Scare-bnb

When Airbnb goes awry

This is the story of our most unnerving experience with Airbnb.

In the late afternoon on Sunday, August 1st, my wife and I were doing our monthly shopping at Costco with our five kids in tow. While we were there, I received a series of disturbing texts from a wary neighbor.

Neighbor: Some people just pulled up in front of your house and they look pretty suspicious. I just wanted to know if you were expecting guests or not

Me: Ok thanks. Guests, yes, but they are not supposed to be here until 8 o’clock. Are the suspicious looking people still there?

Neighbor: The cops chased out a bunch of those vagrants that were living under that pup trailer a few lots over from your place. Then two cars pulled up in front of your house, a girl and a guy. the guy looked like he was tweaked out. they got into a white SUV and took off after they tried to open your door. I just didn’t want them to try to get into your place if they didn’t belong there

Me: Seriously?? They tried to get inside?

Neighbor: Yes the cops are outside your house right now. They actually just went inside

At this point, I stopped texting and called my neighbor, pacing the aisles of groceries as my wife and kids went through the checkout line. I tried to clarify what the vagrants had to do with the burglars, if anything. He didn’t know. Maybe the vagrants had decided to do a little B&E as they ran from the cops? But then, homeless people usually don’t have cars. It just didn’t add up.

My neighbor said that someone had seen the sketchy-looking couple carrying things out of our house. Then he offered to walk his phone over to my place so that I could speak with one of the officers there. The cop confirmed that the man and woman were gone. He asked me if I would like him to do a sweep of the house before we got home. Yes, I would, I said. I told him we’d get there as soon as we could.

Once on the road, I told my wife that it sounded like we’d been robbed. When I described what I’d been told, she suggested that maybe it was just our Airbnb guest checking in for her 10-day stay. She checked the Airbnb Host app. Sure enough, our guest, who had told us she wouldn’t be checking in until around 8PM due to car trouble, had just checked in. Odd. I called the phone number on her booking confirmation.

“Hi there, this is Abram, your Airbnb host. My wife told me that you wouldn’t be arriving until later tonight due to car trouble, but the app says you just checked in. Is that right?”

“Yeah, but I’m not there anymore. I’m in the checkout line at the store.”

“Okay, that’s fine. Sorry we weren’t there to welcome you. We’re just on our way home, and we’ll look forward to meeting you when you get back.”

“Okay, sounds good.”

One of the officers who had done the sweep of our house was waiting in his cruiser when we got home. I thanked him for waiting and asked what had happened.

“A neighbor called when some shady people were seen trying to get into your place. Apparently they got in, but they were gone before we got here. We did a full walk-through, and everything seemed to be untouched: computers and other valuables are still lying around the house in plain sight.”

“Yeah, sorry for the scare. Sounds like it may have been a false alarm. We rent out our guest room as a little Airbnb. We have a guest scheduled for tonight, but she wasn’t supposed to be here until later.”

“Yeah, your neighbors said you guys often have guests, but these people didn’t look like your normal clientele.”

“Huh. Well, I guess I’ll have to wait and see. I called the woman who’s booked for tonight and she said she stopped by to check in. We have a keypad on the door lock so guests can let themselves in when they arrive. That’s how they were able to get in. The weird thing is, our guest only booked for one person, not two.”

“Okay, well, let us know if you need further assistance.”

“Will do.”

I shook the officer’s hand and thanked him again for all his help. If only our guest’s name had come up in the conversation, things might have gone very differently. During her stay with us, I would discover that she was a known entity with a criminal record. That day, however, she was just another of the hundreds of the widely differing guests we’ve hosted over the past few years.

Unusual Arrival

After speaking with the officer, I joined my wife and kids in putting away the groceries. I noticed that there was an early-2000s model Cadillac DeVille parked where our guests normally park. It was a nondescript grayish tan color with no tint on any of the windows. Was it our guest’s car, the one that wasn’t running properly? Maybe she’d had it towed to our place by the white SUV my neighbor mentioned in his text.

