[tense music]
♪ ♪
- I open the door, and I find fruit lined up
Like an edible choo choo train.
- The window screen looks busted,
Like it'd been tampered with.
Something was up.
- It quietly screamed,
"I was here."
- The room looked like it had been ransacked.
There was something under the bed.
♪ ♪
- And I knew that silhouette,
And I'm being hunted like an animal.
♪ ♪
- Man found hiding between a family's walls.
- Intruder secretly living inside her attic.
- Man slithers out from under home.
- Make sure your crawlspaces are locked.
- I hear footsteps.
I'm vulnerable, naked, and someone is in my house.
- There was somebody violating my home.
- I wanna believe it's in my head.
- It's a giant man's handprint.
- You came into my home. You invaded my privacy.
- [screams]
- We had a phrogger in our house.
♪ ♪
- My name is helena jayne bryant.
♪ ♪
In 2005, I was living in columbus, ohio,
In a cute little house.
[tranquil music]
I live in the suburbs.
Well-manicured lawns, flower pots,
Wonderful daughter, groovy little life.
♪ ♪
It was a safe place to be for a very long time.
♪ ♪
My decorating looks very much
Like the inside of a genie's bottle.
♪ ♪
There's colorful fabric draped everywhere,
Plants and lanterns hanging from the ceiling.
It's very warm and cozy.
There's three bedrooms.
That's the second floor off the main floor.
If you walk into the kitchen, it's well-lit, white cabinets,
And a marble island, and I always had a fruit bowl
Sitting in the middle of the kitchen island,
And that entered into the outdoor patio space
Where I had lots of plants.
And that's where I would oftentimes sit
And have my coffee in the morning
Or my quiet time.
♪ ♪
I was working as an instructional assistant
In columbus city schools.
I tutored children in reading.
♪ ♪
I liked the idea of making a difference,
Especially in the life of a child,
And I'm an avid reader, and I wanted to do something
To help empower inner-city children
To develop a lifelong love of reading.
♪ ♪
[tense music]
♪ ♪
And I'm a single mom.
We're incredibly close.
We really valued our time together.
♪ ♪
One day, my daughter and I are making plans
To go shop for tennis shoes.
As we're collecting our things and heading out the door...
[phone rings]
I get a call from someone who's telling me a local store
Is having a sale on tennis shoes.
♪ ♪
It's as if somebody is aware
Of the conversations taking place in the house.
♪ ♪
One night, I'm lying in bed and reading.
It's the end of the day, and I'm unwinding with a book.
[phone rings]
The phone rings.
♪ ♪
- Hello?
- There's no one there. No one says anything.
And I don't think much of it at the time.
♪ ♪
I hang up the phone. I go back to my reading.
♪ ♪
After a few weeks, I begin to realize
That I'm getting a phone call every evening
And every morning,
And the person never says anything
When I answer the phone.
I look back through my caller id,
And I realize that the calls
Always come in at 10:04.
♪ ♪
Either 10:04 in the morning or 10:04 in the evening,
Even on days when I'm not there.
♪ ♪
10:04 in the morning
Throughout the week, I'm at work,
Yet the calls were still coming in precisely at 10:04.
When I look at the caller id, it either says blocked,
Indicating the phone number
Has been intentionally blocked,
Or it says unknown.
♪ ♪
[phone rings]
I get this epiphany,
And the next time I pick up that phone at 10:04,
I would be ready.
♪ ♪
So I went to the store,
And the next time the 10:04 call came in,
I was sitting on my bed waiting for it.
♪ ♪
The phone rang, I answered...
♪ ♪
And I let the air horn rip.
[air horn blares]
And that was the end of the calls at 10:04.
♪ ♪
I laughed.
It felt powerful to take control.
♪ ♪
I showed him for a moment...
♪ ♪
Until things got scary.
♪ ♪
And then I didn't do such a good job
Of showing him anymore.
♪ ♪
A couple weeks go by, and nothing happens.
I come home from work...
♪ ♪
And I find all of the fruit
That was in the fruit bowl lined up
In a neat little row,
Like an edible choo choo train.
