[epilepsy / flashing colors and lights warning]
[no more flashing lights or colors; this video contains zero jumpscares]
Reddit.com is widely known for being the hub for just about any conversation topic that you can think of.
Being the self-proclaimed "front page of the Internet," the site has skyrocketed in size to become the third most widely used site on the web.
With this comes the expectation that things could be shared that might not be happy and easygoing but rather,
Dark and mysterious. And today we're going to discuss one such case.
Enter a reddit user by the name of FlexGunship.
They made a post in the Let's Not Meet subreddit explaining a strange sequence of events that were unfolding with their cats at home.
They began by explaining that they have a cat opening on their rear sliding door,
and that the neighbor's cats usually come around their back patio at night to visit or leech off of their cat food.
With the help of a backyard nanny-cam, this wasn't particularly a big deal since when they'd open up the app to check on them,
they could shoo the neighbor's cat's away or let them hang around.
One night,
Apparently, something strange would begin to happen and FlexGunship would make an interesting discovery.
The neighbor cat had been coming around really late at night and pawing at the locked cat door.
It scared me at first because it was a terrifying sound to hear in the middle of the night (half scratching, half rattling).
I was able to figure this one out pretty easily just by listening.
Anyway, my quote "nanny-cam" has automatic night vision, which turns on when it's too dark.
I had the cats in last night,
the cat door was locked shut, the patio light outside of the slider was turned off, and I was getting into bed
Just as I'd gotten under the covers. I heard the scratching, rattling sound at the locked cat door.
I open the app and definitely did not see a cat.
There was a scraggly looking person hunched over on my patio playing with the locked cat door.
My female cat hissed and he got up and left.
I guess they could have been a she. I never really saw a face and I only caught a few frames while my blood ran cold.
Looked like he was wearing a loose t-shirt.
Now with this, you're probably asking, "where is the footage?"
Well, unfortunately, Flex didn't have their camera setup to automatically record
After a brief update, they let us know that they now do have this feature set up.
They contacted the police who walked the treeline behind the house and we'll proceed to update us with any findings.
With this, they attach these images for reference of the back door and the back yard.
There's an opening in my fence that you can see in this old picture, this is before I added the cat door.
And here is an image of where my camera used to be mounted.
It's not waterproof, however, so it didn't stay here long. You can see how creepy it makes the night images look.
This is the same spot that one of my new cameras will have and they are weatherproof.
These are the cameras that I ordered.
August 16th update:
Nothing last night.
For what it's worth, I've only heard anything on an average of maybe once every week or two.
the more I think about it, the more I wonder if I just saw a trash bag blowing by,
and coincided with a neighbor's cat scratching or something.
I don't know. Seems so weird that someone would be messing with a cat door.
August 17th update:
Nothing last night
Outdoor cameras arrived today. I'm hoping to have time to install one before it gets dark tonight.
August 18th update: So the camera motion sensor went off at 4:00 a.m. last night and captured this image:
I don't see anything. I'll test tonight to see if there's any lag in the motion sensor. Maybe an animal ran through.
A Few days go by after this with minor updates from Flex. A few bugs and cat events were caught on the motion camera.
However, overall, not much seemed to happen.
This solace would be short-lived, However. Since on August 27th, they would update us with something pretty...
...strange
August 27th:
Nope, nope, nope
Something fucked up is happening. I was out two towns over today hanging with my folks when I got motion alerts on my phone.
Notice that the time stamp seems to be working now.
The images that they attached are as follows:
So what the fuck. All of these images are from twenty nine minutes or so before I got home.
So, once I realized that, I checked my camera first thing.
Same place as where I fucking mounted it.
And now the foot of my bed.
The post closes with them explaining that their house was completely locked and that they double-checked to make sure that this was the case.
After going to the police with the footage,
They claimed that either they had an intruder, were haunted by ghosts, or were simply messing with him.
In other words, authorities were a complete dead end.
He took the statement and said it would be fine to sleep at home, so I'm home tonight with the cats.
Understandably shaken and in search of answers, Flex move their updates to the Paranormal subreddit.
And in their post, they link their original one and proceeded to catch everyone up on their situation.
On August 30th, they posted an update claiming that they got a second security camera, and we're going to set it up on their home network.
Afterwards though, they noticed something peculiar
They have no open outlets in their bedroom. So the previous image of the bedroom at night makes absolutely no sense to them.
Being freaked out by this and not wanting to go without their fan or lamp,
They then proceeded to leave the second camera unplugged in the kitchen.
Anyway, on August 31st another update arrived.
I'm having a very meh night.
I went to the gym at about 7:00 got home closed all the shades and curtains because why not walk around naked post shower?
Showered, and when I came downstairs, my slider curtains were wide open.
