There’s a Stranger in Your Walls: Living With Uninvited Guests

The following story was published last year, but I was asked about bringing it up again to make it easier to find, so it will remain here in the meantime while I'll bring you the next week's episode. It was one of the creepiest stories we've told, so I think it's worthwhile to put it up here. Something that could happen to anyone. Picture this. It's time for bed after a long day at work, and you're about to go to sleep. The lights are off and your relaxing sound machine is on and you're pulling back your sheets. Suddenly you hear it tapping. It sounds like it's coming from inside of your walls. Great, just what you need. A wrap problem. You look for an exterminator to call after work tomorrow, But the next morning, when you wake up, things seem a bit out of place. There's a cup in the sink, but you left your sink empty. One of your chairs is too far back. But that's not how you left it, or is it if you did while you were standing in the kitchen. Confused. There's more tapping, but this time it sounds like footsteps. Your heart starts racing. Maybe it's not a rodent problem. Could your apartment be haunted? When people find things out of place in their house and start hearing strange sounds, their minds go to the paranormal, although sometimes the truth and the living can be far worse. My name is Edwin, and here so hoarsy. Philip Peters retired after forty years at the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad in nineteen thirty. He and his wife, Helen were enjoying their time together. The children were adults now and lived two hundred and fifty miles away. For fun, Philip and hell were part of a local mandolin band, and they taught music lessons together. But their fun and carefree retirement came to an end in nineteen forty one. Helen had fallen and broken her hip. She had to spend weeks at the hospital, and Philip was left at home alone, or at least he thought he was. Peter's neighbors knew that he was lonely and invited him over for dinner. They even gave him left over for the next few days. On October seventeenth, nineteen forty one, Peter walked over to his house after dinner, was carrying his leftovers. He unlocked his door, and he was met with a disturbing scene. In his living room, there was a stranger just standing there. The man was tall and disheveled and raiding his ice box. Philip and the stranger began to fight, but unfortunately, the stranger beat Philip to death with a cast iron stoveshaker. Philip's neighbors were worried about him, and they went to check on him. They were shocked to find their friend dead on the floor. Police arrived searched the house, but could not find the intruder. They were also met with a confusing detail that there was no sign of force entry. Did Philip know his murderer? How did he get in? Pelice was baffled. Helen returned to her lonely house months later. In February of nineteen forty two, she had injured her hip again and returned to the hospital for another few months, and it wasn't until April of nineteen forty two that she would once again be back to her house for good. Her longtime home felt different now, and it wasn't just because of her husband. Weird things were happening around there. She started hearing tapping in the walls, her food kept going missing. Her things were being moved, and after breaking her hips twice, moving around was very difficult for her, so she tried to hire help, but no one lasted. One woman Helen had hired fled in fear, claiming that she would not stay in a haunted house. The woman Helen hired after that also quit. She had seen a pale and bony hand slide around to open a door, and that's when Helen began to feel afraid as well. She started to think that her house was haunted, so she ended up leaving and moving to Grand Junction with her son, and once she was gone, the neighbors started noticing more strange occurrences. There were strange sounds coming from Helen's empty house. They also started smelling strong, disgusting smells, and they continued to report every weird event to the police. The police would stop by searched the house, but never found anything out of the ordinary. Everyone believed that the house was haunted. Locals even gave it a nickname. It was known as a Moncrief ghost. The police investigation had gone cold, and the continued calls about Philip and Helen's old house were confusing for officers. In July of nineteen forty two, detectives Roy Bloxam and Bill Jackson decided to try and get to the bottom of the Moncreef ghost mystery. They staked out in front of the house instead of waiting for another call from someone in the neighborhood. As they were sitting in the car, they noticed a curtain move from the inside of the house. They quickly ran from their car to the house, but when they got inside it was empty. As they were ready to give up, they heard noises coming from the upstairs area. The pair opened a closet door and saw a pair of legs trying to disappear into a tiny opening that led to the attic. This didn't appear to be a ghost. They reached for the pair of legs and pulled down hard, and although it was not a ghost, the man had a ghastly appearance to him. He was tall, very skinny, and disheveled. He was taken downtown to the police station. He was six feet tall and seventy five