♪ ♪
I'd been at work all day.
My daughter is in elementary school.
She doesn't drive.
I knew somebody had been in my house.
♪ ♪
And this time, someone wanted me to know it.
♪ ♪
It quietly screamed, "I was here."
♪ ♪
I froze.
It felt so sinister to me.
♪ ♪
Your first thought is that I'm going to call the police.
You know you would sound crazy.
That's the subtle madness of it,
Is that this person decided to confirm
That they were coming in my house,
But not leave enough evidence
To where I would feel comfortable
Even telling anyone.
♪ ♪
I come home, and I find a box of tampons
Sitting next to the cat's water bowl.
♪ ♪
I come home, and I find a jar of mustard
Sitting on the back of the toilet.
I find my calendar had been moved to a different location.
♪ ♪
Things are now being moved around my house
While I'm at work
Just to let me know that somebody had been in my house.
♪ ♪
I'm no longer able to ignore all of these signs
That are happening in my life
That something's very, very wrong,
And so when my daughter's father
Invited her for the summer--
He's living on the gulf coast in mississippi
A thousand miles away--
And for me, that felt like a huge relief.
It felt like an opportunity for me
To get to the bottom
Of what is going on in my life.
♪ ♪
One morning, I wake up,
And I go downstairs to brew my morning coffee,
And I notice that the coffee pot is missing.
♪ ♪
Now, I'm an avid coffee drinker,
And I know where my coffee pot is.
I know where my sugar is. I know where my creamer is.
I know where my favorite coffee mug is,
And it's not in the place where it's always sitting.
♪ ♪
So with the fog of sleep,
I'm not sure I'm seeing things correctly,
And I look around the kitchen,
And I still can't find it anywhere.
Now that my daughter is visiting with her father,
I'm the only person living in the house...
♪ ♪
And I knew I hadn't moved it.
I started to panic.
So I went into the living room to open up the curtains,
Thinking maybe more light, I might see it.
♪ ♪
And the coffee pot was sitting
In the middle of the living room couch.
♪ ♪
And I froze, because I knew
Now this person was coming into my house while I slept.
♪ ♪
Once I realized that he was now
Coming in my house while I slept,
My first thought was,
"what happens when my daughter comes back
And she's alone in her room and I'm asleep..."
♪ ♪
"and there's a madman loose in my house..."
♪ ♪
"who feels perfectly comfortable
"coming and going
And doing whatever he chooses to do for his own sick thrill?"
I knew at that point I had to call the police,
And so I picked up the phone, and I called them.
[phone beeping]
♪ ♪
The police officer arrives.
I'm embarrassed to mention the reason I was calling
Was because a coffee pot was on my couch.
♪ ♪
I know how it sounds,
And that's how it was received.
It was a, "okay...
Does anybody else have keys to your house?"
♪ ♪
I was bothering him.
He didn't even want to fill out a report.
I demanded that he fill out a report.
I couldn't find police officers
Who could see the big picture
That these are collective experiences
Creating a very scary story.
At that point, I didn't care
What law enforcement said or did.
I was calling constantly.
I had the sense within me at that point,
I needed to start creating a paper trail.
♪ ♪
One day, I come home from work,
And all of the flower pots
Are rearranged on my back porch.
The next time I come home,
There is a still-cold bottle of beer
Half drank sitting on the back patio
As if somebody sat in the dark and drank beer,
And as soon as I got home, they left,
And they would leave a pocket knife,
A partially eaten sandwich,
Little clues that they had been there
Sitting outside in the dark.
♪ ♪
I call the police when I see fresh footprints
Around my windows.
I call the police when personal items
From my car come up missing.
I call the police when I see the imprint
Of someone's face against the glass,
And there were certainly some officers responding
Who actually, I would go so far as to say,
Were concerned for me...
♪ ♪
But none of them seem to agree
That this was a sign of a bigger scheme.
When you're going through a situation
In which you feel as though your life is under attack,
It behooves you to consider everyone as a possible suspect,
But the shadow side of suspecting everybody,
The more isolated your world becomes.
