The home is where the heart is, and most times you don’t want to leave your heart unattended, especially when strangers are about. Who knows what may happen; someone may step on it, slice it up, or smash it to pieces. Then who are you to blame but yourself? 

Instead of leaving it to chance, these people installed nanny cameras—also known as indoor security cameras with motion detection. However, what they captured was more than astounding on multiple levels: some adorable, some confusing, and some utterly terrifying. 

Today, dear Pandas, we dive into the hilariously uncanny, all thanks to one person, named justneededausername_, asking the very important question on r/AskReddit: “Parents that use nanny cams, what is the most bizarre thing you caught on it?” 

If you have your own stories to share, please do so in the comments below after you’ve read through and voted for your favorites on the list! And if you’re craving some more creepy, yet intriguing stories, Bored Panda has an article right here for you. Now let’s get into it! 

#1

Our crib was under a window (shut and locked, don't worry). Every few days or so a hawk or some other kind of large bird would land on the outside of the window. The bird and my daughter would sit there for a good 10 minutes bobbing their heads at one another. It was adorable, despite the fact the bird probably wanted to eat her.

Image credits: __Iniquity__

#2

I used to babysit a 9 year old kid with Autism, along with his almost 2 year old brother. He really liked to watch Youtube videos alone in his room, and his parents were cool with me letting him during the 3 - 4 hours they would leave me with the kids, as long as he ate lunch and as long as he didn't watch anything inappropriate. They had a nanny cam in the baby's room.

So one afternoon, I put the little one down for a nap and bring the laptop with the nanny cam feed with me to the living room, so I can get some reading done. I look up maybe 10 minutes into nap time, and I see the 9 year old performing the most mind-bending and impressive dance choreography I've ever seen, while his little brother watched in complete awe. This kid was like a little Beyoncè.

The best part was his parents confirming that they had watched it too, and they had no idea that he was studying dance videos on Youtube and that he could actually perform such an amazing routine. Five years later, they're on Facebook sharing how he's in his high school's pom squad and how dance has helped with some behavioral delays.

Best Nanny Cam moment ever.

Image credits: anon

#3

Just me. I went into his room to get him and said "Daddy's here, don't cry." I went with him back to my room and heard my monitor say "here, don't cry." Since my voice sounds so alien to me I freaked out and watched in horror as a tall man grabbed my baby and walked out. It really probably took 1 second to realize I was holding him and it was me in the video, but I went through 10 years of grey hair in that second.

Image credits: ClassicCarLife

Oh, to have 5 million eyes and be an omnipresent being of light and darkness… Sadly, we have to be content with the slightly blurry eyeballs that we humans are born with, as well as the fact that we can’t look after all sides of the home when we’re focusing on not burning the pasta. Priorities. 

Thankfully, modern technology has allowed us to come close to the first described being, especially with the onset of nanny cameras, otherwise known as indoor security cameras. Their accessible pricing has made these little things some of the most popular home devices, as well as some of the most controversial. 

They’re usually undetectable, placed strategically throughout one’s home in an effort to Monitor what the nanny or babysitter is doing while on the job, to look over the pets whilst we’re away, or to catch a sneaky neighbor stealing some sugar. Or the TV. Whichever is of necessity, I suppose. 

Jokes aside, nanny cams are great tools that provide a sense of control over the matters that matter most. They can prevent and document child abuse, provide evidence for prosecution, and show potential areas of improvement that would have not been known otherwise. As shared by people in this list, they can also capture paranormal activity and infidelity in action. 

#4

My girlfriend's (now fiancee's) parents have security cameras. I used to pretend to not care much for my girlfriend's cat around other people. Then when they were out of town we took care of the dog and brought the cat over. They saw me on camera holding the cat over my head and dancing softly in a circle while looking into his cat eyes. The jig was up.

Image credits: notthatshort

#5

My brother had a camera that was left in the basement just for safety reasons. He had some workers over to fix a tile shower since it didn't drain properly. I guess the guys were pretty annoyed at having to fix it but it's their own fault for not doing it right the first time. Fast forward a couple weeks and my brother's sister in law is turning 21. They are in his basement bar when they start pouring shots of Viniq for her. As they were pouring they could smell something wasn't right. Her boyfriend immediately thought it smelled like nail polish remover. They decided to check the camera and sure enough, the workers drank some alcohol and replaced it with a full bottle of nail polish remover. They found the empty bottle under the bathroom sink and my brother's wife knew that was her unopened bottle she had bought previously. Kind of messed up.

Image credits: NDRoughNeck

#6

Using a baby monitor to care for aging parent. My sister comes in and tries to convince my dad to cut me out of the will and give everything to her.

Image credits: TooPrettyForJail

Many of the cameras turn on when motion is detected, providing the ability to watch all the interesting bits in real time or record them for later. Some even record audio and have an in-built microphone that allows you to communicate with anyone in the home, as if you were a ghost haunting the pantry. 

This Old House Reviews explain that there are three different types of nanny cams: independent indoor cameras, cameras that are a part of a home security system, and hidden cameras. The last on this list are the ones that many of these unfortunate situations were captured on; no one needs to pretend when they’re not being watched, or so is believed to be the case. 

