A home is a safe place, but sometimes dangers can be lurking for us even there. Luckily, technology has made it simpler to spot intruders and other ill-wishers who might be right on your doorstep. It’s reported that around 72% of American households have at least one home security device. 51 million apparently have video surveillance.

Home cameras catch all sorts of interesting stuff. Sometimes, it can be even disturbing. This post is about the latter: the times when homeowners saw something so off-putting through their home cams they wished they could forget it.

We’ve gathered the most interesting responses from the thread titled “People with home security cameras, what’s the creepiest thing you’ve ever seen happen while you were asleep?” and present them to you here.

#1

A couple who would drive by at random hours of the day for a full week, would walk up to the house and look at my dogs (pit bulls). Look into each window in the front and even checked the back gate/fence.

The camera was older and had no “notifications” so the only way we knew was the moment they decided to open up the door (while I was home sick) and were subsequently rushed by my dogs. I heard the commotion and grabbed the only weapon I had, a bat, to find the front door open and what looked like a m**der scene in my living room.

Blood. Everywhere. All over the floor, the front door, the little entrance way, the window. Turns out I have two very good bois and the idiots went to the hospital to eventually be caught by police. They were going to take my dogs to be in dogfights. Involved in a bunch of other seedy things (d***s, p**********n).

Image credits: Gracelanr

#2

I saw someone break into my car, take my sweater out of the front seat, stood there and smelled it for a solid 5-10 minutes. Then put it back and left.

I gave that sweater away that day.

Image credits: lvealey017

#3

I saw this one video of some guy in California that went to this house and spent 2 hours licking their security camera/ doorbell – disappeared for a bit and then came back to resume the licking of the camera for another hour or so.

Image credits: SpreadTheSlug

#4

When I lived with my dad, he once had this ambitious raccoon that discovered he never locked the doggy door. So the raccoon would come in, eat a bunch of s**t, and run away before we’d wake up. So he put an automated doggy door in so it only works if my dog went near it with a collar designed to open it.

Image credits: PeanutPicker

#5

I live in an apartment unit right next door to the office. They installed a new security camera for their door which covers a part of mine as well shortly after I moved in.

The office manager knocked on my door a few days after the install and asked me to come look at something. She pulled up footage of the night before that showed a guy pacing in front of my door for six hours! He even left for a couple minutes and came back with something he tried to stick in my door frame a few times. I was asleep the whole time and heard nothing.

Turned out to be a recent ex of a friend of mine. I’d only met him once. Still have no idea how he knew where I lived unless he followed her to my place once as we live close by each other. Cops called, reports filed, they eventually found him. He had been on a pretty bad d**g bend since their breakup from what I heard and has no recollection of being there. M**h is a helluva d**g.

Image credits: ZonaEshe

#6

Not asleep but we were eating breakfast. There is a school down the street from our house. It’s literally two houses down. Anyways in the mornings there’s lots of traffic and children with their parents to school. They walk past our house nearly every day and we never thought anything of it.

Anyways, one day there was a kid who we caught on the security camera running and there was some guy chasing after him.

Turns out he was trying to kidnap the kid and we had it on tape. The kid got to the school and told his teacher and police came and asked to see what we recorded via camera.

S**t’s crazy. Watch your kids.

Edit: he got arrested for attempted kidnapping or something like that and the kid is totally safe now. Now we see his dad take him to school.

Image credits: passtheparthenon

#7

My locked, closed front door opening in the middle of the night and then closing again, nothing came in or out, and the door was locked and shut tight when I woke up.

Image credits: gartral

#8

A random guy helped himself to my backyard. Thinking he was a thief I was already picking my phone to call the non-emergency police line only to look back at my tablet and see him moving my pot plants. ONLY my pot plants. Some of which are very heavy. He even stepped back a couple of times as if to survey his handiwork. Once he was seemingly happy with their new arrangement he then left the same way he came. I have never seen this man before in my life. WTF?

Image credits: Blackdog1341

#9

Doorbell cam went off at 3am. Flipped to the live view and there was a deer standing in my yard staring directly at the camera, close enough that the camera thought it was a person at the door.

Deer stood there for a solid minute just not moving. The eyes had that creepy night-vision look so it was extra weird.

(and then the deer took a huge s**t while maintaining eye contact with the camera and that kinda ruined the mood).

Image credits: sppwalker

#10

My neighbour told me years ago that when she checked the footage from her security cams outside her front house she found a guy coming into in her yard picking her flowers and sticking them down the front of his underwear.

He was never seen again. Just once.

Image credits: LuckyMitten

#11

I came home from work one day and could see prints in the snow going up our driveway, then veering left into a field by our house and eventually leading to the main road (we were the only house on a long street). I could tell the prints weren’t too recent, as some fresh snow had settled into them. I checked the security cameras, starting at midnight and fast forwarding through the early morning hours, convinced I would catch on camera, the weirdo wandering our property and trying to break in and m**der us. After a half an hour of staring at the screen, the perpetrator finally came into view- a horse from the field across the street had broken out and meandered through our yard and field by our house at around 5 a.m.

The buildup was terrifying, the result of the prints was adorable and hilarious.

Image credits: MegaE_Mom

#12

I was home alone one day blasting music in my room. My dog was sitting on my staircase where she could see the front door, and my room is right at the top of the stairs. When the song ended, I heard my front door open (we have an alarm system and when a door or window opens, it goes beep beep) and then I heard my dog growling like I’ve never heard before. My gut knew it wasn’t a family member, my dad was out of town and my mom and sister were gone. I texted my mom saying “where are you?” And she said she was at the store.