pounds. The man turned out to be Theodore Edward Coney's He was given a meal in a bath and that's when he gave officers his name. Age, confession and life story. He was fifty nine years old. Theodore Edward Coney's was born in Illinois in the eighteen eighties, though the exact date is unknown. He moved to Denver in the nineteen tens, and his health had always been pretty bad. Even as a child, he was always underweight, and that didn't change in adulthood. Due to his health issues, Theodore was not able to keep a job long term, and he was frequently without a place to live. When he had first arrived in Denver, Theodore found himself at the same music center that Philip and Helen taught lessons at. Fyodor even took some mandolin lessons from them at some point when he was eighteen. They even had him over for dinner. He knew where their house was. They had been kind to him in his youth. Decades later, maybe they would be kind to him again. So he knocked at their house one night, wondering if they would share a meal with him again. There was no answer. He peeked inside and it appeared that no one was home. He tried the door and it happened to be unlocked. It turns out Philip had been at the hospital with Helen. That night, Philip didn't lock his door and Theodore just walked in. At first, he was only planning on taking some food and leaving, but he changed his mind. He decided to make the Peters Attic his new home, and so he wedged himself through the tiny hole in the closet and made himself a nest in the attic. At night, when Philip or Helen were asleep, he would sneak down from his nest and take their food. This was working for Theodore until the night he was caught by Philip and he killed him. He snuck back up to the attic right after the murder and police never found him. He stayed there while Helen was in the hospital, and when she returned months later, Theodore was still there. He was a moncrief ghoast. He lived off of corn meal, preserves and canned food that he found in the basement. For water, he would climb onto the roof and grab snow and melt it. When police officers caught Theodore and arrested him, they found the smallest officer and sent him to the attic. They wanted to see the home he had made for himself, but a second he got up there, he threw up. The smell was overwhelming. Theodore had been collecting his own waist up there for all of those months. Theodore was charged and convicted for the murder of Philip Peters. He remained in prison until his own death in nineteen sixty seven. I come across a lot of ghost stories because of my work, and if I've heard of mysterious tapping in the middle of the night, my mind would go to the paranormal as well. All around the world there are cases of people experiencing things that make them think is my house haunted, when really it's not a ghost, it's another person living in their house without them knowing a thing. You would be surprised to know how common this is. And it is until social media in those late night stories that I came across this bizarre type of situation, and it has a name. It's called frogging with the pH in the front. The official definition of frogging is when someone lives in someone else's house without the resident or hormoner's knowledge. And it got this name because the person doing this hops from house to house like a frog, leaping from one place to another. They usually live in places that they won't be noticed in like in the inside of the world, an unused attic, or even a basement of someone else's house. It would only come out when everyone else was asleep or out of their home. And although having another person living in your place without you knowing is disturbing and violating, in some cases like we just heard, it can also be deadly. Daniel LaPlante was born and raised in Townsend, Massachusetts. He had a very difficult childhood, plagued by abuse from the hands of adults that were supposed to take care of him. His own father, his stepfather, and even his psychiatrist abused him. Classmates said he smelled and just had an appearance that showed he didn't take care of himself. Plus he was a loner. He was diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder at age eighteen. During his teens, Danielle la Plante was in and out of trouble with the law. He had broken into several homes and stolen jewelry, money, and other things. He was also caught looking into the windows of different homes in his neighborhood on different occasions. Despite his social struggles and difficult upbringing, Daniel found himself in love. He started going after a girl named Tina Bowen, and so he called her and told her that a friend had given him her phone number, and then had a few phone calls between them and eventually agreed to meet for a date. The date did not go well. It was clear to Tina that something was off about Daniel. He didn't appear to be who he said he was. He brought up weird conversations, and after an hour Tina had enough and she left. That was the extent of their relationship, just one date and it was over. At least that's what Tina thought. Not long after their short lived relationship, in December of nineteen eighty six, the Bowen family began experiencing strange things in their house. Tina and her sister Karen noticed that when they left the room and returned, the TV channel