Story I found on Reddit (Long)

[slicktop]

Story I saw on the front page, fear inducing and I could see people really being spooked if it were a movie.

A little over two weeks ago, my girlfriend, our two dogs and cats and I had all moved into a new construction home. It was on a short street with about 12-13 plots all for new homes being built in the area as part of some new construction groups "test run." Because of this, the homes were lavish, at least to our standards, and cheaper than most other homes of half the quality. At first the price shocked us, but given that we'd been crammed into a 2 bedroom, 900 square ft home with all 4 animals and ourselves with next to no storage space, we were willing to take a plunge and move out to just about anywhere. The new home was about 1,800 square ft, had 3 bedrooms and a bonus room, a backyard big enough for the pups to run around in and enjoy, and most importantly, no neighbors, at least not yet which meant things would be quite. Our last house had been about 2 miles away from the airport and highway, which meant any time of the day we were hearing planes landing and taking off, and 60 mile an hour traffic. Our dogs liked to bark at just about anything, including their shadows and now the only thing we had to worry about was builders in the lots next to ours for the next couple months to finish the new homes, and that was a given when we moved in and something we could handle considering the cost of the home.

The builder met with us personally, laid out his construction plan and assured us the other homes would fill the remaining plots in the next 4-5 months, and since we'd have to deal with the racket, he'd personally cover our HOA fees, make sure his landscapers kept our lawn trimmed, and even gave us the first installation package of a new home security system that just hit the market. I was thrilled about the home security, in large part of past issues I've had with several different break ins. I wasn't taking any chances, and so I made sure I was an expert on the system by the time the realtor left the keys with us on day one. It had one of those robotic voices, you know where it announces, "front door open," or "garage door open," I think you get the picture. A small price to pay for knowing which entry and exit point was being used at any point in time. Of course, like any home security system, the actual alarm that went off was louder than most school fire alarms. I was impressed really. The first few times my girlfriend came home she'd forgotten that it was set and the police stopped by more than once to have a laugh with us about it. They understood the whole new construction thing, new house, new bells and whistles, etc. To top everything off, I could access the alarm system from an app on my phone which made me even more secure, knowing that if we ever left the house and animals unguarded and weren't sure if we'd plugged in the alarm code, I could easily access it from anywhere and make sure things were secure. Here's where things get interesting though, the company behind the alarm system, they were called ZenTeke Security. I hadn't thought of it at first, but aside from the small wire flag in the corner or the front yard and an emblem of ZTS, I couldn't find any actual reference online to them. I searched for a website, a phone number, anything to help in case I ever forgot how to use a certain feature on the system or had to reset the code and couldn't figure it out myself. I got ahold of the home builder one day on my way out the door and he just said that they were relatively unknown still, and so they were still getting everything set up, a web base, direct line, etc. He said they were local, and gave me an address if I ever wanted to go down there, but being on the verge of a final at work for being late, I stuffed the address in my pocket and forgot about it. Any who, moving on to today, and this is where the weird shit started happening.

I worked early because of overtime and so I left the house around 8:30am when I usually work the swing shift and don't start until 11am. My girlfriend usually has class on Wednesdays from 1pm-4:30 and then works a few hours at her colleges student union building. She gets home around 7-7:30 and usually we run into each other since it's the same time I'm usually off work. Tonight though, I beat her home and she had worse luck with traffic coming from the opposite side of town. Walking into the new house, I immediately noticed something was off. The dogs hadn't bombarded me through the door like they usually do when we walk in. Instead, I peered from the entry way through the kitchen to the back door and noticed them running around in the backyard. First off, the dogs can't be left outside all day while we're gone because they bark at anything including their shadow. We hadn't wanted ot leave them out to annoy the builders during the day so we'd been keeping them inside. Secondly, the blinds to the backdoor were open, and I always have them closed for privacy, and that went for any blinds in the house. Even living in a new home, my girlfriends still home for part of the days and I don't need any sweaty builders looking to take a break and play peeping tom while my girlfriend roams the house. The last thing that was off, and something I hadn't noticed until I'd taken a few steps into the house was that the floor vents, at least the one right inside the front door entry way and in the living room next to the fire place were flipped open. The new house had hardwood floors and so any air coming out of the vents made for quite an eerie sound. A few more steps inside and the cats came blasting out of the master bedroom. We'd made it clear when we moved in that the cats weren't allowed in there when no one was home because they were still figuring out the new space, and we didn't want them shitting under out bed. My girlfriend was always good about keeping them out when she left for class, and I was never here during the day unless it was Thursday or Friday for my days off. I closed the front door behind me to keep the cats from getting out, and took a quick peak around the house. Call me paranoid, but I even checked the crawl space, the trash cans in the garage and underneath the counter tops to see if someone was by chance, stowed away inside my house. Then it dawned on me, the alarm system hadn't gone off when I came inside.

No "front door open," no "garage door open," and no small chime to remind me to plug in the code and disarm it. I walked back to the entry way where the alarm panel was and woke the touch display. The system read "armed - silent - delayed - error - call admin." I pressed a few more buttons trying to navigate away from the error but nothing on the screen was responding. Just then, my girlfriend came through the door and the alarm went blaring off, full volume and no matter what I pressed on the alarm panel, it wouldn't shut off. The dogs started barking, the cats when crazy and started hissing at the dogs, and my girlfriend and I had our hands covering our ears. Not thinking straight enough thanks to the piercing noise, I bashed my fist against the screen. The noise continued, but the display shut off. My girlfriend motioned to the garage, and went out to flip the breakers. The noise finally stopped a few moments later, but now we had a house without power. We flipped the breakers back over to give the house power, but the alarm came back on. It's been a couple hours now, and it's well passed 9pm. We can't get ahold of the builder to ask him about the alarm system and the crumpled up address in my pocket has bled and smeared on the paper he wrote the it on. We're currently sitting upstairs in our bonus room with a few candles, the pups and the cats, and I just finished sharing everything that happened and what I saw when I first came home, and needless to say, my girlfriend and I are a bit spooked. Thankfully, the one box we have with candles was throw up here since we haven't finished unpacking the miscellaneous shit, and the bonus room has a balcony for me to smoke from. My apologies for any spelling mistakes or grammar, as I've written most of this from my iPhone, and chain smoking cigarettes. As ridiculous as it sounds, we're both a bit too antsy to go downstairs and continue checking things out, and I have a gut feeling we shouldn't leave the bonus room. I'll update tomorrow as soon we get ahold of the builder and hopefully we get things sorted out with the alarm system and weird shit stops happening.

One last thing though, and if anyone else can maybe shed some light on this as home owners too, there's a section of the ceiling in the bonus room that can be lifted up to go into the attic area of the house. Are they supposed to be locked? We had one in our home before, and to my knowledge there shouldn't be a lock on them. I just noticed too that there looks to be a few paint shavings and bits of insulation on the ground beneath it where my girlfriend and I have been sitting, so I know it's been opened before, but there's no way to open it now. We haven't spent a whole lot of time up here since moving in, so maybe the paint chips and insulation have been here all along? Maybe the attics blocked from the inside by a piece of wood that was cut too long in the frame of the house.. I'm just throwing out ideas to make myself feel better I guess. If anyone has better ideas, outside of destroying the ceiling to my house so I can get it open to find out, I'm up for suggestions.

