The concept of a secret admirer can be pretty creepy. An unknown person watching you and appreciating you from afar sounds like it’s ripped straight from the first act of a thriller, where the protagonist is subjected to more and more danger as the film progresses.
But the situation that TikToker @tallblonde.jpg has found herself in isn’t your typical secret admirer or stalker story. Instead of leaving notes attached to random gifts, she has periodically found sandwiches and pizza outside her home—and she has no idea who could be leaving them there.
She talked about her experience in a viral TikTok that’s accrued over 32,000 likes and said the phenomenon has been going on for years.
@tallblonde.jpg Replying to @Amy He’s escalating in distance AND frequency 🥶 #greenscreen #sandwichmenace #truecrime #wtf ♬ original sound – tallblonde.jpg
She has noticed some patterns in the person’s sandwich-giving practice, stating that while she doesn’t receive any food during the springtime, things start to ramp up in the winter months. Moreover, the frequency in which she’s given food appears to have increased with time: “I’m really surprised by this, and the escalation is freaking me out,” she said.
She continued: “So I got a camera. I put it up with Gorilla Glue duct tape, or glue tape, or whatever, and I had seen absolutely nothing. And then my mom came up and visited late May, early June, and I walked outside, and I noticed another item on my electrical boxes, except it wasn’t a sandwich this time—it was a slice of pizza. Like, the little slices you can get at like a bowling alley. Completely untouched, upside down, so cheese side down. Balancing precariously on my utility box.”
The TikToker said that while her mom “had heard the stories,” this was the first time she had come face to face with the handiwork of the “Sandwich Menace,” as the TikToker calls them. Upon seeing the perfectly balanced facedown pizza slice, her mom said, “This is absolutely not an animal. This is 100% a human doing this.”
At that moment, @tallblonde.jpg thought she would at least be able to review the camera footage to see who was leaving grub on her electrical boxes; however, she saw that the tape she used was insufficient and her camera had fallen. She then asked her boyfriend to properly mount it into position to prevent it from falling again.
A few days later, she saw a singular chicken strip placed on her utility box, which she snapped a photo of to show off in her video. Again, she thought she had the “Sandwich Menace” dead to rights, but the TikToker said her camera didn’t pick up anything.
Then, she said the “prank” went too far after noticing that a slice of pizza was balancing on the outlet cover right near her front door after walking out to meet up with her boyfriend.
“Whoever is doing this to me literally came up to my front door to leave this food item,” she said. “They probably looked in my window. That is the part that bothers me the most. That means they’ve seen inside my home. I don’t f*ck with that at all. Stay away from my front door. Like, absolutely not OK.”
She said it was the first time her boyfriend had seen evidence of the food ninja. He said she needed to implement a new, beefed-up home security system immediately.
While in the car with her boyfriend, she hopped online and purchased a doorbell video camera and a more “expensive” camera to place in her backyard to give herself coverage of the areas where the person was leaving food.
She said her primary reason for purchasing the cameras is that whoever is leaving these items near her home sees the surveillance equipment and simply stops. And while she does want to catch the person in the act, she admitted that she wouldn’t even know what to do once she got them on camera.
“I’m assuming whoever is doing this is watching me. They have to be, right? So I would hope whoever is doing this sees the cameras being installed and is like, ‘OK, game’s over.'”
In the comments section, viewers guessed who—or what—the “Sandwich Menace” may be.
One commenter said something similar happened at their home once: “I had a squirrel that brought me entire sandwiches and food. Freaked me out at first. The window sill was 14 feet off [the] ground.”
“This happened to me too. I would find Pizza, a Pancake, Half a sandwich etc. Found out it was a Squirrel,” a second shared.
Someone else thought it was probably a bird: “It’s a bird. Crows typically leave you something for food being left out, though. My bet is on bird/animal.”
Others urged her to fill out “an online police report,” while someone else encouraged her to fortify the deadbolts on the front door of her home in case it was a person creeping on her.
Another commenter suggested a way she could try and mess with the food stalker leaving meals at her house: “You should flip the script and put food out there. Throw them off.”
The Daily Dot contacted @tallblonde.jpg via email for further comment.
