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People Who Feel Wrong

frankiefelix said:
Around 18 months ago the flat across the hall from me became vacant after some rather sweet (but seriously in arrears) African students had to move out. It had stood empty for a few weeks after the caretaker had been in and done his stuff. One afternoon I was about to pop to the corner shop when I heard voices in the hall and thought I'd take the opportunity for a peek at any potential new neighbours on the way out.
On opening the front door I was met with the sight of two individuals, a male and female, both white and, I would estimate, in their early thirties. They were dressed as if they had come from an office - he in standard black suit and tie and she in a black skirt suit and white blouse. She had blonde, almost shoulder length hair and he had short brown hair, very neat and conservative. He was tall - a good six feet and looked like he could look after himself she was around five feet six and medium build. Both were healthy looking. Neither had any odd features; they just looked like an "ordinary" couple but there was something "off" about them I couldn't quite put my finger on. I wondered, in fact if they were plain clothes police officers, trying to pass themselves off as a couple.

I
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So why can't your original gut assumption have been the correct one? Perhaps they were plain clothes policeman who were also working in the capacity of immigration officers of some kind. Perhaps there had - in the eyes of the state - been some illegal shennanigans going on with the previous tennants and two plain clothes policeman were sent (in the guise of being a couple) to find out what was going on at that property and to report back.

This would account for their awkwardness and also for the fact that they seemed a bit unprepared and not especially interested in the property itself.

I have encountered (what I assume to be) undercover cops in plainclothes (don't ask where and when!) - and I can tell you that their behaviour is pretty awkward - surprisingly so, in fact. I have also encountered immigration officers snooping around the properties of foreign students, so I know that such people are out there and active. My money would be on some combination of the two.
 
I've had a handful of such encounters. One in particular was a couple of years ago when visiting a friend's business premises in the south of the UK. There was a small middle aged chap, wiry and wearing glasses, showing my mate how to complete a small project. I really didn't like the look of him and instantly thought how totally out of place he appeared to be. But you would have walked past him in the street without a second glance. Friendly enough and apparently very mild mannered but something was not "right" to me. Turned out that he worked for the "government" (mib variety) and not someone you would want to encounter in other circumstances. I would not have guessed his occupation in a million years but instantly recognised what he was doing when I met him was not it, despite being very skilled at it.
 
Zeke Newbold said:
So why can't your original gut assumption have been the correct one? Perhaps they were plain clothes policeman who were also working in the capacity of immigration officers of some kind. Perhaps there had - in the eyes of the state - been some illegal shennanigans going on with the previous tennants and two plain clothes policeman were sent (in the guise of being a couple) to find out what was going on at that property and to report back.

This would account for their awkwardness and also for the fact that they seemed a bit unprepared and not especially interested in the property itself.

I have encountered (what I assume to be) undercover cops in plainclothes (don't ask where and when!) - and I can tell you that their behaviour is pretty awkward - surprisingly so, in fact. I have also encountered immigration officers snooping around the properties of foreign students, so I know that such people are out there and active. My money would be on some combination of the two.
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Could of course been bailiffs or High Court Enforcement officers looking for the previous tenants and let in by someone else.
 
PeteS said:
I've had a handful of such encounters. One in particular was a couple of years ago when visiting a friend's business premises in the south of the UK. There was a small middle aged chap, wiry and wearing glasses, showing my mate how to complete a small project. I really didn't like the look of him and instantly thought how totally out of place he appeared to be. But you would have walked past him in the street without a second glance. Friendly enough and apparently very mild mannered but something was not "right" to me. Turned out that he worked for the "government" (mib variety) and not someone you would want to encounter in other circumstances. I would not have guessed his occupation in a million years but instantly recognised what he was doing when I met him was not it, despite being very skilled at it.
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Maybe he was with 'Q' division.
 
ramonmercado said:
It's by Robert A. Heinlein actually. He didn't write much fantasy but this was pretty good.
#
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unpleasant_Profession_of_Jonathan_Hoag
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Can't believed I made that mistake – I've read it loads of times! But I am hot and tired today so that's my excuse. I could have gone back and edited my post but, heh, what the heck! I'm not a huge fan of Heinlein but the Jonathan Hoag paperback of about six stories is one of my faves, even if I can't remember who wrote it!!
 
