I’ve lived alone in my house for a couple years now, and I consider myself a pretty cautious person. I was raised by parents who shared this trait. They taught me always to lock everything at night, and make sure everything valuable is well secured. They also installed every single possible security measure around the house.
We had cameras outside, a silent alarm system, safes, secret compartments, and locks on almost every door. They had a very proactive mindset. They always said “Even if it’s unlikely to happen, it’s not impossible”, and that stuck with me my whole life. I’m thankful, because I’ve never been robbed or burgled, and I never really worry about it because I feel very safe at home, or at least I used to. I have every system and security measure my parents have at their home.
Though, even if it always felt like enough, turns out these measures don’t actually prevent anything, they just create the need for adaption.
That’s why I’m writing this, it’s really just to warn anyone who reads this that you can never be too cautious.
A reminder as well: Ignorance is bliss. If you want to still feel safe at home, just stop reading now.
For context, I live in a very average neighborhood. Even with all my fancy security features, it’s just an investment I made, I’m not really rich at all. There isn’t even a history of crime here either, almost unheard of, but I guess sometimes it doesn’t even get noticed.
Anyway, here’s what happened to me.
It was about a week ago, and I was playing video games on my desktop very late at night, probably around 1AM or so. I usually play with headphones on, so I can’t really hear anything going on around me. Suddenly, the floor vibrated under my feet very briefly. It wasn’t an intense vibration, kind of the one you feel when there’s a loud noise, and it was very short. Although brief and barely noticeable, I could tell it wasn’t just my mind playing tricks on me. Being the cautious person I am, my mind went straight to home invasion. I thought about it for a couple seconds. My thoughts went a bit like this:
Weird, what could that even be? Was there a noise? I wouldn’t have been able to hear it. Is it a home invader? …No, it can’t be, this is the last place they would come. I’m not even rich or nothing, haha, why would they target my house. It’s probably just like… something outside. Maybe my desktop is just… doing something. Whatever, no way in hell someone is getting inside, hahaha, I shouldn’t even worry.
I went back to playing my game, but the odd vibration was still in the back of my mind. I was thinking of the possible ways someone could get in, barely focused on my game, but every time I thought of a way in, I struck it down with one of my security measures.
Broke the window? Nah, I got an alarm for that.
Lockpicked the door? Haha, no way, I’m pretty sure the electric lock can detect that.
Hacked into my alarm system? Hmm, no way they would go through that much trouble, they would just go to one of the easier houses if they were that desperate.
My own thoughts gave me relief, but thinking about my house made me think about my kitchen, and that got me hungry. I live in a two story house, and my kitchen, living room, and bedroom are all upstairs, while my game room is downstairs where I was at. I left the game room and started walking up the very dark staircase.
At this time of night, I had all the lights off. I could barely see anything, but I was still able to make my way to the kitchen off of my spatial memory. I turn the kitchen light on, and grab some chips from my snack cupboard. As I push on the cupboard door and I hear it slam closed, I could have sworn I heard another quieter noise at the same time, like a small tap on the wall or something. It went something like “SLAM..tap”. It was barely noticeable once again, but I wasn’t able to put it off as me “hearing things”, even if I wanted to. I tried recreating it by closing the cupboard again “SLAM……”, but I didn’t hear it the second time, “SLAM………….”or the third.
Now, these kinds of noises are normal to hear sometimes, just random taps or creaks, and I usually ignore them. However, for some reason, I had a really bad feeling about them that night, as if my subconscious was noticing something off.
I just couldn’t ignore it, my paranoia spiked after this little tap I just heard, and I felt like someone was in the house.
It’s just a little noise, it could have been anything. Coincidences happen, but… what if? It’s unlikely.. but… not impossible. Shit, I think I’m going crazy. Something this small shouldn’t be bothering me this much.
There was two entrances to the kitchen, doorways without doors. Looking out through them, I just saw a bit of lit up floor from the kitchen light with darkness behind it. If there was someone lurking, I wouldn’t be able to see them unless I walked over and checked, and I did NOT want to go check.