♪ ♪
Summer came, and in our little community,
We had a wonderful community pool
Where my daughter and I would visit every day.
One day, I'm sitting at the pool,
And I happen to notice a beat-up car
Sitting just outside the pool
Kind of over my shoulder,
And the car doesn't fit with the other cars
In the parking lot.
The other cars are newer, nicer, well kept.
This is very much of a beat-up car.
That caught my attention,
But then I noticed the driver...
♪ ♪
Had dark glasses on
And a ball hat almost covering his eyes,
And you could tell that the person was a large man
Because of the broad shoulders and the size of the head
And the size of the neck,
But I'm unable to identify the driver.
I just take note, and I wonder why.
♪ ♪
So I get in the pool,
And I'm swimming around with my daughter,
And I kind of forget about the car,
And then when I get out of the pool,
The car is still sitting there,
And I have this feeling that this person
Is staring directly at me.
It's as if I can feel the weight of his gaze.
Now, he's wearing glasses, so I can't be certain,
And he doesn't look familiar to me,
But I can't deny that it feels like he's staring at me.
It makes me uncomfortable enough
To where I go over to my pool bag,
Get a piece of paper and a pencil
With the intention of writing down the car plate.
When I look up, the man's gone.
♪ ♪
I don't pay any attention to it.
I brush it off.
♪ ♪
Then, several more times that summer,
While I'm at the pool with my daughter,
There's another strange car.
It's never the same car...
♪ ♪
But the driver is always wearing dark glasses,
A hat pulled over his eyes,
And he's slumped down in the car,
And he's not always parked in the same spot.
♪ ♪
Sometimes it's in front of me.
Sometimes it's more directly behind me,
But it's always in direct relationship to the pool.
♪ ♪
I begin to get uneasy about it.
It feels like this person is always staring at me.
So I mention it to the manager of the pool,
And he kind of brushes off my concern.
It's, you know, probably a friend of a fellow resident.
It's a delivery driver.
And I want to believe him,
So I do, yet the car keeps making appearances at the pool.
♪ ♪
One day, it was evening,
And the sun was beginning to set,
And this is the first time this driver made a mistake.
He arrived in a car with deeply tinted windows,
So this time he didn't have a hat on or dark glasses,
But what he didn't realize is the sun setting in the sky
Was shining right in his back window.
I could easily, clearly see his silhouette.
♪ ♪
And I knew that silhouette.
...And then I didn't wonder who was coming in my house anymore
I knew.
[tense music]
Two years before, one night,
A girlfriend and I went out for a ladies' night.
A man approached me in a bar.
He was the man that I had met in the bar.
♪ ♪
And he seemed interesting.
I casually gave him my number.
He didn't seem too enamored with me.
I wasn't too impressed with him,
But I thought maybe I would enjoy spending time with him,
And we casually saw each other.
♪ ♪
Then I stopped seeing him.
I suppose there were moments where I wondered
If he was the man stalking me.
♪ ♪
And then I remembered his birthday.
It had been him all along.
October 4th.
When you translate that to the hours on a clock,
It becomes 10:04.
From the very beginning,
He was leaving weird clues
As to who was behind the madness.
This casual man floating on the outskirts of my life...
♪ ♪
Is truly the madman at my door.
♪ ♪
I froze, and I was concerned enough
That I gathered up my stuff
And I gathered my daughter, and we went home,
And one of the reasons that I was so troubled
Is I had never told this man where I lived.
♪ ♪
We were in a casual relationship.
♪ ♪
I had been to his house,
But as a single mom,
He had never been invited to my house.
♪ ♪
There was no reason he should know where I live.
So I sent him a text.
I said, "are you sitting outside my pool?"
♪ ♪
He didn't say anything.
♪ ♪
I did not have the financial resources
To buy a gun.
I did not have the financial resources
To buy a trained german shepherd.
I did not have the financial resources
To outfit my entire life with cameras and devices.
Calling police didn't work.
I stopped calling police.
