The Most Bizarre Things Caught On Nanny Cams

Nanny cams are hidden cameras that are frequently installed in normal, everyday objects like teddy bears or cabinets or books in order to record surreptitious footage of caregivers such as nannies, babysitters, and nurses to make sure nothing out of sorts is happening while homeowners and employers are away. While the legality of nanny cams can vary from state to state, the fact is that such hidden cameras have been used to catch all sorts of unsavory behavior, including child and animal abuse.

The good news is, since nobody in their right mind wants to watch video footage of a child or a dog getting beat up, that's not what's being featured in this list. Here's a selection of footage of the weird, the wild, the wonderful, and the downright creepy, all caught on hidden nanny cams and right-out-in-the-open baby monitors. Ghosts, demons, people doing their business where business does not belong, and a handful of people who are dancing like nobody's watching because they foolishly thought no one was watching are all lined up to entertain you. It's enough to make you think twice about any decision you make in proximity of a baby. It could end up going viral.

You know the accepted wisdom about how dogs love us and cats merely tolerate us. How if you died in your house, your dog would fiercely protect your body while your cat would eat you. Some people (i.e., cat people) might quibble with this assessment, but if you look within your heart — which your cat would eat at the first available opportunity — you'll likely admit that the evidence is largely against you.

Well, here's some evidence in your favor: a video compiled from footage from at least two nanny cams that shows a babysitter innocently playing with a young child, throwing a ball back and forth. When the child throws the ball and accidentally breaks something, which makes him start crying, the family cat hears it from upstairs and snaps into protector mode. The furious beast will guard its designated human child with tooth and claw, just straight up attacking this poor babysitter like she was a dot from a laser pointer. The young woman dodges and weaves around the living room fruitlessly while the cat keeps launching itself at her leg. She even tries at one point to show the cat that she and the kid are still friends and everything is Kool and the Gang, but the cat isn't having it.

As a counterpoint, however, the family does seem to have at least one other cat who doesn't seem that interested in protecting the child, instead just kind of wandering around wondering what's going on.

Nanny cams ostensibly exist to make sure nannies and other childcare workers aren't mistreating the children and animals in their charge, or, you know, otherwise doing crimes in the house. Sometimes, however, you get a nanny who treats the kid just fine but hates the kid's parents, and you end up with results like the case of Kassandra Fields-Ralph, as related by New Jersey News.

Fields-Ralph was hired through an agency to be a nurse to a special needs child but turned out not to care for the child's mother very much. Rather than, say, having a little chat with her employer, she decided to act out her dislike in rather more passive-aggressive ways. Mm, no, not like angry Post-it notes. Instead, nanny cam footage from throughout the house shows Fields-Ralph stealing clothes and food from the house, but that's hardly the worst thing. Footage from over the course of two days shows her not once, not twice, but four times relieving herself in the kitchen sink, right in front of the kid and God and everybody. One time she even does it right as her employer comes home, apparently able to snip that stream off and get her pants up just as the mom walks into the kitchen.

The moral is that you shouldn't seek urine-based revenge A) because it's nasty and B) because there's a solid chance there's a camera in that box of cornflakes. Don't go in front of cornflakes.

"Hey, honey, do you mind checking the nanny cam footage? The kids seem really upset and I want to make sure the babysitter wasn't mean to them." "Yeah, sure. Hmm, looks like actually the house exploded and our children narrowly avoided disaster and actually the babysitter heroically saved them from our exploding house." "Oh, huh. I did think it was kind of drafty in here."

While that little dialogue might seem like a scene from a hilarious and award-winning play, it did (one must assume) actually unfold in March 2015 when, according to ABC News, a nanny cam caught footage of a boiler exploding into a children's playroom in a Bellingham, Washington, home. This is no small explosion, either. Shrapnel, smoke, and debris blast into the room as the boiler is ripped from its foundation. A camera in another room shows the floor raised with enough power to slam the lid on the family's piano.

Fortunately, the nanny noticed something was wrong quickly enough to get the family's 3-year-old daughter out of the house to safety. The girl had been napping in the room immediately above the explosion when the nanny heard ticking and a bang and grabbed the child and got out. The good news is that the boiler flew laterally through the wall into the playroom rather than up into the ceiling like a rocket.

It's good to have a chance to feature a heroic nanny here. It's ... not going to happen a lot on this list, honestly.

