Mail for Apartment 0 & Voicemails

Creepy

This episode of Creepy features two distinct horror stories centered on the loss of identity and reality. The first story follows a tenant w

Key takeaways

• The 'Mail for Apartment 0' story explores the concept of a building physically absorbing its residents into its walls.
• A mysterious letter addressed to 'Apartment 0' serves as the catalyst for the narrator's erasure from the building's records.

Main topics

• Urban legends
• Creepypasta

Notable quotes

Your occupancy has been acknowledged.

Conclusion

A chilling exploration of how the familiar elements of modern life can

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) I'm John Grylls from Creepy, and I listen to the Be Afraid Podcast Network. Now, this Speaker 4 (0:12) is Creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous, chilling, and disturbing creepypastas and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened or are simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. Speaker 3 (0:48) Hey y'all. Nothing much to say this week. I gotta get some stuff wrapped up here, then 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 Burkhart. Creepy Presents, Mail for Apartment Zero. Speaker 2 (1:20) 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 mailbox downstairs. Speaker 2 (1:45) 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 front desk. The landlord emptied it every evening. At least, I thought she did. I've never actually seen her open it. Speaker 2 (2:21) 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 address, or postmark. The front had been typed in faded black ink. Current occupant. Apartment 0. Speaker 2 (2:49) 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 envelope downstairs. 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. Speaker 2 (3:35) I slid my finger under the flap. The glue 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. Speaker 2 (4:02) 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 1130. His clothes were soaked even though it wasn't raining. The skin around his eyes looked swollen and pale, and 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. Speaker 2 (4:48) 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 dragged 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. Speaker 2 (6:13) 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. Speaker 2 (6:43) 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 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. Speaker 2 (7:39) 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. Speaker 2 (7:56) 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'd 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 nightgown, holding an opened envelope between both hands. Speaker 2 (8:40) 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. Speaker 1 (9:00) The rooms didn't like people staying for Speaker 2 (9:04) 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 scar behind his ear. He looked up at the number above the doors, then told me that I had the wrong floor as they closed. Speaker 2 (9:40) 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