I lost faith in my family,
My friends, law enforcement,
And most importantly, myself.
Later that night, I'm lying in bed,
And I get a text from him, and it says,
"you are a crazy bitch."
♪ ♪
I deleted his number, I didn't hear from him again,
And for a while, I went on with my life.
♪ ♪
There was a vent in our house that never worked.
I went to open it up to check it out.
There was a baby monitor. It was on.
♪ ♪
I didn't think much of it
Until I learned how easily it is
To turn a baby monitor into a listening device.
♪ ♪
The stalking escalated,
And I would have to suffer for not wanting him.
I would now see him in his car
Parked outside my job.
♪ ♪
I would see him following me
Around stores.
I would see him sitting in the parking lot
When we came out of the movie theater.
It's as if he wanted me to know, "you're surrounded."
♪ ♪
The only way I would ever defeat this man is if I left.
He was never going to stop.
♪ ♪
I took what little money I had.
♪ ♪
I threw away my cell phone.
♪ ♪
And in my car, I put
Whatever belongings would fit...
♪ ♪
And in the middle of the night,
We left town.
♪ ♪
I drove south until I couldn't drive south anymore.
I landed in mississippi on the mississippi gulf coast,
Thinking, "who would look for me there?"
♪ ♪
By now, my ex-husband didn't live there anymore.
He had relocated to denver, colorado,
So there were no real connections.
The harmony of the water and sky
Was just such good medicine for my soul.
♪ ♪
My daughter goes to school.
She's developing new friends.
And for a while, I really began to grow stronger.
♪ ♪
Then one day, I'm driving to the post office
When I see a pickup truck at the post office.
Sitting inside is my stalker.
I really began to believe that I had defeated him.
♪ ♪
And when I saw him, he was smiling...
♪ ♪
Making me feel like
He knew where I was all along,
And he just wanted me to believe I was safe.
I'm now a thousand miles away from home,
I have no family in town,
And I'm being hunted like an animal.
♪ ♪
And then one day, an epiphany came to me...
[tranquil music]
That felt so beautiful and possible.
♪ ♪
That I was going to become an over-the-road truck driver
'cause if you are going to follow me, buddy,
Follow me now.
♪ ♪
By this time, my daughter's graduating from high school,
And she's enrolled in college,
And I decide that if I'm going to change this story,
I have to do something so drastic.
I got my cdl, and I began a life
As an over-the-road truck driver,
And I was gone for months and months.
By and by, he just couldn't keep up.
♪ ♪
And while I was out there on the road,
I saw america the beautiful.
I know what she is now.
I found myself out there on the road.
I became a woman I had never met before.
I stopped hearing from him.
I stopped seeing him.
♪ ♪
I issued my own brand of justice.
♪ ♪
[tense music]
- In July 2014, I'm living with my wife in the u district
In a three-story condo north of seattle,
And we have two cats,
And their names are gizmo and mogwai.
- [meows]
[acoustic music]
- My brother and I get along really well,
But I would say I'm much more outgoing than he is.
He's really, really sweet and kind
And can be really goofy
When you get to know him and when he's comfortable,
But I think I would be more considered an extrovert,
And he'd be more considered an introvert.
♪ ♪
- I was a billing specialist
At a seattle-based coffee company,
And my wife was a graphic designer.
We both were kind of young professionals
And living in the u district
In this really cool historical, like, condo.
[upbeat music]
- The place my brother lives is really cool.
It's an older building.
It's really pretty.
So my brother and his wife live on the second floor,
And when you open their front door,
It goes right into the living room.
♪ ♪
- So it was July, and it was almost 90.
Most places don't have air conditioning,
So I was not looking forward to spending time indoors
When I got home from work.
- So he and his wife,
They decide to go out for a nice dinner
And just kind of enjoy the breeze
And some drinks and some food,
And after that's done, they head home.
[tense music]
- We get home at 9:00. It's dark.
We had a long day,
And we just wanted to go to bed.
Then we see the gate to the courtyard is ajar.
It's not very unusual because there's construction.
There was people renovating their condos that summer.
