Somebody Repeatedly Breaks Into Room And Leaves 'Gifts'

This happened to a close friend and housemate of mine whilst at university. I'll call her Laura for the purposes of this story.

We were in our second year of university, and while it's typical to move out of halls and into a house during second year, for financial reasons we both decided to apply to stay in our halls of residence again. We attended the University of York (in the UK), and chose the college just behind the library due to the en suite bath rooms and the close location to Heslington West (where all our lectures were held).

The halls were 3 floors high, with 10 people living on each floor, and everyone seemed pretty nice. Everyone had a key card, which you had to use to access the main building, and again to access your floor (only the key card specific to that floor would work), and the only other way to access the building was if you rang the buzzer and someone physically came and opened the door. If you lost your key card, you had to report it to the porter and it would instantly be cancelled so it no longer worked and you would be issued a new one.

Now I've described our living situation, I'll proceed with the story. Term started off normally enough. My friend and I were both on the same course (genetics), and we attended our lectures (unless we were too hungover), did society stuff, went to the library and etc. We were a fan of midnight library trips, and one day we came back from the library around 2am.

We buzzed ourselves in, went in the lift to the second floor, and headed to our respective rooms to sleep. I was brushing my teeth maybe five minutes later, and there was a knock on my door. I answered it, and Laura came in with a confused expression and asked me to come to her room with her.

I followed her, and she went over to her desk and picked up an origami swan. She swore she hadn't made it, and that it hadn't been there before our library trip. She asked me if I'd put it in there at any point, but I'd never seen it before.

While we used cards to buzz ourselves through the door system, we unlocked our personal rooms with a key. I asked her if she'd locked her room before going out, and she insisted that she had. I told her that she must have forgotten and left it unlocked accidentally, and that it would just be one of our housemates pratting around. It's not uncommon for people to prank each other at uni- during my first year, a housemate left his room unlocked, so we went and wrapped all his stuff in tin foil and clingfilm. Laura was still looking a bit worried however, but I told her not to worry, and she agreed that a paper swan was innocent enough, so she let it go and we both went to bed.

Around a week and a half passed, and we were busy with uni so we'd pretty much forgotten about the weird origami swan incident. In this time, Laura had asked all our housemates about it, but none of them owned up, so we decided that it was definitely a housemate messing around but not wanting to admit it was them. One day, we had a gap between our morning lectures and a laboratory session in the afternoon, so we came home to make some lunch. I was making a sandwich in the kitchen chatting with a couple of our other housemates, and Laura came in. She was carrying another origami swan and a ribbon. She said the ribbon had been around her door handle, and that the swan had been on her desk again.

This time, I knew she'd locked her door as we'd headed out for our 9am lecture together that morning, and I'd seen her do it. I was a bit confused, but I still insisted that it had to be one of our housemates messing around, because no one else could get in that corridor due to the door card system. Laura agreed with me, but was concerned because she knew she'd lost her key whilst drunk during freshers week.

I hadn't known this, but apparently a few days into term, we'd been on a night out out to a club, and the next morning Laura hadn't been able to find her key. She said she figured she must have lost it in the club somewhere, and had immediately gone to the porters and paid the fine to collect the new key. They'd told her just to hand the missing one in if it ever turned up.

So now, Laura was thinking that maybe one of our housemates had the key, had realised it unlocked Laura's room (because our keys had our room numbers on them), and was putting stuff in there as a practical joke. Laura, however, didn't see the funny side of someone going into her room, and thought it was a bit too weird and specific to be a practical joke. She decided to give everyone the benefit of the doubt though, and took a picture of the swan and posted it on facebook in our house group chat saying 'nice swan lol, thanks guys. I'd appreciate it if you stopped going in my room now tho'.

But they didn't stop going in her room. Over the next few weeks, whoever kept entering her room did so more frequently. They'd still leave the weird ass swans, but other things started happening too. For example, Laura would leave her laptop in a certain place on her desk, but when she came back, it would be on her pillow. And the clothes in her wardrobe would be rearranged, and books would be left out that she hadn't been reading. Again, it was nothing particularly sinister, but it was really freaking Laura out now, and she was beginning to doubt herself. She'd often say that maybe she really had left her laptop on her pillow, and that she was just worrying because of the swan thing. It got to the point where she had me look at her room before we'd leave for lectures, and had me watch her physically lock the door. But Laura wasn't losing it- things really were moving round her room while she was gone, and someone was definitely going in there.