If you do decide to get one, there’s quite a bit to consider. This Old House Reviews advise buyers to consider the size and shape of the camera and how it’ll fit with the rest of the décor, the resolution and recording options, as well as night vision settings. 

Then comes the power source—does the camera use batteries or can it be plugged in? Do you want it to be a part of your smart home system, connecting to devices like Amazon’s Alexa or Google Assistant? Do you want any special features like face detection and animal distinguishment? Quite a few elements to decide upon! 

#7

Not me, but a Co-worker.
It was not actually nanny cams per se. She has 3 cats and apparently while she was at work, they were damaging things in the house.
She set up the cameras to find out which cat was the culprit, and how it could be stopped.

Well, before she was able to figure that out she actually WATCHED as 3 men broke in to her house.

Now she could not call 911 because she lives in a different state than she worked in so the 911 centers had no way to hand calls off to each other.

she got lucky! another co-worker happened to live at the opposite end of the same county as she did. He was closer to my age and lived there before there was 911. Just like me, growing up his parents made him memorize his county's 7-digit fire-police dispatch number. and luckily his county had left that number active so that employees and other departments had a way to call directly into the dispatch center.

He rattled off that number and she dialed it. VOILA!!! it got into her county's dispatch center.

she was able to talk to the police and tell them not just what the guys looked like but which room they were in and where they were crouched down. they were arrested without incident although all 3 had guns on them. all property was recovered not only from her house but from 2 other houses on the same street and they got long prison sentences.

And it all started with one really bratty cat!

Image credits: gkiltz

#8

My Dad has cameras set up in the house as well as smart lights. (They used to live overseas but still had the house.) One time my brother and I were hanging out at their house while they went on a trip. They left for the airport and we started watching TV - it was after dark. Suddenly the lights started flickering in the house. Scared the p**s outta me. A couple minutes later I get a text from mom..."sorry, we're about to take off...your father is sitting here cackling watching you guys jump around as he turns the lights on and off... we'll let you know when we land"

Image credits: afihavok

#9

I got caught having a dance party with the 8 and 10 year olds I was babysitting. It was to Daft Punk. They couldn't sleep, so we danced until they passed out.

The parents loved it, but I was so embarrassed because I felt soooo weird that they saw my creative solution to getting the kids to go to bed.

Image credits: whiteshadow88

Here come the ethical and legal considerations! “Each state has laws regarding whether it is legal to record someone without their consent,” explains Thomas Simeone, an attorney and an adjunct law professor in Washington, D.C. 

“Anyone installing a nanny cam should definitely determine the law of the state in which they live before doing so. Violating the statute can open a parent up to severe penalties.” 

The impulse to be able to monitor what a nanny or sitter does is understandable. But nanny cams can’t really distinguish who they should and shouldn’t record. “Nanny cams will record others beside the nanny, such as guests, playmates of the children, delivery people, repair technicians, and guests of the parents,” he explains. “These people also may have rights not to be recorded without their consent.”

#10

Ok, not a parent, and not a nanny cam, but my nephew and his baby monitor.

Sis called me cry-laughing to tell me that niece went into the nursery and proceeded to lay out a few "house rules" on her 4wks old little brother. Sis says it was things about sharing, and cleaning up and being nice and protective and minding his manners.

That was funny enough, but niece finished with this gem: "Everybody pulls their weight in this family. You're lucky you're only nine pounds."

? That little bossy munchkin. She's super protective of him, still. I have multiple pictures of them holding hands while they nap.

Image credits: Durbee

#11

When my kids were about 4 and 2, we could leave the room for 30 seconds and come back and it would be trashed. My husband set up a camera to see what was happening.

We still have the video. My older daughter called her little sister over and said, "Look, I found something really neat!" and showed her a box full of styrofoam peanuts. They both gleefully started throwing them around the room. Older daughter heard my husband walking back towards the room and runs away, leaving her little sister still obliviously flinging peanuts.

She's been throwing her sister under the bus for 13 years and counting.

Image credits: addlepated

#12

Buddy of mine had a kid at the beginning of last year, discovered that both his cat and his beagle would climb into the crib with the baby occasionally during naps, cute right? Both animals made it a habit to climb in, kick/push the baby to the very side of the crib and curl up in the middle completely alone, you'd catch them glaring at the kid if he started to roll back over and invade their space

Image credits: crushing2013

Although all US states allow for video recording with a reasonable cause, the most discussed is the audio recording law. In the US, 38 states allow you to record the conversation as long as you are there, and 12 states forbid the practice without the other party knowing. Those states are California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington.

But the law is one thing; the potential emotional damage that comes with the breaking of another’s privacy is another. A nanny cam can be seen as a violation of trust, hurting the people that it was recording without them knowing. 

Potentially the best way to approach this is to be open with everyone entering the household that they will be recorded. Of course, there should be rooms where privacy is ensured, such as bathrooms and private bedrooms. Finally, don’t keep the recordings if it’s not necessary to do so. 

