The TRUE Story of My Murderous Roommate: Danger at Home
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I've worked in mental health care for the last 18 years of my life, mainly with people with psychotic illnesses like schizophrenia. I was working at a group home for 9 years and was very close with my coworkers there, especially the two other females. The last few years I worked there, another lady started working there as well. Let's call her M. The four of us together grew very close.

She was a very timid, shy, and friendly woman, and we got along quite well. She was, however, often on long-term sick leave because of her own mental health issues, so we didn't meet much at work, but she always showed up at our after-work dinners, so we continued to stay in touch even when she wasn't well enough to work full-time. She told us that she had a history of schizophrenia herself, just like the patients we were treating, but that she was medicated and hadn't had any psychotic episodes for years.

Since I have an education in psychiatry and extensive experience with schizophrenia, I have no judgement towards people suffering from the illness, and it didn't bother me being friends with someone who had a diagnosis like that. And even after what I will tell you, I still feel the same way. In the summer of 2023, I had moved on to work at a new place, also within mental health, but this time forensic psychiatry, like a halfway house for mentally ill murderers, just to give you an idea.

The four of us former co-workers stayed in touch and still met up every now and then for dinner parties. Em told us that she had been evicted from her apartment because of an incident where she had accidentally entered her neighbor's apartment during the middle of the night. She told us that in the huge apartment complex, the doors all looked exactly the same, and that she simply walked into the wrong door by accident, and that the neighbors had created a scene out of pure drama and reported her to the police.

I somehow felt that while that sounded out of proportion to evict someone just from that, perhaps the landlord took that kind of action because he judged her based on her medical history, and I felt bad for her. I questioned her if something else had happened, and she claimed that it didn't, and that this was the full story. In Sweden, it's very difficult to get a lease for an apartment. When you've gotten evicted, you pretty much get blacklisted. Em asked me if she could move in with me.

since she was literally on the street, like actually homeless. I said, "Of course you can." I've always gotten myself into uncomfortable situations by saying "yes" instead of thinking about myself, and I had no idea how severe the situation would get when I said yes to Em that night. I live in a pretty small apartment. It's one bedroom that pretty much only fits a bed and a desk, a living room that fits a couch and a TV, no room for an extra bed, a small kitchen, and a small bathroom.

In addition, I have two cats. We decided that Em was going to live in the living room, and I offered her to throw my couch out so she could have a bed there, but she said that she was fine with sleeping on the couch since it was comfortable enough. I insisted on giving her a bed, but she declined every time. There's a door between the living room and the bedroom, but between the living room and hallway, there's just an open arch so we wouldn't have total privacy.

I hung up a thick velvet curtain covering the arch, so it would at least give her the sense of a door and more privacy compared to nothing. There's another door from my bedroom to the kitchen, so I actually have two doors to my bedroom. I have to leave one of them open at night, since my cats like to go in and out, and they also have their litter boxes in the bathroom, along with food and water in the kitchen. I naturally kept the kitchen door open and not the living room door, since that's where Em lived, and we wanted to keep our privacy somehow.

She wasn't working at this time because she was on one of her long-term sick leaves while I was working all sorts of odd shifts. So sometimes I had to get up at 6 a.m. and other times I wouldn't get home till like 11 p.m. I have really severe insomnia and often need to combine multiple medicines in order to get to sleep. But even with this, I still wake up easily. I told Em that I would appreciate if she could try to stay quiet those nights when I have to get up at 6 a.m. but that it's fine if she's loud when I'm off work or when I have evening shifts.

Em was a heavy smoker and a coffee drinker, so I bought her a coffee machine. Yeah, I know, I'm a weirdo who doesn't drink coffee very often, so I didn't have one in the house, but I wanted to make her enjoy her living situation just a little bit more. The coffee machine and the sink are placed right outside my bedroom door. Like I said, the kitchen itself is tiny, so the first night together, I had to get up at 6am for my shift. As usual, I had a hard time falling asleep. Em had been up several times that night to go out to smoke.

