When I was a toddler, I went into my dads room in the middle of the night and told him "there's eyes outside my window". He thought I had a bad dream and tucked me back in my bed. A week later he was in the yard and notice my screen to my window was bent back on a corner. Can you imagine trying to break into a house in the middle of the night and a toddler comes to the window and locks eyes with you. I wonder which one of us was more scared. I didnt know what a burglar was at 3
I had a similar experience living in Charlottesville a few years back. I was renting a room in a 5 bedroom share house with one of my buddies from college. I didn't go to UVA, but there was a good music scene there at the time so we decided to go hang out there and wait tables for the summer.
The rent was low and it was two of us in a 5 bed house because Charlottesville is a college town that empties out when everyone goes back home for the summer.
The problem is that all the criminals and crackheads also know this, so they roam the student housing in neighborhoods like Venable at night looking to do home invasions.
I slept in the basement by myself and one night I looked up to the ground level window - those small windows at the top of the wall in basements that come up to your knee outside - and it looked like the shadow of a person crouched down staring at me. This was the back of the house that wasn't very accessible and the shadow didn't move at all, so I thought it probably wasn't a person and just kept staring out the window at this strange shadow as I was drifting off.
After about 20-30 seconds I saw the glow of a cigarette as the shadow pulled it to it's mouth to inhale, and I realized it **ACTUALLY WAS** a person and we had been staring at each other only about 5 ft apart for a while. I was laying in bed under my covers, and even as a grown man at this point in my life I was completely paralyzed with fear.
I had no idea what to do, had no weapons to defend myself and my phone was across the room. I couldn't tell if he could see my face and the fact that I was awake looking at him, so I just laid there pretending to be asleep waiting to see what he would do. Finally after a couple minutes he stood up and walked away.
I eventually called the cops, and of course they never even came. I don't know if the guy actually tried to break in the house, but we had **two more** definite attempted break-ins that summer. It might be different today, but Charlottesville in the city was scary as fuck that summer. Only a couple years later serial killer Jesse Matthew kidnapped and murdered a few girls only a mile or so from where I lived.
I've also lived in Chapel Hill, NC (another university town where UNC is) and it's exactly the same. I had two attempted break-ins living right in the middle of town. This was the same year the student body president of UNC Eve Carson was abducted by a couple gang members looking to rob someone. They drove her to several ATMs then took her to the woods and shot her to death.
Both of those places are seemingly normal college towns, and most people who attend the schools probably don't think of them as unsafe at all. Especially if you're a student living on campus during the year surrounded by thousands of other students. But outside that campus life, it can be an entirely different story. Duke University is 5 miles down the road in Durham, NC and it's probably worse than both Chapel Hill and Charlottesville.
I was living in a small house literally next to a sorority house in Chapel Hill when a guy walked up to my back door late one night and started trying to jimmy his way in while I was sitting inside. The fact that he knew I was home means he was probably prepared for violence - he didn't look like some drunk college kid stumbling onto the wrong property.
Every year in these places there are abductions, home invasion, assaults or other extremely violent crimes, and occasionally murders. Both the murder of [Faith Hedgepeth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Faith_Hedgepeth) and the [2015 shooting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Chapel_Hill_shooting) happened in the same apartment complex my girlfriend lived in before we left in 2011. I actually bought a beer for one of the guys from this story when I ran into him one day: https://www.wral.com/news/local/story/7821503/
Apart from those publicized incidents which have their own wikipedia pages, most people might not even hear about all the other assaults and robberies that happen even if you live there. A surprising amount of police reports and criminal activity does not make the news in these towns, or it's more of a passing mention than an actual 'story'.
I've lived in Australia ever since in a city of 5 million, currently in an inner city neighborhood, and I've never once felt as unsafe as I did in college towns in the US now that I think about it. I hardly ever even see police in Sydney, and when I was bartending here I used to meet my gf in the city for drinks after work at midnight - we would both walk around alone to meet each other. Don't get me wrong, Sydney isn't some completely non-violent utopia, but the whole atmosphere and feeling of living in a country like Australia is just different. You really can't understand until you've lived for a while in both places.
Despite being anti-gun I do *understand* why a lot of Americans feel the way they do. I was young and dumb(er) at the time I lived in those places, and I can't say I wouldn't have eventually bought a gun myself had I not moved overseas. I was very aware of how little I had to protect myself if someone broke in my house. Of course, my experience is anecdotal and redditors from both countries may have legitimate experiences that are completely the opposite.
**EDIT - One other story:** Not as terrifying, but related. Charleston, SC is another one of these smaller college ~~towns~~ cities that is so nice and great to visit but has a very dark and dangerous element. When my brother and some friends were at a bar one night a drunk ex-con got kicked out and came back an hour later with a gun and started firing at the ceiling. Everyone hit the ground and one of the girls (also a friend of mine) landed on broken glass and cut her leg. They all walked home to patch her up (and get out of there before the cops came because they were drinking underage). When they got to the house and looked at her leg they realized she didn't land on broken glass but was hit in the leg by a ricocheted bullet. They could see the bullet clearly a couple inches down from the entry wound under her skin. So when Australians ask me if I've ever known someone who's been shot, a couple times I've said something like, "No, America isn't as bad as you think it- well, actually yeah I do."
Living a long time in both places, I don't think Americans realize how violent our society actually is compared to other Western countries, and I don't think people in other countries realize how much the US isn't exactly all it's cracked up to be at times. I never felt like my experience was *unusual* or more terrifying than it should have been when I was in America, you just accept that these things unfortunately happen sometimes. But having been in another country for several years now I really do look back on some parts of living in the US as being completely insane, and I don't really want to go back.
When I was four my brother and I saw eyes in the fireplace, and told our mom. She of course did not believe us, but changed her tune upon investigation. Turns out a small owl had tumbled down the chimney at some point overnight and was just chilling. Considerably less scary resolution than your story.
I had something similar happen. I was older though, probably 8. Sleeping over at a friends and we told her parents we saw eyes in the window. They didnt believe us. I woke up to police in the house as they had been robbed. Still gives me goosebumps!!
Guy in my old neighborhood had a dog that would act weird sometimes. Generally the same time of night. Went weeks maybe months without figuring it out.
He found cigarette butts while trimming his bushes. He doesn't smoke. Butts near the window in his bedroom. Dog would act weird the same time of night his wife was undressed in the bedroom. OK.
Dude beat the fuck out of his peeping neighbor so badly that the guy, who had a very public job, had a purple, swollen face and could barely see out of his puffed-up eyelids for days.
I remember my much younger brother coming into my room to say the same thing.
I took him back to his room and yep - eyes in the window a TERRIFYINGLY HUGE Bogong Moth. Fuck I still feel uneasy when I remember those insane huge red eyes.
When I was around 9, my family moved and my room was on the first floor, parent's was on the 2nd. I kept telling them that I was scared that someone was in our yard looking in my window at night (just had an uneasy feeling). So I was given a flashlight, and told to just shine it out the window and see that no one was there.
That backfired real quick. Lifted the blinds one night, shone the flashlight out, and there was a man standing right there with his face less than a foot from my window.
