foreign [Music] this happened a couple years ago and a few months after covet had started I started to work from home while my wife was HR at a local chain grocery store we have a daughter together who at the time was seven I was sitting at my desk which was in the living room downstairs and my daughter had been out of school for a few minutes and I could hear her playing upstairs I have home security cameras set up to an app on my phone that can see a live feed though I never really feel
the need to use them as I trust when my daughter's in school she's actually paying attention plus my job is very stressful sometimes and I can't really shift my focus most days my daughter comes downstairs to grab some snacks and I tell her I'll be done in a couple hours she goes back upstairs and all is well in Normal I'm in the middle of writing a report when I hear my daughter talking which wasn't too weird until I hear a faint voice talking back I know it wasn't my daughter's voice it sounded like a man
sit there in shock for a few seconds trying to think if maybe I was just out of it and it was actually one of my co-workers but I could have sworn that the voice came from upstairs I excused myself from the zoom call and proceeded upstairs to my daughter's room I knocked and she told me to come in I asked what she was doing and she said she was just playing on her iPad then I asked who she was talking to and says I don't know that wasn't an uncommon answer for my daughter as she
pretty much says I don't know to anything that she doesn't want to talk about I didn't think much of it but I still had an uneasy feeling [Music] I looked around her room real quick and didn't see anybody and nothing looked out of place so I went back to work and that was that the rest of the day was pretty normal my wife came home we ate dinner played some games with our daughter and then it was time for bed I thought about telling my wife the entire day but kept fighting with myself as I
had no clue what I really heard and I kept reasoning with myself that maybe it was just one of my co-workers or some other voice from one of their screens or maybe even the game that my daughter was playing on her iPad I had no reason to believe that there was someone else upstairs as I had a view of her room from my desk and I even went up there and checked I decided that if I heard anything again I'd tell my wife but I didn't want to freak her out for no reason we both
tucked in our daughter and said her good nights then went to bed that night I had terrible dreams and I kept going in and out of sleep hearing voices and feeling pressure on all parts of my body a kind of sleep paralysis Maybe in these states of being sort of awake I can almost make out a male voice speaking but I couldn't really make any sense of the words he was saying I awoke in a state of panic as I realized the sun was coming up I noticed my wife was already up and getting ready
for work did you hear anything last night I asked her and she replied no which filled me with relief she asked me why and I told her that I think I just experienced some weird kind of sleep paralysis which I'd never had before she made sure I was okay before logging her daughter into school for the day and then heading out I get ready for work myself as I only have about an hour to eat breakfast and shower and try and forget last night's nightmare it's Friday and I'm just ready for the weekend the day
treads on as slow as humanly possible and I can barely even stay awake I doze off for a few minutes on my break before hearing my daughter come downstairs she asked me if she can go outside and I said Not until I'm out of work she is visibly upset but she knows the rules I get through the last hour of work and go upstairs to check on her I knocked on her door and she opens it with a book in her hand did you still want to go outside I asked she said no not anymore
and that she just wanted to read I felt a bit of relief as I really didn't want to do anything anyways as I was so tired I went back downstairs and turned on the TV my wife wasn't going to be home for another half hour so that gave me time to nap since it was a Friday I knew she'd want to stay up late because we both had the weekends off and our daughter always goes to bed by eight or nine so that was pretty much the only alone time we'd get uh it doze off
for a bit until I was awoken by my wife coming in through the front door she said hi and our daughter comes running down to hug her [Music] the rest of the night goes on we have dinner watch a movie and play some games until we eventually took our daughter in the nap really helped as my wife and I didn't go to bed until probably midnight which is a record for us I climbed in the bed ready to fall asleep my wife and I laid there for a while and as I'm on the brink of
sleep that's when my wife asks me something she asked me if someone was here earlier and a little freaked out I said no then asked her why she asked she explained that when she was pulling into the driveway there was a car parked at the curb right outside of our house and right when she pulled in they drove away I told her that no one stopped by and I had made it very clear to everyone that I knew that no one was allowed over because we were really trying to social distance due to the start
of covid she sat there for a few seconds and that she said it was probably just the neighbors and that she thought she saw that same car there on Monday and maybe even sometime last week she jokes that I better not be having any women over and then we finally go to bed thankfully I slept like a rock that night Saturday comes and goes perfectly normal it wasn't until Sunday that my daughter really started to worry me we were eating dinner when out of nowhere she asks us what a machete is I looked over at
my wife who looks just as concerned as I am my mind is moving trying to remember if we'd watched anything or talked about anything in regards to any kind of weapon but I couldn't think of anything in a calm tone my wife asks her where she heard that word she says she forgot and I couldn't help but feel like she just lied straight to our faces something wasn't right about this and she's a good kid and never really lies if something was wrong you'd tell us right I asked just hoping she'd open up a little