It didn't even register to me that anything was wrong.
♪ ♪
We unlock the door, and the first unusual thing
I see is just the living room is just in disarray.
Things were just not how I thought we had left 'em.
- There was just, like, things out of place.
I think it was a--maybe, like, a piece of carry-on luggage
Was out of the closet.
♪ ♪
I know that they both kind of blamed each other for that.
- My wife thought that I had made a mess,
And she was kind of looking at me like,
"what were you doing?"
- My brother's personality is--I would say
He's non-confrontational.
- I was certain I didn't do it,
But it wasn't something I wanted to get in a fight over
After having such a-- like, a nice evening.
I'm like, "oh, my wife probably did it,
But I'm not gonna start an argument."
- I know my brother to be a little bit messy,
So it wouldn't be totally surprising for him
To maybe be getting into the closet, pull something out,
And just have it sitting there and forget to put it back in.
- I just felt something was unusual,
But we weren't alarmed at that point.
- So the next thing my brother notices
Is the kitchen breakfast nook.
♪ ♪
- The window screen looks busted,
Like it'd been tampered with.
- So he lives on the second story,
And this window is off a courtyard,
And it's not a normal size window.
It's pretty small.
- When I looked at the screen, I just thought
Maybe, like, some kid could have crawled through it,
Maybe with the help of another kid
Being propped up and climbing inside.
- The idea that anyone could get in through that
Is pretty unlikely, unless they're a small person.
Plus, how do they even get up two stories?
'cause there's not really anything to grab onto
Except maybe--I mean, I don't even wanna to call it a tree.
It's more like a twig.
- The next unusual thing was the door
To our bedroom had been closed,
Which was actually pretty startling.
We never close that door.
It's always open in the summertime.
When we saw the door closed,
My wife and I knew something was up.
♪ ♪
So I open the door,
And I walk into this pitch black room.
All the shades and curtains were shut.
- And it's extremely hot in there
Because all of the blinds are closed, which is also odd.
- Immediately, I flipped on the light,
And that's when we saw the chaos.
♪ ♪
The room looked like it had been ransacked.
- Just things everywhere. Drawers opened.
Shoes everywhere. Clothes everywhere.
I think they might have even noticed right away,
Some things were broken.
It was just a complete disaster.
- It looked like someone rifled through
Every single drawer looking for something.
We just were shocked.
And so I looked in every room and, like, closet.
I mean, I just did a quick sweep of the house
And felt pretty confident there was no intruder.
Immediately, I was just worried, like,
I thought maybe my wife's jewelry was stolen,
And maybe my credit cards and my passport and some cash.
Those were the things
That would've been valuable to steal.
So in my mind, it shifted from a theft to vandalism.
♪ ♪
So the next thing we find unusual,
There was 2 1/2-inch screws shoved in the crack
Between the door and the door jamb.
- They were certainly not from their collection of tools
Or anything-- like, they came from somewhere.
So it starts to feel less like a--just, like, a break-in
To steal things, and more like something else.
- We--we were a little spooked,
So we called the cops and reported a break-in.
♪ ♪
And then while we were waiting,
That's when my wife noticed a brand-new jar of lotion
Had been emptied out everywhere.
[tense music]
- There was lotion on handles.
There was lotion all over clothing.
There was lotion inside of shoes.
- And the doorknob to the closet
And just kind of everywhere.
- Normally, if you have someone in your space
Touching your stuff, you don't necessarily know
Everywhere their hands have been,
But when you have lotion in the mix,
I just--it just, ugh, creeps me out.
It just ups the ante of how much
Everything was handled.
- It felt like a violation,
People going through our stuff,
And I was thinking,
"why would someone do this to us?
Do we have any enemies? Were we randomly picked?"
Things weren't making sense.
- I think at first,
I didn't realize the extent of the damage.
I'm just hearing things like, "drawers are open."
How did someone get in here?
There's random screws everywhere.
It just felt too odd
That a person would do something like this.
- It just felt really offsetting.
♪ ♪
So while we were waiting for the police,
I left my wife just in the bedroom
To--while she was going through the jewelry
And stuff that was on the floor.
