The Dear David Mystery

In the summer of 2017, Illustrator Adam Ellis posted a series of tweets explaining how his apartment had been haunted by a ghost who was trying to attack him, called David. The thread also consisted of a variety of photos and sketches Ellis had taken in order to prove his case. To this day, he still continues to write tweets regarding the incident.

Here is a definitive timeline of his tweets:

August 7th, 2017

1. So, my apartment is currently being haunted by the ghost of a dead child and he’s trying to kill me (thread)

2. He started appearing in dreams, but I think he’s crossed over into the real world now

3. The first time I saw him, I was experiencing sleep paralysis and saw a child sitting in the green rocking chair at the foot of my bed

4. He had a huge misshapen head that was dented on one side. I did my best to draw it:

5. For a while he just stared at me, but then he got out of the chair and started shambling toward the bed

6. I couldn’t move because I was paralyzed. (I have sleep paralysis fairly often. It sucks).

7. Right before he reached my bed, I woke up screaming.

8. I had another dream a few nights later, where I was in a library and a girl came up to me and said “you’ve seen Dear David, haven’t you?”

9. I was like “who?” and she said, “Dear David. You saw him”.

10. She continued, “he’s dead. He only appears at midnight, and you can ask him two questions if you said ‘dear David’ first”.

11. Then she added, “but never try to ask him a third question, or he’ll kill you”

12. I was very shaken! Having two dreams about the same thing is pretty weird. Anyway, a couple weeks passed without incident.

13. Then, David came back in another dream. Same situation – I was in bed, and he was sitting in the rocking chair near the window, staring at me.

14. In the dream, I say “Dear David, how did you die?” He mumbles, “An accident in a store”.

15. I say, “Dear David, what happened in the store?” He groans, “A shelf was pushed on my head”.

16. I’m frozen with fear. I ask, “who pushed the shelf?” David doesn’t answer.

17. I realise that I’ve asked a third question, which I’m not supposed to do. At that point, I wake up, absolutely terrified.

18. The next couple of days I google death in the city, but can’t find anything about a kid named David dying in a store

19. I even try different names – Daniel, Dylan, Devon. Nothing. A few weeks go by without incident.

20. Sort of randomly, the apartment above mine is vacated, and I have the opportunity to move into it. It’s a larger apartment, so I’m thrilled.

21. Another month or two goes by, and I sort of forget about Dear David. I think he lost track of me because I moved upstairs.

22. But lately, something strange is happening.

23. For the past 4 nights, my cats gather at the front door at exactly midnight and just stare at it, almost like something is on the other side.

24. Last night, I got a weird feeling and looked out the peephole, and I’m dead certain I saw movement on the other side.

25. When I opened the door and turned on the hall light, nothing was there, but my cats seemed unnerved. Bushy tails, etc.

26. And that’s where I’m at right now. Dear David found me, I think. I don’t know what happened. I’ll keep you updated.

August 9th, 2017

1. Update: for the sixth night in a row, my cat walked over to the door promptly at midnight and stared at it.

2. What is going on?

pic.twitter.com/30mLSqYhXo

3. Ok, so I took a photo through the peephole cuz I’m too scared to open the door. I feel like I saw something.

4. I couldn’t tell so I mustered the courage to open the door. Nothing was out there but I took another photo. Look at this:

5. Is it just me or is there something in the first hpoto, right where the banister meets the shelves? Hiding on the stairs.

6. I deadbolted the lock and got in bed because I don’t know what else to do. I can still heard my cat meowing at the door.

7. I am pretty scared.

August 10th, 2017

He continues with a thread that the cats are still sat at the door at midnight meowing, and claims it has become some sort of a routine now for them to do this. He takes videos and photos of them as evidence.

August 11th, 2017

This thread reveals how he recorded the audio during his sleep, and found three clips of significance. One that shows a strang electric sound, another which follows the static and one that sounds like a single step (which he commented was strange because he never got out of bed all night)

https://soundcloud.com/adamtots/snap-step

https://soundcloud.com/adamtots/electric-static

https://soundcloud.com/adamtots/another-snap-groan

August 14th, 2017

He goes on in this thread to talk about how he bought a Fujifilm instax polaroid camera, and it seemed to take photos perfectly everywhere except the hallway, as every photo in the hallway turned out black, even with the light on and from different angles.