I called the police and hid in my closet. I live in a safe area and they took 20 MINUTES to come to my house. The operator stayed on the phone with me and told me to stay quiet. When the police and my mom finally got back home, we checked the security cameras. The footage glitched right when the person came into the front door, so all we could see was a tall black silhouette (the light was shining in from behind him). Never found out who it was but they must have left when they either saw my dog or heard that someone was home.

Image credits: rosalie2222

#13

We consistently see a black cat once or twice a week on one of our 5 cameras, we don’t have a black cat, and all these cameras are inside the house. Our dog doesn’t ever act weird like he’s aware of it and we have never found any cat hair anywhere let alone a black cat’s hair.

Image credits: recon04

#14

I used to have security cameras on her front porch I was growing up. I grew up in a farming town where everyone knew each other so when something happened they could always identify straight away if they were from our town or not. I used to check the cameras when i was bored and I usually checked what happened around 2-3am I had never found anything weird but this one time a black van with no lights pulled up our driveway (visible from the porch camera). A man jumped up and slowly creeped to our front door, he reached for the door handle and then saw the camera. What happened next was the weird part. He promptly took his hand away from the door handle and started staring and smiling at the camera, he then walks up to it and **LICKS** the camera. He then spins around on one heel, walks back to the van and drives VERY slowly out of the driveway. I told my parents and they contacted the police, who couldn’t find anything else about him. We never saw or heard anything about him again.

Image credits: LukiePopz

#15

My mom woke up to a notification on her phone that someone was at the door. Checked out what it was and some creepy man (who we’d never seen in the neighborhood before) was licking and sucking on the doorknob. Weirdest stuff Ive ever seen LOL.

Image credits: chickenlumps

#16

Our neighbours took a massive s**t on my lawn and wiped their a*s with a shirt and left it there in the middle of the night. Caught it all on tape but to this day I am still too scared too confront them.

I just want to know what I did to make them do such a thing.

#17

Early one morning many years ago, I got a call from my buddy across the street.

“Get over here. You’ve got to see this.”

So I get over there and we get into his office and pull up the previous night’s security footage on his computer (he had installed one to keep an eye out for a vengeful ex-friend who had been going onto his property and vandalizing things).

He begins to fast forward the video and pauses around the 3:00 AM mark. At first there wasn’t much going on, but gradually we began to see signs of movement in the shadows of his neighbors’ front lawn. All of a sudden, a very tall, pasty white man with a beard and long, straggly hair stepped out of the shadows and stood on the sidewalk in front of my friend’s house and stood staring at the street.

“What the f**k?” I said. “Is he naked?”

My friend shook his head. “Keep watching.”

The man stepped all the way in front of the house where he was now illuminated by a nearby street lamp. I could see that he was wearing a pair of briefs that were nearly as white as he was.

“Who is this guy? I’ve never seen him around here before.” I said.

“Me neither. Keep looking. It gets better.”

Indeed it did. Abruptly, the man turned and faced the house for several moments, then began to slowly creep up the driveway towards the front door in a highly exaggerated manner that immediately brought to mind Elmer Fudd hunting wabbits.

He then stared at the front door for a full ten minutes and moved over to tap on the front windows a few times before noticing the light of the security camera. He approached it and appeared to wiggle it around a bit before tiring of it and moving over to the side of the house.

It had been a trash pick up day, and my friend had not yet moved his empty can to the backyard. We could see the man kinda fumbling with something, but between the relative darkness and an obscuring palm frond we couldn’t tell what he was doing.

Our question was soon answered when he wandered back into the center of the yard with the empty 50 gallon garbage can over his head! All you could see was his pale legs. He kind of roamed around aimlessly for a few moments, even ducking down entirely into the can when a passing car went by. He soon tired of the garbage can, pulled it off and rolled it down the driveway where it came to rest against the car (the strange placement of the garbage can in the morning being what had prompted my friend to check his cameras in the first place).

For his final act, the man approached the small orange tree in the corner of the yard, plucked off a few of the larger fruits, and started trying to juggle them.

The first two dropped straight to the ground, and he just stared at the one still in his hand for a long moment before slinging it as hard as he could across the street. He then kicked the other two across the yard.

He stood there for a few seconds more, as if just realizing where he was and wondering how he got there, then he shuffled offscreen and out of sight. A few minutes later he showed up again, this time across the street and heading back in the direction he had come. He had the orange he had previously thrown there in his hand. We lost sight of him in the dark, but as he was turning the corner we could just barely make him out reflected in another street lamp.

We never did find out who he was, and we never saw him again, but we did find the orange he had picked laying further down the street later that day.

#18

The cats outside are forming a cult or a gang something, every night all the cats on the neighborhood are gathering on our backyard they always bring dead stuffs, they put all the dead stuff in the middle then they form a circle and they start doing all the weird noises like a f*****g cat meeting cult session.

#19

So I’m sitting in my living room at night, just recently moved into my new flat. I’m in a basement flat, own entrance, in a little townhouse on the edge of town. Quiet area, lots of trees, cheap rent and like no public transport or cell reception. I’m living alone for the first time.

I’d just set up the security cameras and hooked them up to a new monitor (the old one was ancient and gigantic). Hadn’t figured out where to put the monitor, I’d never had a security system before. It was (at the time) on my work desk, which was at the living room window.

