• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Minor Strangeness (IHTM)

One of my neighbours came knocking on my door one day to ask if I'd heard anything in the night. She'd had a large statue stolen from her garden in the middle of the night. The garden isn't visible from the road nor easy to access, so how they a) knew it was there and b) got it out from a garden that's really only accessible through the house I have no idea. And without heavy lifting equipment (or I would have heard it and the dogs would have kicked up an enormous fuss). We are a tiny and quite isolated village and not on any through roads to anywhere.

I guess you can't underestimate the lifting power of a scallywag!
 
One of my neighbours came knocking on my door one day to ask if I'd heard anything in the night. She'd had a large statue stolen from her garden in the middle of the night. The garden isn't visible from the road nor easy to access, so how they a) knew it was there and b) got it out from a garden that's really only accessible through the house I have no idea. And without heavy lifting equipment (or I would have heard it and the dogs would have kicked up an enormous fuss). We are a tiny and quite isolated village and not on any through roads to anywhere.

I guess you can't underestimate the lifting power of a scallywag!
How large are we talking? And made of stone I presume?
 
One of my neighbours came knocking on my door one day to ask if I'd heard anything in the night. She'd had a large statue stolen from her garden in the middle of the night. The garden isn't visible from the road nor easy to access, so how they a) knew it was there and b) got it out from a garden that's really only accessible through the house I have no idea. And without heavy lifting equipment (or I would have heard it and the dogs would have kicked up an enormous fuss). We are a tiny and quite isolated village and not on any through roads to anywhere.

I guess you can't underestimate the lifting power of a scallywag!

If it was made of metal, I have some suspects...

maximus otter
 
One of my neighbours came knocking on my door one day to ask if I'd heard anything in the night. She'd had a large statue stolen from her garden in the middle of the night. The garden isn't visible from the road nor easy to access, so how they a) knew it was there and b) got it out from a garden that's really only accessible through the house I have no idea. And without heavy lifting equipment (or I would have heard it and the dogs would have kicked up an enormous fuss). We are a tiny and quite isolated village and not on any through roads to anywhere.

I guess you can't underestimate the lifting power of a scallywag!
How bizarre! I'm wondering if the statue actually went missing some time before, say when she was away and another neighbour's fence was being replaced...
 
Stone, slightly larger than human sized. And heavy.

I, too, would have suspected a neighbour. But she was very attached to said statue, and therefore I think would have noticed an earlier exit.

We still have no idea how they did it! I suspect that someone who did work on the house at some point saw it and sussed it out. Either that or it's an inside job...
 
Stone, slightly larger than human sized. And heavy.

I, too, would have suspected a neighbour. But she was very attached to said statue, and therefore I think would have noticed an earlier exit.

We still have no idea how they did it! I suspect that someone who did work on the house at some point saw it and sussed it out. Either that or it's an inside job...
How solid is the ground round there?
Any abandoned mines? Sinkholes?
 
A cyber-friend of mine is a funeral celebrant in the Greater Manchester area. On her FB this week, she reported standing at a chapel door, waiting for the next arrival on her own, when she distinctly heard somebody whisper her first name in her right ear. I suggested it was one of her previous clients dropping by to say "Hello".
 
My wife and I were discussing things to watch on Netflix at dinner time. She's watched everything on Netflix and Prime. I ran through the recently released and upcoming programmes and mentioned The Queen of the South, a drugs cartel series. She wasn't interested.

Now I'm watching Johnny Depp in The Ninth Gate and I wonder whether it's based on a book. Indeed it is. It's based on The Dumas Club by Arturo Peréz-Reverte. Who also wrote The Queen of the South!
 
While I was sweeping in the dining room yesterday I saw a tiny brown skink lizard.
I have no idea how it got inside unless it climbed into the washing basket when I put it down on the ground.
I tried to catch it to put it outside but it was too fast and scuttled off so I put out some feijoa but read later they eat insects.
I haven't seen it since so hope it can live on any insects that come in with the washing till I can find and release it.
My youngest suggested that it might be like Stephen Spielberg's lizard.
 
One of my neighbours came knocking on my door one day to ask if I'd heard anything in the night. She'd had a large statue stolen from her garden in the middle of the night. The garden isn't visible from the road nor easy to access, so how they a) knew it was there and b) got it out from a garden that's really only accessible through the house I have no idea. And without heavy lifting equipment (or I would have heard it and the dogs would have kicked up an enormous fuss). We are a tiny and quite isolated village and not on any through roads to anywhere.

