Imagine hearing strange noises coming from beneath your house every night for months. You might brush it off as just the usual sounds of wildlife or the neighborhood dogs causing a ruckus. But for one 93-year-old woman in California, the unsettling sounds turned out to be something far more bizarre than anyone could have guessed.
For weeks, the elderly woman and her family were convinced the noises under their El Sereno home were the usual disturbances from animals. But as the sounds grew louder and more persistent, the family started to get uneasy. The late-night knocking and scraping noises didn’t feel like the usual rustling of dogs or critters anymore.
“I just thought it was animals,” explained Ricardo Silva, the homeowner’s son-in-law. “But when it got worse, we knew something was wrong.”
That’s when they called the authorities. When the Los Angeles Police Department arrived to investigate, what they found under the house shocked everyone. A 27-year-old man, naked and living in the crawlspace beneath the home, was discovered. His name was Isaac Betancourt, and it seems he had been taking shelter there for an extended period, possibly as long as six months.
As police tried to coax Betancourt out of his hiding spot, things didn’t go as smoothly as expected. Despite the presence of police dogs and multiple attempts to get him to crawl out, the man remained unfazed and unwilling to leave. Officers had to resort to tear gas to force him out from the cramped, two-foot-high crawlspace. After several hours, Betancourt was apprehended, taken for medical checks, and arrested for trespassing.
“People are looking for shelter in strange places these days,” said Silva, reflecting on the oddity of the situation. While unusual, incidents like this might not be as rare as they seem, especially in tough times when people are struggling to find safe spaces.
Now, the family plans to seal off the crawlspace to ensure no one else can take refuge there. It’s a bizarre and unsettling tale, but it serves as a reminder of how people sometimes find shelter in the most unexpected places.
