Creepy - Mail for Apartment 0 & Voicemails

Episode Date: September 24, 2026

Mail for Apartment 0***Written by: Z.H. and Narrated by: Cole Burkhardt***Voicemails***Written by: Stephen Storesina and Narrated by: Nichole Goodnight***Support the show at patreon.com/creepypod***Title music by: Alex Aldea Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm John Grills from creepy, and I listen to the Be Afraid Podcast Network. No. This is creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous, chilling and disturbing creepy pastors and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened or simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. Hey, y'all.

Nothing much to say this week. I got to get some stuff wrapped up here and catch my flight. Big month ahead, you know. So much to do. So much to do. I have been waiting for this all year. No time to waste. On with the show.

First up, from writer Z.H. and narrated by Cole Burkart. Creepy Presents. Mail for Apartment Zero. The landlord had several rules about the building, but the one she repeated most often concerned the mail. Do not open anything that isn't addressed to you. She would say, whenever letters ended up in the wrong boxes, put it in the blue mail. put it in the blue mailbox downstairs. I'd lived there for almost seven months,

and assumed she was unusually strict about privacy. The building had an old row of brass mail slots in the lobby, each marked with a black apartment number. The slots often jammed, especially when the weather was damp, so letters regularly ended up in the wrong boxes. Whenever that happened, I dropped them into the blue mailbox beside the first, front desk. The landlord emptied it every evening. At least, I thought she did. I've never actually seen her open it. The letter arrived on a Tuesday. I came home carrying groceries and grabbed the

entire bundle of mail without checking it. I didn't notice the unfamiliar envelope until I was upstairs at my kitchen table. It was plain white, slightly yellow around the edges, with no stamp, return addressed, or postmark. The front had been typed in faded black ink. Current occupant, apartment zero. The building did not have an apartment zero. The ground floor apartments began at 1A and 1B. Beneath them were the lobby, boiler room, and basement laundry area.

I had passed every door often enough to know there was no zero anywhere. I should have taken the omnisciently. down stairs. Instead, I held it up to the light. There appeared to be only one sheet of paper inside. I told myself it was probably an old management notice or a joke from another tenant. The landlord's warning hadn't crossed my mind. Do not open anything that isn't addressed to you. I slid my finger under the flap. The glues stretched into thin black strands before snapping apart, leaving a sticky residue on my skin. Inside was a single sheet of paper with one sentence printed in the center.

Your occupancy has been acknowledged. I let out a quiet laugh, folded the paper, and dropped it into the kitchen bin. That night, I saw Mr. Vale in the hallway. He had lived in Apartment 5C when I first moved in. He was a quiet man in his 40s. who always wore dark suits and smelled strongly of aftershave. He had left suddenly at the beginning of winter. He was standing outside my apartment at 11.30.

His clothes were soaked, even though it wasn't raining. The skin around his eyes looked swollen and pale, and at one side of his jaw hung lower than the other. His right hand was pressed against the wall. Two of his fingers had been flattened almost completely. the nails split and blackened. I called out his name, and he turned slowly to face me. He smiled like he had been expecting to see me.

Then he looked towards my apartment door and said in a quiet, wet voice, that he knew I had opened mine too. I stepped back in confusion until he lifted his damaged hand. A white envelope was stuck to his palm, stained with dark moisture. I reached for the keys in my pocket as he moved towards me. His knees barely bent, forcing his body to sway as he crossed the hallway. I ran to my apartment and threw myself inside.

The lock turned, just as something struck the other side. Mr. Vale dried his fingernails slowly down the door. Then he whispered through the gap beneath it, warning me. not to let them take my number. The next morning, the landlord denied knowing what I was talking about. She reminded me that Mr. Vale had moved out months ago and suggested that I must have been tired. She stood behind the front desk, sorting letters.

The blue mailbox sat closed beside her. I told her that I knew exactly who I had seen, and that he even knew about the letter. Her hands stopped moving. She looked up at me and asked me what letter I was talking about. Something in her expression made me hesitate. I said it was nothing and that I must have been mistaken after all. She watched me for a moment before returning to the mail.

