Kriti MehrotraAs the title suggests, Lifetime’s ‘Phrogging: Hider in My House’ is a true crime thriller that explores the frankly creepy phenomenon of phrogging — strangers living inside someone else’s home in secret. It actually features first-hand accounts from survivors who’ve been through this skin-crawling experience in detail, even making us question if the place where we live is genuinely safe or not. Amongst them in episode 2, aptly entitled ‘Footsteps in the Attic,’ is Amber Dawn — whose uneasy yet fortunately not entirely menacing 1995 ordeal has turned into a tale like no other.
Who is Amber Dawn?
Amber was merely 20 years old when she decided to relocate to the farming town of Enumclaw in Washington, just at the foothills of volcanic Mount Rainer, to be closer to her brother and his family. She even got a good place in an apartment complex three blocks from him, but the first night in itself made her a little paranoid since she heard what seemed like clear footsteps right above her. “I look up and notice there’s a crawl space door that pushes up into the ceiling in my bedroom,” she said in the Lifetime original. “I’m on the top floor; there’s nothing above me but an attic.”
The following morning, Amber did approach a complex employee regarding her concerns, only to be dismissively told it was probably a squirrel or a raccoon, which she completely accepted. However, as the months passed, she noticed things like her cans of soup or soft drinks would go missing, doors she’d left closed would be wide open, and her tiny puppy was once somehow in the sink. She initially put it on her brother as he had a spare key, that is, until she fell sick six months into her lease and decided to deviate from her schedule by staying home from all three of her jobs.
Amber had kept on hearing noises throughout this period and dismissing them as animals, yet things clicked into place that evening after she noticed the ceiling hatch was open while taking a bath. “Everything just slowed way down,” she told the ‘Criminal’ podcast. “I must have sat in that bathtub for ten to fifteen seconds, but it felt like five minutes, and I put it all together… There was someone living in my house with me.” She thus unhurriedly got out of the bath to not spook the stranger, put on her robe, grabbed a hammer, called her sister-in-law to whisper what was going on, and left with her dog — the phrogger was gone by the time the police arrived.
Where is Amber Dawn Now?
Amber has since admitted that her first thought to realizing she wasn’t alone was the phrogger, who she assumes was a male or someone tall to reach the hatch without a ladder, was not a bad person. That’s because they essentially had unrestricted access to her for six months and had never once tried to harm her; plus, her place was flooding when she’d found her pup in the sink. She still stayed calm while getting out of the tub on the fateful evening, though, as she didn’t want to test her luck or their temper — she even waited for her sister-in-law to arrive before they dialed 911.
Amber moved out of her apartment the very next day despite the police making sure the phrogger was truly gone, leaving behind just a sleeping bag, a book, and some food. It has been more than 25 years, yet she not only still remembers the entire close call incident but also shares the same in an effort to let the world know that your intuition is something you should always trust.
“Not that I want to make everybody paranoid, but listen to your instincts,” the now-Illinois resident, wife, mother of two, and continued animal lover told the ‘Criminal’ podcast. “Deep down, I knew what was going on, but I didn’t trust myself, I thought I was just imagining it. Since then I’ve learned to listen to my instincts and if my instincts are telling me that something isn’t right, then something is not right.”
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