This time, I posted a massive rant about it on the fb chat. All of our housemates absolutely swore it wasn't them, and that they'd keep an eye out. And honestly, none of them gave a particularly creepy vibe and they all did seem fairly genuine about it. However, we knew it either had to be one of our housemates, or a friend/partner that someone was letting into the building as there was no way at all of entering without one of those active key cards.

This went on for a few more weeks, and eventually I urged her to tell campus security what had been going on when the weird swan-leaving-laptop moving person didn't let up. There are no security cameras inside the building (only on the door at the entrance), but they said they would keep a close eye and that they would increase their car patrols around our area of college. Laura thanked them, but she wasn't convinced this would be much help, seeing as she was convinced it was someone inside the house. She also informed the college provost (the guy who oversees things like student welfare and disciplinaries), and individually all 30 people in that block were called in to talk to him to see if anyone knew anything. Nothing came of it, but Laura was glad that the university were taking the situation seriously.

Now is when things started to get really creepy. The person was still moving things around her room, and was leaving the occasional paper swan, but now they also started leaving notes. It started with short notes on her pillow, such as 'You are pretty', but soon turned into full blown letters detailing how this person had been watching Laura since the beginning of term, how much they liked her, and how they knew that she liked them too because she always accepted their 'gifts'. Naturally, Laura was seriously distressed by this point. She even considered moving out and staying somewhere else, and she ended up going to Open Doors (the on campus university counselling service) because she had severe anxiety and paranoia. It got to the point where she rarely left her room, and the only person she would allow to enter was me. She stopped going to lectures and to lacrosse society (which she'd loved), because she said she felt like she could feel eyes on her all the time, and was genuinely terrified someone might follow her and do something. If she had to go anywhere alone for any reason, she'd call me to come and meet her. She spent a lot of her time crying, and she was even struggling to complete essays and keep up with university stuff.

I told her to keep all the letters, but she didn't want them in her room, so I looked after them and gave them to the provost, who ended up getting the police involved. Again, the police questioned us all, but nothing came of it. Finally, the university offered to change her door and have a new lock fitted (something they should have done in the first place, but the uni bedroom doors are all heavy duty fire doors and apparently they're expensive).

So she had her new lock fitted, but the letters didn't stop. Instead, they just ended up getting pushed under her door when she was out. They became more and more graphic and sexual in nature, with them stating in great detail exactly what their life together would be like and what they'd do in the bedroom.

We were well into second term by this point, and Laura was really struggling to cope. She'd deleted all her social media accounts, and she'd failed on a couple of assignments due to the stress, but Laura was desperate not to quit as she wanted to do well at her degree and didn't want to let anyone down. We were still no closer to knowing who it was, however, and the only comforting thing was the fact that this person couldn't use the missing key to access her room anymore.

Anyway, the letters continued and finally a letter came asking her to meet up. The person asked Laura to meet at 11pm near Central Hall. In general, York campus is pretty well lit and is pretty safe due to the security patrols, with very few incidents taking place. Central Hall, however, was one area of campus which really wasn't very well lit, and was in fact pretty dark. What's more, the entrance of Central Hall doesn't have any security cameras, so basically this person had asked to meet Laura in a dark area of campus with no security.

Obviously Laura didn't attend the 11pm date, and instead reported it to campus security. Security checked the area out, but no one ever turned up. After that, she received a letter asking her to meet up most days, and by this point Laura was at breaking point. She phoned her mum, and admitted what had been going on for the past few months (she'd never told her family as she didn't want them to worry, and because they'd never actually done anything physical to her). Her mum (who lived about 1.5 hours away by car) insisted she was driving up the next day to talk to the college provost about the situation, and told Laura that under no circumstance she would be staying in those halls. Eventually, Laura agreed to take a medical leave of absence (stating depression and anxiety as the cause), due to come back the following academic year.

As September drew near, she made the decision not come back. Through text she told me nothing weird at all had happened since she'd gone back home, but that she felt too afraid to come back to York, and that she was still experiencing bad anxiety whenever she left the house. I have seen Laura since, and though she's doing okay now, the whole situation will be with her for life.

After the whole situation with Laura, no one else in our flat was ever targeted and nothing odd happened, but I pretty much avoided all of our housemates, knowing that one of them (or someone close to them) had to be responsible for stalking Laura and causing the deterioration of her mental health. We still genuinely have no idea who was responsible for any of it, and I guess now we will never know.

So, creepy person out there, stay the hell away from Laura and please God let's never ever meet (even though we probably already have).