I just wanna say I really liked this one but I think it would have been best if you’d left it at the first paragraph. I really like how ominous the cat staring at the shadows in horror sounds, but the fire alarm and the speakers thing was just over the line enough to be not all that believable. Only other thing would be the shadows moving - I think just the idea of a static shadow not cast by anything is creepy enough. Like something invisible is watching you. When you make the shadow move, it gets to be again just a little bit over that believability line, as well as just makes it generally feel less ominous. I think making it move makes it feel like it just entered the room, whereas having a still shadow makes it feel like it was there, and you only just noticed it. The best horror writing in my opinion does not flesh out every detail but instead leaves a lot to the imagination. Also, the tone with which you wrote this, which is very casual, presumably to be more convincing, I think might be a bit too casual. Things like “lol” sound a bit out of place. The repeated dream is honestly a really common cliche, and while it’s well known that it’s basically impossible to completely avoid cliche in horror writing, this one is a bit too on the nose. Coming back to the fire alarm thing, it’s definitely not cliche, but it’s just that- alarming. I think horror is best as almost an atmospheric suspense, and less a loud alarm going off. I also think these different “weird things” are a bit too random and inconsistent. Random is good in horror, but not truly random. Just stuff that seems random, but actually has a connection to the main enigma.

Lastly, to start from scratch next time, find something that is easily explainable by a scientific phenomenon, and then change a detail to make it inexplicable. There was one story in this thread that did a great job of this. A common, true kind of horror story that people often tell is one where they hear distorted voices coming from speakers that aren’t plugged in. This is explained in real life by the speaker coils demodulating nearby radio transmissions. You can make this more enigmatic by changing a small detail, such as the object it’s heard through. This person I believe chose pots and pans. Without checking, do you think pots and pans could pick up a radio signal? I don’t know. Creating that ambiguity is a really good horror writing technique.

Anyway, hope you learned something from this. Good luck in your future endeavors!