I notice this slight yellow glow out the window out the corner of my eyes, slowly getting brighter. As it does, I notice on the camera that their’s a huge a*s shadow cast across my door (visible from camera, to the left of the window) that looks kinda animal but weird proportions. I quietly s**t myself.

It sits there for while, like a good 10 minutes, moving just enough to make me wonder if I’m imagining it moving. There’s a kind of whining/buzzing noise, but it’s faint and I might be imagining it. I suddenly find religion.

Then all of a sudden there’s a loud POP from *inside my building*, the glow goes instantly away, there’s a sound like a really pissed cat and then really rapid footsteps. I’m in like full cardiac arrest at this point, bathing in my own urine, crying for my mum.

Flash forward a week or so: I haven’t been eaten by a cat shadow monster, though i do have a sudden new interest in exorcisms. I meet the upstairs neighbours (older couple) when they’re having trouble getting a large package up the stairs. They offer me tea as thanks. I notice their cat sitting in the window. Its movement reminds me of something, and after a while I realise it’s the shadow monster.

I ask a few questions to round out the details. Turns out the neighbours had one of those lights-on-a-sensor which turn on when they detect movement. Cat jumps up to ledge, light turns on. But it was an eco light, so warmed up slow. It then went out. Loudly. I’m too embarrassed/relieved to recant the story, so I make my excuses, leaving the nice couple upstairs with the impression that their new downstairs neighbour is a weirdo who stares at cats, has a really keen interest in light bulbs, and a predilection for nervous laughter. They don’t invite me up for tea anymore, but they do ask if I’m OK every time they see me.

#20

Fell asleep on the couch that night. Had a bad incident of sleep paralysis. Watched the playback a few hours later of me trying to pull myself out of it. With the night vision being engaged it looks really creepy because eyes glow combined with the slow blinking during the event. It’s like watching a zombie version of yourself.

#21

Wasn’t asleep, but when I lived with my ex, we had a few security cameras and they send you alerts when there’s motion detected. I was at work and got an alert that there was motion in the living room and I figured it was my ex coming home early, but I checked it anyway. Instead, I saw my dog standing in the middle of the living room staring at the wall. He stood there for a minute and then got on the sofa to sleep.

Two things were terrifyingly off about that. 1) my dog was a puppy at the time and was crated when home alone. The crate is made of solid wood, metal grates and has thick and heavy eye/hook latches, so there’s no conceivable way he could have opened the door. 2) He was kept in the office, which is located off the hall and we kept the door separating the living room from the hall closed during the day to keep the room cooler for him.

I looked back at the recording because I was very confused and unfortunately, because the hall door was closed I couldn’t see how his crate got opened. But the hall door opened on its own and he walked out into the living room about 30 seconds later. The hall door was like a regular bedroom door, it closed with a k**b/latch and wouldn’t have opened even if you pushed on it. There were no sounds aside from the normal house noises. No cars or people had been in view of the outside cameras since we’d left and no other motion detections had went off.

#22

I got a security camera to keep tabs on my sick cat. The first day I swear every time I connected she turned and stared directly at the camera.

#23

My cat k**led a baby bunny by eviscerating it.

#24

Baby cam. The camera only makes noises when it goes from day to night mode, so I have no idea why she was staring silently at it, or for how long.

Image credits: hypnogoad

#25

Neighbors have security cameras that caught 2 people outfitted to look like Jehovah’s Witness reps that were actually armed thieves.

The pair did several burglaries in the area before reports to the police from neighbors caught them in the act.

#26

Some time ago I kept finding this weird whitish sludge in the middle of the corridor when I woke up in the morning. Me and my wife suspected that the dog was sneakily m**turbating while we were asleep. So we set up a motion sensor camera and left it running during the night. When I checked the recording at one point I see this white figure emerging from the darkness and skittering real fast across the corridor until it slammed into the wall. On closer inspection I realised it was my wife, who was bending backwards and crawl like a crab real fast until she hit something and fell down. Anyways turns out she sleep walks or sleep crabs so now I have to give her pills for that.

#27

My sister has video of her great pyrenees being attacked by 2 pitbulls. My sister’s dog was 4 times the pitbulls age and managed to put one down on her own as well as severely injure the other one.

My sister’s yard was entirely fenced in with electrified fencing. These dogs powered through the pain of the electric fence and attacked my sister’s dog only to be put down by a dog many times their senior.

The owners of the dog later came out and collected their two pitbulls and shot at my sister’s dog prompting her and her husband to respond with 9m return fire. (They were outside at the time checking the fence line.)

The two pitbull owners were hit in the stomach and leg. Ambulance came out and collected the two dog owners (illegals) and police took statement telling my sister not to talk to anyone.

After it was all said and done, my sister realized she had been hit by one of the pitbull owners 22LR rounds in her shoulder. She never felt it and was never checked out by the ambulance. She was watching the security footage later and saw the blood spot in her shoulder on camera. She realized she was hit after her husband checked her over. They assumed it was the dog’s blood.

#28

Saw a woman talking to herself stealing my trash. I was so confused the week I moved in because everyday I threw trash away my can was empty and I kept convincing myself I was just losing it. Finally got my cameras up and realized what was happening. Turns out the lady went to every can up and down multiple streets every night taking and throwing away trash, found out she had some mental health issues and lived around the corner. Moved the cans to the backyard instead of the side of the house after all that.

#29

I used to work for a company in California. Pretty small office just off the side of the road. Lots of gang activity around the area. They’ve got the Ring Doorbell camera so they can safely tell if they can open the door at night.

