I knew we needed a new porch for a very crappy reason

I'm an American from the Chicago area, but I live in Iceland. I moved over here in 2015 when I was 20 to work for a man named Hans. The farm I was working for is... well, it's a nonexistent farm in the middle of nowhere, completely off the grid. It's so remote that the nearest town is an hour's drive away, and the house I live in is a short walk from the farm. <br><br><br>I had to be a jack-of-all-trades to get here - I was hired to care for his animals (he runs a small sheep farm), do general maintenance, plumbing, and housework, and when I came over, I was a jackoff of all trades and a master of none. Hans helped me do everything the first few months I was here, and at the end of that time, I'd learned enough that he'd leave for three months at a time, and would phone me once a week to check on me and the farm. He just leaves a list and a thick binder filled with notes, and a large cash stipend for me to work with. I'm 27 now, so he's been leaving me alone for nearly seven years, and I'd never had one real problem until last year, when we had a fleet of mice move into the walls. I'll list the strange events I began experiencing in November:<br><br><br>* 11/13/23 - I started hearing sounds I'd never noticed before. This was the first time I'd been alone at the farm, and I was in my bedroom when I heard a boat swooshing past, just north of the house. Hans was in the habit of making an announcement on the local radio station whenever I flew in, just to be sure I got picked up by the right person, and I assumed it was a boat or plane passing overhead. Hans was due to fly in tomorrow, so I wasn't surprised. <br><br><br>* 11/14/23 - Hans never showed up. I waited for him at the agreed meeting spot, and wondered if he'd cancelled without telling me, but a quick check of my email showed that I DIDN'T have one for him, so I assumed that there were enough boats and planes in the area that he'd been confused for someone else. <br><br><br>* 11/16/23 - I started getting strange phone calls. They were always a quick ring, followed by silence, followed by an immediate hang-up. I got one from a number that my phone listed as "Unknown", and then I got another from a number that looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn't place it. <br><br><br>* 11/18/23 - I was getting more and more anxious, because I knew that Hans would have contacted me by now if he had been delayed, even for just a day or two. I started to think a boat or plane had gone down, and there were people on the lake looking for him, and that I was getting calls from the coast guard or someone trying to reach me. <br><br><br>* 11/20/23 - I started to worry that someone was stalking me, and the calls I was getting were from someone who had somehow listened to Hans' radio announcement. It was unlikely, I thought, but I did live in a remote area, and there were a lot of weird people who lived out there. I wondered if someone had somehow known that I was alone on the property. <br><br><br>* 11/22/23 - I had a weird phonecall from an unfamiliar number, and it was a woman with an Icelandic accent. I don't speak Icelandic, so I assumed she was a wrong number. I told her that I was American, and she switched to English, telling me she was working for an American company, and that she was calling to see if anyone had tried to contact me in the past few days. I told her I'd been getting boat and plane noises, and she told me that there was enough boats and planes in the area that there was a missing person search going on. <br><br><br>She wouldn't tell me anything more, but wanted to know if I'd heard anything. I told her I'd gotten some weird phone calls, and she asked me to give her a list of the numbers that had called me prior to her calling. I gave her the numbers, and she told me she'd be back in touch soon.<br><br><br>I didn't hear anything for a few days, and I assumed it was boat and plane noises, and that I'd gotten a little spooked for no reason. I was starting to feel a little better, and I thought that if Hans got back, I would tell him about the whole ordeal, and we'd have a good laugh over it.<br><br><br>I spent all of Christmas planning a new bathroom, because I'd been thinking about how we needed to update it for a few years, and I was finally feeling up to planning it. I was lying on the couch, reading through catalogs and books, when I heard a low creaking noise coming from outside the window above the couch. It was a window that I didn't look out of often, because it wasn't my bedroom window, but I'd always noticed that the frame of it was crappy. I was so fixated on the bathroom that it didn't occur to me to check it out (I have a bad habit of tuning things out when I'm hyper-focused on something), but I heard it banging again a few hours later. <br><br><br>I was in the middle of planning, so I still ignored it, but then I heard it again about ten minutes later. It was really loud this time, and I heard it creak, then squeak, and finally, it sounded like something was trying to wiggle its way through it. I finally got spooked, but when I looked out the window, I didn't see anyone, and I assumed it was the weather. <br><br><br>I didn't think about it until the next day, when the weather had cleared, but the creaking started again. It was louder and clearer than it had been, and I was sure that it was coming from the window. So I went outside to inspect it, and I was shocked by how crappy the window was. It had been scratched and scuffed, and I thought to myself, "Well, there's one reason to replace it, anyway." <br><br><br>I still didn't replace it, because I wasn't too concerned about it. I went back to planning the bathroom, and I was so fixated that I waited until after Christmas was over to put up the decorations. I didn't even take any pictures, I was so caught up in planning the bathroom.<br><br><br>After New Year's, I decided I REALLY needed to get some work done around the property. It was so cold that Hans was due to fly to warmer climes for a month, so I figured I'd get started on the house. I was so fixated on the bathroom that I barely wanted to do anything else, but I knew I had to get the house cleaned up before Hans got back. <br><br><br>On January 4th, I decided I'd start with the oven because I knew that if I went straight to the bathroom, I would be caught up in it for the rest of the month. I really hate cleaning appliances, but I was so fixated on my bathroom that I decided to get it out of the way. <br><br><br>I pulled out the crappy old oven, and I set it in the backyard because I planned to take it to the dump. I was cleaning behind it when I saw something that made my heart stop. There was a piece of paper that had been partially crushed, and it was slipping through the floorboards. I stopped what I was doing and pulled it out, and I was shocked to see a piece of paper with a hand-drawn diagram of the house with arrows pointing to the exact areas where I'd heard noises. There was also a note that said, "Where I saw her (or them)."<br><br><br>I assumed it was from Hans, but it was missing the date he'd started his trip, and I was sure I'd cleaned behind the stove recently, because I'd done a big cleaning the month he left. I went all around the house, looking for anything else that could have been missed, and sure enough, I found three more pieces of paper in different locations around the house. <br><br><br>I was so spooked and shook up that I didn't do anything else that day, I just holed up in my bedroom with a baseball bat, trying to get enough courage to call the police. They didn't speak English very well, but I tried my best to explain what I'd found, and they told me to stay indoors while they came, it had been a fleet of boats and planes looking for Hans since the prior weekend, and they thought that someone might be in the house with me. <br><br><br>I sat in my bedroom and waited, and I finally got a call back from a detective whose name I can't pronounce, and he explained that a boat had been found a week after Hans' announcement, empty and near the farm, with a whole missing person's search going on. He explained that he'd been looking into similar cases in the area, and he thought that someone was targeting remote houses and farms because there was no one around.<br><br><br>I told him I'd gotten some calls immediately after Hans left, and he wanted to know what they said, so I told him about the "Unknown" number, and then the woman who told me about the missing person's search. He asked me if I'd found anything suspicious, and I told him about the papers, but he told me they hadn't found any sign of a break-in.<br><br><br>I was so spooked when they came to my house that I didn't want to be alone, but the detective agreed that Hans was likely