My Facebook Marketplace horror story started with a lamp. A nice man bought it for twenty dollars, carried it to his truck himself, and asked me which room it had been in. Over the next six weeks, he bought something from every room in my house. It reads like one of those creepy short stories with a twist, but every receipt is still in my email.
In the spring of 2024, my husband and I split up. He moved to Portland. I kept the house, a two-story place on the Bench in Boise, Idaho, with a basement and a deck out back. I didn’t want to keep the furniture we’d picked out together. So I started selling it, one piece at a time, on Marketplace.
The first thing I listed was a brass floor lamp from the living room. A man named Glenn messaged me within ten minutes. He asked if it was still available and if he could come that evening.
He was in his fifties. Clean-cut, a fleece vest, a pickup truck. Very polite. He paid in cash, exact, and the bills were folded into tight little squares, like notes kids pass in school. He insisted on carrying the lamp out himself, even though it was light.
On his way out, he looked around the living room and said, “Is this the room it was in?” I said yes. He nodded like that was important.
I thought he was a little odd. That’s all.
One Thing From Every Room
A week later, I listed a bookshelf from the upstairs hallway. Glenn messaged first. He came that night.
He carried it down the stairs himself. While he was up there, he looked down the hall and said, “Which one’s the main bedroom?” I pointed. He said, “Nice. Faces the street.”
Ten days later, the dresser from my bedroom. Glenn again. I almost didn’t sell it to him. But he offered full price, and he was so polite.
I’d emptied the dresser drawers that morning in a hurry. Dumped everything into a laundry basket. Socks, old receipts, phone chargers, odds and ends.
He carried the drawers out one at a time. Then the frame. He took a long time. When he was done, he stood in my empty bedroom for a second and looked at the bed, and at the window, and at the closet. Then he thanked me and left. Exact cash, folded into tiny squares.
After that he bought the patio set from the back deck. While he was out there loading it, he asked, “What’s that door?” He was pointing at the bulkhead door that goes down into the basement from outside.
I said, “Just the basement.”
He said, “Huh,” and smiled.
Items I Never Listed
A few days after the patio set, Glenn sent me a message.
“Are you selling the rocking chair in the basement?”
There was a rocking chair in my basement. My grandmother’s. It was in the back corner behind the water heater. I’d never listed it. I’d never photographed it. You couldn’t see it from the bulkhead door.
I wrote back, “How do you know about the rocking chair?”
He wrote, “Saw it when I was there. Beautiful piece.”
He’d never been in my basement. I’d have remembered.
I told myself he must have looked down the stairs from the kitchen when he was picking up the lamp. Maybe the light was on. Maybe I was misremembering. People see things.
I didn’t answer him. And I didn’t list anything for a while.
The Twist in My Facebook Marketplace Horror Story
Three weeks later, I was ready to sell the last big thing. Our bed. I listed it on a Sunday afternoon with three pictures.
Glenn messaged at 11:14 that night.
“I’ll take it. No need to move it. I’ll come to it.”
I read that maybe five times. Then I heard a sound below me. The basement door, the inside one at the bottom of the kitchen stairs. It sticks. You have to shove it. I heard it scrape open.
I grabbed my phone and my car keys off the nightstand. I went out my bedroom door and down the front stairs as quietly as I could, and I didn’t look toward the kitchen. I went out the front door barefoot and got in my car and locked it and called 911 with the engine running.
While I was on the phone, a light came on in my bedroom window. The one that faces the street.
A shape stood in it, looking down at me.
Then the light went off.
What Was in the Basement
The police went through the house. Nobody was inside. The bulkhead door to the basement was closed but unlocked. I always kept a padlock on it. The padlock was gone.
In the back corner of the basement, behind the water heater, next to my grandmother’s rocking chair, there was a brass floor lamp. Plugged in. Turned on.
My lamp. The one I sold him on the very first day.
There was a blanket folded on the rocking chair. A water bottle. A stack of my old mail. And a piece of notebook paper with a drawing on it. A floor plan of my whole house, room by room, very neat. Every room had a small label in it. “Lamp.” “Bookshelf.” “Dresser.” “Patio.” And in the main bedroom, in different handwriting, darker, “Bed.”
The officer asked if anyone besides me had a key to the house. I said no. Then I remembered the dresser.
I’d kept a spare house key in the back of the top drawer for years, in a little dish. I’d dumped that drawer into a laundry basket the morning I sold the dresser. I went through the basket with the officer. Socks, receipts, chargers.
No key. And no little dish.
The police tracked down Glenn’s Marketplace account. It had been made the week I listed the lamp, and deleted the night I listed the bed. The truck had no plates they could trace. They told me they’d seen accounts like that before. Somebody who scrolls listings looking for words like “everything must go,” “moving out,” “divorce sale.” Somebody who looks for women alone.
I changed the locks that night. I sold the house in the fall. I didn’t sell the bed. I paid a junk company to haul it to the dump, and I watched them crush it.
I don’t sell anything online anymore. I give things away to people I know.
A few months ago, I got a letter at my new apartment. No return address. Inside was a twenty-dollar bill, folded into a tiny square.
And a sticky note that said, “For the rocking chair.”
If you’re after more super scary stories about strangers, read the scary Halloween story about a raffle on Maple Court, our creepy stalker story about things being returned, or the funeral home horror story from a night shift in Savannah.
Share your Facebook Marketplace horror story
Have you ever sold something online and gotten a buyer who asked too many questions about your house? Share your Facebook Marketplace horror story, or any short horror stories with a twist from a sale that went wrong, in the comments below.
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