Tenant Finds Creepy Notes Around His Apartment He Thinks Are From His Landlord – But The Truth Was Far Worse
"I seriously thought that my landlord was stalking me."
SarahMcEwan / Shutterstock.com Imagine walking into your apartment to see a post-it note on your fridge. It doesn’t seem that unsettling until you realize you live alone and the note’s handwriting is unrecognizable. It’s the reality a Reddit poster shared on the “Legal Advice” forum back in 2016, suspecting he had an intruder or an unwelcome landlord rifling through his space.
The creepy notes, with reminders about chores and saving documents, started to become more and more common with no resolution.
While he’d hoped for advice from Reddit about catching his landlord in the act, one commenter, in particular, did much more. They saved his life.
This tenant suspected his landlord was leaving creepy notes around his apartment, only to come to an unsettling realization about where they originated.
“On April 15, I found a yellow post-it note in a handwriting that wasn’t mine on my desk, reminding me of some errands I had to do,” he started. “While odd, I chalked it up to something I did in my sleep … maybe in my half-awake state, I scrawled it, so it didn't appear to be in my handwriting.”
After throwing out the note and forgetting all about it, he was unsettlingly brought right back to a state of confusion when he found another one just days later. “It was on the back of my desk chair, in the same handwriting, telling me to make sure I ‘saved my documents.’ I was freaked out, but there were no other signs of a break-in.”
Terrified, like anyone else would be after discovering creepy notes in their one-bedroom apartment, he decided to set up a camera. However, after another week passed and another note popped up, he realized the webcam footage he’d expected to “close the case” had been conveniently deleted.
The final note read, "‘Our landlord isn’t letting me talk to you, but it’s important that we do.'" Adding, "I immediately checked the webcam's folder on my computer and found nothing from the night before, but my computer's recycling bin had been emptied, which I am certain I did not do recently, indicating someone had noticed the webcam and deleted the files."
After posting to Reddit asking for legal advice about his landlord’s creepy notes, one reader suggested he consider his own ‘mental health.’
The next time he noticed the notes was just a month after the first one arrived, but this time, they were completely blank. Plastered on the outside of his door and every other door on his apartment floor, the empty post-it notes served as a reminder that he needed to seek help. “They were all blank, in varying colors … Should I consult my landlord? Others living in the complex?”
While most commenters offered security techniques and tactics for catching “his intruder,” one took a different route. “You seem sincere, and this doesn’t seem like a plot,” they wrote. “It’s likely that you are writing the notes yourself but forgetting.”
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“This might be a mental health issue,” they added. “You might be experiencing some kind of dissociative disorder. Or it might be a physical problem … Are you getting enough ventilation when you sleep? Is there a carbon monoxide leak in the building?”
Hallmarks of carbon monoxide poisoning can vary across the board, but most victims experience spurts of confusion, headaches, and dizziness — all things this poster had vaguely noticed, as he mentioned in a response to the comment.
After purchasing a carbon monoxide detector, his entire investigation came to a halt. He’d been the one writing the creepy notes.
Ultimately, it wasn’t his landlord who left the ‘creepy’ notes. ‘I had carbon monoxide poisoning and forgot.’
“Thanks to everyone who gave me suggestions and gave advice on how to proceed,” he wrote in an updated post just a few months later, “especially those who recommended a carbon monoxide detector. I plugged one in my bedroom, it read at 100 ppm.”
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Experts advise tenants to be wary of carbon monoxide levels, as oftentimes symptoms arise before you notice your detector is out of batteries or not working at all. Measured in parts per million (“ppm”), carbon monoxide concentrations are unhealthy when measured at anything above 70 ppm, and considered lethally “dangerous” when sustained for long periods of time between 150 and 200 ppm.
Not only did this Redditor’s comment close this tenant’s investigation against his landlord, but it also saved his life, along with the lives of other tenants in the building.
“Sounds like you owe this Reddit commenter big time. He might have just saved your life,” one person wrote. “I’m glad this worked out the way that it did.”
For many commenters and readers, this was a humbling reminder to invest in a carbon monoxide detector. It could save your life.
Zayda Slabbekoorn is a News & Entertainment Writer at YourTango who focuses on health & wellness, social policy, and human interest stories.