Yeah, they could have been plain clothes operatives of some kind. However, I've encountered some before in the building and they've produced ID when I looked concerned. The latter looked EXACTLY like dodgy geezers - except one was a female officer dressed as a boy; they were investigating alleged drug dealing.
My partner has just reminded me of some Odd Social Worker types she saw, so I'll get onto that one later. :)
 
frankiefelix said:
Yeah, they could have been plain clothes operatives of some kind. However, I've encountered some before in the building and they've produced ID when I looked concerned. The latter looked EXACTLY like dodgy geezers - except one was a female officer dressed as a boy; they were investigating alleged drug dealing.
My partner has just reminded me of some Odd Social Worker types she saw, so I'll get onto that one later. :)
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There was a female police officer at the local protest site, dressed as a member of another service. Sneeky little blighter....
 
Mid 80's my mum use to board students at the Bristol English Language centre. A chap from Germany whose name was Willie Moynham stayed. There was something odd about him, pleasant but odd. Being a nosy teenager, I had a look in his room, came across a false teeth bridge all package but that was it.

Few years later, my Mum is visited by the Secret Service. Turns out the bloke wasn't Willie Moyhnan at all. They wouldn't tell her anything, apart from you will never see him again.

Recently visited my folks and searched for photos of him. No negatives and all photo's which definitely featured WM, my mum said he cut them out.

To this day we have no idea. We thought it could be, Red Army Faction - Wolfgang Gramms disappeared in 1984. He went underground appearing a few years later. Coincidently, Willie Moynhan visited us around 1990, after spending time in Ireland. He flew back to Germany soon after.
 
PeteS said:
There was a female police officer at the local protest site, dressed as a member of another service. Sneeky little blighter....
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Okay, don't know why but on reading this I was immediately curious and had to ask:
Which other service? Ambulance? Building maintenance? Garbage collection?
How did you know she was a police officer? Did you recognize the individual? Could she have a twin? A double? Did she change jobs maybe? Or was it her shoes that screamed "police!"? (At parties when I was young I was advised that anyone wearing clean sneakers—"trainers" to you Britishers—was a narc.)
This is completely unimportant and irrelevant to me in my daily life, so maybe that's why I just had to ask.
 
IbisNibs said:
Okay, don't know why but on reading this I was immediately curious and had to ask:
Which other service? Ambulance? Building maintenance? Garbage collection?
How did you know she was a police officer? Did you recognize the individual? Could she have a twin? A double? Did she change jobs maybe? Or was it her shoes that screamed "police!"? (At parties when I was young I was advised that anyone wearing clean sneakers—"trainers" to you Britishers—was a narc.)
This is completely unimportant and irrelevant to me in my daily life, so maybe that's why I just had to ask.
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Funny - I was curious as well. She was wearing a different jacket with something like "Hospitality" (or something similar written on the back). Nothing else to identify her as a police officer. She struck up a conversation with a friend of mine who was in the midst of the protest, but then started the "now *****, shouldn't you be at home with your feet up or doing some gardening at your age?" type conversation. Friend immediately twigged and asked her to identify herself and it then came out. Clearly put in there for some reason, but only one of the very dodgy tactics used against the apparently exceedingly dangerous pensioners who started off the protest.
 
PeteS said:
Funny - I was curious as well. She was wearing a different jacket with something like "Hospitality" (or something similar written on the back). Nothing else to identify her as a police officer. She struck up a conversation with a friend of mine who was in the midst of the protest, but then started the "now *****, shouldn't you be at home with your feet up or doing some gardening at your age?" type conversation. Friend immediately twigged and asked her to identify herself and it then came out. Clearly put in there for some reason, but only one of the very dodgy tactics used against the apparently exceedingly dangerous pensioners who started off the protest.
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Edit - just remembered the police officer in question was wearing a green "First Aid" jacket. My friend's experience got pretty horrible resulting from that encounter. The morale of the story? Be wary of "First Aiders" - giving aid can sometimes be the last thing on their mind. It's a funny old world sometimes.
 
I’ve never met anyone who I’ve considered to be wrong in a fortean sense, but I’ve certainly come across people who are just basically wrong on a moral one.

I once dated a girl who would constantly make wrong decisions, and do stuff that was incredibly dodgy, but when I’d question her about it and point out that normal people don’t do stuff like that, she’d get very upset and act like that she had no idea that what she had done was wrong.

Once we were off on a long weekend break to the west country, and to take a break from the driving were having lunch in a pub near Taunton, Somerset.

A Guy came into the pub with his wife and two young children, and took a seat at the table next to ours, I could tell by way of their conversation and the excitable tomes of the kids, that they were off on holiday somewhere, and had also taken a break from driving by stopping for lunch.

The Guy goes to the bar and puts an order in for food and drinks, and then sits back down at the table, a minute later my ex stands up and says she will wait for me in the car, which surprised me as although she had finished her food, she still had a half glass full of white wine.

