• Newsfeed
  • viral

This Twitter Thread About a Man Living in the Walls Is Really Creeping People Out Because ‘Trauma Never Gets Old’

3 minute read
By Ashley Hoffman
Updated: | Originally published: ;

It’s time to gather around the phone screens and read a nightmarish Twitter tale from a man who really (well, purportedly) lived it, as is Halloween tradition. In other words, scary Twitter threads are the new scary campfire stories.

In a lengthy thread full of eye-widening developments, Twitter user Grady Hendrix documents his alleged childhood encounters with a man squatting in his family’s house.

Setting the scene, Hendrix wrote that it was 1981, he was 9, and he was hungry. So, he snuck down to the kitchen for a late-night snack — leftover sweet and sour pork from a delectable-sounding restaurant, “the Fish & Shrimp House.”

What was actually on the menu, however? TERROR.

In the kitchen, Hendrix wrote, he saw “a skinny guy, eating our leftovers, and drinking our milk from the carton.” (The man, Hendrix said, couldn’t see him.)

“I can’t explain how terrifying it is for someone to BE IN YOUR HOUSE,” Hendrix wrote. “I slooooowly backed away, crept upstairs, and woke up my mom & dad.”

He says his parents did not believe him, and continued to doubt his sightings despite repeat appearances from the mysterious intruder — including one moment in which he allegedly caught the man watching him through an A/C vent in his bedroom. The nineteen-part yarn only unravels from there — descending into deeper and darker horror story territory. According to Hendrix, the enigmatic man had been living in the walls, and eventually died in them.

If real, the incident proved oddly fortuitous, or perhaps inspirational: suspense became Hendrix’s specialty. He’s written books including My Best Friend’s Exorcism and the graphic novel Horrorstör.

Here is his chilling thread in full — and decide for yourself whether you think it’s true.

More Must-Reads From TIME

Contact us at letters@time.com