This is the strange story of Daniel LaPlante. He has become an urban legend of sorts, and for good reason. He terrorized a family for months pretending to be a ghost. The truth was LaPlante was hiding in their wall.
It all started out innocently enough with a date. It was 1986 and Annie Andrews was 16-years-old. She received a call from “Danny” who asked her out. She complied and the two met in person, but Annie was less than impressed. She ended up ghosting him, but he would end up doing the same, but in a different way.
Annie lived with her sister Jessica and their father Brian. After the girl’s mother passed away from cancer, the women decided to hold a seance. The event didn’t produce any evidence of the afterlife and they let it go. That is until strange knocking began to happen around the house. Also, things would go missing from their rooms and furniture would get re-arranged.
But the scariest thing to happen was the words “I’m in your room come find me” written in what they thought was blood appeared on one of their walls. Panicked and scared to death, the girls ran from the house. Their father came home and investigated, finding that the ominous message was actually written in ketchup.
Thinking his daughters were seeking negative attention, he let the incident go. That is, until another message appeared in Annie’s bedroom: “I’m back find me if you can.”
Once again the girls fled and Mr. Andrews was called. He was about to discover who or what was terrorizing his household. As he made his way into the bedroom he saw a young man dressed as his deceased wife holding a hatchet. It was Daniel LaPlante.
A fight ensued and Daniel fled almost into thin air. But once the police arrived and investigated they found that Daniel had not left the house at all. They discovered a built-in cabinet held a secret crawlspace and Daniel hiding inside.
The young man had been living there for weeks. He was arrested and taken to juvenile hall. This was 1987.
Obviously, LaPlante was mentally disturbed. He said he had a traumatic childhood that led him down a path of thievery and other more serious crimes. Those crimes would eventually turn deadly over time.
In 1987, after LaPlante was released from the detention facility he was arrested once again. This time for murder.
On December 1, 1987, Andrew Gustafson found his wife Priscilla dead. She had been sexually assaulted and shot two times. Their young children were found drowned in the house’s bathrooms. Police suspected LaPlante.
A year later LaPlante was convicted of three life sentences for the murders.
In 2019, LaPlante was denied parole. This may have been a result of a judge determining that the killer showed little remorse for his crimes.
Many police reports corroborate the story of Danny LaPlante although some details may be muddled. For instance, some reports say he also lived in the walls of a family in Pepperell, MA.