[Update]:
My girlfriend and I managed to nut up and go downstairs, let the dogs out to piss and searched things pretty well through with a couple flashlights we had stuffed in our "junk drawer." Nothing else seemed out of place aside from the few things I listed above, and she assured me that she had left the blinds closed and the bedroom locked up when she left for class earlier in the day. We secured all the doors and windows, made sure everything was locked up and moved ourselves to the master bedroom, dogs, cats, all of us. We lit some more candles and made sure we even kept a chair against the bedroom door and managed to get some sleep. Aside from the cats playing around all night and knocking some shit off the dresser, the night was relatively normal.

Woke up this morning to the dogs barking and the sound of construction next door, and so I got dressed and scoped around outside to find the builder. I saw his truck down the road in front of one of the empty plots, and this was around 8am. He was sitting in the front seat, talking on his phone and yelling at someone, maybe an ex wife or girlfriend. I only say that because I heard something along the lines of, "you can't keep me from seeing them," a few derogatory terms and finally it ended with "I don't have the child support." That's when he saw me approaching his truck.

He quickly changed his tone and greeted me, and I went into what happened with the alarm, not having power all night and wanting to get in touch with the alarm company. He came over, flipped our breakers and all our lights came back on, but no alarm. He opened the front door, and sure as shit, "front door open." I asked him to write down the companies address again and this time I made sure to copy it onto my phone so I wouldn't have to worry about losing it. I didn't mention anything else, I thought that info was better kept to ourselves until we had some more information, and I really wasn't interested in having him in our house any longer than necessary. I just kept getting a bad vibe. My girlfriend still had class today, so I was left with the animals and my thoughts to keep my company, so I made a call to have the locks changed, but they can't come by until later this evening. I scoped the address on google maps and found an empty plot of land. Fancy that, right? Just a vacant block, right between two businesses on the other side of town and on the street view, I could see a sign that even read "for lease - call (xxx-xxx-xxxx)."

At this point, I don't have a whole lot else to go on so I'm making a trip to homedepot to invest in some better tools so hopefully get the attic access opened up, and see if maybe anything is up there, or at least any trace of someone recently being there.

I'll keep you guys updated as soon as I have more to go off of, and thanks for the advice so far.


Update as of 5/29-5/30

So, I had a short update yesterday that I threw onto the original post, and you guys can check that out here. [no link]

5/29

I ended up going to home depot and talking to a few employees about doing some "home improvements." I mentioned how I needed to knock out some drywall to make an extension to a bedroom, and needed the appropriate equipment to repair the wall afterwards. They showed me a few things, and ultimately I realized that this sort of thing was outside my budget. I settled with getting a mallet, a drill and some drill bits, and even some door and chain locks. I figured if I couldn't at least get the damn attic access open, I could secure the shit out of it and any other doors in the house without locks. I also managed to get a stud finder, for some reason it sounded like a good idea. On my way home, I drove passed the address my builder had given me for ZenTeke and low and behold, an empty lot like google maps had shown me. Nothing out of the ordinary, in fact it was so ordinary that I decided to get out of my car and take a look. I parked at the business next door, it was one of those title loans places, and started scoping out the dirt. After a few minutes of finding a whole lot of nothing, I came across another fire flag with ZTS on it. This was about as far as ZenTeke had let me come, so I'm still pretty dry on any information there. If you guys can do some research and find anything, I'd appreciate any tips or direction of where to take it now. I headed back to my car, and just before I left I noticed the title loans business had the same wire flag outside. I walked inside, glass window between you and the receptionist, she pressed a button and spoke through the small speaker on the wall and asked how I was doing. I mentioned ZenTeke and her face drained of color. It was as if she knew something, but wasn't allowed to say. She followed up with, "I don't know anything about the system, I just cover the day shifts. The night guys who close up know more." I considered it, and maybe I'd go back later in the evening.

I made it home around lunch time and wasn't expecting to see my girlfriend. She had mentioned earlier before I left that she would be out early for class for an early lecture. I pulled into the driveway, curious that she was still home and came inside with my tools and she was sitting at the kitchen table, bawling her eyes out. Her cousin had passed away this morning and she found out about it before leaving for class, car accident of some sort. She was a mess. Her cousin was her best friend, she grew up with her, they were close and when we moved down here they lost touch for the sake of school and our lives just getting generally busier. She had made plans to fly out this afternoon to be with her family, and wanted me to come but I couldn't get off work for the next few days so this wasn't an option. I'd stay here, take care of the animals and I promised to have this entire situation figured out with the house, the alarm, etc. I helped her pack some things, consoled her as much as I could, and ended up driving her to the airport around 2:30-3pm. She flew out at 4 and once I knew she made it safely onto the plain, she turned off her phone. It was only an hour and a half flight, so I made my way home. When I pulled up, something seemed off. I looked up to the balcony above the driveway, and the blinds were open. I mentioned in my first post, that I keep all the blinds closed for privacy sake when my girlfriends at the house alone during the day. They're only open when we're home, and we hadn't been up to the bonus room and messed with the blinds since last night. We definitely hadn't opened them all the way. I got out of my car, nearly sprinted to the front door and as soon as I got my key in the locking mechanism, the alarm went off. What the fuck? I came inside, tapped on the display and was able to put in our alarm code and shut the damn thing off. The dogs were back in the back yard again, and the bedroom door was open. I know I'd personally closed it once we finished packing, and then I noticed my tools weren't on the table where I'd left them. Instead, they were scattered across the floor, and the chain locks were missing. Jesus chirst, what else had been tampered with? I ran upstairs, checked the bonus room and sure as shit, there were more paint chips and a noticeable amount of insulation pieces on the ground. Someone had been inside my fucking house again. I dialed 911, and within 15 minutes, a cruiser showed up.

It was one of the regular guys who had come by because of a few alarm hiccups, and I explained everything to him. I told him everything down to the floor vents, the blinds and coming home to my dogs being locked outside, the attic access, and he agreed to take a look at things. He couldn't do much, but we did manage to get the attic opened up. I used the mallet I'd bought earlier, and he was able to crawl up there and take a look. It took him a few minutes, but he peaked out over the edge of the hole in the ceiling and dropped down the chain locks. He gave me one of those, "Are you serious? You had me crawl up here for this?" looks. He wasn't amused, and I was dumbfounded. There isn't a way that's explainable in my mind that those locks, the locks that still had the bar codes on them from the store, could have ended up in the attic between the time I left to take my girlfriend to the airport and came home. Not unless someone had forced entry into my home.
I finally convinced the officer to have CSI come out and at least wipe a few things down for prints, but after talking to them, they could assure me of a couple things.

-This was new construction and there's going to be alot of prints from the builders, electricians, and anyone else who helped set up and build the home.

-Whatever they found wouldn't be discovered in an hour long time stamp like the TV show, and I'd be waiting at least a couple days for the results.

