Man knocking telling me to come outside

To be honest I don’t think life is bleak for women living alone/with children as is being made out here. I think this thread is giving lots of worst case scenarios but generally loads of women live without adult men and fare fine!

I think you just have to tell yourself that no one knocking on your door late at night, needs you to open the door. Just ignore it completely especially if you have cameras. Sure there might be a 0.01% chance that someone knocking on your door is escaping danger or whatever nonsense scenario posed by others, but that is going to be such a rare scenario that ignoring late night knocks on the door is still going to be in your best interest regardless.

For anyone needing help, calling the emergency services is always going to be the first point of call. In most situations a random woman with/without a child is not going to be the most helpful anyway so they’d be better off going elsewhere.

I just think - keep the cameras, ensure they are charged and working and don’t let both batteries die simultaneously again. Don’t speak to anyone at the door at night, they don’t need to hear a female voice speaking to them
it cements that you’re an easy target if they are that way included. If you don’t engage, they lose interest. Especially if they’re being recorded on camera.

I have CCTV and I’d say no one bothers me since putting the cameras up. Before that I might have random knocks but I didn’t know who that was per se. But since having the cameras, they are a massive deterrent to random BS.

I had a kid try this - about 11 maybe but in daylight - we had two door clear glass outter one and main door - outside one was locked and I declined to open due to young kids but he seem upset so offered several times to phone police he went when I got the phone to do so.

Later found out it was a gang doing burglary in local area - man went in back though we had two back doors both locked during the day. Here the doors,may well be unlocked but there I locked them as seem to get quite a few issues peopel tryimg doors or knocking selling.

I didn't report this events but others did and police and local paper alerted people.

You did the right thing.. especially reporting it. Sometimes it builds a picture of some random creep trying different houses.

Get a ring though. Or the equivalent with a free cloud. They give piece of mind

Something like this happened to me a few years ago when I was a student. About 2am (mid week) an older man started banging on the door of my flat shouting that I turn the music down. I had been asleep in the flat alone for about 2 hours and even before that I had read in bed for an hour and I don't think I had played music at all that night. I told him there was no music and that we were all asleep but he continued to bang on the door insisting that I open the door to him. I was alone because my two male flatmates spend most nights at their girlfriends flats or were out partying somewhere so I was normally on my own at night in that flat. After some time of me refusing to open the door he eventually went away. It happened again a week or so later and this time I told him I was calling the police and he legged it. He had been claiming to live upstairs from me but he went down the stairs to the exit of the flats. The police came out but he wasn't ever found.

I think he had somehow noticed that I was a young woman alone in the flat most nights and I think probably planned to assault me in some way if I'd been stupid enough to open the door to him. The main security door to the flat had been damaged a few weeks before all this happened was finally fixed after the police were involved. I unfortunately never got a good look at the man's face as it was always in shadow as the stairway light was behind him.

I would tell the police as I he might be trying it on elsewhere, I really hate to think what his motives might be.

I answer the door during the day because we very rarely get cold callers and most people who ring the bell are either delivering or are people we know well. At night I would stick my head out of the bathroom window, which is above the front door, and ask who it is and what do they want.

I had a man knocking late last year. I didn't engage at all the first time as I was frozen with fear. He came back a couple of weeks later so I put my Bluetooth speaker right by the door on full volume and played a man's voice shouting "what do you want?" on repeat. He never returned

A neighbour down our road was burgled a few years ago and it was a very specific time when they were only out for an hour or so. Someone had obviously been watching the house - and were potentially after something in particular.

And if you're in a house, you can open an upstairs window and ask them what they want. That's what i do with the cold callers. I know MNers think it's weird that people don't open their doors to all and sundry but why would you unless you are expecting a visitor or a parcel?

My late mother had a brain tumour, in the lead up before we knew, she started doing some really random odd things. Accusing neighbours of making lots of noise, ranting at them. Saying people over the back were leaving a bright light on all night. It was nonsense but took a while before she was diagnosed for us to join the dots. You just don’t know what someone could potentially be going through but that said, I’d call the police so they are aware.

