So there I was, trying to drift off to sleep at 11pm last night. I was in that half-asleep-half-awake stage when I heard, as if in a dream, a sound that I thought was someone knocking at my door. Sometimes in that half-asleep stage I’ll get some auditory hallucinations…but these seemed rather real.
My first inclination was to ignore it, but then I figured I better go check it out. I pad in to the living room, buck naked, and glance at the security cameras. Sure enough, there’s some idiot standing on my porch.
Now, I learned a long time ago, and at great cost, that the best course of action when there is a stranger at your door, is to not open the door to ask what they want. Instead, I go up to the door and yell “What do you want?”
Back comes this meek and sorry voice saying “I just want talk to someone”. Are you freaking kidding me? This scraggly bearded hippie is either drunk, stoned, both, or otherwise not in their right mind.
So..definitely not opening the door. “No. Go away.” (‘Go away’ sounds less confrontational than ‘get lost’. So I go with that.)
He turns around and wanders into the night.
So… Back to bed for me? Well, that was the plan. Except my neighbors on both sides are women who live alone. :::sigh::: Pull on a pair of sweats and a hoodie, slip on my shoes, grab the MP5A2 and step outside to make sure he’s not freaking out the neighbors. No sign of him. Ok, duty fulfilled…time to go back to sleep.
This isn’t the first time some sort of weirdness like this has occurred. I think the reason is that my computer room is at the front of the house and since I leave the computer and monitors on all night, it gives the impression that someone is awake in the house. Thus, someone wanting to interact with a human, for whatever reason, is going to go to the house where the lights are on. I may need to start turning off the monitors at night since it seems to be the flame that draws the whacko moths.
Before anyone asks, no, this isnt a particularly dangerous town. At least, it didnt used to be. The two biggest ‘threats’ in this town are drunk college kids and crazy homeless people. Neither one is particularly better than the other, and both are tremendously annoying but its still calmer than NYC or LA.
Don’t know the size of your town but there was a time when the local LEOS used to do sweeps for thst type of thing.
No visible means of support. Night in jail and a ride in the daddy wagon to the town limits.
Same thing for the drunks. Usually Friday and Saturday nights after the bars closed.
But thanks to the idiots running the cities in this country pissing off one voter seems to be a very bad thing. So they just left them do what they want.
Thankfully I live in a small village. One bar. One resturant. It’s noisy this time of year because the local farmers are in the midst of harvest time.
03:30 am Phone rings. Can hear panicked next door single lady. FOOT, the bear is trying to eat Elmer. You guessed correct and I did consider wishing him bon-appetite before I racked my beside 12 and went for a stroll. Left before I got there.
I turn off the monitor, and sleep the computer. Keeps it dark, but always on. Good on you for warding your neighbors.
I know the town The Commander resides in… it’s one of the larger ones in Montana. I live about an hour due south of him and have to go to his stomping grounds if I need something from Costco, Winco, Lowe’s, etc.
Wife and I just moved outside of our town because our nice quiet little neighborhood has developed some big city problems in the past couple years. Nothing insurmountable… yet. So we had a chance to do something different and took it.
We now have five acres about five miles out of town. Close enough we didn’t have to completely start over with new docs, friends, etc. but far enough out of town to offer some additional security as well as peace and quiet.
I don’t miss hearing the cars with loud exhausts, blacked out windows and booming stereos roaming around at 2am…
This. Learning from the readership everyday. Location, location, location as a realtor’s mantra is a thing as well for the prudent preppers too! Leaving blue hives or sketchy zip codes helps reduce blood pressure and provides healthy environment conditions as well. Stay relaxed and stay frosty.
And.. mention the incident there where a Trans mtf that killed >her< neighbor, that was a
good one. It is shit everywhere bro, adapt as we are all behind enemy lines now. When you are 10-7 and in your bunk, kill all life signs internally, and as well do not emit Intel crumbs outwards to observers that they can use nefariously or construct larger data sets with, cause ya left some lights on and drapery open. Good actions plan. I would posit that a courtesy call in to your police dispatch may (or not, everyone's choice) have been prudent as well. Give them a rundown (who what when where etc cop data points like Adam 12) so they can roll on it if available. The suspects supposed departing may not have been the end contact for you, or neighbors so put the call out anyway, it documents your actions, so if that contact evolves into a shooting scenario you did some right steps, and let them cops dig into it and deal with it. You do have one of them pretty and easy to install home depot STEEL security screen doors installed at that entry point funnel called a front door? Asking for the readership. Stay frosty, really.
A couple of weeks ago, I placed very low energy night lights in every room in my house. The missus said, “Don’t you think it will show someone looking in where you are?” I responded, “I am not John Wick. No one will be coming to assassinate me in my home. It’s more important for me to be able to see them if they get inside.”
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe if S actually does HTF, I will be at risk from someone who has decided to shoot me from outside my house and take my possessions. If that becomes a serious possibility, I will adjust. Until then, I expect that I will continue to use low illumination inside.
FYI, bizarrely, as I was writing this, a stranger came to my door. I observed him through the window and saw that, fortunately, he was holding a bouquet of flowers for the missus. No problem. (Yeah, yeah. I’ve seen those Mafia movies, too. 🙂 )
If this happened to me and I responded the same, I would be thinking that maybe I was being tested by a higher authority. Maybe he just needed some human contact to help him through a tough spot in life. Hopefully he didn’t wander off and swallow some lead. He could have had I’ll intent… maybe not.
Perhaps he was at the end of his rope and needed some sort of human connection to keep him from laying his head on the railroad track and waiting for the Double-E. But there are better, less disturbing, ways to ask for help. Unfortunately, approaches like that push my frame of mind away from ‘compassion’ to ‘preservation’ and I’m less likely t be responsive to whatever his problems are.
IMHO, blackout courtains are an essential security feature in every house.
My light routine is a bit counterintuitive: In the dark hours, I generally keep the lights out, or the windows carefully blacked out, when I’m IN the house. On the other hand, I leave the courtains a bit open, and a couple of lamps on to let some light filter outside, when I’m OUT.
That said, I could never become accustomed to the fact that in the USA a stranger could walk from the street to the front door of most houses, even single detatched houses, without passing through some sort of barrier.
Here in Italy, and in most of Europe, most suburban single houses and many townhouses have fenced front yards. A visitor coming to my house has to ring a doorbell at the fence’s gate and be buzzed in. If I hear an unexpected knock on my front door, I’m istantly aware that the visitor is a traspasser with bad intentions, because he must have got over the fence or forced the gate open.
If such situation were to happen, I plan to ask “who is this” loudly from behind an internal wall a few yards away from the front door, while holding a Glock… Unfortunately there’s no Castle Law in my country.
Thanks, Daniele