The blink wasn’t a glitch. It was a stare. One second we were on vacation, the next we were prey. The room shrank, the air thickened, and every shadow felt scripted. This wasn’t a bad feeling or a quirky host. It was deliberate. Hidden. Watching. And when I finally climbed up to the smoke detector and opened it, our enti…

We didn’t sleep that night, or the next. At home, every small light in the dark felt like it was looking back. We reported the listing, sent screenshots, circled the lens and the laser dot, but the platform’s replies were cold templates and vague “policy reviews.” The listing stayed up for days. So did the five-star reviews from people who never knew they were being filmed.

What changed wasn’t just our trust in Airbnbs; it was our trust in private spaces at all. Now we scan every room, cover every LED, unscrew anything with a tiny hole pointed at the bed or couch. Friends say we’re paranoid—until they hear the story, until they imagine their own laughter, arguments, and intimacy saved on some stranger’s hard drive. The worst part isn’t that we were watched. It’s that we’ll probably never know where those moments are now.