The people two doors down apparently consist of a lesbian couple, an adult male, and a couple of kids…as far as I can tell. There are also four SUVs and two midsize cars there–not all of which can fit in the driveway. Six vehicles? Why?
Just the other day in the council estate down from my house, I saw a guy and his daughter walking what from a distance appeared to be a biggish and odd-looking dog. When I got nearer I saw it was actually a really small pony. Like, really small.
Did it happen to be Koda, the dwarfed miniature horse?
We have a nice brick home with a nice yard a few blocks down from our house. I have no idea who the occupants have been, but I know the home has been on the market every few months for the last 3 years. I have seen the home sold and purchased no less than four times in the last four years, with each owner staying only an average of 6-8 months or so. Right now, the home has been vacant for several months, with no “For Sale” signs present. I can only deduce the following two options: Either the home is plagued by enormously bad neighbors, or it is haunted. It’s one of the nicer houses on our scretch of road, and I can’t think of another reason.
Three blocks up from us is The Addams Family in a Duplex – that’s a Jolly Roger on the flagpole and their front yard always looks ready for Halloween.
There was a large bush on my route home that smelled like shit for weeks, possibly months (literally–for a while I’d stop and check the bottom of my shoes every time I walked past). It was getting to the point where I was considering trying to find some sort of city number to report what may be a break in a sewage pipe. The mysterious shit smell seems to have disappeared, though.
He recorded these things, and placed them out on youtube, but you won’t tell us how to link to them because he “values his privacy”?
I’m just sayin’.
Update: And now they’re all gone; evidently they were not keeping up on their rent. They did, however, manage to fill the gas tanks in the aforementioned SUVs and throw parties on a regular basis.
The lady next door to us is convinced that they poisoned one of her dogs before they left. No way to prove it, but it is possible.
I stopped to chat to a young boy coming up the road, he’s a friend of my daughter so we blabbed on for a while. During the discussion he reached into the bushes and gingerly lifted out two neatly tied plastic bags, dripping wet. Nothing was said, we continued chatting for a while as he stood there holding the bags away from his body so he wouldn’t get wet from the drips.
After several weeks of wild fantasies of things that are dripping wet in plastic bags I happened on a schoolgirl coming down the road, her school shoes in her hand and wearing an old pair of boots covered in mud from the wet road. Aha! I’ve rumbled the neighbourhood muddy shoe stash.
Why does the next door neighbor wash seemingly endless loads of laundry almost every day? It’s just her and her husband. I don’t get it.
I live in Asia, there’s always something odd going on here:
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Only a bit culturally odd to those of us from Western countries, but there’s a Korean dog meat restaurant around the corner from my apartment. That’s not particularly odd in and of itself, but at least a dozen times I’ve walked by as the dog meat was being delivered. Picture a van stacked with 13 skinned, bloody dog carcasses in the back and two middle-aged men arguing over them, grabbing the bloody carcasses back and forth between themselves, and then shaking bloody hands after the transaction is complete. The carcasses still have heads and tails (I’ve eaten in that restaurant a couple times, BTW, and it’s always been really good).
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I’ve been having weird insomnia issues the past few weeks and I always wake up at roughly the same time early each morning (1:30-2AM). I usually leave my wife sleeping peacefully and go off to have a cigarette on the balcony. Every night I see the same shadowy figure down on the street at the same time. It comes out from behind another apartment building, stops in front of mine for a few minutes, raises its arms in a Christ-like pose, stamps its feet, and then walks on. I have no idea what that means or who that is. He/She’s been there every night doing that for the past three weeks, except for this past Friday night.
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There’s a very small hole-in-the-wall kind of joint that I sometimes pass by while on the bus. It has a red sign with a yellow cross and the words “Mary” “Joseph” written in English on it. It has a metal cage surrounding the front and has never been open, nor have I seen anyone go in or out of there. No one else seems to know anything about it, other than that “it’s been there forever,” as one man told me.
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The weird old man who lives in the building next to mine who mutters to himself in random Russian and ALWAYS, no matter how many times I see him and tell him I don’t speak Russian, asks me something in Russian. Someone told me he used to live in the USSR and went crazy there. According to someone else in the apartment complex, he was returned to our city, escorted by Soviet soldiers, in 1982 (long before I got here). No one knows why.
