Ellie Morton, from Stockport in the UK, had a nasty shock when she discovered strange footprints inside her house after leaving the cat flap open all night.
The young woman was away for a few days, staying with her parents, and had simply asked her father to pop over and feed her cat. But as soon as he arrived, he sent her photos and videos of a rather disturbing scene: large, muddy footprints were spread across several rooms in the house.
The prints, which were visible in the kitchen and living room, were particularly large – about the size of her father's hand.
A mysterious intruder
“He first thought it might be a fox or a badger,” Ellie Morton explained to Newsweek. “For my part, I’d been complaining for several weeks that I could hear the cat flap opening and closing even when my cat was with me. So I already had a feeling something was getting into the house. This just confirmed our suspicions.”
The UK is home to a large fox population. A 2018 study by Natural England and the Mammal Society estimated their numbers at around 357,000. However, it's extremely rare for foxes to enter people's homes.
A real mystery
Searching for answers, Ellie Morton shared the images on her TikTok account, @_ells444. But instead of solving the mystery, the reactions only fuelled the debate.
While some users were convinced the tracks were human, others thought it was impossible and must have been an animal. The puzzle has fascinated hundreds of thousands of people, with the video racking up over 700,000 views.
To this day, Ellie Morton still hasn't identified the culprit behind the footprints. “Honestly, I still don’t know,” she admitted. “A lot of people think they’re human footprints, but neither my dad nor I can understand how that’s possible, especially since they appeared after I’d left for work.”
To be on the safe side, she has now decided to install a security camera at the entrance to her home.