One night there’s a group of guys hanging around looking at our property. We don’t think much of it because they leave in about ten minutes. Next day a guy shows up and just walks into our fabrication shop in broad daylight looking around. Never has this happened before. Our boss intervenes immediately:

Boss: “Can I help you?”

Guy: “OH S**T Uh hey there, a-are you guys hiring..?”

Boss: “No. You have five seconds to f**k off.”

Guy leaves in a mad dash. We called the cops and they find him walking down the street 5 minutes later. Turns out the gang was planning on robbing our facility while we were on holiday leave and they’d assigned him to scout out the interior.

#30

The guy wearing dark clothes with a hood over his face who walked up to our fence at 3:00 a.m., saw the Beware of Dog sign and the fake security cameras we have out to hide the ones we really have. Who then proceeded to get down and half crouch, crawl through our gate and into our yard in an attempt to not be “seen” by the fake cameras and got halfway to our door before my sweet good boi went total hellhound and raced to the front door from our bedroom to inform us someone was out there.

As soon as the guy heard the dog and saw the lights in our place come on he just got up and straight ran through the gate and down the street.

We filed a complaint with the cops, nothing ever came of it. He definitely was testing if we really had a dog or a security system in place and that just freaked the hell out of me. We went and got motion-activiated lights after that as an added deterrent. Good boi got a steak dinner the next night.

He’s damned lucky I didn’t open the door or he’d have gotten mauled and/or worse.

#31

I saw myself sleep walk into the front yard and stand there in my underwear for a few hours before going back in.

#32

Ohhhh story time!
So, my dad had two cameras set up. One for his truck, one for my suv. His truck is always parked in front of the steps to our house. Mine is parked a short distance from his truck.

5 years ago, my dad caught a army of raccoons coming into our house through a cat door, taking peices of trash out of the trash can and walking out with it. My dad couldn’t figure out why it was taking more time to take the trash out.

He viewed the camera a month later and all you could see was 12 raccoon eyes charging in and out of the house. My dad did finally catch them in house and shot one. Game and fish wasn’t happy and wanted to file charges on him. Didn’t work out though because they technically broke into our home. My dad was defending himself.

#33

My family had one installed 2 months ago in front of our garage. One night, we got an alert and after watching over the tape, we saw a man doing cartwheels back and forth across our driveway. Very cool.

#34

Screen on the security tablet next to my bed lit up rather bright for about 3 to 5 seconds, I ignored it and went back to sleep. The next day i went through the footage and could clearly see a face looking through window on my front door.

This happened several times over the 2 years I lived at that rental property.

#35

Woke up to a dead rabbit laying under our bird feeders. Scanned through the footage to see the rabbit hop up, snacked on discarded bird seed for a half hour, then just tipped over dead. No idea WTF happened. Dude just straight-up died — some global warming s**t.

#36

A guy threw his shoes inside my house and tried to burst through the wall with his head several times. Then he stopped and stood there staring at the grass for 10 minutes. Suddenly, he started to run and never came back.

#37

Clown following a delivery man before getting pepper sprayed.

#38

I have a security system monitor (cams all over the church) mounted near the organ console in the choir loft so I can keep an eye on what’s going on downstairs in the church while practicing during the week.

The strangest thing I saw was some guy who came in the church with his dog and started drinking directly from the Holy Water font. Then he held the Holy Water dispenser button so the dog could drink from it, too.

I went downstairs and asked if he’d like to use the men’s room instead. He said he wanted his dog to drink Holy Water to make him better behaved, rather than to drink from the toilet.

#39

I wake up at 6 am and just go through my security camera before heading to work. One day while looking through, I just saw my dog staring directly at my room. Skimmed through the different timelines, he did that for 30 minutes. Not sure why..

#40

When I was a poor college student my wealthy cousin and his wife went on vacation and offered to let me house-sit to give me a break from my 3 slovenly roommates. They live a few towns over in a very nice house with a huge front lawn and a fancy, tall iron fence and double gates. The fence and gates are about 11 feet high. You have to have a remote to open the gates.

That first night I slept so well! I breakfasted like a king and then drove to school. I got back around 5, made a supper fit for a king, and settled down to write an Econ paper. My cousin has a warning system for when someone drives turns off the road and comes up to the gate. There’s a chiming sound and you can look at screens in a couple of different rooms to see who it is so that you can buzz them in. I was deep into my paper when I heard the chime. I was confused at first and checks my ‘phone before I realized what it was. I looked from the sofa and could see a movement on the security screen. I stood up and got closer and had a clear view of two women getting out of a white car.

One tried to squeeze between two bars of the gate (impossible) and then the other woman tried to boost her over the top of the gate (hilarious). The top one fell and even from the house I could heard swearing. I was about to press the intercom button and ask WTF was their problem but I was chuckling at their antics and so just watched silently. They peered at the house intently from between the bars like a couple of jailbirds for a while. The skinnier one actually stripped down to her bra and panties and tried to squeeze through the bars again. No dice. Butt and b***s were not allowing that to happen. More swearing. Then as the skinny one got dressed again, the bigger one went back to her trunk and got out a f*****g tire iron. As soon as she started f*****g with the hinges of the gate I was on 911.

The cops took too long and the women left. I showed the cops the video but they couldn’t get a license plate number. When my cousin and his wife returned the next week I told them what happened and we watched the tape. He said that he had no idea who the women were but his wife looked pissed. I packed up, thanked them for my “vacation” and left.