As I walked away, she called out after me and said that anything not addressed to me belonged in the blue mailbox. I went upstairs and retrieved the envelope from the bin. It was damp now. I waited until later, when I thought the landlord had left her office, before taking it back downstairs. After the way she had reacted, when I mentioned the letter, I didn't want her to know I had opened it. The lobby was empty, and her office door was closed. I pushed the envelope through the slot in the blue mailbox, but it stopped halfway. Something inside seemed to press it back towards me. I pulled it out and tried it again, pushing harder this time.

The envelope bent between my fingers before sliding out on its own and dropping at my feet. The slot lifted slightly, even though nothing was touching it from the outside. For a moment, I thought I saw pale fingertips curled around the metal from within. Then I heard the landlord's office door unlocking. I grabbed the envelope and hurried upstairs before she came out. I stuffed it into a kitchen drawer, planning to try again once I was certain she had gone. I never got the chance. That night, someone began knocking from inside my bedroom wall.

The sound continued until sunrise, three slow knocks, followed by a pause, Then three more. Whenever I moved closer, it stopped. Whenever I returned to bed, it began again. By morning, I convinced myself it was a pipe. But then I saw Rachel in the laundry room. She had lived on the second floor with a small white dog and disappeared sometime before Christmas.

She was sitting on top of a washing machine in a soaked nightdown, holding an opened envelope between both hands. Her eyes locked onto the keys in my hand, and something shifted in her expression. She seemed surprised. When I asked what had happened to her, she said she once had a key, too. Then she looked past me towards the concrete wall behind the dryers. The rooms didn't like people staying for too long. She said it so quietly that I almost missed it.

Then something knocked once from inside the wall. I ran. After that, I began seeing them everywhere. An elderly man stood in the elevator with his forehead against the back wall. When the doors opened on my floor, he turned enough for me to see a deep star behind his ear. He looked up at the number above the doors, then told me that I had the wrong floor as they closed. A young woman was crouched beside the rubbish bags in the alley, scratching at the bricks with a broken key.

Tears streamed her face as she asked whether I knew which apartment was hers. They all carried envelopes. I stopped using the elevator. I avoided the basement and took my rubbish out during daylight. At night, I heard soft tapping in the walls and at my window, but I kept the curtains drawn, not wanting to see. what might be out there. Then, one of them touched me. Mr. Vail was waiting at the end of the hallway when I returned from work. His swelling had worsened, and the damaged fingers on his right side

were bound together with strips of paper. I turned towards the stairs, trying to ignore him. He crossed the distance before I reached them and grabbed my wrist. His fingers felt soft and cold, but his grip was strong enough to grind the bones together. I struck his arm with my keys until the skin split. There was no blood inside him. Instead, thick, black liquid seeped from the wound, carrying scraps of wet paper with it. As I tore myself free,

he whispered that it was changing my address. Five dark bruises had appeared around my wrist, Inside each one was the pale outline of my apartment number, Sitch's C. Over the next two days, the Sitches faded, and then the C, curled, closed. Two days later, each bruise contained the same number zero. That was when the building began treating me like a visitor. My key started sticking in the lock. Some nights it took ten attempts before the door opened.

One morning I found my name missing from the intercom panel beside Apartments at sea. The apartment number was still there, but the space beside it was blank. I checked it twice before drawing upstairs and calling the landlord. I told her that something was wrong with the intercom panel because my name had disappeared. There was a pause before she asked, who was calling? I looked around my apartment. My coat was hanging beside the door, and the mug I had used that morning was still on the kitchen counter. I gave her my name and reminded her that I lived in 6C.

She told me the apartment was vacant. When I insisted I was standing inside it, she sighed and said, I must have the wrong building before ending the call. I stood in the kitchen, with the phone still pressed against my ear. The landlord sounded like she thought I was making. making some strange prank call about living in Sitch C. The following afternoon, I returned from work and found my front door open. The landlord was standing outside with a woman holding a property brochure. I demanded to know what they were doing.