August 15th, 2017

1. Folks have been urging me to get some sage, so did.

2. Saging the hall, and definitely saging the hell out of this rocking chair.

3. Honestly, sage doesn’t seem like it’ll help much, but I’m open to anything. I barely slept last night.

4. I kept waking up feeling like something was wrong.

5. But who knows, maybe this will do something.

August 16th, 2017

1. Sage did not work.

2. I haven’t dreamed about David in a few months, but he appeared again last night.

3. In the dream, my bedroom was filled with hazy smoke, but I could see David sitting in the chair across the room.

4. He was smaller this time. Almost shrunken. He didn’t do or say anything except look at me.

5. Anyway, it feels like a bad omen.

August 18th, 2017

1. It’s been two weeks and he still does this every night at midnight [he includes another photo of his cat sat at the door].

2. Other weird stuff has been happening, too.

3. I’ve been recording myself sleeping, and it picks up this weird static electricity sound every midnight at 3am. It lasts about 5 minutes.

4. This morning I woke up to the whole house shaking. It felt like a small earthquake.

5. I debated even mentioning that on Twitter, because it sounds like I made it up. But I distinctly felt the house swaying.

6. It’s just a whole bunch of small things happening at once. I feel so uneasy, like right before a thunderstorm comes.

7. Everyone is telling me to move, but I don’t have any guarantee that this won’t follow me.

August 21st, 2017

1. All this ghost stuff has been spooky, but this past weekend was the first time I actually felt unsafe in my home. (thread)

2. On Friday night, there was supposed to be a huge storm. In the end it passed, but the night was bizarre anyway.

3. I fell asleep pretty early. I was incredibly tired for some reason.

4. I had a dream that night wehre David was dragging me by the arm through an old abandoned warehouse.

5. I’m not sure why I didn’t fight back in the dream, or how he was strong enough to pull me, but that’s dream logic for you.

6. It was a creepy dream, but I didn’t think much of it when I woke up. I took a shower, and then I noticed something.

7. I’d woken up with a huge bruise on my arm.

8. Now look, maybe I injured myself the day before, and my arm was hurting during the night, which manifested in the dream.

9. There could be a totally logical explanation for it, so I brushed it off. I went to get a coffee, which I do every weekend.

10. wHen I walk to the coffee place, I always pass a food cart repair depot. It’s always INCERDIBLY busy, especially on weekends.

11. I’ve lived in the neighbourhood for over 4years, and the place has always been jam-packed with carts getting serviced.

12. But today, it was completely abandoned. The whole warehouse was totally gutted and empty.

13. Well, almost empty. I went inside to look around, because I was astonished that this place was suddenly empty after all these years.

14. Basically the only thing in the entire warehouse was a single green chair.

15. If you recall, David first appeared in my green rocking chair. It could be nothing, but it’s weird that it was the only thing left behind.

16. On my way back from the coffee, the warehouse has been shuttered. It’s remained shuttered since.

17. The chair, my bruise, dreaming about an empty warehouse and then passing by one…it gave me the creeps.

18. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep much that night. Too many strange things are happening, and more frequently.

19. So I dunno, anyway it was a strange weekend.

August 25th 2017

1. There have been a few small developments in my apartment, but I’m not really sure what to make of them. I just know I’m scared (thread).

2. If you recall, my cats usually gather at the doora t midnight, but lately it’s been getting earlier and earlier every night.

3. I was almost used to routine, so when they started to cry at the door closer to 10pm, I was confused.

4. They began a new routine: hover around the door at 10pm, cry for about 15 minutes, then wander off as if nothing’s wrong.

