Yahoo Lifestyle 23 Terrifying Home Invasion Stories That Might Actually Give You Some Tips If You're Ever In The Same Situation
Recently, Reddit user u/ahmedatrees2003 asked, "People who were in a real home invasion situation, what was it like, and what did you do?" and the answers are TERRIFYING. Still, there are some tidbits of wisdom here — read on to learn people's stories.
Note: There are brief mentions of (planned) sexual assault (but not descriptions of sexual assault), and mentions of firearms and violence.
1."Three men broke in while I was home with my husband. I was also pregnant. I managed to keep the lounge door shut by putting myself against it. I had some bad bruises and damaged my wrist. But physically, I was mostly okay. My husband got acid thrown in his face — luckily, it only really caught his forehead. We both suffered terribly mentally afterward."
"My husband, after having the acid thrown in his face, ran and locked himself in the bathroom. They were mostly focused on trying to get into the lounge, where I was. I have no idea how I physically kept them out. It still awes me to this day. I also managed to call the police and ambulance while they were still in my home. But they left before the police arrived (they could hear me on the phone). They took some stuff from upstairs, but that was all.
"The police did not believe us and didn’t bother investigating the crime. The three men were never caught. I live in the same home, and I really struggle with the fear of home invasion. All of my doors are always double locked, and I’m very careful with windows."
2."I was in seventh grade and home alone after a half day when suddenly there was very hard knocking on my back door. I knew immediately something was off because we never have visitors and my father did not knock like that, and I froze up in my room. I peeked out of my room (right in front of the back door), and suddenly it was quiet, so I went back to my room. AS SOON as I closed my door, I heard glass shatter. I turned off my computer and TV and dived under my bed. For the next 40 minutes, I heard them thrashing around my living room and parents' room, then heard them leave. During this time, I was on a call with the cops, who thought I was PRANK-CALLING THEM and took 70 minutes to finally come over. (The station was three streets away from my house.)"
"They came and investigated, only to find out that it was our next-door neighbor who broke in and was actually looking for drug money. As it turns out, the previous person to live here did at-home haircuts and sold weed on the side. The neighbor was arrested, and his family moved out a week later. THE ONLY THING THIS GUY TOOK WAS THE LUNCH MONEY I'D LEFT ON A COUNTER OUTSIDE FOR THE NEXT DAY."
3."I choked him unconscious and held him until police showed up. I dragged him to the front door and handed him to the cops. He's still in prison. Super-scary situation, but the adrenaline hit made me real strong. Lots could have gone real wrong. I got super lucky. I think back on that a lot. I was carrying a pretty big pocket knife. I passed by the kitchen, and there were plenty of items I could have used as a weapon. If I had killed or significantly injured him, I think my life would have been much worse."
"When he came down the stairs, we were only a few feet apart. I yelled something like, 'Get the fuck out of my house,' then attacked him. I didn't have any interest in fighting him, but I was acting on instinct. It all happened really fast.
"The weird part was holding him in the rear naked choke after he came around; it took like five to eight minutes for the cops to arrive. I have a real clear memory of the texture of his hair and what he smelled like. It was super intimate in a weird way."
4."I was in bed asleep at 7 a.m. when I heard a loud bang. I thought nothing of it because of the large cat tree I have downstairs that's always getting knocked over, so I rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. Not long after, my elderly cat came running into my bedroom, jumped up on the bed, and tried to hide under the blankets. This immediately woke me up because that old fat cat hadn't run or jumped onto our bed in years. As I came to, I saw two men coming up my stairs. At that point, it felt like time stopped and somehow ran incredibly fast at the same time. I jumped out of bed and started screaming, 'GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE!'"
"I tackled one of them on my front lawn, but he struggled free and got away. I saw the getaway car and tried to keep repeating the license number, but it faded away in my mind as I was repeating it. I remember vividly being so mad at myself that I couldn't remember seven numbers, and how stupid I was for not grabbing my phone! Looking back on the situation, I realize there are so many things that happened that I never noticed, like how I fractured my arm slamming into the wall at the bottom of my stairs, and that I cut my feet up on the splintered wood of my front door. The adrenaline rush of a true fight-or-flight situation is something so strange, it's almost impossible to accurately describe. The sense of time, not being aware of pain and injuries for hours, and the hyper-focus on some details but the complete loss of others. Luckily, I wasn't seriously hurt and nothing was stolen, but I installed cameras all over my house the very next day."
