I had been sleeping soundly when I awoke with a need to visit the restroom. Upon returning from the bathroom I ensured my pistol was placed appropriately on the nightstand and crawled back into bed. This particular night, my husband was on shift and about an hour away. My old cell phone gets horrible reception in our house and usually only works in the living room if at all. We have no landline.
I was just drifting back into sleep when I heard what sounded like a drinking glass shatter in the kitchen, which shares a wall with the bedroom. I had washed dishes the night before, so I knew all glasses should be in the cabinet in no danger of falling to the floor. I stayed still for a moment as I scanned the room, then grabbed my pistol and put myself on the floor so I could use the bed as cover. I sat silently, straining to hear any other noise, but right then the air-conditioning unit kicked on. The unit is in the hallway, right next to the bedroom door, so as you can imagine this made hearing anything else rather difficult.
I reached behind me to grab my phone off the nightstand and, of course, had no bars and no service. I held it towards the single window in the room in hopes that would help. Nope. Sometimes texting works when I have no bars, even if I can't connect a call, so I tried to text my in-laws next door. My phone kept telling me there was no service.
In a near panic at this point, I finally have the sense to crawl over the bed and grab the shotgun before resuming my post on the floor next to the bed. I am wondering if my phone would even get through to 911 when I think I hear voices in the living room. I figure I might as well try to get through to 911 now before anything happens.
Mercifully, my phone connected the call and, better yet, didn't drop the call either. The operator was very kind and stayed on the line with me. I told her I was armed and she asked if there were other guns in the house besides what I had on me at that moment. I told her just the ones locked in the safe and she said, "That's good that you have a safe for the others and good that you're armed."
It took 5-10 minutes for a unit to arrive. The operator told me I needed to disarm first and go unlock the front door for the officers. I told her no way, because if there were intruders that would mean I'd be walking UNARMED through the very area in which I believed them to be! She repeated the request for me to disarm first because "the police were there now" and "it was okay". Hah!
I swung open the bedroom door and cleared the hallway, then I opened the next door and cleared the living room. Once that seemed fine I set down my firearms and unlocked the door. Disarming and walking through the house when I think there's an intruder... honestly!! There really wasn't another way for them to get inside, though, so I did have to remove myself from my "safe" bedroom.
One officer cleared the house while the other asked me questions like did I live alone, does anyone else live here, etc etc. I explained about the in-laws next door but my inability to contact them because of my cruddy phone, and how I heard the glass shatter...
...when I checked the kitchen, though, there was no broken glass, dish, ANYTHING. And the voices I thought I heard? I have no idea.
All doors had been locked and no sign of entry. Geez. I felt like an idiot.
I thanked them and then apologized profusely for bothering them to come out, but jokingly added something about how it was probably better that I was mistaken and there was no intruder anyway.
I texted my husband to tell him what happened (still couldn't connect a call) and he teased me about it for a month solid. I finally got so upset with him I cried because, as I recall blubbering, "it's scary to be in a house alone at night when your husband is an hour away, your phone doesn't work, and you think someone's in your house." Much to my dismay, after all this, his mother keeps inviting me to spend the night and offering to come over to spend the night at our house, or even to "lend" me one of their dogs at night. Sheesh...I'm not scared to be alone, I'm just scared when I feel helpless and think I'm in danger!
Since then, I've gotten a better phone that gets great reception in the home, so I'm not worried about not being able to call out if anything should happen in the future. We've also managed to unstick the study door that opens into the backyard (the study is just off the master bedroom), so I can now potentially use that door as an escape. I could go to the back of the yard, hop the short fence into my in-laws' yard and let myself in their house to call the police if I haven't done so already. They aren't armed so I'm not worried about entering their home unannounced, though of course I would make my presence known.
We also now have a dog of our own; he's not yet old enough to know to guard his home and pack and very rarely barks at anything. Still, he does sleep lightly and just him moving around in his crate will wake me up so I know his curious movements in the crate would alert me to anything amiss.Anyway, thought I'd share this story because, in retrospect, I believe I acted appropriately. I didn't want to have a confrontation and risk my life when I had the time and ability to get police there as "backup". If I had to do it over again, I might have tried moving into the study that has more windows to try and get reception to contact my in-laws, as the room is still defendable and I still had good cover. They could have looked outside to see if anything looked off before I panicked. As for everything else...I'd probably do the same things. I hate to unnecessarily call the police in the wee hours of the morning, but I'd rather make certain that I am alive, not injured or dead.
