We all return at some point or another to our own homes.
Whether it’s in an apartment building, a communal residence, or a house.
These are our sanctuaries, where we unwind, drop our guard, and allow ourselves to be
vulnerable.
So naturally, when we feel like we’re being watched in our own home, it’s cause for
concern.
In some cases some of us report mysterious presences in our homes.
Locked doors left unlocked in the morning.
Objects rearranged by the sink.
Or things going missing entirely.
In many cases, we deduce that our homes might be haunted by a spirit.
But what if it isn’t a spirit haunting your home?
In most living spaces, there exists a mysterious door.
It could be a small door below the stairs, or a tiny latch behind a closet.
Sometimes it’s a rectangular frame in the ceiling leading to an attic.
Whatever it may be, this door often leads to a secret, inaccessible area of the structure.
This secret area might be a crawl space between the walls or below the floors.
If you live in a cold environment, your living space probably has a crawl space lined with
insulation to keep the house temperate.
Sometimes it’s an empty space between the roof and the ceiling that isn’t large enough
to be considered an attic for storage.
Now and then, it might even be an entirely secret room that you were unaware of.
The thought of a stranger squatting in our home is terrifying.
It’s invasive.
It’s uncanny.
It’s the thought that, when you leave the house or go to bed, a person is crawling out
of a hiding spot somewhere close, secretly violating your living space.
(SPOILERS AHEAD)
The concept of home invasion has been explored in various films such as:
The Purge (2013) High Tension (2003)
Hush (2016) You’re Next (2011)
When A Stranger Calls (1979) Funny Games (1997)
Wait Until Dark (1967) The Desperate Hours (1955)
The Strangers (2008)
And some of these explore the concept further in the idea of a stranger actually living
in the walls of your home.
The concept of people hiding in the walls has been explored in various films such as:
Housebound (2014) Within (2016)
The Pact (2012) The Boy (2016)
Black Christmas (2006) Walled In (2009)
The Haunting in Connecticut (2009)
Unlike the many urban legends we hear of, cases such as these unfortunately do happen
in the real world.
We often think simply locking our door will keep intruders at bay.
And who could blame us?
It’s not like this is a matter that we like to think about frequently, especially in the
sanctuary of our own home.
Regardless, here are some security measures people have overlooked, taken from real-life
home stowaways.
Tatsuko Horikawa
The year was 2008 and after numerous observations that food would periodically go missing from
his home, a man in Kasuya, Japan installed a security camera convinced he had a chronic
burglar.
When he received images on his phone of a person lurking in his home, he called police.
After an investigation, they found a homeless woman hiding in the closet.
She had been living on the top shelf of the man’s closet for at least a year.
To avoid detection, she showered when he was gone and kept things very organized.
She was initially able to enter his home because he would sometimes leave the door unlocked.
Think about it.
Whenever you open your closet to grab something, do you really spend a ton of time studying
the contents from corner to corner?
Imgur Intruder
In late 2013, a post appeared on the image-sharing website Imgur.
The anonymous poster detailed his discovery of a secret passageway hidden behind a bookshelf
in the wall of his family’s new home.
The passageway led to a spiral staircase that led down to a cramped crawlspace, where he
found a collection of strange items, including dolls, a mysterious key, and Halloween candy
he had recently acquired.
Police later found a stack of clothes in the corner of the space.
Someone had been staying down there behind the soundproofed walls, though this intruder
wasn’t present at the time of discovery.
In a followup post, he admits that his family never thoroughly inspected the blueprints
of the house before moving in.
The intruder was never found.
The post could have easily been a made-up story, though it does point out the importance
of being aware of all the nooks and crannies in your living space.
With the increasing frequency of home-invasion portrayed in the news media and film, it’s
no surprise that panic rooms are being built in modern housing.
Duplex Attic
In 2008 a family in Pennsylvania noticed that some of their wrapped Christmas presents would
periodically go missing from their duplex.
They later found strange footprints in one of their bedroom closets which led to the
attic.
Suddenly, the strange noises they had initially attributed to their children or the two cats
made sense.
Police brought a search dog and in the attic, found a young man who had been kicked out
of the joined residence next door.
Instead of leaving, he had secretly moved to the shared attic space of the duplex and
had been living there, periodically coming down to steal clothing, presents, money, and
food.
He had lived in the attic for 10 days before authorities found him.
Many duplexes and multi-unit buildings share crawl spaces and attics.
They sometimes even have locked doors leading into each other.
Do you have any of these in your living space?
NYC Squatter
This last case is taken from a video that was uploaded on YouTube in late 2009.
A man had noticed that food he hadn’t been eating was going missing and eventually confronted
his girlfriend, who denied that she was involved.
He setup a security camera to catch her in the act.
Instead he found footage of a woman he didn’t know crawling out of the extended storage
loft above the kitchen.
She had been there for at least a few weeks, eating his food, watching TV, and using his
sink as a toilet when he was away or asleep.
I’ll leave a link to the full video down below if you’d like to later see it for
yourself.
So what can we take away from this?
How can we prevent this from happening to us?
Here are some measures you can take right now to gain a better peace of mind:
Check your crawlspace and attic thoroughly.
Is anything out of order?
Are there any doors leading to other dwellings in the structure?
Perhaps films like The Grudge have left you afraid of opening that trapdoor in the ceiling.
And perhaps someone up there is counting on that.
Install locks on points of entry that an intruder might utilize inside your home and periodically
change the locks, especially if you’ve ever lost or misplaced your keys before.
Consider installing security cameras in and around your home.
This might seem like an expensive investment, but video proof is strong evidence.
Analyze the blueprints of the house if you are a homeowner.
Are there any suspicious areas that you weren’t before aware of or haven’t yet seen with
your own eyes?
Check your mirror.
Is it mounted onto the wall or does it seem to be a part of it?
Press your finger up to it.
Is there a small gap between your finger and your reflection’s finger?
If not, you may be looking at a two-way mirror.
Try to keep an organized living space.
It’s easier to notice disturbances in a neat environment.
That should take care of it… right?
But wait.
What if you’ve already done all that?
What if you’ve made absolutely sure you have no strange intruders living in your walls-
and yet, objects still seem to be in places you didn’t leave them?
What happens when rational explanations don’t account for things disappearing and reappearing
elsewhere?
What do we do then?
Indeed, online accounts of alleged teleporting objects exist.
It’s called the Disappearing Object Phenomenon, or DOP for short.
And while we might scratch our heads in wonder, research suggests it goes further than simple
absentmindedness (Hereward Carrington).
Spontaneous dematerialization is a term parapsychology writer Douglas Scott Rogo used to describe
it.
It’s when something seemingly vanishes from this plane of existence- only to reappear
later, either in the same place… or elsewhere.
Some supernatural theories suggest that these items are being pulled into another dimension-
which might explain why we might sometimes find objects we have no recollection of having.
Other theories point at the presence of a poltergeist- a strange force of energy possessed
with an ability to physically move objects.
In our busy days, we have a tendency to brush these sorts of mishaps off as just a little
“glitch”.
We’re far too busy to really ponder on them for too long.
But if it isn’t a person living in your walls, and you aren’t going mad, what is
it?
What do you think?
As always thanks for watching.
To learn more in the realm of creepy, be sure to subscribe and check out the rest of the
Darkology series.
I’ve left both links on screen for you as well as down below in the description.
I’ve also left the links to these individual stories there if you’d like to learn more.