Yelm woman learns of unwanted visitor under her house
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YELM, Wash. -- A Yelm woman recently got the surprise of her life when she learned that a stranger was living underneath her house.
Velma Kellen said she recently bought a new furnace, so she was a little surprised when her house wasn't warming up. She called a repairman, who gave Kellen an odd bit of news.
"He says, 'Well, I've got good news and bad news. I've got your ducts fixed, but somebody's been living under your house,'" Kellen said.
The repairman came out of a crawl space under the house carrying an empty beer can. He said there were more cans and a liquor bottle underneath the house.
"I was just amazed when he came in and told me," Kellen said. "I couldn't believe it. I thought, golly sakes."
Kellen has no idea how long the person was living in the crawl space, but thinks the unwanted guest was there to get out of the cold.
"They cut the duct so that the warm air was blowing down on them," she said. "They were getting all my warm air from the front of the house."
The 73-year-old also believes that the person smoked marijuana because she said she often smelled smoke lingering throughout her house.
Oddly, the squatter also fooled Kellen's three dogs. Kellen said the dogs never barked at night to make her think anything was wrong.
Kellen called her insurance company and had to pay $500 to have the duct fixed. Yelm's police chief said in his 18-years with the department, he's never heard of anything like what Kellen experienced.
Velma Kellen said she recently bought a new furnace, so she was a little surprised when her house wasn't warming up. She called a repairman, who gave Kellen an odd bit of news.
"He says, 'Well, I've got good news and bad news. I've got your ducts fixed, but somebody's been living under your house,'" Kellen said.
The repairman came out of a crawl space under the house carrying an empty beer can. He said there were more cans and a liquor bottle underneath the house.
"I was just amazed when he came in and told me," Kellen said. "I couldn't believe it. I thought, golly sakes."
Kellen has no idea how long the person was living in the crawl space, but thinks the unwanted guest was there to get out of the cold.
"They cut the duct so that the warm air was blowing down on them," she said. "They were getting all my warm air from the front of the house."
The 73-year-old also believes that the person smoked marijuana because she said she often smelled smoke lingering throughout her house.
Oddly, the squatter also fooled Kellen's three dogs. Kellen said the dogs never barked at night to make her think anything was wrong.
Kellen called her insurance company and had to pay $500 to have the duct fixed. Yelm's police chief said in his 18-years with the department, he's never heard of anything like what Kellen experienced.
Our business has been under a few houses and a couple years ago we found a person who had been living under a building in Seattle while attending UW. We found college papers dated in the mid 80's and a mechanical calculator and a tin of sugar cookies which looked startlingly fresh (I may never eat those again). This innovative student had a series of carts he used to get around in the crawl area and had tapped into the electrical to hook up a series of lights. Nobody ever suspected he was there.
"The 73-year-old also believes that the person smoked marijuana because she said she often smelled smoke lingering throughout her house." You can live under a house and steal heat too when you start smoking the evil weed!
Time to install a hidden camera so when you find the guy you can call the cops...
Nobody has made mention of the $500 bill for fixing the duct. My opinion is THAT is the real story here. Even with an upcharge for having to work in a nasty crawlspace the cost is at least double what it should be.
 @Furd the repair was submitted to insurance and verified. non-the less its was an inconvenience for the lady to go through this knowing someone can have the gall to cut her duct and divert her heat. just the idea of someone crawling around under your house is creepy imo. who knows the person could break in your home where your n
 @Furd not home. although good thing Velma has a home alarm security system.
being serious now i will confess that this is my mother-n-law and i was there Christmas day just before all this news media went wild. she is even on Yahoo news as well now. although Yahoo seems to make fun of the whole thing and jokes that it is one of the top ten places to stay in Yelm Wa.. ;-)
from what i understand more news media mongers other than KOMO have been camped out at her residents. they leave beer cans and smoke mj and cut her heater duct to keep warm. Creepy! now everyone knows where to -go to get out of the cold. ;-)
This kind of thing will be happening more and more as our homeless population increases. It's terrible to be out in the cold and having to find a warm place to sleep. Very scary for homeowners, too.
I would have shot him and nobody would ever know. Especially in Yelm.
 @Ankle Biter Gotta see them first.
Get'R done.
That would make my skin crawl. I would first make sure the space did not contain human waste. I would then spray it down with bleach. Next I would make sure there was no way someone could ever get in there again. Talk about feeling violated, well beyond âgolly sakesâ. Obviously a very nice lady. Â
Every time that happens to me, I think "golly sakes" too.
 @Shelly are you from Minnesota too?Â
Urban gorilla squatter tactics 101...
