Not to answer the door?

[usernameismyusername]

It's late at night here and we're lying in bed. Someone banged on the door loudly and repeatedly, my dh and I were at each other. He got up and yelled 'hello?' through the front door. A lady yelled back and said did we have any money for the bus. My dh yelled back no sorry.

It freaked us both out but after thinking about it, now I'm worried that there's a woman walking around late at night with no way of getting home. Wibu (and dh) not to give her change or open up to her?

No you weren't unreasonable, I wouldn't have either.

Probably a scam where they try to get money out of you or once you open the door an armed gang bursts in and robs you. Don't worry yourself.

I wouldn't have answered the door. If she was knocking on the door because she was being followed it would be different. But begging for a bus fare, no, for the reasons banana says.

No way would I have opened the door to someone asking for money.

Did you go to bed very early or do your buses run very late?

You say it is late at night, how late? As in, are there actually buses running near you at the moment?

It is definitely a bit weird for a stranger to knock on your door late at night and not unreasonable for you to not open.

We live in a quiet cul-de-sac, and over the years we've had similar occurrences; where it's turned out to be friends (or hook-ups) of neighbouring youngsters who are drunk and misremembered which house. Could it be something similar?

I understand that the idea of thinking a lone woman is stranded is making you uncomfortable/stranded, but equally you are both possibly thinking she may NOT be alone and it is a scam to get you to open the door/ check if the house is empty etc.

It's a hard one.

Is she still around? You could shout down and ask why she has found herself stranded?

I wouldn't have answered the door. If she was knocking on the door because she was being followed it would be different

People can say anything. Doesn't make it true.

I took so long to type that everyone else has covered my points far more succinctly

Having had someone bang on our door late at night (who was large, male and drunk) I've had a reminder to think about this. I would only answer the door late at night to someone I knew. Otherwise I would offer to call the police/ambulance - the risk is it's a scam which could end in significant harm (to me). I didn't open the door to the drunk, who tried worryingly hard to persuade me that he should be there and that we were expecting him.

We lived in a hospital flat and got sick to death of people ringing the bell and calling into the intercom. We used to ignore it. When yet another female voice claimed to have been raped (lots of drunken women would say that - we got used to it) we ignored it once more. The next morning there was a trail of blood between the flats and A&E. God, did we feel bad. But if we had responded every time someone yelled that, we would have had little sleep. This poor woman.

This was a scam by me i willntry find the article.

A woman knocks late at night begging for help/money. When people opened the door men with her would push you aside and enter the property to steal.

Sometimes if you don't answer the men that she is fronting will kick the door in.

Another one is to bang on the door hard to see if an alarm goes off, then stop, then bang again to see if anyone looks out. Then kick the door in.

We have had someone hit our door at night, it shakes the house, the alarm doesn't go off because I am still awake and it is not set. However, the steel door may well hurt their hand when they punch it, the steel frame doesn't move and the security lock doesn't give way so I tend to ignore it as I am busy and they will be gone before I get to the window anyway.

Snopes also confirm it. If uneasy about someone being attacked or in distress call the police. My aunt heard screaming one night behind her house and it turned out her neighbour was being stabbed to death. Was an awful situation for all luckily the neighbour survived after surgery.

It's dangerous. Sometimes it's a woman saying she needs toilet etc.
NEVER open doors at night like this. There was probably someone waiting out of sight to force their way in!

I would have ignored it as well. Do you love by a bus stop? If not, why has she knocked at your house? Even if you do live enlarge a bus stop, it’s a bit weird that she has knocked,on your door late at night.

I had a teen come up,to me last week and asked for directions to a village Which was two plus miles away, so I suggested she caught a bus. She said she didn’t have any money. I came away feeling slightly guilty that i couldn’t/wouldn’t help,her, but I didn’t want to be scammed/robbed either. However, the girl and her friend were still hanging about a couple,of hours later, talking to a local shopkeeper, so I reasoned she can’t have been too depsarate.

We heard the most unearthly screaming one night at the back of our last house on a bridleway full of trees and no lights. It was a woman, no other voices except hers. Absolute terror as if she was being murdered or raped. It was blood curdlng. We rang the police, so did several neighbours. They took it really seriously and brought in extra officers from Newcastle and a police helicopter and search the area and the fields and allotments. Nothing. We felt stupid but they said we had done the right thing. They told us not to go out when we rang - DH was all for going out there to see if he could find her-he thought someone had committed murder. He was told not to go out.
Strange people hang around at night - don't give them a chance to get near you. Don't open the door.

NEver answer your door late at night, if you have an upstairs window talk through that, if it’s an undesirable call the police.

You were not unreasonable at all. My cousin once opened the door late at night after something similar and two people, woman and man, pushed past her into her house and went through rooms quickly looking for valuables, one blocking her way all the time. They didn't get much except stuff out of her purse but it was terrifying.

I've thought of a solution - throw bus fare in an envelope out of the window! Hee hee, just a thought. f you found it on front garden in the morning you'd know the woman wasn't genuine.

Somebody knocked on my mum's door during the day a while ago - she happened to be on the loo at the time so wasn't able to answer it immediately but as soon as she could she opened an upstairs window to call down and see who it was and what they wanted. There were three men, quite smartly dressed, all out of the car, who wanted directions to somewhere not nearby - and they would have had to have turned off the road and driven up her drive to get to the house, so not an obvious place to stop for directions, particularly not to where they were going.

She pointed them off in the approximate direction, told them to ask later and didn't think any more of it. Next day, at the hair dressers, she discovered that these people had robbed a couple of other houses locally, while the owners were out. Reckon mum had a lucky escape as at the other houses, just one person had knocked on the door - and when it wasn't answered, the others got out to help rob the place (somebody had seen it happen from a distance).

So beware during the daytime as well as at night!

This happened to me years ago. There was lots of loud knocking/banging in the early hours and when I didn't answer the door he kicked the door in. I just had enough time to pull on some clothes and grab my phone before he was in my bedroom. Apparently he had the wrong flat

It was 11:30pm here (and I fell asleep ) . Some of these stories are awful.

There's a main road nearby so there are buses running. We're on the outskirts of the city so it wouldn't be that far to walk, but not very safe.

Dh looked out the window after and saw her going to other houses. His concern as others have said was that there were others out there with her.

When I was very young I was sexually assaulted. I ran down a street trying to escape the guy, screaming, and banged on a door. The person looked at me through a screen but didn't help me. It had never occurred to me that there were these scams going on and that's why people are reluctant.

I probably would’ve chucked some change out of the window

No, I'd have said 'I'll call the police for you', then see if they hung around. If they needed help genuinely they would hang around safe outside your home. If not, they'd scarper.