My male cat had the thousand-yard stare
Looking outside and wouldn't respond when called like he was tracking a bird or moth or something, but his head wasn't darting around.
(No, no one outside as far as I could tell.)
Normally, I wouldn't think twice about this but I was wearing my birthday suit and obviously noticed the fact that my three phase slider
was fully exposed.
My male cat is weird so I can ignore the funky behavior, and I probably just forgot to close the curtains but...
Hmm...
Maybe it's as simple as me going nuts
September 5th
This happened less than half an hour ago. I'm shaking right now.
I'm still in my home, but probably not staying. I set up my second camera to look out the window at the patio camera,
so I could see if anyone touched it or moved it. I got two motion alerts.
I've been getting tons of false alerts due to a spider web up on the camera (I think).
I was playing some Starcraft when they (motion alerts) came in. When the game ended, I went to clear them and this is what I saw:
That is most certainly my bed.
I quickly opened my phone app which annoyingly, changed in the last few days due to an update, and I took a manual shot from each camera.
So, yeah, I'm packing up and leaving for the night. Just doing this update and rounding up the cats. Staying at my friend's again.
September 6th:
Mobile edit: out with friends right now. Just got three motion alerts on my phone.
Pretty sure the mystery is solved. I expect that when I get home, my camera will have been stolen. My camera's on the move!
Goodbye, camera. Damn it. Probably some asshole kid.
Another edit:
Just explained what I was doing to my friend and she immediately asked how they stayed on my Wi-Fi and how they were powering it.
Uhh...
We're leaving now to go scope it out.
Yet another edit: something is fucking with me I'm not staying here tonight.
Again, as you can see the camera is still there. I don't know why I didn't think of this while it was being stolen.
It's still online. In fact, and thanks to my female friend for this, the spider webs are undisturbed.
September 12th: Go figure. I go away for a couple of days and come back to this.
In a final edit,
They addressed all the theorizing going on in the comment section before explaining that they're just going to take the cameras down.
In regards to people claiming that they're sleepwalking, they said that, "if I'm sleepwalking or just generally going insane,
Then I'm unlocking my utility closet, unplugging the camera, dismounting it from the bracket, running an extension cord to the living room,
plugging it in, waiting for it to boot up, letting it trigger a motion event,
then putting away the extension cord, going back outside,
reinstalling the camera, lock in the closet again, and going back to bed without so much as an ounce of evidence."
In an anti-climatic fashion, after people asked for an update, Flex claimed that they took the cameras down and sold them on Craigslist.
Cats are fine. I'm fine. Honestly don't want to revisit it. Things got worse.
Dumping the cameras fixed it.
Now I could just leave you with that,
but seeing as we're all internet investigators, I thought it would be fitting to speculate what could be going on here.
Because why not?
Honestly and truly, I really don't know what to make of this story.
In a comment, Flex claims that they understood that the ending is quote,
"Boring for everyone else" and I really believe that this is their strongest and weakest point about this entire story.
I think honestly and truly that, one, they were sleepwalking like others have said.
If we're going with the presumption that this is real, this would be the only logical explanation for such a phenomenon.
They could have very well gotten up in the middle of the night, gotten the camera down, taken random pictures and reinstalled it.
The thing that kills this though is the fact that they claim that the camera was screwed onto the wall.
This would have been a serious pain in the actual ass if they were to do this while sleeping. And also,
wouldn't they catch themselves with motion detection if this were the case?
A second theory could be that someone is living in their attic or walls.
This has happened others in the past and could very easily be a contender for what's going on here.
When they are asleep, they could be coming down from the attic or some other opening to scrounger off for food and ultimately mess with the owner.
Possibly in hopes of getting them to move out or something.
While this is so, wouldn't they be caught with the motion capture as well?
The camera has a pretty good view of the back door in backyard
and they'd have to take a seriously meticulous route in order to get this thing down just to simply mess with the owner.
A third theory is that,
Well, they could be haunted by a ghost
But, honestly, ghosts wouldn't be nice enough to hang the camera back up perfectly. So I'm really discounting this one.
Lastly, we always have to strongly consider the idea that this could be faked.
Honestly, it's the most logical theory we have.
For all we know Flex could be doing this to create a spooky story on Let's Not Meet.
Being self-aware about their anti-climatic ending really is a double-edged sword for them as well.
While it does give them a hint of authenticity that they understand how boring the conclusion is, it also kills the story entirely.
Why not give any sort of detail as to what happened after the last update?
What are they trying to hide? Or rather...
... is there even anything to hide?
The very fact that we didn't get any sort of closure on this is what really puts this story into limbo.
For all we know something could have very well happen to FlexGunship,
something so creepy that they really,
really don't want to speak about it.
Who knows, maybe we'll get an update sometime in the near future.
And possibly, we can put the story of this mysterious phenomenon...
...to rest
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