And I woke up every time she did. At 5am, she started making coffee, and since it's literally outside my bedroom door, of course I woke up to the sounds of it. I asked her in the nicest way possible why she was up this early, asking if she had any plans today. I mean, she's on sick leave, why not be asleep at 5am if you can? And she just said that she couldn't sleep. I expressed the little bit of empathy that I could there because we were in the same boat.

But I also told her that I would appreciate if she could wait until 6am to make coffee, since I really need this last hour of sleep. Adding a little bit more to why I need sleep is that I have a form of epilepsy that gets really bad when I don't get enough of it. I find myself particularly susceptible to seizures when I don't get at least 4 hours of sleep. I knew that I would probably get seizures at work now, meaning that this day would be both stressful and potentially dangerous for me, since there's a huge risk that I might fall and hurt myself.

And it's not a good thing to get cramps and seizures among mentally unstable criminal clients who you're supposed to be caring for. I know that it's not an ideal situation to work in that field with my condition, and I can inform you all that I did quit after only six months. Em said that she really wanted coffee with her cigarettes, but that she would try to wait the next time that I had work. I accepted this and went on about my day, but things didn't get better.

She continued to wake me up early in the morning and throughout the nights, and continued to promise to stop, but also insisted that she really wanted coffee with her cigarettes. I suggested making the coffee the night before, or drinking iced coffee, or even a coke instead, but she didn't want that. I may add that she demanded for me to be silent at 10pm, because that's when she wanted to sleep. I did my best to respect that. She used to get these moments of binge eating, where she would empty my fridge and pantry from everything I had.

I remember this one time when I had bought a big loaf of bread, and she texted me 30 minutes after I had left the apartment, saying "Hey, I'm sorry, I ate your loaf of bread. I'll buy it back once I get money." Like, an entire loaf of bread in 30 minutes? I had told her when she moved in to feel at home, and what's mine is yours. So I couldn't really get mad, but it started to annoy me for two reasons. One, it was getting kind of expensive, since it was such huge amounts of food she was intaking.

And two, it was always at an inconvenient time of day, like after an evening shift when the stores were closed. I would come home hungry, and she had emptied the kitchen from everything I'd bought that same day. Em had long black hair that was everywhere, all over the sink, the floor, the bathtub. I'm no clean freak, but I think anyone could understand that this isn't the nicest thing to step in or see everywhere in your house. She also left her fingernails and toenail clippings on the bathroom floor.

There were also pee drops on the toilet seat every time she had been to the toilet. I saw a silverfish on my bathroom floor, had never seen one before, and they eat hair, skin, and nails, so I figured this fella probably enjoyed life because of the new dirty conditions in my bathroom. At first, I didn't want to say it straight out, because I thought it would hurt her, and I didn't want to make her uncomfortable, so I just put a broom and a dustpan in the bathroom to imply that we needed to sweep the floor more often.

This didn't seem to work, so after a while, I told her in the nicest way possible with a smile on my face. Do you think we could try to clean the floor in the bathroom a bit more often? We tend to lose some hair when we brush it, and I'm afraid we might get pests. I saw a silverfish the other day, and I don't want it to get any worse. I always made sure to say we instead of you, so she wouldn't feel attacked. She promised to think about it, yet nothing changed. I started dating a guy and was head over heels for him.

He was also in a roommate situation, so we had a tough time getting any alone time. I asked Em if there's any chance that we could get one night to ourselves every now and then in the apartment, and that she of course would get the apartment to herself as well. She didn't like the idea, and claimed that she had nowhere to go, no friends, no family. Now, I wasn't asking her to leave for 24 hours, just a few hours so we can get some quality time together. She could just go to the library, or take a walk, or whatever.

I was at work for 8-10 hours, 5 days a week, so she had the apartment to herself a lot. One of our old coworkers realized that this was really tearing at my mood to never get any time for myself and I started to feel really suffocated. She offered that Em could stay the night at her place. After all, they were friends too. Em said she didn't want to bother our friend, but both me and the friend told her that it would be no bother, that they're friends too, that Em was more than welcome.

