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Original poster

Someone was in our house last night.

470 replies

worried91 · 10/04/2022 10:59

Am so worried and confused about what happened.
1am- DH and I go upto bed, dd1 has popped out to pick up her boyfriend from the pub and bring him back here and dd2 has just arrived home from work. Younger dc have been asleep for hours.
5am- I hear a phone vibrating in the house and what sounds like an alarm, dh puts his ears to the older dc's doors but thinks it's coming from downstairs. Goes down past the (closed?) front door and locates the phone down the back of the couch. Knocks on oldest dd's door and throws the phone to her sleeping boyfriend saying he'd left it downstairs.
8am dd2 goes downstairs for a drink and the front door is wide open. I hear her coming up to check on the little two who are still asleep in bed.
At this point I start getting concerned so go into dd1s room and her boyfriend says the phone isn't his! He thought dh had got confused about who he was giving it to at 5am so just put it under the bed and went back to sleep.
Dh insists the door was closed when he walked past it at 5am (Yale lock no handle so when it's not clicked closed it swings wide open so I believe it was closed)
Back door is locked with the key in the door and the conservatory has an added locking system over the original lock that hasn't been moved.
We live in a nice area, we are on the edge of town with fields all around so you wouldn't walk past our house going anywhere else iyswim, you'd have to be deliberately coming this way.
We rent our house (moved in 18 months ago) so we don't know who all had keys before us which stupidly never crossed my mind until this morning 😕
Nothing seems to have been touched, my bag is over the end of the stairs, the cars and keys are all there and no laptops etc are missing.
I've no idea why anyone would have come in, lost their phone on the couch then left again without us hearing anything.
I'm worried that the person must have still been in the house when dh went downstairs then left the door open when he went out.
The only other thing to add is one night a few weeks ago dd2 came in at 1am then I went out at 5am and the door was wide open. I told her to be more careful when she came in and she insisted that she had closed the door properly but now I'm wondering if someone has done this before.
We've phoned the police who are coming out at some point to talk to us and pick up the phone (phones locked with a gaming picture on the Lock Screen) and will be going to B&Q to get new locks but I feel so on edge wondering what's been going on 😔

OP posts:
Oaktree55 · 10/04/2022 13:00

It’ll be connected to your children/children(s) boyfriend. Not many burglars go round using their phones whilst robbing somewhere.

PunchMunch · 10/04/2022 13:01

@Shadow1986

Also, if it’s an iPhone. Even when my phone is locked, I can swipe up and it’ll show previous notifications so this may give you some clues as to who’s phone it is.
How do you get yours to do that? Mine,dds and dh doesn't, it would be useful for dh at work if he could but he hasn't been able to work out how, we have Face ID set and can only see old notifications after the padlock opens by looking at phone, if the phone is away from face and the padlock still closed the previous notifications wont appear when swiping.
MostlyEatingBiscuits · 10/04/2022 13:01

Swapping the barrel in a Yale lock is not expensive or difficult. It costs about a tenner and anyone semi competent with a screwdriver can do it in a few minutes.

LaNozzeDiFigaro · 10/04/2022 13:03

@PunchMunch it's a delicate swipe up. A full swipe up brings the passcode screen. I've deactivated Face ID though as it kept unlocking while I was walking around and doing things I didn't want it to. I'm fairly certain it's the same.

mumsiedarlingrevolta · 10/04/2022 13:04

@Blanketpolicy

If it is an iPhone does pressing the home key and asking Siri to "call mum" (or other random names) still work?
@Blanketpolicy was coming on to say the same.

DS (in his 20's) was on a drunken night out-called the uber and sat on some steps to wait. Got in, leaving phone on steps.
In a miraculous series of events someone picked it up and put it through the letter box of the office building the steps were on and an amazing woman used Siri to call Mum and her us know she had the phone.
DS just like DH in that somehow things always seem to work out!

Rather long winded way to agree but try Siri?

Shadow1986 · 10/04/2022 13:05

I think it’s under settings > notifications > Show Previews and select ‘always’.

If I swipe up from the very bottom of my phone it takes me to Lock Screen to put pin in, but if I swipe up slightly higher it shows me notification centre.

cheeseislife8 · 10/04/2022 13:05

This sounds so scary! Changing the locks is a great idea, you just don't know who from the house's past still has one. We had a few weird occurances when we first moved into our current house. Cats out that were in when we left, doors open or closed that weren't how we left them and small things like that. All of them magically stopped when we changed the locks

PunchMunch · 10/04/2022 13:06

[quote LaNozzeDiFigaro]@PunchMunch it's a delicate swipe up. A full swipe up brings the passcode screen. I've deactivated Face ID though as it kept unlocking while I was walking around and doing things I didn't want it to. I'm fairly certain it's the same. [/quote]
I just tried it on mine but sort of swiped from the middle up instead of the bottoms and it's worked perfectly. Thank you so much for that Smile

justlonelystars · 10/04/2022 13:09

Okay - so my husband tells at story of when he was 18 he walked back home from a night out and crashed out on the sofa - only it wasn’t his house, they’d moved out a year before and he’d been at uni for most of this time. Could it be something similar? Doors are left unlocked where my husband is from but could it be a drunk teenager who’s still got keys and just forgot he doesn’t live there anymore?

