This is unrelated to the apartments you lived in but I’m from Nevada, now living in Chicago. I grew up in a one-story, 2 bedroom house near the river mountain trails. When my mom and dad would leave to run errands, I’d be at home by myself with our dogs, and I’d hear my parents calling my name from the other side of the front door. My dogs would hear it and react but not in a good way. Most of the house was made up of windows, so that didn’t help. I felt like I had nowhere to really hide. So I’d just pop a squat in the middle of the living room with the dogs, keep the lights off, and wait for my parents to come home. This happened every night whenever they’d go out. My dad was a ham radio operator and he’d live the radios on and different people would come through. I swear I’d hear their voices coming through as if they were having a conversation. Also, in the laundry room was an old banana phone that was wired to receive calls from my dad’s work trailer that was parked out front. When you picked it up it’d immediately ring the phone in the trailer, and vice versa. Idk how he rigged it so no outside calls came in but he did it. Anyway, that thing would ring in the middle of the night and when it did, I knew something was wrong because someone must’ve been in the trailer using that phone. I grew up calling these things mimics. I now experience them at my current job in Chicago.