Why Smart Home Cameras Are Giving Some Homeowners Chills

0:00What we noticed more is that we've moved AI off the screen into the physical world. That's Tanguy Katlan, senior partner at McKinsey and director of the McKinsey Global Institute. AI, he says, no longer lives in a computer, but is tangible in robotics, engineering, space travel, and more. One of the 14 key points identified by McKinsey in its 2026 Technology Trends Outlook. At the break, join McKinsey to learn how these trends are shaping innovation and how leaders should respond.

0:33Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Monday, November 2nd. I'm Julie Chang for The Wall Street Journal. Halloween may have just passed, but we've got an unsettling, maybe even spooky, story for you. Home security cameras are supposed to give us peace of mind, but lately they're giving some homeowners a whole lot of goosebumps. People across the country are reporting that their smart home devices are capturing things they simply can't explain, like shadows, voices, and whispers in the night. WSJ family and tech columnist Julie Jarkin has been looking into these potential paranormal encounters, speaking with everyday folks who are wondering if their devices recorded something supernatural.

1:21Julie, these cameras have become very popular over the last several years, Why are people typically installing them? Yeah, people want to see what's going on when they're not home, whether it's potential criminal activity like a break-in. They want to see if their baby's sleeping by looking at baby monitors. They want to know who's at the front door when they're receiving a package or some other knock on the door. And so people have cameras in and outside of their houses constantly now, and it's recording everything, including things people didn't expect to see and can't explain. Right, those shadowy figures in the frame or odd sounds we mentioned.

2:00It's funny, it seems like these devices that are supposed to help us feel more safe are now somehow making us feel less safe. Julie, walk us through one of those encounters. You spoke with a woman who heard a voice coming through her ring doorbell. What happened there? Yeah, so there was a woman named Amanda Presswood. She was at home in Galesburg, Illinois, one day. And she decided to check her ring doorbell camera to see if it was raining outside. It was not, but she found something else that she wasn't expecting, which was voices that seemed to be coming from her front porch.

2:40First, she heard a male voice and then some women's voices, but she could see on her camera that no one was around and she knew her neighbors weren't home. She went outside to investigate and saw no signs of anyone. So it's a mystery where these voices actually came from, but they were clear to her on her camera. And it's not just sound. Another Ring user you spoke with caught something visually bizarre on camera. What did she see? Yeah, there was a woman in Cape May County, New Jersey, who owns a kid's shop. And one day when she was at home and the store was closed, she received a motion alert from the store's Ring camera.

3:20And so she figured maybe an employee had left something behind and had gone to get it. So she checked her ring camera. No one was there. No one had been there. And she saw a black shadowy mist drifting around the toy store, moving up, you know, across the camera and then up. And she just couldn't explain what that possibly was. It looked very spooky. And, you know, at first she was worried that maybe there was a fire. Was it smoke? Nothing was wrong in the shop. Nothing was on fire. It was like this black misty thing moving across and then up the camera. So unclear what that might have been. Now, it's not only security cameras that are acting up here.

4:00You found a man whose smart refrigerator started behaving oddly. What was going on with his fridge? Yeah, so he was at his other home in Florida. And he also lives in Cape May, New Jersey. And he got a notification on his refrigerator app that the refrigerator door was open. So he checked his interior ring camera, and on it, he had captured the door opening slowly on its own. And he also heard on that video the ding that the fridge makes when someone waves their hand under the door sensor to open it. And that's what he said was really spooky to him because no one was around. He called his neighbor to come and check things out.

4:43The neighbor came. No one had been in the house. Everything was locked up and intact. and yet the fridge door had opened on its own. There were some people who had the same model refrigerator who posted on Reddit about something similar happening with their fridge doors opening randomly. But there was no detailed explanation for exactly what caused that to happen. Have you seen anything spooky on your home camera? If you're a listener on Spotify, let us know in the comments. Coming up, why we seem to be catching more of these supposed paranormal encounters than before. That's after the break.

5:42and improve the performance of the system. If you improve every single component of the system to really unlock the full potential of those technologies, you're going to need to start from a blank sheet and redesign the processes and trend. Later, Katlan explains how leaders identify the trends that matter most to their businesses.

6:00Welcome back. We've been talking about some spooky things people have seen on their home security cameras. So Julie, has anyone offered any explanations on what these potential paranormal activities actually are? Is there a chance that these could just be technical glitches? They certainly could be. Some of the people that have seen these things happen on their devices wondered that too. Was it just a glitch? Was it a glitch with the fridge? Was it a glitch with the video camera? But there's no solid explanation for what could have caused any of these situations to happen. So people are just left wondering, you know, was there some paranormal activity that was captured?

6:39Or was it something that could be explained away somehow? People have reported seeing paranormal activity on cameras long before home security cameras became popular. So what's different this time around? I think it's just that home security cameras have become ubiquitous. So people are capturing a lot of things. And these cameras are running usually 24-7 or they're activated by some sort of motion or light or something like that. So there's just a lot more video being captured right now. So there's going to be obviously more opportunity for things that people can't explain to be appearing on their cameras.

7:15And we want to end with a sort of happier story. There was at least one feel-good ghost story that you heard. Can you tell us about that one? Yeah, so there was an actress in L.A. who had set up an indoor camera so that she could keep tabs on her new puppy. And one day, she and her husband were out grocery shopping, and they received a motion alert, and they figured it was the new puppy chewing the couch or something. So they pulled out their phone and took a look at the footage, and they were shocked by what they saw. There was a moment where they saw what looked like a glimpse of a dog that they had owned previously who had died three years ago this month.

7:56And in the frame, you see their current dog just kind of walking through the living room, And then just for like a second, you see another dog. The current dog is white and their other dog, you know, was much darker. And so for a second, you see this darker dog. And then it just disappears and it's back to the regular dog again. So it's very strange. And it gave them comfort because they felt like they had, you know, another glimpse of their beloved dog that had died. That was the journal's family and tech columnist, Julie Jargon. And that's it for Tech News Briefing. If you're a listener on Spotify, be sure to leave us a comment.

8:33Today's show was produced by me, Julie Chang, with supervising producer Katie Ferguson. We'll be back tomorrow with a new episode. Thanks for listening.

8:59five key themes outlined in McKinsey's 2026 Technology Trends Outlook, a comprehensive view of what's shaping today's tech landscape and where we might be tomorrow. Leaders, Katlan says, can examine the 14 trends McKinsey identifies and apply the learnings to their unique business context without chasing headlines. The competitive advantage comes from the intersection of proprietary data, workflows, and the ability to rewire the operating model, not from the trend that gets the most capital or gets the most attention to the press. It's how you're going to redesign your end-to-end workflows, take advantage of your own proprietary context and data, and the ability to rewire the operating model at upskill.com.

9:38That's where actually you win. For more, visit mckinsey.com. This content was created by Custom Content from WSJ, a unit of the Wall Street Journal Advertising Department.