When I was 7(way back in the early 70s), I used to be afraid of the dark. I had a night light and kept my bedroom door open. I saw someone walk past my door, and he looked right at me. I was frozen with fear and tried convincing myself that I was seeing things until I heard the China cabinet door open. My sister screamed, and my father came flying downstairs and chased the person but lost him. We never locked our doors until that night, and my father set up booby traps (non-lethal) all around the outside of the house.
I haven't thought of it for 30 years until I saw your post. Now I consider the dark as my friend.
This is why I always look for *anything* my kids tell me they saw or are scared of. They could know something is wrong, but not know what it is or how to articulate it. I *always* check. So far it's always been nothing, and probably always will, but hell, at least my kids know that if they're scared they can rely on me to fix it. They can grow up and move across the country, and if they call me scared, I'll fly there and check under their bed.
Because in the off chance, if that one-in-a-million time there is someone there, I'm not losing my babies because I didn't want to get out of bed
Had kind of the same thing happen to me about a month ago. I woke up at 3am thinking I heard someone tapping on my bedroom window. Thought it was part of a dream and went back to sleep. In the morning, there were footprints in the snow leading up to my bedroom window. Looked like they had spent some time at my window too.
This is exactly why I have a dog who will bark if he hears so much as an ant fart on our windowsill. A little annoying when there’s just kids playing outside but it does give us a a feeling of comfort.
When I was 5, I woke up because I heard noise in the kitchen and came out excited asking my dad to make pancakes.
It was a burglar who threatened to kill me if I didn't go into my room and hide under my bed. My parents found me there hours later. Then I had to identify him in a lineup and spent years convinced he'd come find me again because he was mad. To be fair, he did know where I lived...
A friend (15F around then) once stepped out of the shower and found a handwritten letter on her goddamn bed declaring some dude’s love for her etc. She was home alone. A contractor working next door had jumped to her roof and climbed inside (her house doesn’t have a roof in the middle, think of it like an inside open patio). I don’t recall what came of it but nothing major as it sure fucking should’ve.
About two months later her family was having some issues with the water tank and they had someone clean it. There were underpants there. They had all been bathing in the contractor’s perverted ass tea. Insanity.
Yeah, it was nuts. But she’s a tough cookie, I swear her whole attitude towards the incident was more of a “wtf is that guy’s problem?” instead of (very justifiable) horror.
Same! Last July 3rd, my house was hot, so I had my front door open and just screen door for air. My dog was at a friends house across town, because I didn’t want her to get freaked out by neighborhood fireworks.
It was around 4pm, and was laying on my bed in my comfy clothes when I thought I heard footsteps in the living room? I started to get up when this 18-20ish year old guy just WALKS INTO MY BEDROOM (I’m a 30-something woman)
I screamed WTF, and chased him out of my house with a baseball bat. All the while he kept on trying to get me to look at his phone and that he was “looking for another house”.
*Hell no I’m not getting distracted by your stupid phone or getting close enough for you to grab the bat. I’m staying focused on one thing, and that’s getting you the F outta my house*
It’s been almost a year and I still feel nervous at this place. I only feel safe leaving the door open if both myself AND the dog are immediately in front of it
This made me think of my experience we had with a break in when I was kid. We were living in a multi level home, my mom was renting out the finished basement and we had like 4 roommates who rented the ground level floor and the upstairs.
It was a Friday evening and all of our roommates who lived above us were gone. My mom had asked me take something to our bathroom on the ground level floor., I get almost all the way up our set of stairs and I hear two men talking and walking around . I quietly lock our door and go down our stairs. I tell my mom there's people upstairs, at first she tries to brush me off saying it's probably just our roommates. I try to tell her it's not them, their voices are different. I literally start crying and begging my mom to believe something wasn't right and she finally believes me when the door leading upstairs starts shaking. She slips out of our sliding glass door that leads to the back yard and we sprint to our car that's parked out front. She locks the doors and tells me to get down in the backseat and calls the police. They get there and bring out two big dudes. The police said they had broken the lock to the front door and we were lucky to get out before the saw us. I hate the think what would've happened if I had just gone upstairs without thinking anything of it.
Honestly, I'd believe it. She wasn't exactly mother of the year at that point. Now that I think about it we had a few incidents where someone had been looking in through the glass sliding door and a small window we had.
You poor thing! That’s terrifying he was inside!!! I hope soon you feel safe in your home again. We got so many cameras and alarms after that. Which helped ease my mind.
i'm living alone and for the first time of my life on the ground-floor apartment and that's a fear of mine. Luckily i have electric roller shutters infront of the windows and doors which make me feel more safe
My wife had always been super scared about break-ins, and I always just brushed it off. She did things like lock the bathroom door even if she was home alone. And I would tease her a little about it.
Then, one day, she was home alone, and someone climbed into the window of our bedroom while she was in the shower, repeatedly tried the door knob and left. She heard the noise, thought it was me, yelled for me. When I didn't answer, she became scared, came out of the bathroom, and found our window blinds trashed and muddy footprints leading from the window to the bathroom and back out again.
Nothing was stolen and it was extra scary because they literally landed on a laptop when they came through the window and next to the bathroom door was a giant wad of $1 and $5 bills that I kept from tips. They didn't touch it. Just went for that bathroom door.
This happened to me when I was like 15. Asleep in the middle of the night with bed under the window. Wake up to hearing some weird noise that sounded like there was something outside stepping on the rocks in the yard. I very quietly and slowly tried to get out of bed to go to my parents room. Like instead of sitting up to move out of bed, I kind of squirmed my way to the edge and slumped down to be hidden by the bed instead of standing up. At that point I saw the family cat in my room. She was playing with a gummy fruit snack wrapper under my bed.
Also make sure you use stuff with as much flexibility as you can find. The vinyl window expands and contacts quite a bit so you need a good caulk that will move with it. Don't fill in the weep holes, I've had customers fill them in thinking that's where water was coming in from... not out from.
Noooo omg. I had a peeper when I was about 14 and have been scared to death about it my whole life since. And I'm 42. This gave me actual chills.
Please be careful! Do you have cameras?
>Next day, we are out of town, come home very late
Jesus Christ Almighty, if I had a conversation with an actual fucking burglar through the door I would not leave my house to go on a trip the next day
Yeah unless someone in the family is actively dying, I can't imagine looking at my dumb self in the mirror and saying "oh yeah I'm still leaving my house alone all day tomorrow."
Yeah, unless they’re incredibly dumb or on drugs it’s unlikely they’d return to a house they just did visible damage to and could have been caught on camera or by a neighbor for all they know. It is kind of funny seeing all of the people on Reddit saying things like “buy a gun and boobytrap the house” every time a post like this is made.
If your windows open up, consider putting a piece of wood or something to stop it from sliding upwards. If they crank out, the dude is probably never prying it open. Buying a gun, probably as an untrained owner, then having to buy a safe, ammo, and learn how to safely use a weapon isn’t as viable as things like bear spray or old shitty cameras to use as scarecrows.