Was somebody caught? Has this senior citizen been helped? Way to many immature comments on here.
 @Seahawk64 she is fine. we have been talking to her daily over the phone.
Dang, you just can't make this stuff up.
 @dkgiovenco no it's for real alright.
While it's creepy to have a stranger living under your house drinking, smoking and stealing your heat...I want to know where he emptied his bowels. If I found human poo in my yard or under my house, well...someone will die, that's for sure.
 @SouthofSeattle there is a park behind the house. the perp probably went back out the gate squatted in the park did his business then went and crawled back under the house.
 @ricohorton Well, that would be the polite thing to do, at any rate ;)
Chicago can no loner keep law abiding citizens from carrying firearms to defend themselves. Handle your buisness.
That would freak the hell out of me to know that someone violated my home (even if underneath) but I know my dogs would have detected it.
 @The WA Mama He probably smoked the dogs out before going under the house. lol
Meth.....
Crawlspace. Â 1972.
Oh come on, let's have a tent city under this lady's house. Have a heart people
Those dogs suck.
@Rockberry I can just hear them. "Come on there's warm air under the house!"
Bottom line we need to build more bridges for the space seekers...
I would rather have that then what was in my crawlspace. Rats and wild cats. He easier to get rid of.
@DeeDee -- I'd rather have rats. You can kill them.  Â
We had a large bush/hedge at the home where I grew up. In the summer, my dad was trimming back the branches and found a mattress and other homey time items. All through the summer my sister and I had been camping in a tent in the backyard not 10 feet from that bush. It still gives me the creeps to this day.
So empty beer cans, an empty bottle of booze and a "cut" duct mean that someone has been living under your house? HA!! I am a home inspector and find this crap under houses almost daily. Trust me if your dogs didn't bark or run around the house sniffing the floor you are probably fine. I inspected a house today in Federal Way. The homebuyer brought her two little dogs along with her. When I was in the crawlspace I could hear the dogs following my every move. I would tap the underside of the floor joists just to play with the dogs. Just because you find "stuff" in a crawlspace there is no need to freak someone out Mr. Heat. Now the next time you find a mattress, blankets, empty twinkie wrappers...well, then you'll have a real story...instead of this sensationalism garbage that apparently the sheep feed on.
 @ReallyRUSerious okay so where did the smell of pot smoke come from, since she's obviously not a smoker?
 @ReallyRUSeriousÂ
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My thoughts exactly.   I've been under hundreds of houses and it's not too uncommon to find that kind of stuff.   Some people drink on the job, particularly amateurs doing a weekend project.   Heating ducts get dislocated frequently too.  Cable guys, phone guys, alarm guys, plumbers, electricians, etc... have to crawl under or over them and they sometimes end up a little worse for wear.
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Also, people sometimes dispose of stuff under houses.
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Crawl are pretty nasty places and the only people I would expect to enter them uninvited would be fugitives trying to hide from the police.
 @Remle Duff  @ReallyRUSerious The smell of smoke from pot came from under there, too, and there's nothing that smells so rank.
@ReallyRUSerious You bring up some really good points. I think people would have been alot more receptive to your post if it didn't come across as so angry and insulting.
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 @ricohorton  @ReallyRUSerious You should try to use more insults to get your point across. Â
 @robmo  @Landshark I'll rate that post an "A", for grammar & spelling accuracy. If I were a religious nutjob, I'd have to reduce it to an A- for not capitalizing "god", but I'm not, so an "A" for you!
 @Landshark @ricohorton Lots of people seem to have anger control issues & feel the need to express it here. Hopefully they aren't out there showing it with road rage or something too.
@Landshark There are a lot of haters that watch this website. There is zero tolerance here for mistakes and god forbid if you happen to say something that isn't 100% accurate. Someone will come out of the woodwork to rip you a new one rather than to kindly help educate you.
I think I would turn on the AC and laugh, but then again, I am evil!!
What's the address please? Some of us might have to move there if things get worse.
At least whoever was living under the house didn't try to break in to the rest of the house. I would guess that it was some kid rather than an adult.Â
KOMO has cried sensationalist wolf so often and so long that I nearly missed this one entirely, not wanting to yet again get headline-ambushed only to read that a stray cat or dog had sought shelter there.
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Hopefully this creep is gone for good, and like others have noted, hopefully this woman has family and friends nearby to help checkup on her.Â
Man, if this happened to me, I'd toy with the guy. Since he's already high on pot, I would somehow ake some pretty crazy sounds just to scare the crap out of him enough to think the place is haunted to the point he would never come back! ;)
@Zoso "Put the explosives on all four corners. I don't want any of this remaining when we blow it up. "