Real Encounters

*Did my boyfriend terrorise me?*

This happened a couple of months ago. I'm a 17 year old female. I was house sitting for my parents as they had gone away for 2 weeks, and so I thought I'd have my boyfriend stop over to keep me company. My house is an old converted farmhouse, out in the sticks with no neighbours or main roads around. Very secluded and peaceful.

Anyway one night he went out drinking with his friends (he is 18 so legal to drink in the UK), I was just sat in the living room reading a book. Around midnight I heard a single loud and aggressive knock on the front door. I momentarily panicked, given the lateness and the fact we have no neighbours and nobody ever passes by here, but then I thought maybe it was my boyfriend coming home drunk and had forgotten his key. I didn't have a text from him to say he was coming home but like I say he was drunk, maybe he forgot. I went to the front door and said "Hello? Is that you John" (my boyfriend's name). No answer. So I opened the door a touch and peered out. Nobody there. Weird. I shut the door and locked it again. Maybe I was hearing things I thought. But 30 minutes later I heard pounding on the back door. Really hard and angry pounding, it lasted about 3 seconds then stopped. I was freaking out obviously and immediately text my boyfriend asking him to come home as I was scared as I'd heard pounding on the back door and I think I should maybe ring the police. I was debating ringing the police (I know most wouldn't even need to debate this but I didn't want all the hassle and stress of ringing the police and stuff) when I heard the front door open, close and then silence. Now the room I was in had a door separating it from the hallway, where the front door is. As you can imagine I was shaking with fear, whoever was doing this was now in my house, with just a door between us.

Next thing I hear is nails clawing at the door of the room I was in, as if somebody were slowly scratching the door but with force. It was genuinely the stuff of horror movies at this point, and I did the first thing that came to mind which was scream and threw a vase at the door. Don't ask me why, I don't know what I was expecting that to do other than smash to the ground but hey ho. Then silence. I heard the front door open again and slam shut, and footsteps on the gravel outside the front of my house.

I did call the police, they found no signs of forced entry and searched the property inside and out and found nobody. They found muddy footprints in the hallway, which the intruder must have gotten from the back garden which is very muddy in winter, the front is all gravel so no mud there. After they had gone, about 30 minutes later my boyfriend comes home. The first thing I noticed was he didn't seem drunk at all, he'd been out since 7pm and it was now like 2am, and usually he stinks of alcohol after a night out. He seemed stone cold sober and no alcohol smell. I told him that someone had gotten into the house and I didn't know how as only he and I have keys, that there was no forced entry etc. He said "Well did you definitely lock the door after you'd opened it after hearing the knock earlier?". This confused me because I hadn't told him about the knock on the front door, I just told him the guy had gotten in and that I'd heard pounding on the back door. So how did he know I had opened the door? I also noticed his boots were muddy, which is strange because he got a taxi to go see his friends earlier and only walked in the front garden to the taxi, which as I said has no mud there. The back garden does however...and somebody was pounding on the back door earlier.

I questioned it and he just said he got them muddy outside the pub but that's all street there so I don't see how he could have. And to think of it, I don't recall hearing a taxi pull up when he arrived home. Usually because it's so quiet you can hear the taxi pull up outside. I don't know if I'm being majorly paranoid here or not, but I think I suspect my boyfriend of being the one behind that incident. We've been together a year and he has never shown any weird behaviour like this before or since, but I have an overwhelming instinct that he was behind what happened. Only he had a key to get in and I definitely DID lock it, I made sure after hearing a creepy knock that the door was definitely locked after seeing no one outside. I wouldn't have forgotten to lock it.