Straight out of a horror movie.
A Florida woman abruptly ended her stay at a Kentucky Airbnb and was ordered to get a hotel room after she returned from a night on the town and made an unsettling discovery.
The parent was in Lexington last weekend for an equine competition with her daughter, her three friends and grandmother when they went out to dinner on April 13, according to FOX 56.
“When we returned, the girls hung out, and we got ready for bed around 11:30,” the renter told the outlet.
However, while getting ready for bed, they made a horrifying find
“One of the girls came in and told me that her window was open,” the renter said. “My mom and I went to find that both windows in their room were indeed unlocked and cracked open.”
The mother soon realized that all the windows in the home had been opened in a similar position, even though they were sure all were closed when they left for dinner.
But what happened next forced the renter to call the police.
“When I opened the window, there was a car that had been parked across the street with tinted windows. When I looked up and looked at their car, the car immediately started and took off,” the renter told the outlet.
The parent, identified as Laura from Tampa, told WTQV it was her first time staying in an Airbnb.
Fortunately, a “deputy quickly came” and scoped out the Airbnb around 11:38 p.m. but found no sign of forced entry at the rental.
“I feel like somebody was here to take the girls,” Laura told the outlet. “I said, I feel like we could have woken up to something very different tomorrow morning. And he said, trust your gut. He said, I can’t say for certain that that’s what was happening.”
The strange occurrence led to the officer telling the renter to leave the Airbnb and find a rental for the remainder of their stay if they felt unsafe.
The officer kindly stayed with the group until they packed their belongings and left the property, police told the outlet.
“When we opened the garage doors and saw that there were two cars and officers standing outside, it made us feel really safe. It also validated what happened to us,” the renter said.
There have been 148 offenses of Breaking and Entering in Lexington through January and February 2024, according to state-released statistics.
Disturbing experiences and crimes while staying at home-sharing services have become an ongoing issue over the years.
In July 2023, a woman allegedly discovered a camera in the bedroom of a Florida apartment that she’d rented via Airbnb.
In September, an Airbnb host in Mississippi was caught taking a security photo of her married guest “in the company of another female” and emailed the image to the man’s wife after a failed extortion attempt triggered by a bad review, according to a lawsuit filed in February.
