Imagine having the feeling of someone following you for months, losing track of time, and finding strange notes inside your own home! That's exactly what happened to a woman from Raleigh, NC, named Jessie H. At first Jessie believed that she was crazy, but when she finally discovers the truth she almost faints.
It all started one day when Jessie was walking to her car after a long day of work when suddenly she notices someone following her in the corner of her eye. She turns around immediately, but nothing!
No one is there. Jessie starts shaking and she makes a weapon with her keys as she clutches them. Who was the strange figure? Was Jessie's mind playing tricks on her..?
After some time she managed to get home, and tried to calm down by having some relaxing tea. Suddenly, as she was making the tea, she saw something behind her again! She immediately jumped and turned to see who was INSIDE her house.
But once again, no one was there. She carefully searched every single room but she found nothing. Was she going insane?
That evening she decided to make a new start and tried to relax more because she thought that maybe she was just tired, However, she could never be prepared for what was about to happen in the following days!
When she woke up the next morning another thing took her by surprise. A post-it note had appeared from nowhere with a "to do" list on it on Jessie's desk. The craziest thing was that the handwriting wasn't hers.
However, Jessie thought that she could have written it while half asleep, and without thinking about it too much she threw it in the trash. maybe she should have thought it twice...
The rest of the day was pretty normal for Jessie until something seemed to be really wrong. While she was watching her favorite tv show, she went to the bathroom once the break came, and then she came back to continue watching the show.
The ads were still on when she came back so everything seemed to be right, but then she looked at the time and froze.
When she looked at the time she realized that twenty whole minutes had passed since she took the break to go to the bathroom. How could that be possible?
“I then started missing huge chunks of time when I swear that only minutes passed by,” she admitted.
She was so confused and couldn't give an explanation of anything that was happening. She tried to blame stress and overworking once again, but nothing seemed to add up.
Could stress and overworking lead to all of this?
She was really shocked by what had happened earlier, but she continued persuading herself that it was from stress. However, while she was cleaning, she opened the trash can and found the post-it that had thrown away earlier that day. She was confused at first because it didn't remind her of a thing, but then she decided to do a really smart move.
She took a picture of the note in order not to forget about it and started documenting everything. What would she find out?
The next day was very difficult for Jessie.
She was so stressed that something might happen and while she was going at her work she was burning from anxiety and not without a reason.
And it happened again. As she was walking to her job, she was seeing a figure in the corner of her eye that was disappearing every time she tried to look at its direction.
Jessie started believing that she was losing her mind and couldn't handle this anymore. She needed to do something immediately.
Thankfully, nothing like that happened to Jessie while she was at her workplace, but when she entered her apartment, another mystery was waiting for her.
“I found another post-it note on the back of my desk chair, in the same handwriting as the previous note, telling me to make sure I “saved my documents,” Jessie claimed.
At first, she thought that someone had broken into her home, but after searching everywhere she didn't find a sign that proved that. She felt that she had enough of all this and decided to set up a webcam connected to an app on Jessie's phone in order to record everything.
However, she had no idea that this move would make matters worst.
Jessie was so stressed out due to all of this that she couldn't sleep all night. When she finally started feeling more relaxed, it was time for her to wake up. She was so tired and she decided to take a shower to relax before heading to work.
She saw what time it was in order not to be late, but after the shower, the same thing had happened. Once again she had lost track of time not being able to explain how. So, she called her boss and informed him that she was not feeling very well.
Jessie decided it would be better for her to take a walk outside and at first, she felt better. But after a while, she started smelling something that made her shiver as it was so strong.
However, no one else seemed to be bothered by is so Jessie started running to her car while holding her nose to block the smell. But, something was waiting for her in the car.
Once again it was a post-it waiting for her on the desk of the car. Right on her desk, she could see a piece of yellow paper. “Our landlord isn’t letting me talk to you, but it’s important we do,” was written on it. She was really shocked and immediately checked the webcam folder to find some explanation. But it was empty! There was nothing and the recycle bin was empty, too!
What was happening? Who could delete all the footage? Who was leaving her the notes? How was the landlord involved in any of this?
The next day, she woke up sweating and headed to the shower trying not to lose track of time again. “Okay I have to be out of the shower in the next 13 minutes,” she calculated.
