A California woman made an unnerving discovery in her apartment.
According to Carlyn Perry of Sacramento, she found a camera hidden inside what she once thought was a smoke detector.
The bogus smoke detector was placed on her apartment's bedroom ceiling.
"On the back it says, 'This is not a smoke detector. Will not detect heat or smoke. For video surveillance only," said Perry in an interview with a local Sacramento news station. "It's a really violating feeling for sure."
Last month she said her apartment complex informed her that a maintenance person would be coming into her unit to service the fire alarms.
A few days later, Perry noticed the smoke detector's cover had fallen open. However, she didn't immediately climb up to fix it.
She then went out of town with her boyfriend and when she returned, she noticed the cover had been put back in place. After confirming that her boyfriend hadn't climbed up to fix it, the two decided to investigate.
That's when they discovered that the smoke detector was actually a motion-activated surveillance system with a memory card inside.
According to KCRA, the memory card has video footage of someone installing the device in her room and the moment Perry and her boyfriend realized they were being recorded.
Perry said she notified her management office at the VivLeo Apartments and filed a report with the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office.
"As a woman… living alone in any city, there's such as sense of… when you're out and about, you kind of have to be constantly on alert about your safety and your surroundings," she said. "But you have a sense of safety in your own home, and [this] just kind of violates that."
Perry has been staying with family since the discovery and said the apartment managers are allowing her to get out of her lease.