Just then, only minutes after the officer had driven away, a white Chevy Blazer pulled up and parked behind the DeVille. Concealed behind the blinds in our enclosed front porch, I waited and watched. I could now see why our neighbors had been suspicious. The DeVille may have been a little dated, but this Blazer looked like a barely street-legal demolition derby. One of the bumpers was gone and the other was partially twisted upward like the tusk of a warthog. The windows were cracked or missing, with dents on all sides, and the dry residue of duct tape here and there.

In the cloudless afternoon, the driver’s face was veiled in shadow. Oddly, the only other person in the vehicle wasn’t riding shotgun but was in the back seat on the passenger side — as if her connection to the driver were more business than personal. Her window was down, so I could see her from where I stood. Why is she in the back seat? I wondered. There’s no way this guy’s an Uber driver. I’d intended to go out and help her with her bags, as I often do with our guests, but she didn’t get out of the vehicle. Minute after minute, she just sat there, talking with the driver.

After about five minutes, I decided to initiate. I opened the front door, waved hello, and walked out to the sidewalk. She opened her door a crack as if she were about to exit, but then continued chatting with the driver for another minute or so. As I waited, I noticed a large sprawling weed (known as goat-head or puncture vine) growing from one of the cracks in our sidewalk. Taking an old chisel that I’d left nearby while doing some yard work, I bent down and exposed the root of the weed.

Apart from my legitimate need for the chisel as a digging tool, the situation was strange enough that I was glad to have it as a potential weapon as well. Just as I lifted the body of the weed from the ground — its dozen or so tentacles dangling limply from its center — the woman in the back seat of the mangled Blazer stepped onto the curb.

“Hi there. You must be Harper*?” I asked.

“Yep.”

When I introduced myself and held out my hand, she responded with the limp fish of someone who knows about the custom of shaking hands but hasn’t had much exposure to the practice. She looked to be in her early thirties, about 5ft+, overweight but working hard to hide it, with commando boots and a low-cut tank top brimming with slack bosom. She also had a diamond-studded piercing (the kind that looks like a shiny mole) on the left field of her upper lip.

As I held open the gate of our chainlink fence, the driver of the Blazer began to slowly pull away from the curb. After passing the DeVille and just before speeding down the street, he called out, slightly louder than necessary, “We’ll get your car fixed tomorrow!” Something told me that I was the intended recipient of that message, not her. From what I could see, the driver seemed to be a swarthy caucasian, perhaps forty (or thirty but aged by meth), and every bit the human counterpart of his vehicle.

“Who’s that,” I asked.

“Oh, that’s my brother.”

Looking back now, the weed I held in my hand at that point seems more than a little symbolic. Since moving into our house several years ago, I’ve pulled hundreds of that particular species of weed, and I always regard the task as a metaphor for the prickly process of systematically uprooting evil.

Puncture Vine, a.k.a. Goat Head

Among The Family

Once inside, I showed Harper her room and invited her to come meet the other family members, who were still in the kitchen. We received her warmly as we do with all our guests, sharing the kids’ names and ages, and asking about her destination, etc. Given the strange circumstances of her arrival, it would have been easy to feel uneasy, but since we hadn’t been robbed, we were probably feeling fairly relieved, all things considered.

As she mixed herself a drink of orange juice and something else she’d brought in in a large styrofoam cup, I asked her where she was from.

“Oh, I’m from here.”

“Really? Are you just between places?”

“Yeah, I got evicted because I couldn’t afford to pay rent.”

“Wow, sorry to hear that. I hope you can find another place. But if you couldn’t pay rent, how could you afford to book our place?”

While she busied herself with a long drink, one of our kids, eager to join the conversation, filled the silence with some unrelated question, and I never circled back.

“How about your family?” I asked. “If you have family in town, couldn’t you stay with them to save a few bucks?”

“My family’s a mess,” she said, which was easy to believe.

The most obvious question I forgot to ask that day was based on one of the initial messages Harper had sent my wife in requesting to reserve our room:

“I’m in between housing as my fiance and I are seeking a place together. He comes home august 12th! We are getting married within the next month and I may need a second set of eyes to get a few things, if that’s something you would be interested in.”

