My younger sister (16 at the time) was the only other person home at the time, upstairs in her room (my room was downstairs). I opened the box, and connected it up. At first I was going back and forth, trying to get the cables right, trying to get the channel right etc, but no luck. Until I finally got something. I remember just sitting there and something started fuzzing in (this is where things start to feel like a horror movie). I remember thinking "oh here we go" and waiting to see the picture come in clearly. As it started fuzzing in, I remembered that this whole time the cable set top box wasn't even on, and that's why it wasn't working this whole time. "But then why was I getting a signal?". It seemed to all hit me at once. As I realised the box was off, the picture fuzzed in, and I saw a bed.
I FREAKED the fuck out, as at first I thought it was my bed. I had recently seen Saw 2, and remembered that scene where she turns on the TV and its a camera filming her in her apartment. That was the first thing I thought of. I sprinted upstairs to my sister, absolutely terrified. I told her to come down and take a look. She came down and we both realized it wasn't my bed. We didn't know who's bed it was, or how I was getting the signal. Obviously it was the Av receiver picking up a camera signal, but we were just so confused as to who/what it was for?
Eventually my parents came home, and we concluded that it would have to be a neighbor, or someone living close by, for us to be receiving the signal. We waited around until about 6pm, and then someone came into the room.
My dad recognized it as one of our neighbors. We still didn't know what the camera was for, but we assumed it had something to do with fidelity. Either his wife or he had set it up to watch the other and see if they were cheating. Either this, or it was to tape themselves having sex. We entertained the idea that he was a murderer and would film himself murdering people in his room, but just to freak eachother out. We'd always make jokes about how one night we'll turn it on and itll just be his face with clown make up on staring at the camera waving, and then him walking out of the bedroom with a knife. This never happened. But what did happen was still super creepy.
We connected to this signal for over a week, but after a few days the novelty kinda wore off. We felt a bit weird watching it, and just resigned to the explanation that it was to catch his wife cheating. Until one day, we turned it on, and realized what we had discovered.
Our neighbors were having a bunch of renovations done to their house. During weekdays they would be out, and there would be workers at the place pretty much all day. It had been like this for over a month. We started watching the feed and saw a man walk into their room. It was the plumber that had been there regularly for the renovations. We didnt think anything of it, until he start opening drawers. I called out to my mum (only person home at the time) and we started watching it. He started getting the wifes underpants and sniffing them, doing all that creepy shit. At first we were like "oh my god, how embarrassing, he's being filmed. will the neighbors see this somehow?" but then what happened next what truly terrifying.
He slowly walked over to the camera and look right down the fucking lens. We were CONVINCED that he knew we were watching. Mum immediately called dad. I kept watching. He started fiddling with it and then put it back down. I told mum that I don't think he knew we were watching, but he's definitely the guy that put the camera there. Dad came home, and by this time the plumber had left. Much to mums pleading, dad went over to the neighbors to tell them what we saw. Mum wanted to completely stay out of it and was terrified, understandably. When we told the neighbors, they had NO IDEA what we were talking about. They allowed dad to go up to their room, and what he found (that was holding the camera) was an installed device in the wall that was designed to monitor water usage (which was completely normal, at the time, as Brisbane had been hit with a drought recently and there were lots of water restrictions, still is now I think). The plumber had installed this into the wall, but had fitted a camera behind it in the wall to watch the bed.
Immediately they called the police, who came over and conducted an investigation. For the next week or so we didn't hear much about it. I spent most of this time just telling my friends, showing them pictures, but truthfully my whole family was scared every night. It was just very creepy thinking that we could have stuff like that hidden in our house. Chances are we didn't, but it was still really scary. After a couple of weeks my mum was speaking to the wife next door and asked what happened with it all. The wife said that the police found out he would, at nights, come to our street and sit in his car (which had really tinted windows) and watch them on his laptop. When mum told me this I got the BIGGEST shivers. The reason was (besides the obvious of a creepy dude sitting his car watching people through a hidden camera) was because on multiple nights, when I had driven home late from my girlfriends or walked home drunk after a night out, I remember seeing a station wagon (don't know if thats what theyre called outside of Australia, but its like a big hatchback car) always about 30m down the street from our house. It was never there during the day, always at night. I'd always walk past it and look at my reflection in the windows, assuming no one was inside. I was always so confused by whos car it was but literally never thought it was anything.
It still scares me so much that it was just this creepy fucking plumber sitting back in there on a laptop watching a hidden camera stream of my neighbors.
Anyway, that's my story. It's all true, and still creeps me out to this day, but my friends and I have a good laugh about it.
Op.
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