The landlord turned. For a moment, she looked genuinely frightened. Then she told me that I had moved out. I held up my keys, pointing out that I still had them. Her eyes moved over me with confusion before drifting towards the framed photos inside, my coat beside the door and the shoes lined up on the rack. She stepped into the apartment and picked up one of the photographs. I was standing in the center of it, but she studied my face like she had never seen me before.

Eventually, she decided I must have left it all behind when I moved out, although I could tell she didn't quite believe it. Then she noticed the bruises around my wrist, and the confusion disappeared. She dismissed the woman without explanation, and followed me inside, closing the door behind her. She knew what the zeros meant, and more importantly, she knew that I had opened the letter. I asked her what apartment zero was, but she ignored me, and demanded to know where I had put it. The envelope was still inside the kitchen drawer. When I unfolded the paper, I saw that it had turned almost completely black.

The original sentence was gone. It was now replaced with occupancy pending, current resident, unconfirmed, previous address, 6C. The landlord stared at it before telling me I should have come to her immediately. I told her that I had tried putting it in the blue mailbox, but something had pushed it back out. That didn't seem to surprise her. Once the letter had been opened, the mailbox wouldn't take it anymore. I pointed out that she had never told me what would happen if someone opened one. Her jaw tightened.

She said the warning should have been enough, but she didn't sound convinced. I asked about Mr. Vale and Rachel. The landlord looked towards the walls before answering. They had both received letters, so had every person I had seen wandering through the building. The building had not erased them completely. It had replaced their absence with explanations people would accept. Mr. Vale had moved out. Rachel had broken her lease. One former tenant had supposedly died in the hospital, while another had gone to live with her daughter. None of it had really happened. landlord only noticed because she managed the building and sometimes found evidence that contradicted

what she remembers. Even then, the false memories felt real until something forced her to question them. A faint dragging sound moved through the wall behind us, traveling from the kitchen towards the bedroom. The former tenants' apartments had never disappeared. The people had simply lost their right to occupy them. Once the building stopped recognizing someone as a resident, apartment zero moved them into whatever spaces remained unclaimed. The walls, the service shafts, the gaps between floors, anywhere that was not officially occupied.

The dragon stopped behind my bedroom door. Heavy breathing came from the other side. I asked what they wanted from me. The landlord lit the door. They wanted my place. The bedroom door opened by itself. Mr. Vale was sitting on the edge of my bed. He was wearing one of my shirts with my work badge pinned to his chest,

but my photograph and name had been scratched away. Behind him, the wardrobe door opened. Rachel stood inside, folded into the narrow space with her knees. beside her shoulders. She began forcing her joints back into place without looking away from me. She was repeating the same thing over and over again. You have a room. Mr. Vale repeated it. You have a room. A third voice came from under the bed, whispering that they need one. The landlord pulled me behind her into the hall. hallway, but before she had closed the bedroom door, the wall behind Mr. Vale split from floor to ceiling.

The plaster stretched apart like wet paper. Inside was a narrow black space packed with bodies. Faces were pressed between pipes and beams. Arms and legs had been bent into gaps. No living person could have fit inside. Some were closed from decades ago, while others were closed. While others were so swollen that the fabric had sunk into their skin. Every one of them held an open envelope. They began pulling themselves through, repeating the same words as they came. You have a room. We need one.

The landlord shoved me towards the living room, but something caught my ankle. I fell on the floor and felt hands close around my legs and shone. shoulders. Mr. Vale pinned me down while Rachel reached into my pockets. The landlord shouted that they were taking anything that proved I belonged there. Someone tore the keys from my hand, another pulled an earring from my ear. The missing residents weren't trying to kill me. They were collecting evidence that C's C was mine. The young woman from the alley crawled over my teeth. chest. The broken key had been driven through the center of her palm. She opened her mouth.

