Young boy discovers terrifying discovery after sneaking downstairs for midnight snack

His parents didn't believe him and dismissed his concerns (stock)
-Credit: (Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)


A young boy's life was turned into a horror movie after he snuck downstairs for a midnight snack and was faced with a horrendous sight. Sharing the harrowing story on TikTok, an account posted a clip of Jonathan Bartlett Allen, known as MrBallen online, recalling the traumatic event.

To begin, he explained how the nine-year-old boy discovered he could sneak out of his bed at night and make it into the kitchen to "eat as much junk food as he wanted" without his parents noticing. Jonathan said: "One night, in the summer that year, his family went out for this huge dinner at this amazing restaurant and when they came back, they had all these leftovers" reports the Mirror.

He continued: "The boy really wanted to eat the remainder of the sweet and sour pork. He was really excited about it. So everyone goes to bed and he's really deliberate and starts sneaking down the stairs being ultra careful.

"He gets to the end of the stairs, he hasn't made a sound." However, the boy then freezes in his tracks after he hears what sounds like a fork clunking against the counter.

He goes on to gingerly look around the corner, expecting to see either his mum or dad standing at the fridge - but instead, he saw an unknown figure. Jonathan added: "He pokes his head far enough in to see into the kitchen - and standing in the middle of the kitchen is a skinny man who he has never seen before drinking milk directly from the carton with the fridge wide open."

In a bid to remain silent, the boy sneaks upstairs before running into his parent's bedroom to tell them about what he just saw. "The father runs downstairs ready to confront whoever is there but there's no one there.

"There's not even a sign that anyone was there," he added. The parents then checked around the house but again didn't find anything.

"Believing their son made it all up, or possibly dreamt it, they sent him back to bed and went back to sleep themselves. For the next few days, the boy decided to make a mental note of where everything is left in the kitchen, waiting to see if anything 'mysteriously' moves in the night.

Jonathan said: "He started paying really close attention to everything in his house. In the mornings, he would go downstairs before everybody else and he would see if there was a sign of someone having been in the kitchen.

"He noticed at one point the napkin holder had been moved to the wrong side of the counter. He also noticed there was a mug in the sink that nobody had used the night before.

"So, he's thinking that somebody is sneaking into our house. I don't know how, I don't know where but I'm confident it's still happening."

However, his parents still didn't believe him, thinking he was making the whole fiasco up. But three months later, the boy was lying in his bedroom looking up at a ceiling vent when he noticed a pair of eyes looking down at him.

"In a state of panic, he runs into his parent's room and tries to explain what he just saw while "completely freaking out". His parents rush into his bedroom and open up the vent but they find nothing on the other side.

Again, they turn to their son and accuse him of having an "overactive imagination" before leaving his bedroom and going about their day as if nothing happened.

"But a week goes by and their house started to smell really bad," adds Jonathan. "The majority of the stink was coming from that vent in the boy's bedroom. Even worse, there were maggots falling out of that vent."

Confused, the parents called in the air condition specialists to take a look at the issue - with them believing there was a dead animal in the vent. But when they opened it up to check it out, they made a horrifying discovery - and came to realise the boy's suspicions were right all along.

Jonathan added: "They find a dead man who had been living in their ceiling. There was literally a cot that had been set up inside of their ceiling. There were drawings of this boy taken from the perspective of looking down at him through the vent. Someone had been living in their ceiling over the boy's bed for months and then died up there."

Before ending the video, he simply added: "The man was never identified and died a John Doe." Commenting on the creepy story, one user said: "Don't ever ignore kids and might seem like they're lying or whatever but never ignore them." Another user added: "That boy is going to have some mad therapy sessions." A third user said: "I'm so lucky I don't have vents or any crawl spaces in my house."

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