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Faulty Wiring



Estimated reading time — 6 minutes

It wasn’t long ago I noticed a strange noise coming from the air conditioning unit, in the wall of the living room. At first it was almost imperceptible from the other noises such a device would typically make. It started out as a slight clanking sound, only when it was first turned on. I had just accredited it to the age of the apartments and the appliances within. Realistically they weren’t all that old in the grand scheme of things, but without constant upkeep things break down and fall apart relatively fast. Everything in the place made at least some kind of noise. The washing machine shook, the dishwasher sounded like a jet taking off and the fridge would kick on every few minutes and hum so loudly I’d have to turn the television up to hear anything over it. So you can see how it wasn’t such a big deal for the air conditioner to rattle a little. So I put it to the back of my mind as just something that comes with age.

That was until it started making it more and more often. I first noticed it when I turned it on and the rattling didn’t just go away after a second or two.

‘I had better tell the landlord so maintenance can come fix this’, I thought. After about a minute it once again stopped and the thought faded into memory.

A few weeks passed and I began to notice other strange occurrences, scratching in the walls, the electricity flickering in and out, the occasional thump in the night. Again things that could all happen due to the age of the wiring, maybe a mouse had gotten into the walls, or a noisy new neighbor had moved in. All pretty explainable, I thought. Besides, I worked a lot and really didn’t have a lot of free time to do much, so it didn’t bother me. But when things started to go missing in my tiny, one bedroom, apartment, I started to worry.

I hadn’t been home in what felt like a couple weeks, between work and friends, I was barely there at all besides to sleep and bathe. I figured I should do a thorough search of the place and see where my things could have gone. The TV remote, a calculator, several pairs of socks, and one shoe, were apparently misplaced. So I went through, room to room (which was really only 4 rooms) searched high and low to find my things and as I did this I noticed more and more small ineffectual things were also missing.

‘Strange’, I thought. ‘Where could these things have gone?’ I hit the power button on the TV and sat down in my once familiar armchair, now a stranger in my own forgotten home, and noticed something. The TV wasn’t on. I flipped the light switch up and down but nothing.

‘Oh for god sakes this is getting a little ridiculous’

I got up and twisted the knob on the stereo, nothing. I went around and tested all the appliances, to see if they were all still functioning. To no avail as not a thing in the place was still functioning, except, strangely enough the increasingly loud air conditioner. It came on with a loud rattle and ran that way for several minutes until it sparked, I heard a loud pop, and then it too died. ‘Maybe the power’s out and it will be fine in the morning.’ I thought half-heartedly. I had a hard time sleeping that night. The neighbors were especially loud and the being without power made me a nervous. I woke up the next morning to find that the power was still out.

I took a shower, got dressed and went over to my neighbors to ask if they were having similar problems. I knocked loudly several times but no answer. I decided enough was enough and went to the maintenance office to complain and hopefully resolve this issue. When I opened the door the smell of stale smoke swept into my nostrils. The place was a mess, papers and ashes all about the desk, peeling paint, smudges on the windows, and a TV with only static bolted to the wall. Sitting behind the desk was a thin, graying man who looked as if he hadn’t bathed in a week. I told him about how everything was suddenly not working but the A/C unit, until it sputtered its last. He gave me a sarcastic look and with a gruff he grabbed his toolbox and followed me back to my apartment.

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“You see I would have called but for some reason nothing seems to be working, and I don’t think the electricity is out because the air conditioner was running and suddenly died.”

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“Well let’s take a look at it.” he said. He went over to it and unscrewed the faceplate and peered inside. He clicked his flashlight on and went to work unscrewing and checking different things when he stopped suddenly and pulled out a tiny thing attached to a cord that didn’t look like it belonged. He looked at me with a raised eyebrow.
“This yours?”
I couldn’t even identify what he was holding. “I don’t believe so, what is it?”
“It’s one of those little spy cameras, you haven’t been havin girls over, secretly tapin em have ya?” He gave a sly grin.
“No! What the hell was that doing in my home?!” I was getting a scared, and a little irate.
He shrugged “Well let’s see where this wire goes, huh?”
He followed the wired with his hand and stopped to look inside.
“There’s a little hole in here, it goes into the wall.”
He pulled out his hammer and got to work taking chunks out of the dry wall and following the cord. I was freaking out. ‘Who put that there?’ ‘Was this dirty old man watching me?’ ‘Are there more of those?’ All these things went through my head as I watched him work.
“Well that explains a lot” he said under his breath.
“What? What is it?” I exclaimed.
“Looks like somebody rewired your outlets over here.” He backed away to show me what he was seeing.
“But, why?”
“My guess, stealing your power. You sure you didn’t notice anything?” His calmness put me on edge.
I thought back to the odd noises in my walls, the thumping, the flickering lights. What had once seemed such a normal thing had my heart racing.
“I noticed a few things here and there but I haven’t been here a lot lately. I thought it was just an old place.”

