The Man Lurking In A North Carolina Dorm Room
Guilford County Sheriff’s OfficeMugshot of Andrew Swofford, the man found living in a college student’s dorm room closet.
A college student known as “Maddie” in North Carolina believed that the strange things she was experiencing fit all the hallmarks of textbook paranormal activity: strange noises, missing clothing, and unexplained handprints. Then, in 2019, she was living at the Summit at the Edge Apartments, not far from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
“I’ve been having, like, pieces of clothes missing. Like shirts and pants,” Maddie, a junior at the time, told WGNO.
It would turn out that there was nothing paranormal about Maddie’s experience — but the truth was far worse. A 30-year-old man named Andrew Swofford was secretly hiding in her closet.
Fox 8Image of Andrew Swofford after he was caught phrogging in a college student’s closet.
“I just hear rattling in my closet. It sounded like a raccoon in my closet,” Maddie said. “I’m like ‘Who’s there?’ And somebody answers me. He’s like, ‘Oh my name is Drew.’ I open the door and he’s in there, wearing all of my clothes. My socks. My shoes. And he has a book bag full of my clothes.”
It’s a terrifying situation for any person, but especially so for a young college student accompanied only by roommates. Maddie called her boyfriend, but kept Swofford talking to distract him. While she waited, he tried on a hat of hers and checked himself out in a mirror. At one point, he complimented her looks and asked for a hug — “But he never touched me,” Maddie said.
Swofford was quickly arrested, but Maddie and the police were unsure as to how he got inside in the first place. Moreover, it wasn’t the first time Maddie and her friends had found strange men in their apartment — just two months earlier, they came home to find two strangers in their living room.
Their leasing office had changed the locks back then, but it apparently did little to stop Swofford from briefly moving in.
