I Thought My Wife Was Losing Her Mind—Until I Realized It Was Me

The first time I noticed something was off, it was her laughter. Not the joyful kind—low, halting, like something breaking apart. I’d hear it late at night, always coming from the living room. When I asked her about it, she’d shrug and say she hadn’t laughed at all.

“Stress, maybe?” she offered. “You’ve been working so much.”

She wasn’t wrong. I’d been pushing myself hard at the firm, burning through 12-hour days. But it wasn’t just the laughter. Small things started piling up—missing books, rearranged furniture, lights left on when I knew I’d turned them off.

“Are you reorganizing the house?” I asked one evening after noticing our bookshelf looked different.

“I haven’t touched it,” she replied, a flicker of something in her voice—fear? Guilt? I brushed it off.

The tipping point came last Tuesday. I woke up at 2:47 a.m. to the sound of scratching. My wife wasn’t in bed. I found her in the basement, crouched over the floor, carving something into the concrete with a screwdriver.

“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded.

She turned slowly, startled, like she hadn’t even realized I was there. Her eyes were wide, red-rimmed, her hands trembling.

“I… I don’t know,” she whispered.

I pulled her away and brought her back to bed, trying to convince myself it was sleepwalking or stress. But something about her face—the haunted look, like she was afraid of herself—made my skin crawl.

The next day, I searched the house while she was out. That’s when I found the tapes.

Twelve unmarked VHS tapes, crammed into a shoebox in the attic. The first one I played made my stomach drop.

It was me. Sitting at my desk. Typing. Eating dinner. Sleeping. Hours of me, filmed from angles that didn’t make sense—inside my office, my car, our bedroom. On one tape, I was sitting on the couch, turning my head sharply as if I’d heard something. The camera panned to the doorway where my wife stood, holding the screwdriver from the basement.

I confronted her that night.

“Why are you recording me?” I shouted, holding up one of the tapes.

Her face crumpled, tears spilling over. “Recording you? You’ve been following me! I found those tapes weeks ago!”

Her voice broke, and she fled the house before I could respond. I stood there, dumbfounded. Following her? That was insane. But her words gnawed at me. I stayed up all night, pacing, until curiosity got the better of me. I played the last tape in the box.

It was dated the day before. On it, I watched myself sitting at the kitchen table, writing in a notebook I didn’t recognize. My handwriting filled the pages.

I didn’t own that notebook.

The most recent entry sent chills down my spine: She knows I know.

I tore the house apart until I found the notebook, stuffed in a drawer beneath the sink. The pages were filled with logs of her movements: 7:30 a.m. - Leaves for work. 12:15 p.m. - Comes home for lunch. Doesn’t see me watching.

I couldn’t remember writing any of it. My hands trembled as I flipped to the last page.

Tomorrow, she’ll leave. Don’t stop her.

The next morning, her side of the closet was empty. She was gone. She’d taken everything except a single piece of paper on the pillow. Four words were scrawled across it in my handwriting:

Who is watching you?

I searched the house again, every room, every drawer. Then I checked the tapes. All of them were blank.

That night, I woke up to the sound of laughter from the living room. Low, halting. My laughter.