You ask what secrets a shabby rental apartment could hide?
That depends on just how brave you are.
Two months ago, when I moved in, the realtor's face looked utterly disgusted. He stared at my ID card for a long time and said: "Brother, let me double-check—are you fully aware of this apartment's listing details?"
I scrolled through my phone. "Room 503, No.36 Cuiping Road, Xicheng District. 1,200 yuan a month, one-month deposit with monthly rent, municipal water and electricity, fully furnished. Any issues?"
"None." He swallowed hard and pushed the contract toward me. "Let's sign it then."
He fled the second I finished signing. Shoved the keys into my hand, then bolted down the stairs without waiting for the elevator.
Back then, I thought he just had severe social anxiety.
Later, I learned the truth—he was terrified I'd back out.
On my first night, the shower turned on by itself.
Not a slow drip. The faucet knob twisted sharply, scalding water crashing down and washing my brand-new plastic slipper straight to the floor drain. I stood frozen in the bathroom doorway, watching the knob tremble faintly, as if an invisible hand had just let go.
I cut the water off and snapped at the empty air: "You gonna pay the water bill?"
The shower fell dead silent.
Right after, the shampoo bottle in the corner toppled over.
It didn't slip. It tipped over perfectly in place, as if gently pushed by someone.
I set it upright and stared at it for three full seconds. Nothing moved again.
At that moment, I still had no idea—the truly bone-chilling horrors of this apartment were never those trivial midnight disturbances.
Let me start from the beginning. My name is Gu Lei, twenty-six years old. I work as an operation dispatcher for a shared bike company. To put it plainly, I ride a tricycle cart hauling bikes all over the city, moving surplus bicycles to undersupplied areas and balancing traffic demand. My take-home salary is 4,800 yuan a month. After rent and meals, I barely save anything.
I used to share a partitioned room near the train station for 900 yuan a month. My next-door neighbors were a couple, and the sound insulation was so poor I could hear every smacking kiss they shared, along with far more unsettling noises. Woken up three times in one night, I decided to move out for good.
I scrolled rental apps for half a month, and even the cheapest single room cost over 1,800 yuan. Then I casually clicked into the "Special Discount Housing" section and spotted this 1,200-yuan unit.
The listing photos looked professional: a living room with a sofa and coffee table, wooden bedroom flooring, even a fake potted flower on the kitchen counter. The only flaw was one blurry shot of the hallway's far end, completely indistinct.
I messaged the realtor, and he replied instantly: "Price is real, viewings available anytime."
I was forty minutes late to the viewing. I'd been rebalancing bikes in the southern district, my electric cart died mid-trip, and I pushed it two kilometers to find a battery swap station. By the time I reached Cuiping Road, the realtor was already waiting downstairs.
To be honest, the second I laid eyes on the building, I understood why the rent was so cheap.
It was an octagonal residential complex built in the 1990s. The white exterior paint peeled and flaked everywhere, revealing blackened concrete underneath. The unit door lock was broken, jammed shut with a rusty iron wire. Abandoned bicycles and dust-covered cardboard boxes cluttered the stairwell, and the motion-sensor lights lagged terribly, only flickering on after furious stomping.
Surprisingly though, the interior was spotlessly clean. Freshly repainted walls, brand-new flooring, newly tiled waterproof kitchens and bathrooms. All the furniture was brand new too—cheap particleboard pieces, but decent enough to look at.
"The landlord renovated thoroughly at the end of last year. He planned to live here himself, then got transferred out of town for work and entrusted us with renting it out," the realtor recited rigidly in the living room.
I frowned. "This place is newly renovated, yet only 1,200 yuan a month?"
He forced a smile. "Remote location. Over a kilometer from the subway, limited surrounding amenities—hard to rent out quickly."
His words held some truth. Cuiping Road was isolated, with no shops nearby. The nearest supermarket was a fifteen-minute walk, and the closest market required two bus stops. Wedged between two old residential compounds, this building was easy to miss if you weren't paying attention.
I was just about to agree and sign the lease when my gaze locked on the hallway's far end.
That blurry angle from the listing photo pointed to the last wall of the corridor. A window sat there, boarded up from the inside with a dull gray plank, only a faint white border visible around the edges.
"What's that?" I nodded at the sealed window.
The realtor glanced back casually. "Oh, that window faces a narrow light well with no view. The landlord boarded it up to hide the ugly sight."
I asked to take a look behind the board, but he claimed it was nailed shut permanently.