He gave me a skeptical look and continued following the ever expanding bunch of wires and cables throughout the place. Some wires would branch off to more tiny cameras, hidden in vents and just in the shadows, one even wired into the eye of one of my pictures. ‘How have I not noticed these?’ My heart had started beating faster and faster as he discovered more. He kept going and, one by one, found all of my electric had been rewired into one central bunch that led to the bedroom. My heart stopped.

“How long have these been here?”
“Not long I’d say. We check all the appliances and outlets before we rent the places out.”
“Well where does it all lead?”
He kept knocking holes with his hammer and following the dreaded cables until finally he stopped and looked into the most recent hole he made with a flashlight.
“The space between the walls gets a lot bigger here. I think I can fit in here I see something glowing just around the corner.”
He smashed a hole big enough for him to squeeze through and disappeared into my bedroom wall. He appeared a few seconds later with a grim look on his face and his skin had gone pale. He was no longer the calm, apparently fearless, man he was before.

“You aren’t gonna wanna hear this, but there’s a little room back there. Bunch of monitors set up all over and all sorts of crap scattered around. Looks like somebody was livin’ in there but no sign of em now.” He swallowed hard. “This place is starting to freak me the hell out. If I were you, I’d move.”

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I packed my things and left for my mom’s that day, not wanting to spend another second in that place. Over the next few days the police came and investigated the whole scene. They found twenty different monitors all linked up to VHS players in that little room in the walls. Surprisingly though no tapes were ever found. And neither was the thing that had been watching me all those nights.

A few weeks had passed and a box arrived on my mother’s doorstep. It was unlabeled but inside was all the little things that had gone missing in my apartment. I also found a dirty ripped piece of paper with a barely legible message scrawled on it:

I LIKE YOUR NEW PLACE MUCH BETTER.

Credit To – Hairy Monster Man

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58 thoughts on “Faulty Wiring”

  1. I love the fact that there are no monsters, no creature, no nothing, (well at least how I imagined it in my head) just another creepy human. A monster I get it, it is in its nature being… Well, a monster… But a human in most cases, chooses to be like that

  2. Wayne Duranceau

    This is the very first pasta I’ve ever read. I love horror stories and a friend recommended this site. Pretty good. Can’t wait to read more.

  3. the ending gave me chills ahhhh!!! that’s so scary to me just having someone watching you and not even knowing. good story!

  4. Hairy Monster Man
    July 30, 2013
    Thanks for the comments =] This was my first attempt at a creepypasta. I’m glad to see it went over so well and I just might start writing more now.

    Well, your first attempt was better than my ideas. X) I haven’t made one yet, but I am hoping to…someday. XD

    Loved the story. I am favouriting and rate 7/10!

    Sincerely,
    Grim Gamer

    Blood is red, corpses are blue, I love games, don’t you?…

  5. ..I dont know if the ending was funny or scary.. But otherwise, this was well written, and a nice idea. It deserves the rating it got.

  6. When imagining what the apartment looked like, I couldn’t help but imagine Seinfeld’s apartment…

    Stalker was Kramer :O

  7. It honestly sounds like the culprit was the neighbor, notice how he was making hella noise in the night packing up and then left.
    He might have checked the tapes and realized the protag was going to get his wiring checked.
    So after the man noisily packed up he took the VHS tapes (the thumps in the wall) and went on his way.
    Case solved, but nice the author hinted to it

  8. I dont mean to ruin the scare for anyone but this reminds me of that creature that stole the rental vhs on regular show XD

  9. Daniel Lopez-Hollingworth

    Absolutely loved this! It’s good to read a pasta that, for once, moves away from huge, skin ripping, blood drinking vampire zombies and focuses more on the fucked up specimens of humanity that inhabit our world (assuming it /was/ a person :P). I would have possibly liked to find out exactly who it was that was watching him that whole time, but the vagueness and mystery gives the conclusion a more satisfying and creepy feel.

    When all the electricity blows out in his house, however, and he tries the lightswitch, I don’t get that part. Would he not have realized prior to trying to turn on the TV that his lights didn’t work? Unless he was planning to sit and watch tv in darkness.

