A woman says it was the ‘most terrifying feeling ever’ after her family found a man behind a wall at their rental accommodation.
Therese had arranged a property to stay at with her partner and two children on Booking.com as they were attending a family birthday party.
The house was close to the function and advertised as not being owner occupied, but Therese says she immediately began so suspected something wasn’t quite right when the family arrived.
The landlord was there with his clothes in the washing machine – but he said that he wouldn’t be staying.
“I met with the landlord to get a key,” Therese told Kieran Cuddihy on RTÉ’s Liveline. “That was in a key lock box. He showed me around the house. He had his clothes in his dryer at the time, and so they were drying away. I was leaving, heading back to the party, and I said, ‘Will you be here tonight when I come back?’ And he went, ‘Oh no, no, I won’t be here’.”
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She added: “At the time I didn’t realise when I booked it, the entire piece. It does have advertised the entire home is yours. But even with that regardless, I wouldn’t have minded if he was staying there because B&B hosts still stay in the house sometimes. I just asked, ‘Are you going to be here tonight?’ And he went, ‘No, no, I’ll be gone’.”
The family headed off to the party and when they returned they found another strange situation. The washing machine was running again and the key for the property was also on a chain in a lockbox outside the home. “That did make me think that he was here,” said Therese.
Feeling put off by the whole situation, Therese asked her partner to check the rooms, which is when they noticed something very strange with the property.
“Still I felt a little bit weird. So I said to my partner, ‘Will you go upstairs and just check all the rooms.’ And he went up, then he came back down. He was feeling a little bit weird. We didn’t initially notice that there was like this partition-looking wall,” she said.
“It was actually a really thin piece of plasterboard with a nail. So there was no nails on one part. This was in the sitting room, in the living room. So my partner went, ‘What’s behind that?’ Because it looked like it could move. So when he went to move it, it came off.
“It was just darkness behind it and I hear ‘hey, hey’, so we obviously died. And I went, ‘Is there somebody behind that wall?’ And he went, ‘Yes’. Now the man didn’t come out near us, but like straight away, I went to get the kids and just leave right now.”
Therese explained she met the landlord after, who claimed to have never met her before, and told him how the experience was traumatising.
“It was pitch black, so you couldn’t see a thing,” Therese said. “And obviously, when you get frightened, you’re not expecting to hear somebody go, ‘Hey, hey’, from a wall, which I thought was just a wall at the time.
“We left, initially had the kids outside. In the end, I did end up meeting him at the front of the house. He said that he didn’t meet me before. And I said to him, ‘Why have you done this? You have traumatised myself and my kids when you easily could have just said, ‘Yes, I will be here later on’…. And he went, ‘Well, my Google reviews don’t say that’.”
Therese said it felt like being in a “Netflix documentary”. She continued: “It’s horrifying. It’s so scary. I genuinely. The only way to describe it is… I feel like I was on a Netflix documentary. I wouldn’t believe this.
“The blood drained from my face. The kids were frozen in one spot. We had to physically move them. Their jaws had dropped. They heard the hey, and all we could see was this black hole. We didn’t know what size it was, whether it was a small space or big space, and we knew there was a man behind that. It’s the most terrifying feeling ever.”
“I’m still not over it,” she said. “It’s terrifying, and I feel sorry for the kids. Genuinely, will put me off booking any sort of holiday home in the future. I think I’ll probably be hotels from here on in. I don’t think the kids would want to stay. You just don’t feel safe. Even in my own home now, it’s crazy. I know I am safe, but I’m still psychologically affected by it. It’s terrifying.”
Booking.com confirmed a probe has been launched into the incident, and that the listing has been taken down while the investigation continues.
A Booking.com spokesperson told the Irish Mirror: “We take safety and security very seriously. As soon as we were made aware of this incident, we launched an investigation into the property, which is ongoing. The property has been suspended while the investigation is completed.”
