Well, everyone knows that Peppers are German Schnauzers. Don’t they?
I have a cousin who was a whiz in physics. For a while he taught college and then he took a job that he wouldn’t talk about. He was traveling all over the planet but he wouldn’t tell anyone why.
After years of questioning he reluctantly told us he worked for the government but wouldn’t say what he did.
He’s now in his seventies and continues to work. He spends a great deal of time in China and Europe. Mysterious!
I once knew this guy named Donald Eugene Ivens…
Ok, not really… Sadly, I can’t think of a single mysterious person that I actually know.
As far as mysterious people that I know OF… here in Chicago there is the “Walking Dude.” He looks like a cross between a 1970’s Italian porn star or Yanni. He wanders around the city just walking and walking and walking all day, always dressed in an old suit.
Here’s a little video that someone made about him so you can see what he looks like. I love the part where he stops to comb his awesome hair (which was very gray the last time I saw him) in the windows of the old Sun Times building.
I can’t be the only Doper in Chicago that knows of this guy. Anyone else have “Homeless Yanni” stories to tell?
In one of my careers I worked for a state mental institution. Talk about mysterious characters! We’d have people come in who nobody knew who they were. A guy from Panama who couldn’t speak English who apparently was wandering in a fugue state. A woman who arrived in Minneapolis by plane from Seattle in an alcoholic blackout and couldn’t remember her address.
And my favorite, a man who claimed to be working for the CIA. He was diagnosed as delusional and spent a couple of years there before he had been disabused of his odd notion. It wasn’t until years later that someone received information that indeed he had worked for the CIA. Came in sane; went out not knowing who he was?
You’d think they’d have checked first. Or did you get too many fraudulent CIA employees to bother?
I’m thinking something along the lines of Asperger’s Syndrome or Schizoid personality disorder would explain this kind of person (the lack of social skills, lack of understanding of humor, etc.) I know a guy that is very “Aspergery” and your description of this guy reminds me of him in some ways. He’s a good guy - a little hard to relate to in some ways but certainly doesn’t mean any harm.
It seems so very odd, doesn’t it? And, of course I can’t verify it, but it seemed to be general knowledge. Overworked staff, myriads of people with confusing or unverifiable information and a veritable ocean of paperwork. Some of the files were certainly never read on some individuals as they were massive, there wasn’t sufficient time during the workday, overtime was frowned upon and it was forbidden to remove the charts from the grounds.
It hasn’t been so many years ago that they began scouring the state institutions for people who were misdiagnosed. You’d be surprised at the number of children who were put away as seriously retarded who were simply deaf.
Of course after spending their formative years in that atmosphere they were truly in need of supervision.
Because of poor funding the whole system was pretty cold. They are only in the last decade trying to mark the graves of people who died in government care and were buried with only their record number to mark the spot.
If a person was fascinated with strange and mysterious stories there were more than enough to go around.
It’s a dog. And probably the most non-mysterious thing about this guy is what he named the dog. It’s a Keeshond/Shepard mix and looks like it was sprinkled with a pepper shaker.
Bourne. Jason Bourne.
I’m assuming the latter. But for all I know, there are hundreds and they only take three out at a time.
I wouldn’t ask her, because I’ve never seen her carry the baby. I’ve only seen the guy carrying it.
Will you ask him? I’m dying of curiosity over here. And you must be, even more so, since you actually see these people! I have to know what’s going on.
In 7th grade, I untied my shoes and walked around all day like that. Pretty mysterious right?
i really just wanted to see if i could do it without falling, but the other kids didnt know that
F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre. I knew him online and from meeting him several times at SF conventions. I had no idea how mysterious he was until . . . well, read the article.
When I was a teenager, I knew a man who may have been Dan (“D.B.”) Cooper.
in case you aren’t familiar with the name and story
He “admitted” his identity in my presence on at least one occasion, though he didn’t go around making the claim (a generally quiet, private man overall) and I knew several other locals who believed him to be the famous hijacker.
I lived, at the time, near The Dalles, Oregon (which is about 85 miles east of Portland) and met him through my mother’s boyfriend (whom we lived with for a while on his rural property); this guy was the BF’s pot connection, and regularly supplied large quantities which he both grew on his land and flew into the country in two modified small planes (my recollection is that he called them “Brownies” and had modified them to hold the maximum cargo and added fuel capacity).
He also repaired cars and had a scrap yard on his large, rural property.
He certainly bore a very strong resemblance to the composites, though of course was an older man at the time (the early 80’s and he was in his mid-50’s I would guess, which also fits the estimates of Cooper’s age at the time of the hijacking).
He claimed to be a former paratrooper and veteran and said that he’d lost almost all the money in the jump (something which apparently still pissed him off mightily, by his demeanor and tone when he related it…blamed himself and said he lost consciousness briefly due to altitude and lost hold of the second chute which was attached to the bulk of the loot…he claimed to have miscalculated and not secured it well enough, as I recall).
He walked with a pronounced limp, sometimes using a cane, which he said was due to an injury he suffered “in a jump”, tho’ he never said if it was from his military days or later.
He was married to a much younger Asian woman who spoke virtually no English (and he was a misogynistic pig, imo…often expressed that he liked her/Asian women in general because they were “quiet” and “submissive” and he treated her pretty crappily, at least whenever I saw them together).
He died in 1983 or so while flying one of his planes back into the country full of bales of marijuana…the DEA was on his tail and he took the plane into the water off the coast of California (something he had said before he would do in such a situation, trusting that he could survive the crash and escape…seems he had a pretty reckless confidence in his own abilities which might explain why he thought he could make such a jump, though the FBI has now revised their previous view that the hijacker was a former paratrooper or pilot because no-one with such a background would attempt such a jump. Maybe, maybe not).
Wish I could locate an article about the incident (which I read at the time). Bales of pot were washing up on the beaches and several went missing before they could be taken as evidence (go figure:D).
The night of his death, my mom’s BF, having heard the news, went out to his property to try and harvest as much of the crop (which they were in on together) as possible. he came back in the wee hours really shaken up saying the place was “overrun” with FBI and having only managed to grab a few plants (and slice the hell out of his thumb in the process) before sneaking away for fear of being caught.
According to him and a few other locals I knew (who were otherwise sane, reasonable people, one of them a public official) the FBI had been watching and investigating him for years, and they felt it was about more than his drug activities (which would have been very easy for them to find and bust him for. Does seem a bit odd.) 
Anyway, maybe he was just a looney who enjoyed perpetrating a hoax and happened to look a hell of a lot like the guy, whoever he was and have experience which would have allowed him to pull something like that off.
But he fits here regardless as certainly being mysterious.