5."A dude kicked the door in to beat up my roommate, who had just gotten home from a late night of gambling. I was in the back and heard the commotion. I called 911 and they didn't take me seriously...until I said it sounded like someone was going to get murdered. The cops came; they told me to leave the house. I walked to the front of the house...blood was everywhere — the floor, the walls, etc. The fight had led to broken windows and spread into the hallway and kitchen. I backed out of the house and was dragged across the yard by the police. I told them I didn't see anyone in the house. They entered, and there was commotion when they found my roommate hiding next to his bed. The police were upset that I didn't see him. He was dragged out on a stretcher, and the neighbors watching probably figured I beat the shit out of him."
"I was fixing the windows when he walked home from the hospital still wearing a gown and hospital slippers. He didn't want to pay to be admitted. He looked as if he'd escaped from an asylum. We never spoke about it after he repaired the damage. My tip: Just say 'murder' when you call 911; a lot of police will come quickly."
6."I was in college and had the only room on the ground floor. I was bartending, so I got home at like 3:30 a.m. I had just changed and gotten into bed when I heard someone fiddling with my window screen (I lived in a beach town and usually left my windows cracked open to hear the ocean as I fell asleep). I first thought it was one of my roommates who'd forgotten their keys or something, but I realized they would’ve called me first, so I flattened myself against the foot of my bed and the wall to look. It was a dude in a black hoodie with a box cutter, cutting my window screen. As he was lifting himself to enter, I jumped up onto my bed and kicked him as hard as I could in the chest."
"He fell onto the parking lot, hit a bike rack, and was knocked unconscious. I slammed my window shut, bolted it, and called the cops. By the time they showed, he was gone, but they found him two blocks away. His bag had zip ties and duct tape in it, and he had a record of sexual assault. The cops blamed me a bit for having my windows open. I kept my windows shut after that."
7."A guy who stalked me broke into my house with his buddy. I had a messed-up sleep schedule, so I was awake around 3 a.m. I grabbed my little dog and my phone and went to the 'basement' (it was a little cellar, almost...a trapdoor in the floor with stairs that led down to a small space with the furnace, hot water tank, etc.) and got us into the crawlspace. I had some cardboard on top of the door, so they didn't see it when it was closed. I turned my phone on silent and texted my best friend, asking her to call the cops for me. After the longest 15 minutes of my life, the cops eventually got there, arrested Shithead and his buddy, and came to find me."
"These two assholes had what the police described to me as a 'rape and disposal kit' (duct tape, lube, sex toys, a handsaw, and a box of heavy-duty big, black garbage bags), which implied intent and planning, so they went away for conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to commit rape, breaking and entering, and something else I can't remember. The guy who actually stalked me pinned it all on his buddy, so the buddy went away for five years and is still in prison because he can't not act like a psycho, while the stalker served 2.75 years of his four-year sentence (threw his buddy under the bus and took a plea deal for himself; later got out on 'good behavior'). I got a restraining order, which he violated a couple of times right away. It was then quiet for a bit, until he got a girlfriend a couple of years ago. He told her 'his version,' in which he was the victim and I was the villain who sent him to jail for nothing, so she sent me a long, nasty message telling me she'd find me and make me pay for it. So predictably, the cops got to go talk to both of them, and I haven't heard from them since."
8."I was in bed and I heard something outside. I have a lot of vivid dreams, so I ignored it at first. But he started using a screwdriver to get the window open. My bed was right next to the window. After realizing that this was really happening (remember, I woke up to this), I got up quietly and found my phone. I’m a small woman, so I didn’t want him to see me. It was still dark and the blind was down, so I turned the torchlight on and stood against the wall opposite the window, aiming the light directly at him. I held it high so I would look taller. I figured that all he would see was the torchlight as soon as he got in. And sure enough, he got the window open, pushed the fly screen out, and lifted the blind to start climbing in. As soon as his head was through, I started shaking my phone so that he could see not only the light but also that someone was holding it. I was also banging on the wall and making the lowest, most guttural noise I could muster, like a fucking ape."
