After celebrating Christmas with relatives about an hour away from where I live my mother and I return home just as one of my neighbors is walking down the street towards us. He informs us that he saw a teenage (he believes it was a teen) boy walking off of our porch and away from the house about 15 minutes before we returned. We immediately assume he attempted to break in I check the front door and it is locked securely and all of our belongings are accounted for. I was planning to go visit my cousins and brush off what the man said happened until I told my mom to turn on the porch light and leave it on while I was gone (in case the teenager decided to return). She turned on the light and with both noticed the bulb was yellow. Who ever came onto our property changed the bulbs out. I don’t know if I should consider it a prank or I should take it more seriously. I don’t know why anyone would do something like that and it would be a strange way to prank someone. My other theory is that the person was scoping my house out and changed the bulb as a signal (either to let him know that our house was his target to rob later on or to some how warn him not to return if the front porch light was on). Needless to say we IMMEDIATELY replaced the bulb with a white one. After I left my mom called the police department to let them know what happened. The officer told her they would send someone out to patrol the area.

The reason I’m posting is honestly because I’m scared. We have had multiple problems before with people coming up to our house and trying to lure my mom to open the door.

My question is how would YOU take this situation and what actions if any would you take?

How would you set up your house to try and prevent this kind of situation or a potential robbery?
I’m not suggesting there is a person walking around with a ton of light bulbs. I live in a neighborhood surrounded by druggies and alcoholics. People here do weird things for random reasons and usually have the worse intentions.