Part of my mind was still putting it off as me just being paranoid, and I still didn’t fully believe there was someone inside. Instead of being logical about my imagined situation, and checking for someone, I instead SPRINTED out the kitchen, down the stairs, and back into my game room, locking the room’s door behind me. I was very loud while doing this too, so anyone in the house would now know for sure I was awake. Although I might have just made my situation even more risky, I felt much safer in this room with the door locked. I just needed a good false sense of safety for a moment.
After a moment, I realized how stupid I was being and just went back to my game, eating my bag of chips. The idea of someone being in the house at that time was still in my head, but I didn’t really take it seriously. I played my game for a few hours, then went to reading some reddit posts, and then fell asleep in my chair, never leaving the game room all night. I just “didn’t really feel like” going upstairs.
That wasn’t the end of the night though.
I fell asleep at around 3AM for about an hour. I was sleeping in my chair, lights still on and desktop still running until “BANG!”. The noise woke me up right away. It came from upstairs, as if a large object was dropped on the ground. Then, I heard a few sets of footsteps moving very quickly. I was in instant shock, unable to move, sitting on my chair, staring at my screen. I wasn’t even thinking about anything, I was just paralyzed by my sudden and intense fear. As the footsteps moved around upstairs, I hoped to god that they would not come toward me.
First, whoever was upstairs moved very fast toward what seemed like one of the windows in the living room. They stopped for a few seconds, while another set of footsteps marched toward my front door. I hear inaudible voices, and then silence. There was no more movement or talking. I was still sitting there, frozen, without any plan or idea on how to get out of this. I just waited, waited for anything.
Suddenly, all of the people upstairs started running very loudly and quickly downstairs toward the room I WAS IN. I heard their booming steps approach, there must have been two or three of them, and they got closer and closer to the only door left separating me from them. I stared at that door, waiting as they descended the staircase, walked down the hallway and then finally arrived right behind it. They all stopped right outside this room. The lights were on and shining bright inside here, so they knew I was here, they could see the light through the gap between the door and the floor. I expected them to kick it down, or maybe start fiddling and picking the lock, but it seemed like they just stood there and stared at my door. But then, I heard them move away, going in the direct opposite direction of my room, to the room across, an unused empty unfurnished bedroom.
They all entered it, and after hearing them move around and talk for about a minute in the room across from mine, the noises completely stopped. I was still stuck in my chair, listening to the entire situation unfold, but it seemed they were entirely gone. A wave of relief washed over me, and I was able to think and rationalize my situation.
What the actual fuck just happened. Were those little noises earlier actually people inside? How did they get in here? What did they steal? Why did they go back to that room… oh, shit. They must have came through there! But how? The only way in to that empty bedroom is a window facing the backyard, and if they somehow got in the backyard and broke it, the alarm would have went off! I should go check it out… but.. fuck that, they might still be here, waiting for me.
I then sat there, thinking about what just happened, how they could’ve gotten in, why they even broke in, what they would have stolen, and what would have happened if I went and checked for someone near the kitchen instead of bolting back downstairs to the game room. I didn’t do anything for hours. I just thought about it, until the morning.
It was eventually well into the morning, and I had not budged. Probably around 11AM at this point, nice and bright outside, and I had finally convinced myself that there was probably nobody inside the house anymore. I decided to make sure. I grabbed a wooden baseball bat that was on the ground inside the room, and went up to the door that lead to the hallway. I thought about it, then stopped thinking about it and swiftly opened the door while simultaneously preparing to swing the bat at someone’s head, yelling “AHHH!” as I opened it. Of course, as I optimistically expected, nobody was there anymore.
After checking every room and turning on every light, I ensured nobody was in the house anymore. Then, I went to every possible entrance; doors, windows, the chimney, and looked for any sign of breaking and entering. Somehow, I didn’t see any entrance broken or used, and every door and window was still locked, even the one in the bedroom they supposedly exited out of. What I did find, though, is my living room television on the floor near the top of the staircase, screen first. I lifted it up and, yep, the screen was completely smashed. They must have tried to carry it outside, but they dropped it on accident, which was the loud noise I must have woke up to. If they hadn’t have dropped it and panicked… who knows how much else they could have taken. I had safes full of very sensitive documents, valuable electronic devices, and even my own life that was all at risk. Thankfully, it didn’t seem like they got any of that, and nothing small was missing that wasn’t already missing.
