Have you ever had this feeling?
Your phone vibrates suddenly. You pick it up, thinking it's a news alert or a message from someone, only to find it's just a random app notification. You glance at it, see nothing important, and put it down.
But that little red dot stays there, staring at you until you open it.
And once you do… you wish you never had.
My name is Lin Shu. I'm twenty-seven or twenty-eight. I rent a studio apartment outside the Fifth Ring Road in Beijing, with a job that's neither good nor bad. I'm not telling this story to scare anyone. I still don't understand it myself.
If you ride shared bikes, you might delete the app after hearing this.
Or you won't.
People always think bad things only happen to others.
It started on that Friday last month.
I worked overtime until almost nine. When I left the office, it was completely dark. The company is in Xi'erqi. The wind is strong there at night, and the streets are full of young people just getting off work, all looking tired.
I walked to the bike rack by the subway entrance and scanned a blue shared bike.
I remember it clearly.
Its basket was crooked. On the left brake handle, there was a sticker for a new gym opening.
I rode home in about eleven or twelve minutes, parked it inside the marked area at my community gate, and locked it manually. I heard the beep, then gave the wheel a little push to make sure it was locked before going upstairs.
I picked up this habit when I first arrived in Beijing. I'd been overcharged too many times. I learned my lesson.
When I got home, I cooked a bowl of noodles, watched some short videos, and fell asleep around eleven. I was exhausted. I passed out the second my head hit the pillow.
The next morning, I woke up to my alarm.
I fumbled for my phone, squinting. When the screen lit up, I saw a notification from the shared bike app.
I thought it was another useless coupon spam. I was about to swipe it away… but I caught the words.
You have an unpaid trip.
I froze.
I definitely locked the bike last night.
I opened the app.
The billing page showed a trip:
Start time: 2:03 AM
Distance: 41 kilometers
Duration: 2 hours and 1 minute
Fee: ￥21.50, including a cross-zone 调度 fee.
Starting point: my community gate.
Destination: Longquan Public Cemetery.
I stared at the screen for several seconds.
My first thought was that my account had been hacked. Or someone unlocked it after I left. That happens sometimes—people don't lock properly, the next person scans it, and the first user gets charged endlessly.
But that didn't make sense.
The starting point was right. But why a cemetery?
Who rides a shared bike to a cemetery at two in the morning?
I checked the bike number.
The last four digits: 7742.
I checked its current location.
The map showed it was right downstairs, the green icon almost overlapping my apartment.
Meaning…
This bike was ridden from my gate at 2 AM to a cemetery over 40 kilometers away…
And now it was back downstairs.
I wasn't scared right away.
When people face something weird, they always look for normal explanations first.
GPS drift, I told myself. Shared bike GPS is terrible. Sometimes it shows you in a river when you're on the sidewalk. Maybe a backend bug. I'd heard stories of people getting random trips in their history. I even checked the app's official Weibo. Sure enough, people complained about fake trips in the comments.
So I did the normal thing.
I called customer service.
A young woman answered, speaking with practiced politeness. I explained the situation. She asked for my phone number and the bike ID, then went quiet for a moment.
"Sir, the records here are normal. This trip was indeed initiated from your account, using a phone scan—not manual code input."
"That's impossible," I said. "I was asleep at 2 AM."
"Could a family member or friend have used your account?"
"I live alone."
Another pause.
"Then I suggest you change your password and set a limit for auto-pay. I can apply to waive this charge for you."
She was about to hang up. I thought that was that—just a bug or a hack.
Then she said one last thing, and my chest tightened.
"Sir, you confirmed your last trip ended at 9:14 PM at the East Gate of Jinyu Huafu, correct?"
"Yes."
"According to our system, that bike had no other usage between your trip and 2 AM. The 2:03 AM trip was the very next one."
It took me a second to process.
From the moment I locked it until 2 AM… no one used it.
At 2:03 AM, someone used my account to scan that same bike.
Which should have been right downstairs.
I hung up, put on my shoes, and ran downstairs.
Among the row of shared bikes, I spotted it immediately.
Crooked basket. Gym sticker on the left brake.
I scanned the QR code with my phone.
The lock clicked open.
I locked it again.
The app showed: Available.
It was here.
It never went anywhere.
I had a bad day that day.
At my desk, I kept turning it over in my head, no logical explanation sticking.
I listed every possibility:
A physical key? No modern shared bike uses those.
Cloned account? Would require bypassing phone verification.
Hacked database? Then why only me?
When work ended, I made a decision.
I needed to figure this out.
It wasn't courage. It was the opposite—I was terrified.
I couldn't stand the thought of this hanging over me, of another fake trip appearing at 2 AM with some unknown destination.
People fear the unknown more than the terrifying known.
I decided to ride it again.
I prepared.
I wore a fitness tracker, turned on full-time phone location, and brought a small dash cam, taped it under the basket.
