myself busy during the summer break. I got off work at 4pm. When I came home, I decided to climb up into the attic to check out if anything weird was going on. But how was I supposed to get up there? Did we have a ladder? Yes, we did. I found a small ladder in the garage. I brought it to my room. It was tall enough for me to reach ceiling. I opened the hatch. I climbed up and looked inside. It was the first time I was seeing the attic. It looked like my parents had never gotten
up there either. Everything was covered in dust. There were untouched spider webs everywhere. I couldn’t see too far into it since it
was darker in the corners. I turned on my phone’s flashlight and held
it there. There was no trace of a human being having
been up here last night. I figured I probably wasn’t fully awake
and thought the sounds in my dream were real. I was so relieved after seeing the attic. It was pointless to worry now. I even watched a horror movie to prove to
myself that I wasn’t scared. And I went to sleep after finishing the movie. I slept like a baby all night. When I woke up in the morning, the only thing
I thought of was “What am I having for breakfast?” I spent the following day without any problems. My concerns about the attic had completely
vanished. That is, I thought they had. I wasn’t working on the weekends. I woke up pretty late that Saturday. When I went into the bathroom, I noticed the
light was on. I was thinking “I must’ve left it on”
when I saw a shiny ring on the floor. Where did it come from? I picked it up. It looked very expensive. There was no way a ring this expensive could
have been my mom’s. Suddenly I felt my blood curdle. I thought it had been a guy. But what if it had been a woman in the attic
that night? Did she come back while I was asleep and walked
around the house this time? But the only way to the attic is through my
room. It would have been impossible for someone
to get in or out without waking me up. I couldn’t think of a reasonable explanation
at that moment. All I could say was “This doesn’t make
any sense.” There was nothing to steal here but I still
quickly checked the house. Everything seemed in its place. Or was I completely wrong? Could it be that someone came to visit my
mom and dropped their ring? But I’d been using that bathroom for the
past week. Surely, I would’ve seen a ring this big. I wasn’t able to figure it out yet but there
was something going on. I made a plan. But it wasn’t something I could pull off
on my own. I called my best friends, Luke and Matt. I told them it was something very important
and asked them to come over for the night. When they came, I told them all about what
had happened. Matt had a relative who worked at a jewelry
shop. He took a picture of the ring and sent it
to her. She told him, “I’d need to see it in person
but it looks like a diamond ring expensive enough to cover your and your sister’s college
tuition.” Luke had made fun of me at first. But after hearing that, he was also convinced
that something weird was going on. We waited until it got really late. Then we started executing our plan. I have a small tripod. I started a livestream from the Youtube app
on my phone. I set up the phone on the tripod. I climbed up the ladder and opened the hatch. I placed the tripod with the phone attached
to it onto the floor of the attic. There was no lamp in the attic, but the moonlight
coming in through the roof provided enough light. Next came the second phase of the plan. We went down into the basement, just in case. We started watching the livestream from my
laptop. More than an hour passed. We were glued to the screen but nothing was
happening. We all got tired and sleepy from staring at
the nothingness. I had to find a solution. I thought we could stay awake if we played
a board game. I went up to my room. Just as I was picking up the game, I heard
a noise from the attic. I held my breath and listened. It wasn’t as clear as it was that first
night but there was definitely some kind of movement up there. I left the game there and ran to my friends
in a panic. When I got downstairs, I saw that they were
both sitting with their eyes closed. They had fallen asleep! I said, “Wake up! There’s someone in the attic,” trying
to keep my voice down. We all looked at the screen at the same time. We all saw it. A shadow was moving in the attic. It wasn’t close to the hatch. It was further away. Luke said, “This doesn’t look like a woman.” But the attic was so dark, it was impossible
to tell for sure. It was time for phase three of the plan: Calling 911. We couldn’t look away from the screen. We weren’t scared because there were three
of us, but could this man or woman be armed? I nodded toward the front yard. “Let’s call them from outside,” I said. If anything happened, it would be easier to
run away. There was a police station nearby. A few minutes after we called 911, we were
in the front yard, staring at the screen with two cops. They were also sure there was someone in the
attic now. They debated whether to ask for back-up. One of the cops said, “We could lose them
while waiting for back-up.” They turned on their flashlights. They went into the house very carefully. We were very excited to be watching it all
live via YouTube. We were expecting an operation like in the
movies but it didn’t turn out that way. We’d left the ladder we used to go up into
the attic there. The cops used it to climb up. On the screen, we first saw the light from
the flashlight and then the head of one of the cops. The attic was now fully lit. Right in the corner, a man stood completely
frozen. There was a bag in front of him. The officer yelled, “Police! Sit down where you are. Put your hands above your head.” The man did as he was told without saying
a word. So who was the man in the attic? And more importantly, what was he doing up
there? According to the police, this man was the
most brilliant thief in town. He only broke into rich people’s houses
and stole only jewelry. His sister had lived in our house about 10
years ago. Whenever he came to visit her, he climbed
the tree next to the house to get into the attic. He made a secret compartment inside a wall. He was keeping some of the jewelry he stole
in there. One day, when he decided to stop being a thief,
he was planning to sell his hidden jewelry stash and start a new life in another country. However, he got caught in a wealthy person’s
house in the middle of a burglary. He had been in jail for years. He finished serving his sentence the previous
week. The first thing he did after being released
from prison was visit his hiding place. Which is our attic. This guy was taking some of the jewelry from
the attic and selling it piece by piece. If he sold it all at the same time, the mafia
would’ve heard about it since it was stolen. As you might have guessed, the ring I found
in the bathroom was his too. That night when he came to pick up jewelry,
he had to use the toilet really badly. The guy is the smartest thief in town. He spent his whole life breaking into other
people’s homes. So he was really comfortable entering our
house from the attic and using our bathroom. He must have dropped the ring as he was pulling
up his pants. I didn’t want to upset my parents so I told
them everything only after they came back. Naturally they were really shocked. But they were more upset that I had to go
through this while they were away. They vowed not to leave me home alone ever
again.