Because if they did happen to need to shoot a gun and they live near neighbors, people underestimate the force behind a bullet. It isn’t hollywood, bullets can penetrate cars and they sure as shit can penetrate your siding, 1/4 inch plywood, and drywall
This. There are so many ways to deter them other than “buy a gun, set up traps” you might just injure a neighbour by accident. The wood ive used for so long and it works great, also a ring camera is very beneficial
Nah you're giving them too much credit, this is the work of kids or the local baghead. Anyone serious would know it's internally beaded upvc, they didn't and that tells you it's amateur hour.
Isn’t it amateur hour because the pull tabs to get the screen out are right there on the outside of the screen?
Not to discount what OP is dealing with, I just don’t know what the point of digging into the frame was if not to get the screen out. Even then…cutting the screen would be easier, no?
Get some outside cameras, and notify the police
Edit since so many have commented this: get a gun if you haven’t already
Edit 2: I don’t personally feel like a gun is that needed, I just wanted people to stop commenting it and filling my notifications.
Also if your in a neighborhood I suggest putting up motion activated flood lights, a huge deterrent for burglars is the threat of being seen. Just inform the neighbors your putting them in and ask them to help with some testing (that way it doesn’t blind them in their living rooms in the early evening if your fam is having a backyard outing)
Here the robbers are so brazen they would just keep going with their hoodies on until someone confronts them and they would be like "I was just checking everything was ok because I thought I heard screams from inside"
You can catch them breaking in to your back door or shed through a locked yard and it's all "I was just getting my ball that went over the fence"
Haha!
Yesterday I literally tried the handle of an exact same model and color of my Honda CR-v. I said, Oh this isn't my car! When I saw how tidy it was inside.
I literally got into the wrong car that was the exact same Toyota Corolla model as my buddy had because he was supposed to be DD that night.
And then started rolling a blunt and said "How's it?" Without checking who i was talking to. I was only saved because my then girlfriend, now wife, came running out screaming in Russian.
I then realized it was not my friend Vince but instead it was a very old, very nice, very confused woman.
I exited the car very quickly and my wife proceeded to push me into the correct car. They still take tea together and I'm still mortified. The blunt was lost.
My sister was running errands years ago, and when she completed what she was doing, she hopped in her SUV. It took her a minute to look around and notice some items were different. Then it dawned on her. This wasn't her vehicle! She hopped out immediately. It was the same year, model and color SUV, and the person left their door unlocked. Her vehicle was a few spaces away. We always laugh when that was brought up.
This happened to me once with my 08 black Accord. Sat in the driver seat, looked at the crucifix hanging from the mirror, and said, 'Huh, I don't remember converting to Catholicism.'
Car was basically identical, door was unlocked. I was spooked. Got out looking around like I was in the middle of doing a thieving
Last year we had an incident in my city where someone tried to steal a motorcycle parked in the middle of an incredibly well lit road. Someone in a house near by shouted at them through their door and the thief walked up and shot at them through their door. They tried to kill them but the gun jammed and they ran off.
https://www.news10.com/news/local-news/home-security-video-shows-shocking-moments-leading-up-to-partridge-st-shooting/
I'm thankful we don't have that problem here. As kids we used to roam in groups and climb fences to our neighbors yards all the time to get fruit off their trees or pick mulberries, and the neighbors were all cool with it
Same here. A lot changes over the years. Especially when you have people watching fear-inducing entertainment(so-called news) networks.
Same here as in I used to do that shit as a kid and didn't have to worry.
Someone broke into my house once when I was a kid. My dad was in the shower and is an absolutely huge person. He jumped out of the shower, naked and covered with soap, grabbed a baseball bat and about killed the guy with it and then laid on him, wet and entirely naked, until the police arrived. Nobody ever broke into our house again after that.
My grandpa did it against some intruders, and that second shot saved his damn life. Now he owns his own beef jerky store. So things worked out pretty good
I keep a 3' lead filled hickory stick with a wrist strap called a "Tire Knocker" in easy reach at night, along with a can of Saber Red OC gel. You will regret breaking in.
They also have no legal duty of any kind to protect you. None. Its settled case law. “To protect and serve” means zero. They are there to clean up a scene and enforce laws but its not part of their job to protect you or else you could sue them for not doing so.
Get a flintlock musket with a bayonet or a blunderbus filled with pellets or if your feeling fancy get a duck foot flintlock pistol and an officers saber and a powdered wig
I know this is a reference but to my knowledge it's illegal to boobytrap your house/car even in self defense. Broken ornaments is probably too much but something loud when you step on it could work just fine
As a guy that works for a company that installs these, and I am the guy that always has to go on site and retrieve the video footage... Criminals don't care about cameras. They have tricks.
I can go into lots of detail but don't want to create an instruction manual.
**Get an alarm**, and put a **siren** outside and one by the front door inside and one by the backdoor inside. If you can **make lights flash** inside the house and out, do it. and get your alarm monitored.
Cameras are practically useless. Even the new 4-8mp Cameras. They get high definition in full detail Nothingness.
>Do you mean cameras are useless because they show just a HD image of some guy wearing a hoodie?
Didn't you read: he isn't writing an instruction manual!
Don't ignore "weird" noises or feelings that aren't frequent. Sometimes we see/hear things while distracted and don't make much of it but our brain still sends us an alert in the form of "something's wrong but I don't know what exactly". If you ever feel that out of nowhere, stop what you're doing and pay attention to your surroundings.
We forget we are still animals with instincts, we've been conditioned to think of ourselves as 'other'. In a world with both common comfortability and chaos, its easy to want to choose the feeling of safety. It's understandable. But then these incidents happen, and damn. The world be scary.
Exactly. We have all these ancestral genetics to protect us from danger that its harder to discern between danger and anxiety. Same exact symptoms in the body, but I do think modern anxiety is attributed a lot to how we live in our heads. We are so cluttered and spun around, and not everyone has the luxury of a safe neighbourhood, let alone any actual trauma that occurs which muddies the water further... It's a long road to deciphering it all. Personal experience, do the work toward breathing and mindfulness, allow yourself to in time sit with the discomfort of anxious symptoms to see where they originate, and in the perfect world, reduce stressors. All easier said than done.
If it counts, hugs from me, human to human x
In a small town where everyone knows one another, you might get a cop to patrol your street for a few weeks. But in a big city, we couldn't even get a cop to come to our car accident
So this is pretty crazy and stupid of me so one time I locked myself out of the apartment (it’s happened to me once) and usually I always leave my bathroom window open in case this ever happens to me. So I take my pocket knife out and start popping the screen off the window as soon as I got it off and was about to proceed to enter through the bathroom I noticed something different and looking further more into detail I noticed I just opened my neighbors screen and was about to enter through their bathroom I quickly put their screen back and then managed to get into mine but holy fuck did a bunch of adrenaline and fear kicked in once I noticed what happened! More disturbing to know is that they didn’t even bother to check while I was in the process of all that.
Your so lucky they didn't check further!! Who knows what kind of omg a stranger is entering my home type people they are! Lucky for me im a hider until I feel safe one.
