Last weekend, a college student in North Carolina began to think her apartment might be haunted after she heard a strange, mysterious noise coming from her closet—and when she went to investigate, she found something only slightly less terrifying than an actual goddamn ghost, FOX 8 reports.
“I just hear rattling in my closet. It sounded like a raccoon in my closet,” Maddie, a junior at University of North Carolina Greensboro, told the local news station. “I’m like, ‘Who’s there?’ And somebody answers me. He’s like, ‘Oh, my name is Drew.’”
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Drew, it turned out, wasn’t the undead specter of some expelled student haunting the halls of her off-campus building or whatever. He was 30-year-old Andrew Clyde Swofford: a complete stranger just camping out in her closet.
“I open the door and he’s in there, wearing all of my clothes,” Maddie said. “My socks, my shoes, and he has a book bag full of my clothes.”
As horrifying as the whole thing might be, Maddie—who has declined to reveal her last name—apparently didn’t think Swofford posed any sort of immediate threat. She reportedly kept up a conversation with him and let him roam around her home while she called for help.
“He tries on my hat,” she said. “He goes in the bathroom and looks in the mirror and then is like, ‘You’re really pretty, can I give you a hug?’” According to Maddie, he never actually tried to touch her.
Eventually, Maddie’s boyfriend showed up, and Swofford left the apartment and headed to a nearby gas station, where he was later arrested, local CBS affiliate WFMY reports. It’s unclear how, exactly, Swofford got into Maddie’s apartment: She said she always locks her doors, and there were no signs of forced entry. But scarily enough, Maddie thinks this wasn’t the only time she’s had someone lurking in her home—she apparently came home to find “two guys in the living room” back in December, she told FOX 8. She’s also noticed that some of her “shirts and pants” have disappeared from her closet since she moved in, and she’s even found suspicious handprints on her bathroom wall—all of which got her thinking there might be a “ghost” in the apartment, she told WFMY.
Swofford has been booked into Guilford County Jail and is facing 14 felony charges, including breaking and entering. But even with him out of the picture, Maddie and her roommates are completely over living in that apartment, which, you know, makes sense.
“I can’t stay here. My closet, it stinks,” she told FOX 8. “I’m just ready to leave.”
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