ImInStealthMode · 10/04/2022 13:10

@WTF475878237NC

Best guess is a drunk got the wrong house
A friend of mine once did this, they'd not long moved and he'd been out, got extremely drunk and went back to their old flat Blush

It's the type of place where nobody locks their doors and he crashed on the couch. Woke up after a couple of hours, realised, horrified, snuck out.

Obviously it would have been awful for everyone if the new tenants had woken up and realised, but it was a silly drunk mistake, there was no malicious intent.

FortunesFave · 10/04/2022 13:11

It's something to do with DD and her boyfriend. Either he or she has accidentally brought someone else's phone home and doesn't want the other to know...or along those lines. And I'm another one who is astounded your husband opened the door and threw the phone to the sleeping boyfriend! That's weird! Why didn't he just turn it off or something normal?

MrsLargeEmbodied · 10/04/2022 13:13

surely it could have been lost in the couch for ages?

Lockheart · 10/04/2022 13:14

@MrsLargeEmbodied

surely it could have been lost in the couch for ages?
How long do you think phone battery lasts?

It could only have been down there a few days max.

Polyanthus2 · 10/04/2022 13:15

The phone would have had owner's fingerprints.
Sounds like a drunk sleeping on the sofa - left without phone.
Could the phone have been there a while?

MrsLargeEmbodied · 10/04/2022 13:16

ok lost in the couch for a day,

IcedOatLatte · 10/04/2022 13:22

It doesn't seem very likely that a random person is going to have keys to your house or that with all the comings and goings someone managed to sneak in and out without being noticed

More likely that the door wasn't shut properly and the phone fell out of someone's pocket at a different time

jesusmaryjosephandtheweedonkey · 10/04/2022 13:23

Honestly sounds like someone allowed someone to crash on the sofa and now people have been woken up and disturbed and it's escalated, they won't own up.
You have a random phone so the answer is with that .

fairylightsandwaxmelts · 10/04/2022 13:29

@MrsLargeEmbodied

surely it could have been lost in the couch for ages?
The OP says the battery is almost full, so it must have been lost recently.

Even if they're not being used, iPhone batteries don't last longer than a few days.

DoubleChinWoes2 · 10/04/2022 13:34

I had a phone that even when the battery was dead the alarm went off! I had a phone that died Friday night in the pub when I was a student, didn't go home to charge it but the alarm woke me up Monday morning staying with my boyfriend. It wasn't a smart phone though, an old flip thing from the early 2000s

Getoffmyshoes · 10/04/2022 13:34

@jesusmaryjosephandtheweedonkey

Honestly sounds like someone allowed someone to crash on the sofa and now people have been woken up and disturbed and it's escalated, they won't own up. You have a random phone so the answer is with that .
This! I think it’s vanishingly unlikely someone random snuck into your house, took nothing and left their phone down the back of the sofa all without waking you Confused
Aberration · 10/04/2022 13:40

Don’t you think it’s unlikely that her adult children would continue to lie about someone sleeping over when the op was about to call the police ?

Fadeout83 · 10/04/2022 13:42

No advice but subscribing because I’m curious as hell. My bet is on one of the kids sneaking someone in. Anything else is super creepy

JunhaLamra · 10/04/2022 13:43

Locks are very easy to change, hundreds of videos on YouTube showing you how to do it depending on the lock. Even in rented properties we have done this and then just put back the landlord's original barrel when we move out.

We had the previous tenant of our property turn up and try to sell us spare keys that they still had in their possession and they couldn't see anything wrong with that situation. Luckily we had already changed the barrel so they were useless to us anyway but we notified the letting agents.

JustVisiting9 · 10/04/2022 13:44

Do you know anyone who would have a reason to set their alarm for 5am on a Sunday? Anyone who'd have to be at work early for example?

Have you looked down the back of the sofa where the phone was found again to see if there's anything else e.g. a wallet or card that might have fallen out at the same time but been missed by your partner at 5am?

DuchessofAnkh22 · 10/04/2022 13:45

This is simple.... The door wasn't correctly shut (so closed but not completely) so a gust of wind opens it.

The phone has been lost by someone in the house recently, You need to check with recent guests.