I finish my half lager, walk to the Car, and continue driving, 10 minutes later and by this time I’m driving southbound on the M5, my ex (with a huge smile on her face) took out of her handbag a man’s wallet stuffed with cash -several hundred pounds in fact.

What happened was, that when the guy paid for the food and drinks at the bar in the pub, he had absentmindedly left his bulging wallet on the counter, my ex noticed this and made a decision not to do the right thing and hand it back but to swipe it.

You can imagine I was absolutely bloody livid, I turned around at the next junction and go back to the pub, thankfully the family were still sitting at the table and still unaware that the wallet was missing – all I needed to do was tap the guy on the shoulder and pass him his wallet back, no harm done.

Unsurprisingly the relationship didn’t last long after that, but I sometimes think about her and wonder what happened to her, obviously there was something not quite right going on upstairs with her sadly.
 
Dick Turpin said:
I’ve never met anyone who I’ve considered to be wrong in a fortean sense, but I’ve certainly come across people who are just basically wrong on a moral one. ...
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I've known a few folks of the sort you describe. In my experience they seemed to belong to one or another of two distinct groups or species:

- The passively oblivious ones who thought nothing of casually invoking "finders keeper; losers weepers" as if there were nothing serious involved*

- The proactively self-serving (e.g., predatory; criminal) ones who knowingly recognized they were doing wrong but did it anyway for personal gain or bragging rights

* In the late Sixties / early Seventies this facile face value rationale was often replaced by "sticking it to the man!"

The passively oblivious ones made me roll my eyes, lecture them or correct their actions (as you did), and avoid them like the plague thereafter.

The proactively self-serving ones got considerably more respect** from me, though I would always be careful around them once I'd learned their nature.

** This "respect" was for their skills and / or daring, not for their moral orientations.
 
A follow-up note ...

It occurred to me that your (Dick Turpin's) girlfriend definitely fit the first category I mentioned (the passively oblivious), because ...

A card-carrying journeyman member of the second (proactively self-serving) category would have been savvy enough to remove the cash, ditch the rest of the wallet, and keep the "score" a secret.
 
When we went on (left wing) protests in the 80s, there were often 'students' amongst us - taking photos. Even without the cameras, we knew which ones they were. Crappy student clothes but... Polished shoes.

I had a mate at uni who was an animal rights activist. Big time and we knew he was involved in some serious stuff - no precise details but we heard about them going on night time raids, etc as well as being hunt sabs and the usual.

After uni, he vanished. Literally. Then we heard on the grapevine he was in South America as was one of his housemates, also an activist. They had to stay there a few years.

A few years later, I was walking round a museum and who should I see but my (very distinctive looking) mate. But dressed as a scout leader. And with a crocodile of scouts with him. Brilliant cover! I mean I know these days we suspect scout leaders of other things, but this was the 1990s, and it was a good way of looking absolutely innocent. He glanced at us then quickly looked away and carried on as if nowt had happened and he had no clue who we were. But from a brief look that came over his face, I KNEW he recognised and remembered us. And I instantly figured out what was going on.

I should add: my theory is, if someone who didn't know who he was, saw him in his new persona (he'd had nowt to do with the scouting movement when we'd known him pre-South America), I'm willing to bet you'd never have guessed anything was 'off' about him. He totally looked and seemed the part. But I'd known him very well for 3 years and that wasn't who he was - that scout leader. Not remotely who he was. But he would never have been rumbled, I don't think. So also someone can not be what they seem but give not a clue to the casual bystander...

He'd have been one of the people being photographed by what we used to call 'Prince Edwards' - ie: a copper/secret service person trying to look like a student but with a crease pressed in their jeans...

Never saw him again.
 
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PeteS said:
She struck up a conversation with a friend of mine who was in the midst of the protest, but then started the "now *****, shouldn't you be at home with your feet up or doing some gardening at your age?" type conversation.
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Oh! The nerve! Just like those guys who've tried to pick me up in a bar by treating me as though I'm incompetent to make my own decisions!

PeteS said:
the police officer in question was wearing a green "First Aid" jacket.
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Seriously, that sounds very unethical to me. There should never be a rational reason to conflate medical people with dreaded authority figures.
 
IbisNibs said:
that sounds very unethical to me. There should never be a rational reason to conflate medical people with dreaded authority figures.
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I'm sure that there will have been a well rehearsed explanation in the event of strenuous complaint - "oh I just borrowed it because of the cold weather/rain/forgot my standard police issue macintosh" or some such nonsense.
 
EnolaGaia said:
A follow-up note ...

It occurred to me that your (Dick Turpin's) girlfriend definitely fit the first category I mentioned (the passively oblivious), because ...

