Singer Kendra Muecke Recalls the Terrifying Night an Intruder Broke In and Watched Her Shower
Kendra Muecke Kendra Muecke
Kendra Muecke of the band Kendra & the Bunnies has lived a life where she panicked easily, anxiety always seemed to creep up on her and a self-imposed paranoia caused her to stop trusting her own intuition.
"We use all these words to describe these feelings, from anxiety to paranoia to panic attacks," Muecke, 30, tells PEOPLE. "It describes those feelings that I have when something is going on, and my mind and my body and my vibes are trying to figure it out. I do deal with panicky thinking. It tends to protect me."
Yet, on the night of March 15, 2021, as Muecke was staying overnight with her aunt and uncle in rural Petaluma, California, the pop singer believed she was in a place where she could finally let her guard down.
But then, she stepped into the shower, and her whole world changed.
The day had started innocently enough. Muecke had joined her family go to shopping, eat Mexican food and visit the iconic Burning Man sculpture. It was a wonderful day to celebrate all the good happening in her life at the time. She had just finished recording her rock album in San Francisco, and the Texas native was thriving on her own in California.
On that particular night at her aunt and uncle's house, after enjoying some time in the hot tub, Muecke made her way to her room to turn in for the night. She laid on the bed watching Netflix on her phone, all the while feeling like someone was watching her.
Kendra Muecke Kendra Muecke
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"I just felt it," recalls Muecke, who studied songwriting at the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University. "I felt like something was going on. But then I was like, 'No, this needs to end today. You're watching Netflix, you're in the country. Let it go.'"
Muecke proceeded to get into the shower around midnight, despite her anxiety. Then, she turned around and saw a shadowy figure.
"I thought it was the dog or one of my family members because it just kept inching closer to me," recounts Muecke. "I got a brief view of his face. He was a young-ish guy, and he ran. All of it started to hit me at once, and I just started screaming. My family was asleep, so it took a few minutes for [them] to come down. I think we were all in shock."
As her uncle ran outside to look for the man, Muecke and her aunt called the cops, who eventually noticed "ladder marks" outside a window high up on the home's right side. Muecke believes that's where the intruder was watching her — for more than an hour.
"I still had shampoo in my hair hours later," Muecke remembers. "My aunt and uncle stayed up while me and my cousin fell asleep."
Kendra Muecke Kendra Muecke
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Ever since that night, Muecke says thoughts have swirled around her head regarding what happened and why. "I thought maybe someone had followed me, based on my social media posts," she says. "I'm also very spiritual, so I have thought that maybe this was something that was bound to happen energetically."
No matter the reason and the loose ends that remain, Muecke has found a way to move on through songwriting, specifically the enlightening and energetic song "Alive," which appears on the singer's new EP of all time.
"Every single time I listen to this song, I'm like, 'I'm so strong,'" she says. "Everything that has happened in my life that I think that I can't deal with, I can totally deal with."
Nevertheless, Muecke will never forget what happened to her on that fateful night, and she will never shy away from sharing what she has learned.
"Know your surroundings, leave a light on, communicate with the people around you, keep your phone close, lock your bathroom door," she says quietly. "It's just little things that are bits of information people don't think about, but they should."