This was as close as I was going to get to finding some answers, and I wasn't willing to risk my privacy any longer. Someones been watching my home, watching when we leave and when we're not paying attention. Someone, whether it be the builder or his crew, or this ZenTeke place, someone's been in here, and I intend on figuring out who. I managed to install the new locks on the front and back doors, along with the chains. I had a lock smith come over and change all the primary locks to the house, including two separate keys for the deadbolt and the standard lock on both the front and back door. I locked the garage door manually, and pulled the plug on the box on the ceiling so no power at all was coming to it, and I waited. I waited and waited and ended up passing out in the living room and didn't wake up until one of the cats had come and hopped up onto my lap. I looked at my phone, and it was almost 7:30pm. No missed calls from my girlfriend, and this worried me. I'd called her 2-3 times, and kept getting her voicemail. I assumed it just died on the plane or close after she landed and she's just with her family, and not concerned about her cell right now. No worries there.

5/30

I woke up today, and still no missed calls from my girlfriend for me to even know if she landed safely or not and got to her family. I checked everything out and the house looks normal, no interference from anyone other than me, and the animals kept quite all night which is strange. I can here the builders next door working, but I can't help but feel like they're keeping one eye on my house at all times. Just the way they're walking, they seem like they're purposely trying to someone face my direction. I can see them through the bedroom window, and also from the balcony. I thought I smelled something weird, and so I spent the first hour this morning undoing every vent I could find, both floor vents, wall vents and even the ones on the ceiling. I couldn't find a source for the smell, so maybe I'm just finally letting the paranoia get to me. I'll see how today goes, and update when I have anything more, but I have a good feeling that if I leave today, for even an hour, there's going to be something off when I come home. Something always is. I've closed all the blinds, locked all the windows and the doors, both front and back have new locks, the garage isn't opening for anything. The dogs are inside, cats are out of the master bedroom, I can't think of anything else to try. I've locked the chain on the backdoor, but it's kind of hard with the front, so we'll see how that goes.

I'm going to go get ahold of my brother, he's about a 45 minute drive away and see if he wants to do something today. Maybe he'll come down and help me sort some of this out. I'm open for suggestions guys, so please, leave me anything you can think of.


Update 2

5/30 - 5/31

So yesterday, I ended up getting ahold of my brother and he came over so I didn't have to leave and risk anything else happening. Luckily, he doesn't even live an hour away, and he was in the area. As soon as he got here, we sat down and I explained everything that had been happening and since he's worked construction in the past, he ended up agreeing with alot of the things you guys have mentioned in the comments. False walls, how easy it would be for builders to include hidden entry points to homes, knowing the layout even better than I do, etc. I'll just jump right into things.

First thing, I showed him the entire floor plan, walked him through every room, showed him every space and crevice, all the vents, etc. Since he's built homes and done all sorts of construction before, he had a much better idea on what to look for than I did. He checked the doors and windows for any sign of forced entry, especially with the windows, any hint that someone had maybe crawled through them, and left any trace on the outside, and opened up every vent and made sure there wasn't any source to that smell I had mentioned. He couldn't find anything obvious, but he wasn't satisfied with giving up. He wanted to talk to the builder, but before we did, I showed him the alarm system and how it worked. It had been disabled since the police had come over the day before, and so there wasn't a chance of it going off again unwanted. This is where he didn't have much expertise. He wasn't sure on anything when it came to the system, but we agreed to keep things turned off until we had a better idea about everything else.

He wanted to talk to the builder, and so I made sure everything was locked up, doors were closed, dogs were inside and cats kept out of the bedroom, windows closed and locked, etc.

(This was before someone mentioned keeping a log of things.)

We came outside, I made sure to lock the door behind us, and we walked down the road to where the builders truck was. I cam eup to him, and immediately he asked why the police were over the day before and if everything was okay. I played it off as another alarm malfunction and that it wasn't anything, he seemed more curious than he needed to be though. My brother started in on conversation, trying to reel him in with talk about mutual employment, how he's done construction and home building, and they got off track for a moment before I realized what my brother was doing. I just sort of stood there, not knowing **** about building houses and trailed off. I lit up a cigarette and just hung around for a minute when my phone went off. It was my girlfriend, she'd lost her phone after getting off the plane and she'd been with her family since the airport. It wasn't a huge deal, I was just glad she was okay, and in the background, I could here her mom and sister talking over her. She was fine, that's all I needed to know. I walked back down the street, gave her a quick summary of what had been going on since she left and assured her not to worry, that my brother had come over and I was going to convince him to stay through the weekend to help us sort things out. She had a sigh of relief, knowing I wasn't alone to do all of this and I suggested she stayed with family a few extra days for everything going on, and that I'd have this all resolved so she wouldn't have to come home to more stress. Given the situation, she agreed after a few minutes of convincing and I let her get back to her family. When I finished up on the phone, my brother had come up to me and just motioned for us to go. We'd only been outside for maybe 10 minutes, but he was serious about something. We walked back to the house, I put the key in the locking mechanism and as soon as I opened the door, the alarm system started blaring again. I ran up to the panel, plugged in the code, but it wasn't shutting off, the noise kept screaming through my house. The dogs started barking bloody murder and finally, my brother pulled out his keys and wedged it between the system panel and the wall and popped it right off. The noise stopped, the ringing in my ears kept going for a few minutes, but when it ceased, he looked me in the face and said we needed to leave, get some lunch, just get out of the house for a little bit. I knew not to argue with him when he had a certain look on his face, and this was the look.

We did a walk through of the house, nothing seemed out of place this time, but he assured me something would be when we came home. I decided to keep the dogs outside, just since they were so riled up, and everything else was still locked. We got in his jeep, and left. We decided just to go about a mile or two away, and sat down at a diner by the name of Rocky's. Not important, but they have incredible onion rings. If you have one in your area, go. They'll settle your nerves better than any whiskey. We sat down, and he immediately brought up a few things.

-Did you get the universal keys for the in house locks when you moved in, did I even check?

-Have I personally been up in the attic access since getting it open to see if there was anything up there aside from insulation and the framing of the house.

-Have I been unusually congested late at night either right before or any time after we moved into the house leading up to recently?

-Have I background checked anything about the guy who built my house.

I didn't know about the universal in home keys for the locks inside. Me and my girlfriends last house didn't have them, and we'd never been given them. I hadn't known where to check until my brother informed me that honest builders leave them on top of the door frames of any rooms with locks.

I hadn't been in the attic myself at all. The officer who came by the other day has been the only person I've seen actually go up there, and that was when he dropped down the chain locks. I hadn't managed to go up there myself to see anything.

I hadn't been congested or anything that I'd remembered, but my girlfriend had been complaining about feeling sick a few nights of the week since we moved in, and more times than not, she'd get up in the middle of the night and cough up flem, loogies, etc before she'd be able to come back and get to sleep. She wasn't allergic to the animals or anything, and it was weird but I hadn't thought much of it.

I hadn't looked much into the builder either, in fact I knew about as much about him as I do most strangers, aside from his name and that he builds houses.

