SUMMARY
I had been renting a room in a single-family home owned by a high school orchestra teacher who worked north of Seattle. I lived there for nearly three years under a rental agreement. When COVID shut down the schools, my roommate began teaching music classes from home — and that shift completely changed his demeanor. As the months of lockdown dragged on, our relationship deteriorated. The constant proximity and isolation led to arguments that grew increasingly aggressive and controlling. To avoid confrontation, I tried to keep my distance, but that only seemed to make things worse.
Around the same time, the State Auditor’s Office suffered a data breach that exposed the personal information of many people receiving pandemic assistance — myself included. I was contacted by the Auditor’s Office about the breach, but before I knew anything about it, I had already started having trouble accessing my email account and Google Drive. Then I began receiving strange messages through social media and text — messages from people I didn’t know claiming they were watching me, threatening to kill me, even describing in detail what I was wearing. On one occasion, someone contacted me through a friend’s profile, leading me to believe it was my friend inviting me over to his house. When I arrived, he was shocked to see me and said he had never sent the message.
Things took an even stranger turn when I started hearing voices taunting and harassing me — they sounded like my neighbors, but we’d never had any issues before, so it didn’t make sense. I usually heard them at night or when I was alone in my art studio. They threatened me, harassed me, and made bizarre comments about my family and heritage. I never saw anyone, but I could hear them clearly. It made me feel unsafe and deeply unsettled. I would shout, “Please stop,” but the harassment continued. Often I would hear a woman’s voice, similar to my neighbor’s, saying things like “It’s just my goddamn kids,” which was completely out of character for them. Over time, the voices seemed to get closer, as if they were right next to me, like wearing headphones turned up to full volume. I began experiencing severe headaches, sharp pains around my ears and jaw, disturbing vibrations, and high-frequency sounds inside my skull, along with obscene voices echoing in my inner ear.
Since the voices sounded like they were coming from the neighbors next door, I decided to go over and check in. I knocked on their door, and a man I had never seen before answered. Just behind him, I saw a woman at a nearby desk — also someone I’d never seen before. I told him I lived next door and was checking in to see if everything was alright. I didn’t explain exactly what I was hearing because I wasn’t sure where the voices were coming from. He told me everything was fine and quickly closed the door.
A few nights later, I heard a loud scream, like a young girl, quickly covered up by the sound of a blow dryer. I ran outside to see where it was coming from but saw no one — not in the front yard, the backyard, or my neighbor’s yard. The next night I decided to call the police and have them to do a wellness check. I was on the front porch of my residence when the police arrived at the house next door. They went and spoke with the people inside then came over to speak with me. I explained that I hadn’t seen my neighbors in months and wasn’t sure who the couple was now living there. The officers said there was nothing they could do and left. I even called the school the kids next door attended and left a voicemail with my contact information, but I never heard back.
Unable to find the source of the voices and feeling increasingly uneasy about the threatening messages, I began to suspect that maybe my roommate was behind it all. His behavior had grown possessive, and we were arguing almost every day. What made me especially suspicious was the fact that he had ordered unusual AV equipment — things like an electrometer, a switchboard, and other frequency devices to help him teach music classes from home. I had never used this kind of equipment before and seeing it all arrive one day made me feel a little uncomfortable about how it might be used, especially when I started to feel physical pain in and around my head, eyes and ears.
One night, I was hit with a migraine so vicious it felt like a shrieking, high-pitched frequency drilling behind my eyes. Sleep was impossible. Desperate to make it stop, I ran upstairs and found my roommate at his computer, headphones on, surrounded by his equipment. I yelled, “What are you doing?” while frantically trying to switch off dials and controls. He claimed he was just working on assignments for his classes the next day.
As time passed, I became convinced that this equipment was being misused — to spy on me, record me, maybe even harm me physically. The tension between us kept mounting until it snapped into outright abuse. He once barged into the bathroom while I was showering and bit me when I shoved him out and forced the door shut. Another day, someone he knew came over, and when I opened the front door to see who it was, they pulled a knife on me. I called the police multiple times to report the abuse, but they refused to file a report — most precincts in Seattle were shut down because of COVID social distancing.
Somehow, my roommate managed to talk to someone at the sheriff’s office and got a protection order filed against me. Meanwhile, none of my own reports ever materialized into anything official. It was infuriating and baffling — and it forced me to pay closer attention to the strange things happening around me: the missing neighbors next door, the cryptic messages, the voices I was hearing. Piece by piece, it all started to feel connected.
In the last week of February, two sheriff’s deputies came to the house, served me with paperwork, and told me I had to leave immediately. I packed what I could and stayed in a hotel for about a week, but with only a few belongings and no clear plan, I decided to return to the house, believing I still had the right to be there under my rental agreement with the owner.
On the morning of March 7th, while I was still lying in bed, two Seattle Police Department officers entered my room and arrested me for allegedly violating the no-contact order that had been issued by the King County Sheriff’s Department two weeks earlier. They pulled me from my bed and handcuffed me on the spot. I spent one night in the county jail and was released the next day. No formal complaint was ever filed against me, and the case was dismissed without prejudice.
NOTES
- I called 911 twice before the protection order was filed against me to report my roommate's abusive behavior, but the police refused to make a report or look into it.
- I never found out who the people staying next door were, nor did I get information about my neighbors whereabouts.
- The voices continued so I contacted the Mayor, a senator and a few other departments in Seattle.