A card-carrying journeyman member of the second (proactively self-serving) category would have been savvy enough to remove the cash, ditch the rest of the wallet, and keep the "score" a secret.
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I agree with you 100% Enola.

She wasn’t a bad person to be fair, she could be gentle and kind-hearted one moment, then explode with uncontrollable rage the next, even over the slightest thing.

And as for the stealing, I think in her mind, she would think that as long as she had no personal connection to the person she was stealing from, it was okay. She stayed in my flat quite a lot back then, and was left alone often, but I never noticed anything go missing.

I do know that when she was young, her Mother spent some time in a mental institution, (as did her Grandmother at some point in her life interestingly) and her father walked out nether to be seen again, so it’s no wonder she had issues.

I haven’t seen her for over 25 years, so I hope life turned out alright for her in the end.
 
Dick Turpin said:
I agree with you 100% Enola.

She wasn’t a bad person to be fair, she could be gentle and kind-hearted one moment, then explode with uncontrollable rage the next, even over the slightest thing.

And as for the stealing, I think in her mind, she would think that as long as she had no personal connection to the person she was stealing from, it was okay. She stayed in my flat quite a lot back then, and was left alone often, but I never noticed anything go missing.

I do know that when she was young, her Mother spent some time in a mental institution, (as did her Grandmother at some point in her life interestingly) and her father walked out nether to be seen again, so it’s no wonder she had issues.

I haven’t seen her for over 25 years, so I hope life turned out alright for her in the end.
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Some people don't have a great start in life and it then colours their behaviour for ever. Others seem to be able to make the most of it, albeit still affected in some ways. Outcomes seem almost random sometimes.
 
Dick Turpin said:
I’ve never met anyone who I’ve considered to be wrong in a fortean sense, but I’ve certainly come across people who are just basically wrong on a moral one.

I once dated a girl who would constantly make wrong decisions, and do stuff that was incredibly dodgy, but when I’d question her about it and point out that normal people don’t do stuff like that, she’d get very upset and act like that she had no idea that what she had done was wrong.

Once we were off on a long weekend break to the west country, and to take a break from the driving were having lunch in a pub near Taunton, Somerset.

A Guy came into the pub with his wife and two young children, and took a seat at the table next to ours, I could tell by way of their conversation and the excitable tomes of the kids, that they were off on holiday somewhere, and had also taken a break from driving by stopping for lunch.

The Guy goes to the bar and puts an order in for food and drinks, and then sits back down at the table, a minute later my ex stands up and says she will wait for me in the car, which surprised me as although she had finished her food, she still had a half glass full of white wine.

I finish my half lager, walk to the Car, and continue driving, 10 minutes later and by this time I’m driving southbound on the M5, my ex (with a huge smile on her face) took out of her handbag a man’s wallet stuffed with cash -several hundred pounds in fact.

What happened was, that when the guy paid for the food and drinks at the bar in the pub, he had absentmindedly left his bulging wallet on the counter, my ex noticed this and made a decision not to do the right thing and hand it back but to swipe it.

You can imagine I was absolutely bloody livid, I turned around at the next junction and go back to the pub, thankfully the family were still sitting at the table and still unaware that the wallet was missing – all I needed to do was tap the guy on the shoulder and pass him his wallet back, no harm done.

Unsurprisingly the relationship didn’t last long after that, but I sometimes think about her and wonder what happened to her, obviously there was something not quite right going on upstairs with her sadly.
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I once knew a young woman who seemingly had it all. Intelligent, confident and practical. Added to that she was also devastatingly beautiful which, be it right or wrong opened doors to her which may not have opened otherwise.

However, she was also a pathological liar and would lie in almost any instance even when there was no need to lie. These weren't grandiose lies which someone might claim to try to impress, but it what as though she would lie just because she could. It was the most bizarre behaviour.

She also was the most mercenary person I've ever known, happy to tread on family, friend or stranger to achieve her goal, whatever it may have been at the time. Her looks attracted a lot of attention from men (and quite a few women), and as such, she had no close female friends. Women were always wary of her whether it was justified or not. Over the years she hurt everyone close to her and subsequently died quite young and quite alone. A sad situation, but no one was surprised when it happened.
 
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Lord Lucan said:
I once knew a young woman who seemingly had it all. Intelligent, confident and practical. Added to that she was also devastatingly beautiful which, be it right or wrong opened doors to her which may not have opened otherwise.

However, she was also a pathological liar and would lie in almost any instance even when there was no need to lie. These weren't grandiose lies which someone might claim to try to impress, but it what as though she would lie just because she could. It was the most bizarre behaviour.