My brother almost looked dumbfounded, like I'd done something wrong or bad. He was giving me that "wounded puppy dog look." That's when he went into a few things that really scared me. He explained that the universal keys for the inside locks were just little pieces of thin metal with a flat edge. He went into a few horror stories form the past when he was building homes and how he'd had a few squatters from a crew he worked with that disappeared when the homes finished being built. It ended up that they hid up in the attic access and robber the home owners after they moved in. He mentioned how they'd basically made camp up there and during they day when the owners would leave for work, they'd sneak down and steal things and leave through the back doors and then hide up there again before anyone noticed. They'd use the bathrooms and even the shower during the day and wouldn't leave a trace. This went on for a couple weeks and once they'd taken everything that the owners wouldn't notice up front, they snuck out without even being noticed. They bragged about it, it was sick, and he'd reported them to the authorities but nothing came of it. They weren't able to prove it once things had happened.

As far as the congestion, he'd already checked the vents but wasn't entirely convinced that nothing was there knowing that my girlfriend had the congestion. One other horror story he had was from one of the first construction jobs he'd done. The builder had laced some of the vents with a chemical, scentless that made the home owners sick, congested, you name it. It was a twisted joke, nothing meant to kill or seriously injure someone, but again, the compound was untraceable and scentless, he just heard the word from mouth, and suggested we double and tripped check things to make sure.

Lastly, he wanted to look into the builder, get a background check and make sure he was up to snuff with now black marks to worry about. This stuff was already full of red flags, and he wanted to make sure we covered all our basis to get this situation taken care of. We were getting ready to finish up and leave when my phone went off. It was the alarm app, someone was inside my house, and had used the front door. It was fucking locked, the system panel was off the wall, this was it, this we had something! We practically jumped up from the table, bolted outside, jumped in the car and we were back to my house within a couple minutes. We could hear the alarm going off from the driveway, and my dogs were barking in the backyard. The door was closed, locked even, and when we came inside, the fucking panel was back on the wall. I plugged in the code, and it turned off. Things were escalating. I let my dogs in, found the cats huddled underneath the couch, and we came up with a plan.

My girlfriend and I together had a few laptops and a desk top computer, and my brother suggested we enable all the webcams but put the screens to sleep. Leave one in the bedroom, one upstairs in the bonus room, another in the living room and make sure they're always running, always recording, and to not turn them off until we had something. We managed to get into the attic access, but didn't see anything obvious for someone being up there. No wood piece sticking out to keep it firmly closed, nothing that showed it had been previously barricaded, but between a couple of the wood panels, it had looked worn down like someone had been sitting between the two. Nothing else stood out, so my brother suggested I leave the close the panel, and we drill it shut, just like you guys had also suggested. After that, we were out of immediate ideas.

I jumped on here to check some of your comments, looking for anymore we could immediately implement and we both started a log to keep track of when we used certain doors, when we closed them, opened them, time stamps for whenever we stepped outside to smoke, and we even ran through and checked each point regularly. We did another check on all the vents, we didn't find any cameras or fiberoptic wires, nothing to suggest someone had been tampering with anything for the ventilation, but just to be safe, we turned off the air and even kept log of that. We made sure no settings on the panel were set to automatic, and made sure every vent stopped blowing air also. He showed me on the floor vents, how if you reach in, you can fold a thin piece of metal opened or closed, and we closed all of them and added it to our logs. Those aren't going to be blown open by any air, and had to manually be opened and closed.

Everything was secure. The doors, windows, vents, attic access, the extra chain locks, everything. My brother had one last idea, and that was the universal keys for the indoor locks above the door frames. Usually, when the builders finish up homes, they're left above the frames of every door with a lock minus the front and back door, and usually the garage access. We grabbed a kitchen chair, and checked above each door frame. I had the universal keys, but my brother told me not to touch them Instead, we took a picture of each top of the frame, and logged where each key was in case whoever was messing around inside when I was gone was using them, we'd be able to tell since I hadn't known about them until now, and hadn't ever used them. A great idea! I was taking anything into consideration at this point, any ideas were worth a shot.

My brother ended up staying the night, crashing on the couch and pulling the alarm panel off the wall again for the evening. I slept in my bedroom, and kept the door open since there was a straight shot to the living room and front door from where I laid. We woke up this morning and everything was normal, nothing was out of the ordinary, the doors were all exactly how they'd been on our logs, and the same went for the keys on the door frames. I'm at work, and I've been typing this up for the last hour but my brother agreed to stay over at the house and keep an eye on things, and he's periodically updating me and the logs as he goes. Sorry it took so long for the update, and I'll give you guys more when I have it. I'm still open for suggestions if you guys have them, so please feel free.

I can't help but think that I'm still missing something, not checking something, and it's right under my nose. Help me out guys.


Update 3

5/31

So over the course of work yesterday I took alot of what you guys suggested into consideration. I ended up getting off late, around 8:30 and the sun was pretty much down. I walked inside, no alarm going off thankfully, and my brother was sitting on the couch playing on my iPad. He greeted me, and said he had a few new ideas of his own for us to try tonight, and at first was I was lost considering we'd be around the entire time and nothings happened when we've been home, but he assured me it was worth investigating. The new houses being built along the street were still in the early stages. That meant there was open floor plans for anyone to walk into and check out, and no locked doors to stop us. I wasn't entirely sure where he was going with things, but given that he hadn't led me astray yet, I was all ears. I brought up a few ideas you guys listed in the comments and he jumped over them, confidant that we'd soon be at the end of all of this but if not, we could look into them. My brother wanted to settle things tonight and get to the bottom of all of this. He told me to grab a flashlight, put on something dark to wear so no headlights would see us through the framing if a car drove by, and to lock everything up. I did as he asked, curious as hell as to what he was thinking.

Instead of coming out of the front door, we left through the back yard. I had a gate, but we ended up jumping the fence and into where the backyard would be next door to the right. Currently, my house was the only one finished and so everything else was just dirt, wood piles and spare tools and the skeleton of homes being built. We crept through the framing, located hwat was going to be the bathrooms and bedrooms, kitchen, closests, etc. Eventually, my brother found what he'd been looking for. He motioned for me to come over to where he was crouching, over a flat panel of wood on the ground in what was the underspace of the stairs. My house had stairs also, and this was where my crawl space was. I'd done a quick look down there, and my brother had done another with me when he came down but he had a certain look in his eyes. He lifted up the panel, and low and behold the crawl space was right there. We slipped down into it, down on all fours and looked up at me and motioned for me to jump down also. I bit down on my flashlight and crawled over the edge right behind him. He flipped his light in the direction my house would be, and started crawling that way. Eventually, we hit a wall. We felt around from one side to the other, patting down the black tarp that lined everything in the crawl space and eventually, my brother found something. There was a piece of tarp, that when pressed against, didn't stop against the wall. My brother felt all around and found where the piece ended and shuffled it to the side and beneath him. There was a tunnel, only about 15-20 feet long by the looks of it, and in that moment, all of my fears came to life. I crawled in front of him, down the tunnel and sure as shit, we popped up underneath my house, and found the entrance to my crawl space. We'd finally done it, we'd figured out how they were getting inside undetected, we'd found the proof and along with it, and for a brief moment, I had a sigh of relief. My brother on the other hand looked terrified. He pressed his hands against the crawl space enterance and it wouldn't budge, we both pressed against it but even together we couldn't get it to open or give even a little bit. We heard shuffling above and I knew someone was in my house, right now, they'd been waiting all day, just in case we left. They'd come up as soon as soon as we locked the door and come into the back yard. I knew for a fact that nothing was above my crawl space, nothing to block our entarance. We scurried acorss the black tarp, back to the tunnel between the under bellies of the homes and made our way back to the other side. It took us a few minutes but we finally found the crawl space entrance to exit. Thankfully it wasn't blocked like mine. We crawled back to the surface and were about to bolt back over to my home when my brother stopped me. He pulled me in close and whispered that we should wait. We should see if he comes back. I had a better idea in mind, to cover his exit point, and force him into my house with us there waiting. We quickly searched for something heavy to put on top of the plank and after a moment, we found a pile of cinder blocks. We covered the wood plank with 7-8 of them, easily over 250-300lbs worth and then we headed back towards my house.