I found it odd, yet the shockingly low rent felt like a once-in-a-lifetime bargain. I brushed the doubt aside, signed the contract, paid the fees, grabbed my keys, and moved in.
Moving day fell on a Saturday. One suitcase for clothes, one woven sack for bedding and odds and ends. I made three trips on a shared bike and finished everything alone.
My first meal in the new home was instant noodles. I sat at the small coffee table in the living room, devouring every bite with two added sausages. As I cleaned up, a heavy *thud* echoed from the ceiling, like something heavy crashing onto the floor upstairs.
Just a kid upstairs, I told myself.
I finished washing up around ten and lay in bed scrolling my phone. The new sheets smelled like laundry detergent, the mattress rock-hard, and the pillow horribly mismatched. Drowsiness crept in as I debated buying a new pillow from IKEA.
I turned off the lights, and the room sank into pitch darkness. The landlord-provided curtains were thick polyester, blocking out all light with terrifying efficiency.
Half-asleep, I heard running water coming from the bathroom.
At first, I blamed old plumbing. Aging buildings always creaked and whined whenever neighbors used water. But this sound persisted, growing clearer by the second—the distinct splash of water hitting tiled floors.
I rolled over and pulled the covers over my head.
The water kept running.
Two minutes later, a sharp *click* cut through the quiet. The water stopped.
Another *click*. The water started again.
Someone was inside my bathroom, turning the shower on and off, over and over.
I jolted upright, grabbed my phone, and flipped on the flashlight. The beam swept down the hallway; the bathroom door stood wide open, swallowed by darkness.
"Who's there?" I called out.
No answer.
Barefoot on icy floorboards, I inched to the bathroom doorway and peeked inside.
Nothing out of place. Sink, toilet, shower area—all normal. Except for the shower spraying water at full blast, hot steam fogging up the mirror completely.
The faucet knob sat firmly on the hot water setting, water splashing wildly, soaking the toilet seat and half the washing machine.
I rushed over to shut it off, then snapped that same line at the empty room, sounding utterly unhinged: "You gonna pay the water bill?"
That was when the shampoo bottle fell.
I stared at the spilled shampoo on the tile floor, slowly bending down to pick it up. The bottle was ice-cold. I couldn't fathom what kind of hand could push it perfectly in the center, tipping it over steadily without a single slip.
I set the bottle back in the corner and glanced at the shower faucet. The knob stayed locked in place, completely immovable.
After standing frozen for a few seconds, I rationalized it all. Old shower faucets with poor sealing sometimes twisted on their own from unstable water pressure—rare, but not impossible. As for the shampoo? A wet bottle base and slippery tile could easily cause slow, unnoticed tipping.
Satisfied with my excuses, I turned off the lights and tried to sleep.
Rest wouldn't come.
Fear wasn't the issue. It was the next room.
The apartment layout was simple: a small entryway by the door, kitchen to the left, bathroom to the right. A five-meter hallway stretched forward, with the living room and master bedroom on the left. At the very end stood a second bedroom—the realtor called it the guest room, completely empty, housing that same boarded-up window.
On my first night, I slept in the master bedroom.
The guest room door remained tightly closed.
At exactly 2:15 a.m., just as sleep finally approached, faint noises drifted from the guest room. Not running water—slow, shuffling footsteps. Bare feet dragging across wooden floors, step by step, creeping toward the hallway door.
The sound was soft, yet deafening in the deathly quiet old building, each heavy step pounding against my temples.
I lay on my side, perfectly still, straining my ears.
The footsteps halted right behind the guest room door.
A faint *click* echoed down the hallway—the guest room doorknob twisting open.
I shot upright. The hallway motion-sensor light stayed dead, its infrared sensor failing to trigger even with my sudden movement.
I threw open my bedroom door to total darkness. I fumbled for the hallway light switch and pressed it. Nothing.
Too scared to investigate, I retreated, locked my bedroom door from the inside, and leaned against the wood for minutes, listening intently. Complete silence.
I stayed wide awake until sunrise.
It was Sunday, no work. I got up at eight sharp, my first move checking the guest room door.
It remained firmly shut, the latch locked tight. I twisted the doorknob from the outside; it turned freely, yet the door stayed sealed. It wasn't a deadbolt lock, just an old spring latch—once locked from the inside, it could only be opened with a key from outside.
The twisting doorknob last night could only mean one thing: broken hardware, an aging spring snapping back on its own.
That became my second logical excuse.
As for the footsteps? Sound traveled wildly through aging brick walls; distant noises from upstairs or neighboring units often distorted and echoed.