As discussed by Us Magazine, a very strange video went viral in spring 2016: It shows nanny cam footage of a small boy named Connor (unless someone else's name is written on his wall, which is weird in a different way) in his crib getting up, wailing like a banshee, climbing onto the rail of his crib, and standing there, perfectly balanced, for about 20 seconds before falling backward onto his bed, when the video ends.

Naturally, the Paranormal Activity-style black and white night vision footage only adds to the eerie nature of the contents of the video, causing many to suspect something supernatural is up with Connor. That boy, they say, ain't right. In fact, many commenters on the video claim that Connor is possessed. One person even claims they can see a ghost leaving Connor's body right before he falls back into bed, getting the obvious reply, "Typical ghost who just want to play." Then again, possession is YouTube commenters' answer to everything: "Why did that child eat a Tide Pod? Must be possessed." "That video game player only screamed racial slurs because of the devil." Etc.

At any rate, it's impossible to say whether Connor was bitten by some kind of genetically modified spider, granting him preternatural balancing abilities, or if a ghost took over his body, or if the video is an edited fake. Yes, it is impossible to say which is most likely.

There's no shortage of videos claiming to have caught evidence of ghosts or possession. Go ahead, check YouTube (after you finish reading this article, of course). You'll see they have one major thing in common, however; namely that they are — hmm, how to put this? — super-duper-mega fake. Whether it's someone standing next to a door doing their best Paranormal Activity impression or someone who realized that fishing line is basically invisible on camera and wanted to do a prank or, worst of all, those baneful floating dust particles known as orbs. (If you read enough about ghosts, you will encounter one of two reactions to orbs: either "Wow, orbs! Ghosts are definitely real!" or, more likely, "Please shut up about orbs.")

So what's different about this video? Well, uh, the mysterious glowing matter caught on camera is ... bigger? While it's entirely possible, and indeed pretty likely, that a piece of lint got caught on the camera lens and is just being moved around by natural air movement in the room, it definitely looks like that kid has some kind of ectoplasmic umbilical cord busting out of him, right? Perhaps the child's soul is aching to escape his body via the belly button, the body's most natural and convenient exit? Or, you know, maybe the kid's parents just need to clean their camera. But that night vision sure makes even babies look creepy, huh?

If you have or have had young children, you know that they can be, hmm, let's say ... disruptive to one's typical daily schedule. They sleep when they want to sleep, play when they want to play, live how they want to live, say what they want to say, dance how they want to dance, kick, and they slap a friend — wait, no, sorry. That's the Addams Family. But you take the point. Your whole schedule is now basically beholden to the whims of a human constantly trying to eat their own feet.

If you want some semblance of your former life, if you want to indulge in activities that aren't watching Caillou, adult activities like partaking in alcohol or relations or whatever, you have to maximize the times your child is asleep as efficiently as possible. That is to say, once they're asleep, do everything you can not to wake them up. That's what one brave mother did in this viral video from 2017. Despite the always-frightening nature of that night vision eye glow, there's no horror here, only the terror lurking behind the prospect of a napping baby waking up. Lying flat on her back, she lurches, scooches, slides, and crawls as silently and slowly-yet-steadily as she can in order to escape the dread night-ruining consequences presented by her own child.

Of course, if we told you this was actually footage of a mom being consumed by some kind of under-the-crib demon, it doesn't not look like that.

There are certain lessons most people are taught at a young age: Don't get in other people's personal space. Don't put your gum in other people's hair. Don't stick your wet finger in other people's ears. Don't put your breast in the mouths of babies that aren't yours. You know, common courtesy sort of stuff.

Well, it turns out a housekeeper in Nairobi, Kenya, maybe didn't learn all of those lessons. As reported by Nairobi News in 2015, she had been working for a new family for less than two days before she got caught on camera trying to cram her nips in her employer's 9-month-old baby. The footage shows the baby resisting as the housekeeper tries to force in first the right breast, then the left. It turns out that the mom was not only watching this footage on her smartphone, she was actually watching it live at work, so presumably she took a long lunch that day and scooted her boots home to fire someone (the housekeeper, not the baby).

Even though the baby managed to fight off a mouthful of strange bosom, nevertheless the mother — who suspected the woman had an illegal motive for trying to breastfeed her child; super gross — had the housekeeper tested for hepatitis and HIV. Fortunately everything was all clear, which is good news for the housekeeper, because it's bad enough to go to jail for shoving your chest in a baby's mouth; you don't want to go to jail and have hepatitis on top of that.