had changed. If they left the kitchen for just a moment and returned, their food would be gone. Things they had left in one place disappeared and would show up somewhere else. They kept hearing noises from within their walls, and they told their dad, and their dad, Frank Bowen, thought his daughters were dis messing with each other. He dismissed their fears, and while he looked the other way, his daughters continued to be mentally tortured in their own house. As all these strange experiences continued, the girls grew more and more paranoid. On December eighth, Frank and a friend were hanging out at home when they noticed that there was something wrong in the bathroom. No one had been home, but it seemed like someone had just used a toilet. Frank frantically searched the house, hoping to find the intruder. He went from room to room, and when he opened one of the closets, he found Danny in the plant. Daniel was holding a hatchet in one hand and a steel ranch in the other. He swung the hatchet at Frank and ordered everyone in the house to go into the nearest room, and everyone did. There was nothing else a family could do. Fortunately, as they were waiting for their opportunity to escape, they saw a chance. Daniel stepped out of the room where he was holding the family hostage for just a second, and that's when Tina Bowen escaped through a window. She ran to a neighbor's house, where she called nine one one police arrived shortly with search dogs, but Daniel had gotten away. The father, Frank, told investigators that the most chilling part of everything was how calm Daniel was during it all. He coldly and calmly told the Bowen family to get into the other room. Even the way he swung the hatchet was collected and calculated. The Bowen family was obviously shaken and afraid for their life. They fled their house to a nearby hotel, but unfortunately their nightmare was not over. Two days after being held hostage in their own home, Frank returned to his house to grab some belongings, and as he was inside, he saw a face pressing up against the front window. It was the intruder from two days ago. He immediately called nine one one to report what he had seen, and when they arrived, he told Officer Stephen Bezensen about what he saw and handed him the key to the door. The officer walked around the house looking at the fresh footprints on the snow. Before he noticed the door. He was met with one of the most disturbing scenes he had ever seen. There was a knife sticking out of the right wall, and then on a family picture he saw writing it read I'm still here, Come find me. The hairs on the back of the neck stood up. He turned around and that's when he saw another knife. This knife was on the opposite wall and stabbed through another family picture, and there was writing there too. This one said I'm going to kill you all. Officer Bezensen called for backup, and in just a few minutes, Officer Scott and Chief Young arrived at the Bowen residence. They searched the house, looking into all the obvious places and found nobody. The officer presents him told the other two that bastard is still here. Were missing something, and that's when he realized there was a section in the wall behind the toilet. It was made white enough to hide pipes, and he looked inside. There there was a pile of clothes, and underneath that pile of clothes was Daniel Laplant hiding. It was evident that Daniel knew exactly where to hide because he had been there before. His hiding spot was very hard to get into. It was a corner with concrete foundation and an inner wall and then another outfacing wall that separated the toilet from the plumbing pipes. The spot was so small there was barely enough room for him. He had to sit in a crouched position, and that's what he did. He even fell asleep in that position. The entrance to Daniel's hiding spot was tiny. It was a very narrow opening that was as wide as a piece of paper. Daniel was taken into custody, where he made a chilling confession to investigators. He told him he had been going in and out of the Bowen home unnoticed for weeks. He spent a lot of time living there. He would do things to confuse a family on purpose, and do things to annoy them. He would change the channels on the TV set, drink the Bowen's girls cups of milk, fill the bathtub with urine, and leave trails of pennies in the hallway. Scaring them was fun for him. It was amusing to him. Daniel did this for an entire year. He became a ghost in the walls of the Bowen home. His reign of terror still affects the family. Thirty years later. Karen Bowen still cannot sleep in the dark. The rest of the story continues. Right after this stay with me, Daniel spent almost eleven months in jail. His mom made bail in October of nineteen eighty seven, and although the Bowen family's nightmare was over, Daniel was not done terrorizing others. Almost immediately after getting bailed out, he started breaking and entering into homes. In December of nineteen eighty seven, just two months after being bailed out, Daniel broke into the house of Andrew and Priscilla Gustavson in Townsend, Massachusetts. This was the second time he had been in the Gustavson home. He liked going back to familiar places, just like he did with the Bowen home. While Daniel was in their house, Priscilla and her five year old son, William