The obvious question would have been, “If your fiancé has a home here, why aren’t you staying there?” But who knows, right? Maybe her fiancé had been living elsewhere — stationed with the military, perhaps — and would be getting home for the first time in years. It’s funny how we make excuses for other people’s stories, assuming the best, projecting our own sense of honesty, stability, and rationality onto another person, even when the red flags are whipping us in the face.

That night, Harper went to sleep about 8 o’clock and didn’t come out of her room until around noon the next day. When she came out, she was wearing what looked like a flashy exercising outfit with chartreuse highlights and hoop earrings. She said she had slept great and was going to walk over to the post office a few blocks away. But she didn’t come back from the “post office” until dinner time. After changing clothes, she said she was going out to eat with a friend. She didn’t come back until early the next morning (Tuesday), and after sleeping most of the day, stayed out again all night.

We never saw her “brother” come back to fix her car, but apparently it was working again because she had been gone with it for long stretches. None of this was too alarming. We’d had lots of previous guests come and go late at night and early in the morning. We did, however, remind Harper that she was the only one authorized to be in our home. Things didn’t start to get creepy until Wednesday evening at about 7:30 when I found her sitting on our doorstep with a knife.

Jumping Ship

With Harper scheduled to stay at our place for ten days, we had more or less resumed life as usual. That meant that sometimes we were gone when she was there and vice versa. On Wednesday evening, we were away from the house for dinner. As my wife and I happened to be driving separately that day, I got home before she and the kids did. Seeing Harper on the front steps, I walked up and asked how she was doing.

“Not too great,” she said.

Stepping toward her slowly to get a better look, I said, “Sorry to hear that. What’s the problem?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try me,” I said playfully, trying to lighten the mood.

But the mood darkened. Instead of helping, my comment seemed to remind her of how bad things really were. She began to fidget with her purse, sniffling to hold back tears. As she adjusted her position, I saw a small dagger in a black sheath attached to her belt.

“What’s the knife for?” I asked.

“Self-protection.”

“Is someone trying to hurt you?”

She didn’t answer.

“If you’re in danger, why don’t you call the cops?”

“I can’t call the cops.”

“Why not?”

“I have a history with them.”

“Well, if you’re afraid of something, what are you doing out here in the open? Why don’t you go back inside?”

“I’m not going back in there! What’s in the closet in my room?”

“Not much. There’s not room for much more than a few hooks and the full-length mirror.”

“No, I mean behind that secret door-looking thing inside the closet. What is that?”

“Oh, that’s just an access panel for the shower plumbing. Why, did something happen with the closet?”

Fear clouded her face but she said nothing.

Following a hunch, I said, “Do you think you had a spiritual encounter?”

She looked up at me with that childlike blend of contrition and terror.

“If you did have a spiritual encounter,” I continued, “it was probably with a good spirit because we’ve cleaned the bad ones out of here. They know they’re not welcome in our home.”

At this, her hands began to visibly tremble and she had to fight even harder to hold back tears. Just then her phone rang but she didn’t answer it.

“What if I told you I’m involved in the sex trade?” she said.

“What do you mean? Are you being trafficked?”

Looking across the street at a large steel shipping container, she said, “See that thing? There’s probably people in there right now! I’m probably gonna end up dead in one of those things.”

“There’s nobody in there. That container’s been sitting there for months. They use it to store people’s furniture while their house is being restored.”

Her phone rang again, this time with a different ringtone. Fishing around in her purse for the phone, she muttered, “If I don’t answer the one, you call me on the other.” This time she took the call.

Distracted by her previous comments, I didn’t pay much attention to the first part of her phone conversation. I was thinking about the container. Could there be people in there? I’d heard too many stories about people being trafficked under their neighbors’ noses to be dismissive on this point. So I walked across the street (wondering if I was about to poke a hornet’s nest) and pounded on the corrugated paneling. “Is anyone in there?” I called, and then listened to the silence. After pounding and listening a second time, I walked back across the street and looked at Harper as if to say, “See, nobody’s in there.”

As I waited for her to finish the call, I overheard the end of her half of the conversation:

“No, I’m freaking out, I can’t drive this car anymore… I swear I’m getting weird looks from people all over the place… I’m gonna go check myself into the hospital… There’s a shipping container across the street from this place, and it says TEX right on the side!… I’m at 444 south thirty-ninth street…”

While still holding the phone to her ear, as if taking instructions, she stood up, walked to the gate, opened it, and walked around to the driver’s side of the DeVille.

