An Auckland couple received a shock when they awoke in the early hours of the morning to find a stranger sleeping in their bedroom.
The couple, who are in their 80s, were asleep at their Bucklands Beach home in Auckland's east when the scary saga unfolded.
"I'm deaf, and my husband's pretty deaf too, so when he got up to go to the toilet, he just about fell over somebody on the floor," the woman told 1News.
The man initially thought it was his wife and worried she'd fallen in the night, but noticed the person - a woman - had a tattoo.
He quickly realised something was wrong and flicked the lights on to wake both his wife and the stranger.
"I woke up, and I saw this face looking at me," the woman said.
"I said to her, 'How did you get into my house?', because I could not make out how somebody could get into our house with the gate locked... Not thinking about the window, of course.
"I wouldn't have thought they would have got around the back."
She said the stranger was not aggressive and was just "mumbling things I couldn't understand".
"She just wanted to actually get out."
The couple, who did not wish to be named, tried to get her into the lounge so they could call the police.
"She noticed the front door was there, so she turned the key and, of course, got out," the woman said.
The stranger then leapt over their electric fence and fled into the night during the incident last week.
"She just vanished," the woman said.
The couple called the police, and a dog handler soon arrived, who they said had been looking for the woman since earlier that afternoon. More officers arrived, but the couple hadn't heard anything since.
The next day, they installed window stays but still felt less safe than before.
"I'm not happy about maybe living where I am now because I feel I'm cut off, because we're down a right off way," the woman said.
"The fact that she didn't hurt us was all right. But when you think about it later on, you just think, 'oh, that could have been anybody, somebody can get into my house through the locked gate'.
"I can't say I've been the happiest feeling person at all."
She hoped her story would serve as a good reminder to be careful when leaving windows open at night, especially in summer.
"It's silly, it's something that probably won't happen again, but you don't know.
"Installing the stays was a good idea."
1News has approached police for further information on the incident.
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