    Anyway, it was original, interesting and I liked it. 9/10

  10. How is that scary? I mean, it’s not like the stalker ever did anything but watch him, and the guy admits that he was rarely ever home, so what horrible unmentionable things could have possibly been seen or recorded? It must have been boring. He even said he didn’t invite girls over to get naked or anything.

    1. I would rather be killed than be stalked by some unknown creature. If you know anyone who was stalked or watched any of the shows that talk about being stalked you would know that these stalkers ruin people lives.

      You don’t know this creature’s state of mind. Does it wish to hurt, does it love you(crazy way), or does it just want to ruin your life. Many people who have been stalked do devolve paronia.

      The conast fear that any moment someone may jump from behind that corner, that knock at the door may be your end, or that man sitting in the booth next to yours may be this monster. It is one of the worst experience that I can imagine.

      Now I ask you would you want to be stalked?

  11. At the beginning it says the apartment is 1 room but then goes on to say he searched all 4 rooms. I’m confused.

    1. It said it was a one bedroom apartment. I assume the other three rooms are a living room, bathroom, and kitchen.

      1. Jus google the first paragraph idiot. Smh. Copy pasta! Period! If dude man wrote this last year the props. Read this stopy on creepy pasta wikki awhile ago plus on someother creepy pasta site…

        1. I did this, and all that came up was this site and a few tumblrs/youtubes that all reposted this AFTER it was uploaded here. You’ll have to provide links, since googling “Faulty Wiring creepypasta” and “Faulty Wiring creepypasta wiki” both come up with, once again, THIS post.

          If you can prove this is stolen, I will listen. But so far you haven’t.

  12. Well my paranoia has been awakened. Just got a new place and the air conditioner has just started making weird noises the last few days…
    I know what I’m doing the rest of the night now.

  13. Just wasn’t that original. I think it has potential as a longer story, but the author doesn’t seem to quite have a grip on the short-story format yet. Bland pasta.

  14. I liked it, though I think the ending was fine… it was kind of like a subtle ‘you-cant-get-rid-of-me’ kind of thing, like he WANTED the guy to know that moving was futile. Though, how did he build a whole freakin’ ROOM in the apartment and noone noticed? Unless the guy went away for a few weeks to let the drywall be moved and replaced and repainted believably…Unless it was already there? Hmm… so many possibilities.

    But yeah, it was creepy and twisted. I liked how it seemed supernatural at first, then turned out to be a crazy guy. Creepy, but believable.

    Good pasta… OMNOMNOMNOM.

  15. Hairy Monster Man

    Thanks for the comments =] This was my first attempt at a creepypasta. I’m glad to see it went over so well and I just might start writing more now.

  16. I really liked this story, mostly due to the fact that it was creepy and unsettling without the use of the crutch of being overtly supernatural. I find the most jarring things often come from something in the bounds of reality. Well done. 9/10

  17. I quite liked it. It had ton of suespence. That is all I can really say. I think the build up was so good that the end kind fell flat. But, it was still pretty good. And much better than the last 4 ;). 8/10

  18. This was, for all intents and purposes, a reverse-stalkerpasta. The reader is the victim of the stalker, and a scarily efficient one at that; it (he? she?) managed to go completely under the radar.

    I loved how the setting was immediately identifiable. The protagonist’s apartment is full of the ‘I’ll get round to that’ things in life, the little annoyances that pop up with irritating regularity. They’re treated as such too; the plot doesn’t bubble with paranoia, rather with the drab realities of life. I thought this made the creepypasta all the more scarier- like any good creepy, this one manufactures a fear of the mundane.

    The protagonist has no reason to feel anything is amiss; why should he? His everyman skepticism is grounded and well-reasoned, especially with his schedule.

    The pace with which things creep under his skin was refreshingly believable. The protagonist gradually feels the apartment transform under him, but he can’t put a finger on the cause of his unease. I thought the ‘stranger in a forgotten home’ musing was excellent at insinuating this without resorting to paranoia.

    IMO the brilliance of this pasta lay in its portrayal of being stalked. Stalkers rarely break the water long enough for victims to suspect, much less do anything. The peaking fear after the reveal was realistic. Often the victim is left with the curse of hindsight; that sinking feeling that everything could have been avoided, not to mention dark speculations regarding the reasons why.

    This was what this pasta evoked: a host of dark implications. How did the stalker install such a system? Why? The pasta lets the reader’s imaginations take a running start; the mystery and lingering fear persist.

    I felt that the sting was the most apparent flaw of this pasta. The written message was unnecessary and felt like the author intervened too much for the reader’s benefit. IMO a subtler take, like the A/C acting again, would’ve worked better.

    Overall, a very well-executed and chilling stalkerpasta, from the victim’s perspective. 8.5/10

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