"IDK what came over me. I just knew he couldn’t see me and I had to overwhelm his senses so that he wouldn’t notice my size and gender. And it worked. He let out an ungodly scream and ran. I think my behavior startled him. He left a bag behind, and it had a needle in it. I ran to my neighbors' house and called the police; they came and fingerprinted the place, took his bag, and left, and that’s the end of the story. He didn’t come back or anything."
9."My in-laws were home when a young guy broke into their house. They don’t speak English very well, so my father-in-law, in the clearest English he could muster, loudly said, 'Get me my gun!' At that point the intruder left in a hurry. My father-in-law doesn’t own a gun but figured it would scare off the intruder, and it succeeded."
10."My dog scared off what I believe to be robbers/home invaders. I was at home cooking dinner one night, and I was about eight months pregnant at the time. My husband had to work about two hours away from our home on this particular day. Anyway, as I was standing in our kitchen cooking, our dog (a blue heeler) suddenly got alarmed out of nowhere, his hair raised on his back, and he was growling and barking. Well, next thing I knew, someone knocked at our door. So I went to answer the door and our dog stepped in front of me. As soon as I opened the door, our dog almost ran out in pure anger, but I held him back by his collar. There was a man standing on our porch. I asked, 'Can I help you?'"
"The man then said, 'We are here to pick up the washer and dryer.' After he said that, I looked in the driveway, and there was a tiny car no bigger than a Honda Civic out there. I immediately said, 'There's no washer or dryer here for anyone to pick up.' The man then said aggressively, 'I told you, we are here to pick up the washer and dryer.' Mind you, this whole time, I am having to hold back our dog by his collar. He knew something wasn't right, and so did I. I then said, 'Sir, there is nothing here for you, so please leave.' You could tell the man was getting more and more scared of our dog because he kept backing up. He then just turned around and walked to his car, and I could tell there were multiple people in the car as well. I let go of my dog's collar and he stood on the porch, growling, with his hair raised the entire time the guy was walking to his car. Then when the guy got to his car, they all sat there for like 10 minutes, and my dog never moved off the porch. He stayed there growling the whole time. By this time, I had grabbed the shotgun we keep by the door. They then drove off, and my dog came back inside with me and wouldn't leave my side. I called my husband in a panic because what if they tried to came back? My husband said that he was about 15 minutes away from the house and he was hurrying as fast as he could.
"Our dog truly saved mine and the baby's life. He was so protective, and I know if I had let him go, he would've attacked this man without question. It was truly a scary experience. I wish our dog were still alive today, but he sadly passed away a year ago. He absolutely adored our son."
11."My boyfriend Jay and I were staying with two friends of his, Jim and Jeremy. Jeremy had left the apartment an hour or so before Jay and I decided to go to bed. A few minutes after Jay fell asleep, I heard a knock on the door and Jim answered it. Turns out it was Jeremy, but he wasn’t alone. Two guys who also lived in the apartment building forced Jeremy to knock at the door so that they could force their way in, as he didn’t have his keys with him."
"Once they were inside, I could hear what sounded like a scuffle from where I was in the bedroom with the door closed. I woke Jay up, and all of a sudden we heard two unknown voices yelling, 'Get down, get the fuck on the ground.'
"Jay wanted to go see what was going on, but I begged him to stay in the bedroom with me, which he did. After what seemed like a couple minutes of arguing and fighting sounds, everything went absolutely silent.
"We opened the bedroom door to see Jim lying on the ground with what we later found out to be a barbed machete sticking out of his chest. Jeremy was calling 911.
"The apartment building didn’t have a buzzer to let anyone into the building, so when the police got there, Jay let them in and showed them to the suite we were in. After that, they separated all of us and put the three of us into the backs of three different police cars, where they left us while the paramedics tried to save Jim.
"Unfortunately, they weren’t able to save him. He died at the apartment. I knew he was dead when the paramedics wheeled him out to the ambulance but didn’t leave for at least five minutes without working on him at all.
"The police took us to be questioned, again keeping us separated the entire time. About 12 hours later, they were ready to let us go but told us we were not allowed to go back to the apartment, as it was an active crime scene.
"We were dropped off by the police at a coffee shop with no money, phones, wallets, or even shoes on our feet, as they wouldn’t let us take anything from the apartment before they put us in the police cars prior to questioning us.
"We ended up going to a friend's house, where we stayed until we were let back into the apartment four or five days later.
