It’s one of the oldest pranks in the book: the “ding dong ditch.” The prankster rings the victim’s doorbell, then quickly runs away or hides before the resident answers. The unsuspecting victim drops what they’re doing to answer the door, only to find that no one’s there.
Sharon Mardis, of Fayetteville, North Carolina, a widow and mother of four, told ABC News that she suspected she’d been a victim of the prank when she responded to her ringing doorbell at 1:00 a.m.
“My doorbell started ringing, and I came to the door,” Sharon told ABC News. “There was nobody at the door. I went back in the house. Got 10 to 20 feet and the doorbell started ringing again. I came back to the door, nobody at the door.”
But after she stepped outside to look around and came back in, she smelled something. Smoke.
Sharon quickly gathered her kids and the family pets and ran to a neighbor’s house. Only then did she realize how bad the fire was. The roof of the house caved in, the house was quickly ravaged by flames.
The smoke detectors had never gone off: they were out of batteries. Good thing for the mysterious doorbell.
Firefighters found that the flames had fused the wires of the doorbell together, causing it to ring. But strangely, the fire wasn’t related to the doorbell wiring at all. It had started in the bathroom, well down the hall. From there, the flames didn’t spread to the nearby bedrooms, where the children and Sharon were sleeping. Instead, they improbably reached the doorbell first.
Making it ring repeatedly, alerting Sharon to danger.
Sharon believes it happened that way thanks to a guardian angel. I’m inclined to agree.
