So, I remember some time ago reading a short story (or thinking about it, it might even have been a short film). It was about a man who finds himself homeless and takes to living in another person’s house without them knowing - moving around when they’re not there and hiding in the attic when they are.
This continues for some time until he discovers that there are a number of other people who have been doing the same thing, and that they’ve all been living in the house together without him realising.
Does this sound familiar to anyone? (I may not have remembered all the details correctly).
There’s a voice in the back of my head that says it was a Neil Gaiman story (might be to do with the combination of creepy/funny) but I don’t have any of his books to hand to check.
There is also John Collier’s classic short story, *Evening Primrose *, about a man who goes to live in a department store and gradually finds out that there is a whole society living there after hours.
I have always remembered this while growing up as a sort of urban legend where some creepy peeping-tom kind of guy lived in between the walls of a very well-to-do home in California. *While the family lived there. * He would peep on them while they slept and sneak out during the day when they were at work/school. Seems they had some sort of unique architecture that included crawlspaces between rooms and would connect to the attic.
Never figured out if it was true or not, but it was a good creepy story.