5. But this week, something else has been happening.

6. Shortly after the usual cat stuff, around 10:30 or so, I start getting phone calls from an unmarked number.

7. My entire call history for the past week looks like this. You’ll notice that I answered once, yesterday.

8. Since this has been happening for days on end, I thought it might be an automated telemarketer or something

9. Usually if it’s an automated thing, if you answer once, they quite calling. So I picked up.

10. Instead, what I heard on the other end was a peculiar electrical static sound, very similar to the static my sleep app picks up at night.

11. I didn’t say anything. I just listened, waiting for some automated message to chime in.

12. After about a minute, the static stopped, and there was silence.

13. I kept listening. I heard what I thought was breathing, but it was so faint I can’t be sure. My heart was racing, so it was hard to hear.

14. Then, just as I was about to hang up, I heard a very small voice whisper “hello”.

15. Something about the way they said hello freaked me out. It wasn’t a question, or a greeting

16. Just “hello”. A flat statement. So quiet I could barely hear it.

17. I panicked and hung up. I didn’t know what else to do. I closed all the curtains in my apartment and turned on every single light.

18. I watched TV until dawn because I was too scared to go to sleep. I sort of feel like I’m losing my mind.

19. If I look at each individual incident on it’s own, there are perfectly logical explanations for everything.

20. But after three weeks of weird shit happening, I don’t know how to make sense of it all.

21. The only thing I can do right not is write everything down. So that’s what I’m doing. And that’s what I’ll keep doing.

August 29th, 2017

1. So, I moved the green chair out of the bedroom weeks ago. It’s been in various parts of the living room ever since.

2. I should probably get rid of it, but I’m not sure that would have any effect.

3. Also, I’m going on vacation to Japan in 3 weeks, and I keep thinking if I can make it to my trip, this will all end, as dumb as that sounds.

4. David lost track of me once when I moved, so maybe if he believes I’ve left the apartment again, he’ll leave me alone.

5. Anyway, last week I bought a pet monitoring camera so I can keep an eye on the cats whilst I’m overseas.

6. It’s basically a nanny cam that connects to the wifi, so you can check in whenever you want. It runs 24/7.

7. It also alerts you to sound and movement via an app. (I blacked out the company, as I doubt they want to be associated with ghosts)

8. In any event, I decided to test it out this weekend. I was away from home one night, so I set up the camera before I left.

9. My phone pinged periodically through the evening, alerting me to the cats running around and playing. Normal stuff.

10. Then, around 11, it alerted me again that it detected motion, but when I checked the feed on my apartment, I didn’t see anything.

11. So I watched the feed again. Still nothing. I watched it a third time, and I finally noticed something.

12. Watch the chair.

https://twitter.com/moby_dickhead/status/902341859523129344/video/1

13. I knew it couldn’t be the wind, because I haven’t had the windows open at all this summer (I have AC).

14. It was unnerving, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it right then, so I flipped my phone off and tried not to panic.

15. About half an hour later, I got another motion alert.

16. Here’s the feed off that alert

https://twitter.com/moby_dickhead/status/902342479965552640/video/1

17. I’ve turned the nanny cam off. I’m too scared.

6th September 2017

1. It’s happening again.

2. I’ve been leaving my nanny cam on 24/7. It records every time there’s movement or sound, as you know.

3. I was going over the feed from this weekend, and noticed some weird stuff.

4. During the night on Saturday, whilst I slept, it recorded the cats in the living room. It seemed pretty unremarkable at first.

5. But then, after a few moments, Maxwell freaks out and jumps over something invisible.

https://twitter.com/moby_dickhead/status/905224754025697280/video/1

6. Anyway, the next night, the camera recorded a couple more strange videos.

7. Specifically, it recorded Maxwell doing this on and off for hours.

8. He’d sit up on his hind legs and peer around the room, as if looking for something (or looking at something?)

9. This is odd behaviour for him, and I can’t come up with an explanation for it. Especially because of the next video.

10. Here’s the final video the camera recorded that night

https://twitter.com/moby_dickhead/status/905226052296986624/video/1

11. I suppose there’s a chance it was a fly, but I honestly never get flies. So that seems unlikely.

12. I just can’t shake the feeling that something has made its way into the apartment.

17th September 2017

Ellis goes on to explain how he’s been having weird nightmares, including one where he turned over in bed and saw a severed head on his pillow, attached to a spine and still smiling. He asked “what happened to you?!” and it replied, “it feels great”. He also commented that he’d been having dreams about people staring into his windows and making him feel uneasy.