She divorced him that Summer.

#41

When I lived with an ex and her family, her dad’s van was keyed very badly so being an electrician, he decided to set up a camera overlooking the street where we parked our cars.

The camera was accessible via an app which I had on my IPad and it would pick up on movement, record it and save it or alternatively you could watch it live.

The house was just round the corner from a pub so we just assumed it was some pissed up person mucking about on their way home.

Anyway, one Saturday morning I go out to the street to see that all our cars have been keyed. I frantically check the app and there was an update at 11.30pm but it was just a dog walker. Myself and my girlfriends dad check all the updates from the last 24 hours but nothing, very strange.

We thought that maybe someone could have moved the camera because it was in plain view outside of the house so my girlfriends dad moved it to a more subtle position. From then on, every Friday night for several weeks we’d have the IPad set up in the living room watching the camera live. Nothing happened and we soon lost all interest and forgot about it.

A few months later I was on my IPad in the house on a Friday night deleting some apps when I came across the camera app. Me and girlfriend shared a joke and decided to watch it live to see if the cars would get keyed again.

We were having Chinese food and watching a film and set up the IPad on a table in the corner of the room. At around midnight, my girlfriend had gone to bed and I was watching the end of the film with my dog when something caught my eye on the IPad. I’d totally forgot I’d left it running. I watched the screen as I saw what looked like an old lady walk past the house and cars. What was she doing out at this time I thought? Something to do with the church maybe that was opposite. Soon she disappeared out of shot as she waddled down the street.

About 5mins later, the movie had finished and I turned all the lights off in the living room. The only light I had was the IPad screen. I picked it up and went to turn it off but stopped when I see something on the screen. It was the old lady again standing outside the house, just stood perfectly still staring straight into the camera. What the f**k is going on I thought, it was terrifying. She must have stood there for a good two minutes before reaching one hand into her pocket and pulling an object out and walking over to my car. She then frantically started using the object on the top bonnet. Me and my dog then bolted out of the back door, I unlocked the gate and burst out into the street ready to catch this old b***h red handed but.. nothing.

The street was completely empty, no old ladies, just the parked cars outside the house.

I jogged up and down the street but saw nobody. There’s no way she could have got away in the seconds it took me to get out of the house. Confused, I went to bed and the next morning I told my girlfriend and her old man all about what had happened the previous night. He studied the recordings and the camera had picked it all up to her walking past originally and her walking away after she had vandalised the car and me and my dog appearing a split second later on camera.

My girlfriends dad took the recordings to a work colleague in hope he could enhance the picture quality so we could see the lady in more detail. It worked, we got to see her in all her glory. My girlfriends mum recognised her, she lived two doors down from us and regularly visited the church opposite.

We used the recording and reported it to the police. My girlfriend and I split up soon after so I don’t know what happened. I certainly never saw a penny for any of the damage caused to my car.

*EDIT – Just to clear up some info that’s been mentioned in the comments.

– When I said ‘enhance’ picture quality I’m pretty sure he just took the video recording, slowed it down and blew up the picture to get a better look at the woman. There was no spy s**t going on to my knowledge.
– I honestly cannot explain how I did not see the woman walking down the street when I went outside. When I looked back at the recording, I appear on camera 2s after she disappears from shot. The only logical explanation is she heard me coming and dived into a bush or under a car, although surely my dog would have seen her.

#42

My friend showed me footage that her home security camera got of a c*ked out neighbour running into her door and shattering the glass with his head. The weird part was that he didn’t get hurt, smashed the glass but came out without any damages to the head.

When he approached her door he stopped for a moment and then charged like a bull.

#43

Obligatory not my story, sorry. My brother got a new security camera and he was having trouble sleeping. He lives in an apartment building with a couple other people in the hallway. He kept waking up to a person trying to open his door in the middle of the night. He eventually found out it was a neighbor who got drunk a lot and was trying to get into the wrong apartment. The neighbor eventually went away. A couple weeks later he came home and their were a bunch of cops outside of his apartment. Turns out that his other neighbor, who had also gotten harassed by this guy in the middle of the night, had m******d the guy who kept knocking on my brothers door. My brother caught it all on his security camera. He turned it over to the police, and the neighbor got arrested and went to jail.

EDIT: he didn’t end up going to jail. My brother still sees him walking around the apartment complex.

#44

We caught a neighbor who stole a package off our front porch that UPS had dropped off. It was an expensive car part (idk what kind, my husband is a car nut).

He was very quick to give it back when the police showed up at his door, because my husband wanted his car stuff rather than press charges and have it go to evidence.

#45

There has been a string of car break-ins in our neighborhood lately. We have had cameras up for a couple of years now, so we checked the footage. Unfortunately, while we have the wannabe thieves on camera (there was nothing worth stealing in either mine or my husband’s car), we have no idea who they are. The cops can’t do much without an ID. One of them is wearing very distinctive shoes, though, so we have been on the lookout for an unusual pair of Nikes and who might be wearing them. Sucks when you can only watch someone break into your car.

I know it’s a little off topic, but we did also have a funny one we caught on camera. Our neighbor is a huge d****e who can’t handle his drink. He likes to listen to crappy mariachi music all night and into the early morning, which wouldn’t be such a problem on the weekend. But he likes to do it on a Wednesday night. It really is a pain in the a*s when you have to go to work in the morning. Our neighbor called the cops on him and we got to watch him get pepper sprayed in the face on camera. It was hilarious.

