A Quito Journalist’s Motion Camera Catches a Figure in an Empty House

The former National Library building, San Blas, Quito. A generic city image, not the camera capture. Credit: Ranoutofusername, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

What happened

Elaine Sánchez is a reporter for TC Televisión who covers crime and public safety. She posted a video on her social media telling her followers about a frightening night at home. Metro Ecuador published her account at 10:18 on 19 June 2026, and Extra ran it that evening at 20:23 without naming her.

According to her account, on the night of 18 June her husband got a motion alert on his phone from a security camera inside the house. He messaged her: “¿usted bajó a la cocina, bajó a la sala?” (“did you go down to the kitchen, to the living room?”). She hadn’t left the bedroom. He then sent her the photo the camera had taken. Thinking it was an intruder, she went downstairs and checked every corner. She found no sign of a break-in and nobody there.

The evidence: a single still from a cheap camera bought online. Sánchez told Extra the device “no graba videos”: it streams live and takes one photo when the alarm triggers. Her social-media video is a recording of her telling the story and showing that still. Univision’s Primer Impacto shows the capture time as 22:38 on 18 June. The capture is the image Extra labels “Captura de pantalla”. Extra’s lead image is captioned “Ilustración generada con IA”, so it’s AI art, not evidence.

Timeline

• Before June 2026: Sánchez says the household had long heard unexplained footsteps, running, shouting and other noises (Extra).
• 18 Jun 2026, daytime: she covers the discovery of an older woman’s body in a ravine in La Roldós norte, Quito (Extra).
• 18 Jun, about 22:38: the camera takes its motion-triggered still (Univision timestamp).
• About 23:00: her husband messages her and sends the photos (Metro Ecuador).
• Later that night: she checks the house and finds nobody. She says she kept hearing footsteps and laughter while on the phone with her husband (Extra). She calls a priest at about 3 a.m. (Metro Ecuador).
• 19 Jun, 10:18: Metro Ecuador publishes her account. A second Metro piece covers the priest’s view.
• 19 Jun, 20:23: Extra publishes.
• June 2026: Univision’s Primer Impacto runs the story as a video segment.
• 4 Nov 2026: we rechecked. No technical analysis of the image has been published.

What believers claim

Sánchez describes the figure as human but insubstantial: “yo siento que es una persona, siento que es un hombre” (“I feel it’s a person, I feel it’s a man”), and “no veo como que si fuera algo sólido, sino más bien como algo transparente” (“it doesn’t look solid to me, more like something transparent”). Extra quotes her as saying it looked like a youth rather than an adult. Univision describes “una figura humanoide aparentemente desnuda” (a humanoid figure, apparently naked).

A priest she trusts suggested an “alma en pena”, a soul in torment. He asked whether she’d recently been somewhere with a heavy emotional charge, which she linked to that day’s assignment. He recommended prayer. Paranormal investigator Christian Cevallos told Extra the figure might be someone who lived in the house years ago, a presence that followed one of the residents, or the result of a past ritual such as a ouija session.

What the research found

It’s a still, not a clip. A single motion-triggered frame can’t show how the “figure” moved, if it moved at all. Whatever the camera’s motion sensor reacted to, the photo shows a single instant.