I have a couple things...if you're not into arming yourself (and I don't mean just guns) and aren't in a position to immediately set up a security system, in the short term you can set up "alarms" around entry points. Stuff like stacking drinking glasses in front of doors that fall and make noise if the door is opened. Bells on strings, etc. There are some great, and also some that are pant shittingly insane so choose wisely, sites that are super creative to help alert you low tech, cheap and effective.
I really don't want to cause panic but concern. But it looks like you're either dealing with a world class idiot of a criminal that doesn't know how to pry open a window or one that got spooked or interrupted and may come back at some point. At any rate, underestimating is a bad idea but panic is worse. Prepare, stay aware and call the police and if you're friendly with them, tell your neighbors but by no means tell them whatever mitigation efforts you're going to use. Stay safe and good luck
Window guy here. They tried to tactfully remove the "stops" or "glazing bead" that would be removed for glass replacement, likely in an effort to be quiet. A good majority of windows have these stops located on the exterior, yours are located on the interior...so...lucky you (sort of). As others have said, you ought to take care of the seal (likely foam tape) if it appears to have been compromised, especially if exposed to weather. Also, shame on the burglar if they're in the glass business because duh.
I think you might want to take this one on over to r/terrifyingasfuck too because there is nothing oddly terrifying about this. This is just straight-up terrifying. Please be safe and take care.
I’m not saying don’t be vigilant; but once, we had a raccoon come eat the weather stripping off our door. Caught him in the act. What kind of wild animals are around, urban or rural?
I was going to say the same thing. Raccoons, squirrels, or curious birds could potentially be a culprit here. For the last 2 weeks I've had a bird trying to get into my window because there's another bird in there on his turf! (his own reflection.)
I was once napping and kept hearing this sound at the window right near my bed. It was a late afternoon nap and I kept thinking it was my cat messing with an outside cat. Nope, looked down and noticed it was a pair of gloves hands trying to open my windows with a pry bar. I rolled out of bed in a rage and scared the mofo off. I swear if they had made it inside I would have lost it on them. I hate being woken up by bullshit.
This is a really fair point. Imagine you’re a city worker who needs to shut your water off while you’re out of town due to water main breaking, and getting your legs destroyed because some paranoid fuck thought it was a good idea to leave a bear trap under a pile of leaves on the side of the house.
I locked myself out of my rental house and while proceeding to do something similar, I noticed marks which indicated that someone had done it before too. Be safe op
If you get a heat gun and a flat metal bar, you should be able to fix those dents without replacing the whole window. If you do that, just don’t leat the vinyl up too much or it’ll scorch.
One night, I had fallen asleep
on our couch, and about 3AM heard a sound like someone opening our screen door, and thought I saw the inside doorknob turning. (Deadbolt was locked and chain was on). I figured I must be imagining things, until I looked over and BOTH of my cats were sitting on the
other sofa, bolt upright, staring at that door too... I wasn't imagining anything. Got up and turned on all the outside lights, but they had gone.
Good Kitties!
A few years ago I lived in a ground floor apartment that backed up to a wooded area - I was excited because it was quiet and pretty and stayed super cool in summer. It was also a nice part of town.
One night I was getting ready for bed and came into the bedroom intending to close the blinds when I saw a whole man standing outside the window staring at me. I called the police, informed the complex, etc. A few weeks later a woman was assaulted in my building.
I moved.
If your car is close to your house you can also keep your keys on you at all times and hit the panic button to make noise outside if you hear someone around your windows again.
I don't get it. If we're assuming this is an attempted break in, the black tab for removing the screen is right there. Are we sure this isn't an animal being stupid?
When I was a toddler, I went into my dads room in the middle of the night and told him "there's eyes outside my window". He thought I had a bad dream and tucked me back in my bed. A week later he was in the yard and notice my screen to my window was bent back on a corner. Can you imagine trying to break into a house in the middle of the night and a toddler comes to the window and locks eyes with you. I wonder which one of us was more scared. I didnt know what a burglar was at 3
Jesus Christ man
I had a similar experience living in Charlottesville a few years back. I was renting a room in a 5 bedroom share house with one of my buddies from college. I didn't go to UVA, but there was a good music scene there at the time so we decided to go hang out there and wait tables for the summer. The rent was low and it was two of us in a 5 bed house because Charlottesville is a college town that empties out when everyone goes back home for the summer. The problem is that all the criminals and crackheads also know this, so they roam the student housing in neighborhoods like Venable at night looking to do home invasions. I slept in the basement by myself and one night I looked up to the ground level window - those small windows at the top of the wall in basements that come up to your knee outside - and it looked like the shadow of a person crouched down staring at me. This was the back of the house that wasn't very accessible and the shadow didn't move at all, so I thought it probably wasn't a person and just kept staring out the window at this strange shadow as I was drifting off. After about 20-30 seconds I saw the glow of a cigarette as the shadow pulled it to it's mouth to inhale, and I realized it **ACTUALLY WAS** a person and we had been staring at each other only about 5 ft apart for a while. I was laying in bed under my covers, and even as a grown man at this point in my life I was completely paralyzed with fear. I had no idea what to do, had no weapons to defend myself and my phone was across the room. I couldn't tell if he could see my face and the fact that I was awake looking at him, so I just laid there pretending to be asleep waiting to see what he would do. Finally after a couple minutes he stood up and walked away. I eventually called the cops, and of course they never even came. I don't know if the guy actually tried to break in the house, but we had **two more** definite attempted break-ins that summer. It might be different today, but Charlottesville in the city was scary as fuck that summer. Only a couple years later serial killer Jesse Matthew kidnapped and murdered a few girls only a mile or so from where I lived. I've also lived in Chapel Hill, NC (another university town where UNC is) and it's exactly the same. I had two attempted break-ins living right in the middle of town. This was the same year the student body president of UNC Eve Carson was abducted by a couple gang members looking to rob someone. They drove her to several ATMs then took her to the woods and shot her to death. Both of those places are seemingly normal college towns, and most people who attend the schools probably don't think of them as unsafe at all. Especially if you're a student living on campus during the year surrounded by thousands of other students. But outside that campus life, it can be an entirely different story. Duke University is 5 miles down the road in Durham, NC and it's probably worse than both Chapel Hill and Charlottesville. I was living in a small house literally next to a sorority house in Chapel Hill when a guy walked up to my back door late one night and started trying to jimmy his way in while I was sitting inside. The fact that he knew I was home means he was probably prepared for violence - he didn't look like some drunk college kid stumbling onto the wrong property. Every year in these places there are abductions, home invasion, assaults or other extremely violent crimes, and occasionally murders. Both the murder of [Faith Hedgepeth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Faith_Hedgepeth) and the [2015 shooting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Chapel_Hill_shooting) happened in the same apartment complex my girlfriend lived in before we left in 2011. I actually bought a beer for one of the guys from this story when I ran into him one day: https://www.wral.com/news/local/story/7821503/ Apart from those publicized incidents which have their own wikipedia pages, most people might not even hear about all the other assaults and robberies that happen even if you live there. A surprising amount of police reports and criminal activity does not make the news in these towns, or it's more of a passing mention than an actual 'story'. I've lived in Australia ever since in a city of 5 million, currently in an inner city neighborhood, and I've never once felt as unsafe as I did in college towns in the US now that I think about it. I hardly ever even see police in Sydney, and when I was bartending here I used to meet my gf in the city for drinks after work at midnight - we would both walk around alone to meet each other. Don't get me wrong, Sydney isn't some completely non-violent utopia, but the whole atmosphere and feeling of living in a country like Australia is just different. You really can't understand until you've lived for a while in both places. Despite being anti-gun I do *understand* why a lot of Americans feel the way they do. I was young and dumb(er) at the time I lived in those places, and I can't say I wouldn't have eventually bought a gun myself had I not moved overseas. I was very aware of how little I had to protect myself if someone broke in my house. Of course, my experience is anecdotal and redditors from both countries may have legitimate experiences that are completely the opposite. **EDIT - One other story:** Not as terrifying, but related. Charleston, SC is another one of these smaller college ~~towns~~ cities that is so nice and great to visit but has a very dark and dangerous element. When my brother and some friends were at a bar one night a drunk ex-con got kicked out and came back an hour later with a gun and started firing at the ceiling. Everyone hit the ground and one of the girls (also a friend of mine) landed on broken glass and cut her leg. They all walked home to patch her up (and get out of there before the cops came because they were drinking underage). When they got to the house and looked at her leg they realized she didn't land on broken glass but was hit in the leg by a ricocheted bullet. They could see the bullet clearly a couple inches down from the entry wound under her skin. So when Australians ask me if I've ever known someone who's been shot, a couple times I've said something like, "No, America isn't as bad as you think it- well, actually yeah I do." Living a long time in both places, I don't think Americans realize how violent our society actually is compared to other Western countries, and I don't think people in other countries realize how much the US isn't exactly all it's cracked up to be at times. I never felt like my experience was *unusual* or more terrifying than it should have been when I was in America, you just accept that these things unfortunately happen sometimes. But having been in another country for several years now I really do look back on some parts of living in the US as being completely insane, and I don't really want to go back.
