Halloween came earlier this year for Isa Machado and her family. Shortly after moving into a large trailer-style home in Jacksonville, Florida, the family began to suspect that a mysterious entity was occupying their new house.
“We heard strange noises throughout the house,” Isa told The Dodo. “Something was making noises, and we got scared because we could even hear them in the kitchen.”
The sounds were so odd that Isa’s mom started to think the home was haunted by ghosts.
But then the truth was revealed.
One day, as Isa stepped in to use the bathroom, she began to hear those strange noises yet again, but this time just inches from her.
“I was really scared, but I didn’t make a sound,” Isa said.
And that’s when she saw it — a little hand with pointy claws reaching through the bathroom wall.
“I took out my camera and recorded it,” Isa said.
Isa then showed the video to her family. They were instantly relieved that the home was not, in fact, haunted by ghosts. The little hand belonged instead to a raccoon.
“We thought it was so funny and sweet,” Isa said. “We called animal control, and they came to get it out.”
But it wasn’t just a single raccoon living in the home’s crawlspace. “It was literally an entire family,” Isa said, adding that the crawlspace was left unsealed for them to still be able to come and go.
The mystery had been solved, and the Machado family’s fears quickly turned into appreciation for the animals “haunting” their house.
“Let me tell you,” Isa said, “those are the cutest and sweetest little critters I’ve ever seen.”