And I really just wanted one night to myself and my guy. I didn't understand why she made such a big deal of her leaving me and the apartment for just a single evening. She eventually accepted and spent the night there, and I spent the night away the next week, so she could get more alone time too. When I came home the next morning from my night away, I saw that my cat's water bowl was completely dried out. There was no spill on the floor, and it looked as if it had been wiped out with a towel or something. I had filled it to the brim just the night before. I asked her how this was possible.

and she said that the cats must have tipped it out, but there was nothing on the floor like I said. My cats are overly social and usually cuddle up with strangers just after a few moments. I noticed that the cats withdrew from her more and more over time, and the last couple of weeks they never left my bedroom, except for when they ate or used the litter box. It seemed almost as if they were scared of her, which I couldn't figure out, since she herself was so timid.

I had this old saucepan from the 60s that meant a lot to me. You probably wonder how a saucepan can mean a lot to someone, but it was my grandmother's, and it's the only thing that I have that belonged to her. My mother used to cook for me with it all the time when I was little, so it has a great sentimental value to me. She burned it one day and made zero attempt to clean it. She just left it on the stove and went out to smoke. I found it ruined, and it brought me to tears. She didn't even say that she was sorry.

She also broke dishes on several occasions and didn't bother to replace them or apologize. This only added to my frustration. It had been probably two months now, and she kept waking me up at night, kept binge eating my food, never cleaned, never left the house, scared my cats, and ruined my things. I realized somewhere along the way that she stole my prescription sleeping pills, lots of them. I'm only allotted one per night,

And as you already know, I really need them. I had 20 of them in a nightstand when I left for work, and when I came home, they were all gone. She denied taking them, which is pretty hilarious since no one else could have been there. My frustration was getting heavy. The summer heat was strong, and I felt locked up in my tiny bedroom with my two cats, never getting a single moment to myself, never any alone time with my guy friend, except for once every 14th day. My apartment was messy. She was stealing from me.

The list just went on and on. Out of nowhere, my old elementary school classmate texted me on Facebook, asking me how I knew Em. He had seen that I posted on Facebook that we were roommates now. I told him that we were old co-workers and that she needed a place to stay because she had been evicted. He said, "I know. Do you know why she was evicted?" "Yeah. She accidentally went into her neighbor's apartment." He said, "That's not the full story. She broke in and snuck up to their sleeping baby with a knife in her hand.

But luckily, the father had woken up and wrestled her down, managing to save the baby. I felt absolutely sick to my stomach. Could this be true? It would certainly explain why she was evicted, but it just sounded so horrible, and she was such a timid, nice girl. I had so many questions. But my friend had the full police report. Apparently, the couple that M had broken into was his ex-girlfriend and her family. It seemed that M had a psychotic episode during the break-in, but those parts weren't public.

It was, however, clear to me that she had been lying to me about what had happened, about how long she had been mentally stable. I started getting quite paranoid at this point. I was already frustrated with everything and really wanted her to move out. We did, however, have a contract between us that stated that she would get 30 days notice. I knew that if I asked her in a harsh way, it would mean 30 days of chaos until she moved out, so I wanted to handle this as nicely as possible.

I started looking for cheap hostels that I could suggest to her so she wouldn't be on the streets. I sat down with her and told her that I loved living with her and I felt really horrible for this, but I just miss my alone time and that my apartment is too small for two people. I made sure to tell her that it wasn't personal, that I wouldn't want to live with anyone right now, and that I wished it would have worked out and that I'm really sorry, hoping that we could remain friends. She looked crushed and said that it wasn't possible

I showed her the hostel that I found and said that I understood that it wouldn't be the ideal situation, but I really needed her to move out because I felt suffocated and also the summer heat was making it tough to always have the door to the bedroom closed, that it was also tough for me to get my sleep, something that I really needed. She said okay, she was going to try to move out, but not until the 30 days had passed. I was a bit disappointed, but I didn't expect anything different, so I simply said, "Of course,

The first night after our talk, she got up and made her coffee at 2.30am. I nearly had a mental freakout. I was going to get up at 6 and couldn't go back to sleep. I asked her in the morning for probably the 15th time to not make coffee till I get up, but this time, she didn't even respond to me. She just sort of sat on the sofa and stared out the window. I said, Em? And she just kept staring. I was a bit put off by her behavior, but I left for work. She kept on with her weird act.