#13

I have my house surrounded by CCTV cameras. One day, just all of the sudden, in the city of New York, in Flushing, an entire heard of goats just randomly walked into the area where our tiny front yard is. They stood there and nobody came to get them. It was completely bizarre. I looked up any information I could find about parades or anything that would have had goats around. None of the neighbors saw anything. This is a regular street in Flushing with only houses around me. My mailbox was eaten off the fence post. They were around for 20 minutes. I'll never know why they were there.

Image credits: PlymouthHorizon

#14

My buddy has a camera that sits on his doorstep. It has a motion sensor and every time it detects someone or something on the porch, it snaps a photo and sends it to his phone.

It's a Sunday morning, and for once, his two year old isn't shouting into his bedroom to get him out of his crib. Ah, yes. A rare morning to lay in bed. His phone goes off. A photo of a little red-headed boy reaching out of the front door to grab a package appears.

And that's how he discovered that his son could get out of the crib.

Image credits: Kalae

#15

Not really a "nanny cam" story, but I managed to record my son playing peek-a-boo with himself just before going to sleep. It was super cute. The video starts with him sitting in his crib, laughing with his blanket over his head. He whips the blanked off and laughs, then does it a couple more times, until finally grabbing his stuffed bunny and flopping onto the bed to go to sleep.

Image credits: samuelk1

Lastly, every bit of technology has its weak points. Very few realize the fact that in-home surveillance equipment is relatively easy to hack into with over-the-counter devices, as seen in some of these items on the list. Whether by accident or on purpose, the technology is simple enough to manipulate. 

Furthermore, the footage may be used for nefarious purposes by said hackers, either to scope out the layout and belongings of your home, to spy on you and your family, or to capture personal details about your life to use for blackmail purposes. 

But let us know, dear Pandas, what do you think about having said cameras in the home? Do you have your own stories to share? Enjoy the rest of this list, full of the most wholesome and the most weird stories, and I shall see you in the next one!

#16

I have a backup camera on my truck and sometimes it freezes in the on position and records things after i get out of it. I park my truck facing my building so the back see's all that is happening at the police station. One day I went to work and my truck recorded the following - there was this guy dressed as a cowboy, literally on horseback, in Denver. He trots up to the police station and takes his horse up on top of the cop car. He gets off the horse an walks away. My car cam recorded the horse just standing there for like 30 minutes, nobody did anything. I actually didn't see this until my auto mechanic brought it to my attention when they were clearing the videos out at the dealership with a computer

Image credits: PlymouthHorizon

#17

Not a parent, but once caught the babysitter taking the baby's blanket, putting it around her neck like a small cape, and 'flying' around the room with it on. Keep in mind, the baby could only see out of the crib and was not present for the show.
Needless to say, we found out she was often high during babysitting.

Image credits: gooblagoobla

#18

Not on a cam, but on a babyphone.

My aunt liked to tell a story from a time, when her children were small. One time she was lying in bed, everything fine, and then suddenly she heard a deep voice saying:

"It's me, the monster, I came to get you"

Of course she went into panic mode instantly, ran to her child and... nothing there. So she went back and heard the voice again, realising that it's one of her neighbors playing with his kid.

Turns out those devices used the power grid and, since they both used the same model, apparently made her hear what was said into the neighbors babyphone.

Image credits: Force3vo

#19

Pretty standard as a parent to instinctually hear a noise in the deepest sleep in a really bad a*s dream and immediately wake up and turn the monitor on to investigate, albeit, that lightens up with their progression. Anyway, my kid was of the age that she was standing and talking and liked to aimlessly travel around her 3'x5' crib. On this particular night, I awoke out of a sleep because of some odd noises, like ruffling, and then sort of labored breathing and then other noises, I'd never heard before. So, as a parent (and if you don't have kids, you won't understand until you do) my heart drops. In that one second, someone has broken in, made it past our alarm, past our sleeping dog and is now trying to take my sweet precious little girl!!! So in a two seconds flat, I sit straight up like they do in the movies, and I look straight over at a dark screen and I grab it, turn it on and HOLY F**K!! I was NOT prepared for what I saw. My kids f*****g face was the entire monitor screen, head turned sideways. All I saw was her cute little face and little beady night vision eyes. It's an image that's hard to explain, but it scared me more than the initial thoughts that ran through my head; my heart skipped a beat for sure. That's when we found out, she now knew what the camera was and could communicate with us through it. She was whispering into the camera while looking into the camera eye. She was whispering "I love you mommy and daddy, can I come to your bed?"

It really was a scary few seconds, then that weird feeling you get when you realize your child's curiosity is so cute and they're learning.

#20

My husband and I had twins. A few months after they were born, my mother passed away. One morning as my babies were waking up in their room, I turned on their monitor camera to see what appeared to be my mother's smiling face completely covering the screen.
I instantly ran into their room, where my babies were just talking to each other.
My mom and I used to joke that if one of us in the family passed, we would try and give each other a sign we were ok after we left this plane of existance. I'd like to think it was my mom letting me know she made it wherever she needed to be, safely.

#21

Back when monitors intercepted phone discussions in the 90s, I was a toddler. We had lesbian neighbors, one of whom traveled frequently, so at night they'd call each other from afar.

