Lock your doors, check your crawlspaces, and for heaven’s sake, secure your attics! The horrifying new Lifetime series Phrogging: Hider In My House has us peaking under our beds and looking in our closets. This new series explores the terrifying true crime phenomenon known as “phrogging” where an individual is secretly taking up residence in someone else’s home. So how does that work? It doesn’t! It usually proves to be one(or in some cases two) people too many and the homeowner wises up to their unpaying, unwelcome guests. The show explores stories of these phrogging survivors who have lived to tell their tale. Trust us, they are proof that fact is definitely stranger than fiction. Here are five of the most creepy, crawly episodes that had us running to padlock our windows and doors.
“Buried Secrets,” season one, episode 4
When Paul Mohlman was hearing odd noises coming from inside his and his girlfriend’s Tennessee home, he was suspicious but not alarmed. What could it be? Old house noises? Animals? A human being living below him in his own home? Who would have guessed it was the latter, but, sure enough, one day when the noises reached an all-time high, upon Paul’s inspection, things got weird.
He noticed a radiator pipe had come out of its hole in the floor, but not as if it had fallen out, as the pipe was several inches away from the hole. Paul bends down to investigate and sees some sort of light coming up from below. Paul bends down lower to get a closer look, and BOOM! a green eyeball is staring up at him! Talk about terror, this is like something from a horror movie, but the nightmare wasn’t over yet. Paul realized there was a man in his crawl space. As he investigated further and tried to flush the man out, he discovered two big containers of muriatic acid. How odd. Even odder, when the police came they pulled out an African-American man from under the porch, but Paul could have sworn the man that he saw was a blonde-haired Caucasian man.
Finally, Paul realized there were actually two men who were under his crawl space. He called the police back, and they searched again. The other man had disappeared, but the police realized that the muriatic acid was probably being used to make meth. A horrifying realization all around. While the phroggers may be gone, for Paul, that green eyeball staring up at him from below the floorboards will remain in his psyche for a long time.
“Stranger Danger,” season one, episode 10
Jordan Buranskas and her boyfriend lived in a hip condo in a suburb of Chicago. It had beautiful sunsets from their rooftop, a spacious balcony with a hammock, and plenty of room for them, their older dog, and their brand new puppy. Life couldn’t get any better, but one morning, Jordan woke up to find her purse missing. The couple searched the condo high and low and got no closer to finding the purse than when they started.
Finally, at their wits end, the couple checked the security footage from their home and found something too terrifying to be believed. There it was, on camera, a phrogger in their house, watching them sleep. The couple had fallen asleep on the couch the night before, and someone had come in, made themselves at home, and helped themselves to Jordan’s purse. The phrogger stood at the top of the stairs for several minutes observing the couple as they slept. When the two awoke and made their way up to the bed, the phrogger escaped seconds before being caught.
The idea of someone roaming around the house while we sleep is one thing, but the image of this man standing at the top of the stairs gazing down on the sleeping couple is one that will haunt our nightmares for years to come. What’s even more alarming, is that if Jordan and her boyfriend had not had cameras inside their home, they might never have even known the man was there. Terrifying.
“Creepy Crawlers,” season one, episode five
Nothing casts a pall on your big day quite like finding out someone is living in your newly purchased home without your permission. That is exactly the scenario newly engaged Portland couple Timothy and Amanda find themselves in in this horrifying episode straight out of our nightmares. Their future was looking bright, newly engaged, new home, good friends, great family, what could go wrong? Yet the day after their engagement shower, they returned home the following morning to find something in their new home was terribly askew.
Random items sat perched on their car. When they entered the house, they noticed things appeared disheveled and out of place. Half-eaten cupcakes, a mystery vape, and upset dogs all painted an odd picture. As they walked through, they realized it was more than disorganization; there was actual damage as there were giant, man-sized holes in the wall of their brand new home. Someone had been in their home, and worse, they realized the intruder was still in their crawl space. Thankfully the police arrived and flushed the phrogger out (who was wearing Amanda’s Christmas onesie no less).
As if that wasn’t enough, the cherry on the cake of this nightmare was the intruder hadn’t moved in alone; he brought a stolen cat with him. Meet Spaghetti, dressed in a sweater, that was left in the crawl space of the couple’s now-trashed new home. Okay, so the part about a cat wearing a sweater and the grown man wearing a girl’s Christmas onesie is a little funny, but the rest of this story is absolutely horrifying. The couple was able to track down the owner of the cat who was actually related to the intruder and had been wondering where Spaghetti had run off to. The cat was returned, and all’s well that ends well, except for the fact that Tim and Amanda may never sleep again.
“Bump In The Night,” season one, episode one
Where do we even begin with this one? Brittany and James Campbell along with their two young sons had just moved to their dream home in Hawaii, but their dream home very quickly became a nightmare. It started with small things, missing blankets, oddly placed items, and other occurrences, caused the family to become suspicious that something was up, but no one could possibly know how sinister the reality would be.
The family left on vacation and came home early to find the phrogger wandering free in their home and had locked them out. Finally, the police were called and the man was arrested, but as shocking as having a intruder, this phrogger’s plans were even more insidious. The couple realized the man had been using their own webcam to spy on them, he had also been using their laptops to record videos of himself and write out his plans. His plans were to feed the family sedatives, and once they were out (wait for it) perform medical experiments on them. We are speechless. The man had detailed these plans in a document and had Googled videos and articles on how to perform these operations, many of which revolved around sex changes.
The man had infiltrated every part of this family’s lives. He had been living undetected in their house for months, eaten their food, used their electronics, listened to their private conversations, and even used Brittany’s makeup. Yikes. Although the man was caught before any more harm could be inflicted, the couple ultimately never felt safe in their home again and moved out. Their story remains one of the most horrifying and well-known phrogger stories out there.
“Who Left the Seat Up,” season one, episode seven
Who knew a raised toilet seat could feel so menacing? In a home of all females and with no reason for it to continue to be left up, it was exactly what alerted Kate Flory to the fact that there was an intruder hiding in her home.
Kate lived in her dream home on a quiet street in a suburb of Pittsburgh with her two daughters and two cats. Life couldn’t be better until Kate found a mystery blanket in her basement. While it was odd, she brushed it off. That was until the toilet seat continued to be left up, and Kate started hearing noises at night. After going through the house with a flashlight and finding nothing, Kate didn’t know what to think. One day when a loud crashing sound sent her racing up the stairs to investigate, she got her answer. A man stepped out from behind the door, and put his hand over Kate’s mouth!
Kate managed to escape but was obviously very shaken. Her neighbors came to the rescue and held the mystery man at gunpoint. When he finally stepped out with the police, it turned out he wasn’t a mystery at all. The man was a former tenant of Kate’s whom she had evicted, but who apparently had just never left. It turns out he had been living in her attic, coming out when Kate and her kids were gone. They found a bed, sandwiches, a laptop, and a makeshift toilet up there. He had been there for weeks. What makes this one possibly even scarier is that it was someone she knew.
These episodes of Phrogging: Hider In My House are beyond belief. People living in the crawl spaces, attics, and walls of other people’s homes is a type of true crime that hits way too close to home. While all of the episodes have their own horrifying twists and turns, these five especially took us on a wild ride. Lock your doors, check your crawl spaces, and make sure to double-check those scratching sounds because these creepy-crawly phroggers could be hiding literally anywhere.