I wanted to check my neighbor's place
Just to see if they might have had a break-in as well,
But they had no indication of a break-in.
♪ ♪
So the police arrive in about 45 minutes.
We showed the police around.
We kind of showed them the living room,
And then we showed him the bedroom,
And so they kind of walked around the bedroom
And looked around.
They had asked us to show 'em the bathroom to see maybe
If anything was missing in the bathroom.
They were kind of thinking
The same thing we were thinking.
Like, thinking it was a very strange story as well.
The police were just as confused as we were.
I showed them where I thought, like,
An intruder could have gotten in.
To them, it just looked like it was very unlikely
That a person could have climbed through there.
So they were just kind of trying
To just figure out why this would happen.
- They definitely think the situation is bizarre.
They take a look around. They check closets.
They, you know, take some pictures,
But ultimately, they don't find anything
That they can really run with, so they decide to leave.
♪ ♪
- After the police left, I continued to feel uneasy,
But my wife was calm through the entire thing,
But she was just as confused as I was.
♪ ♪
We were finding more things that didn't make sense.
That's when we noticed my wife's shoes
All spread out all over the floor.
Tennis shoes, her boots,
Just--the insoles were taken out of some of 'em.
My wife was wondering, like,
Why were they so focused on these shoes?
- She has really cute shoes.
So it was interesting to me that they seemed
Like they might have been tried on
And that there was lotion all over the shoes.
So I think at some point
She's trying to just collect the shoes,
Put things away, and she finds
A pair that are not her shoes.
♪ ♪
- The shoes were low-cut women's boots,
And they were something similar
To what my wife would've worn, but they were larger.
My wife was pretty calm, and then she looked
Over at me and told me,
"these boots are not even mine."
- I think finding weird screws around is one thing,
But to find a pair of shoes that do not belong
To anyone who lives there,
That says there's-- someone has been inside here.
It's unmistakable, and they removed their shoes,
Which shows a certain level of comfort
That they might have had.
- It just didn't make any sense.
Even if it was vandalism, the--
The shoe thing just seemed extra violating,
And if they were just trying on your clothes,
It just, like, added a layer of creepiness to the whole thing.
So between the lotion, the screws, and now, like,
The shoes all spread around and tampered with,
It was just-- it was still very unusual.
Like, we were-- more questions than answers.
♪ ♪
So we're cleaning up, and around the room,
We find clumps of blonde hair that had been cut,
Probably, like, half a dozen or so
In various places in our room
Just kind of, like, intermixed with the shoes.
Like, one was on the bed.
It was just another layer of ickiness to the whole thing.
So at this point, we didn't think
To call the police again because we thought
It would be kind of embarrassing,
And we didn't have any additional info
Really to give them.
- So it's after midnight.
They've been doing some cleaning,
And my brother hears what I guess he's describing
As wheezing, like a weird breathing sound.
♪ ♪
- I heard this wheezing sound several times...
♪ ♪
And it seemed to be louder near the floor.
- So he leans down, kind of at the end of the bed.
♪ ♪
- Then I realized the sound was coming from under the bed.
♪ ♪
- And he assumes, because one of his cats has asthma,
That maybe the cat's under the bed
Having trouble breathing.
- But I looked to my side...
♪ ♪
And I saw both cats just staring at me...
♪ ♪
Which really scared me
Because that meant there was something under the bed.
At first, my wife didn't hear the noise.
She thought I was overreacting, and then she heard the noise.
♪ ♪
After she heard the noise, we get out of that room,
And she slams the door.
♪ ♪
We thought it was an animal that was under the bed,
So we were trying to figure out what to do next.
Should we call animal control,
Or should we call the police again?
We didn't know what to do.
We finally decided to call the police again.
We told the dispatcher
We thought there was an animal under our bed,
And she told us to leave the house immediately...
♪ ♪
So we left.
- Brian gets freaked out.
He manages to convince his wife to leave.
They slam the door.
They realize they've left gizmo, their cat, inside there
With god knows what.
