'Check your crawlspace': Single man living alone comes home to paper towel draped over his webcam 2 times, has no idea how it could have gotten there

There's nothing more unsettling than something in your house being slightly different.

There are lots of scary things about living alone. When you live with other people, lots of weird things can be chalked up to them. A weird food item appears in the fridge? Oh, that's just Jerry. He likes to try new sauces. Someone left laundry on the floor again? Oh, that's just Annie. She's kind of a mess sometimes. You come home to your furniture rearranged? Must have been Beth, who is constantly reading about feng-shui. But when you live alone, if things aren't exactly as you left them, then you have reason to be concerned. This can make you weirdly paranoid about every little thing that you encounter. But rarely do you genuinely have reason to be scared. Rarely is there a true unsolved mystery in your real life. This is why we come to the internet.

Who doesn't love a good puzzle? There's a reason that true crime is one of the most popular genres. We like to look at clues so we can put the pieces together ourselves. We like to comb through evidence and come to our own conclusions. It makes us feel like Nancy Drew. But there are so few opportunities to do that in real life that we often have to turn to fiction. And there are well-worn tropes that make certain kinds of stories too easy to figure out. We need a bit of a challenge. This story is a challenge.