Everyone is forgetting an important undertone in the song. As soon as he enters the house he hears "Welcome to the Home by the Sea" from out of the darkness. In the stanza after he says "then as one they signed and the moaned" he says "Before the time when we first heard 'welcome to the Home by the Sea'". So the man breaking into the house was not the first to do so. He is the newest victim and will become like the others. Now there is one more ghost in the house waiting for another victim so he can relive his life to someone who is 'living'.
Everyone is forgetting an important undertone in the song. As soon as he enters the house he hears "Welcome to the Home by the Sea" from out of the darkness. In the stanza after he says "then as one they signed and the moaned" he says "Before the time when we first heard 'welcome to the Home by the Sea'". So the man breaking into the house was not the first to do so. He is the newest victim and will become like the others. Now there is one more ghost in the house waiting for another victim so he can relive his life to someone who is 'living'.