The following is a story told by a real Fyxed Maintenance client, the names and specific details have been omitted for privacy. We hope this story entertains you as much it did us!
We received a call from a tenant stating that they believed that someone had access to the property and was breaking in while they were sleeping. As we begin to ask them questions on why they believed this to be true, they stated that they’ve been noticing their items being moved or misplaced. Of course, you want to proceed with caution to not offend them, but we had to ask “Are you sure that you might have only thought you moved the item but in reality, you didn’t?” The tenant persisted that they did not have anyone else inside of the property and that they knew for a fact where they were putting their items at night before they retired off to bed for the evening.
As we continued to speak with them, they informed us that they recently changed their locks, and somehow someone has gotten a hold of their new keys because this issue was still continuing even after the locks were changed. We kindly let them know we were unaware that they had changed their locks, so no one from our office could have been there to get in.
The tenant then said “I must have a ghost, and I want to break my lease because this house is haunted” As we attempted to reason with them because tenants safety is our number one priority we asked if we could send our maintenance tech out to investigate this matter and they agreed. Our maintenance tech searched the house to find any indication of a break-in.
All the windows were locked and could not be accessed from the outside without breaking them. The door locks worked fine and did not show any indications of being tampered with. We all were completely stumped but we wanted to get to the bottom of the issue. So with the tenant’s permission, we set up a surveillance camera inside of the living (this is where the issue was occurring), which the tenant turned on at night before going to bed.
The tenant went to bed as usual and woke up the next morning to find their items once again moved from the spot they had it last. The tenant watched back the video and we were able to find the culprit. The tenants had a toddler who had mastered the art of escaping from her crib in the middle of the night and going to the living room to play with Mommy and Daddy things (especially their keys because all babies love keys), while Mom and Dad were still sleeping. After some time of fun, she would go right back in her crib and go back to sleep. We were all able to have a good laugh about that the next day.
