Episode 71: A Bump in the Night

Jul 21, 2017

Amber Dawn was 20 when she moved into a one-bedroom apartment in Enumclaw, Washington. On her very first night, she began to notice strange sounds. And they didn't stop. 

 

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Artwork by Julienne Alexander.  

Play Episode

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well let's just start with you introducing yourself my name is Amber Don and I live with my family in Berwyn Illinois I work as a animal trainer at the Shedd Aquarium and that's about it what kind of animals do train mostly penguins and otters but I also work with all of our animals in the Marine Mammal Department what do you train a penguin to do mostly husbandry care so we

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this going to the vet with them we asked them to be calm in our lab and calm with other people we can teach them to spin and the follow us train them you know to come to their names you can teach a penguin almost anything so do you have like Penguin friends ones that you like more than others well I love all of her Penguins but I do have my favorites I helped hand-raised 11 of them so yeah I mean a

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Irwin shoesies you they choose you to be their person and then every time you come out on to exhibit they come out of the water and run up to you and do their little flirty Behavior

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I've I knew I wanted to work with animals ever since I was a small child so I started working with them years ago whoa we're here to talk about something that happened longer ago than that how long ago were you living in that apartment in Washington 21 years ago

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long before she worked with penguins Amber Dawn moved to one of the rainiest places in America the small town of Enumclaw Washington to be closer to her brother and sister-in-law it was gorgeous I could see Mount Rainier out of my bedroom window of his apartment like right there was it was gorgeous she moved into a small apartment building her apartment was on the top floor a one-bedroom with a little dining room a living room and kitchen and a

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balcony on the front she was 20 the first night I moved in I know I had I had been playing music while I was unpacking and I went to bed that night and I turned off the music and I was laying in my bed and I heard Footsteps in the attic and they're very clear footsteps and I wasn't quite sure why I would be hearing that

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that but you know all whenever you move into a new apartment you know you start to notice all the little different sounds that that particular space makes and so I wasn't quite sure what it was but it sounded like footsteps had you been told that there was an attic in the apartment or with did you have an entrance to the attic in your apartment there was a crawl space that it was just a little push up

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I don't even know what you would call it like a like a trapdoor in the ceiling kind of sort of yeah it's like it would push up into the ceiling so it was like a square maybe two and a half by two and a half feet that push up into the ceiling and that came into my bedroom or it was in my bedroom ceiling so I could see it from my bed and I thought okay you're you know

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that's probably not what it is you know your you have an act I like I know I have an active imagination so I just

► 00:03:43

you know fell asleep anyway but the next day I went to the landlord and I told them you know I I think I heard footsteps up there last night is there any way that anybody could be up there and she told me no she said it was probably squirrels or raccoon or something as like well that squirrels were in a pretty big set of boots then

► 00:04:08

we've all had that feeling that something isn't quite right and we're very good at talking ourselves down going on with our lives telling ourselves that it's all in our imagination and most of the time it is I'm Phoebe judge this is Criminal

► 00:04:35

I was very meticulous you know everything was very organized I knew it was in my cupboards and I would buy a six-pack of soda I would drink one maybe take one to work with me and I would come back and there would be three left and it's like well did I drink too

► 00:04:58

that's odd or like cans of soup would be missing what did you do what did you think was happening well I had moved to Enumclaw to be close to my brother and he lived about three blocks away he had a key to the apartment I assumed that he was coming into my apartment and eating my food because I that is something he would do just come over and grab a can of soda or whatever

► 00:05:28

so I thought it was him did you confront him yeah I called him I told him you know I can't afford to feed you don't come over here and eat my food and it wasn't happening all the time I just went down to say every now and again Amber wasn't home much she was working several jobs processing papers for an accountant working at the local drugstore and waitressing at night

► 00:05:54

so when she noticed that little things in her apartment had been moved she'd second-guess herself chalk it up to exhaustion she was starting to feel at home in Enumclaw she had her two cats and then she got a puppy she was beautiful German Shepherd mix she was maybe nine or ten weeks old so really little yeah she's just a baby so she was learning to be potty trained so I would

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home in between my jobs and walk her

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and I was telling her in the bathroom while she was you know learning her her manners and learning to be potty trained so I kept her in the bathroom with you know newspaper on the floor and water and toys and stuff one night she was waitressing when she got a call from her landlord saying that her bathroom was flooding and my downstairs neighbor was getting rained on in her bathroom so I came home and we came in my

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and I opened up the bathroom door and my puppy was in the bathroom sink I asked her was like did you put her in the sink she's like no we wouldn't open the door because we didn't know how big the dog was we didn't know if it was people-friendly so this is why you had to come here

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that there's no way she could have gotten into that think she was a little puppy and the toilet was you know far enough away from the sink that she wouldn't have been able to climb was there water all over the ground uh-huh it was a big mess but the puppy was dry like safe in the sink yeah she was sitting in the sink

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but like someone must have put her in the sink right there's no way she could have yes someone must have put her in that sink Enumclaw is a tiny safe farming Community nothing ever went on there so anytime Amber got worried she just reminded herself that her brother and sister-in-law were three blocks away she kept herself busy she'd been living in her apartment for about six months when she got sick and called into

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jobs and so on this day for the very first time she didn't leave her apartment at all it was around seven o'clock at night I was on the couch and I was watching I was watching my stories watching my TV and I heard a loud thump in the bedroom

