From Reddit
Stalked, my experience
This is a throw away account as I want to keep this a secret from my partner.
I lived alone in a small house in a small town in New Zealand, far away from the biggest region Auckland.
This all happened around 6 1/2 years ago, so some parts may be altered as I can't vividly remember this incident, when quite frankly I should. This was one of the scariest incidents that had occurred in my lifetime even until now.
It all started, when one morning I decided to open my front door to go and buy groceries I had forgotten to purchase from the local market that started around 8:30 am everyday even on weekdays. Instead, I found the strangest thing waiting for me outside... Lying on the center on my doorstep, was a small USB Flash Drive. (so small that I nearly stepped on it.)
At first, I was confused, and took a second to look around if anyone was pranking me. you know how those teens are these days I thought. But when the outside of my house was dead silent, the questions began to flood in my head. "Who put that there?" was the obvious first thought.
It was just a generic USB stick, no label or anything. No-one would waste their time to walk up to my house, placing it on my doorstep I thought, but that was exactly what had just happened.
There was no way to know where it came from, or who dropped it, or if they purposely did so for the soul purpose for someone curious and lacked common sense to plug it in.
Well, I did what anyone else would do... I took it inside and thought it'd be smart to plug it into my computer. The device was full of pictures. In fact, nothing but pictures. Dozens of them filling every tiny space the USB drive could hold. I then opened the first picture and clicked through all of them in order.
The first few were just shots from around town; general places that i recognized and pass through sometimes when im taking my morning stroll around the park. The 4th image was taken in our town's busiest street. In the image, the street was full of people, but there was somebody in it that caught my attention immediately. Me. The image showed me in amongst the crowd, just minding my own business buying groceries for my BBQ a day ago.
Well at first I thought, "This was a small town... was it just a coincidence that i was in the picture?" The 5th image had been taken on the same day. Again, it was taken in our town. Again, I was in it. The photographer was closer to me this time, a little too close I thought. Whoever had taken these pictures of me, I hadn't noticed them at that time. Next came several more pictures of me in various locations around town.
Then something more chilling... A photo of a house. My house. It was nighttime in that image, and the living-room light was on. I clicked through the next image. It was another image of my house, this time taken even closer. Through the living-room window you could see me sitting on the couch on my phone. I could tell from the clothes I was wearing that it had been taken the night before, right after I'd taken a shower. I had no idea somebody had been outside watching me. I kept clicking through the images on the drive. Photo after photo of me inside my house, taken from just outside my window. Because it was so light inside and so dark outside I was totally unable to see that somebody was watching me from out there. I couldn't see them, but they could see me clear as day... they didnt even need to use the camera light.
After 20 or so pictures of me just inside my house,there came a real curveball. An image taken from inside my hallway. The man or woman or whoever was taking these pictures of me had been inside my house the night before. There were photos of my living room, now lightless and empty, obviously taken after I'd gone to sleep. Photos of my kitchen, of my dining area, my stairwell, and several taken as the unknown figure ascended my stairs, towards where I was sleeping.
My brain started to run wild with thoughts about who had been following me "Had I wronged someone in the past? Said something wrong to the wrong guy? Was this just some weirdo who decided to target me? Were they armed when they came to pay me a visit?"
Whatever the case, somebody had come inside my house at night and taken pictures of all my rooms... including my bedroom. The second-to-last picture was of me, fast asleep in bed, totally oblivious to the person in my home. The final image was just a hand-written note framed in closeup.
The message simply read: "Never hide a spare key under your doormat." I have since moved house.