I decided to investigate how they got in, though. I had CCTV cameras in the back and front yard, and they can be accessed from my desktop in the game room. I didn’t bother checking them before because I was either not paranoid enough, or scared for my life during both opportunities. These cameras save all the footage from 72 hours before, and then overwrite it, so I could check when they got inside and when they left. They were also night vision, so I could see anyone who was in the dark.
I checked the footage of last night, starting from 8PM onward, as that’s around when it gets dark out. Sure enough, at 1:12AM, around the same time as that “vibration”, I could see three guys wearing all black and a ski mask climb over my 10 feet backyard wooden fence with a step ladder, and then bring the ladder over with them. Then, they quietly paced over to my unused bedroom’s window, and then… enter it. They just entered my window. They didn’t take long enough to “pick” the electric lock, or even smash it (which they obviously didn’t do anyway). I just saw the first guy go up to it, touch it for like 3 seconds, and then they all went in. I even checked that window, and I didn’t see anything wrong with it, but I decided to go and check one more time.
I walked over to my unused bedroom’s window, and studied it. At a glance, it looked completely normal, but I looked very close and… there it was. There was an almost invisible cut out circle, big enough to fit a person crawling through, on the direct center of the window. The glass was still there, but you could see where it was cut. I pushed slightly on it and the circular piece of glass fell out, onto the grass outside. They must have cut out a circle with a very precise cutting tool. Still though, I wondered, how did they do that in a mere three seconds? Then it hit me.
This wasn’t their first time inside my house
I ran to the desktop again to check the CCTVs, hoping that what I suspected was just speculation. I checked the night before last night at the same times, and to my horror, there they were again, they entered at about 12:57AM. Although, even this time, they just entered the window easily. I was sleeping around that time that night, and while I slept they had entered through their cut out hole in the window and stole who knows what. Obviously nothing big, but that explained why I couldn’t find my reading glasses, or my silver chain that I thought I misplaced yesterday.
I checked the night even before that, and as I watched them climb over the fence, I saw that on this night one of them was carrying some kind of tool. I figured this was their first night of robbing me, on which I was again asleep, this time it was about 3:15AM. This time, when they went up to the window, the guy with the tool used it on the window for about two minutes, probably cutting open their entrance. Then, they entered and came back out around 4AM, climbing back over my fence, leaving no trace.
So, it turns out, these guys had been doing this to every house in the neighborhood, the exact same way. After I found out what these criminals had been doing, I went over to my neighbor who was mowing his lawn, and told him what had happened. He immediately got concerned after I told him, and told me he had been missing some small stuff in his house too. We both went to his house and checked his windows, and lo and behold, a window in one of his very rarely used downstairs rooms had a circle cut out on it. We talked to many other neighbors and found something very similar in almost every other house, with all of them missing a few small items.
Not only did they rob all of the houses in the neighborhood, they robbed mine. The house with the sophisticated alarm, the electric locks, the CCTV cameras. They did not care what I had to stop them, they persisted. I know that, regardless of how many upgrades I add to this house, I doubt anything will stop them. There is always a way inside, it’s just a question of dedication. I’m at least glad that their intentions were only to steal, and nothing else.
If there was a serial killer on the loose, what’s really stopping them from cutting into each window on the block, and then killing everyone all in one night. Well, at least they won’t be getting into my house that easily anymore.
The one thing I am still confused about though, even now a week later, is why the hell they tried to steal my TV? They only stole small items from the other houses, presumably to make it so nobody even knew they were getting robbed. For me though, they moved my TV a whole room over before dropping it. I don’t even think it would have fit through their glass hole in the window either. I doubt there is more to it, but maybe I should do a more thorough investigation…
P.S if you haven’t already planned on doing so, check your windows.