“I had CO poisoning and thought my landlord was stalking me.”
Imagine living alone and waking up in the middle of the night, needing to use the bathroom. After fumbling through the darkness and making it to the toilet so you can relieve yourself, you notice something on a nightstand that’s visible in the afterglow behind you that’s seeping into your bedroom.
It’s a Post-it note. The handwriting appears to be yours; however, you have no recollection of ever writing the note. You simply attribute the find to perhaps an action carried out thoughtlessly during the day. You throw it in the trash and then go about your life. However, the next day, another note pops up. Again, you have no idea who wrote this note or left it behind.
It sounds like the beginning of a horror story that doesn’t end anywhere good, but that’s exactly what happened with Redditor @RBradbury1920 after they said that they noticed a series of Post-it notes being left for them — and they had no idea how they got there. They posted their story to r/legaladvice because they sincerely believed that they had a stalker who was breaking into their home without their knowing.
At first, Bradbury says, there was a note on their desk. “On the 15th of April I found a yellow Post-it note in a handwriting that wasn’t mine on my desk reminding me of some errands I had to do, but told literally nobody about.”
They went on to say that the note was haphazardly written so it didn’t immediately appear to look like it they wrote it, so they ended up just throwing it in the garbage.
However, after a few days went by, they noticed yet another note inside of their home — this time it was plastered to the back of their desk chair and the handwriting was identical to the initial note that they found.
Thinking that there was someone messing with them, Bradbury decided to start looking around their home; however, they couldn’t see any evidence for a “break-in.” It’s at this point in their tale that they decided to set up their webcam to try to record the Post-it-leaving psychopath in question.
Around nine days later, however, the Redditor woke up to find yet another Post-it note that read: “Our landlord isn’t letting me talk to you, but it’s important we do.” Thinking that they finally got the sneaky note-leaver dead to rights, Bradbury ran to their computer and started looking in the web camera folder.
What they saw must’ve made their skin crawl: the folder was completely empty. Not only did it look like the files in it had been deleted, but whatever files that were in the recycling bin were deleted as well.
A few days later they kept seeing a bunch of blank, different-colored Post-it notes over their apartment, and then stuck to various doors and parts of their apartment complex.
Freaking out, Bradbury wanted to know what they could do to legally address the situation, but they did have some fears.
They wanted to know if they could get in trouble for potentially sending the cops on a wild goose chase because they couldn’t prove that someone else was leaving these Post-it notes, adding that it very well could look like a crime they’d set up that could potentially waste police time and resources.
“Would contacting the police get me into any trouble, if they can’t determine an outside source for this? I just want to make sure I’m not wasting anyone’s time. Should I consult my landlord? Those also living in the complex?” they asked toward the end of the post.
Numerous folks who responded to their story speculated as to what the source of the issue could be, but one thorough response in particular by a user named @Kakkerlak ended up holding the key: they thought it was either a “mental” or “physical” issue that could potentially be the source of Bradbury’s problem.
“You seem sincere and this doesn’t appear to be the plot of a Ray Bradbury short story,” Kakkerlak wrote. “It’s possible that your landlord is leaving notes inside your apartment, but they don’t make any sense in the context you’re describing them. It’s likely that you are writing the notes yourself, but you are forgetting. Do you use Post-it notes as reminders in any other parts of your life or job? Yes, this might be a mental health issue. You might be experiencing some sort of dissociative disorder.”
Kakkerlak continued: “Or it might be a physical problem. You mentioned that you have a very unusual narrow bedroom with no windows; is there a chance that you are not getting enough ventilation when you sleep, or that there is a carbon monoxide leak in the building ? A cheap CO detector (which you should have anyway) is a fast way to find out. You’ll also have really bad headaches.”
The user added: “You know your own medical and mental history and your other experiences. If you think these incidents might be you, writing notes to yourself, there’s no shame in getting somebody qualified to give you an opinion.”
And as it turned out — one of Kakkerlak’s suppositions was right. As it turns out, there were heightened levels of carbon monoxide in Bradbury’s home. One such side effect of prolonged exposure to heightened levels of carbon monoxide? Memory loss. They summed up their story in a pithy breakdown: “Thanks to everyone who sent suggestions and gave advice on how to proceeded – especially to those who recommended a CO detector … because when I plugged one in in the bedroom, it read at 100ppm. TL;DR: I had CO poisoning and thought my landlord was stalking me.”
Written By: Mustafa Gatollari.
This article was originally published on Distractify.