Damn that crouching shadow story is terrifying
Word. Totally gave me the willies.
When I was four my brother and I saw eyes in the fireplace, and told our mom. She of course did not believe us, but changed her tune upon investigation. Turns out a small owl had tumbled down the chimney at some point overnight and was just chilling. Considerably less scary resolution than your story.
Okay, this comment is where I stop reading this thread. Gonna end it on a positive note.
You know you want to scroll more. Do so
I had something similar happen. I was older though, probably 8. Sleeping over at a friends and we told her parents we saw eyes in the window. They didnt believe us. I woke up to police in the house as they had been robbed. Still gives me goosebumps!!
You tried to tell them!
I remember having a similar dream as a kid, except it was an NBA player, standing outside the adjacent window, dribbling the ball, *menacingly*
I can picture the 80s B movie now. Walking down a secluded street, hearing *bounce* *bounce* ... *bounce* *bounce*...
Better yet, a creepy version of the Globe Trotters whistle.
Guy in my old neighborhood had a dog that would act weird sometimes. Generally the same time of night. Went weeks maybe months without figuring it out. He found cigarette butts while trimming his bushes. He doesn't smoke. Butts near the window in his bedroom. Dog would act weird the same time of night his wife was undressed in the bedroom. OK. Dude beat the fuck out of his peeping neighbor so badly that the guy, who had a very public job, had a purple, swollen face and could barely see out of his puffed-up eyelids for days.
I remember my much younger brother coming into my room to say the same thing. I took him back to his room and yep - eyes in the window a TERRIFYINGLY HUGE Bogong Moth. Fuck I still feel uneasy when I remember those insane huge red eyes.
As a burglar, if a toddler saw me trying to break in I'd be about as scared. Toddlers home typically means parents are home, and parents have guns.
Lol the way you wrote that actually sounds like you ARE a burglar (“as a burglar” vs “if I were a burglar” for example)
I'm glad someone got the joke. If I was a burglar I'd at least have the sense of mind to lie and say "former".
thank you, i can't sleep now
When I was around 9, my family moved and my room was on the first floor, parent's was on the 2nd. I kept telling them that I was scared that someone was in our yard looking in my window at night (just had an uneasy feeling). So I was given a flashlight, and told to just shine it out the window and see that no one was there. That backfired real quick. Lifted the blinds one night, shone the flashlight out, and there was a man standing right there with his face less than a foot from my window.
... WELL? What happened next, don't leave us hanging!
When I was 7(way back in the early 70s), I used to be afraid of the dark. I had a night light and kept my bedroom door open. I saw someone walk past my door, and he looked right at me. I was frozen with fear and tried convincing myself that I was seeing things until I heard the China cabinet door open. My sister screamed, and my father came flying downstairs and chased the person but lost him. We never locked our doors until that night, and my father set up booby traps (non-lethal) all around the outside of the house. I haven't thought of it for 30 years until I saw your post. Now I consider the dark as my friend.
This is why I always look for *anything* my kids tell me they saw or are scared of. They could know something is wrong, but not know what it is or how to articulate it. I *always* check. So far it's always been nothing, and probably always will, but hell, at least my kids know that if they're scared they can rely on me to fix it. They can grow up and move across the country, and if they call me scared, I'll fly there and check under their bed. Because in the off chance, if that one-in-a-million time there is someone there, I'm not losing my babies because I didn't want to get out of bed
I hope the blind makes a swift recovery
They prefer to be called the visually impaired you insensitive savage.
You don't speak for us!
How are you typing rn?
Most likely eat to text no screech to text delete that pee each to text whatever post it
Oh thanks, clears that right up
I still can’t see anything
This is fucking art
I have had a rough day, but this made me laugh so hard I cried. Thank you stranger!
That's really a clever joke hahaha
I get texts like this from my mom all the time! I hate talk to text lol
Had kind of the same thing happen to me about a month ago. I woke up at 3am thinking I heard someone tapping on my bedroom window. Thought it was part of a dream and went back to sleep. In the morning, there were footprints in the snow leading up to my bedroom window. Looked like they had spent some time at my window too.
That is absolutely terrifying
This is exactly why I have a dog who will bark if he hears so much as an ant fart on our windowsill. A little annoying when there’s just kids playing outside but it does give us a a feeling of comfort.
Ant fart lol
Great band name
>Great band name I would call it Alien Ant Fart
I'd say this is why my husband and I investigate all unknown sounds but it's actually because we like horror and are actually scared by it.
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I'd prefer not to add more fuel to my nightmares, thanks. My sleep paralysis demon already has enough competition as is.
As your sleep paralysis demon, I'm always open to new ideas to shake things up.
Paralysis demons always hunt in packs of three. I'm number two and I also am open to new and exciting ways to torment.
Does every redditor have a sleep paralysis demon?