My guess is that he knew there was no man in the house. I don’t want to alarm anyone but something happened to me to make me realise that people around us know more about our living arrangements, our habits and rhythms than we may realise.

l

I really hope OP is just catching up on sleep.

I’ve been watching loads of old episodes of Crimewatch UK and loads of crimes start like this. This is why people are right not to open the door.

You can get your Ring doorbell hardwired into the mains electricity, which means it doesn't require charging and risk being unavailable when needed. You'd need a competent electrician to do this, but worth the cost for the peace of mind it'd bring.

Sorry this happened to you. I'd be very unsettled in your shoes too

I know it’s no help to OP now, but if anyone has battery powered Ring doorbells, it’s worth buying a second battery. When I get a notification that my battery is low/30%, I charge up my spare one. When that is fully charged, I swap it with the one in the doorbell so that it’s always working.

There are posters telling stories of when they had late night knocks at the door and they didn't answer but I haven't seen the many posts where there are actual crimes that did occur. Im not sure I've seen one but I accept I may have missed yhem

Well clearly when we don't know the actual reason anything is theoretically possible but that doesn't make all those things equally likely.

Im not going to change my view that a distraction burglary at 11pm when a house is in darkness is the top of the list of possibilities.

The OP didnt open the door, nothing bad happened, she's had good advice about charging the doorbell cameras, what is helpful about suggesting all the worst case scenarios?

On MN you get laughed at for living alone and saying you don’t answer the door to any unexpected callers!

How terrifying OP. Get in touch with the police and have your Ring doorbells charged, you can get spare batteries for them but maybe try to charge during the day if you feel safer in daytime.

This. I've knocked on people's doors before, after dark, to tell them they've left their car open or I've found a bunch of keys on their drive - you don't start by asking them to come outside. That's horror film 101 stuff. You start with the issue - "Sorry to disturb you but if that's your blue Astra that's parked outside you've left the boot open". "Sorry to knock so late but I found some keys on your drive, are they yours?". Whether the guy was confused, drunk, weird or deeply dodgy in some way I don't think the OP is being unreasonable by considering the possibility of a non-benevolent motive. However rare these incidents are, they do happen. I'm not one of the 'lock your door and never answer it' MNers, I probably err more towards 'whoever's out there isn't going to be more bad tempered than me', but I certainly wouldn't obediently trot out into the street if I was in the same situation as the OP of this thread.

I think you are agreeing with me that he wasn’t very articulate.

She said she didn’t go outside to look. Any of those things could be missed by just checking from one angle.

It is (fortunately) rare.

Yes, there are many examples given on the thread - ranging over a 30 year period and by a self selecting group (people who see the thread title and think “oh something similar happened to me once”).

Its important to stay safe but it’s also important not to become overly anxious and disappear down a rabbit hole thinking that every knock of the door is malicious.

The fact he refused to say why he wanted her to come outside is EXACTLY the point.

if someone’s tyre had been slashed why didn’t he say that? If someone’s lights were left on why didn’t he say that?

Then he even got agitated when she refused and STILL refused to tell her.

Thats not normal behaviour from someone either in an emergency or someone simply trying to be a decent person.

Also did you miss the part where op looked outside and there was nothing to see?

We once had a knock in the door at about 2am. I opened an upstairs window to see who it was, I wouldn’t even have gone to the door at night.

There are many people in this very thread relaying examples of opportunistic criminals doing the exact same thing as this man so it’s not rare at all.

But he didn’t say it was an emergency, did he?

While I think OP was sensible to not go out, examples of what it could have been include flat tire, slashed tyre, rock through the window, hand break was off and car has rolled into something, he saw someone bump the car and drive off … any number of things.

If I was walking a dog at 11pm (which isn’t that unusual as a quick round the block before bed), and I saw any of those things, I would have knocked on the door. And I would have done it quietly in case children were sleeping. The only difference is that I would have been more articulate about the issue than this person seemingly was.

Im not saying that’s what it was, and I am certainly not saying OP should have done anything differently, but IMO it is more likely that it was something benign rather than a door to door rapist (as some are suggesting).

i can understand why you feel unnerved by that and im glad you didnt open the door or comply in any way.
Charge your ring doorbell in the daytime only.
I think i would have said "its OK my husband is a police officer and on his way home now....