I also contacted a friend, Li Ming, a college classmate working as a coder in Beijing. I messaged him: I'm doing a test. Watch me. I shared my location with him and told him to call if I stopped moving or turned somewhere strange.
I left home around 9:30 PM, following the route in reverse.
The straight-line distance from the cemetery to my place was over 30 km, but the bike route wound to just over 40.
I didn't plan to actually go to the cemetery.
I just wanted to ride part of the way and see if anything felt off.
If normal, I'd turn back and write it off as a bug.
If not… I honestly had no plan.
About forty minutes in, I passed a river.
A narrow road, no streetlights. My headlight only lit up two or three meters ahead. Tall reeds lined both sides, rustling in the wind.
I checked the navigation.
Over 20 km remaining to the cemetery.
I started to feel cold—not from weather, but a chill crawling up my neck.
The road was ordinary, just a suburban asphalt road with occasional trucks passing by.
But something was wrong.
I realized it then.
I'd ridden forty minutes and hadn't passed a single traffic light.
That's not normal.
Heading southwest from my place, no matter the route, there should be at least seven or eight intersections with lights.
But I hadn't stopped for a single one.
All the intersections were flashing yellow, late-night mode.
But it was only a little past ten. That was too early.
I stopped and checked my phone.
My stomach dropped.
The time showed: 1:47 AM.
I thought my phone was broken. I checked the tracker.
Also 1:47 AM.
I clearly left at 9:30 PM, ridden at most forty minutes.
How was it almost two in the morning?
I checked my messages.
Last one sent at 9:42 PM to Li Ming: "Leaving now."
Nothing after that. Full signal, but no new messages, no texts, no calls.
It was like time skipped four hours the second I sent that text.
And I didn't notice at all.
I was about to call Li Ming when my phone vibrated.
A notification from the shared bike app.
Your trip has ended.
Distance: 41.2 km
Duration: 2h 03m
Destination: Longquan Public Cemetery.
I slammed my phone face-down in the basket and looked up.
I had no idea how I got here.
In front of me was an iron gate, closed but unlatched, creaking in the wind.
Four characters were painted on it in red, most peeled away, but still visible in my headlight:
龙泉公墓
Longquan Public Cemetery.
I looked down at the dash cam under the basket.
The red light was still flashing—it had been recording the whole time.
I grabbed it, my knuckles white.
I slowly turned the bike around, trying to head back.
But I couldn't remember which way I came.
My phone rang. Li Ming.
I answered. His voice sounded fuzzy, like he'd just woken up.
"Hello? Lin Shu? What're you doing sending me so many messages in the middle of the night?"
"I didn't send anything."
"Check WeChat," he said. "You've spammed me with over a dozen locations since 10 PM, all the same spot. I thought you lost your phone."
I hung up and opened WeChat.
Starting at 10:12 PM, my account sent a location pin every few minutes.
All the same coordinate.
Until 1:50 AM.
I never sent them.
I didn't even know how to send location pins quickly like that.
I pasted the coordinate into a map.
It showed a spot inside Longquan Public Cemetery, about 200 meters from where I stood, deep inside.
I don't want to describe how I got home that night.
Suffice to say, I pushed the bike for about three hours along a road I didn't recognize, until I finally hit a street I knew. I took a taxi home and left the bike by the road.
The next morning, I went downstairs.
It was back.
Crooked basket. Gym sticker.
I was starting to get used to it.
That was the scariest part.
I didn't ride it for the next few days.
I switched to a different brand, rode different bikes every time, never the same one twice. I memorized the number 7742 and checked every time I passed the gate.
It just sat there. No one else rode it.
One day, it was gone. I thought someone finally took it. I breathed a sigh of relief.
The next day, it was back.
Same spot.
Crooked basket.
I watched the dash cam footage that night.
Over four hours of video.
The first forty minutes were normal: me leaving home, streets, intersections.
Then the video jumped.
Like someone cut a chunk out.
One frame, a lit road.
The next, complete darkness.
That black segment lasted over two hours.
Nothing but occasional headlights flashing through trees and weeds.
The final ten minutes showed the cemetery gate.
Then me reaching for the camera, the image shaking, then cutting to black on my palm.
I replayed the jump frame many times.
For one split second, something flashed by too fast to see normally.
I went frame by frame.
My finger froze.
In that single frame, my headlight illuminated a tree by the road.
Behind it stood a figure in dark clothes, facing me.
But it didn't have a face.
Just a pale, oval shape, no features at all.
Like a face covered by frosted glass.
Or a face that hadn't finished growing.
I closed the player, formatted the memory card, and threw it in the trash.
Li Ming asked me about it later.
He said he checked the server logs for those location messages.
The timestamps were real. Sent directly from my device.
And they were high-precision GPS, not cell-tower approximations. No drift, no delay.
He said something that made my skin crawl.