“Hey, I still wanna talk to you!” I called out just before the car door closed with her inside. Completely ignoring me, she took off down the street. Apparently, the hospital couldn’t wait.

Discovery

I had no idea what to make of that disjointed interaction. Was she crazy? Was she on drugs? Both? Her fear struck me as completely authentic, but what exactly was she so afraid of? On the one hand, she was terrified of something in our house, but she was also worried about being trafficked, which would have been less likely in our house. Unless… could she have thought the plumbing access was some kind of hidden door to a holding cell in the basement? Maybe she had seen that kind of thing before. Maybe she’d been held in one. That would explain why she was so traumatized by the mere sight of the “door”.

I went into her room and opened the closet to investigate. There was a nylon mesh bag with her dirty laundry in it on the floor. Moving the laundry out of the way, I slid the access panel to the side. Pipes. The fiberglass of the back of the shower. Business as usual. As I looked around the room, it was clear that her departure was completely unplanned. All of her stuff was still there, on the bed, on the floor, in the bathroom.

I decided to call the police and report the situation for good measure. After I had described the above at length, the officer said, “May I ask what your guest’s name is?”

As soon as I’d said her name, the officer sighed grimly and said, “Oh, that makes sense. We know Harper. She’s bad news. She’s a drug addict with a pretty rough past. She did time for armed robbery after her husband was shot and killed by an officer. It was all over the news.”

“Wow, what do you recommend we do? I mean, she seemed pretty spooked, but all her stuff is still here and she still has the key code to our home.”

“Well, definitely let us know if you see her again. In the meantime, we’ll check the hospital parking lots for the vehicle you described.”

“Will do. Thanks for your time. Honestly, given the fact that her stuff’s still here and that she’s terrified to come in our house, I’m afraid someone else might show up on our doorstep — someone like her “brother” or her “fiancé” — whoever that is. Is there any way you could have someone patrol the area tonight just in case?”

“Sure thing. We can do that. And you be sure to give us a call if need be.”

“Definitely. Thanks again.”

Needless to say, I was becoming more and more concerned for my family’s safety. Who was this person we had let into our home? I asked my wife if she had checked Harper’s reviews on Airbnb before allowing her to book — something we’ve tried to make standard procedure for all requests, before allowing a guest to make a reservation.

While she looked up Harper’s profile, I did a web search for her name. The top ten results were for the incident involving her husband’s death and the ensuing court case. Mug shots. Crime scene. Reports of large quantities of firearms and ammunition.

Her Airbnb profile offered no reassurance. She had zero reviews. In fact, her account indicated that it had been started only days before booking our place — suggesting that it may have been created for the sole purpose of getting into our home. In the busyness of preparing dinner on July 30th, my wife had accepted Harper’s request to book without checking her profile for reviews.

We sat there wondering what to do. Was this woman still involved in burglary? Had she been sent by someone else to do reconnaissance? Is that how she paid for the reservation? But if so, why hadn’t she robbed us yet? Not for lack of opportunity. And why book for a full ten days? What did she think she could get out of our place that would justify the $600 someone had dropped on her reservation?

That’s when I remembered what she had said about trafficking: “What if I told you I’m involved in the sex trade?” Maybe that was it. She wasn’t here for our stuff, but for my wife or my kids. That would explain the investment. How much would one of our kids be worth to a sex trafficker? In that case, Harper was just a stooge — the blunt tip of the arrow — and that’s why she was afraid: she wasn’t the threat, it was the people who had sent her. Were they leaning on her to grab one of our kids and she just didn’t have the stomach for it?

In either case, she had given someone our address just before she left.

On Edge

Since there was so much that we didn’t know for sure, we wanted to give Harper the benefit of the doubt while exercising due caution and also trying to fulfill our commitment as hospitality service providers. Using my wife’s Airbnb host account, I sent Harper the following message:

“Abram mentioned that you were feeling nervous about something and decided to go to the hospital. Since you haven’t stayed here the past two nights, if you’re going to stay here tonight, please let us know when you plan to arrive so we can unlock the interior door. If you’re not planning to stay here, please let us know that as well. Thank you for respecting our home and the safety of our family.”