"Once we were finally allowed back into the apartment, the first thing I had to do was clean up the blood. Which I’m sure you can imagine was pretty hard to handle. It was pretty traumatic."
12."Slept through it. It was the last night we spent in the house before moving into another one in the same city (the moving company had finished that day). Five guys tied up my dad and threatened to sexually assault my mom and me (both of us slept through the whole thing). Held him at gunpoint. Three hours later, we had no TV — phones, some wine, and clothes were also stolen. We really just kept what was important to us that night."
"When they left, my dad got his restraints off and woke us up. Luckily, they didn't take the cars, so we drove around our neighborhood until we found someone to call for help. Some guy was sneaking his girlfriend back into her parents' house and begged us not to make a huge noise, but we were a few houses down, so no worries."
13."Two guys came through my front door, and I was chopped three times with a machete and beaten with a pistol. My house was robbed and they ran off. My roommate sleeping in the basement saved my life. The living room walls, ceiling, floor, and couch were covered in blood. I had my knee (femur) cut through, most tendons on my forearm chopped to the bone, and my ankle had a gash. I had several lacerations on my scalp. A week in intensive care and several months before I started learning how to walk again."
14."I woke up at 3 a.m. to my wife frantically whispering that there was somebody in the house. In fact, he was right across the hall in the bathroom, looking for pills, perhaps. I told my wife to get our daughter and go lock themselves in our detached garage. I tried to sneak into the master bedroom to the gun safe, but the intruder looked over at me just as I passed the bathroom. I slammed the door in his face and sprinted into the bedroom. I have a pistol safe that opens very quickly with a keypad. He was coming out of the bathroom just as I racked the slide to put a round in the chamber. I told him to get back in the bathroom or I was going to shoot him in the face. He went back into the bathroom and I called 911. He played a little peekaboo at the bathroom door, but I told him if he did it again I was going to shoot him. The police were there in a very few minutes."
"I was naked the whole time. Always leave a robe by the bed."
15."A couple of weeks before my 19th birthday, I woke up one morning around 4 while someone was trying to break my bedroom door down. I had fallen asleep with my light on after coming in tired from work. So when they came in my room, I could at least see what was happening (not that it helped much at first). There were two guys, and one of them immediately attacked me with a hammer, so I told them to just take whatever they wanted. The other guy started to load all of my electronics into a backpack."
"Meanwhile, my mother down the hall had woken up from the commotion and started shouting to find out what was going on (staying in her room, at least). Next moment, they both ran out of my room and shut the door on the way out, going to my mother's room.
"She managed to hold the door closed on them for a few seconds, giving me time to open the safe in my cupboard (with a six-digit key code that I amazingly input correctly the first time) and remove my pistol. I checked for a round in the chamber and went to open the door to make my way to my mother's room.
"As I opened the door, one of the guys turned around and ran at me with a hammer. I fired two shots before he got to me and pushed me back into my room and onto my bed, where he held me down and tried to take my pistol, while the other guy started to cut my arm and head with what turned out to be one of my mother's own kitchen knives.
"My mother eventually joined the fray and managed to take the knife away from the guy cutting me. Meanwhile, I was just holding on to the pistol with everything I had in me, because I knew that if one of them got control of the firearm, my mother and I would be dead.
"My mother froze after she took the knife away, and the guy got up, grabbing my DVD player, and knocked my TV to the ground, then hit me over the head with the DVD player. By this time, I had managed to sort of wrestle my gun hand free and shouted to my mother to get out of the way so I could try to get off another shot.
"She rolled off of the bed, and I managed to turn the gun enough to get a shot off into the guy on top of me. It was then that they decided to bolt and grabbed my bag of electronics on the way out.
"When the cops came, they found a body with two gunshot wounds in my garden a few meters away from the house, and a blood trail leading away and disappearing at a nearby road."
16."When I was 11, my closest friend had a home invasion involving a local gang. Her father fought back — they stabbed him 14 times and shot him twice. They then held the wife and two of the children hostage (the third little girl slept through it all), tied them up, and stole all electronics and their car. After the robbers left, they went looking for the dad, and the youngest found him dead in the swimming pool. The entire suburb was devastated — he was the loveliest guy, had a black belt in karate, and did his best to fend off at least four intruders. After his death, they sold the house and moved across the country...can't blame them."