"Lin Shu, you really went there that night.
Your phone didn't lie.
Your bike didn't lie.
You lied to yourself."
We slowly stopped talking.
Not because he did anything wrong. But every time he spoke, I saw that faceless figure by the road at 1:47 AM. His voice sounded far away, like it was coming through something.
You think that's the end?
It was only the beginning.
About a week later, I had a dream.
I was riding a shared bike through total darkness, only a small circle lit by the headlight. I rode for a long time until I reached a road between fields.
A person stood by the roadside, waving at me.
I rode closer.
It was my face.
It smiled at me and said something.
I couldn't hear it. Then I woke up.
The next morning, I scanned a bike by my building as usual to go to work.
After about five minutes, I felt something wrong.
The basket was crooked.
I looked down at the left brake.
A gym sticker.
I pulled over and checked the ride history.
Bike number: 7742.
It found me again.
That night, I withdrew all my balance from the app, unbound my bank card, and deleted my account. I stood on the balcony smoking, staring at the bikes downstairs.
Surely that would end it.
No account, no more records.
The next morning, no notifications.
I relaxed… for about ten seconds.
Then I realized.
I'd deleted the app after canceling my account.
So why was it back on my home screen?
I opened it.
Same interface. No login required.
My account was still there. Balance still there. Card still linked.
One unread message.
I tapped it.
A new trip record.
Start time: 3:17 AM
Distance: 41 km
Destination: Longquan Public Cemetery.
I squatted by my bed and deleted the app.
Then I went to system settings, app management, and scrolled through the list.
It wasn't there.
I checked three times.
Gone, as if never installed.
But the blue icon was still there on my screen, quietly sitting in the corner of the third page.
I deleted the account again, this time recording the whole screen.
At the end, the app popped up:
Account deleted. Thank you for using our service.
It logged out automatically.
I spoke to the camera: "Current time: 10:42 PM, May 17th. Account deleted."
I turned off the screen and placed the phone face-down on the nightstand.
I slept for about two hours.
Then a vibration woke me.
The phone was face-down, but the whole table was buzzing.
Not a call. Not a message.
A steady, rhythmless vibration, like something inside was trying to get out.
I didn't flip it over.
I just lay there, listening, until it stopped.
When morning came, I turned the phone over.
The app icon was there.
A red number 1 in the corner.
I didn't open it.
I took the phone to a repair shop near the subway and sold it.
I bought a new phone, got a new number, and moved.
From outside the Fifth Ring to a small village outside the Sixth. Rent was half price.
I told HR I wanted a transfer to a branch in another city. They said no positions were available.
I said I quit.
I threw away everything I built in six years in Beijing.
All because of a shared bike.
Now I live in a small southern city, doing remote part-time work, barely leaving home.
I haven't ridden a shared bike in three months.
Haven't ridden any bike at all.
I only walk.
Shared bikes are rare here. Most are public dock bikes that require a citizen card.
I don't have one.
I thought I was safe.
Yesterday afternoon, I went to the supermarket.
On the way back, I passed a bus stop.
A row of old shared bikes was parked there, paint peeling, seemingly abandoned for a long time.
I didn't care.
But for some reason, I glanced back.
Just one look.
One of them had a crooked basket.
I froze.
Wind blew across the road, carrying a strange smell—like burned joss paper.
I slowly approached, knelt down, and checked the left brake.
Nothing. Clean.
I exhaled and stood up, ready to leave.
Then I saw the number, carved on the rear fender, mostly covered in mud.
But the last four digits were clear enough.
I stood there, unable to move.
The area was quiet. Afternoon sun shone brightly. Sparrows chirped in the trees.
Everything was perfectly normal.
But cold sweat seeped from my bones.
Behind me, a soft sound.
Metal scraping.
I didn't need to turn around to know what it was.
The click of a shared bike lock popping open.
I turned slowly.
The bike stood there, unlocked.
The basket swayed slightly, as if someone had just gotten off.
But no one was there.
I was the only person on the entire street.
My new phone vibrated in my pocket.
I didn't check it.
I already knew.
The app was back.
It followed me everywhere.
No matter how many accounts I delete, how many phones I change, how many cities I move to.
It hides in the corners of the world, waiting for me to near a shared bike.
Waiting for that beep.
Waiting for me to ride again.
Down that dark road.
To that iron gate.
I don't know what it wants.
I don't know why it chose me.
I only know that tonight, at 2:03 AM, another trip will appear on my phone.
Starting point: my current home.
Destination: Longquan Public Cemetery.
Distance: 41 km.
Duration: 2 hours 1 minute.
Average speed: 20 km/h.
Right now, I'm standing by the window, looking down at the row of shared bikes under the streetlight.
I can see every one clearly.
I count them.
Twelve total.
Eleven have straight baskets.
One is crooked.
It's parked at the very end.
Quiet.
Waiting for me.