I’m a student at a university in the UK and have been for two years now. Last year and this year I have been living in student halls which for anyone who isn’t familiar with the term is student accommodation.

During my first year I was on the second floor of the block of flats I was living in and never experience anything weird. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that freaked me out. However, now in my second year I’m in a different block of flats and this time I’m on the 3rd floor. The highest floor in the block with only another floor above for storage rooms. No one lived up there which is important to note. The only people that go up to the 4th floor are maintenance and cleaning during the hours of 7am and 5pm.

When me and my friends first moved into this flat we noticed that we could hear weird noises above at night when we were going to bed. Sounds like chairs being scraped across the floor or just furniture in general being moved as well as what sounded like people running up and down the corridor, loud and heavy steps. Didn’t think much of it at first as we didn’t actually realised the 4th floor didn’t have people above us.

Before I get into the details properly a little timeline is that we moved in Sep 2022. Started hearing noises a couple of weeks after we moved in and then it was the middle of October so quite a few weeks later that I was woken in the middle of the night (2:45/3am) to what I can only describe as a sound of something large and with a bit of weight about it being thrown across the floor above me. It startled me as it jumped me awake. That’s the first time I felt a bit creeped out by it as I wondered what on earth people were doing in the flat above us at that time.

Not only had it woken me up that night but it had woken my friend up too who had come through to me asking if I had also heard the noise. The next day we contacted our head resident of the block and asked if she would have a word with the people above us to keep the noise down during the night as we like to have a good time as much as anyone but not at 3 in the morning especially when we have full days of classes the next day. This was when she informed us that there wasn’t actually anyone in the flats above us and that it was all storage rooms and a cleaning cupboard. This information clearly freaked us out as the noises we were hearing obviously shouldn’t be coming from a storage cupboard!

From this point we didn’t really know what to do so we just had to kind of get on with it. By weird coincidence, the next week we required maintenance to come out and have a look at our fridge which had stopped working and we asked him if they happen to go up to storage in the middle of the night or Security as we had been hearing noises in the middle of the night but they were adamant that no one was going up there past 5/5:30 at night but he was happy to go up and have a look to see if there was a trapped bird or something which would he making all the noise. 30 minutes later he reported back that there was nothing but one of the big storage shelves had collapsed so that could have been what we heard. We got some comfort from that and moved on.

After that we didn’t heard the noise again for a while until the middle of November when it started back up again. This time it was more obnoxious - things being thrown, scraping, running, banging on things, dropping heaving objects on the floor so it it sounded like a person was about to fall through our ceiling. It was more annoying than creepy at this point. We then decided that going up to the fourth floor to see for ourselves would be a beneficial option.

We got up there and it looked just the same as our floor except there was just locked doors. We couldn’t get into any of them and that was that. There was nothing there that could have answered any of our questions so we got back into the lift to go back down to our floor but as we were leaving it we heard a sound coming from one of the locked rooms. It was like a scratching noise when your dog is scratching the door to get out or dragging your nails down a hard surface. We stopped to listen but the scratching got harsher so we took our leave. We have seen horror movies and we aren’t stupid.

We reported the noises to the accommodation staff and they checked it out, came back with nothing once again. We came to the conclusion after that we weren’t going to get answers so we left it once again and just had to deal with the noises we were hearing.

Now we are at the start of December and it’s getting worse which is why I’ve come here. The noises have gotten worse but me, as well as all of my friends have admitted to hearing scratching noises coming from our hallway in the middle of the night. We all lock the doors at night so it would be impossible for anyone to be getting in the flat. At first we thought one of us was just winding each other up and trying to freak us out but after we have all admitted to hearing the noise we have now realised that it isn’t one of us.

A couple of days ago we all stayed up in my room to see if we could hear the noise and prove it wasn’t one of us making the noise and sure enough around 2/3am we heard the scratching. At first it was distant like it was at the front door and then got louder as if someone was dragging their nails along the wall and it stopped right outside of my room. It’s safe to say we were all freaked out and called security who came up and found nothing except me and my friends clutching each other.

It happens every night now and we don’t know what to do. We don’t know what it is and clearly no one else is experiencing this either. We are desperate for some advice to what’s going on. And although none of us are saying it but if whatever is doing this can make it’s way into our locked and secure flat then surely it will be able to make its way into our locked and secure bedrooms too?

Any advice would be helpful!