The Intruder: The TV Woke Us from a Sound Sleep - Who was in Our House?

Back when we were living in an old house on the other side of town, and had linoleum on the floors, no air conditioning, and old doors and windows with broken locks, we experienced a terrifying incident one night. I had cleaned house all day, including stripping the wax from the linoleum and rewaxing the floors. Exhausted, we had gone to bed early and were sleeping hard.

About midnight, my husband shook me and whispered, "Wake up! The television is on. Somebody must be in there." The window at our heads was open, and I told him it was just the neighbor's radio that he sometimes left on all night.

Our bedroom at the time was next to the living room. "Look at the light coming under the door. It's the television we're hearing," he insisted. The music had a weird, other-worldly sound, coming from a place it shouldn't be at a time it shouldn't be. I felt a sudden prickly sensation at the back of my neck.

We held a hasty whispered conference and agreed that we had not even turned the television on that night. I remembered that our two-year old daughter had watched cartoons early in the morning, but had left them to go outside and play and it hadn't been on since.

Back then we didn't have a phone in every room as most people do today. We had only one, and it was in the living room. Calling the police was not an option.

A picture started to form in my mind. I could see some demented person sitting on our couch, with his feet propped up on my freshly polished coffee table, watching our TV, and who knew if he might have a gun pointed at our bedroom door? What kind of crazy person breaks into a house and turns on the television, with the owners at home?

I climbed up on a homemade toy chest and pulled a pistol from the highest, most inaccessible place we could find, in the top of a closet. As I loaded it, I assumed my husband was getting dressed. I turned to hand him the gun, only to find him sitting on the side of the bed just as he had been before. I didn't know if he was in shock or had gone back to sleep.