Whereas I was trying to project a calm, professional demeanor in the message, I was anything but calm. That night, I kept my gun on or near me at all times. While my family slept, I stalked through the midnight shadows of our unlit home, going from one window to the next, keenly aware of approaching headlights from every direction. About 11 o’clock, a patrol car rolled past our house followed by a fire engine with blinding floodlights. The two vehicles circled our block at a crawl, and I still recall how comforting it was to know that help was available if needed. As soon as the floodlights were gone, however, the fear came flooding back with the returning darkness.

Harper didn’t come back that night, but neither did she cancel her reservation — which marked the third night that she had paid for a room she wasn’t using. This seemed to reinforce the hypothesis that she (or someone else) had an agenda that justified the sunk cost. Or was it just the financial irresponsibility typical of the underclass? Or was she running for her life? Or was she in the hospital being treated for a psychological break? In the morning, wanting to officially eliminate her access to our home, we sent her this message:

“Hey Harper, we haven’t heard from you and are wondering if you are okay?? If we haven’t heard anything by noon today we are going to go ahead and cancel your reservation with us.”

Noon came and went with no contact from our guest. In attempting to cancel her reservation, we discovered that the cancelation would negatively impact our host status, despite the fact that Airbnb’s vetting process had allowed someone convicted of armed burglary into our home. Interacting with their support personnel over the phone was a distressing experience: in arbitrating a dispute between a multi-year, five-star Super Host and a first-time user with a publicly available criminal record, their main contribution was reminding us that we would be penalized if we initiated the cancelation. So then, it was up to the burglar to kindly revoke her own access to our home.

Profile Comparison

It wasn’t until the evening of the following day, August 6th, that Harper sent us this message:

“Thank you and my husband will be by to get my things when he gets home”

Like hell. Now she had a husband? There’s no way I was going to let some unknown dude roll up on our house whenever he “got home.” I fired off the following response:

“Negative. We have reported this situation to the police. Our house is being monitored 24/7 by neighbors and others. If you want your clothes, you can pick them up tomorrow morning across the street from our house in front of the school building. We will leave your things there at 8AM.”

Within minutes, she canceled her reservation without a word of further communication. By nightfall, we had packed her things into an old hamper and put it across the street in the designated location. Something strange we noticed in rounding up her belongings is that several articles of clothing were brand new, with the tags still on, and were nowhere near Harper’s size. They were women’s clothes. I thought of the very first message she’d sent my wife: “… We are getting married within the next month and I may need a second set of eyes to get a few things, if that’s something you would be interested in.”

Who asks someone they’ve never met for help with their wedding? Moreover, the friendly tenor of this first message was wildly incongruous with all subsequent messages. Yet another indication that someone else was involved.

Looking Inside

Harper didn’t show up to get her stuff in the morning. Eventually, homeless people found it and carried it off. As the hours passed, I became more and more convinced that I had foiled someone’s plans and that that someone would soon show up to demand compensation. I ordered a quick-draw gun clip that would mount directly to my firearm, a low-profile solution for keeping it on me at all times.

Looking for any kind of insight into the situation, I called a friend who does what he calls “seeing in the spirit”. This ability allows him to tap into information that is not directly accessible along conventional lines. His results vary, but sometimes they’ve provided others with meaningful, confirmable insights which had no other particular relevance to my friend. Without giving him any particulars, I simply told him that we were in a tough spot and asked him if he would look into it and let me know what he saw.

He texted me later that morning:

“Took a second and had a look. I saw a huge steel door. locked and barred. 4x the size of a normal door. With water running out from underneath. Whatever is taking place on the other side is set and cannot be changed. “The way is barred” is what I heard. I keep thinking like a water heater broke and the water is running out the bottom. As in, the damage is done. You can’t get to it. But now you have all this water. A leak, so to speak.”

My friend was in the midst of planning his father’s funeral, but he was able to carve out some time to meet with me that evening. I was desperate for an alternative interpretation of events. All day, I was distracted by fear. Looking out the windows, eyeballing every opaquely tinted vehicle that might conceal a hostile party. Every white SUV in the distance was the run-down Blazer coming to run me down, the demolition derby coming to demolish me.

