A guy spent a MONTH gaslighting his gf so she'd move in with him

Okay I wasn't going to post this but it's been living rent free in my head and people need to know this story exists.

So I used to manage a one-room apartment building¹ with my parents. Three months in, we get this girl as a tenant. Kind of a pain in the ass honestly, kept asking us to change her door lock code every few weeks. The manual's RIGHT THERE but whatever, she'd always ask us to do it for her. She seemed like the type to make complaints, so I just smiled and did it every time to avoid drama.

Then one day she starts saying someone's been getting into her room while she's out.

Okay look. Yes we have a master keycard that opens every room. But we are NOT the type of landlords who just waltz into people's rooms whenever. We literally only use it when someone moves out without telling us the code, or for electrical inspections, and we ALWAYS ask first. But she was side-eyeing me like I was the one doing it. And it just happened to be during my school break so I was home basically 24/7. My parents calmed her down, told her she was imagining things, sent her back downstairs.

Then one day she comes back UP. Furious. She said she'd wedged a piece of paper in the door frame before leaving and folded a corner of her blanket a specific way, and when she came back the paper had fallen and the blanket was unfolded. She was 100% convinced it was me and just. Started screaming. Cussing me out.

I had JUST finished cleaning the rooftop in the heat and was sitting down eating a tonkatsu I ordered. I was so mad I couldn't see straight.

And now my parents were starting to look at me weird too. We only had two cameras, one at the entrance and one at the parking lot, nothing on the actual floors. No way I was gonna spend real money installing cameras just to catch some girl with delusions. So I took my old digital camera (worse than SD quality, this thing was ancient), hid it in a Vita500 box², and set it up in her hallway.

The catch: I had to go down every two hours to clear the memory card. Three days of this and I was already losing my mind. But on day four, something happened before I could even check the footage.

The police knocked on my door first. Not her.

They took me to her room and. The walls were covered in glitter. Like cosmetic shimmer/pearl powder, the stuff you put on your face. Turns out she'd coated her door handle in the stuff before going home to her parents for a few days, hoping whoever broke in would track it back to their own room.

Except whoever broke in didn't just touch the door handle. They went full unhinged and smeared pearl powder on EVERY wall. Ceiling. Floor. All of it.

The cops came to my room and checked my keyboard, mouse, drawer handles, faucets, even the toilet flush lever. Looking for glitter. Obviously there was none. I was just eating tonkatsu the whole time???

But also, four days of an empty room and the sink was wet. Like someone had JUST showered. Soap was all soggy.

I ended up going to the police station as a witness. A witness. Me. I was just living there minding my business and I'm getting questioned like a suspect. The vibe was genuinely like those old stories about guys getting dragged to the KCIA in the 70s for no reason just because they were young men in the wrong place.³

When I got home I finally checked the camera footage.

Day two. 11pm. Her boyfriend walks into her empty room.

Day three he's not on camera. Day four I hadn't recorded. But that was enough.

I went back to the police.

The full story: this guy had been sneaking into his girlfriend's room while she was at class and leaving subtle, creepy signs that someone had been there. For a MONTH. Every time she'd freak out and tell him about it, he'd casually bring up brutal murder cases in studio apartments, and then go 'hey if you're scared you can just sleep over at my place tonight.'

His end goal was for her to move in with him. And that day was supposed to be the big finale.

She'd told him about the pearl powder trap she set. So he put WAY more powder on his hands and just. Decorated her entire room with it. The wet sink, the messed up blanket, all him.

The part that genuinely gave me chills: the day the police showed up, he was RIGHT THERE holding her, comforting her so gently while she cried.

The whole time he was hugging her he was probably already thinking about what to do next to scare her more.

He got reported to police. She took a leave of absence from school.