The strange noise

A long time ago, I was working as a truck driver, always on the road for days or weeks at a time. While I was gone, my girlfriend cheated on me, so I packed my things and left.

I moved in with an old friend who had just come back from the army. He had a small house with two bedrooms. Since I didn’t have a bed yet, I slept on the couch in the living room.

The setup worked well—he worked at night, and I worked during the day, so we only saw each other on weekends. But after a few nights, something strange started happening.

Just as I was about to fall asleep, I would hear the sound of a door latch clicking. The house was old, and the wooden doors had to be pushed shut hard to make that sound. At first, I thought it was just settling noises, but it kept happening.

The house also had an old floor heater near the couch. One night, after hearing the door click again, I heard something step onto the metal grate of the heater. It made a soft creaking sound, like someone putting weight on it.

After weeks of this, I finally asked my friend if he had ever noticed anything strange in the house. His eyes went wide, and he asked, “Why?”

I told him what I had been hearing at night. That’s when he admitted that one night, while sleeping, he heard his keys jingling. We had a habit of leaving our keys in the lock on the front door. He got up to check, and his keys were swinging back and forth. There was no one outside.

He also started hearing the sound of a lighter clicking open and shut—like a Zippo. We both smoked, so we knew the sound well. But when we checked, neither of our lighters had moved.

Then, one day, he went out for groceries. When he came back, every single cabinet in the kitchen was open.

Eventually, we both started hearing the strange noises when we were home together. We decided to joke about it and named the ghost “Charlie.” Whenever we heard something, we’d say, “Alright, Charlie, enough.”

Later, my friend’s girlfriend moved in. She also heard Charlie moving around the house.

Then, one day, she placed an old family Bible on the living room table. After that, everything stopped. No more sounds, no more moving objects—nothing.

Years passed, and my friend eventually passed away. His house is now up for sale, but no one has bought it yet. Sometimes, I wonder if the new owners will hear Charlie too.