I'm Aie Shorasko and this is a Sunday story.

Imagine being a homeowner, paying your mortgage on time, month after month, and then suddenly

losing your house to foreclosure.

It sounds like a nightmare.

But an NPR investigation reveals that this is happening

to a striking number of people

because of something called zombie second mortgages.

Now you know I love a good scarer movie,

but this particular zombie story is extra horrifying

because it's real.

On today's episode, NPR's Planet Money Podcast investigates zombie mortgages.

Correspondents Robert Smith and Chris Arnold take it from here.

One spring morning a couple of years ago Karen McDonough was having her tea at her dining room table. She lives in a cute little two bedroom place in Quincy Massachusetts.

She looks at her window to the

neighborhood beyond and she sees something unusual. They were like 20 cars and

they all came at the same time and they parked like in front of my house across the street up the street and down

the street. I just had this feeling like something really bad had happened.

She was right. Something bad was definitely happening to her.

And then I saw people get out and then they were like coming to my lawn and I'm like,

why is everybody at my house?

Karen puts on her shoes, goes out to the driveway.

At this point a group of men are milling around the lawn, casually dressed, except for one

...