While I waited for evening to come, I asked my wife if she thought we should get a dog — a possibility we had never previously entertained. Surprisingly, she said she thought it was a good idea. I jumped on Craig’s List and called on the uppermost listing, which didn’t even include a photo. I made plans with the breeder to see his dogs the following day.

When I met up with my friend that night, I told him I was hurting for some encouraging conversation; struggling with fear and not sure how rational any of it was. I also wanted to discuss the meaning of the huge steel door and the leaking water. We took a walk so we could chat in private.

“So what’s going on, man?” he asked.

“I’m pretty sure someone involved with the sex trade rented out our Airbnb in order to prey on someone in our family.”

“Really? I take it he’s gone now?”

“Yeah, she’s gone. But it got complicated and I’m afraid someone’s gonna show up to recoup their losses or try to get what they came for. Someone is out six hundred dollars for her stay with us, which she only really used for one night.”

“Six hundred bucks? That’s nothin’ for people like that. She could probably earn that in one night.”

“What?”

“Oh yeah, man, when I was dealing drugs, I spent money like it was going out of style. Easy come, easy go. I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”

“That’s hard to imagine,” I said.

“Plus, people like that are bottom-feeders; they only go for easy targets. They’re not gonna mess with someone who would die to protect his family. Hey, that reminds me, why do I always see pictures of your family on Facebook but you’re never in them?”

“I’d rather not have my life documented like that. My wife’s probably just respecting my wishes.”

“But you’re so pretty,” he said, grinning playfully as we strolled through the quiet neighborhood.

“Let’s talk about the door and the water you saw.”

“I think the door is a sign of protection,” he said, “meaning that those people couldn’t touch you if they wanted to. The way is barred. But I’m not sure about the water. Do you feel like anything is “leaking” in this situation?”

“As soon as I read your text this morning, what I thought of is that my courage has sprung a leak and now fear is constantly seeping out.”

“Huh, yeah, I don’t know. That could be it, though.”

“Another possible interpretation,” I said, “is that although the way is shut, and she has no access to us, it is still possible for something good to flow out from us to her.”

“Could be both!” he said. “Stuff in the spiritual realm is like that. Both meanings can be true at the same time.”

“You know, I’m feeling better right now — as in, less fearful — than I have for days. This conversation is certainly helpful, but I think it’s also related to what I did just before driving over here. My family was at a barbecue at a friend’s house, and our place was empty, so I did something I almost never do: I took my guitar off the wall and just belted out some worship songs at the top of my lungs. I don’t know why, but there was something soothing and cathartic about it.”

“You don’t know why? Dude, you were communing with the King of the universe! He’s got your back! Here, before you go, let me pray for you.”

As much as I appreciated my friend’s confidence that all would be well, I drove away thinking, “It’s easy to be optimistic when you’re not the one in the grinder. Lots of bad shit has happened even to people who communed with the King.”

One Last Message

After another night of tense suspicion, and another 911 call for questionable vehicles circling our block, on Sunday morning my family and I drove out to look at a litter of four-month-old German Shepherd pups. To everyone’s surprise, one of the pups came home in the back of our minivan that very day. She’s been patrolling the yard ever since.

My wife and kids left town for most of the following week to do some camping with friends. That left me home alone. Still wanting more information about the people Harper was working with, I sought out the neighbors who had seen her and her “brother” in front of our house while we were at Costco.

Two new facts surfaced about the man in the beat-up Blazer. 1) On the day of Harper’s arrival, he had been speeding down our street when one of our neighbors had yelled at him to slow down. At this, he apparently threw the res-runner into reverse and, in view of other neighbors, cussed out the woman who had yelled at him. 2) While Harper was in our house for the first time (checking in, while we were away), the man she was with, in the words of one neighbor, “would not go inside.” Instead, this man, who very likely was high on something, “took his shirt off and stood in the front yard like he owned the place.”

