Halloween horror: The boy who found a man living in his wall

The creepy story has many questioning its authenticity. Photo / 123RF

Speculation is rife over the authenticity of a US author's terrifying experience about a man living — and dying — inside the walls of his house as a small child.

New York based horror author Grady Hendrix posted Wednesday a series of tweets explaining how a man was found dead after he had been living inside the vents of his house for months on end.

The story has left some terrified, claiming they "will never sleep again" and dubbed, "the scariest story of things found in walls", but others doubted the legitimacy of the story.

"Everyone's telling scary stories for Halloween so I'll talk about something that happened to me when I was a kid because hey, trauma never gets old," Mr Hendrix wrote.

We won't go through the whole story — just the juicy bits — but you can read the entire thread here.

Mr Hendrix said that on one night in May, 1981, he crept downstairs as a 9-year-old in the hope of gorging on a midnight snack.

"All of a sudden I heard a fork click on the counter. I froze. The microwave clock light showed the outline of a man sitting at our kitchen counter," he wrote.

"He couldn't see me, but I saw him: a skinny guy, eating our leftovers, and drinking our milk from the carton."

I can’t explain how terrifying it is for someone to BE IN YOUR HOUSE. I slooooowly backed away, crept upstairs, and woke up my mom & dad.

— Grady Hendrix (@grady_hendrix) October 30, 2019

Mr Grady explained that by the time his parents got downstairs the intruder had fled and "the kitchen was empty".

"Everyone said I read too many horror comics so they blew off what I said.

"I started tracking the position of everything in the kitchen. One day the paper napkin holder was on the wrong side of the counter. Another day a mug was in the sink that was NOT there the night before.

"My bedroom door didn't lock so I kept a steak knife under my pillow. I must've stabbed myself in the hand 1000 times checking to make sure it was there."

Three months later the man returned, but in an even more terrifying ordeal.

Then in August, I was in my room reading when I looked up. There’s an A/C vent over my bed. Behind the vent a pair of eyes were watching me.

— Grady Hendrix (@grady_hendrix) October 30, 2019

I freaked & raised hell until my parents searched our attic and the crawl space under our house. Nothing. I wasn’t very popular for a few weeks.

— Grady Hendrix (@grady_hendrix) October 30, 2019

At the end of the month, the family began to notice a smell in the house.

"One night, rice fell out of the vent over my bed. Maggots. The A/C people said something had probably crawled into our vents & died."

Turns out what had crawled into our vents & died was the guy. We lived in an old house with lots of space between the walls & big ducts. He’d been living in them since May. At least.

— Grady Hendrix (@grady_hendrix) October 30, 2019

It gets creepier.

He’d put a foam pad beside my bedroom vent so he’d be comfortable while he watched me. The police said he’d made lots of “drawings” but when I asked they pretended they hadn’t said anything.

— Grady Hendrix (@grady_hendrix) October 30, 2019

Mr Hendrix is a US based author of titles such as "My Best Friend's Exorcism" and as Pedestrian's Josephine Rozenberg-Clarke wrote: "Look, Grady Hendrix IS a writer, seeming to specialise in horror, so I think I might take this with a giant grain of salt and pray to the universe it isn't true"