My devout Christian parents were privy to their conversations.

Image credits: ridethewood

#22

My old roommate has two kids of his own. The older kid(3) deactivates the baby monitor cam when he and his sister want to do something they'll get in trouble for. Kid even waves bye to the camera before he pulls the plug.

Image credits: Flynn_lives

#23

My child was nonverbal as a baby. Obviously very smart, so we weren't worried about it and just figured it would happen when it happened. You would ask her questions and she'd point at things or if you said something funny, she would laugh. She also mastered the art of giving meaningful looks, of which we now have many, many hilarious pictures. We also tried to teach her sign language, which she thought was silly.

Wife and I occasionally talk about it, but no big deal. Then one morning we hear our daughter through the monitor. She woke up early and was sitting up in the crib, practicing her words. She'd say a word over and over until she got it right, then move on to another. This was accompanied by grunts of frustration if she got one wrong.

Wife wanted to run in and give kisses, but I had us wait it out so we could see how deep her vocabulary went. It was actually pretty big, more than 20 words.

All that day and for at least a few weeks more, still nonverbal. Then one day she simply started speaking in complete sentences. It was the same when she started walking later.

#24

Will probably get buried. I have a nest cam we use as a baby monitor. The nestcam at night uses night vision. Often times though it randomly adjusts and resets. My baby was sleeping and I was watching on my iPad with Netflix on our TV. I see in the corner a random dark shadow. Cannot explain it. Camera readjusts image because of the shadow. Baby wakes up from a ddeep sleep and starts screaming bloody murder. She was scared. She's 5 months old, so they often wake up hungry, right? She would not take a bottle took 90 minutes to calm her down and she slept with me.

Still no idea what happened and the nest cam footage showed a shadow. Can't explain anything else.

#25

When I'm home from college I babysit for these pretty wealthy people. At the time the boys I would babysit were about 2 years old and 9 months old. It was summer and I had laid the younger one down for a nap, then took the monitor out with me to the backyard so the two year old could play. I hear sound going off and see arms reaching into the crib to the sleeping baby. I grabbed the two year old, a knife, and slowly walked upstairs. Their grandma had come to see if I needed any help but didn't have my number so she didn't text me she was there. We laughed about it but never have I ever been so ready to shank someone.

Image credits: foolsdayeveryday

#26

Probs too late but meh.

I was babysitting for my sister a few months ago and was checking on my 2 year old nephew through the nanny cam, asleep in his crib. I got up to put dinner in the oven and when I came back I checked the cam again and...

There was a huge black mass in the crib with him.

My sister doesn't have any pets, so I was like.. WTF!? A black dog or cat or something had got in and is attacking my nephew!

I ran upstairs like s**t off a shovel and saw, to my horror, my nephew has pulled a black bin liner into the cot with him and had crawled inside!! I got him straight out of it and he was fine.. I took the bin liner back downstairs and just sat on the floor crying.

This was my first time babysitting for my sister. I had a go at her when she got home, "who keeps a bin liner where their baby could get it?" And she said there was one in his cupboard full of nappies (diapers) well out of reach, so we checked and the nappies were in there but the bag had been taken out, somehow?

FYI: bin liner = garbage bag in the UK.

Image credits: Pazzam

#27

Also late and not a monitor or camera story but worth sharing. About 6 years ago i stayed with my sister for the summer. At the time my nephews were about 4 and 7, and shared a room. I checked on them before going to the guest room, they were both out like lights. 10 minutes later the oldest ran out out the room screaming and crying about a yellow rabbit in the closet saying "bad things to me". Went in and checked closet. No toys, no stuffed rabbits, only a dresser and hanging shirts. Youngest nephew still out cold. Let my nephew chill with me in the living room. 5-10 minutes later my other nephew comes running out and crying about...yup..a scary yellow rabbit in the closet. Never did find a rabbit toy or stuffed animal. That house has many creepy stories. F**K. THAT. HOUSE.

#28

I look at the baby monitor and see a ghost.

I do a double take; yep, it's really real and on the monitor hovering and swirling around my infant son. My brain jumps, wtf do I do? Should I go grab my son? This can't be real. Maybe the ghost is harmless. Should I get my camera? No one will believe it. I don't believe it. Is the ghost going to hurt the baby? I can't believe this is happening. Will the ghost hurt the baby if I interrupt? Think logically. It's not a ghost. It's not a glitch. It's definitely in the room hovering over the baby. Think. Breath. Calm. Think. Oh, it's the camera light reflecting off the vapor from the humidifier we installed this morning. LOL. Ghosts, I knew I didn't believe in those.

#29

I was the Au pair, the parents had a monitor in their room downstairs and the other in the kids' bedroom upstairs. The monitors did two way communication so the parents could let the kiddos know they heard them and would be on their way.
One time I was putting them to bed as the parents were out, and as we are reading there's this breathing sound on the monitor and the little one just asks who that is. TF I don't know, but I gotta be cool so I pretend like nothing as I nervously continue bedtime routine. Kids didn't pay much attention. They were convinced I was Batman AND Superman, jumped out the window at night and saved the world so they would never question any security/safety issues - sorta assumed I got it.