#46

I woke up one morning and my front door was wide open. Scared the s**t out of me but couldn’t figure it out as nothing was missing.
Went back and looked at my camera and it turns out at around 4am the door just swings open for no reason. Never figured out why.

#47

My dad woke me up, but I live on a culdesac and my dad told me to grab a weapon and come watch the cameras. The culdesac was full of atleast 8 police cars with the lights on and more were parking up the street and running into the neighborhood. We didnt know wtf was going on but if a fleeing criminal tried to break into our house to hide we wanted to be ready. Turns out some homeless dude lived in the woods behind my house and stole some jewlery from a Walmart about 15 minutes from my place.

#48

One night the camera on the front (facing to the road) captured a white car that pulled up near the gate. Backed onto the road. Drove a few steps ahead, then backwards, then forwards. switched lights off, then on, then fog-lights on (special lights in Europe – don’t know if they are around the world), fog-light off, forward, backward, lights off, lights on and drove off.

never saw that car again. The ID was not even from the country i am living in.

#49

One night a bunch of cars in our neighbor were broken into, including my son’s. We checked our security cameras and saw the guy doing going through my son’s car and then he walked over to my neighbors house and up onto their back deck and stared through their French doors for about 15 minutes before leaving.

#50

Smelled kerosene in my chicken house (not for first time) one morning. Reviewed cam footage. Good video of neighbor entering with kerosene can and pouring it on my birds. She hates me and my birds. Maybe just me.

#51

My parents live on an “L” shaped large piece of property with a dirt road that runs along the inside corner of the L. My dad walked out of the house very early one morning on his way to work and sees someone pull off the dirt road onto the opposite end of their property. before he can get in his truck to investigate, the trespassers peel out and take off the opposite direction and he can’t catch them. He goes to work suspecting poachers and gets a trail camera to attach to a tall tower he built as a lookout point/deer stand. He goes out once a week to swap SD cards and batteries, never sees much more than animals and the occasional car on the dirt road. This goes on for months and everyone kinda forgets about it. My grandfather goes in the hospital for heart surgery, but never leaves the hospital, dying after not recovering from a coma after surgery. Things start to settle down after my grandfather’s death and I’m over to work on a computer for my mom. Dad goes and trades cards and batteries and brings the full one back. Part of the issues they had was reading SD cards. So I load the card and flip through the several hundred pictures. I get bored, and leave my mom to it. She’s visibly upset and looks at my dad and says “Do you know who that is?” He looks, says “It looks like your dad!” I look, and it does definitely look like him. very distinctive clothing and hat, but missing his dog and gun that never left his side when in the woods. He’d been dead for over a month at the time and the cards had been changed several times since. there was only a single picture, and there would have been no way to get to where this person was without having triggered the camera several times along the way. He had not been out to their property in a few years, let alone to that part of their property. I still have no explanation for it.

#52

I was living and sleeping in the basement of my parents house at the time. My Father, Mother, and baby sister lived there with me. I can remember that my sister was not home this particular night because she would stay at the library quite late because she was in college.

I’ve only ever recorded myself sleeping a 4 times. 3 of the 4 times nothing strange happened, but the 1 time and last time that something did happen. It was about 3am ( I usually fall asleep about 1am and set up the camera before I just lay in bed) and my recorder was on this particular night. I usually sleep with the fan on and my feet off the edge of the bed because my feet get hot so I need the fan to keep cool.

I’m pretty sure I heard a loud Thump sound at about 3am, like something had dropped and hit the floor. I didn’t wake up but my feet keep shaking like if you’re feeling anxious about something and keep tapping your feet. As I was watching the recording, something flys in front of my camera and lands on it.

When I woke and watched the video on my computer, I fast fowarded and only noticed because the camera moved all by itself with it pointing at me. I don’t think my parents had came downstairs in the middle of the night so I turned up the sound and I didn’t hear it at first, but after I turned the volume to max, I heard a high pitch noise myself. I had no idea what it was but for a second I was kind of scared that I might have something else. I went to ask my parents and sister and they said they didn’t come downstairs.

I stayed up one night after this and pretended I was asleep. It turns out that I had a bat that would live in my heater exhaust vent and occasinally come down and fly around my room. It so strange because I’ve never heard him flying around and hitting himself off the walls. It might have been the first time it’s ever came in but it was strange for it to start coming into my room once the set up the camera. I really thought I had a bat problem, but it was just this one bat. I was relieved to know that it was just a single bat, but I was just always worried that it’s been there for quite some time and I am shocked that I never heard it before that night. Also, I was worried it had bitten me and I would turn into a vampire.

TLDR; I found out that a bat was in my basement room that came thru the heater exhaust vent.

#53

My neighbor went for a walk and following him was a car speeding past our house. Next thing you see is his whole family running over. Supposedly, he had some business with d**g dealers and they came to shoot him. He’s been ok since then though.

#54

Woke up one day to a very weird feeling. I decided to check the cameras (this was around a month ago btw). Ended up seeing three dudes in black who were roaming around my house at around 2 a.m. Then they just left. I was very nervous for a couple of days after and still am a little bit. I have no idea what they were doing.

#55

I set up security cams around my house and one night while playing war thunder I got a notification saying that there was movement and saw a man just staring into my bedroom window and when I turned around to check he ran off.

#56

Funny story from a family friend. They have a tether ball pole on their front yard and their security camera was facing it and the entire yard. Then out of no where, a lady came up and smacked the ball and then left. They saw the whole thing and laughed about it. They showed us the video and we laughed about it too.