Curiouser and curiouser. Was he getting ready for a fight? Was she supposed to bring someone or something out? Or perhaps he was there to protect her, just in case, as she would be staying with a family she knew nothing about. All I knew was that she went in, touched nothing, met no one, left before the cops showed up, and returned right after the last cop left (the one who waited for us to get home).

There was one last clue I needed to follow up on: Harper had told us that she was working part-time as a driver for the local auto auction. This was somewhat confirmed when we were cleaning out her room and found a cap with the auction’s name and logo on it. I thought of how the regular transportation of hundreds of vehicles could be put to use in human trafficking. A web search turned up no obvious ties between the two industries.

But if she really did work there, maybe I could do something with that. I happened to have some cash on me so I jotted a quick note, put both into an envelope, and drove over to the auction, where I left the envelope with her supervisor. The note read, “Harper, we’re sorry about your lost clothes and bathroom supplies (when you didn’t show up, homeless people eventually walked off with them). Hopefully the enclosed cash will help you replace what was lost. Sorry about the way things ended. It just got too weird for us, and we felt we needed to take preventative action. We wish you the best.”

Looking back, I’ve considered that perhaps that small gesture was the “water” that was able to flow out from us despite the barricading presence of the huge steel door.

Peace Through Song

My family’s absence was a mixed blessing. Because they were gone, no one could hurt them. But also because they were gone, I was alone with my demons. Since no one else can do our part in facing our demons, however, that was as it needed to be.

Notes from my wife

Having attempted to right any perceived wrongs with Harper, I felt somewhat less culpable for her losses. I had to remind myself that despite all the unsettling indications, she may have just been a local gal who needed a place to stay and happened to be mixed up with some unsavory people, but meant our family no harm.

Still, as night would fall, my hackles would go up. Haunting the windows became a habit, and concern turned to paranoia. I had to know if someone was out there, and to know, I had to keep a watchful eye. At the height of this paranoia, I could hardly walk through the house without pausing at each window — or running from one to the next — and then waiting to see if the same car or pedestrian would pass again.

I was fully aware of this mounting neuroticism: the possession of a person by an idea. I knew I needed to get free, but I wasn’t sure how. Not knowing what else to do, I resorted to singing worship songs as I had before chatting with my friend about the water and the door. My singing filled the empty space in our house with a kind of musical wailing, proclaiming the kingdom of God at full volume to myself, to the spirit realm, and to no one in particular. As I sang, my fear quotient slowly declined, and afterward I felt an increased sense of peace. Each night, I repeated the process.

In attempting to analyze the effect the singing had on me, I’m sure one source of benefit was the mere distraction — training my mind on something other than the object of fear. Neurologically speaking, a release of endorphins probably helped to elevate my mood. But there seemed to be an X-factor that went beyond these immediate benefits.

The singing would lift me to a place where I could see that the fear was entirely in my head: that the world around me clipped along more or less the same whether I was full of fear or not. Bad guys didn’t storm our house when I wasn’t hovering at the windows. So I told myself that I had to regard each day that passed without incident as evidence that my fears were not reflecting reality. As the weeks passed and days piled up on the scale, my fear had comparatively less and less weight to make its case.

But it’s not as if the lyrical content of the songs was neutral. The lyrics were embedded in a worldview that is explicit about a hope that transcends the struggles of our earthly lives. Such a worldview readily acknowledges the inevitability of death and assures the worshipper, through symbols and imagery, that whatever comes, a Fatherly Force beyond our ken will carry us through.

Maybe you’re someone who regards such notions as mere myths. But in the trenches of human life, the thought-forms of myths and ideas carry the day. Even the hard-nosed skeptic who rejects the supernatural is still operating within (and at the mercy of) his preferred mythology. Fact or fiction, whatever you focus on will loom largest in your mind, and from there it will exert real forces that produce real effects in your life. Our minds are the playground of ideas, and some ideas don’t play nice. Whether or not we refer to these ideas as “spirits” is merely a matter of semantics.

I still see the DeVille around our neighborhood now and again, probably being driven by the shady types that Harper didn’t want to be mistaken for. In case you’re curious, yes, our key code has been duly changed. For the time being, our Airbnb listing is on an indefinite hiatus. Next time you get a request, don’t forget to check those reviews.

• Harper is a pseudonym.

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