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and I just dismissed it because I have animals and they make noise and I just dismissed and kept on watching television later on that evening around 11:00 or so I turned off all the lights I drew a bath I got undressed and I got into the bathtub and I so I'm in the bathtub I got a candlelit

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and I look up and that crawl space door was open and everything just slowed way down and you're in the bat in the bathtub I'm in the bathroom naked in the bathtub naked in the bathtub in the dark and I must have sat in that bathtub for 10 to 15 seconds after seeing that crawl space door open but it felt like five minutes

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and I put it all together as like okay

► 00:09:32

the footsteps the first night the doors being closed when I had left them open the missing food Thea my dog in the sink

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there was someone living in my house with me

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so I very calmly got out of the tub and got my robe I put it on there's only one place he could have been hiding and that was in the bedroom closet and I had to walk by the closet in order to get out and the closet were those mirror doors and that was really scary to see myself you know in the dark knowing that he was on the other side of that door

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did you say anything no no if he would have if he would have opened that door if I would have seen him I would have lost it he's been living in my apartment for six months if he wanted to hurt me that's not what he wants he just needs a place to stay he's probably not a bad guy like he put Thea in the sink like he's I don't want to freak him out I don't want to scare him

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by screaming and yelling because then he might hurt me so that he doesn't get caught

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so I very quietly walked past it the closet and I didn't go out the door I went to the phone and under my phone I had a junk drawer and in the junk drawer there was a hammer so I had the hammer in my hand claw out so if anybody came at me they're going to get a face full of hammerclaw

► 00:11:19

and I called my sister this was before most of us had cellphones so Amber had to stay in the apartment and use the landline she told her sister in law that someone was in her house and her sister-in-law told her to get out of there as fast as she could so I grabbed my puppy and I walked out the door I walked out the door in my robe with a hammer in one hand and a puppy in the other and I got to the bottom of the stairs and I was looking at the the apartment door knob

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please don't come out please don't come out please don't come out because like I said like if I would have seen him I think I would have lost it she was there within minutes with her two giant German shepherds in the back of her car and we went

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we went to her house and we called the police and what did they find out well the police came to the apartment but he was gone in the Attic the police found a little bit of food a book and a sleeping bag

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I don't know how he was getting the apartment I mean I I left a window open for my cats so he could have gone

► 00:12:35

in and out that way I had a spare key he could have taken my spare keys and made a copy to I mean I don't know he could have lived there before me and maybe the managers didn't change the locks I don't I don't know she filed a police report and while Amber believes it was a man there's no way to know whoever was living up there was never found

► 00:13:03

we spoke to Amber's brother Eric Olson and he remembers just how nervous and scared she was through the whole thing and how relieved she was to get out of there we also asked if you remembered Amber accusing him of stealing food from her apartment we said that sounds about right it's been more than 20 years and Amber says she still wishes she could find this person and ask them what was going on

► 00:13:32

did you stay in the apartment no no my grandparents came over the next day and we moved out we moved all my stuff out you think that if there is a stranger in the house like the puppy would have been barking yeah well I got her while I live there so as far as she knew that's that's normal you know mom goes to work and then Dad my friend comes

► 00:14:02

yeah my friend comes down from the attic and hangs out in place with me so when he came in night she didn't bark she just like oh hey

► 00:14:15

in her next apartment she made the landlord padlock the attic door

► 00:14:22

it makes me so nervous now because I lose things and things think I've done that like it wait a second did I drink that did I eat and now and I'm like Phoebe no you're fine but now I'm really you've given us all reason to be really worried like know maybe there is someone in here you know

► 00:14:40

not that I want to make everybody paranoid but I think you just have to listen to your instincts I think that's what I've learned from this like deep down I knew what was going on but I didn't trust myself I you know I thought I was just imagining it but I think if since then I have learned to listen to my instincts and if my instincts are telling me that something is not right then something's not right

► 00:15:08

so now do you ever do things like check in the garbage can to count how many Soup cans there are or no I live I live with a family nothing is ever where it was placed you know I have no idea how many cans of soup I have in the cupboard

► 00:15:38

criminalist produced by Lawrence poor nydia Wilson and me audio mix by raw buyers are in turn is Matilda or foligno special thanks to Dick Gordon and Carol Jackson Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal you can see them at this is Criminal.com and if you have a story like Amber Dawn's write to us at hello

► 00:16:03

at this is Criminal.com we're on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram come say hi tell us what you think the best thing you can do to help criminal grow is completely free just review us on iTunes or tell a friend to subscribe to the show thanks very much criminal is recorded in the Studio's of North Carolina public radio wnc we're proud member of radio topia from PRX a collection of the best podcasts around shows like

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love and radio love and radio is a show but morally complicated and completely fascinating situations and people they let people speak and they don't judge them here's a preview of their brand new season are you worried you're going to have all sorts of like crazy side effects like later in life you'll grow a third arm or something people would look at you like oh that's disgusting I was always kind of inspired by that you know American Psycho routine

► 00:17:02

ghost in your house I will pee in your sink sorry oh God Steve and I hope you make me a good documentary I'm so sick of reading it I can't even begin to tell you I'm so upset I could just cry and all of a sudden the wood on my woodpile started to shake probably dinner with a flower and then I wake up with a plastic bag over my head holy

► 00:17:30

go listen radio topia from PRX is supported by the Knight foundation and special thanks to adcirc for providing their ad serving platform to radio Topia I'm Phoebe judge this is Criminal radio Tokyo

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