#57

A heavily pregnant young girl jumped my front fence, made it 4m or 5m into my yard before being tackled, hard, to the ground by a female police officer. Cop car then pulls up, and a second female police officer gets on top of her too. Was kind of blown away by the struggle they had and the strength of the girl, given how tiny and pregnant she was. Think beach ball belly. No doubt it was d**g related. Hopefully she sorts herself out for the sake of the kid. I did hear the commotion / screams at the time and popped my head out the front door. Received a “everything is ok, go back inside”, so I went back to bed.

#58

Not what I saw, but what it did.

I have a newborn so I was awake at 3am feeding him. I had my head down facing my lap (so I could see him) and I kept hearing clicking and it was like, everything got dim and bright, over and over. Thinking I’m just going insane from sleep deprivation I’m ignoring it.
As I’m going back to bed I see the ceiling is flashing green. I look over and the security camera is what’s clicking and blinking.

Opened the manual and it says blinking green light indicates someone is watching the live video feed. But the only people that have access are myself and my husband who is asleep, and his phone was off. Meaning someone got into my account and was watching us sleeping, in the middle of the night.

#59

A baby rat fell in the pool. It was still alive in the am and I rescued it and it was eaten by a cat moments later.

#60

Not a home camera, but one at work. We had some issues with stuff being stolen out of offices overnight so we set up a camera that recorded to a network share. We placed the camera so that you could really only see the top half of the room, from the desks up, because we were mainly concerned about the change and usb keys that had gone missing. For a couple of weeks there was nothing but the cleaning crew coming in real early or the occasional guard doing routine checks. One day we checked the video from my officemate’s computer and saw a guard sit down at my officemate’s desk and pick up his deskphone and have a half hour conversation. There was no audio on the video so we skipped through a bunch of the video but the guy was just chilling, talking, laughing, then he seemed to lean forward and get serious in conversation. Then he hung up the phone, stood up, and **pulled up his pants.** We all gasped and wtf’d and then there was a moment of silence before we realized what had happened. My officemate, who was sitting at his desk while we watched the video, and realizing he was sitting in the chair some random guy had just j**ked off in, immediately stood up and threw his chair into the hallway.

#61

This dude…

I was actually awake watching tv or playing video games. But I have a monitor to see all around my house next to my TV. I looked over and saw this dude creeping in my window. I answered the door with my gun. Guess he was looking for my neighbor, but thought he lived in my house.

Image credits: Smoothynobutt

#62

No cars were outfront, saw a guy with a ski-mask knock on the front door and leave when i got up and turned the light on.

#63

My son saying weird stuff while having fever dreams/delusions. He had fevers a lot because he had chronic ear infections until we were able to have ear tube put in surgically. He had just turned 2 at the time, but when he had a fever he suddenly said things that were much above his typical verbal and intellectual level. Like counting to 20 or saying the full alphabet correctly. Or really just speaking in full correct sentences in general, though they didn’t really make sense logically. His pediatrician said, “oh, that’s normal.” Yeah, I’m pretty sure that this is where the myths about demonic possession come from.

#64

I watched a fat raccoon knock over my trash cans, pull out a full garbage bag, drag it up on the hood of my car and then rip it open and feast.

#65

I was skimming through some feed , curious because our neighbors had someone break into their vehicles and this was after someone already had thing stolen from their truck. Obviously these people are casing the houses during the day.

Anyways saw a guy walk up to our truck and check to see if its unlocked, turned around and left. So that’s creepy.

I saw someone had rang our door bell and didn’t recognize him. So I watched the video to see if he was welcome. Well he rang our doorbell, but freed a hand and ran his hands across the top of our door. There’s a little ledge above our door. I’m certain he was looking for a key to our home. Still freaky. Don’t hide keys anywhere obvious.

#66

I wasn’t sleeping, but a crazy lady ran into my property (love in the country, nearest neighbor is 1/4 mile away) while screaming that men with guns were after her. She ran up to my front door, crouched, then peed everywhere. I had no idea what was going on, opened the door and she barged in. She then ran to my recliner, sat down, and peed again. Called the police, they showed up and said she was a known crazy and hauled her off. We had to throw away the chair… Absolutely drenched.

#67

I wasn’t asleep but it was 1am. Both my ring cameras go off, which, because of how they’re angled, means only a full sized adult can be in my yard. I check the notification — dude starts walking up the sidewalk to my yard, camera with flood light kicks on, dude instantly turns around like he was mistaken and goes on to the neighbor’s yard.

Neither us nor the neighbor knew him. Shady.

Mostly I just get videos of cats visiting though

Edit: the full sized adult thing: one camera is angled down, one is angled out from a raised porch. Thus they only both go off if there is movement in my yard taller than waist high. It’s a great setup, highly recommend.

#68

I have an Amazon Ring and on Halloween night a black cat laid down on my walkway. The shadow made it look like a HUGE cat like a panther or something. Freaked me out until I zoomed in to see it was just a little black kitty.

#69

A man took my bluetooth doorbell with a camera off of my door piece and I spent at least 2 hours watching what he was doing. Apparently he sells d***s and smokes weed at night. Who knew!