Keys in hand, we run back to my house and I couldn't unlock the door fast enough. Before we even opened the door, I could hear my dogs barking, but it wasn't because of the alarm, whoever had been there, still was. We scanned the room, I made sure to lock the door behind us when we came in, and we migrated from room to room until the onyl place left was upstairs. We heard rustling, it was coming from the bonus room. We crept up each stair one by one and finally I heard a large thud as if someone had crashed into the door. They knew we were close, they knew they had no time to get back to the crawlspace and get away. We opened the door right after the thud and right before he left our field of vision, we saw the blur of someone in black, right as they cleared the balcony. I heard the sound of glass breaking; he'd used my car to break his fall. We ran to the railing but he was gone. All we could hear was the faint sound shoes hitting cement as they got father and farther away.

We got ahold of the police and not even 10 minutes later, a couple crusiers showed up. One of the officers was the usual who'd shown up a few times before, and tonight was his lucky night. We showed them the crawl space, the tunnel between my house and the one next door, gave as good of a description as we could of the guy who we almost caught, and they had CSI come back out to do a sweep of things for another round of prints. The did the railing, the door knobs, as much as they could of the crawl spaces, and collected any evidence they could from my car and the impact. I told them about the alarm company, ZenTeke, and they'd never once heard of them, but that didn't matter. There was some blood, and I was convinced we had this fucker and I'd finally be done with everything. I gave them all the information I had on the builder nad his crew, gave them a rough profile for each based on everything I'd found out or caught onto since moving in, adn they said they'd get back to me with everything they could. Through all of this, and not until the officers left for the night, I'd forgotten that the webcams had been running, one of which was in the bonus room. My brother and I sat down in front of the laptop and fast forarded to tonight, right around the time I'd gotten home and when we left to check out the floor plan of the other house. This is where things got strange. We watched up until the point where the bonus room door opened and the man came inside. He never once made facial contact with the webcam, and we'd placed it convieniently where you'd have to in order to access the balcony door. That's when we noticed the balcony door swing open, but he wasn't alone. The intruder opened the door, and then came back in the direction of the webcam and the entrance to the bonus room while the other vaulted off the balcony. We'd swept the entire house with the police, the attic access was closed off and drilled shut and even the crawl space was empty. If one jumped off the balcony, then where was the other who'd stayed in the bonus room? At that moment, the color drained out of my brothers face. He got up from the computer and backed up towards the balcony. He stepped out, lit up a cigarette and just stood there in the doorway, shaking. I came out, lit one up with him and asked him what was going on. He just looked at me and said, "false walls." At that point, I'm sure the color drained out of my face also. There had to be one, well hidden and easily accessed in the bonus room. There just had to be.

We spent the better part of an hour scanning every square inch of the room, knocking on every square inch of the wall, the ceiling, the floor even to see if there was anything short of a fucking teleporter hidden up here. We couldn't find shit. Not a single thing, and it wasn't without putting a few holes in the wall to aid our search. We had nothing except an answer for how they were getting in and out. That, and the fear that whoever was here, might still be. We can't be certain, but one thing we do know is that we're not staying in the house tonight. We can't trust it now that we've made progress in the right direction. We know their plan, we know how they were getting in, and now we feel even less safe than we did before. At least not knowing gave us the illusion of some protection. Now they've outsmarted us again, and with our luck the entire house is covered in hidden entrances and passages. I took one of your ideas and closed every door and put a piece of tap at the bottom of where they open and close. I even did it to the crawl space. We're going to get out, stay at a friends house tonight, and update the log of everything, doors closed, windows, all the tape we put out, and check back first thing in the morning. Thanks for the support and suggestions guys, I feel like I'm one step closer to getting all of this resolved, but also, one step further at the same time.

6/1

We just woke up and it's about 8:30am. I managed to get a hold of my girlfriend and they're having the funeral today so I won't be hearing from her until after. I have to head back to the house and grab a few things for work, and I'll post this when I get there. Any additional updates will come later tonight, and I'll throw an edit onto this post with any word of mouth we get from the police.

[Edit] -
Got home from work a bit late tonight guys, so I apologize that the update had taken a few. Some of you wondered if I'd brought the dogs and cats with us last night after we left, we did, and we all managed to cram into a friends house. It was temporary, so he didn't mind the minor inconvenience for an evening given everything that had happened. We got up early this morning, got back to my place to check on everything and I was pleasantly surprised to see that all of the tape strips were still in place on all the doors and the crawl space. No alarm went off when we came in and a small sense of normalcy washed over me with a sigh of relief. Aside from some glass in the driveway from the evening before, everything else looked to be in check, nothing crazy, and most importantly, the logs from the evening before matched up. I got cleaned up, made sure to update the logs for every door my brother and I used, took the tape off the bathroom for my brother and the garage in case he went out to smoke, and we compiled a list of all the valuables I had in sight. My girlfriend and I actually had quite a bit of things that your usual robber or home intruder would probably swipe up in a heart beat. Just from the things in plain sight there was several game consoles, a PlayStation 4 and an Xbox One, about a hundred games worth, an iPad and a surface tablet, iPod touch, the desktop computer and monitor, a pretty expensive stereo setup with surround sound, any jewelry she had left laying out in the bedroom or in the master bathroom, and the list in total ended up being around 25-30 of the most important, obvious items my brother and I could find laying around the house. This didn't include all of the jewelry my girlfriend had in her jewelry box, and miscellaneous things we had tucked in the closet, and quite a few other things that could have been listed.

I knew my girlfriend was busy with the funeral for her cousin, and so I left the list with my brother and finished getting ready for work, made sure everything was in place and where it should be, and he told me he was good to go. I worked my shift, got off late like I had mentioned and now I'm home and everything went as normal as normal should go from what my brother told me. It's the weekend, so he hasn't seen any of the builders, so now we're just waiting for tomorrow morning to see if any of them show up, and if they do, we're coming up with a plan on how to handle things. For some reason, we're considering discreetness considering all the flashing red and blue lights last night. I did call the police station to see about what they'd found out about the webcam footage, but they're still going through all of it and said they should have something for me come tomorrow.