Back to story though.
The dog. The dog did it, one of them was sleeping with the head close enough to the monitor downstairs for it to catch the noise.

#30

Not a nanny cam, but close enough. My fiance's parents have a mountain house in the Sierras in California. The property has about a half mile driveway leading up to the house and they have three motion activated cameras that capture footage of wildlife in the area. The cameras are along the driveway, but are faced outward towards fields.

One weekend about two years ago, fiance and I decide to go up to the mountain house for the weekend without telling his parents. During that weekend, I decided to go tearing down the driveway on an ATV topless, because reasons. About two weeks later fiance receives a call from his dad saying, "I am reviewing camera footage and I see that MajesticButtercup and you visited two weeks ago. We added a new camera that faces towards the driveway. It looks like you two had fun."

So now I am fairly certain my future father-in-law has seen me topless tearing down his driveway on an ATV. Yep.

#31

Not a camera but a monitor. Had it on one night and heard someone talking. It was some older lady talking about what it was like growing up in africa. Weird as s**t.

Image credits: armalitedan1

#32

I've posted this before a while back so i'll copy and paste it here. They are now 3 and a 1.5 years old.

"I babysit my cousin two kids pretty much every other Friday night so he and his wife can have some time alone and out of the house. Their kids are 2 and 6 months so they have video monitors in each of their rooms and I pretty much watch the monitors and read or watch tv. Roughly a month ago I heard talking coming out of one of the monitors. It was a man's voice and he kept saying over and over again "its ok, go back to sleep, I'm here" and I could see a figure standing over the crib in the 6 month old's room. I freaked out thinking someone has broken it (they had a break in around Christmas time and the guy was never caught). I called the police and my cousin and crept upstairs with a knife to protect myself and the babies. No one was upstairs and both kids were sound asleep. Needless to say I was thoroughly freaked out until the police and my cousin came out. it didn't help that they lived in a older home and everything creaked.

Fast foreword to last week the exact same thing happened to my cousin during the day while the kids are napping. But since it was day time the video monitor gave off a better picture of the room. Apparently the one monitor in the 6 month olds room switches over to the neighbors monitor every once and a while. The voice I heard was that of his next door neighbor soothing their crying baby who is around the same age."

#33

When my Niece was around four years old I had her stay for a weekend while her parents went away. They loaned me a baby monitor because I sleep like the dead and probably wouldn't hear her from my attic bedroom if she woke in the night.

I was just settling down to sleep when I heard this horrendous hacking cough over the monitor, I bolted to her room thinking that she was choking but she was still sound asleep.

A few minutes later I heard it again but this time there was a female voice too saying "Shhhh, you will wake her up." I charged in there again to find her fast asleep and alone.

It was then that I realised one of my neighbors must have the same cheap a*s baby monitor and I was picking that up.

#34

I had a nannycam for our chicken coop. I actually caught one of our neighbors brandishing a power drill about to break into our coop. I called the cops and her defense was 'I was worried about the eggs'. The cops let her go. Thanks rural America.

#35

My baby monitor has a delay every time you turn it on. The one time that scared the c**p out of my wife and I was when we went to turn on the cam for the night after our daughter had already gone down. It had recorded the last 5 seconds from the previous morning of our daughter waking up.

In flashes her wailing scream and her face staring at the monitor like those vids you watch on youtube where a face pops out. Scared the bejesus out of us (my wife even peed a little). We had a good laugh about it afterwards.

#36

My niece would often talk and wave randomly to nothing, nobody thought it was odd until one day she was having a nap and we heard singing over the monitor, we thought it was probably picking up a radio signal but we went to check on her, as we got closer the lullaby got louder and it gave us the creeps but thinking some weirdo was in her bedroom we rushed to her room flung the door open to find a chair next to the cot, the sound stopped as soon as we opened the door, we were curious but not all that freaked out we simply put it down to a faulty monitor, we checked the nanny cam, the f*****g chair had small orbs of light all around the legs my niece was sat up in the cot waving and smiling at the chair and it moved to the cot slowly the song started as another ball of light was flying across the screen, the video from the feed was interrupted once we walked in and went out of focus, my brother has since moved and nothing weird happened since.

#37

Not a parent, but I'm almost certain my dad caught this.

When I was in college my dad asked if I would dog/house sit for he and my mom. I said sure as long as they didn't mind if my girlfriend came. They didn't; I'm pretty sure they like her more than me (we're now married).

The week comes and like any college couple we had sex...everywhere. Partway through the week we're sitting in the living room and "everything going well? The dogs okay?" Comes out of the clock. I damn near jumped out of my skin. Turns out my dad had installed a mic/camera system throughout the house. I don't know if they caught us, the cameras deleted everything from 24 hours prior, but there's a distinct possibility. Needless to say, we kept our antics to my room from then out.

Image credits: Maximum__Effort

#38

Back when mom worked at Hewlett Packard, one of her coworkers used a nanny cam for all three of her babies. But on baby number 3, the older two found out about it and started doing things like dancing or jumping around and making funny faces in front of it, or doing things like lining up the toys to face the camera.