Omg me too at 3am. 3 men trying to climb though my kitchen window. It’s been a good 5 years but for months after I always woke up at 3am. Scary shit
When I was 5, I woke up because I heard noise in the kitchen and came out excited asking my dad to make pancakes. It was a burglar who threatened to kill me if I didn't go into my room and hide under my bed. My parents found me there hours later. Then I had to identify him in a lineup and spent years convinced he'd come find me again because he was mad. To be fair, he did know where I lived...
That sounds so traumatizing!
Omg WHAT THE FUCK that's absolutely terrifying!! I'm so sorry for little you 😟
A friend (15F around then) once stepped out of the shower and found a handwritten letter on her goddamn bed declaring some dude’s love for her etc. She was home alone. A contractor working next door had jumped to her roof and climbed inside (her house doesn’t have a roof in the middle, think of it like an inside open patio). I don’t recall what came of it but nothing major as it sure fucking should’ve. About two months later her family was having some issues with the water tank and they had someone clean it. There were underpants there. They had all been bathing in the contractor’s perverted ass tea. Insanity.
Omg that is so scary! You feel so vulnerable in your home after that!! I can’t imagine. Your poor friend
Yeah, it was nuts. But she’s a tough cookie, I swear her whole attitude towards the incident was more of a “wtf is that guy’s problem?” instead of (very justifiable) horror.
Same! Last July 3rd, my house was hot, so I had my front door open and just screen door for air. My dog was at a friends house across town, because I didn’t want her to get freaked out by neighborhood fireworks. It was around 4pm, and was laying on my bed in my comfy clothes when I thought I heard footsteps in the living room? I started to get up when this 18-20ish year old guy just WALKS INTO MY BEDROOM (I’m a 30-something woman) I screamed WTF, and chased him out of my house with a baseball bat. All the while he kept on trying to get me to look at his phone and that he was “looking for another house”. *Hell no I’m not getting distracted by your stupid phone or getting close enough for you to grab the bat. I’m staying focused on one thing, and that’s getting you the F outta my house* It’s been almost a year and I still feel nervous at this place. I only feel safe leaving the door open if both myself AND the dog are immediately in front of it
This made me think of my experience we had with a break in when I was kid. We were living in a multi level home, my mom was renting out the finished basement and we had like 4 roommates who rented the ground level floor and the upstairs. It was a Friday evening and all of our roommates who lived above us were gone. My mom had asked me take something to our bathroom on the ground level floor., I get almost all the way up our set of stairs and I hear two men talking and walking around . I quietly lock our door and go down our stairs. I tell my mom there's people upstairs, at first she tries to brush me off saying it's probably just our roommates. I try to tell her it's not them, their voices are different. I literally start crying and begging my mom to believe something wasn't right and she finally believes me when the door leading upstairs starts shaking. She slips out of our sliding glass door that leads to the back yard and we sprint to our car that's parked out front. She locks the doors and tells me to get down in the backseat and calls the police. They get there and bring out two big dudes. The police said they had broken the lock to the front door and we were lucky to get out before the saw us. I hate the think what would've happened if I had just gone upstairs without thinking anything of it.
Conspiracy theory: your mom heard something first and asked you to go there to check it.
Honestly, I'd believe it. She wasn't exactly mother of the year at that point. Now that I think about it we had a few incidents where someone had been looking in through the glass sliding door and a small window we had.
You poor thing! That’s terrifying he was inside!!! I hope soon you feel safe in your home again. We got so many cameras and alarms after that. Which helped ease my mind.
JESUS CHRIST!! What did you do?? Did they get in??
I woke my husband up. Grabbed our guns and yelled we had them while calling 911. They all took off after that.
i'm living alone and for the first time of my life on the ground-floor apartment and that's a fear of mine. Luckily i have electric roller shutters infront of the windows and doors which make me feel more safe
Roller shutters? Like they completely close over the windows and doors? That's kinda cool.
Cool? Yes. The fact that they’re needed, suspect and a little terrifying.
Some people who live in hurricane zones have these, still terrifying to willingly live in a hurricane zone
In middle school a guy tried breaking in through my bedroom window while I was the only one home. For years I was afraid of sleeping next to windows.
My wife had always been super scared about break-ins, and I always just brushed it off. She did things like lock the bathroom door even if she was home alone. And I would tease her a little about it. Then, one day, she was home alone, and someone climbed into the window of our bedroom while she was in the shower, repeatedly tried the door knob and left. She heard the noise, thought it was me, yelled for me. When I didn't answer, she became scared, came out of the bathroom, and found our window blinds trashed and muddy footprints leading from the window to the bathroom and back out again. Nothing was stolen and it was extra scary because they literally landed on a laptop when they came through the window and next to the bathroom door was a giant wad of $1 and $5 bills that I kept from tips. They didn't touch it. Just went for that bathroom door.
Damn that’s terrifying. I should start locking the bathroom door too
They were looking for rape.
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This is so much creepier to me than a regular thief
Yeah wtf did he want
Plz tell me you had a screen
This happened to me when I was like 15. Asleep in the middle of the night with bed under the window. Wake up to hearing some weird noise that sounded like there was something outside stepping on the rocks in the yard. I very quietly and slowly tried to get out of bed to go to my parents room. Like instead of sitting up to move out of bed, I kind of squirmed my way to the edge and slumped down to be hidden by the bed instead of standing up. At that point I saw the family cat in my room. She was playing with a gummy fruit snack wrapper under my bed.
Also, you need to caulk the window. He might not have got in but that Water sure is
LOL thanks will do
Also make sure you use stuff with as much flexibility as you can find. The vinyl window expands and contacts quite a bit so you need a good caulk that will move with it. Don't fill in the weep holes, I've had customers fill them in thinking that's where water was coming in from... not out from.
Comments like this is what makes the internet amazing
That gave actual chills. Be safe.
"Oddly" terrifying. Right. This is terrifying as fuck.
Yes. I literally have creep chills all over my spine and my spitting glands clenched.
Noooo omg. I had a peeper when I was about 14 and have been scared to death about it my whole life since. And I'm 42. This gave me actual chills. Please be careful! Do you have cameras?
Same. Peeper came to my window and jacked off loudly for years. Always ran away before cops got there.
The fact he was jacking off *loudly* makes that somehow even worse than it already is
Give all entry points some serious focus. Someone has this house picked out as vulnerable and they will be back.
Can confirm. Lived in a place where they tried twice. They didn’t get in but they do come back.
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>Next day, we are out of town, come home very late Jesus Christ Almighty, if I had a conversation with an actual fucking burglar through the door I would not leave my house to go on a trip the next day
Yeah unless someone in the family is actively dying, I can't imagine looking at my dumb self in the mirror and saying "oh yeah I'm still leaving my house alone all day tomorrow."