22nd September 2017

Ellis reveals how he’s leaving for Japan this day, and thanks everyone for their support.

3rd October 2017

He takes a photo of a statue he has seen in Japan, which is a combobulation of bodies all entwined. He notices a kid with a bump on his head.

14th October 2017

Ellis reveals how a lot of his bulbs have been blowing, which seemed weird since most were brand new. He then was getting ready for work at around 5 in the morning, when he heard faint scratching from the other side of the door. He was too scared to look through the peephole, so instead took a picture of it.

For a clarification of the face: https://twitter.com/Krowphay/status/919280530071457795?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwakelet.com%2Fwake%2Fe6275d03-7bce-4789-9961-f3a04723cc71

27th October 2017

He noted that the cats were looking at something, and heard scratching but brushed it off. His tweets continue from there.

1. As I went into the kitchen to get a bottle opener, I noticed something.

2. There’s a window in the kitchen, which looks out onto the same roof. And someone was standing on the roof, staring at me

3. I immediately ducked down. I reached up and flicked off the light switch. I peered over the window sill but couldn’t see much.

4. My phone was in my pocket so I grabbed a photo. It was blurry and dark but I swear someone was out there.

6th November 2017

1. It's been about four months since the first time I dreamed of David. (thread)

2. This might be long, but stick with me. Last night I dreamed about him again. It was almost exactly the same as the first time I saw him.

3. In the dream, I saw him in a chair again. I don't have the green chair in my room anymore—this time it was a recliner I've had for years.

4. He was staring right at me, just like the first time. Again, I felt paralyzed & could barely move. But this time, something was different.

6. David glared at me, and I dreaded what I knew was coming. He was going to get out of the chair and come toward me, like before

7. I had to do something. I keep my phone next to me on the bed, and I somehow managed to get ahold of it.

8. I thought, "If David is going to kill me, maybe I can at least get evidence on my phone." I started snapping pictures in the dark.

9. Sure enough, he crawled down off the chair and began shuffling toward me. He moved slowly, like it was a struggle for him

10. I felt terrified, but I kept taking photos. David limped closer toward me, never taking his eyes off me. Soon I was face to face with him.

11. He started muttering something, too quiet for me to understand. I watched as his eyes rolled back in his head, until they were all white.

12.I tried to writhe away from him, but I could barely move. I stared in horror as he began crawling up onto my bed, still murmuring something.

13. And that's when I woke up. Same as before. Broad daylight. No trace of David anywhere.

14. It's almost routine now. But it was a dream after all, so I got up and went to work, and after a while the stress of the dream melted away.

15. I wasn't even going to write about this, since it wouldn't really be new information. But tonight I noticed something that petrified me.

16. I went into my phone to find a picture from a couple days ago, & saw dozens of pitch black photos in my camera roll. All from last night.

17. It's better to just show you. Turn up your brightness, because they're pretty dark.

18. Usually I can come up with some excuse for what's happening, but I have no logical explanation for this.

19. So now I'm sitting here on my couch, freaking out. I certainly won't be able to sleep. I just felt like I needed to get this out.

November 28th 2017

1. A lot has happened in the last week, but I was away for Thanksgiving so I'm just now able to write it all down. (thread)

2. The noises from the ceiling haven't let up, but the pole I ordered didn't arrive before I had to leave for the holiday, so I didn't actually get it until late Friday night. I planned to investigate the next morning and went to bed.

3. I'd barely fallen asleep when I woke up to an INCREDIBLY loud crash above me. It sounded like someone had dropped a bowling ball. I bolted upright in bed and immediately felt strange. There was a weird energy all around me. I can't explain it.

