The Landlord Lens - Phrogging Nightmare: I Found Someone Living in My Attic

Episode Date: October 31, 2025

What would you do if you discovered a stranger secretly living in your home?This is the shocking true story of a phrogging nightmare, when someone was found secretly living in a family’s attic without their knowledge.“Phrogging” refers to the terrifying phenomenon of people hiding and living in other people’s houses — sometimes for days, sometimes for months — completely undetected. From strange noises in the ceiling to missing food and moved belongings, the warning signs can be easy to miss until it’s too late.In this video, we explore:- What phrogging is and how it happens- The real-life case of someone discovered living in an attic- The warning signs homeowners ignored- How to protect yourself from hidden intrudersThis story plays out like a horror film — but it’s all too real.If you’re into true crime, creepy real stories, or mysteries that actually happened, this one will stay with you long after it ends.

So have you ever heard of Froggers? Yeah, yeah, what does that mean? So Froggers is when somebody lives in your house without you knowing it. What? One video in particular that caught our interest, lady, husband goes out of town, and she hears a family of raccoons up above in her attic. Spoiler alert, it's not our family of raccoons. Hey, everybody. Welcome to a very special episode of Landlord Lens, the Halloween special.

Yes, sir. and you're dressed appropriately. That's right. This is my pumpkin outfit. Looking like a jack-lantern over there. Well, don't carve me up. Well, we're going to talk about the intersection of Halloween and landlords, which you might wonder what does that even mean?

I am wondering that. Yeah, what does that mean? Yeah, so have you ever heard of Froggers? Froggers, like the video game you played as a kid and kind of bounced across the street? Kind of like that, except not at all. Oh. So Frogers spelt P-H-R-G-G-I-N-G or ERS. is when somebody lives in your house

without you knowing it. What? Yeah, and this is a whole thing. There's entire pages on YouTube dedicated to it, entire subreddits dedicated to it. Netflix even did a special. And there's one thing, or one video in particular, that caught our interest.

We just watched it beforehand. Lady, Chicago, husband goes out of town. Okay. And she hears a family of raccoons up above in her attic. And she goes up to investigate what this family. raccoons is doing up there because it's so loud. Spoiler, it's not a family raccoons. And she's sitting there and she's like, what is going on? Like, what could pot? Like, there must

be a million raccoons up in my attic. And so she decides to pull the access stairs down from the ceiling. And so she just crawls up four or five stairs and just sticks her arm up into the attic and just snaps a photograph. She pulls her phone down to see what's actually living there. this is what is on her phone screen. That image, that person in the attic? Yeah, yeah, in the attic. Just waiting up there and had been there for weeks, the video said. Living up there, obviously rent-free.

Must have been in Mondami's New York City. Well, one thing that came to mind when I saw this, because is this, how is this different than squatting? You know, is the landlord, because this was a renter, is the landlord somehow responsible for this? Do you have any opinions on how it's different than squatting? Well, I guess the biggest difference to me is that squatters will typically move in when somebody's not there and then make it basically impossible, right, for the tenant to either get back in or to move in or it'll be someone that came for a showing, for example, right? And remote showing and they end up moving in and then they refuse to leave, right?

So there's no lease that you can actually evict them and they're squatting in the apartment. This situation seems to be a little different in that somebody's living in a house that another group of human beings have rented and are actually occupying, which is wild. Wild and terrifying. I'd say so. Yeah. So I know Alex, our producer, put together a list of things to watch out for. It may be valuable for us to give our audience some signs that you may have a frogger on your hands. So, John, what do you think?

the first big sign that you might have a frogger is. All right. So the thought I had, and this is something that I'm going to tell my wife when I get home because this happens to me all the time, is when your pet starts acting weird. Oh. Right. So you got a dog or a cat and they're barking suddenly and you can't figure out why. Maybe it's a room where the windows actually closed, so they shouldn't be barking out the window.

That might be a sign that there's something weird on the other side of either your floors, your ceiling or your walls. Yeah. Yeah. If your pets are acting weird, you might have someone living in your house that you don't know about. A couple that come to mind for me is don't you hate when you've poured a bowl of cereal and then you go to the fridge to get the milk out and the milk's gone? You might have a frogger. Oh yeah. Or you pour a bowl of cereal. You go to the fridge to grab some milk and when you come

back, your cereal's gone. There you go. Also another sign that you might have a frogger. I like the one here that is pretty practical actually. If you see a big spike in water or electrical usage. Ah, yes. Yeah. Yeah. Because then maybe there's somebody using your water or electricity you don't know about. Exactly. So before you go to the wife and kids and say, what are you doing during bath time? Check your attic. Check your attic because you might have a frogger. The reason this kind of makes me uncomfortable to talk about in general is I have like an unsecured entry to the crawl space under my house. And what was your address again? There have been times that my wife has made me go into our crawl space because she's heard something and you know like eight o'clock on a

in a November night, I have gone in with a flashlight and checked. And I have absolutely thought, you know, as you go out there, you're thinking, what if there is someone down there? Yeah, you might see this guy from the video just appearing back at you. And then I got to call the police and it's a whole thing. Or I could get killed. So I think what that's a great segue to is ways to prevent froggers. So one way would be never leave your house. Recluses almost never have froggers. That's true. Yeah. Because they know everything that's. going on in their house. Another way would just be to lock the entrances. Yeah, you could lock the entrances in your windows. Yep, you should make sure you don't have unsecured crawl spaces.

Yeah. That look inviting. Yep. And then also just make sure that service providers and stuff that access your house, use a smart lock. So you can send them a code that you can change, as opposed to giving them an actual hard copy of the key that they could, you know, make a duplicate of and then move in next month. Yeah, or give it to their strange brother-in-law that looks like this. And then last thing, vacant periods. It's never good to have a vacancy. But it never hurts to have someone either check up on the property or either yourself go by from time to time to make sure everything's secured. Likewise, we always tell our neighbors when we're on vacation in case they want to come in and help themselves to a bowl of cereal.

The other idea is to set up cameras in the house, whether it's your own primary residence or one you're renting. And then if they're motion activated and you get this random. clip at 11 p.m. or something, you know you might need to investigate something. That sounds like a terrifying watch though. Yeah, it does sound scary. After the quickest of Google searches, we found one source that claims frogging is up 23% this year. Oh my goodness. Another outcome associated with their affordability crisis. So yeah, that's our Halloween special about frogging. Something horrible that can happen. That's very scary. If you've ever suspected that you've lived in a place where there has been a frogger, please leave a comment. We want to hear your story.

If you want to pretend like you've had a frogger in order to leave a comment, we're open to that too. Or if you've ever dabbled in a little bit of frogging yourself, please let us know, tell us a story. Sounds interesting. James, do we have raccoons in the office? I don't think so. Why? I don't know. Oh! TurboTenant is the all-in-one platform for landlords to manage their rental properties. From vacancy to tenancy, we have you covered with industry leading tools and expert advice. Landlord better from anywhere for free at turbotenant.com.