The Creepy People

[gracer]

@Alba

Gracer, Did your aunts story happen in a town in the Netherlands?

No, Norfolk, UK. But now I’m curious…

Also, what did your parents experience in the apartment in Damascus?

[SerafinaPekala]

@CLee

I’m not sure that childfree people feel the same way about such things. There’s a special sort of hormonal bonding event that leaves a lifelong impression when one has had or adopted his or her own child that makes reading things like this devastatingly sad instead of merely curious. Not saying that everyone should join parents in this feeling of dreadful sadness, but attempting to explain why some of us view such news as “bummer” while others squelch tears.

Postscript: children can be total shits and babies insurmountably needy, but they are helpless and utterly dependent and trusting and that’s what makes them precious. They believe that we will care for them and protect them, and that’s what makes the abuse and death of babies so very tragic.

Im child-free and I still find it tragically sad.

[SerafinaPekala]

@Malthus

Sadness can be a component of the creepy. The thought of a neglected, hidden baby corpse mummifying in the walls gives me the shivers exactly because it is such a lonely abandonment of a child and because of the desperation behind the act - even though, of course, the real sadness lies in the death itself, as the dead don’t care where they are.

And that is very poignant.

[BrianJ]

When I was a teenager in Vancouver, there was a serial killer grabbing teens off the street. Many teens disappeared.

One day I was in a drug store looking at magazines. A guy came in and stood at the magazien rack and strated rifling through a playboy, or penthouse magazine. He wasnt just having a look. He seemed very anxious, and very creepy. He was tall, overweight, with curly brown hair.

Not long after, they caught the killer. He was Clifford Robert Olson. Guess what he looked like? It was the same guy. :eek:

[aruvqan]

@Malthus

My thought at the time was that there must be a non-criminal explaination. Maybe a lodger who wanted to lock the room when he or she wasn’t in.

It certainly did look like a home-made prison, though. It is hard to imagine even the most hard-up person wanting to live in that room.

Subjectively, the whole house had a feeling of sadness and tragedy, like nobody had ever been happy there, though of course the overall decrepitude of the place probably accounted for that. We were not tempted to buy it, even though rationally speaking it was in a good area and could have been renovated into niceness.

My recollection was that the owners were very elderly, so any criminality must surely have been a long time ago …

Back then? It could have been a mentally handicapped sibling or child that they kept locked up instead of exposing the family to shame by openly having a relative in an asylum. Unfortunately locking people in basements and attics was not particularly unknown or rare back in the day.

[Alba]

@gracer

No, Norfolk, UK. But now I’m curious…

I don’t know of any similar story in NL, I just thought it would be weird to have someone with a gun in the Netherlands.

@gracer

Also, what did your parents experience in the apartment in Damascus?

My father didn’t experience anything, he just heard stories of people who came to his apartment. Mostly people felt uncomfortable being in the apartment, seeing things in their peripheral vision. My mother felt uneasy in the apartment the whole time she was there and thought it was a ghost. Although that could also be because my parents were about to get divorced (her words). I’ll check with him tonight to see if he has any stories with a bit more substance to them.

[gracer]

@Alba

I don’t know of any similar story in NL, I just thought it would be weird to have someone with a gun in the Netherlands.

It’s even weirder in the UK, there are even fewer handguns there than in the Netherlands.

[Orionizer]

I knew Katherine Johnson through her best friend (Kelly). We used to sit around in Kelly’s driveway and smoke cigs and just hang out and have a good time.

Kelly and Katherine were both a year older than me, so they went of to college before I did. Still saw Kelly quite a bit as her house was right around the corner from me.

Then, I found out from Kelly about her murder by a serial killer! That really creeped me out…

Story here

Also, when I was at college, there was a man who committed suicide by somehow tying himself to a chain link fence at our baseball field and dousing himself with gas. We all heard about it the night it happened and went to the scene where tons of people were around. The FD then setup tower lights and turned them on! Watched them try to pick him up and his arm just fell off…

There was a lot of speculation that it was a gang related thing and everyone was freaked for a few weeks, until they determined he had left a note and had been suicidal in the past and just never succeeded.

Unfortunately, I can’t find a link on this one.

[Quarter_Girl]

For some reason I quit getting email updates and thought this thread had died. So glad it didn’t, I love these stories!

By the way, you guys quit picking on Agnesnitt. It would be pretty funny if it were some totally innocent guy she yelled and he’s telling his own creepy people story featuring her. But seriously, I’ve been in situations like this before and I’d rather have freaked some innocent dude out than have him attack me. I’m a firm believer in going with your gut instinct on people in situations like that. I yelled at a guy who stopped his motorbike in the dark street with his headlights on me and the two kids I was walking home. He could have had a legitimate reason for doing that but I couldn’t figure one out and told him he needed to get his freakshow down the road and leave us alone. It worked. And now there is another message board with the story of the psycho witch woman that yelled at him for no reason.

[Labrador_Deceiver]

@gracer

It’s even weirder in the UK, there are even fewer handguns there than in the Netherlands.

Was this a long time ago, or recently?