Sorry for the less than exciting update, but I'll get something else posted tomorrow when I have more to share. Thanks for all the helpful tips and suggestions guys, I took the flour/sugar idea into consideration and I'm going to put it down in front of all the door ways my brother and I can spare before we run out. Front door, crawl space, backdoor and garage, bonus room, etc, and we're going to see if we can't catch anything tonight. Hopefully we get one step closer. Have a good night guys, and I hope I can provide more in my next update.


Update 4

6/1 Continued.

Last night, my brother and I came up with an attack plan for what we were going to do if the builder and his crew showed up in the morning. WHat we hadn't anticipated was that they'd show up as early as they did. More on that later, here's what happened following the short update from last night.

Our idea was to confront the builder, ask about the crawl space and hint that I'd heard a draft coming from underneath the house and that I was wondering if there were any openings. We wanted to get him on the rocks and see about scaring him for a change. We were going to see how that went if he showed up, and then check out the loan business for any additional hints or clues towards ZenTeke. If all that went smoothly, we should have been a few steps closer and in the right direction, and then following up with the police was our next check onthe list. We cracked open a few beers, bullshitted about some stoires from our childhood, and got off topic of everything that's been happening as of late. It was a nice break from all this stress to be honest, and I needed it. I managed to get ahold of my girlfriend, asked a stupid question on how the funeral went and obviously, the answer was terrible. I mean, it wasn't a fucking wedding reception, and I had so many other things on my mind that I'd let that one slip right out. She understood, especially after I caught her up on all the updates from the weekend away. She was scared and worried, but some porgress had actually been made and I assured her as much as I could that things were going to be okay. I managed to have her agree to stay with her mom and sister for a few more days, but she said she'd be coming home by wednesday no matter what.

My brother and I did another once over to all the rooms, made sure we put new strips of tape on all the doors, and I had a bag of flour that we ended up pouring a thin layer of in front of all the main doors and entry ways. We placed a storage chest over the crawl space entrance filled with various things my girlfriend and I had stored, and it weighed at least a hundred pounds or so. The crawl space door wasn't openeing without one of us noticing. One of the dogs slept with me in the bedroom, and the other one stayed out in the livingroom with my brother. That way, if something happened, we'd know from the only alarms working in the house. We shut off all the lights, double checked the doors and windows one last time and made sure not to step on any of the flour patches, and called it a night around 11:30 or so.

6/2

I woke up a couple hours later to my dog growling at the end of my bed. I looked over to the night stand, and it was just after 2:00am. I did my best to wake up, and he kept growling and letting our subtle little woofs. I leaned over to my night stand, flipped on my lamp and the room illuminated, but nothing was out of the ordianry. My dog got off the bed, and walked over to my bedroom door and layed in front of it. Light was peaking through from the living room, and I assumed my brother was just using the bathroom. I leaned down, tried to peak underneath and saw the paws of my other pup walking around the livingroom. I got down on my stomach to try and get a better peak if possible, and saw front door cracked. I immediately opened up the bedroom door, and rushed into the living room and the scent of smoke came into my nostrils. I walked up to the door, the hardwoof florr making a silent approach nearly impossible, and before I made it to the door, my brother came in. He'd stepped out for a smoke, and hadn't wanted to alarm me or the dogs and apologized if he woke me up. I sat down with him in the living room after we made sure the door had been locked, and that's when we heard foot steps upstairs. Both of us were dead silent, and the foot steps continued for at least 30 seconds before finally ceasing. The dogs had both been locked in position, woofing and showing little hints of, "hey, someones fucking here." We listened as carefully as we could, and from what we could tell, they stopped in the spare room upstairs, right across from the bonus room. We let the dogs out in the backyard, they completely scattered all fo the flour in front of the door, and we closed it behind them. In the backyard, they started barking, and we made our way to the base of the stairs. We couldn't hear any more movement, but both of us knew we'd heard something. Step by step, we carefully made our way to the top before tunring towards the spare room. The door was open, and we both knew that It had been closed before we went to bed. I slipped my hand inside the doorway and tapped the light switch on the wall. I got down, checked under the bed, looked on both sides but there was nothing. That left the closet, which should have been full of all the spare towels, toiletries, blankets and any extra shit we had for guests. The closet door was closed, but we weren't ruling anything out. We took a few steps towards the door, and opened it. The light was off and so we reached in, flipped it on and there was no one there. We patted at the walls, pulled things off the sleves, but nothing. Not a damn thing. We came back out into the upstairs hallway where the spare room, upstairs bathroom and bonus room connected, and it dawned on me. The window. I walked back into the bedroom, and the window was unlocked, he'd walked right inside and jumped right out. My brother ran downstairs, and took a flashlight with him. I had gravel and bark on the side of my house, and so if someone had jumped from the second story to the ground, we'd be able to tell from the ground. Sure as shit, there was a spot right below the window where the bark had been scattered.

We locked the window and came back downstairs and tried to come up with how someone had gotten inside. My brother thought it happened when he was smoking. He told me he'd walked down the driveway and onto the sidewalk to do a little survelance, but what he didnt' realize is that was exactly what he/they were waiting for. A moment to slip in, undetected. They'd gone upstairs between the time he'd gone outside, and I'd woken up from the dog. God dammit, we'd been so wraped up in all of this that we'd made a small mistake and they made it inside with little to no effort. Id' thought the foot prints in the flour were from my brother when he walked inside, but he'd been barefoot and the marks were clearly those of boots or shoe souls. We coudln't sleep, we weren't going to risk anything else and so we stayed up for a few more hours and made a pot of coffee. around 6:00am or so, we heard the sound of a couple vehicles pull up outside. It was a work van. It wasn't one that was usually around when the builders were, and shortly after that, the builders truck pulled up too, followed by another truck. I called the police, told them that the construction crew was here right now and they needed to get the fuck over here. My brother and I continued to watch from the window, but we didn't see the builder get out of the truck. Instead, it was someone else. I walked outside, and demanded to know who the fuck he was. He told me he was the builder for the new construction homes, and that he'd been out of town on another sight of his for the last two weeks, and that his crew was going to pick up where they'd left off. He wanted to get on sight and check on everything, just to make sure they were on schedule to start work on the homes again. That sure as hell threw me for a spin, especially when he asked me when I moved in, who the realter was who took care of things for me, and how the new house was. He said the realtor he usually works with had been out of town with him, and wondered if she'd set something up with a partner to get me moved in. Mine was the first one finished, the rough draft he called it for the rest that he was putting up, and he had barely finished having the place fumegated before he left. He apoligized for any of the smell that may have still been lingering around the time of the move in once I told him the exact date I'd gotten settled, and even showed general concearn knowing that we'd moved in so soon after he'd done it when they don't let tennents back in untilt he pesticides have successfully disepated.

At that point, I'm sure he was just as confused as I was. My brother came outside too, asked some of the same questions I did and was rewarded with the same answers. This wasn't the fucking builder, this wasn't the guy I'd been seeing the last couple weeks, and the guys getting out of the work van weren't the crew I'd reconginzed over the last couple weeks either. He had a dumb look on his face, like he thought I was joking, and then I asked to see some identification. He didn't even hesitate, and showed me his ID, and even pulled out his busniess card. Same name, same company log for the housing company, same everything. I was at a loss. By 6:15am the police showed up. They spoke with the builder, filled him in on everything that had been going on, and I told him about the crew and guy who had been claiming ot be the builder that had been around the last two weeks. We gave a description of him, everyone from the crew we could remember, and then the actual builder and police both asked me the same question.

