Someone Who Looks Exactly Like Me Keeps Triggering My Cameras at Night

I know everyone online says this, but this really isn’t just some creepy story I made up to go viral.

If I could go back and never install that stupid camera, never open that first notification, I would. This whole

thing has eaten up my life. I barely sleep now. I moved states. And I still feel watched.

Last summer, after my divorce, I moved into a cheap rental house on the edge of town. The landlord

told me the previous tenant “left in a hurry,” which should have been a warning, but I was broke and

tired and just wanted a place that wasn’t my sister’s couch. The house wasn’t scary looking, just old

and quiet. Too quiet. The kind of quiet where you start hearing your own heartbeat if you sit still long enough.

My sister bought me a basic WiFi camera system for the front and back yard. “It’ll make you feel safer,” she said.

If only that were true.

I set everything up and forgot about it. Three nights later, my phone buzzed at 3:17 in the morning. The notification said:

“Front Driveway Camera: Motion Detected.”

I almost ignored it. I wish I had. But I was awake anyway, half-thinking about bills. So I opened the app.

There was a man standing at the very edge of my driveway.

Just standing.

Facing my house.

Completely still, like he’d been waiting there.

I sat straight up. At first I thought maybe it was a neighbor or someone drunk, but there was something wrong about the way he stood. Too still. Too fixed. His hoodie, his jeans, his pale face blurred by the night vision.

All of it felt off in a way I couldn’t describe.

He didn’t move a muscle.

I watched him for five minutes, barely breathing, trying to convince myself it was a weird fluke.

Then the camera glitched. Just a blink. When the feed came back, the driveway was empty.

The slider refused to show the moment he left. Just a jump from “man standing there” to “no one at all.”

The next night at 3:17, my phone buzzed again.

“Front Driveway Camera: Motion Detected.”

He was back. Same spot. Same posture. Same completely unnatural stillness.

But this time, I noticed something else. On the far right of the screen, in the reflection of my front window,

I saw a shape. A head and shoulders. Standing inside my house. Someone looking out.

I was in my bedroom.

My skin went cold. I stared at the reflection, trying not to blink.

The reflection didn’t move.

The man in the driveway didn’t move.

I whispered “Hello?” even though that made no sense. There was no answer. The feed glitched.

Both figures vanished.

I didn’t sleep. I barely even breathed.

The third night, he was closer.

Halfway up the driveway now, like he’d cut the distance in half. I could see more of his face. Stubble. Dark hair. His mouth slightly open like he was concentrating.

I thought about calling the police, but what would I say? “There’s a guy on my camera but he only appears in grainy night vision and vanishes every time the footage glitches?” I’d sound crazy.

I called my sister instead. She told me to call the cops. I told her I didn’t know if it was a person. She sighed and said she’d come the next day to look at the cameras with me.

We looked at all the footage. She pointed out how the hoodie folded exactly like real fabric. How the man’s shoulders weren’t a glitch. But she couldn’t explain why he never moved. Not even a shift.

Not even a blink.

We factory reset everything and she left for work.

At 3:17 a.m., the camera pinged again.

This time he was at my front door.

Right up against it. So close his face filled the frame. Too pale. Wet-looking, either from rain or sweat.

His mouth slightly parted. No eyes visible in the shadow.

He wasn’t knocking. He wasn’t trying the handle. Just standing inches away, head tilted like he was listening to something inside.

That’s when I heard breathing.

Not from the phone. From the hallway. Right behind the front door.

Slow, deliberate inhaling. Then a long, shaky exhale.

My heart started beating so hard I felt dizzy.

On the camera, the man’s shoulders rose and fell in the exact same rhythm as the breathing I was hearing.

I stood up without remembering deciding to. My whole body was shaking. I walked toward the hallway, terrified but somehow unable to stop.

I was five feet from the door when I whispered, “Who is there?”

The breathing stopped.

On the screen, the man in the camera seemed to freeze even more than before.

Then a voice on the other side of the door said, “You.”

Except it was my voice.

Not just similar. Exactly my voice.

Same tone. Same wobble. Same way I had said that word earlier in the week to a salesman at the door. It was like someone recorded me and played it back through the wood.

I stumbled backward. My hands were shaking so hard I almost dropped my phone.

“You,” the voice repeated, with the exact same timing. Like a recording.

On the screen, the man at the door tilted his head slightly, like he was listening.

I called 911 while backing toward the back door. The dispatcher tried to calm me down, told me the police were coming, told me to stay put.

I absolutely did not stay put.

I slipped out the back door into the cold air, shaking so hard my keys jangled. The yard smelled like wet leaves. The quiet felt wrong again.

I checked the feed.

At 3:24, the camera glitched and the man was gone.

A crunch of leaves came from the tree line behind the house.

I turned.

There was a person in the dark trees watching me.

Tall.

Still.

Facing me.

And in the faint light, I realized I was looking at my own face.

I ran and didn’t stop until I reached my car. Two weeks later, I moved states. I hoped the thing wouldn’t follow.

But last night, at 3:17 a.m., my driveway camera buzzed again.

This time the figure under it wasn’t at the edge of the street.

He was standing directly beneath the camera, head tilted up toward it.

And the scar on the back of his neck was mine.