Though one of them apparently recorded a "Happy birthday daddy" message on it.

Image credits: CrazyCoKids

#39

Finally I have a weird relevant story to post.

Back when I was relatively young (probably 8ish), I had an Action-Man doll toy which had a speaker in its chest - along with a portable microphone you could speak into and your voice would come out of the chest of this doll. Pretty cool.

Well, it gets interesting because the neighbours had a baby monitor setup, which happened to use the same frequency as this Action-Man doll. So when I started playing with it, I got these creepy baby crying sounds etc and the sounds of my neighbours trying to hush the baby.

Needless to say, my parents and I were freaked out until we figured out what was going on.

#40

Not a Nanny Cam, but a baby monitor (audio only). I was 16 and had two very young little baby brothers. I was kind of a night owl and my parents worked hard, so I typically would take care of them if they woke up at night and I heard them crying so my parents could get some much needed sleep... Unfortunately this house, in my opinion, was haunted af so all kinds of crazy stuff would happen. On this particular night I was chilling in the living room watching some 3 Stooges at like 1am when I hear one of my little bros crying. I got up to grab him and feed a bottle if needed but before I could get to the room he went silent and seemed to have gone back to sleep. Coolness I thought, back to the 3 Stooges.
Next morning my Mom thanked me for taking care of my little bro and putting him back to sleep. Told her that I actually didn't have to because he went back to slow before I reached his room. This upset her, because both my parents swore that they woke up to him crying over the baby monitor but then heard someone in the room rocking him back to sleep... In the rocking chair, right next to his crib and the baby monitor. Cool and all except for the fact that it wasn't me...
All in all that was actually the least creepy thing to have happened in that f****d up house.

#41

OKAY. About 2 weeks ago, my wife and I checked our night vision infrared cam in our daughters room while we were laying in bed. What we saw scared the hell out of us. There was an "orb" floating about 5 feet above her head, moving in many different ways that followed no real pattern. It would shoot off camera for a bit, come back, stay still, move in circles, etc. I recorded the whole thing with my phone. After about 5 minutes my wife got scared and went in and grabbed my daughter, at which point it just hovered. Shortly after that, I went in to investigate. Nothing could be seen with naked eyes, and it wasn't picked up by the cam with the lights on. I stopped recording shortly after I went in because I was watching the baby monitor screen and trying to find what was causing it with the other hand. I moved my hand right in front of it and felt a variance in temperature, and checked everything around it to see if there was some kind of reflection. I didn't find anything. I kept checking and after awhile of turning the lights off and on, it finally disappeared when I turned them off.

If this post has enough interest I will upload the video. I haven't yet simply because my wife didn't want me to, but this seems like the perfect thread for it.

EDIT: Here's the vid
https://youtu.be/I8LY-3XNIWk

#42

Our kid was/is the most active sleepwalker I have ever seen. He would get out of his crib and walk around his room them climb back in and go to sleep. It is very creepy waking up to hear your kid having a conversation while he is asleep or watching him sitting up in his crib staring at the camera. Usually when he left his room he would come to our room and climb in our bed. One night I heard him get out of his bed and the next thing I know I heard the chime on the front door. By the time I got up and got out the door he was all the way up the driveway and almost out in the street. His eyes were glazed over and he was mumbling about going to grandma's (who lived down the road). Scared me to death, we added an extra chain lock to our door the next day.

#43

It was late at night, everyone was in bed asleep.

I woke up to my bedside light flashing on and off and some strange hi-pitched speech coming from the baby monitor. Believing that this was the start of an encounter of the third kind, it was in this moment i could have done with one of the babies nappies!

Turns out that touch lamps and radio frequency's go a little strange during foggy weather conditions.

#44

My own child sitting in place for three hours staring back at the camera. Never moved, never blinked. Gives me chills just thinking about it.

#45

You know the "orbs" they show on shows like Ghost Adventures? Well one afternoon I had the monitor on as my 2 year old was napping. He was starting to wake up, and as he's laying there he's playing and talking to himself, which I thought was super cute so I wanted to record it.
The camera only records in 30 second clips, but about 5 seconds after I hit record, I see this white-ish small orb move towards his crib, turn left and go towards him. It kinda looked like it disappeared into his blanket, but immediately after it did that he's on his hands and knees and says playfully, "Hi!". I was lucky to have recorded that, as there have been times I've seen similar "orbs" near him when he sleeps.

#46

Have a 3 year old and a 1.5 year old..My wife lost her grandpa's a lil while back and she got the call at 1am that he had passed. She leaves to be with her family and I'm wide awake now, well I'm watching TV and I hear both the kids on the monitor saying "papa". Creepy as s**t..

#47

I know of a family who had a full-time plus nanny/cleaner/cook (known as a "helper" in Hong Kong and often expected to work 20 hours a day, plus sleeping in the same room as the kids, with only Sundays off). They got a nannycam and fired this woman because after spending her entire day getting the kids ready for kindy, cooking a hot breakfast, picking up after the family, doing 3-4 hours of cleaning, prepping for dinner, setting out activities for after she went out to get the kids, in other words after a very full days work for minimal pay, she had the audacity to sit down on the family's couch, in the communal room of the house she was contractually obliged to live in, for 15 minutes to have a rest before leaving to get the kids.