[gracer]

@Labrador_Deceiver

Was this a long time ago, or recently?

Years ago. I think around ten years ago.

[nearwildheaven]

@Malthus

Speaking about creepy houses, this story set in my home town gave me the shivers. Surely it would not do the resale value of the place any good to have this published …

Renovator uncovers mummified infant

“Stigmatization” is part of full disclosure, so it’s a good idea to let things like this be known.

[nearwildheaven]

@Malthus

Cigarette House would have been like living inside a cancerous lung used as an ashtray - it had been occupied by an elderly lady that defied the medical odds and smoked two packs a day in it for over 50 years. No superficial reno would ever have removed the stench.

I looked at a house like this a couple years ago. It would have had to be gutted to remove the smoke residue.

I also heard about some people who rented their house out to some people who, along with all their friends, were really heavy pot smokers, and they had to scrape resin off the walls before painting! :eek:

[Malthus]

@nearwildheaven

“Stigmatization” is part of full disclosure, so it’s a good idea to let things like this be known.

It would certainly make for an interesting court case. I’m no expert, but I’ll bet that what you have to disclose varies by jurisdiction. If no-one (or very few) knows a mummified baby was found in a house, because the report isn’t making the media, is the house “stigmatized”? My guess it that would depend on where you live.

[Malthus]

@nearwildheaven

I looked at a house like this a couple years ago. It would have had to be gutted to remove the smoke residue.

Heh, Cigarette House had a brownish tinge to everything inside.

I also heard about some people who rented their house out to some people who, along with all their friends, were really heavy pot smokers, and they had to scrape resin off the walls before painting! :eek:

Worse is heavy pot users who burn a lot of incense to disguise the smell.

[Orionizer]

I had a similar house hunting experience to “cigarette house”, except it was “cat piss house”. Even the stair banisters had some sort of coating… UGH

[Mr.Goob]

Years ago (20+) my friends were house shopping. I spent a couple of weekends with them bouncing from house to house. Upstairs in one bedroom was a door in the back of a closet, OK so far so good. Thinking it was a cape cod with low eves it was the tiny crawl space. Nope, inside the second closet that was at best, three feet tall was a door to a third room. With a hasp for a lock on the door. Gun safe? Secure storage for for the stamp and coin collection?

Nope it looped back around to a full sized room that was partitioned off from the rest of the second floor so cleverly that you couldn’t tell was there. It was empty but what the hell? A bedroom only acceced through two closets one of them hobbit hight? We boogied on out of there posthaste.

[AaronX]

Ok, when did this thread become Bizarre things previous homeowners did?

[Bam_Boo_Gut]

Hunting for a flat. I still shudder at the weirdness but I don’t think I can adequately describe it.

There were knitted multicoloured pads on the arms and back of the sofa - ok not creepy, but he asked me if I liked them - his mother had made them - busy stripey carpets and wallpaper - I said yes. He shows me the bathroom - wallpapered with tiny designs, stripes and little flower boarders, it actually made me feel sick it was so busy. As I turned around he was blocking the doorway, asking me if I liked it. Again I said yes and he looked surprised, muttering something about most people don’t have that reaction.

All I could think of is that it would hide blood splatters pretty good.

Hanging out in the village as a kid. The other kids said some people had come up to the village in a car wanting to show them a kitten. They all ran off to tell their mothers - this was EXACTLY what we’d always been warned about. A few days later they showed up again with a kitten - wanting to catch them (and standing quite far away from the car) I told them I had a kitten but I wanted a rabbit.

I told my parents I was trying to trap them, I imagined villagers staking out the exits to the village. Well, my mum just said keep the fuck away. They did come back with the rabbit and I ran hell for leather home.

Years later I’m tuning into a tv program ‘Children of Serial Killers’ and there they are:

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/weird/west/index_1.html

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

@agnesnitt

I was on official travel with a group of men. We decided to drive through the night to get back to main base early. So some ungodly hour of oh dark thirty we stopped at a 24 hour place (maybe a Dennys) for food. It was back in the era when smoking in restaurants was common, so the guys stayed inside for one last ciggy ( I wouldn’t let them smoke in the car) and I went outside to start the car. While I was walking across the dark and almost empty parking lot, a man came up from nowhere behind me, and asked me for the time.

For those of you that don’t have any knowledge of rapist techniques one of the things they’ll do is test your compliance by asking you the time or some change or a cigarette. While you look away from them, then they’ll grab you and well, there’s another missing woman in rural California.

I whirled on him, slammed one foot on the ground as I lunged at him and yelled “NO!” with the aggressive tone and loudness of voice I used on really bad dogs.

It was quite gratifying to hear a grown man squeak and run like a bunny away from me.

I was screaming after him, "YOU DON’T NEED THE FNG TIME IT’S FNG DARK YOU FNG D! "

Then I went inside and rousted my guys, warned the waitresses and we went home.

I was taught that 99% of all menacers will leave you alone if you look like you’re quite willing and capable of defending yourself.

Now I know not to ask for the time if I’m ever out by myself, late at night. Frankly the bar’s pretty low these days for any lone man out late at night–don’t speak unless you’re spoken to.