How much progress has been made on the houses since we moved in? How much had been made in the last several days that this has all been going on?

They mapped out the work schedule and how much progress should of been made in the last two weeks, and my brother agreed. The frames for at least two or three of the houses should have been put together, and there should have been insullation in them. Wiring progress should have been started, and even plumbing should have made some headway. The builder said he barely noticed a difference in how things looked when he left to right now. He wouldn't of noticed a thing if I'd not mentioned it and come up to him at 6:00 asking who the fuck he was. The last thing I asked about was ZenTeke. He hadn't heard of them, and had no intentions on loading every house with a security system. They were spendy, and not in his budget for this project. It had been an idea early on in the first stages of the project, but never panned out. He had included the utilities panel inside the homes in case anyone wanted to have their own set up, but that's as far as he'd gone. The police hadn't come up with any leads on ZenTeke either, and after I invited the builder inside to check things out, he noticed a few things that didn't add up considering he'd built the house himself. The alarm system panel was right over the wall plate where he'd put a utility panel. He pulled the entire panel off the wall and inside there should have been several dead connections where a system could have been set up, and my house already had one. There were connections linking to several areas in my house, and after asking how long it would have taken to wire an entire system, his answer wasn' one I was looking forward to. Four or five guys who knew what they were doing could wire an entire system in a few hours if they hurried. They wouldn't need to tear apart the walls or even do alot of work to install everything. The police had an actual alarm company come out that morning and checked my entire home. They found ten cameras hidden, and they were hidden expertly. Two of them were in the living room; one in the light fixture/ceiling fan, and another in the fire alarm above the entryway. Two more were in the kitchen, wired into the display window of the microwave, and another in the display window for the stove. We found another wired into the garage box, right on the ceiling and that was only five. It took a couple more hours, but eventually we found the others. In the three bedrooms and bonus room, there had been one inside the light fixture for each room, and the last one was the worst. It was in the master bathroom, behind the mirror. I asked how the fuck something like this could have happened and so fast, and unfortunately, their answer wasn't easy to swollow. Everythings wireless now; all you need is a base connection, and everything links together like a remote control to a television. I didn't care, I just wanted all of them removed and taken care of. I asked the builder if he'd found anything else in the house that didn't match his original plans, and he only found one more thing. The bonus room upstairs. There had been an exposed piece of walling that was ruined during the final days of finishing things up. He'd left things in the hands of his crew to take care of it, and when I showed him the closet upstairs, he showed me exactly where the wall had broken. He went down to his truck and came back up with a hand drill and a few different drill bits. He drilled a small hole in the wall on the opposite side of the bedroom and showed me how thick it was. Then we drilled a hole in the closet wall, it was thinner, much thinner. You wouldn't be able to tell by looking at it, and it was still sturdy enough to lean on and withstand some pressure. He felt around for some grooves, any space to grab onto, and right where the shelving inside the closet met the edge of the wall, there was a small crease that could be pulled back with a small, flat edge. The builder pulled a flat head screw driver out of his utility belt and moved it between the wall and the shelving. It came open with little to no give, and the creases where it broke from the wall were completely unharmed. It was perfectly in place, and only opened from the one side. The space was the size of the underspace beneath a kitchen sink. You or I could have uncomfortably squeezed in there, and had enough room to still close the wall behind us. It was the perfect little cubby. The perfect hiding spot for someone who needed to quickly get out of sight.

Nothing else stood out ot the builder, aside from the crawl space tunnel, and that's being filled up today. The police had checked for prints all over the false wall space, the wiring and cameras for any prints or partials, and the alarm company did one final run through and checked every space they could for anything extra hiding out of sight, and to see if they could find any digital footprints. I called into work, got the day off considering everything coming to head, and now I'm just sort of at a loss for what to do next or how to continue. The police are going to check on the footage from my webcams and see if anything leads to finding these guys, and we're also going to check out the loan business where ZenTeke had been located to see if they can't get any leads there. They're taking things alot more seriously now, and they're going to check on the blood work too. It hasn't been long, but given that everythings escalated, they said they'll put a "rush" on the results.
Here's hoping we get somewhere, because this morning was a just a shit ton of steps back.


Update

6/2

I just want to step back from this entire situation for a moment and extend my gratitude to everyone who's commented, sent PM's and offered suggestion and wished myself, my girlfriend and my brother luck through this entire situation. It's been beyond stressful, and living where we do, we don't have alot of support in the form of family and many close friends, at least besides my brother. You guys have been supportive where I've needed it, and for that I'm thankful. I know I wouldn't have ended up getting half this far without alot of the ideas and suggestions that have been posted, and because of them, this last week almost has been a bit more bearable. I'll get into the update now.

We spent the better part of the morning searching the entirety of my house, top to bottom with the police. It was a huge help to have more than just my brother and I looking, and in total, there was us, the alarm company to search for any other stray cameras, and about 5-6 officers. We didn't' find any more cameras thankfully, and the alarm company had offered to compensate for this entire situation in the form of an actual home security system and cover it for the first six months to see how I adjusted with it. A generous offer, and one I wasn't too keen on accepting with my luck on the first system. They left me their number and assured me that their offer stood if I changed my mind. As far as the builder helping us, the police kept him out of the house after we discovered the false wall just in case he was involved and would try and alter or change any evidence in the house, or steer us in the wrong direction. His crew was all profiled and statements were taken, and everyone ended up going down to the station, my brother and I included. I'd already shared most of what had happened, but it felt good to actually have this become a bigger deal. My brother and I left the station around 1 or so, and an officer had been assigned to escort us back to my house and stick around. We brought up ZenTeke and the loan office next door, and he agreed to stop by with us on the way.

We gave him directions, and pulled up, up front of the loan office and came inside. It had been the same women from a couple days ago, and she looked like she was pretty anxious, scared and ready to be anywhere but there. She paged us through the microphone on the wall and asked how she could help. The officer stepped in front of us, asked to speak with the owner, manager, or whoever the hell was more important than her. It was comical, and my brother and I both grinned from behind him. She picked up the desk phone on the other side of fthe glass, mumbled a few things and a few minutes later, a man came out from behind the glass from a side door in the lobby and asked what as going on. We brought up the wire flag in front of their business, how next door was supposedly a local alarm company, and wanted to know what they knew about it. After a few minutes of pressuring and the officer threatening to shut them down for the day and drag everyone down to the station, the owner shuttered and left it at, "We don't know." Apparently, a man matching the description of the "imposter builder," had come by maybe three or so weeks ago with a check. He wanted to put a flag in front of their business for advertising and not to say a word about it to anyone, especially not the police. They had been behind on rent for the building they were leasing, behind on payroll, and didn't hesitate or ask many questions. They saw no harm in having a small flag sit out front. The officer asked for a copy of the check, any proof for the story and sure as hell, they had photo copied the check and made record of it in case it bounced or came back to bite them in anyway, shape or form. What we didn't expect was that the sum would be so large. The check had been for $25,000. All for the sake of legitimizing ZenTeke just a little more. Just for the sake of saying one business "used their system." This all wasn't adding up, none of it's been adding up and this wasn't helping. We asked if they'd seen the man since he came by again, any additional details of things he might have said, and the owner of the loan office just said that the man had mentioned that we weren't his first stop. That could have meant there were some other failing businesses around town, or it could have meant he had fucking lunch plans at the olive garden, who knows.