Work for 10 hours straight and sit on the couch for 15 minutes of downtime before getting the kids, making dinner, cleaning the house, welcoming the parents home, serving dinner, cleaning up after dinner? Fired.

#48

I got fired because of a nanny cam. I was working for a very rich (by Australian standards) family. The dad was a surgeon and he'd invented some kind of special surgical screw.

Anyway. So I was 25, looking after their five children, all boys, aged 17, 16, 11, 9 and then baby surprise who was 3 years old. The two older kids obviously don't ever need me, and the 11 and 9 year olds were really sweet and cute and didn't need that much. The toddler though. Just the worst kid I'd ever cared for. Really bratty and awful, but stopped short of torturing small animals.

One day we're stuck inside playing starwars lego and he's bossing me around and talking about the "Cat-Cat Walkers" we're building. I'm like little dude, it's AT-AT for real. He cracked it, flipped over the fancy lego table, told me he hated me and ran down stairs. Being the consumate professional I am, I calmly flipped him off for 2 whole minutes before I went down and helped him cheer up.

Next day I was fired.

#49

Not a baby monitor or nanny cam story but my sophomore year biology teacher once told the class a really creepy home security footage story.

So my teacher lives with her husband and her house is in some back roads with a couple of neighbors nearby, so one morning while everyone was at work she told us that a group of people dressed up as furries were snooping around her house. She explained how at first it appeared as if they were trying to break in the house and steal stuff but things got weird. They decided to hide around her house and seem to wait for someone to come home. She said they stayed for 1 hour and 27 minutes then they left the sight of the cameras into the back trails. They got the local PD involved and purchased self defense weapons.

This story fuels my fear of furries.

Image credits: Mestizo123

#50

My cousin has a video baby monitor that connects over wifi. Her husband travels a lot and likes to check on the baby at weird hours without having to wake his wife, so he can just log on. It also has a microphone feature so he can talk to his daughter. She is two now but was about 18 mths when this happened.
She was inconsolable one night and my cousin kept having to go soothe her back to sleep. One the third or fourth time entering her room, she heard a man's voice, not her husband, talking to her crying baby. She changed the password and sent out a warning to other parents to change their passwords. Scary stuff.

#51

Baby monitor- I woke up to the sound of heavy breathing, to find a face close-up in the camera (two eyes and a nose). My son figured out how to pull himself up on the crib rails. I may have stopped breathing for a few seconds. Very freaky!

Needless to say, we moved the camera to a more elevated location.

#52

Overheard my 8yr old son breaking up with his gf of 4 years. She came over for a playdate just to break the news to him that since most likely they will end up with different teachers it will be hard to maintain relationships and perhaps would be a good idea to start seeing other people. (Paraphrasing very close to how things were said that evening).

EDIT: asked him if he was ok afterwards, he said "Yeah, she was only my backup anyways"

#53

Someone else mentioned "themselves" as the creepiest thing.

I was setting up a camera in our family room before we went on vacation. It's an open kitchen family room and kitchen lights were off. I was switching between playing back and live to see how it all worked when suddenly in what I thought was the live video was a tall black figure standing behind my couch in the dark. I'm a huge person (and I sometimes forgot that) and so it looked freaky as hell. I spun around scared to death to see no one there.

#54

We have a smartcam in my sons nursery and check it constantly while he is in there to make sure he is still breathing etc. A friend of ours came over one day and wanted to see how it looked because the camera has some cool features, our son was sitting next to us...we opened up the app and saw...my son, laying in his crib. I can't even describe how freaked out I was but after a few seconds it "caught up" and showed the real live room which was empty, chills to the bone!!

#55

My daughter used to worm her way over to the baby monitor which also served as a night light and sing to her grandpa or whoever was listening. You could also talk back through it, and my dad would often talk to her while she was trying to get to sleep.

#56

To give a quick scene building, my boys room is upstairs and we have both a baby monitor and Nanny cam to see what they're up to. One night I forgot to plug in the monitor to hear them so activated the camera to look.

The infrared was on and both were standing under the camera looking up. The IR made their eyes glow. Scared the living daylights out of me.

It turned out that they were calling for me and knew I could see them through the camera so they were calling to the camera to get my attention. :)

#57

Audio monitor experience for me. My ex husband and I were in the office downstairs and hear the creepiest voice say very dramatically "Hello Baby". Pretty sure we both died momentarily before we realized she kicked a toy in her crib. Needless to say that toy was donated the next day!

#58

I'm late but here goes

My sister is 23 and lives with us with her boyfriend right? They both have a daughter with different people.

My niece is 2 and his daughter is 4/5. Can't remember off the top of my head

One day we're in the garage hanging out and I decided to watch the baby cam for whatever reason. When I notice his daughter is like talking to herself and rocking back and forth but her eyes are wide open. I don't know looked like some s**t you'd see from an exorcism movie.