I guess you can't underestimate the lifting power of a scallywag!
If it was a sculpted real stone statue,( and not one of these reconstituted stone or concrete imitations) they can be worth a fortune of course.
 
The garden isn't visible from the road nor easy to access, so how they a) knew it was there and b) got it out from a garden that's really only accessible through the house I have no idea.

A couple of thoughts:

a) Is there a public footpath or the like running at the side or rear of the garden?

b) Would the statue have been visible on Google Street View or (gasp!) Google Earth?

A note to all FTMB viewers concerned about security: You can have the image of your home munged on Google Street View to render it less informative to the evilly-intentioned. Here are the instructions cribbed from a website:

  1. Go to Google Maps and type in your address.
  2. Bring up the street view of your property.
  3. Look to the bottom right-hand corner of the screen you should see an icon labeled: “Report a problem.”
  4. Click on “Report a problem.”
  5. You will get a page called “Report Inappropriate Street View.”
  6. There will be a box called “Image Preview” where you can adjust the area you would like blurred.
  7. Below the Image Preview, there is a section called “Why Are You Reporting This Image?
  8. If you want your house blurred, click on “My home.”
  9. A text box will appear where you should add verifying information, such as your address and a description of your house.
  10. You need to include your email address in the box below that.
  11. They use a reCAPTCHA verification service, so click the “I’m not a robot” box and hit “Submit
  12. Check back in a few days to see if the image has been blurred.
maximus otter
 
Some really strange things have happened to me recently. And it's quite shameful to admit so be gentle.

I found myself agreeing with some things that Piers Morgan said. Eww I feel a bit dirty now. :yuck::sick2::puke2:

I won't say what they are, because I'd get a spank from the mods with their "No politics" paddle, and I'm sure once the pandemic is finally over or the Large Hadron Collider team repair the hole in reality he'll go back to being the same old obnoxious twerp who gets upset about sausage rolls.
 
We certainly live in a weird era of reversals, splits and unforeseeable affinities now.
Tuck in to your favorite comfort food, sit back and know we'll all get through this somehow.
 
I live in suburban London, near a large forest. It’s an interesting place, with quite a few remnants of the comparatively rural area it must have been before the railways came. One of these is a path through the forest which would have originally been the road towards London.

Like lots of people at the moment, we’ve been out walking around our local area for exercise, and as it was a beautiful twilight a few days ago we decided to walk a couple of hundred yards down the old road, through the woods. It’s not isolated and there are houses to the side, and it wasn’t dark but I was very uneasy, as if someone was behind us. Just as I thought that, my husband looked behind him. As we came out into a field I said to him that the road was spooky, and I didn’t like walking along it.

My husband is a sceptic, who doesn’t believe in ghosts, precognition, or anything of the sort. But he agreed and said he hadn’t said anything because he knew that would have really disturbed me. When I thought about it, the feeling started when the thought crossed my mind how unchanged the road must be, and how we could be at any time in the last six or seven hundred years.

We didn’t see anything, but the feeling of not being alone was really strong, and I won’t walk that way again.
 
I live in suburban London, near a large forest. It’s an interesting place, with quite a few remnants of the comparatively rural area it must have been before the railways came. One of these is a path through the forest which would have originally been the road towards London.

Like lots of people at the moment, we’ve been out walking around our local area for exercise, and as it was a beautiful twilight a few days ago we decided to walk a couple of hundred yards down the old road, through the woods. It’s not isolated and there are houses to the side, and it wasn’t dark but I was very uneasy, as if someone was behind us. Just as I thought that, my husband looked behind him. As we came out into a field I said to him that the road was spooky, and I didn’t like walking along it.

My husband is a sceptic, who doesn’t believe in ghosts, precognition, or anything of the sort. But he agreed and said he hadn’t said anything because he knew that would have really disturbed me. When I thought about it, the feeling started when the thought crossed my mind how unchanged the road must be, and how we could be at any time in the last six or seven hundred years.

We didn’t see anything, but the feeling of not being alone was really strong, and I won’t walk that way again.

Could it have been an animal watching you, like a fox or badger? Even an owl? I wonder if some animal instinct buried deep in our evolution tells us we're being watched by, well, an animal.
 
I'd never be OFF that road! :D
Wouldn't be alone though as Techy is just as keen on being haunted.