17."I came home to a random woman in my bedroom. She had drawn herself a bath in the en suite bathroom and used an assortment of items from my shower shelf, and when I called out 'Hello?' she came around the corner wearing my clothes. I found out later that she had tried on a spare set of my glasses and some other dresses of mine too. It was fucking terrifying. I still get a cold pit in my stomach thinking about it. As for what I did? Well, I had just been out with my mom, who was luckily stopping in to use the bathroom before leaving (I was an adult; had moved out with my partner). So I did the reasonable adult thing and let my mom handle it for me while I hyperventilated and tried not to lose my shit."
Finally, let's end on some that have some sort of funny or lighter aspect to them:
18."My friend woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. As he was finishing up, the Ring camera motion detector picked up someone at his door. At 3 a.m. My friend ran to the front door just as the intruder started trying to force the door open. My friend watched on the camera and was verging on panic. So he shouted at the intruder through the door. He wanted to sound tough and intimidating. But his courage failed him at the last minute. He said, 'Get out of here! Or I'm gonna fuck you!'"
"He meant to say 'up' at the end. But that's when his nerve failed him. So instead of 'gonna fuck you up,' he just said 'gonna fuck you.' Through the camera, he watched the intruder freeze up, look scared, slowly back away from the door, and make a run for it. So I guess things worked out okay in the end.
PS: Yes, my friend handed the Ring footage over to the cops. The cops arrested the guy a day or two later for something else."
19."I was in bed upstairs, home from work because I was sick. Someone knocked on the front door. I didn’t answer because I felt like shit. A little while later, I heard a strange thud in my kitchen. My cats, who were lying with me, became alert, which made me nervous, so I went downstairs to investigate. As I was going down the stairs, I saw a young man in my kitchen and another outside the kitchen window. I yelled, 'WHAT THE FUCK?!' in a deeper tone than I normally have (I think that was some kind of instinct). They got scared and ran for the back door, which was locked. I actually had to explain to the inside guy that you have to do the top lock first."
"He shoved a chair at me, unlocked the door, and ran off with his friend. I wasn’t scared in the moment, only afterward. In fact, I kind of felt bad for the guy while it was happening. He looked like he was maybe 15 and was scared shitless that someone was home."
20."Four guys knocked on my buddy's door at 11 p.m. He lived with a bunch of other guys, so this wasn’t anything new. They burst in and held a gun to his neck and demanded the drugs. He stammered that there weren’t any drugs but they could take what they wanted. One guy held him there with the gun as the others searched the house. Since they didn’t find anything, they realized they had the wrong house and left. As they were leaving, the last guy said, ‘Sorry, this wasn’t my idea.’"
21."I was absurdly lucky when it happened, 12 years ago. Single female, ground floor apartment with a private garden. Must have been targeted. The dude snapped the lock of the garden-facing windows and sneaked in in the middle of the night with a rucksack and what must have been a pocketful of condoms (I only know that because we found some in the home and in the garden). What he hadn't expected was that the day before, a friend of a friend had a pipe break in his apartment and totally wrecked his place. Said friend called in a favor for his buddy, and I agreed to take him in. The dude was a huge, redheaded, scarified, tattooed psych nurse and fun as hell. I set him up with a cot in my living room — the same room that had the garden-facing windows. When the wannabe intruder stumbled in, he wasn't faced by a scared, defenseless woman but by a very startled, very angry beefy dude who bellowed at him."
"I was woken up by my guardian angel temporary roommate, a scream of terror from the invader, and the sound of said invader face-planting when he jumped the garden fence (blood smears the morning after led me to hope he really, really hurt himself). My redheaded tattooed guardian angel was welcome to stay as long as he needed after that. And I started to sleep with a machete behind my bedroom door."
22."My mom was super into medieval decor. I was maybe 4 and my sister was 10. This guy broke in with a shotgun, and my 5-foot-2-inch mom with the wildest curly red hair (think the girl from the movie Brave) and wearing a robe grabbed a bastard sword off the wall and rushed the dude. I think the guy was in so much shock, he forgot he had a gun and just took off running. Lesson I learned that day is you don’t fuck with a Scottish woman’s children, LOL."
Disney
23."When I was a baby, my parents had a break-in, and my dad ran after the guys, screaming at the top of his lungs. He chased them out of the house all the way down the street, naked as the day he was born."
Have you ever dealt with a break-in? Let us know in the comments below!
Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