She also was the most mercenary person I've ever known, happy to tread on family, friend or stranger to achieve her goal, whatever it may have been at the time. Her looks attracted a lot of attention from men (and quite a few women), and as such, she had no close female friends. Women were always wary of her whether it was justified or not. Over the years she hurt everyone close to her and subsequently died quite young and quite alone. A sad situation, but no one was surprised when it happened.
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Afternoon m’lud.

Sounds like she was suffering from what the medical world now terms as having ASPD (in times past she would have been labelled as a sociopath)

I honestly don’t believe my ex-girlfriend had anything like that, I firmly believe that due to her screwed up childhood and the lack of any parental guidance, she didn’t know how to act in a normal, functional, responsible way.

Sad isn’t it.

The girl you mentioned reminds me of the character that Sharon Stone played in the film Casino.

As a complete aside, (I thought you might find it interesting) the wife of a friend of mine was the nanny of Lord Lucan’s children, just prior to the family hiring poor Sandra Rivett.

Luckily for my mates wife, she quit the Lucan family to get married and start a family of her own, otherwise it could have been her lying on the kitchen floor with a busted skull and not Ms Rivett.
 
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Lord Lucan said:
I once knew a young woman who seemingly had it all. Intelligent, confident and practical. Added to that she was also devastatingly beautiful which, be it right or wrong opened doors to her which may not have opened otherwise.

However, she was also a pathological liar and would lie in almost any instance even when there was no need to lie. These weren't grandiose lies which someone might claim to try to impress, but it what as though she would lie just because she could. It was the most bizarre behaviour.
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I've known a couple of women who fit that same description (with the single proviso of characterizing them as "quite comely" rather than "devastatingly beautiful").

In both cases - just as you described - they seemed compelled to lie about even insignificant things that had no effect in terms of inflating their importance or one-upping everyone around them. It seemed to be more of a persistent habit rather than a tactic for boosting one's status.

I've known more than a few males who matched this profligate lying profile. However, these males consistently exhibited the sort of self-aggrandization aspect the females didn't.


Lord Lucan said:
She also was the most mercenary person I've ever known, happy to tread on family, friend or stranger to achieve her goal, whatever it may have been at the time. ...
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In my cases cited above, both females were notably materialistic and prone to recurrent petty crimes (shoplifting; financial shenanigans). Only about half the males were known (at the time or eventually) to have dabbled in underhanded or criminal behavior ranging from petty theft and fraud up to armed robbery.
 
Dick Turpin said:
Afternoon m’lud.

Sounds like she was suffering from what the medical world now terms as having ASPD (in times past she would have been labelled as a sociopath)

I honestly don’t believe my ex-girlfriend had anything like that, I firmly believe that due to her screwed up childhood and the lack of any parental guidance, she didn’t know how to act in a normal, functional, responsible way.

Sad isn’t it.

The girl you mentioned reminds me of the character that Sharon Stone played in the film Casino.

As a complete aside, (I thought you might find it interesting) the wife of a friend of mine was the nanny of Lord Lucan’s children, just prior to the family hiring poor Sandra Rivett.

Luckily for my mates wife, she quit the Lucan family to get married and start a family of her own, otherwise it could have been her lying on the kitchen floor with a busted skull and not Ms Rivett.
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Sad indeed for all involved in their messy lives. I often wondered if she (and people like your past friend too) ever took stock of the damage, emotional and otherwise that they caused as they barrelled through life from one disaster to the next, seemingly with little consequence too.

Interesting too about your friend's wife... I bet she had some tales to tell and quite right too, potentially a very lucky escape.
 
Lord Lucan said:
I once knew a young woman who seemingly had it all. Intelligent, confident and practical. Added to that she was also devastatingly beautiful which, be it right or wrong opened doors to her which may not have opened otherwise.

However, she was also a pathological liar and would lie in almost any instance even when there was no need to lie. These weren't grandiose lies which someone might claim to try to impress, but it what as though she would lie just because she could. It was the most bizarre behaviour.

She also was the most mercenary person I've ever known, happy to tread on family, friend or stranger to achieve her goal, whatever it may have been at the time. Her looks attracted a lot of attention from men (and quite a few women), and as such, she had no close female friends. Women were always wary of her whether it was justified or not. Over the years she hurt everyone close to her and subsequently died quite young and quite alone. A sad situation, but no one was surprised when it happened.
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Interesting this pathological liar stuff, especially when it involves wholly unimportant stuff. Someone I knew suffered from this and it got so tedious that I would call her out on her lies . Didn't alter her behaviour in the slightest. A peculiar addiction.
 
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