My scream came out of her. I tried to make a sound, but only air escaped. Before they to drag me towards the open wall, the landlord struck Mr. Vale with her ring of keys. Brass sliced through his cheek, releasing black liquid and scraps of paper, and his grip loosened. She held up the letter, and tore it in half. Every missing tenant screamed. The sound came from the walls as well as the room. Mr. Vale clutched his chest. Rachel's body folded inwards,

and the zeros around my wrist burned as they stretched into thin lines and began to fade. The landlord tore the letter again. This time, the darkness inside the wall, wall pulled the bodies backwards. Hands clod at the floorboards and walls as the opening swallowed them. Mr. Vail slid across the floor leaving a trail of black liquid behind him. Rachel's limbs bent around the edges of the gap before snapping free. The young woman held on the longest, hooking the

broken key between two floorboards. The landlord stamped on her wrist. The key tore loose. The key tore loose. The The key tore loose, and she disappeared into the wall. The opening closed with a wet, sucking sound. The landlord found my keys underneath the table and tried them in the front door. It turned without resistance. She told me the transfer had been stopped. The building recognized me as the occupant of Sitch's Sea again, but the others were still trapped inside Apartment Zero. By morning, my name had returned to the intercom beside apartment at sea.

The landlord's records showed that I had lived there continuously for seven months. According to everyone else in the building, I had never moved out. I haven't slept in the bedroom since. The landlord insists that the wall is sealed, but I still hear movement behind it whenever the building becomes quiet. Sometimes Mr. Vale drags his fingers across the plaster. Sometimes Rachel whispers that she used to have a kitchen just like mine. The young woman can still use my voice.

She uses it to call my name from inside the wall, then answers herself when I refused to respond. This morning I went downstairs and found another name underneath mine on the intercom. Mr. Vale, apartment 6.6. C. By the time I called the landlord, Rachel's name had appeared beneath his. She told me not to remove them. Apartment Zero had failed to take me, but the people inside it had already been acknowledged as occupants of my apartment. According to the building, I still lived in such C. I just don't live here alone anymore.

And next, from writer Stevens, Dorcena, narrated by Nicole Goodnight. Creepy Presents Voice mails It happened during a string of dreary, rain-soaked nights. I've always gone to bed later than most people. I've struggled with delayed sleep phase disorder since childhood. Staying up late has never been unusual for me. Working late morning suited me well because of it.

I did a lot of my schoolwork and other necessary things like cleaning late at night. I thrived then, given my sleeping issues anyway. I even ate my dinners later than what social norms dictate. One night, I went to sleep, fan on, cool climate and rainfall outside that I could hear from the window. It was rare for me to get this kind of sleep. When I woke from this near blissful slumber, I rolled over and checked my phone to see whether I had any texts or social alerts. Even hoping for a message from a Tinder date, there was nothing like that. but I did have a voicemail from an unknown number.

Half anticipating a scam call about some fake computer virus, I ended up playing it. I could never have predicted what I heard. The timestamp was labeled 0-0-0, which was a time that, as far as I knew, didn't exist. The message was exactly one minute long. I gazed at the screen trying to make sense of it, but all I could think was, when was 0-0-0 even possible? When I pressed play, I heard only rainfall, the stillness of night and slow, heavy breathing into the receiver. Rhythmic.

Deep. Deliberate. It sounded patient in a way that caused my skin to crawl. While I was obviously disturbed, I went about my day's business as usual, eating my breakfast cereal at 10 sharp and showering immediately after. The drive to work was clear and pleasant. The sun shone as I downed a large coffee that was gas station fresh. walked into the office ready for the day. I was an IT consultant for a large company,

part of a team that kept processes running smoothly. I was no stranger to the IT world and was stoked to show my coworkers the voicemail at lunch. They were perplexed, as I was, to discover the voicemail was not there. I just saw it there, not an hour or so ago. They all reached a consensus, as I did. The voicemail had to have been some kind of fluke.

I was confused, but these sorts of things can happen in the IT world. Glitches, they call it. I reached the end of my shift at the same time each weekday around 9 p.m. I stopped by a chicken place and got a bucket for dinner while I watched the Nets play a late game. Kicking my feet up on the recliner, I was able to decompress from the day. Still confused, but the whole situation was out of mind. Once the Nets won, I went upstairs and did the same as the previous night. Had all the noises in place, rainfall was a tad heavier this day.

