Stranger Around The House
My house is on the main road in a nice neighborhood, but is secluded by trees and not as visible as the rest of the houses on the street. My backyard is cut off by a wooded area and the right side of my house has a large yard, but is not visible at night due to no street lamps. There is a stop sign in front of my house at a three-way intersection, and the only time anyone really notices my house is when they come to that stop. Across the street is a field that belongs to the house cattycorner to us.
In daytime, it is not unusual to see the occasional jogger, dog walker, etc. At night, since it is a main road with steady traffic and limited lighting, it is rare to find any pedestrians. Our neighbors are quiet and are seen only enough to know what they look like in passing.
We have not had any problems since we moved into the house three years prior until about seven months ago. My dog, an Australian Shepard, usually stays outside up until my husband and I go to bed. She had been barking more than usual, but we just brushed it off, thinking there was another dog or even a deer nearby. We hadn't noticed anything strange in our neighborhood, so there was no reason for us to be alarmed at the time.
On a rainy night around 9 pm, a friend of mine was coming for her customary twice-weekly visit. She called to signal that she was pulling into the driveway, so I started to walk towards the door to let her in. As I walked into the living room, she began to bang on the door frantically. I opened the door and she nearly knocked me over as she entered, quickly closing and locking the door behind us.
I asked what was wrong, and she said that when was at the stop sign she glanced over at the field, where our neighbors were growing corn at the time, and saw a man standing there. As she was getting out of her car, he began to walk towards her but she made it to my door before he could cross the street. My husband, after hearing this, went out to search the property for this person, but never saw him.
Since that incident, I saw the man myself every few days for the next three or four months. I would see him standing in the cornfield, staring at my house. The sightings always occurred right at dusk, when everything started to become dark. I had called the police, but by the time they showed up there would be no trace of the stranger. However, after the corn was cut down, I did not see him again.
(I'm not sure if what happens next is the same man, but I am scared either way)
Fast forward to about a month ago. My husband works an hour-and-a-half away at a prison. While I was at work, he called me to tell me not to be gone after dark and to make sure all the windows and doors were always locked. The reason for this was, a former inmate had come to the door asking to do odd jobs around the house (clean the gutters, mow the lawn, etc.) and recognized my husband. He, of course, told the inmate no thank you, and asked him to not return. I know that after people get out of jail/prison that they sometimes look for odd jobs in the area, but the strange thing about this is that my husband asked a few neighbors if he had come to their homes looking for work, and each one of them said that he had not.
About a week later, I was once gain at work and my husband had left for work. My mom, who was watching my baby at my house, called and said that a man came to the door exactly fifteen minutes after my husband had left and said that we were expecting him to come and paint something in the house. He had no supplies, and he kept trying to look around her into the house. She felt very uneasy and told him that he would have to come back another time, since we did not tell her we were expecting anyone. When she described him, my heart sank. It was the inmate.
Since then, we have not seen anyone out of the ordinary, but that does not stop my dogs from barking and us hearing strange noises outside. Our sensor light on the side of the house will come on, which could be attributed to animals, but it seems to happen more frequently than it used to. The past week I have had someone stay at the house until my husband got home from work, and nothing happened, the light did not even come on. However last night, while I was home alone, I opened my back door to go onto my deck for a smoke. I guess the noise from the door opening startled what or whoever was out there, and I heard them run under my deck. I noticed that the sensor light was on. I did not smoke that cigarette or any others for the rest of the night.
Though we have not seen a person, I am still scared to death of what could happen. I will update if anything else happens.
EDIT: Wow, thank you all for your concern and your advice! I am going to do everything I can to catch this guy so I can feel safe at home again. There is another little thing that started happening within the past two weeks, not sure if it is linked. I have noticed a black Ford truck that gets behind me in the mornings on my way to work, but figured it was probably someone on their way to work as I was, and have to go the same route, which is common because the road where my house is, is a main road not only in the neighborhood but also in town and leads to many different businesses. The truck didnt follow me to the exact road that my office is on, but kept going straight. I've been a little more aware of my surroundings since the incident night before last, so I did notice when yesterday I was out for a smoke at the office, and a black truck was sitting in the church parking lot that is on the hill above us, facing my office. Usually there are only two or three different vehicles there, as they have a day care in this church during the week. I had never seen this truck there, and thought is was strange that it looked exactly like the one that I had been seeing behind me, but black ford trucks are very common. I do know it hadn't been there very long though, because I had left the office for lunch and returned after an hour and never saw it either time. I informed the people that I work with of what has been happening and told them to look out for anything strange. I got a call from a coworker last night saying that the truck left a few minutes after me.
EDIT 2: I am going to copy and paste what I posted below in reply to a comment:
I've been meaning to update.... Not a lot has happened except a strange thing I think it was Tuesday? Not exactly sure of the day, but it was last week.....
My sister-in-law has been staying at my house on nights that my husband works late. We both went to bed around 10, and every night before bed I make sure all doors and windows are locked and my sliding glass door has a stick in the track to stop it from opening far, if someone were to try to pick the lock and break in it only opens a couple of inches before the stick stops it. I CLEARLY remember checking to make sure it was in the track that night. My husband came home at 1am and came straight to bed, having to walk through the dining room where the sliding glass door is. At some point during the night, I remember my dog waking me up by barking in the dining room area, but I was so exhausted I did not wake up completely. The next morning, my husband woke up at 6 to feed the baby, and the door was open all the way to the stick. It was below freezing that night so my husband would have known if the door was open already when he came home at 1 the night before. I know it wasn't any of us sleep walking because my dog would not barked at us, because she knows us.
There were no footprints in the snow. Nothing in the house had been touched. I'm not sure how that could have happened, unless someone was already in the house. We checked downstairs and there was no one and nothing had been moved. I just.... I don't know.
EDIT 3: okay I finally got around to taking a picture of that "dirt room". This picture just doesn't do it justice to how creepy it really is. Behind the black tarp thing is nothing but dirt that leads to outside, I'm assuming. I mean, why else would there be dirt piled up along "walls" in a random basement room? I think they started to make a room and just didn't finish it for whatever reason. Sorry for the mess, we just kind of throw shit in there. http://imgur.com/Il575u6 But I'm going to be honest, and I know this isn't the place to talk about the paranormal so I won't go into detail, but I'm not so sure the recent happenings (like the door being open, and the other night doors were slamming down my hallway, footsteps, etc) are from an actual person. My husband and I cleaned the whole house, basement and all last night and there was no sign that anyone has been in the house but us. Like I said though, this is not the place for paranormal, so that is all I am saying.
#LetsNotMeet #Unexplained/Paranormal #Person/Stalker #Building/aa/Basement