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I don’t know where else to put this. If I post it on Facebook, my mum will panic. If I tell my friends, they’ll think I’m spiralling. So I guess this is for the strangers of the internet.

Something in my house is mimicking me.

It started small. Subtle enough that I convinced myself it was stress. I live alone in a rented terrace. It's an old place. Narrow stairs, thin walls, the kind of house where you can hear your own pulse at night. I work from home, so I’m here all the time. I know every creak, every pipe knock, every draft that snakes under the doors. About three weeks ago, I started hearing movement upstairs while I was downstairs. Not loud. Just… pacing. Slow steps from my bedroom to the spare room. Then back again.The first time, I froze on the sofa, heart hammering. I muted the TV and listened.

Step. Step. Step. Directly above me.

I grabbed the kitchen knife (classic horror movie mistake, I know) and went up. Nothing. Bedroom empty. Spare room empty. Windows locked from the inside. I told myself it was the old floorboards adjusting. Temperature change. Wood swelling. Normal house stuff. Then it started copying me. The first incident I can’t explain happened on a Thursday. I was brushing my teeth in the bathroom upstairs. The door was open, light on, mirror slightly fogged from the shower I’d just had. I leaned forward to spit and I heard someone clear their throat behind me. Not in the hallway. Inside the bathroom. It was my throat clear. Same pitch. Same scratchy little double cough I’ve had since I was a kid.

I whipped around so fast I slammed my elbow into the sink. No one there. Shower curtain still. Door still open. Light buzzing softly. I stood there for a full minute, waiting for breathing that wasn’t mine.Nothing. I didn’t sleep much that night. The next morning, I was making coffee in the kitchen when I heard my voice from upstairs. Not talking. Humming.I always hum while I make coffee. Same stupid off-key tune. Something I don’t even realise I’m doing most of the time. But I wasn’t humming.I was standing completely still. And from my bedroom above me, I could hear me humming it. Perfectly in sync with the rhythm I usually use.Then it stopped abruptly. Like it realised I wasn’t joining in. I didn’t go upstairs, I left the house and sat in my car for an hour.

I tried to rationalise it. Audio hallucinations. Stress. Isolation. I googled everything from carbon monoxide leaks to early psychosis. I even bought a detector. No leak. No gas. No explanation.

It escalated on Sunday. I was on a video call with my sister. Mid-conversation, she paused and frowned.“Why are you whispering?” she asked.

“I’m not.”

"Yes, you are. You’re… repeating me.”

Cold spread down my spine.

“I’m not saying anything.”

She turned pale.

"I can hear you,” she insisted. “You’re slightly delayed, like an echo. You’re repeating the last few words I say.”

I swear to God I wasn’t speaking. Then, through my laptop speakers, I heard it too. My voice. Soft. Whispering. Repeating her last sentence exactly, but flatter. Wrong somehow. Like it was reading from a script. I slammed the laptop shut.

The whispering didn’t stop. It was coming from upstairs. Same tone. Same cadence. My voice, practising conversation.I don’t remember grabbing my phone, but I must have. Because I recorded what happened next.

I stood at the bottom of the stairs. And I spoke

"Hello?”

From the top of the stairs, my voice replied.

“Hello?” Half a second delay. Same inflection.

I swallowed.

"Who’s there?”

"Who’s there?”

But the second version dragged slightly on the last word. Like it was stretching it out, testing it. I don’t know why I kept going. I think I was in shock.

"Stop.”

“Stop.”

"Go away.”

“Go away.”

Then I tried something else. I said nothing. I just stood there, silent, and after about ten seconds, it spoke anyway. In my voice.

"Why did you stop?"

I felt something inside me drop. Like missing a step in the dark, because that wasn’t a repetition. That was new.I ran outside. Barefoot. I didn’t even grab my keys. Just stood on the pavement shaking until I could breathe again.

I checked the recording later. You can hear both voices.

Mine, closer to the phone. And the other, fainter, upstairs. Identical, but not quitet. It sounds hollow, like it’s speaking through teeth that don’t quite fit. I called the police. They searched the house. No sign of entry. No hidden rooms. No attic access big enough for a person. Nothing.

One officer even joked that maybe I had a ghost with a good ear. I laughed. I wish I hadn’t. Because two nights ago, it changed tactics.

I was lying in bed, lights off, trying to ignore the tension in the air. Then I heard the front door open downstairs. The unmistakable click of the latch, footsteps; slow, measured. They were coming up the stairs!

I held my breath. I live alone. The steps reached the landing. Stopped outside my bedroom door. And in my exact voice, right outside the wood; "I know you’re awake.”

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even scream. The handle slowly turned. The door creaked open. But nothing was there. Just the dark hallway. Then I heard it. Behind me. From the corner of my bedroom. Breathing. I don’t remember falling asleep. I must have passed out. When I woke up, my phone was on my bedside table, unlocked. Camera app open, the front facing camera recording. Six hours of footage. I skipped through it. For the first three hours, nothing. Just me asleep. Then at 3:17am, I sit up, but I don’t wake up. My eyes are open, but they’re wrong. Too wide. Too still. I turn slowly toward the corner of the room and I smile. Except, it's not my smile. It’s too stretched. Too deliberate.Then I whisper, "Almost right."

I lie back down. Close my eyes. At 3:19am, the door to my bedroom opens.And something shaped like me walks in. It stands beside the bed. Watching the version of me in bed. The standing one tilts its head. Then slowly, carefully, it climbs into me. Like stepping into clothes. My body jerks once .Then goes still. The standing figure is gone. It’s just me in bed again.

Sleeping peacefully.

The recording ends at 6:42am when my alarm goes off.

I watched it ten times. I don’t remember any of it.

Yesterday, my neighbour knocked on my door. She asked if I was feeling better. I said I was fine. She looked confused.

“You were banging on my door at 3am,” she said. “You kept saying you’d locked yourself out. You sounded… strange.”

I was in bed at 3am. I have the footage.

I checked the file again last night. It’s shorter now. Only shows me sleeping. No 3:17am. No standing figure .No whispering.

Just six hours of normal sleep.I don’t know what’s real anymore. But I’ve noticed something else. Sometimes when I speak, there’s the faintest delay in my ears .Like an echo. Half a second behind me. Learning.

If I stop posting after this, assume it got it right.