4. After about a minute I heard another crash. I briefly thought about grabbing my shoes and booking it, but that would mean passing under the hatch, and that seemed like a bad idea. So instead I just listened and waited, though I'm not sure for what.

5. The crash happened again, and then again—probably 15 times in a row, followed by a long silence. Then I heard a smaller, creaky sound from the hallway. In my mind I registered it as a footstep, but it really could've been anything.

6. I stayed still, but there were no more sounds after that. I lay back down, still tense and nervous, but I must've fallen asleep at some point because I woke up the next morning and everything seemed normal again. I got dressed and left to go get a bagel, same as every Saturday.

7. As I made my way down the stairs, something crunched under my feet. I looked down and noticed a pile of debris on the stairs, directly under the hatch.

8. It looked like dirt but I couldn't tell for certain. It could've been old plaster or something? I glanced up at the hatch and noticed something else peculiar. The edge of something was caught in it, barely poking out. It's hard to see because it's so far up, but I took a photo:

9. At that point bagels were the last thing on my mind. I went back upstairs and grabbed the pole. I set my camera on the coat wardrobe at the top of the stairs and hit record, just to make sure it would be caught on video if a demon burst out of the hatch.

10. Here’s the video:

https://twitter.com/moby_dickhead/status/935711670642577409/video/1

11.I jumped out of the way and practically fell down the stairs trying to dodge whatever it was that fell. At first I thought it was a dead squirrel, which would honestly explain a lot. It hit the steps and bounced down to the first floor.

12.I went upstairs to get my phone and collapse the pole, since it's so long and unwieldy, then went back downstairs to investigate the object that fell. At first I wasn't even sure what it was. It was a dingy, faded black.

13.I picked it up and realized what it was. It was a small leather shoe.

14.I hustled back upstairs and texted my landlord. I told him I thought there was something in the crawlspace and asked if he could investigate. He said he'd come by later with a ladder and check it out.

15.A few hours later my landlord was on a ladder, shining a flashlight into the crawlspace, I stared up at him, half expecting something to grab him and yank him into the darkness. He angled his flashlight all around and finally saying, "There's nothing up here."

16.But then he was like, "Oh, wait." I watched as he reached up into the emptiness with his free arm, and when he pulled it back he had something small and round in his hand. He climbed down the ladder and handed it to me.

17.Again, I wasn't quite sure what I was looking at. It was smooth and shiny and at first I thought it was an old piece of candy, but it was cold and too heavy to be candy. After a second I realized it was a marble.

18. It was so worn that it hadn't registered as a marble at first. Its shape was also sort of weird, with a little bump on one end.

19. My landlord seemed unbothered for the most part (uhhh ok dude) and he told me to call him if I heard anything else. I went inside and headed to my office to see if I could figure anything out about this marble that somehow made its way into my ceiling.

20. I had nothing to go on, and In short I didn't really learn much. But I did figure out the bump on the marble, I think. Apparently in the early 1900s they made marbles by hand and cut them with big metal scissors, which would mean the marble is probably really old?

21.Anyway, now I have a decrepit old shoe and a marble sitting on my dresser. I guess this is the new normal.

December 13th 2017

1. But last week something started to happen. Late on Wednesday, I woke up with a start and felt something strange, like something had just been watching me. I turned on the light but I was alone.

2. Still, there was this a tangible feeling of... badness? Everything felt wrong, sort of like when you have the flu and you wake up at night and can't really tell where you are for a minute.

3. It was a feeling I'm used to—it always accompanies David. People tweet at me a lot saying he might just need help, but I'm certain that's not the case. Every time he shows up, I feel a palpable sense of malice.

4. There's what I felt that night. Malice. Dread. But still, I was alone. And I was so tired, I wound up just going back to sleep. I've been so exhausted recently I can barely function.

5. The next night, the same thing happened. I woke up suddenly, feeling like I had just missed seeing something. Like a candle had just gone out and I could still smell it.

6. I thought about using the pet cam from the living room to monitor my bedroom while I slept, but the cord was too short to get the camera high enough to see the entire room. So I improvised.