I pushed all unease aside, rode my electric cart to the supermarket, and cooked a proper lunch of tomato eggs and rice. Eating alone, I mocked my own paranoia from the night before.
That afternoon, I dismantled the guest room lock for inspection. Sure enough, the ancient pin tumbler lock had a deformed spring. I bought a new cylinder from a hardware store for fifteen yuan, installing it myself. The door now opened and closed smoothly, no more random twisting.
I still refused to step foot inside the guest room. The second the door creaked open, that boarded-up window dominated the view. The gray plank blocked every ray of light, turning the room into a sunless black cauldron even in broad daylight. Renovation scraps littered the floor: half a bag of cement, broken bricks, a roll of moldy old wallpaper.
Up close, the sealed window grew even stranger. The plank was nailed to the frame with a nail gun, dense rows of fasteners sealing it shut completely. Expanding foam filled every gap between the wood and window frame, rock-hard and fully dried.
Who would go out of their way to board a window shut forever?
The landlord claimed it was for aesthetics, but that made no sense. Frosted film or blinds would've worked far better. Nailing a solid plank over glass was beyond bizarre.
I stepped back to the opposite wall and spotted two thin, straight cracks running vertically across the paint—not structural damage, clean linear gashes, as if forced open by something pressing from outside.
A faint yellow water stain blotted the ceiling directly above the window, palm-sized and discolored. Nothing else stood out.
Curiosity is a double-edged sword.
The third night after moving in, Monday.
I got off work close to ten, exhausted after hauling over three hundred shared bikes around a busy night market district. Crowds swarmed nonstop, bikes vanishing within minutes of being parked, leaving me hopelessly overworked.
I showered quickly, ready to collapse into bed, when my phone rang.
It was my mom.
"Leilei, settling into the new apartment alright?"
"Yeah, it's fine, no complaints."
"I sent you two new quilts—they'll arrive the day after tomorrow. How's the heating there?"
I assured her everything was perfect, brushing off her nagging about regular meals and takeout before hanging up.
Lying in bed, my mind drifted to a strange encounter from earlier that day.
At three in the afternoon, I was stacking bikes onto my tricycle outside the shopping mall's south entrance when an elderly janitor pushing a trash cart stopped beside me.
"Young man, you live on Cuiping Road, don't you?"
Assuming he was a local resident making small talk, I nodded.
He nodded slowly, remaining silent. I thought he'd leave, but he paused again, staring at my cart and muttering quietly: "Fifth floor of that building, the last room down the hallway. If anything feels wrong, move out fast."
I lost my grip on the bike mid-lift, the metal frame crashing to the concrete with a deafening bang.
I tried to ask what he meant, but he'd already pushed his cart away, walking far too quickly.
Who was he? How did he know I'd just moved into Room 503? Even with my work uniform and company-branded cart, there was no way to pinpoint my exact building and unit.
Unless he knew exactly what was wrong with that room.
The janitor's warning stuck like a thorn in my mind, haunting me through every bike hauling shift on Tuesday.
*If anything feels wrong, move out fast.*
What counted as "wrong"?
A self-turning shower? I'd explained that away. A twisting doorknob? I'd fixed the lock. All these small incidents were common in aging residential buildings, trivial on their own.
Yet the janitor had sought me out specifically to warn me. He was certain I'd experience terror sooner or later.
Why?
Tuesday night, I resolved to clean out the guest room for storage. Rent was already paid—wasting space was foolish. I bought a simple storage shelf from the supermarket, planning to assemble it inside.
The second I opened the guest room door, a stale, ancient stench washed over me. Not moldy rot, but the dry, dusty odor of long-forgotten cardboard and old fabric. I turned on my phone flashlight and scanned the empty room, spotting nothing unusual, then set up the shelf by the doorway.
As I pushed the unit against the wall, it collided with a thin paper layer, crinkling loudly.
I aimed the flashlight beam closer. The wall behind the shelf was entirely covered in layers of yellowed, brittle newspaper, peeling at the edges like cracked skin.
Curious, I peeled off one sheet.
Beneath the newspaper lay a photograph.
Not a printed polaroid, a standard A4-sized self-printed photo. It featured a woman in her early thirties wearing a pale blue hospital gown, standing against a plain white wall.
Plain-featured, long brown hair, monolid eyes, chapped lips. She stared directly at the camera with a stiff, forced smile—unnatural, frozen mid-expression, jaw slightly tilted forward.
Something in her eyes clashed violently with that hollow grin.
I flipped the photo over. A handwritten date in neat ballpoint ink marked the back: *March 15th, 2019. One day before discharge.*
A souvenir photo before leaving the hospital? Why hide it behind layers of newspaper in an abandoned guest room?