“I listened to ONE song which was like 3 and a half minutes (it was a short song). Then I went to change the song, and it was 8:23 a.m,” she said.
“There was no way that 11 minutes went by when I only listened to a 3-and-a-half-minute song,” she continued. As she was trying to get ready for work she came into the realization that she had enough of all this.
She had to do something and fast.
She was panicking. She tried to call her mother but there was no answer. She tried many times but nothing. Then she ran to her bed and started crying.
She couldn't believe what was happening and she was feeling so alone. And that's when she thought to make a post on Reddit. At least someone might help.
“Some weird things have been happening to me recently. I don’t know if I’m losing my mind or what but for some time I’ve known that something is not right,” Jessie wrote. “It all started about a month ago when I started always seeing stuff out of the corner of my eye.
I could never tell what it was, but it was always “something.” But by the time I turned my head to observe whatever it was, there would be nothing there. This would happen to me multiple times a day but has recently kind of stopped and has been followed by even more weird stuff.” “I found a yellow post-it note in a handwriting that wasn’t mine on my desk reminding me of some errands I had to do, but told literally nobody about,” she claimed.
Many users responded to her post and even though some advised her to see a doctor, others scared her even more. “It’s possible that your landlord is leaving notes inside your apartment, but they don’t make any sense in the context you’re describing them.
It’s likely that you are writing the notes yourself, but you are forgetting. Do you use post-it notes as reminders in any other parts of your life or job?” a user asked.
After that, she decided to inform the police about her suspicions according to the landlord, but they suggested her to go to the doctor first because without evidence there was nothing they could do.
What happened next would change everything!
What the doctor told her would make anyone's jaw drop. “Yes, this might be a mental health issue. You might be experiencing some sort of dissociative disorder. Or it might be a physical problem.
You mentioned that you have a very unusual narrow bedroom with no windows; is there a chance that you are not getting enough ventilation when you sleep, or that there is a carbon monoxide leak in the building? A cheap CO detector is a fast way to find out. You’ll also have really bad headaches,” he said.
After her diagnosis, Jessie knew that she had to act quickly, so she ran to the store to buy the carbon monoxide detector and once she was home, she plugged in.
Then things took an unexpected turn.
The minute Jessie plugged in the detector, it wouldn't stop beeping. It beeped so much that she thought it was broken so she took it back to the store.
What the staff told her, took her breath away. “The machine beeps when it detects a high level of CO like a fire alarm would indicate when it detects smoke,” an employee explained.
“Thanks to everyone who sent suggestions and advised how to proceed– especially to those who recommended a CO detector… because when I plugged one in in the bedroom, it read at 100ppm,” Jessie commented on her original Reddit post after running home from the store and plugging the detector back in.
This means that Jessie wasn't losing her mind, she had CO poisoning that made her see things, lose track of time, and forget about the post-it.
“You might get headaches, you might feel a little groggier than usual.
And depending on the chronic exposure, you can even become mentally-off, cognitively-impaired in some ways,” fellow Redditor Deborah Blum, who is a specialist on CO poisoning, said.
After the whole mystery was solved, Jessie called the cops once again to inform them about the situation.
They found Jessie a place to stay and the immediately got to work in order to make the apartment safe again.
“Yes, the notes were real, I did write them, and I forgot! As for their being notes on all the doors– I went so far as to put notes on my neighbor’s door, but not much further than that.
I was on a corner– above the garage– so I only had one neighbor, who had headaches and not much more.” “Actually, as it turns out, I never plugged it in. I just put it on a shelf, downloaded a webcam app to my phone, (which isn’t even compatible with an external webcam) and made a folder on my desktop called “WEBCAM”… then thought it was deleted when the folder was empty.” She explained later.
Well there has been a year since Jessie went through all that and she hasn't recovered completely. “It’s been almost a year now.
While four months ago, things were rough, I’ve definitely made a significant improvement, and currently, there’s little reason to doubt a full recovery within a year,” she said.
“I’m much better in both mood and physical health– through in this situation, those aren’t exactly separate categories! I will say, though, I use a Moleskine notebook daily planner thing now. (I do keep busy!
Important for mental health!) I’m kind of done with post-it notes for a while!” “Overall, I’m happy” Jessie continued. Hope you will fully recover Jessie!