We have a thread on 'places that feel weird' or summat like that.
There’s actually a story about a time slip in one of the IHTM books very close to the old road, and it sometimes feels as if the past is very tangible here
 
Could it have been an animal watching you, like a fox or badger? Even an owl? I wonder if some animal instinct buried deep in our evolution tells us we're being watched by, well, an animal.
It felt like a person, not watching but behind, there are foxes in the wood but we’re not rural enough for badgers
 
Strange ... But not as strange as originally suspected ...
German police investigating find of ape body parts in forest

German police say the grisly find of an ape’s hand and foot in a forest west of Munich appears to be less nefarious than previously thought, and certainly not as outlandish than wildly speculative tips they’ve received.

The cleanly severed hand and foot, complete with skin, hair and nails, were discovered about a week ago near the Bavarian town of Grafrath by a forester’s dog. Tips came in, including one suggesting the find was evidence the government was carrying out coronavirus experiments on monkeys, police told the dpa news agency Thursday.

But after examination of the foot and hand, which appear to come from a chimpanzee, experts concluded they had been preserved with formaldehyde or another chemical used to keep scientific specimens.

“This makes it possible that the parts are significantly older than initially thought,” Michael Fischer, a police spokesman in nearby Fuerstenfeldbruck, told dpa. “The good news is that nobody has to worry that an ape was slaughtered in Fuerstenfeldbruck last week.”

Police are still trying to figure out how a chimpanzee’s parts ended up in a German forest, but say it now seems likely it is at most an administrative offense rather than a crime.

“And it could already be past the statute of limitations,” Fischer said.

SOURCE: https://apnews.com/e732373cae6144a0fc3a8c66404d6720
 
I've said before, but I'm a very keen birder. Avoiding nature reserves of late but have been birding on each daily walk i take with my family.

Yesterday I realised I hadn't seen any Buzzards for a few weeks - I was concerned and wondered if maybe a bunch of eejits with guns were responsible. I said to myself (or maybe the Gods of Birds) - it would be nice if when I stepped outside for my next fag there would be a Buzzard overhead.

Half an hour later - time for a fag - and I heard a Buzzard calling.

Looked up - FOUR of them!

Made my day! :)
 
I've said before, but I'm a very keen birder. Avoiding nature reserves of late but have been birding on each daily walk i take with my family.

Yesterday I realised I hadn't seen any Buzzards for a few weeks - I was concerned and wondered if maybe a bunch of eejits with guns were responsible. I said to myself (or maybe the Gods of Birds) - it would be nice if when I stepped outside for my next fag there would be a Buzzard overhead.

Half an hour later - time for a fag - and I heard a Buzzard calling.

Looked up - FOUR of them!

Made my day! :)

Same thing hapened to me! I hadn't seen a buzzard about for a while, although everyone else in the village seemed to have had them practically falling out of the sky onto their heads. Went out for an early run and there was an entire family of them climbing the thermals above our hill..

I can do a kind of 'squeaky whistle' which seems to call them in. I'd been wandering the local lanes 'squeaky whistling' in search of buzzards, but none had come. I'd been beginning to despair. But maybe they were just waiting for better weather.
 
There are a couple of pairs over the village, they like to use the heat off the houses to thermal. Recently they have been mobbed by the local crows that are nesting there.
 
I've said before, but I'm a very keen birder. Avoiding nature reserves of late but have been birding on each daily walk i take with my family.

Yesterday I realised I hadn't seen any Buzzards for a few weeks - I was concerned and wondered if maybe a bunch of eejits with guns were responsible. I said to myself (or maybe the Gods of Birds) - it would be nice if when I stepped outside for my next fag there would be a Buzzard overhead.

Half an hour later - time for a fag - and I heard a Buzzard calling.

Looked up - FOUR of them!

Made my day! :)

Lovely! We have local buzzards. What a gorgeous sight they are.
 
OK, this really is quite strange. I've been thinking about it since yesterday.

Currently I am conning my dog by feeding him his medication in a hole bored in some cheese - he loves cheese. Did so as has become usual early Wednesday evening. I use what used to be called a 'boning knife' to create the hole. I can't recall going in to the kitchen after that.

Thursday morning, got up, first job - make a cup of tea. Went to throw the teabag in the bin, and there was the knife - stuck through a flimsy box (too thin to call cardboard). I got it out and the tip was broken off. I cannot think of any possible way this could have occurred - if I had broken the knife I certainly would have remembered , as it was one of an online purchase that I've already found are poor quality..
 
Back
Top