time, I fell asleep without another thought in my mind. I woke up at the same time the next morning, sunlight in the room, everything seemingly normal. Then I checked my phone and found another voicemail. Again, the timestamp showed zero zero zero. This voicemail was more disturbing when I heard it. The rain was there and so were passing cars. The same drawn out breathing deep, rhythmic and labored, like it belonged to someone who had spent years smoking. But this time there was a something else. A loud creak. A noise I knew immediately. The loose wooden step on my front porch, the one I'd been meaning to fix for months. What chilled my bones was the three taps I heard. Each tap had a second or two in between and wasn't too aggressive. I started to panic. Had who or

whatever this was made it all the way to my door? What made it tap my windows? Who the hell does that? Was it looking in through the windows looking for me? I was intent on finding out what the hell this was. I ate my cereal and got my coffee on my way to work, just like normal. This time, I didn't mention anything to my coworkers. They joked about whether the entity had returned. They had zero idea it had. I just joked back and decided to ignore the comments.

It was when I went home that things got more interesting. I made sure all curtains were closed and that there was a phone nearby in case I heard a break in. I watched my basketball game and ate dinner as usual. I stayed calm, but I was still nervous. I hated that this had become reality. But the sooner I deal with it, the better off I'll be. I can't allow this thing, entity, person even, to fester in my mind, living in my thoughts rent-free. I did calm meditations I found and went to sleep, arguably from exhaustion.

By the morning, the messages had become the first thing I thought about when I opened my eyes. I didn't even look out the window anymore. I put out my hand for my phone first, every morning, already afraid of what I would find. There was another voicemail waiting for me. Stamped zero zero, as always. I stood in the kitchen while it played, too afraid to sit down. At first I heard the rain again, then the slight scrape of something sliding across wet wood, not footsteps this time, fingernails maybe or something metal. Slow. Careful. Testing the porch railing, the doorframe, and the siding. Then the breathing returned, closer than before. At the very end, there was a soft sound so ordinary, it terrified me more than

anything else had. A click, presumably from my front door. Unlocking my door. I was sure of it. I didn't go into work right away. Instead, I spent nearly an hour checking every window latch and door lock in the house, then walking the perimeter twice in the rain like I expected to catch someone crouched under the porch. I found nothing except muddy water in my own pale, sleepless reflection in the windows. When I finally dragged myself into the office, my coworkers took one look at me and stopped joking. I frantically attempted to find the voicemail this time. I swore I wasn't lying or anything. They all looked at each other in a way that I did not exactly recognize. The kind of glances people say for somebody they believe may be falling apart in real time? By noon, my manager had asked whether I was

sleeping, whether I had anyone to call and whether I thought I should go home. That was worse than being mocked. It meant they had already decided something was wrong with me. They ended up dismissing me for the day. They reasoned that I was not performing the way I should and that they were concerned. I did not take that well, because I knew it was due to these forsaken voicemails I keep trying to show people. It's not a hallucination. I know it. The dismissal for the day did not sit well with me and spurred me to further action. I was not going to be made a fool of. I was so infuriated that I began preparations. It was early enough in the day to get things done. I went to a store that sold security-related items. I decided I would spare no expense to catch this mischievous thing in its tracks. First thing I did when I

went to the store was go up to the firearm counter. A big burly man was behind it and informed me what would be good for self-defense against anything. He smirked and showed me some. The deputy, who spoke to me at the station, kept his voice calm in that deliberate way people do when they think calmness alone could keep a situation from tipping over. He watched the footage twice, listened while I tried to explain the timestamps, and finally asked whether I had been under any unusual stress lately. Bills. Sleep problems, family history. I understood what he was doing. He wasn't investigating the voicemails anymore. He was measuring how once, stable I sounded. Before I left, he said that they would patrol the street if they had time.

If they had time. I remember being in the station parking lot in the rain, realizing that if something really was out there, then I was going back to face it alone. They ushered me out, promising to keep a deputy nearby and instructing me to call 911 if I saw anything. It should have made me feel better. Instead, it only made the house feel more dangerous when I got back. I reset the cameras, convinced myself a reboot might somehow fix whatever it happened, and sat there reliving that breathing in my mind until I could barely think of anything else. I couldn't eat. I couldn't even make tea. I bought a shotgun that afternoon and told myself I would stay awake all night. No sleep, no mistakes. I was going to prove I wasn't losing my mind. That night I sat in bed with a shotgun

loaded. Seinfeld playing mildly in the background, the fan going, the room dark except for the television. I did something I normally never do. I called an old friend from back home and asked him to stay on the phone with me. He agreed immediately saying he was worried about me. We talked quietly for hours, about work, about the city, about old plans and the things we were supposed to be doing with our lives. It helped. For a while, I even thought I'd won. But at some point, exhaustion dragged me under.