kept making a mess, kept waking me up, kept eating my food. And all I could think about was the incident with her, the baby, and the knife. I eventually got so pissed off about being woken up by the coffee maker that I unplugged it and stored it in my attic, which she had no access to. It may have been childish, but I was just so tired at that moment. My sleeping pills were stolen, and I was starting to feel like Edward Norton in the beginning of Fight Club. Well, the next night,

I woke up at 4am to the sounds of her making coffee in a saucepan. I tried talking to her again, explaining the situation as rationally as I could, but she just stared and didn't say a word. Me being frustrated and on the tipping point, I took the saucepan and stored it in the attic as well. I know, I know, but I was going crazy and I just wanted her to stop with these nightly coffee routines. Like seriously, get the hint.

The third night, I had the guy that I was dating sleeping at our place because I was really paranoid now. Her weird behavior had not stopped. I woke up from my very light snooze by him poking me, he whispered, gesturing towards the doorway. When I peek up, I see Em just standing there, silently, staring at us both. Now this was like a scene from a horror movie, with her long black hair completely covering her face. I didn't say anything at first, thinking maybe she'd break the silence,

or perhaps she was doing something benign in the doorway in the first place. But I realized after a while that all she was doing was standing still and staring at us. It reminded me of the ending of Paranormal Activity, when Katie just stares at Micah in the final scene. That's when I sat up and said, "What are you doing?" But before I could finish the sentence, she slammed my door shut and I heard the sound of something metal fall on the floor as she ran through the hallway towards the living room. I yelled out, "You need to leave!"

and started crying hysterically because this was turning into a f***ing nightmare. Of course, there was no way I could go back to sleep, and I was really happy that I had company that night. I just kept asking myself, had she done this before? Watched me while I slept? In the morning when I got out of bed, I opened the door that she had slammed shut and saw a kitchen knife on the floor. That was the metal sound I had heard before she ran off. I took all my knives and locked them in the attic as well.

I then asked a friend of mine to come to my house and be here when I tell her that she has to move out immediately, that I couldn't wait the 30 days, which now stood at 27 days to be precise. During the conversation, I really tried to stay calm. I know she has mental illness. I know she means no harm. Even though I was so frustrated, I couldn't hate her. I was just mostly scared and tired. She, however, didn't even answer when I talked to her.

She just kept that same million-mile stare out the window. She left the apartment and sent me a text instead, saying that I was disrespectful for bringing a friend over to her place. Nighttime came, and I thought this would be a quiet night finally. No coffee maker, no saucepans, no knives. But at 3am, I woke up to her burning dry coffee powder in a frying pan. At this moment, I was absolutely terrified of her.

I mean, I had no idea she was back in the apartment in the first place. When I fearfully made my way to the kitchen, I saw that her face was dead. Her eyes were black. I suspected that she had gone back into a psychosis. I stopped the beginnings of the fire she had created, and she just ran off to the living room in silence. I knew she had an appointment with her psychiatrist the next day, and while she was away, I packed up all her things. I then sent her a text telling her that she needs to pick them up and return my keys.

that I would give her money for a hostel for the upcoming 26 days, but she didn't reply. The guy that I was seeing came to keep me company in case Em wanted to fight about it, but she didn't. She left the keys without even looking at us, just walked out the door. Our coworkers who were friends with both of us told me that she had moved in with a guy that she was dating. She stayed there for a few weeks till she somehow amazingly got an apartment of her own. She started working once more and I was really happy to hear this.

It seemed like she was doing well. Then, in January of this year, one of our old coworkers told me that Em had called her and told her that everything must burn, that she has a baby that she must save, along with other delusional stuff. She had called 112, which is the Swedish emergency number, like 911 in the States, but they hadn't taken her seriously. Em had then proceeded to burn her entire apartment down because the voices in her head were telling her to, that she had to burn everything to save her friends and family.

Her neighbors had tried to rescue her from the fire, but she fought them off, ran back in, poured more liquor on the fire to make it burn even quicker. She was arrested and sentenced last week for aggravated arson. She will serve her sentence in a mental institution/prison for a very long time, possibly forever. What's ironic is that she will probably be in the facility where I used to work and end up where she used to work herself.