#70

We have quitte a big yard with only a gate in the front and we live in the middle a city. i was asleep during this but my parents saw it happen, and i saw the aftermat on the camara images.

there was a very drunk guy who climbed over our gate and stated screeming “bella” bella”. My parent raced outsite and asked the guy what he was doing while escorting him out of our yard. He said his dog ran into our garden. They looked for the dog with the man for about half an hour but could find it at this point my parents sent the man home and went to look at the camera footage (i have woken up at this piont). We where looking at the footage and realised that there was no dog at all.

Yeah that man was pretty wasted.

#71

Not my camera, and not my house, but while visiting some close family friends during a backpacking trip through Ireland, they warned me not to go out at night as there was an animal, most likely a feral dog, that had been attacking people and other animals in their area for a few weeks. They then proceeded to show me grainy footage of a camera they had outside their farmhouse. It was really bad quality but it was clear enough for me to see a horse staggering around their lawn at night with its jaw completely torn off. Have that image scared into my brain for the rest of my life.

#72

Not my camera but nearby. Several people in my neighborhood shared creepy videos of a guy walking around the neighborhood at 3am on a freezing cold night. He was walking up to people’s front doors and garages with this weird slide walk and then moving on to the next house. He was probably high, but the videos are just deeply uncomfortable because he looks like he’s talking to himself and totally out of it.

#73

Caught a murder on camera. Wasn’t sleeping but not home at the time, came home to cops and helicopters up the street from a property I owned. Turns out there was a fight over money owed at a dice game on the corner opposite my property the day before. Somehow the two gentlemen met back up the next day (maybe under the guise of paying the debt?). One guy was driving a car and the other guy was hanging on the corner waiting for him. When the driver pulled up, the passenger hopped in the front passenger seat, shot the driver in the head, and casually got out. The car slowly rolled across the street and stopped against the curb.

Cameras caught the whole thing. The passenger/shooter WALKED down the block toward my building, facing the camera I had pointed up the block the whole time. He then turns in front of my building and gives a full side profile still walking by, although you could tell he was nervous as he was looking around quite a bit and looking over his shoulder. He then turns the corner and goes down a side street, breaking into a sprint, which the cameras caught as well.

Detectives reached out the next day and we met up at the building. We watched the whole thing and I made copies for them. Never heard anything more about it.

Unrelated to cameras, I was also a witness to an attempted murder of a cab driver a year later and got to ride along with the cops as they were looking for the getaway car. We tore a*s all over the neighborhood trying to find those guys. No luck that day but the dummies used the cab drivers credit card at a convenience store (on the same block they live on!!!) a few hours later and they got caught that way. I had to testify which was nerve wracking. It was only a preliminary hearing and I never got called back in so no idea what happened from there. The cab driver was at the hearing also and doing well. He was an elderly guy just making some extra money after retirement and these scumbags set him up by calling for a cab to a dead-ish end area and ended up shooting him in the leg for his wallet and phone.

#74

A man delivered us 2x 2litre milk bottles 3 nights apart.

We don’t know why.

#75

Not me, but a family friend.

They live in this pretty nice community (the houses are really nice and whatnot) but all of the garage entrances and driveways are in the back and all connect to this small road. There was a string of car thefts in the area, so they put out cameras just in case.

They go on a vacation for a few days (they didn’t specify where) and they come back and check the cameras.

There’s this guy who spent a good hour walking up and down the street trying to open up all of the car doors. Not with a crowbar or anything, but just by using the handle. For the first few cars, he was just pulling the handles really hard. (Maybe he thought if he pulled hard enough they would open?) But by the time he got to my family friends’ house, he looked super bored, and was essentially just checking if anyone had forgotten to lock their cars.

It seems stupid, but just remember that this was probably the guy (or one of the guys) who were stealing all of the cars. At one point, it had actually worked.

And that’s just really sad.

#76

It’s not exactly as major as some of the other stories here but one night I woke up to my two shepherds going nuts. Sifted through the cameras the next day and someone was scoping the house to break in and got spooked by the doggos barking. It’s such an eerie feeling knowing that someone was lurking around your property… felt so vulnerable.

The next day however I came home to find my back door WIDE open and immediately though hell no this dude came back and broke in. Although nothing was touched or missing… sifted through the cameras again and my dog had decided to use my back door keys to let himself out into the garden. What a panic. Now I have to hide my keys when I leave.. 😳.

#77

My d**g addicted sister with whom we have a no trespassing order and a restraining order came into our house while we were sleeping, grabbed herself a drink, then left but first she stared at our door for for a good 5 mins.

Weird and made us lock doors at all times!

#78

While I was on vacation. I have one of those motion detecting camera doorbells and there was this one old white guy who looked to be around 50-60 and he wouldn’t knock or ring the doorbell when he came to our door. Instead, for whatever reason, he would stand there as if he was expecting somebody to open the door for him, not making a noise. After about 3 minutes would pass he would just turn around and go on with his day, this happened around every other day for a span of about a week while I was out in Vegas with my parents. The odd part about it is that when we got back home from vacation, the old guy never showed up again.

#79

One night, me and a friend were playing cod in the basement when we heard some noise upstairs. We were alone in the house, so we were really freaking out like every 14 years old boys would. I had the bright idea to check the camera in the living room but it made things even worse, because we saw 2 red eyes (at least it looked like eyes) looking at the camera. We were both really tired because it was like 3am but we’re pretty sure it was eyes. The thing is, the camera wasn’t designed to see colors in the dark so we freaked out and hid in a closet for a good 15 minutes. I have absolutely no idea what happened in my living room that night and I will never check that f*****g camera ever again.

#80

Two coyotes in my driveway.