Straight out of a horror movie.
A Florida woman abruptly ended her stay at a Kentucky Airbnb and was ordered to get a hotel room after she returned from a night in town and made an unsettling discovery.
Laura Schilling flew into Lexington late last week for an equine competition with her daughter and three friends, and her mother when she first noticed something was off after they arrived at the rental, according to FOX 56.
The front door was “wide open and the glass storm door was closed, but despite being “uncomfortable” with the situation, she claims to have “thoroughly” checked the home before allowing the girls inside, she claimed on Facebook.
She told WTQV it was her first time staying in an Airbnb.
Schilling claimed that — after being away from the property — they returned to find someone had “unlocked” the deadbolt on the front door, though they only used the garage to enter the Airbnb.
“Later that night, when we returned, the girls hung out, and we got ready for bed around 11:30,” she said. “One of the girls came in and told me that her window was open. My mom and I went to find that both windows in their room were indeed unlocked and cracked open.”
Schilling realized that all the windows in the home had been opened in a similar position, even though they were sure all were closed when they left for dinner.
But what happened next forced her to call the police.
“When I opened the window, there was a car that had been parked across the street with tinted windows. When I looked up and looked at their car, the car immediately started and took off,” she claimed in the post.
Fortunately, a “deputy quickly came” and scoped out the Airbnb around 11:38 p.m. but found no sign of forced entry at the rental.
“I feel like somebody was here to take the girls,” Schilling told WTQV. “I said, I feel like we could have woken up to something very different tomorrow morning. And he said, trust your gut. He said, I can’t say for certain that that’s what was happening.”
Police told the group to leave the Airbnb and find a rental for the remainder of their stay if they felt unsafe.
The officer kindly stayed with them at the house while they packed their belongings and left the property to head to a hotel, Schilling wrote.
“The deputy felt strongly that we had been set up for someone to take the girls that night after we had gone to bed,” she claimed.
She explained to the Airbnb host— identified only as Rosanna —about the door being open the first night and the windows being open after they came back from dinner, alleged messages show.
“Oh my gosh,” the host seemingly replied.
The concerned mother claims she’s contacted Airbnb about the incident but has “yet to get any kind of result.”
There have been 148 offenses of Breaking and Entering in Lexington through January and February 2024, according to state-released statistics.
Disturbing experiences and crimes while staying at home-sharing services have become an ongoing issue over the years.
In July 2023, a woman allegedly discovered a camera in the bedroom of a Florida apartment that she’d rented via Airbnb.
In September, an Airbnb host in Mississippi was caught taking a security photo of her married guest “in the company of another female” and emailed the image to the man’s wife after a failed extortion attempt triggered by a bad review, according to a lawsuit filed in February.