My old coworker was a witness at the trial, and apparently, Em had stopped taking her medication because she thought that it made her feel numb, and she thought that she was stable enough to function without it, which obviously wasn't the case. She had also stopped taking her medication the last few weeks that she'd stayed at my house, so when she stared blankly off into space, she was on her way into her psychosis. That includes the night that she stared at me with a knife in her hand, as well as when she burned the frying pan the last night that she was at the apartment.

It's disturbing to think about what would have happened to me and my cats if she would have stayed, or if I would have been a heavy sleeper. I also think about what would have happened to that baby the night that she snuck into her neighbor's apartment just before being evicted. And yeah, I know it's crazy that I didn't just throw her out, but you have to understand, it was complicated. The reason why I haven't been able to talk about it with my friends is because they sympathize with her and have minimized my experience.

They think that I made a bigger deal out of it than what it was. I can sort of understand it, since they had never seen the darkness in her eyes that I saw those last couple of days. I just remembered a few other things that I wanted to add to this post. There were several times when I was going to work early in the morning that she occupied the bathroom by taking long baths. I patiently tried to wait till last minute before knocking and asking her if she could get up and get back in after I had gotten ready for work. Just another thing that added to my frustration.

I fell really ill one time when she was staying there. I didn't know at the time what it was, but I woke up early in the morning one day feeling nauseated. On my way to the bathroom, I literally sh*t myself and threw up at the same time. It takes like 10 seconds to get to the bathroom so you can imagine how bad it was when I didn't make it. I had a really high fever and kept throwing up and couldn't control my bowels all morning. Anyone who has been this ill would understand that you want the bathroom to yourself.

Actually, I think it's pretty understandable that you'd want to be completely alone when you hear this though." My head was spinning and I was nearly hallucinating from the high fevers. Working in healthcare, I have this natural instinct of not wanting to spread infections, so my first thought, besides wanting to be alone, I didn't want to risk giving whatever this was to Em, so I begged her the moment I noticed that I was ill to please leave for her own sake. I could barely speak because it made me throw up that easily.

One of our friends in common had asked her to water her plants that week, so she had the keys to her place and could have been alone there. But Em refused to leave, and I swear if I had the energy to slip out the window and fall to my death, I would have, but I couldn't. I was half sitting, half laying on the toilet with a bucket in my lap, my head sort of resting in the bucket of puke because I couldn't hold it up due to the high fever. I just begged through whispers for her to leave so she wouldn't get sick too.

I told her, if you catch this, we can't share the toilet. I will be here all day. You should go to our friend's house before it's too late. Please. Eventually, she left the apartment. Absolutely pissed at me. It turned out I had a severe case of food poisoning, and I was well again after a few days, but my god. The fact that she refused to leave is something I felt I had to add to this story because, thinking back, not only was it frustrating, but it was just odd.

I'm not sure if she had anything to do with my food poisoning. We never actually ate together all that much, but she did have unfettered access to my food pretty much at all hours of the day. There were also several instances of me returning from a long day of work to find that my cats had been locked up in my room. No water, no litter, no anything. I asked Em every time why they were locked up, and she would simply say because the cats were bothering her while she tried to sleep.

I explained that there's no situation where they should be locked away from food and water, something that made sense to me, but each time, Em would respond that it's not like they're going to die, which is a creepy enough thing to say, but coupled with the look that she would give me when she said it, it's almost as if she were weighing not only my response to her words, but considering what would happen if she did something more malicious than just closing my cats off in my room. It still feels a bit strange to post this story here,

Because while it was absolutely terrifying to live through, I understand that I played my part in it all. I didn't have to let her stay with me. I didn't have to be so hospitable. I could have stood my ground on various things that may have made my life easier, but I just wanted so badly to help this person that I thought was my friend, do something to make her life a little better. However, once I learned the truth of why she was evicted, that should have rung warning bells loud and clear in my head, that it was time for her to go.

No ifs, ands, buts, or grace periods. It would have saved my own mental state, kept my house from being almost burned down, and perhaps even saved my grandma's saucepan.

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