bit but she declined and assured us everything was great and she said that she's made a good friend and her teacher is nice and online school is going well I had mixed emotions sort of hating myself for wishing something was wrong so that she could just tell me I decided to respect her boundaries though and so does my wife the rest of the night nothing else was brought up my wife and I put our daughter to bed and after closing her door we headed back downstairs to sit on the couch I had this horrible feeling
in my gut that I've had all night and pretty much all week a feeling that's been festering so long that I decided to just tell my wife everything from The Voice I thought I heard to the dream in the machete come to think of it my daughter's been spending more time in a room than usual ever since kovitz started she used to want to be around me and her mother all the time she was an only child who couldn't see her friends anymore except through a screen so it made sense that she'd want to spend
time with us but now her spending so much time alone all of a sudden felt really strange I tell my wife everything I've been feeling I think I was venting for maybe 20 minutes because I had so much on my chest she looks at me with a blank stare and then looks down and I can tell that she feels something similar she looks up at me and she's on the verge of tears before she can get a word out she just starts crying I hold her for a while as we both sit there and getting
everything out had just made my mind go blank but then I hear it again a voice coming from my daughter's room the same voice I thought I heard before I bolt up from the sofa not even gauging my wife's reaction and I race up to my daughter's room swinging the door open and there she is sitting on the edge of her bed just staring at me in horror as if I'm the one that was intruding on her and her friend and not the other way around I was scared and anxious and I just yelled who's
there there was no answer I yelled to my wife to call the police while I'm scouring my daughter's room I look under her bed and in her closet and under piles of stuffed animals and there's nothing I checked out the window to see if anyone was down there and there was no one this didn't make any sense and that's when I heard my wife ask my daughter something that turned my entire world upside down is it coming from the camera I turn around and my daughter hesitantly nods her head the camera my fear turns into
complete rage as I grab a stool and dismantle it I tried to keep my cool so as to not scare my daughter but the thought of some stranger talking to her through a camera that I willingly installed in her room was unbearable I was angry disgusted and heartbroken and that's when my doorbell rang and I hear a man yell police I answer the door and I explain everything to them but they don't really seem surprised at all they explained that this thing happens a lot when security cameras don't have a ton of those security features
that you get with the more expensive ones apparently hackers can see through it and even talk to you which was obviously news to me they asked to speak to my daughter and what she told them was Soul crushing this had been going on for almost two weeks now apparently and the voice had become my daughter's friend they talked to her after school and asked her about everything she liked and would tell her that they liked that stuff too this voice learned what time I got off work and what time my wife would get home and
basically our entire schedule as a family they learned my daughter's school schedule and her friends names and how she hadn't seen them in a while and how she felt like she didn't have any friends anymore and was lonely this voice had been learning everything about my daughter right inside of my home and right under my nose they had preyed on her and the fact that she was lonely and used that to their advantage everything was starting to make sense the voice I heard was real and the dream I had about the voice wasn't even a
dream at all and this just made me wonder if my daughter wanting to go outside was just to play with this stranger which means that my wife was right about the car outside of our house the one that was there on Friday and apparently Monday and last week too whose voice I've been talking to my daughter for a whole two weeks and I only noticed a couple days ago I felt sick to my stomach and wondered why she wouldn't tell us why she felt like she needed to protect him the officer had the same question
and my daughter was silent for a bit until he assured her that everything was going to be okay she said that the voice told her that their friendship had to be a secret and it was only between them and if she had told anyone about them talking that someone was gonna hurt him with a machete and they would never be able to talk or play again I looked at my wife who looks rightfully horrified and I know she feels just as guilty as I do the policeman tells my daughter that no one's gonna get hurt
and not to worry then he gestures me over to the side as his partner my wife console our daughter the officer's face is noticeably more worried than before he claims usually when they've gotten these types of calls in the past it's been pranks and nothing malicious ever comes out of it but this case is different and they want to take protective measures he advises us to take all the cameras down and says if possible we should stay at a family member's house or because of kobit and maybe a separate hotel room for a few days
while they Patrol the area and try to look for a car that matches the description my wife gave them after that night my brother took us in for a couple weeks and we kept in contact with the police for a few months but unfortunately nothing ever came of the incident it took a while after that whole thing to feel safe in my home again and I know my wife feels the same way but we're both just happy that our daughter doesn't know the true intentions of The Man Behind The Voice and we probably won't tell
her until she's much much older [Music]
