Horrifying Stories Of Intruders Who Secretly Lived Hidden In Other Peoples' Homes

A South Carolina woman known only as Tracy discovered her ex,only a few weeks out of jail, living in her attic in 2012. Tracy broke up with the guy 12 years before he showed up in her house, and just before he went to prison. While in prison, he wrote to her constantly.

After hearing strange sounds, Tracy saw insulation and even nails fall from the ceiling, prompting her nephew to investigate. He discovered a man sleeping inside the heating unit in Tracy's attic. The secret houseguest had filled fast food cups with his waste and, even more disturbingly, positioned himself near a vent in the ceiling of the master bedroom, so he could watch her sleep. He immediately fled. Based on his release from prison, police estimate he was living upstairs for under two weeks.

When Maddie, a junior at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, realized that pieces of her wardrobe mysteriously vanished, she and her roommates blamed it on a ghost. She found handprints left on the bathroom wall, and on February 2, 2019, she discovered a man living in her closet and wearing her clothes. 

"I just hear rattling in my closet. It sounded like a raccoon in my closet," the student told Fox 8. "I'm like who's there? And somebody answers me. He's like, 'oh, my name is Drew.' I open the door and he's in there, wearing all of my clothes. My socks. My shoes. ANd he has a book bag full of my clothes."

Police identified the man as 30-year-old Andrew Swofford. Maddie talked to Swofford as she waited for her boyfriend and authorities to arrive. He continued to try on her clothes and commented on how she was "really pretty."

Swofford was arrested and put under a $26,000 bond. He faces 14 felony charges, including larceny and identity theft. 

Davis Wahlman had no idea what he'd find when he began investigating the series of strange noises upstairs in his Green Lake, WA home in July 2016. When he finally found the source of the noise in his upstairs office, he tried to open the door. The room was completely locked, so Wahlman had to knock on a door in his own house. Finally a strange woman with dark hair answered.

The startled homeowner didn't know what to do. He asked the woman how she got into the Green Lake property, and she claimed that a man named Jimmy gave her permission to move into the dwelling. Wahlman called local police to handle the situation, but the strange house guest escaped before authorities could question her.

A retired, 73-year-old woman living in Washington state received shocking news in January 2013, when a repairman told her a man had been living in a crawlspace under her house for an indeterminate period of time. While completely taken aback by the news, it did explain the strange smell she occasionally caught wind of, believed to be marijuana or meth her secret tenant smoked.

In 2008, on the day after Christmas, a Wilkes-Barre, PA woman discovered a man living in her attic, periodically helping himself to her family's food, clothes, and possessions. She states, "When he came down from the attic, he was wearing my daughter's pants and my sweatshirt and sneakers." The man also helped himself to a computer and an iPod. He kept a list of everything he took, titling it his "Christmas List."