You shouldn't really be scared of catching ghosts on your nanny cam or baby monitor; it's not what academic professionals would call "super likely." What you should be scared of is randos hacking into your baby monitor because apparently that happens all the time, if you believe all these YouTube videos. You've got dudes taking over the monitor and telling nannies how cute they are plus also how full the baby's diaper is, guys who talk through the monitor so much that the child becomes terrified of it, and — worst of all – this guy who streamed Smash Mouth through his neighbor's monitor just to show off what a 1337 h4x0r he is.

Then you've got this story, reported by Cincinnati's Fox 19 in 2014. A mom was asleep in her home when she starts hearing a strange man's voice. She picks up her phone to check her baby monitor app, only to see that the camera is moving around, but she's not moving it. Then she hears the voice again, screaming, "Wake up, baby! Wake up, baby!" Her husband runs into the baby's room and sees the camera swivel to look directly at him instead of the baby. The camera then starts yelling cusses at him. Not knowing what else to do, he just unplugs the camera, probably the smartest play at that point.

Some rando in Sweden jerkin' gherkin to your baby is way scarier than any ghost. Update your passwords, everyone.

Hey, remember Soulja Boy? He had a No. 1 hit in 2007 with his song "Crank That (Soulja Boy)," which was not only audacious enough to include a parenthetical in its title, but also to make that parenthetical his own name. And best of all, "Crank That" inspired a dance craze, putting it up in such rarefied air inhaled by lofty hits like "Vogue," and "Dougie," and "YMCA," and basically every song you hear at a wedding reception. Like "The Chicken Dance"! And "The Macarena"! Soulja Boy went on Live with Regis and Kelly and tried to teach Regis Philbin how to dance the "Crank That" dance! Is it too late to change this list to "Most Bananas Dance Crazes"?

Anyway, you know who definitely will never forget Soulja Boy? You know who will never forget the "Crank That" novelty dance? You know who will never forget that in order to do said dance, one must, as the Wall Street Journal put it, "bounce back on their heels, ripple their hands, crank their wrists like motorcyclists, then lunge into a Superman pose"? You know who will never forget nor live down the knowledge of this dance, even if she's never able to do it herself?

The poor nanny in this video, who got caught on nanny cam doing her best to rehearse the steps to the then-current dance fad. She's, uh, not doing a great job keeping up with Mr. Tell'em, but darn it, she's trying.

Demonic possession can be pretty wild. It can (allegedly) cause people to float off the ground, metamorphose into snakes, lead armies, or even just straight up do murders. But in the case of the woman in the above video, it seems like the presence of a malevolent spirit is primarily causing her to bend over and point, then sit on the floor, then lie on the floor, all while flopping her hair in front of her face in her best Sadako impression.

According to The (Singapore) Independent, this woman is a maid being recorded on her employer's closed circuit camera. Apparently one day in March 2017, the maid came out of the shower and then just started acting super irrationally, which caused the employer to worry that her maid had become possessed. When she posted the video on Facebook, some helpful commenters (the idea of "helpful commenters" seems unnatural and a contradiction in terms, but this time it applies) pointed out a few things. First, it's pretty convenient that the demon doing the possessing seemed to know exactly where the camera is and only had her act a fool entirely within that area. Secondly, also very convenient, especially for the maid's modesty, that the demon waited until after she had finished dressing following her shower before making her bend over and point at the wall or whatever.

So why fake possession? Perhaps the maid thought this was the most graceful way to get fired and sent back to her home country.

Okay, to be fair, this one isn't really bizarre. It's not creepy or criminal or terrifying or embarrassing or even all that surprising. But it is kind of awesome, and you should still watch it, if only to remind yourself not everything is ghosts or hackers or sink-defiling ghouls. There's still a plenitude of good out there; you just have to hope that YouTube's algorithm wants to show it to you.

According to the description on the video, a mother of two set up a nanny cam in her living room with the intention of letting the kids' grandmother see the children doing cute stuff. What she didn't expect was catching footage of her husband going absolute beast mode dancing with his daughter and lip-syncing to Katy Perry's "E.T.", complete with pom-pom accessories, while also entertaining his younger child, who is bouncing like an absolute maniac in a little bouncy person chair. And then — and this step is very important — he immediately goes back to finish the chore he was doing before he stopped to delight the absolute business out of his kids.

While there are certainly plenty of folks out there who have or had or are friends with or are married to or engaged to or dating or straight up are  a fun, loving, fun-loving, caring, responsible, and present dad who knows all the words to Katy Perry jams and knows that they're not such a rara avis, it's still pretty nice to see it caught, candidly, on tape.