♪ ♪
- My wife bravely went in
And scooped him up and saved him.
- And they decide to wait
For the cops outside of the building.
- The cops arrive within minutes.
The same cops, the same two cops.
This time, the cops are taking it more serious.
I let them in the door.
As the door opens, I see a tall figure
Dressed in black,
Standing in our living room, holding shoes
And trying to get into the closet door.
♪ ♪
I felt my stomach drop, and I just felt uneasy,
And it hit me like a ton of bricks.
Just the sudden realization that this person
Had been in our apartment the whole time.
- I think at this point,
Everything has continued to escalate,
So to see an actual person, and to see that it's a woman,
None of it makes sense.
Why she's there, how she got in there.
How long was she actually under the bed?
♪ ♪
- So the police handcuff her
And take her out of the apartment,
And as she was talking to the police outside,
I got a better look of her.
She kind of had scraggly hair.
She was very tall, and she was laughing
And, like, just joking around with the cops,
And, like, kind of being a little flirty.
Police told us this person
Was known for trespassing in construction sites,
So the screws kind of made sense,
And then also that she had been up for days
And that she was paranoid.
She thought people were after her.
So the police leave,
And we go back in our apartment.
There's still several hours of cleaning to be done
'cause we didn't know what to do.
We were still running on adrenaline.
We wanted to make the apartment whole again,
So we decided just to stay up and clean.
♪ ♪
- They've cleared enough stuff away
That they can actually look under the bed,
So brian grabs a flashlight.
♪ ♪
- And I shine a flashlight under the bed,
And we find our biggest kitchen knife.
Another wave of anxiety, like, went through me.
It's 2:00 in the morning, and it hit me,
Like, what kind of danger
We potentially could have been in.
- It's really disturbing to think about.
She had that the whole time,
And as he's shining the light around,
He notices...
♪ ♪
- A needle
And pieces of fabric and stuff.
♪ ♪
- There's fabric coming from the bottom of the box spring
Because she had been stabbing the bottom of the bed.
- That we had been sitting on all night.
♪ ♪
- My brother tells me about the knife.
It's just--it's horrifying
Because who knows what her mindset was?
But just the idea that she could have harmed them.
She could have, you know, slashed at their feet.
I don't know.
It just--it makes my skin crawl, to be honest.
- So it hit me pretty slowly.
I think I definitely couldn't sleep that week.
It just was a--it wasn't like
I was scared of things under the bed anymore.
It was just this whole violation.
I mean, I was just trying to figure out, like,
What motivated her to choose us,
And how long had she been in our apartment,
And what was going through her mind?
- Who knows?
Maybe she was planning on staying there.
- It was really disturbing.
Things could have gone so wrong.
Just me thinking about that gave me anxiety,
Even though everything turned out fine.
I just keep thinking about what if.
- I hated that my brother had to go through this.
I just think it's such a violation,
And I didn't like that it would change
The way he would feel in his own home.
He's just so sweet and kind
And doesn't deserve something like this,
So it was very upsetting to hear that,
You know, he was disturbed
And uncomfortable in his own bedroom.
♪ ♪
- So the weeks after this intrusion,
The first thing we did was we ordered a new bed.
We didn't want to sleep in that bed anymore.
It kind of felt a little gross.
And then a couple of weeks later,
We'd also painted the whole room.
So we kind of gave it a refresh,
And we just kind of made it feel like a different room.
We never thought about leaving that apartment.
We like living there.
- I'm not surprised he's still living there.
It's a really rad apartment, and it's a great neighborhood,
So it makes sense that he'd wanna stay there
And not let somebody ruin his home for him.
- We love the place, the neighborhood.
We just wanted to continue living there,
Despite the craziness that happened that summer.
♪ ♪
- I was resting, and I heard something behind me.
- From the base of my stairs,
I could hear my attic door being opened.
- We open the door,
And there's my best friend, like, crying and just frantic.
- And he told me I needed to crawl and not look back.
♪ ♪
He's gonna shoot me right here, and I'm gonna die.
[gun clicks]