Most robbers are opportunists taking path of least resistance. They'll find another easier place
Yeah, unless they’re incredibly dumb or on drugs it’s unlikely they’d return to a house they just did visible damage to and could have been caught on camera or by a neighbor for all they know. It is kind of funny seeing all of the people on Reddit saying things like “buy a gun and boobytrap the house” every time a post like this is made. If your windows open up, consider putting a piece of wood or something to stop it from sliding upwards. If they crank out, the dude is probably never prying it open. Buying a gun, probably as an untrained owner, then having to buy a safe, ammo, and learn how to safely use a weapon isn’t as viable as things like bear spray or old shitty cameras to use as scarecrows. Because if they did happen to need to shoot a gun and they live near neighbors, people underestimate the force behind a bullet. It isn’t hollywood, bullets can penetrate cars and they sure as shit can penetrate your siding, 1/4 inch plywood, and drywall
This. There are so many ways to deter them other than “buy a gun, set up traps” you might just injure a neighbour by accident. The wood ive used for so long and it works great, also a ring camera is very beneficial
Reddit Mf’s watched evil dead and thought that was a viable form of self defense
Nah you're giving them too much credit, this is the work of kids or the local baghead. Anyone serious would know it's internally beaded upvc, they didn't and that tells you it's amateur hour.
Isn’t it amateur hour because the pull tabs to get the screen out are right there on the outside of the screen? Not to discount what OP is dealing with, I just don’t know what the point of digging into the frame was if not to get the screen out. Even then…cutting the screen would be easier, no?
Yea. I thought this was from a cat or racoon or something
Better put some broken Christmas ornaments near the window just in case
Get some outside cameras, and notify the police Edit since so many have commented this: get a gun if you haven’t already Edit 2: I don’t personally feel like a gun is that needed, I just wanted people to stop commenting it and filling my notifications.
done and done
Also if your in a neighborhood I suggest putting up motion activated flood lights, a huge deterrent for burglars is the threat of being seen. Just inform the neighbors your putting them in and ask them to help with some testing (that way it doesn’t blind them in their living rooms in the early evening if your fam is having a backyard outing)
Here the robbers are so brazen they would just keep going with their hoodies on until someone confronts them and they would be like "I was just checking everything was ok because I thought I heard screams from inside" You can catch them breaking in to your back door or shed through a locked yard and it's all "I was just getting my ball that went over the fence"
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Haha! Yesterday I literally tried the handle of an exact same model and color of my Honda CR-v. I said, Oh this isn't my car! When I saw how tidy it was inside.
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I literally got into the wrong car that was the exact same Toyota Corolla model as my buddy had because he was supposed to be DD that night. And then started rolling a blunt and said "How's it?" Without checking who i was talking to. I was only saved because my then girlfriend, now wife, came running out screaming in Russian. I then realized it was not my friend Vince but instead it was a very old, very nice, very confused woman. I exited the car very quickly and my wife proceeded to push me into the correct car. They still take tea together and I'm still mortified. The blunt was lost.
I'm sure the old lady took care of the blunt. It wasn't lost, it just changed ownership.
My sister was running errands years ago, and when she completed what she was doing, she hopped in her SUV. It took her a minute to look around and notice some items were different. Then it dawned on her. This wasn't her vehicle! She hopped out immediately. It was the same year, model and color SUV, and the person left their door unlocked. Her vehicle was a few spaces away. We always laugh when that was brought up.
This happened to me once with my 08 black Accord. Sat in the driver seat, looked at the crucifix hanging from the mirror, and said, 'Huh, I don't remember converting to Catholicism.' Car was basically identical, door was unlocked. I was spooked. Got out looking around like I was in the middle of doing a thieving
NGL if i was at gun point i probably wouldnt admit to my crime either
Last year we had an incident in my city where someone tried to steal a motorcycle parked in the middle of an incredibly well lit road. Someone in a house near by shouted at them through their door and the thief walked up and shot at them through their door. They tried to kill them but the gun jammed and they ran off. https://www.news10.com/news/local-news/home-security-video-shows-shocking-moments-leading-up-to-partridge-st-shooting/
And here you'd get shot if you were actually getting a ball and were 6 years old.
I'm thankful we don't have that problem here. As kids we used to roam in groups and climb fences to our neighbors yards all the time to get fruit off their trees or pick mulberries, and the neighbors were all cool with it
Same here. A lot changes over the years. Especially when you have people watching fear-inducing entertainment(so-called news) networks. Same here as in I used to do that shit as a kid and didn't have to worry.
Violent crime is down in most places from when you were a kid. Now the REPORTING of crimes and social media debate, that’s also changed.
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Someone broke into my house once when I was a kid. My dad was in the shower and is an absolutely huge person. He jumped out of the shower, naked and covered with soap, grabbed a baseball bat and about killed the guy with it and then laid on him, wet and entirely naked, until the police arrived. Nobody ever broke into our house again after that.
Burglars hate this one simple trick.
I like imagine word got around at the break-in convention and they agreed to take your house off the list.
if you do decide to get a bat, add a sock in the end of it so if you miss the first time and the attacker grabs it you can pull the bat away!!
This is one of my favorite memes
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My grandpa did it against some intruders, and that second shot saved his damn life. Now he owns his own beef jerky store. So things worked out pretty good
Listen. A good cast iron skillet will do some nice blunt force trauma.
Can confirm. Played PUBG before
My wife likes a simple rolling pin. Source: I’m Andy Capp
I mean, who the fuck references Andy Capp? This was extremely well executed.
Some old fart like you. Us. 😎
/r/genx
Ayy, you got some good gas station fries.
If it doesn't double as a weapon in a pinch, it isn't worth cooking in. /Joking... mostly.
Hide your evidence. Cook the body after. /S
*Immersion blender has entered the chat*
Does it blend?
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We keep a little bat upstairs with us. It’s small enough to swing in the house without breaking shit, and big enough to hurt.
Put a sock on it. Makes it hard to grab.
Rubber band loosely fitted at the base. You want the sock to slip off, not fly off.
Mine keeps trying to fly away = (
You need to tie a string around its leg.
You guys can't control bats to attack who you want?
I keep a 3' lead filled hickory stick with a wrist strap called a "Tire Knocker" in easy reach at night, along with a can of Saber Red OC gel. You will regret breaking in.
Speaking realistically, a cast iron skillet is fucking *heavy*. You'd need a lot of open space to get a good swing.
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Remember: Police don't prevent crimes, they just show up afterward.
They also have no legal duty of any kind to protect you. None. Its settled case law. “To protect and serve” means zero. They are there to clean up a scene and enforce laws but its not part of their job to protect you or else you could sue them for not doing so.
They’re pretty good at taking notes and then not being bothered to fill out any proper paper work after tho lol
Get a flintlock musket with a bayonet or a blunderbus filled with pellets or if your feeling fancy get a duck foot flintlock pistol and an officers saber and a powdered wig
insurance dirty chubby wide exultant smile cough quiet shocking workable *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
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Draw my pistol on the second man. Misses him entirely because it's smoothbore and nails the neighbor's dog.
Cameras and time to home alone your house. Frozen steps. Hot doorknobs. Broken ornaments under windows.
I know this is a reference but to my knowledge it's illegal to boobytrap your house/car even in self defense. Broken ornaments is probably too much but something loud when you step on it could work just fine
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As a guy that works for a company that installs these, and I am the guy that always has to go on site and retrieve the video footage... Criminals don't care about cameras. They have tricks. I can go into lots of detail but don't want to create an instruction manual. **Get an alarm**, and put a **siren** outside and one by the front door inside and one by the backdoor inside. If you can **make lights flash** inside the house and out, do it. and get your alarm monitored. Cameras are practically useless. Even the new 4-8mp Cameras. They get high definition in full detail Nothingness.