We got back to the house, the officer stayed outside and we started relaxing for a few. I decided to give my girlfriend a call and fill her in on everything. She was relieved, but at the same time, stunned. So much had happened while she'd been gone, and she couldn't wait to be home. I couldn't either, I really couldn't. Given everything that had been going on, my brother and I were fairly certain that things were finally coming to a head, and maybe calming down. I decided to lie down, catch up on some much needed sleep, and my brother did the same in the living room. The dogs were surprisingly quite, and we ended passing out for several hours before I woke up to my brother knocking on the bedroom door. He told me something was wrong, the officer outside was gone and that none of the builders had come back from the station. The entire street was empty. No cars, no trucks, nothing. Everyone had just packed up and left, right under our noses while passed out. I looked for my phone on the night stand, and then remembered I'd left it on the kitchen table when we first got home and I'd called my girlfriend. I walked into the living room and couldn't find it, my brother started looking around for his phone too and neither one of us could find ours. We started to panic for a minute, and decided we needed to get the hell out of here before anything else happened. We got the dogs and cat in the living room and started looking for his keys since my car wasn't drivable with the windshield and hood completely smashed up from the other evening, but we couldn't find them either. Both of our keys were gone. Our phones were gone, and no one has a house phone these days. No neighbors next door to borrow a phone from, nothing. Someone had been in the house again, and with all of the people in and out all day long, we couldn't keep up on the logs and had the tape off all the doors. All of our careful planning had completely left us unprotected after everything this morning.. We couldn't leave the animals, and so we stayed put. We checked room by room, made sure no one was inside, made sure the crawl space was still covered, and then we made it to the false wall. We pried it open by the flat edge with a kitchen knife and found our phones and car keys lying inside on the ground. Enough was enough. We got into the jeep, piled all of the animals in the back and left faster than we could fucking think. This wasn't just people fucking with my home anymore, this was someone trying to leave a message. That message was that I wasn't safe, and I wasn't beyond protection even if the police were on duty, the cameras were gone and the doors were locked. I was still a sitting duck, and they'd won. They can have the house, they can have whatever's in it. They can't have my sanity.

We drove straight to the police station, and by the time we pulled up there were a few officers coming outside. They'd been on their way over when neither one of us had picked up our phone while the officers swapped out watch in front of the house. The officer on duty had left for a family emergency, his wife was in an accident or something, and had phoned for another officer to come in his place and hadn't thought a 30 minute window was "that big of a deal before getting in touch with someone." Stupid fuck hadn't even knocked on the door to let us know we were alone. We told them everything, how someone had been back in the house and that our phones and keys were missing and we found them in the false wall. I got in touch with the realtor, told her she could go fuck herself if she thought I was paying for the house and we made plans for tomorrow morning to go and get everything we could carry with a moving truck. It can go into storage and I'll live in a fucking hotel for a couple days till my girlfriends back in town and we figure out somewhere else to live. This isn't worth it. It's not worth finding out who, what, or why these people are tormenting me. It's not worth another ounce of my sanity. We got ahold of my friend who'd let us stay the other night and he said he'd watch over the dogs and cats for a few days while everything is sorted out and we get our things. He's a good dude, definitely a much better friend than I'd thought.

My brother suggested that we go back to his place since it's only about 45 minutes away and I could crash there until my girlfriend was back in town, and stay a little while with him while we figure out a new living situation. I relaxed, kicked back and actually felt a sense of safety walking into his place. It wasn't my house, anywhere was safer than my house right now. Not a whole lot happened the rest of the evening; we watched a few shitty movies we used to enjoy, Kung Pow and that awful Batman movie with George Clooney, and I ended up crashing on his couch like he'd done the last few nights at my place. I woke up around 11:30-12am and couldn't sleep. Bad dream or something kept getting to me whenever I shut my eyes. I ended up playing around on my iPhone and noticed my notes application had been open in the background. I opened it, and found one I hadn't entered myself. It was a short one, just enough to keep me up all night again.


"The only thing worth stealing is what you can't physically hold, and what we stole from you is something you'll never know."

[ZionsWrath]

Few teasers to get me interested in reading that Colin Powell please lol

[slicktop]

These two sentences enticed me to read from the beginning.

The officer stepped in front of us, asked to speak with the owner, manager, or whoever the hell was more important than her. It was comical, and my brother and I both grinned from behind him.

[jebuwh]

What. The. Hell. Long but so worth the read. Is that seriously a true story. I'm tripping if it is.

[strat61caster]

I'll just check an off-topic thread before I go to sleep.

F U

Great movie script, totally unbelievable. Right guys?

Edit: Link to the reddit thread? I'll google it but I figured I would have hit it already

Edit2: Ah the nosleep subreddit, there's a reason I didn't see it:

http://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comm...as_been_in_my/
http://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comm...eone_else_has/
http://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comm...eone_else_has/
http://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comm...eone_else_has/
http://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comm...eone_else_has/
http://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comm...eone_else_has/

Dude needs to lock this down and get a script written.

[serialk11r]

Crazy shit. What the hell.

[LadyFRZ]

What the fucccckkkkk.

I'd be shitting myself 24/7 if that shit ever happened to me. I mean WHAT. THE.FUCK.


Then of course I'd enlist the internet. 4chan, reddit, you guys.
The internet is a powerful force, not to be meddled with.

Holy shit, this is so scary though. How can someone do that and live with themselves?

[jebuwh]

Now I'm reading other stories on reddit. Eff this. I can't sleep now. I'm freakin out man!!!!! Haha

[LadyFRZ]

"Reddit: No sleep"
Yeah, pretty much the description of my night, now.LOL

I love you guys, you entertaining folk, even though this is creeping me the fuck out (and keep looking to see if anything is behind me LOL)

[jebuwh]

Dammit this is awful. Why did I read these dumbass stories.

[LadyFRZ]

Originally Posted by jebuwh

Dammit this is awful. Why did I read these dumbass stories.

We're both in the same boat. LOL

Have some cookies to make you feel better.


There's some coincidences the powerful internet deities have found though. The gf left due to her cousin being in an accident, the cop also had to leave because of a car accident?
Also, if it's his identity being stolen....Holy shit. Never dealt with it, personally (knock on wood) but it's a bitch.

[strat61caster]

2:40 am

Maybe a second cup of hot chocolate will help...

Totally because of the soda I had for dinner, totally.

[ZionsWrath]

ok so I had 4 shots and a beer. Time to read this story as I sip on another beer.

Wish me luck

[n2oinferno]

Ahhh ok it's in nosleep. So it's fake.