There was an elderly woman living in the apartment next to mine who kept knocking—sometimes even banging—on the shared wall between us.

At first, I thought it was just normal apartment noise. But it got more frequent. More deliberate. Always late at night. Three sharp knocks. Then silence. Then again, like clockwork.

I tried to ignore it, thinking maybe it was plumbing or the building settling. But deep down, it felt… purposeful. Like she wanted something.

I didn’t know her, not really. We’d passed each other in the hallway once or twice. She always wore a faded green cardigan and shuffled along with her walker. Seemed quiet, kept to herself.

After about a week of the banging, I started losing sleep. Every time I’d drift off, I’d hear those knocks again—sharp, insistent, right near my headboard.

Eventually, I’d had enough.

I opened my front door one afternoon to take out the trash, and there she was, standing in the hallway. Tiny and pale, with wisps of white hair escaping her scarf. She smiled nervously, like she’d been waiting for me.

I mustered the courage and asked her, “Ma’am, I don’t mean to be rude, but… have you been knocking on the wall at night?”

Her eyes widened, and she looked embarrassed. “Oh dear, yes. I’m sorry if I scared you.”

I stared. “May I ask why?”

She clutched her scarf and gave a sad little laugh. “I’ve been trying to tell you… I think your wall is haunted.”

I blinked. “Haunted?”

She nodded solemnly. “It’s the only explanation I’ve come up with. Every time I hear a voice from that wall, I knock to make sure I’m not going mad. It sounds like a man whispering. Always around midnight.”

I was so startled I laughed, a bit too loudly. “A man whispering?”

“I know how it sounds,” she said, eyes darting toward the wall. “But it happens often. I can’t sleep. I thought maybe you were hearing it too, and we could compare… notes.”

I wanted to dismiss it. Chalk it up to an old woman’s imagination. But she looked genuinely troubled, and a small part of me—it hates to admit this—felt a twinge of fear.

“I haven’t heard any voices,” I admitted. “Just your knocks.”

She looked crushed. “I see. Well. I’m sorry for disturbing you.”

She turned slowly and began walking away. Something tugged at me then—not fear, but guilt.

“Wait,” I said. “What’s your name?”

“Mrs. Penrose,” she said without turning.

“I’m Lana,” I replied. “Would you… want to come in for tea sometime? Just to talk. Maybe about the noises?”

She stopped. Her shoulders stiffened like she hadn’t been invited into someone’s home in a while. “I’d like that.”

The next day, around four in the afternoon, she came over. She brought lemon biscuits in a tin so old the label had worn off. She sat carefully on the couch, clutching her handbag like it might escape.

We talked about simple things at first—how long we’d both lived there (me, two months; her, twelve years), how she’d once had a cat named Nimble who died of old age, how she didn’t like TV much but listened to the radio.

Eventually, the conversation drifted back to the noises.

“They started after the last tenant moved out,” she said. “Before you.”

“You mean the guy who lived in my unit before me?” I asked.

She nodded. “Never saw him much. Quiet man. Moved in with barely any furniture. Kept to himself.”

“Do you remember his name?”

She thought for a second. “Graham? Grady? Something with a G.”

I frowned. I didn’t remember getting any info about the previous tenant. Just that the place was available and cheap, which now seemed more suspicious than lucky.

“Did anything weird happen while he lived there?”

She shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t like to gossip.”

“This isn’t gossip,” I said, more firmly. “If something dangerous happened, I need to know.”

She hesitated. “Well… I think the landlord found him… not breathing. In his bed. They said natural causes. But it took days before anyone noticed. The smell was awful. I had to stay with my niece in Essex for a week while they aired it out.”

I swallowed hard. That would explain the faint scent I’d smelled when I moved in. I’d assumed it was old paint.

After Mrs. Penrose left, I lay in bed that night wide awake. Midnight came. I stared at the wall.

And that’s when I heard it.

Not knocking. Not banging.

A low whisper. Like someone muttering through gritted teeth, just under the edge of understanding.

I bolted upright.