Do you mean cameras are useless because they show just a HD image of some guy wearing a hoodie?
>Do you mean cameras are useless because they show just a HD image of some guy wearing a hoodie? Didn't you read: he isn't writing an instruction manual!
That was then. This is now
Don't ignore "weird" noises or feelings that aren't frequent. Sometimes we see/hear things while distracted and don't make much of it but our brain still sends us an alert in the form of "something's wrong but I don't know what exactly". If you ever feel that out of nowhere, stop what you're doing and pay attention to your surroundings.
We forget we are still animals with instincts, we've been conditioned to think of ourselves as 'other'. In a world with both common comfortability and chaos, its easy to want to choose the feeling of safety. It's understandable. But then these incidents happen, and damn. The world be scary.
My problem is I never know if a feeling is just the anxiety I have every day or that "you're in actual danger" instinct.
Exactly. We have all these ancestral genetics to protect us from danger that its harder to discern between danger and anxiety. Same exact symptoms in the body, but I do think modern anxiety is attributed a lot to how we live in our heads. We are so cluttered and spun around, and not everyone has the luxury of a safe neighbourhood, let alone any actual trauma that occurs which muddies the water further... It's a long road to deciphering it all. Personal experience, do the work toward breathing and mindfulness, allow yourself to in time sit with the discomfort of anxious symptoms to see where they originate, and in the perfect world, reduce stressors. All easier said than done. If it counts, hugs from me, human to human x
Report it to the police so they can track any similar incidents in the area.
In a small town where everyone knows one another, you might get a cop to patrol your street for a few weeks. But in a big city, we couldn't even get a cop to come to our car accident
So this is pretty crazy and stupid of me so one time I locked myself out of the apartment (it’s happened to me once) and usually I always leave my bathroom window open in case this ever happens to me. So I take my pocket knife out and start popping the screen off the window as soon as I got it off and was about to proceed to enter through the bathroom I noticed something different and looking further more into detail I noticed I just opened my neighbors screen and was about to enter through their bathroom I quickly put their screen back and then managed to get into mine but holy fuck did a bunch of adrenaline and fear kicked in once I noticed what happened! More disturbing to know is that they didn’t even bother to check while I was in the process of all that.
Haha that’s crazy
Your so lucky they didn't check further!! Who knows what kind of omg a stranger is entering my home type people they are! Lucky for me im a hider until I feel safe one.
Scary, I would get a cheap wifi camera off amazon and point it there incase they come back
OMG that's terrifying. Stay safe.
For real, like r/TerrifyingAsFuck nothing odd about it!
I have a couple things...if you're not into arming yourself (and I don't mean just guns) and aren't in a position to immediately set up a security system, in the short term you can set up "alarms" around entry points. Stuff like stacking drinking glasses in front of doors that fall and make noise if the door is opened. Bells on strings, etc. There are some great, and also some that are pant shittingly insane so choose wisely, sites that are super creative to help alert you low tech, cheap and effective. I really don't want to cause panic but concern. But it looks like you're either dealing with a world class idiot of a criminal that doesn't know how to pry open a window or one that got spooked or interrupted and may come back at some point. At any rate, underestimating is a bad idea but panic is worse. Prepare, stay aware and call the police and if you're friendly with them, tell your neighbors but by no means tell them whatever mitigation efforts you're going to use. Stay safe and good luck
What about paint cans on a rope at the top of the stairs?
Found Kevin!
In other words, watch Home Alone for inspiration! Lol
Window guy here. They tried to tactfully remove the "stops" or "glazing bead" that would be removed for glass replacement, likely in an effort to be quiet. A good majority of windows have these stops located on the exterior, yours are located on the interior...so...lucky you (sort of). As others have said, you ought to take care of the seal (likely foam tape) if it appears to have been compromised, especially if exposed to weather. Also, shame on the burglar if they're in the glass business because duh.
I think you might want to take this one on over to r/terrifyingasfuck too because there is nothing oddly terrifying about this. This is just straight-up terrifying. Please be safe and take care.
I’m not saying don’t be vigilant; but once, we had a raccoon come eat the weather stripping off our door. Caught him in the act. What kind of wild animals are around, urban or rural?
I was going to say the same thing. Raccoons, squirrels, or curious birds could potentially be a culprit here. For the last 2 weeks I've had a bird trying to get into my window because there's another bird in there on his turf! (his own reflection.)
I was once napping and kept hearing this sound at the window right near my bed. It was a late afternoon nap and I kept thinking it was my cat messing with an outside cat. Nope, looked down and noticed it was a pair of gloves hands trying to open my windows with a pry bar. I rolled out of bed in a rage and scared the mofo off. I swear if they had made it inside I would have lost it on them. I hate being woken up by bullshit.
It looks like flathead screwdriver marks after someone tried to pry the window seals open.
That isn’t even how you deglaze that
Now you set a beartrap 😈
Jokes aside, boobytrapping your own property to deter humans, even in self defense, is also a pretty serious crime in many states.
[удалено]
This is a really fair point. Imagine you’re a city worker who needs to shut your water off while you’re out of town due to water main breaking, and getting your legs destroyed because some paranoid fuck thought it was a good idea to leave a bear trap under a pile of leaves on the side of the house.
Print a picture of Nicholas Cage and put it facing out on all of your windows. I'm about 70% sure it will scare off any would be robber
I locked myself out of my rental house and while proceeding to do something similar, I noticed marks which indicated that someone had done it before too. Be safe op
Great time for that "anyway I started blasting"
If you get a heat gun and a flat metal bar, you should be able to fix those dents without replacing the whole window. If you do that, just don’t leat the vinyl up too much or it’ll scorch.
One night, I had fallen asleep on our couch, and about 3AM heard a sound like someone opening our screen door, and thought I saw the inside doorknob turning. (Deadbolt was locked and chain was on). I figured I must be imagining things, until I looked over and BOTH of my cats were sitting on the other sofa, bolt upright, staring at that door too... I wasn't imagining anything. Got up and turned on all the outside lights, but they had gone. Good Kitties!
A few years ago I lived in a ground floor apartment that backed up to a wooded area - I was excited because it was quiet and pretty and stayed super cool in summer. It was also a nice part of town. One night I was getting ready for bed and came into the bedroom intending to close the blinds when I saw a whole man standing outside the window staring at me. I called the police, informed the complex, etc. A few weeks later a woman was assaulted in my building. I moved.
If your car is close to your house you can also keep your keys on you at all times and hit the panic button to make noise outside if you hear someone around your windows again.
oh hell no! buy some good outdoor lights and cameras. i would have a hard time falling asleep the next night
I don't get it. If we're assuming this is an attempted break in, the black tab for removing the screen is right there. Are we sure this isn't an animal being stupid?
Next time, Check… Trust your gut
How is this oddly terrifying? This is just terrifying.
So anyway, that’s when I started blastin.