7. I downloaded an app that takes a photo every 60 seconds and set my phone on top of a bookcase (it's almost 7 feet tall, so it had a pretty good view of my bed and the surrounding room). Then I went to sleep.

8. Just like before, I jolted awake hours later, feeling the same unease. I turned on the light and hurried out of bed to get my phone from the bookcase. There were probably 350 photos to scroll through.

9. The vast majority of them were me sleeping in an empty room. It's sort of dark but you can see me sleeping. I'd left a couple night lights on just in case anything showed up, but for the first hundred or so photos it was just me in an empty room.

10. Then, suddenly, he was there. Standing on the chair at the foot of the bed staring at me.

11. Then he appears to collapse on the chair. The next dozen photos are all the same. He's completely lifeless. At first I'd thought he was dead, which obviously doesn't make any sense. I looked over at the chair half expecting him to still be there but it was empty.

12. He was on the bed. Inches from me, staring down at me sleeping. My heart sunk.

13. The next one was worse. In the next photo, he's staring right at the camera.

14. After that, there's seemingly nothing. He disappears again and the rest of the scroll is just me alone in my room again. That is, until the last photo.

15. I'm at a loss for words. That malformed ear, that stringy hair. I didn't even know what to think. I looked all over my room but couldn't find anything. And honestly I've been so exhausted I didn't know how to process it.

16. Even now, all I wanna do is just go to sleep.

January 2nd 2018

1. But after a few days, I started to feel strange again. One night I got up to go to the bathroom, and as I stood there in the dark, I couldn't help feeling like there was something moving outside the bathroom window.

2. The bathroom looks out into the back yard and it was pitch black. I could barely see anything but it's Montana and there are animals passing through all the time. Sure enough, in the morning I found animals tracks through the snow. (I don't know the specific animal—deer? elk?

3. The next night, the same thing happened. I got up in the middle of the night and thought I saw movement in the blackness outside. This time I stood at the window and gazed out, straining my eyes to see, waiting for them to adjust to the night.

4. For a long time I stared out into the snowy darkness, but couldn't see any movement. Then, just as I was about to turn away, I saw something lurch off to the right and disappear from view.

5. Again, it was too dark to make out the animal, but it could've been anything. Maybe a coyote or something?

6. In the morning, as I was getting out of the shower, I glanced out the window and noticed tracks behind the garage.

7. I couldn't tell what they were from the bathroom, so I got dressed, put on my coat and went outside. When I got up close, my heart practically stopped. They weren't tracks, they were footprints. Really small footprints.

8. I followed them across the backyard but they disappeared into the ditch out back. I stood there in the snow, not knowing what to do. What could I do? Call the cops and tell them I found footprints in the snow?

9. The last couple nights I was too scared to leave my room. If it had been David out there in the snow, it meant that he could follow me anywhere. No matter where I moved, he could find me. I felt helpless.

10. Last night was particularly bad. I felt sick and had nightmares all night. I dreamed that David was hovering in the corner by the ceiling, far off the ground. He was mouthing something, but I couldn't hear any words.

11. Suddenly he plummeted downward and I felt this huge pressure crash into my chest. I woke up gasping, the wind completely knocked out of me. I sat up and looked around frantically, heaving for air, but there was nothing.

12. When I caught my breath I retrieved my phone from the dresser. The photo roll showed nothing of note, save for the last photo, taken just a moment before.

13. don't know what to do. I'm at a loss here. I just don't know.

From February 3-February 14th

Ellis wrote a few weird tweets about how everything will be fine, including one which wrote: “please dont worry about me. I'm ok and everything will be like it was before”

The final tweet was written on March 12th 2018, and read:

For everyone asking if I'm alive: I'm doing OK! It's been pretty quiet around here lately and I've been trying to focus on work. Of course I'll keep you updated if anything strange happens, but for now I'm staying busy with drawing and other projects.

---

What do you think? Do you believe this is a real story of a haunting? Or a big social media hoax?