When I woke, the shotgun was still beside me, loaded and untouched. My phone, however, was no longer plugged in. My friend had hung up sometime after I fell asleep. I grabbed the phone and checked it immediately, relieved when I didn't see a new voicemail. For the first time, I thought maybe it was over. I went downstairs to make breakfast and decided to leave my phone in the living room so I could have a single quiet moment. A notification sound chimed faintly from the other room.

I ignored it at first, assuming it was a tad. text from my friend checking in, or maybe my boss trying to get me to come back in. But when I checked the screen a few minutes later, rage hit me so hard it felt infernal. Another voicemail marked zero zero zero. I turned on the voicemail to hear it, but in my rage, I did not realize how startling it would be. This voicemail had no rain, no passing cars, and no outside noise. It was a slow, measured squeak, like the stairs leading up to my bedroom. The breathing arose again, heavy and heaving, close enough to make my chest tighten. Under it almost engulfed by it, I heard something I couldn't even

fathom. It was a conversation. My conversation. My friend's voice and mine from the night before. Someone stood just outside my room and listened to every word. I heard nobody outside my door, let alone in my house. I thought I'd protected my. I thought I was ready. Somehow it got ever closer, breathing, unceasingly breathing. I screamed at the top of my lungs in anger and fear. I lost the war with this entity. This grotesquely disturbed apparition had won. I couldn't handle it anymore, so I tried something drastic. I ran as fast as I could up to my bedroom. I was going to do it before the voicemails could. It was the only way. I got there, slammed the door shut with a force like an angry gorilla, and snatched the gun.

My shotgun was already loaded and ready. I slid a slug in the chamber and aimed it directly up under my chin. My heartbeat raised. Thoughts flew by, blocking my rationality. Without thinking, I pulled the trigger, filling the whole house with a blow that shook the neighbor's windows. Depending on your interpretation of luck, the barrel of the shotgun narrowly missed the bottom of my head. It skimmed my chin and up by my right nostril. That's what this atrocious scar is from that goes up my forehead.

Most days, I wish it were successful, that I had escaped this awful reality. The voicemail is in my head replaying again, day after day. I cannot escape it. The conversation seems ingrained in my being. I eventually went to the hospital to get treatment for my wounds. Figure I can't let this infect or anything. That was a damn mistake. That is how I ended up here.

The event left me restrained in this hospital. Sedated and watched over while doctors and nurses talked around me as if I were not there. I keep hearing terms such as schizo, episode and hallucination. Of course, these shrinks believe that they should never listen to the person in peril. The medication has made me question everything. I'm not calmer. I'm just more calculated, more exhausted than anything. I've had co-workers family and even my friend from back home come see me while I'm in this hellhole.

He apologized for some reason. He said he felt guilty, but how was he supposed to do anything? He couldn't have done anything. After he left, I watched the news because the chatter helped. It helped fill the room I am locked in with noise, causing it to feel less empty. There was a breaking story about a man linked to home invasions in a basement full of obscure equipment. He was a large, burly man. I immediately recognized the man from the gun store.

I hit the call button so hard my hand cramped, trying to get someone to hand me a phone so I could call the police. The nurses came in and interpreted my revelations as hysterics, that there was no way the man on the news was responsible for my issues. Someone eventually added something to my IV, and I slipped unconscious. I am writing this now because I still need someone to believe me. The doctors say I'm sick. They say there's no way it was that man.

I broke before anyone could see the truth. I know what I heard. I know those voicemails were real. Whatever I discovered at zero zero zero may still be out there waiting for someone else to answer. I didn't imagine it. I know I didn't. At least, I don't think I did. For more information on this podcast, including how to submit.

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