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The office building next door to my house that ALWAYS has a hall light turned on in the middle of the night even though no one is there (I can see it from my bedroom window).
Honorable Mention) I also once saw a group of young waitresses from a nearby restaurant doing exercises in the parking lot while wearing headscarves ala Lawrence of Arabia. Don’t ask me why.
Two from the Old Country:
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I remember driving by this secluded mansion on the way back from the Meadows Mall in Las Vegas as a kid. All I remember is that it the roof was copper and it had a big “G” on the side. People used to say it was Whoopi Goldberg’s house, though I doubt it. Haven’t been back in years, so I don’t know what’s become of it. Any Vegas Dopers know what I’m talking about?
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Another mysterious place was in that strip mall on Sahara and Commercial Center: the “Meyong Cafe.” Closed during the day, only open at night, but as soon as you walked in a hostess would tell you to get out. We used to walk in and ask to use the phone or bathroom only to be told that they had neither and to get out now. From what I could see, it looked to be a kind of karaoke bar (big TV screens were visible on the first floor) with stairs leading up to motel-style rooms. Gee, I wonder what went on in that place…
Yeah I know that guy. This is the house on Ridge just north of Main Street in Evanston. Nice guy who had a couple grown kids and used to come in to Nevins occasionally. He started suffering from dementia and was convinced his boys were trying to take his house away and stick him in a home so they could get all his money. Last I heard he passed away a few years back and the house was sold.
Who is letting all their cats out to roam? I see cats running about and they meow at you and some approach so they aren’t feral.
Why does the single man stare at all the boys who walk by, then if an adult look at him, he gives them a disgusted look?
Why does the woman go out in the afternoon, leave her kids home, come home around 2-4 a.m.?
Oh, man I have a guy in my neighborhood that drives me batty.
Italian Soccer Guy. He has two vehicles. One is a white van with Juventus stickers all over it. The other is a mid-1980s Mercedes, also with a few Juventus decals. He is utterly and absolutely insane in his obsession with his Mercedes. He keeps it covered, under a tarp. No big deal. He only moves it AT ALL on street cleaning days, when he HAS to, or he’ll get a ticket. The thing is, when he parks it, he has an odd, odd ritual. He apparently has only street parking, like most of us - most have no garage access. He’ll park only in large spaces - frankly, spaces that could house 2 cars if parked normally, which is infuriating in and of itself. But also, he parks in the center of the spot. Gets out. Looks at the front and back of the car. Gets in. Move 4 inches back. Gets out. Looks. Gets in. Moves 2 inches forward. Gets out. Crosses the street and leans back, examining his parking job. Gets in. Moves .25 inches back. Examines. Think, think, think. Goes inside the building. Comes out. Moves .75 inches forward.
This is at least bi-weekly (street cleaning is bi-weekly), and I have sat in my living room and watched him, fascinated, multiple times.
Joe
The neighbor directly across the street who hangs out in his open garage all evening long. I don’t know what he’s doing in there, he doesn’t seem to be working on any projects. He moves around, rearranging things? But I go out to get the paper, and there he is. Later that evening, I run out to the store, and there he is. Come home 2 hours later, he’s still there. I lock the front door, ready to go to bed, and he’s STILL in his open garage, puttering around. 
(and I NEVER see his wife, I’ve glimpsed her maybe half a dozen times in the last 8 years.)
I’ve lived in my high-rise apartment building for a number of years. The apartments all have balconies. Until recently, the people who live above me only used their balcony when the temperature was below 30F and it was after midnight. Recently they’ve used it a couple of times when the temperature was in the 40s. An additional oddity is that the only music I’ve heard from them (very rarely) is middle-Eastern.
I may be a mystery because I’m practically a hermit. I do exchange small talk with my neighbors when I meet them in the hall, though.
One of our neighbors behind us leaves all their house lights and exterior lights on ALL the time. You can look at their house at any hour and every room will be lit up including bathrooms) and all their outside lights including two VERY bright floodlights will be on. One of my neighbors finally complained because of the close proximity of our yards the back floodlights were shining into our rear windows at all hours of the night. They only turn on ONE floodlight now. What must their electric bill be like?
No opinion on the soccer, but the parking thing has GOT to be an OCD ritual.
One my my next door neighors does this, and so does someone on the other side of the street. It’s only at night, but it’s still too bright.