I peeled off a second newspaper sheet. Another photo, same white wall, same woman. This time her smile was genuine, relaxed, showing her upper teeth with faint laugh lines crinkling at her eyes.
The back read: *April 2nd, 2019. One week post-discharge.*
My heartbeat spiked sharply.
Third photo, fourth, fifth—every newspaper layer concealed another portrait.
The timeline stretched from March 2019 to November 2019: one day pre-discharge, one week later, one month later, three months later. Every shot captured her against that identical white wall, yet her condition deteriorated drastically with each passing month.
She didn't recover. She wasted away.
One month post-discharge: gaunt, sunken eye sockets, lips cracked and peeling.
Three months post-discharge: massive bald patches tearing through her hair, raw exposed scalp as if savagely ripped out.
Six months post-discharge: leaning weakly against the wall, one hand bracing herself, the other limp at her side, withered like rotting vegetation.
The final photo, dated November 2019, had no note marking her recovery timeline.
She was lying flat on the floor.
Not a clumsy fall—perfectly positioned, arms folded neatly over her abdomen like a laid-out funeral corpse. Her eyes hung half-open, mouth agape, revealing a dark empty throat.
The camera angle was drastically lower than all previous shots, tilted upward as if placed directly on the floor.
The same white wall loomed behind her, now marked with fresh damage.
I zoomed in with my phone camera, squinting to decipher faint carvings scratched into the paint with a sharp object. Crooked, thick strokes, messy and jagged.
They weren't Chinese characters.
They were Korean.
I stared at the woman's lifeless half-lidded eyes in the photo, cold dread coiling in my chest.
I set the photo down, frozen in place, too terrified to breathe.
That's when I heard it.
A faint sound from behind the gray boarded window.
*Knock, knock, knock.*
Soft, slow, rhythmic. Three quiet raps.
Like someone knocking on a door from outside the glass.
But this was the fifth floor.
That boarded window faced the sheer outer wall, dozens of meters above empty concrete ground.
I stared rigidly at the gray plank, paralyzed.
*Knock, knock, knock.*
Three more knocks.
Then a muffled, distant voice filtered through the thick wood, every word crystal clear despite the heavy barrier.
A young woman's tone, thick Korean accent, broken halting Chinese:
"Hello… is anyone there?"
I have no memory of how I stumbled out of the guest room. One second I stood frozen by the boarded window, the next I was gasping in the hallway, crumpling that dated hospital photo in my sweating fist, soaked head to toe in cold sweat.
I didn't dare spend the night in that apartment.
At one a.m., I rode my electric cart to an internet café near my workplace, booking a private booth to survive the sleepless night slumped in a chair. My phone was dying, my charger left forgotten on the master bedroom nightstand.
I forced myself to calm down, piecing together every clue.
The apartment had been renovated at the end of last year, the landlord claiming it was meant for personal use. Yet these photos proved someone lived in that guest room from 2019 to 2020—a Korean woman hospitalized for long-term treatment, whose health declined until her final days.
What happened to her in the end?
The photo series stopped abruptly.
And that sealed window. No sane person would board glass shut unless something unspeakable lingered outside… or trapped inside.
That voice. Polished, stilted Chinese, clearly practiced repeatedly. Why keep asking if anyone was home? The room was empty. Who was she calling out to?
Or did she not know I stood inches away, listening behind the wood?
I replayed the janitor's warning in my head. *If anything feels wrong, move out fast.*
His tone had been grave, less a suggestion and more a desperate warning.
Wednesday morning, I skipped going home and headed straight to work. Busy work distracted me from the horror, my mind fixed solely on traffic jams and bike shortages. By eight p.m., night had fully fallen.
Riding back toward Cuiping Road, I made my decision: grab my charger, then spend another night at the café. I'd take half a day off tomorrow to view new housing and move out for good.
Multiple streetlights were broken along Cuiping Road, plunging the entire street into shadow. Nearing the apartment building, I spotted a figure squatting by the unit entrance, cigarette glowing red in the pitch-black darkness.
I recognized him instantly—the janitor.
He lifted his head as I approached, deep wrinkles carved across his face like dried riverbeds, illuminated by flickering cigarette embers. He exhaled smoke through his nostrils and spoke: "Back already?"
I nodded silently.
"You went inside that room?"
Another stiff nod.
"Heard her?"
I hesitated, then nodded again.
