Woman Treated to Early Halloween Surprise: A Creepy Ex-Boyfriend Sleeping in Her Heating Ducts

Since we’re right now wandering through something of a fun desert on our Gregorian calendar, you might want to get a jump on the candy-slinging, horror movie marathon-watching gateway to hell and the holiday season known as Halloween with the first unsettling, urban-legend story of the season: a woman from Rock Hill, SC says she discovered her allegedly drug-addled ex-boyfriend recently out of jail sleeping in her heating duct, from where he could watch her domestic goings-on through an air vent. After she and her children discovered his hiding spot, he fled before police could apprehend him, and remains, as of right this very moment, at large.

Anyone who’s not familiar with the little 80s slasher that couldn’t, Crawlspace, good — you’ve successfully navigated the swamp of Netflix instant watch selections more nimbly than I have. For anyone who has gotten caught in Klaus Kinski’s murderous quicksand, you’ll immediately notice some similarities between his vent-crawling extracurricular activities and this unsettling news item. The woman, identified only as Tracy, told the Charlotte Observer that she had broken up with her ex-boyfriend/current intruder more than 12 years ago after only a single year of courtship (he was apparently a drug addict and once tried to rob her flower shop).

A year ago, Tracy commissioned her spurned lover to help install new doors in her home after most it burned in a fire. She couldn’t have expected, however, that this entreaty for home improvement handiwork would earn her an attic-dwelling houseguest, whose clandestine presence caused all manner of shaky ceiling and falling installation jitters. At one point, Tracy jokingly explained that there was some “poltergeist stuff going on.” No poltergeist — just a stealthy ex-boyfriend menacing her and her five children. You know, the usual pre-Halloween home invasion awfulness that lets us all know that summer is most definitely over.