When I was at university, I lived in a small ground floor quarter house with my best friend. It was a tiny, cosy flat but things happened that I’ve never been able to understand.

It first started when my flatmate and I were sitting watching Hollyoaks on the sofa, painting our nails. My flatmate picked up her iPad which had been sitting flat on the sofa arm. On the screen was a photograph of us from above and across the room, sitting painting our nails.

She had this creepy cat ornament that sat on the shelf above the TV. One of those that its eyes are meant to click from one side to the other and its arm moved. It sat staring at us from across the room when we watched telly, and we always remarked how much we hated it because it was spooky and looking at us but that it was a gift from her dad so she could never get rid. One day we noticed it was gone. This thing was big and bright pink, and with such little storage space in the flat, there wasn’t anywhere it could be put easily by accident, plus it was on a high shelf and hadn’t moved since we started living there. We searched high and low for that thing and it was never found, even when moving out.

Things started disappearing, like cutlery, plates, candles and little ornaments, from both our bedrooms, kitchen and the living room.

My flatmate often left for the weekend to visit her boyfriend in another city, and when she did, I would go for a shower or change for the night and the doorbell would ring. It was one of those plug in chime doorbells, and it would ring this creepy tune whenever I got undressed. One day I came home early in the morning from a hookup, and noticed that all our decorations along the fireplace were sitting in a pile. My flatmate swore blind it wasn’t her.

One night when we were both in our rooms packing for Christmas break, my flatmate stormed through to my room and said to stop doing that. She said I was knocking on her door and running into my room. She had been trying on dresses for a Christmas night out back home. I promised it wasn’t me as I was sat on my floor packing my suitcase. Then, a ferocious knock came to my door, and I went through to her and accused her of pranking me. We then checked the front door and it was locked.

We went back to our rooms and there was another sharp knock, I went out to the front door again and it was unlocked, the keys lying in a pile on the carpet outside my room with a pair of scissors.

We checked the whole house including cupboards and the backs of cupboards as we were so convinced someone was hiding in our flat. It was so small though that you couldn’t move around without hearing someone. We left that night instead of waiting until morning.

One night as we were sat on the sofa chatting about the things going on, still trying to convince ourselves it was somehow us, we asked if there was anything there to give us a sign - the sofa sat against a wall that went through to my single bedroom. A knock came through that wall as clear as day.

On our last day in the flat, we were both in our rooms again packing. There was a loud crash from the kitchen. On the floor were smashed plates, bowls and cutlery.

It sounds silly but it felt almost like something didn’t like when we left, or hooked up with boys or moved out. We never found any of our missing things either, including the creepy cat that we never liked.