He crushed his cigarette underfoot, stood slowly, and brushed dust off his trousers. Half a head shorter than me, his gaze held unshakable certainty, as if he'd known this moment would come all along.
"Three years ago," he began quietly, "a Korean woman lived in that guest room. Her surname was Park, working at an electronics factory in the east district. She stayed here for over half a year. Neighbors all remembered her—she'd scream aggressive Korean during market arguments, no one could understand a word."
"She spoke Chinese to me," I whispered. "Broken, but understandable."
The janitor stared at me, nodding slowly. "That was later. Her Chinese was terrible at first, slowly improving over time. But she grew more and more… unhinged."
"How so?"
"Skinny, nothing but skin and bones. Clumps of hair falling out nonstop. She never slept at night, wandering the hallways endlessly. Downstairs neighbors heard muffled sobbing after midnight, quiet suppressed cries behind covered mouths."
He lit another cigarette, continuing his grim story. "When she first rented here, realtors asked why she'd left Korea alone. She confessed she'd worked as a nurse in Seoul, involved in a fatal medical malpractice incident, her license revoked. She fled to China with nowhere left to go. No one thought much of it back then—everyone has their own scars."
"What happened to her?"
"One day, upstairs neighbors noticed her front door wide open. They stepped inside and found her motionless on the guest room floor. Paramedics rushed over, but it was too late. Police ruled it self-neglect… she starved herself to death."
My heart sank. "Why board up the guest room window?"
The janitor fell silent for a long time, waiting for his cigarette to burn down to the filter before answering, voice low and hollow: "That window wasn't boarded to block the outside world. It was to trap whatever was inside."
"What does that mean?"
"She treated that sealed window like a door. Recorded audio of herself knocking on glass, playing it on loop outside at all hours. Then she'd wait alone in that empty room, opening the door over and over, searching for a nonexistent visitor. Driven to madness by isolation. After she died, the landlord sealed the window shut. But every new tenant after her… they all heard it."
"Heard what?"
"Knocks from beyond the glass. A voice asking if anyone's home."
He tossed his cigarette butt aside, staring at me with exhausted, empty eyes, no pity or fear in his expression. "Young man, I've cleaned this building for eight years. Room 503 has cycled through four tenants. The first stayed three months, the second one week, the third fled after a single night. You're the fourth. How many days have you lasted?"
I didn't reply.
"You thought you scored a steal with that cheap rent," he muttered, turning to leave without another word.
I stood frozen downstairs, keys clutched tight in my palm, a cheap copper keychain hanging from them bought at a flea market on moving day.
Up above, Room 503's curtains stayed drawn, lights dead, like a blind eye staring down at the street.
I never went upstairs.
I spun my cart around and rode away, searching for the nearest internet café on my map all the way. I booked a private booth and collapsed into the chair.
I messaged the realtor: *I'm breaking the lease. Keep the deposit. I'll leave the keys under the fire hydrant downstairs tomorrow.*
I deleted the draft fearing follow-up questions, rewriting it sharply: "This apartment is haunted, and you know it. I forfeit my deposit. Keys left at your storefront tomorrow."
Sent.
I flipped my phone face-down, leaning back to stare at the ceiling fire sprinkler.
I closed my eyes.
*Hello… is anyone there?*
The voice echoed vividly in my mind, not through my ears, but burned into my memory.
I snapped my eyes open.
Beyond the booth door, the internet café buzzed with clattering keyboards and frantic mouse clicks, warm ordinary human noise. Yet I felt trapped at the bottom of a deep dry well, staring up at a tiny blinding patch of sky far above.
I never mentioned a word of this to anyone for two weeks after moving out.
But some horrors can never be left behind.
Every night when I lie down to sleep, that broken accented voice resurfaces unbidden. *Is anyone there?* Night after night, pulling me back to that dark guest room hallway, staring at that cold gray plank, trapped in suffocating terror.
Two weeks later, I crossed paths with the janitor again while cleaning the roadside outside my work station.
He paused sweeping fallen leaves when he saw me, our gazes locking across the bike lane.
"Moved out?" he called.
"Yeah," I shouted back.
He nodded and resumed sweeping.
I slowed my cart as I passed, catching his quiet mumbled words carried on the wind.
"Sorry, what did you say?"
He stopped sweeping, straightening his back, every syllable sharp and clear: "Property management checked building surveillance after that night. No one else entered the hallway that late. They questioned the resident of 402 directly below your unit. Do you know what he heard?"
I shook my head.
"He claimed he heard a man's voice. Young, perfect standard Mandarin. Repeating the same question, over and over: 'Is anyone there?'"