Ghostly Activity De-Bunked

I wrote in a previous post about the unusual increase in ghostly activity.

Anyhow today, Ariana and I discovered that the "ghost" was actually one of the former squatters that I had evicted. Apparently, Richie, whom the both of us thought to be a nice and sweet guy was sneaking in Danny and having him live under our roof.

That explains a few things.

It explains why Jessica had been calling the house at late hours of the night. It explains why the ghostly activity ~ hearing foot steps and finding open windows and doors ~ suddenly stopped after Richie left the house. And it explains why Ariana's iTouch was missing.

Livid wasn't the word to describe how we felt.

We were not only betrayed by Richie, but also made fools of.

Granted, I was getting all set to evict Richie because he had proven himself to be a lazy bastard who was not contributing to this house. But we had NO idea that he was also a thief who was harboring another thief right under our very noses.

We were duped big time.

All this revelation came out last night when Ariana was visiting Amanda. Aside from being dishonest, Richie also had a big mouth. He blabbed to everyone that he was hiding Danny in the house and that it was Danny who stole Ariana's iTouch and gave it to Jessica.

(Danny also stole the credit card of another one of Ariana's and Amanda's friends and used it to buy a pair of expensive shoes for Jessica.)

Fortunately, this story has a happy ending in that Ariana had been able to retrieve her stolen iTouch.

She called up Jessica and confronted her. And after Jessica tried playing dumb, Ariana very calmly informed her that unless her iTouch is returned, she will be going to the cops.

At that time, Jessica practically admitted that it was Danny who stole the iTouch, saying that Ariana will have to go after Danny, not her, because she had nothing to do with the theft.

Wrong!

Jessica had everything to do with the theft. She accepted stolen property, making her an accessory.

Ariana had her iTouch withing half an hour.

In the meantime, seeing that Richie claimed to have lost the house key, and seeing that the house key was not recovered after Barbara and Ariana thoroughly cleaned the room where Richie (and Danny) was staying, I did not want to take any chances. For all I know, Richie could have given that key to Danny.

So I called a locksmith and had all the locks changed.

We still cannot believe that we allowed ourselves to be duped in such a manner. But then, con artists are such sweet and charming people. That's what makes them successful as con artists. And Richie was one of the sweetest ones that we met.

And how could we have been so stupid as to not even be aware of the fact that there was a 4th person in the house? Granted, ours is a big house. But still.

The both of us have learned a big lesson today. It was a very embarrassing lesson to learn. And hopefully, the sting of this embarrassment will stay with us long enough for us to never repeat that same mistake again.

Yes, Ariana and I do have that embarrassment to deal with.

But Richie, Jessica, and Danny will have something far worse to deal with should they continue the way they have.

Already they have lost their friends. Nobody wants anything more to do with them.

What will they lost next? And when?