Wherever you live, if you’re a certain type of person (and we definitely are) you’re always secretly hoping that you’ll find some small treasure left behind by the people who came before. If you do, there’s basically two ways it can go: either your treasure is Amélie-level charming or super creepy.

The experience of Alex Moss, reports the Mirror, falls into this second category.

Moss had just moved into a new house in the north of England, and he found a note behind the fireplace. It was dated to 2001, and it had a message: “I WILL ALWAYS BE WATCHING YOU!”

Again, there are two ways to play out this situation. You can freak out, because, hey, that’s creepy. Or you can dig deeper, presumably unworried about the possibility of awakening hellfire ghosts who will haunt you forever.

Moss chose the latter approach. There were some indications that the note-writer was not hostile. He wrote, “WELCOME TO MY ROOM.” And he signed his full name, Darren Clucas, which is unghost-like behavior. (Also, his sign-off was the rather friendly “L8ERS.”) Moss posted a picture of the note to various social media channels, and within hours, he and Darren Clucas were in touch on Twitter.

It turned out that Clucas’ family had lived in the house for about twenty years, and that, while he was nostalgic for that time, he hadn’t fulfilled his 15-year-old promise to creep on the premises.

“I’m not watching I promise,” Darren said.

Every day, we highlight one newly found object, curiosity or wonder. Discover something amazing? Tell us about it! Send your finds to sarah.laskow@atlasobscura.com.