#59

Caught a huge meteor streak outside the window of nursery. lit the room up enough to switch the camera from night time vision to day time. We ran into his room and carried him back to our bed for the rest of the night.

#60

Not a nanny cam but when I was about 5 we got a dog my dad claimed he hated the dog because he shewed his slippers barked aka got last word hiding under the couch or bed, Last year I got our old 8mm movies converted to video files I see my dad playing with the dog bathing him brushing him and looking like he really cared for him. This was in 1972 ish so I showed him the footage last time I went home to montreal last July for the first he addmited he really loved the dog.

Dad at 96 finally addmitted he loved the dog he swore at and pretended to hate so my mom would keep it.

#61

Caught my daughters friend stealing stuff from her room. This girl was supposed to be a "good" influence on our daughter. She was known all over the neighborhood as a good girl. We were shocked but just let it go and kept our distance after that. We were tortured for days with what to do and how to talk to her parents about this. We determined in he end it was best to just let it go.

#62

There was a small hair or thread on the camera lens of the monitor and it looked like something moving under our son's blanket. Very creepy.

#63

Not on a nannycam but maybe close enough?

My son was awake in his crib babbling to himself and having a good time. My wife and I were watching him through the baby monitor kind of laughing at him being silly.

He could pull himself up and while holding the crib rail slowly walk around the inside edges of the crib. As we're watching him, he comes around and looks directly into the camera so looking directly at us in the baby monitor.

As we're watching him, he reaches out to try and grab the camera. We see him leaning over the crib rail stretching his hand out for the camera which is just out of reach. Suddenly he flips right over the crib rail while we're watching live and lands with a thump on the carpet. Cue his crying and our running to check on him. He was scared but otherwise fine.

Not that great of a story, I guess. Still my wife and I were both so surprised and the odds of us having both been watching the live feed exactly at that moment were pretty low. In my mind's eye I can still see that sudden look of surprise on his face as he flipped. He never tried to climb out of his crib on his own like his sister did and I wonder if that was the reason why.

#64

My 6 month old son will stare at the cam at night. It's creepy. Even more so since his eyes glow, like shifters in Supernatural. Freaks my wife out

Edit 1: [This is a shifter from Supernatural] (http://i.imgur.com/n7IB8fc.jpg)

Edit 2: [Baby is put down to sleep] (http://i.imgur.com/JjHJOeW.png). I doubt we'll live til morning, guys

#65

Not exactly IN the nanny cam, but when my first child was very young and we were both very sleep deprived, I accidentally knocked the monitor on the floor and we both freaked out for a few seconds because I had 'dropped the baby'.

#66

The cam at home has some sort of lag sometimes and the baby had not been feeling well, she was about 2.5 years old at the time and had been whining while on her sleep the whole night. I woke up to a loud cry to find her standing on her bed, she wasn't moving, just standing there and movement was still heard from the cam speaker. She was just still. I rubbed my eyes and opened them again to find her moving while laying down in bed. It was the most freaky thing ever.

#67

Late to the game but we had a Nanny we thought perhaps was psycho. She smelled like cat pee. Anyway, she was well aware we have a security system with 8 cameras in every room in our house. We got it to watch babysitters since one of my children has Down syndrome and is mostly non verbal. We don't hide the cameras and make it quite known we watch them.
Anyway we had vodka in our fridge and the sitter started drinking it. She drank the entire unopened bottle. She then proceeded to pee in cups from our cupboard and dump them down the sink and return them to the cupboard...

#68

I have a ghost story. Not on a nanny cam, but a video monitor. And I'll tell you I've never really had any hard facts that ghosts are a real thing. Never experienced anything prior or since. My girlfriend and I were at her sisters house and it was getting late so she put her baby down in his crib. And everything went good no problems. She comes back upstairs and we visited for a half hour or so then the little guy just starts screaming. A horrendous cry. And her sister picks up the monitor and pushes the button to talk to him to try and calm him down. It wasn't working so she excuses herself and goes back downstairs. Probably 20-30 minutes pass and my girlfriend and I are watching t.v. and glancing over to the little monitor and see what we thought was her next to the crib. Well we think nothing of it. But the whole time the kid was crying. We're getting tired of it so we decide to leave. She goes downstairs and gives her sister a hug and we leave. Next day, the sisters we're talking and her sister apologizes for the kid crying so much "he's never cried like that when he sleeps. I don't have a clue why he was." To which my girlfriend says "yeah we we're surprised your voice wasn't calming him. We figured you singing or talking to him would have quieted him down." And she says "I wasn't close enough to do that. I was just sitting on the stairs hoping he'd stop." She didn't want to give him attention to teach him if he randomly cries he'll get some mommy love. So she was probably 15-20 feet away from the crib the whole time and my girlfriend and I could clearly very well see a face next to the crib looking in. It was going back and fourth just looking in. We never saw hands reach in or anything touching him. But just someone watching him through the crib bars. We would have wrote it off as maybe something on the floor beside the crib. But it was very much moving back and forth the length of not the crib. But length of the child. Creepy stuff. My skin is crawling the whole ti