Submitted by: Elin, 31
Gothenburg, Sweden
I lived alone in a six-storey apartment building in Gothenburg. It was not an old building, and nothing about it felt frightening. The entrance had electronic locks, the basement was brightly lit, and cameras covered the front door and garage.
That was why I did not take the woman seriously at first.
My laundry booking started at ten on a Thursday evening. I had been working late and had no clean clothes left, so I carried two baskets into the basement just before ten.
When I entered the corridor, I saw a woman standing beside the storage-room door.
She looked to be in her late forties. Her dark hair hung loosely over her shoulders, and she wore a long grey coat even though the basement was warm.
I smiled and said hello.
She did not answer.
I assumed she was waiting for another laundry room. There were three in the building, and people often arrived early.
I unlocked my room, loaded the machines and returned upstairs.
Forty minutes later, I went back down.
She was still there.
She had moved closer to the laundry-room door.
This time, she was facing it.
I asked whether she had booked the room after me.
She slowly turned her head and looked directly at me.
“No,” she said.
Her voice was quiet and rough.
I waited for her to explain, but she said nothing else.
I collected my washing and placed it in the dryers. As I worked, I could feel her watching me through the narrow window in the door.
I decided to leave before the cycle finished.
When I opened the door, she was standing so close that I nearly walked into her.
“Sorry,” I said, stepping around her.
She followed me.
I could hear her shoes against the concrete floor as I walked toward the lift. When I stopped, she stopped. When I continued, she followed again.
I turned around and asked what she wanted.
She smiled.
It was not a friendly smile. Her lips moved, but the rest of her face remained still.
“You always come down alone,” she said.
I ran.
The lift was on the top floor, so I took the stairs. I heard her behind me for the first two flights. Her footsteps were slow, but they never stopped.
I reached my apartment, locked the door and called the building’s emergency number.
The caretaker arrived twenty minutes later with a security guard. They searched the basement and every stairwell. They found no one.
The next morning, the caretaker reviewed the security footage.
The woman had never entered through the main entrance, garage or courtyard door.
That alone was frightening, but something else disturbed him more.
She had appeared in the basement recording at 9:12 p.m., standing beside my storage unit.
My name and apartment number were printed on the label attached to its door.
For forty-eight minutes, she stood there without moving.
Then, several seconds before I entered the basement, she turned toward the camera and smiled.
The police took a report but could do little. Her face was partly obscured by her hair, and nobody in the building recognised her.
I changed my laundry booking habits and never went into the basement at night again.
Two weeks later, I found an envelope inside my locked mailbox.
There was no stamp or writing on it.
Inside was a photograph of me carrying laundry through the basement corridor.
It had been taken from inside my own storage unit.
On the back, someone had written:
You looked at me this time.
I moved out three days later.
Editorial note: This is an original fictional horror story presented in a realistic user-submission style. It is not a verified eyewitness account.