It didn’t sound like the TV. It didn’t sound like plumbing. And it wasn’t coming from the hall. It was inside the wall.

The next day, I texted my friend Nina who works in property management. I asked her if she could get me any info on past tenants. She owed me a few favors, so she said she’d try.

While waiting to hear back, I went downstairs to the building manager’s office. Derek, a grumpy man in his fifties with too much cologne and not enough customer service skills, raised an eyebrow when I asked about my unit’s history.

“Why?” he asked. “You allergic to ghosts?”

“Just curious,” I said coolly. “I heard the last guy died in there.”

He grunted. “Yeah. Heart attack. Poor sod. Quiet fella. Paid on time. Shame.”

“Did he have family?”

“No. We tried contacting someone. Never got a response. Council cleared out his stuff. Most of it was junk.”

That night, Nina called. “So, I did some digging. You’re not gonna like this.”

I braced myself. “Tell me.”

“The guy’s name was Graham Dell. Forty-three. Accountant. No criminal record, no complaints. But there was a flagged note on the internal file that said ‘previous tenant reported repeated nighttime disturbances and suspected someone was watching him through the walls.’”

My stomach dropped. “You’re serious?”

“Dead serious. He’d called management twice, but they chalked it up to stress. He died less than a month later.”

That was enough for me.

I marched down the next morning and demanded Derek let me check the wall cavity. He laughed in my face. “What do you think you’ll find? A bogeyman with a Wi-Fi plan?”

“I’ll pay for the inspection myself,” I snapped.

Two days later, I hired a handyman. We opened a section of the wall behind my headboard. There, tucked inside the insulation like a secret no one was supposed to find, was a small, old audio recorder.

It had no batteries left. Just a scrap of masking tape stuck to the side with “G.D. – for backup” written on it.

My heart was racing.

I replaced the batteries, plugged it into a speaker, and hit play.

The voice that came through was scratchy, tired, but clear.

“This is Graham Dell. I’ve been hearing voices every night for two weeks. They say my name. They whisper things I can’t understand. I don’t know if I’m going mad. I don’t know if someone’s in the walls. If I die, I want someone to know this wasn’t just in my head. Please. Believe me.”

I sat frozen.

I showed the recording to Mrs. Penrose. She cried.

“That poor man,” she whispered. “No one believed him.”

I gave a copy to Nina, who passed it along to a friend of hers who runs a local true crime podcast. A few weeks later, the story aired, and interest in the case exploded.

Turns out, two buildings over had a similar complaint in 2017—tenant reported voices, then suddenly moved out and was never heard from again.

The landlord quietly renovated the wall in that unit. Covered something up, maybe literally.

Investigators reopened Graham’s case. They didn’t find foul play, but they did find something else: a series of hidden vents connecting our unit with a long-abandoned maintenance shaft.

Inside the shaft? A pile of old electronics and audio tapes—most too damaged to play. But a few held recordings. One had the same whispering I heard. Another had screaming.

They think someone, years ago, may have set up the space as a hideaway. Some theorized it was used by a disturbed tenant or squatter who eventually vanished or died inside the sealed shaft.

Creepy as that is, it helped clear Graham’s name. He wasn’t mad. He was ignored.

Management, under pressure from press and tenants, offered me the chance to break my lease without penalty. I took it.

But before I moved, I had tea with Mrs. Penrose one last time.

She brought fresh biscuits this time. “You were brave,” she said. “You listened when no one else would.”

“You helped,” I told her. “I wouldn’t have looked if you hadn’t knocked.”

She smiled softly. “That’s all some people need, you know. A little knocking. A little noise to say: I see you.”

I moved to a newer building in a quieter part of town. But I still think about that wall sometimes. About Graham. About how the truth tried to speak through plaster and paint.

We live so close to each other, yet we act like we’re miles apart. Maybe if we knocked more—on doors, on walls, on each other’s stubborn silence—we’d notice things before they rot and go quiet.

I learned that listening isn’t always about ears. Sometimes, it’s about courage. And kindness.

If this story made you feel something—share it. Like it. Let someone else hear the knock they might be missing.