Midnight has passed, and in the stillness of these hours, the hauntings are never silent.

This is Real Ghost Stories Online.

After midnight.

The first time they heard the running upstairs, his mother blamed the pipes.

That became her explanation for nearly everything during those first

few months in the apartment because the alternative was harder to live with. Old buildings made

noise, pipes knocked inside walls, floors settled, people walked heavily without realizing it.

There was always some ordinary explanation if a person wanted one badly enough, and at first the apartment above them sounded ordinary.

The building sat on the edge of a tired, industrial neighborhood where nearly every structure looked slightly damp no matter the season.

The downstairs unit where his family lived had narrow windows, low

ceilings, and radiators that hissed constantly through winter. Upstairs another apartment stretched

across the same footprints with a separate entrance along the side of the building. When they first

moved in, the upstairs unit was occupied by a middle-aged couple his mother described as quiet.

The boy barely saw them beyond occasional glimpses through the stairwell window.

Grocery bags, cigarette smoke drifting from the landing.

Muffled television sounds late at night.

Mostly, the people upstairs existed only as footsteps overhead. At 13 years old,

he barely noticed them in the beginning. Then his parents started fighting more often. Money problems

came first. His father's hours at work were cut back almost overnight and stress settled into the apartment. So

gradually, nobody recognized how much the atmosphere had changed until every conversation

already sounded strained. His mother worked late shifts at a nursing home and came home exhausted.

His father spent longer hours drinking beer in the kitchen after dark while the television

...