I never checked the ventilation in my apartment. I really wish I had.

I had never checked the ventilation in my apartment.

Honestly—who even thinks to look there?

I lived in a regular apartment building, a rented place, nothing special. The first few weeks were completely normal, until I started noticing a strange little detail: in the mornings, some of the kitchen drawers would be slightly open. Just a little. As if someone had looked inside and hadn’t fully closed them.

I blamed myself. Fatigue. Habit. Autopilot.

Then food started disappearing. Not all at once. First, a chocolate bar. Then a yogurt. Then half a bag of cereal. I even thought I might’ve miscounted at the store.

The turning point happened at night.

I woke up to a quiet metallic sound. Not a bang—more like a scraping. As if something was slowly being dragged along the wall. The sound was coming from above, from the kitchen.

I stepped into the hallway and turned on the light. Silence. Everything looked normal.

But the smell was strange. Dusty. Like an old stairwell.

The next day, I noticed that the ventilation grate in the kitchen had been shifted. Just slightly. I pulled on it—and it came off easily. Inside was darkness, and it felt far too… deep for a normal vent.

I turned on my phone’s flashlight.

And I saw marks. Scuff marks. Dirt. And a handprint.

By the evening, I went online and learned that in older buildings, ventilation shafts sometimes connect multiple apartments directly.

That night, I didn’t sleep. I sat in my room with the lights on, listening.

Around 3 a.m., I heard the sound again. Closer this time. I slowly walked into the kitchen.

The grate had been removed and neatly placed against the wall.

Breathing was coming from inside the shaft.

I didn’t scream. I didn’t get closer. I locked myself in my room and called the police.

They found him two hours later.

A man with no documents. He had been living in the ventilation system for weeks, moving between apartments while people were at work or asleep. Eating whatever he could find. Sometimes just standing there and listening.

As they led him out, he looked at me and said:

“You’re the only one who locked the bedroom door.”

A week later, I moved out.

And only after settling into my new apartment did I realize one thing:

in the old one, I never locked my bedroom door…