Airbnb Leads to Unsettling Night in Nebraska
A solo road trip turns into a spine-chilling Airbnb experience in the middle of nowhere. What was behind that mysterious small doorway!
It was the end of April, and I was moving out of my home in Chicago all the way to Nevada. I hired a company to take all my boxes and ship them to the new place to make things a little easier on me.
I wanted to take a road trip there and spend a few days relaxing at hotels or Airbnb’s. As the drive would take 30 hours, I decided to split it into thirds and drive 10 hours each day and stay somewhere overnight.
After planning out the times, I figured that my first stay would have to be on the far edge of Nebraska. I scrolled through Airbnb looking for cheap places since Nebraska wasn’t too exciting, so I just wanted to get a place for 8 hours and then head back out on the road.
I found a small one-story home with two bedrooms. Although I didn’t need the two bedrooms, the price was a great deal, so I didn’t mind the extra space. However, I did find it a little bit strange that they only showed pictures of one bedroom. Again, though, it didn’t make much of a difference to me, so I booked it for the next night and got ready for bed.
In the morning, I finished packing up my car with the rest of what I had and started the drive. I left a little bit later than I had wanted to, but I figured it wouldn’t be much of a big deal other than having to drive in the dark for a few hours.
If you’ve ever driven through Nebraska, you would know it’s very plain. There are long stretches hundreds of miles long of barely any light or buildings at all. A couple hours after dark, I pulled up to the Airbnb.
It was off the long, empty road I’d been on and down a short gravel path. Initially, I was a little bit disappointed as it looked a lot more worn down on the outside than they had shown in the pictures.
I reminded myself that I was only staying for a few hours just to sleep, so it didn’t matter too much. I grabbed a couple of my bags and headed to the front door. Usually, the owners leave the key in a key box and give you the password, but this door had no key box.
In fact, it actually had no lock at all. It was one of those plain doorknobs you’d usually see on a closet door. I started to get a little uneasy, but I didn’t really have any other options than to stay here.
I opened the door and stepped in, and to my surprise, it was actually reasonably nice on the inside. It was small, but the living room and kitchen were well-furnished and seemed to be kept up with.
I went to the first bedroom but noticed that it, too, did not have a lock. Thankfully, the second bedroom did, so that’s where I decided to unpack in. There was one thing that got me really creeped out about this bedroom, though.
Right in front of the bed on the wall was this small old doorway, maybe three feet tall and two feet wide. The more I looked at this door, the more unsettled I got, but there was no way I was staying in a room that I couldn’t lock.
I tried to open it to check what was behind it, but it was locked from the other side. I figured the owner probably just kept some cleaning supplies back there or extra towels or something, but still, the store gave me the creeps.
I was getting pretty tired, though, so I only unpacked what I needed for the night and started to get ready for bed. I woke sometime in the middle of the night, hearing a soft tapping noise coming from the edge of the bed. It was very subtle, but the whole house was silent aside from the tapping.
I reached blindly for my phone on the nightstand and turned on the flashlight as quickly as possible. As I shined the light towards the edge of the bed, the tapping stopped. I’m not one to get scared easily; sure, I’ll get creeped out or nervous, but never scared.
Something about that small doorway on the edge of my bed at that moment made me truly scared. I jumped out of bed, turned on the lights, grabbed everything and rushed out of the house as quick as I could.
It was still really dark outside, and I couldn’t see much, but as I was backing my car out of the gravel path, I swear I saw a man lying on the ground behind the house.
I drove down the road for probably 30 minutes before pulling over and texting the owner to tell him that someone might be in his house and to call the police. I continued down the road for a couple hours until I found a small town, and I parked in a grocery store parking lot just to get some sleep.
I still don’t really know what happened at that Airbnb, but the creepiest part was that when I checked my phone in the morning, I saw my message had been read just a few minutes after I sent it, but the owner never responded to it.
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