got home. Daniel a plant, came out of his hiding spot and aimed the gun at Priscilla and William. He ordered Priscilla into her bedroom, where he assaulted her and then shot her, and then he took five year old William to the bathroom where he drowned him. He tried to leave after that, but heard seven year old Abigail Gustavson get home from school, and he drowned her too. There was a man hunt for Daniel after police found the gruesome crime scene, and even though there was no evidence tying him to the scene. He was an immediate suspect because of his history. He escaped the police a few times, but he was found hiding in sight of a dumpster. When the bow And family heard about the tragic murderer and Daniel's arrest, they were very scared if you're Daniel would not be prosecuted and would somehow make his way back to the inside of their walls. The family fled their house for a few days and went into hiding themselves. The Bowens did not feel safe, not until Daniel was behind bars. He was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences without the chance of parole. In twenty seventeen, Daniel asked for his sentence to be reduced. He was granted a hearing for that. There was a new law in the state of Massachusetts that allowed people convict it as juveniles for more than thirty years to ask for parole. His parole was denied. A psychiatrist evaluated Daniel LaPlante and determined that he was not remorseful for any of his crimes. There was no doubt that if he were free again, he would begin to hide inside of a family home again and possibly commit murder. The Campbell family left their house in Honolulu for one week to visit family. This was a normal thing for them. As they drove back home, ready to sleep in their own beds and return to the comfort of their house, they were met with an odd sight. There was a bike that did not belong to any of them sitting right in front of their house. James and Brittany Campbell told their kids to wait in the car so they could see what was going on. James tried opening the door, but someone was inside yelling, this isn't your house, This isn't your house. This was his house, and he pushed the door so hard that the man pushing against it fell. The stranger quickly stood up and James saw him. The stranger was wearing his own clothes and told James again, this isn't your home. James found a sledgehammer and chased a stranger out of his house while Brittany called the police. Police arrived and they arrested the stranger. His name was Ezekiel Zaeis. While the Campbell family was gone, he made it himself at home in their house, and when the Campbells finally entered their home, it was a complete disaster. There were pots and pans all over the house. James's musical equipment was all out, the couch was full of bodily fluids. Their kitchen knives were spread out on their bed. The Campbells thought that was it, but during the investigation, Ezekiel's journal entries were found. The writing and the journals was extremely disturbing. He wrote about performing surgeries on the family. He wanted to turn them into the perfect human specimens. In the notes Ezekiel left there was also a paper titled the Omnivore Trials the Rehabilitation of rat like People. What did that even mean? It was bizarre. But the creepiest thing among the journal entries was that Ezekiel wrote about Brittany going through fertility treatment. They hadn't told anyone about this and had started months ago, and this meant that Ezekiel had been living in their home for much longer than the week they were gone. But they found next confirmed their worst fear. They found dozens of videos of Ezekiel sitting on Britney's desk chair and some he was shirtless, and there were several of these videos dating back two weeks before the family went on vacation. Ezekiel had indeed been hiding in their house and they had no idea this man baited their home and destroyed the feeling of safety they all had. This happened in twenty nineteen, and it still shakes their core to talk about it. Ezekiel was charged with burglary for breaking into the Campbell family house, but he was released. Less than a year later, he was back in jail, this time for good. He had been arrested again for vandalizing a temple, but while he was in jail, he killed another prison and will remain there for life. It's a common saying among skeptics regarding the paranormal that the living should be feared more than the dead, and now it may actually hold some truth. Whether you agree or not depends on your own experiences. But if you have ever been through situations that involve noises at night, disappearing objects, or things being moved around your house, consider the possibility that you're home your safe space they actually have a real living ghost in the walls. If you have any real horror stories that you've heard and want to hear on the podcast, let me know. I'll leave my contact information in the description of this episode. Fradfree listening and more. Check us out on scaryplus dot com and to get in touch with me, find me on Instagram and TikTok. I'm at Edwin Cove. That's e d w I n co o V. This episode of Horror Story was researched by Don, with scriptwriting and pre production by Christina Lamaghi. It was hosted and read by me Edwin Kowarrubias. Anyway, thank you very much for listening, See you sooner.