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Odd People: Cranks, Eccentrics & Nutters

That's nothing. I was in Leeds today and I saw this freak of a woman with pink hair...
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lol Minda, thank god i stayed at home yesterday :D

Have you ever seen the guy who looks a bit special needs and walks around in a shirt with "Jesus is the only answer" on the back?
 
I don't think I've seen that one. Is he usually in town? I haven't been in the town centre much recently so I'm not quite up to date on all the weirdos.

Actually, now I think about it I was in Leeds town centre yesterday and today and yesterday there was a man in superdrug, standing near the counter carefully stacking up all the perfume boxes into neat pyramids. He looked like his legs were giving way underneath him and his eyes were almost closed but he kept stacking with his face only inches away from the perfume. And today I was in a shoe-shop and a drunk-looking (and smelling) man came in and stood near the counter and was very carefully moving shoes from one rack to another for no obvious reason.
 
Anyone remember the bloke who used to wander Regent Street and Oxford Street with a placard proclaiming all man's woes were down to eating too much protein? That if we just stopped eating meat and protein we'd all be much happier (kind of an anti-atkins diet). He used to sell pamplets for 12p. he was so well known he got onto album covers and pop videos.
 
I just recently remembered a strange person(s) from about 25 years ago. I haven't thought of him (them) in ages.

I used to manage a small shop in Yorkville in Toronto. There was a large bay window that overlooked the street and the sex accessory shop (called Lovecraft) across the street. Mine was a very quiet shop, without a lot of customers, so most days I read books and stared out the window at the people slipping furtively into Lovecraft. One day, a youngish, mid-sized blond man, wearing denim pants, an open demin jacket with no shirt beneath, and work boots began a very strange activity. He would run/stride between two streetlight poles in front of Lovecraft: as he left one pole, he would move to the next pole, make a little leap, kick the pole and do a quick turnaround in the air, land, then start back towards the other pole. He would do this for hours without a pause. It was as if it were his job. He went home ("left work" I guess) every day, but would show up next day and "do his job". This went on for some weeks. I remember the seasons changed and it got a lot colder. There was ice and snow on the ground, but the guy never changed his outfit or seemed to be affected by the weather.

One day, he didn't show up. Things went back to normal and I forgot about the strange jumping man. Then, one day, another man who was dressed identically to the pole-leaper showed up and started doing the pole thing. (This was a completely different man, I know: he was shorter and stockier and had darker hair.) It was very strange -- as if the previous guy had lost his "job" and then, after a decent interval, the new guy took over the position.

I left my job in the shop shortly after the new guy started, so I don't know how long he stayed (or whether he is still there).
 
Moving house recently has moved me into different social groups.

There are fewer people with face furniture and/or tattoos around here, which makes it easier on my eye! (Although the scenery is spoiled somewhat by a contender for World's Ugliest Woman... :shock: )

But there is one character here who looks like Shrek! Give him green skin and trumpet ears, and he'd be a dead ringer! He has the bulky build, and even a similar face with a sort of quizzical expression on it. A bit disconcerting, to see a cartoon character in real life!
 
oooh, this reminds me of my town's own stran9e person... a lon9 time a9o, when i was in middle school, there was a man who was well known over a pretty wide radius.. not sure just how wide, but i do know he was seen around my middle school which was about 3 miles from my house and i saw him walkin9 down my street quite often. that was what he did, he just walked everywhere, continuously, every day. we called him Cleopatra. he was a tall, skinny white man with bleached blond hair, i would have put him in his 40s. he always wore the variation of the same thin9- very short worn out denim shorts and a too-short muscle shirt in purple, blue, or pink (sort of a throwback from the 80s) and supposedly he was 9ay. i saw him walkin9 my street probably about once a week, hard to remember as this was about 8 years a9o, just takin9 bi9 strides down the sidewalk, and i can;t remember if we actually 9reeted him or anythin9. upon returnin9 to school after one weekend, the bi9 story was that the 6th-8th 9rade buildin9 of my tiny parochial school had been broken into. i don't remember if anythin9 was stolen, but some windows were broken, there was some other dama9e, and there were a lot of muddy footprints trodden all over the floors (it hadn't rained recently). for some reason, everyone was sayin9 it was cleopatra and that he was mad about somethin9 and so broke into the school (but i can't remember what). i'm pretty sure it was just silly 9ossip, but i think the police did re9ard him as an actual suspect. i don't remember what happened after, but i stopped seein9 him around eventually..
 
I encountered a lot of mentalists in my home town, especially when I started working at a store there and so was in every day. Here are a selection (I may have mentioned them before, but bear with me, I haven't been around for a while):

The cracker lady: She used to come in the shop, sometimes up to three times a day, and buy packs of gluten free crackers. She'd also move the packets around on the shelves, and sometimes she'd just stand by the door and staaare. My co-workers used to comment that we should keep an eye on the local newspaper for any stories about a woman disappearing in a weird biscuit-y death pile.

Nut man: This guy used to come in about once a week, and always managed to corner me. He'd always start out by saying 'I've just had three pints of beer and now I'm in a healthfood shop! hurhurhur,' and then tell me that his friend had sent him to get a bag of mixed nuts but he didn't like brazils, cashews or hazels, which was basically all the bags were made up of. I sent him away with some uncooked pistachios once (as he'd said he really wanted some but doesn't like them roasted or salted) then came back the next week and said they were horrible and could he just have a bag of mixed nuts without the...

I had a creepy stalker in there too. In fact, at least three of the girls there did. One each. I'd met this guy because I was in the supermarket looking for some guacamole and fallen into a bit of conversation, like you do, and then he started coming to the shop where I worked and just... looking for me. He never bought anything, he'd just wait around - I'd spot him on cctv and hide in the packing room.

Ok, last two (both bus related); I was walking to the toilets at the bus station when a man appeared out of an alleyway and hissed 'is it you? are YOU the BITCH??' I sped up and had to call my friend from the toilets to check he'd gone. Apparently he'd walked past my friend, muttering to himself, then disappeared up the road.

There's a man who lives in the same village as another friend of mine so we'd often end up on the same bus as him. At first we thought he had tourettes or something similar but as time went on we realised he was fully aware and in control of what he was saying. Highlights include him telling an elderly couple that their grandchildren are c*nts, and leaping off the bus screaming 'f*ck yooooouuuuu!!!' waving two fingers in the air.
 
I had a rather disconcerting one last week - the youth hostel I manage was closed on Thursday so I could have a night off, so I was putting my feet up over in my shed - sorry, luxury staff accommodation. Some time after 10pm, I heard someone outside - it's quite common for people to turn up without checking if I'm going to be open or not, though they're not usually so late. I went outside with my torch and found a man standing by my garden gate. He looked (and smelled) sort of trampy, possibly in his 40s, filthy with long matted hair and beard. The weird thing was that his clothes were in tatters. Not just torn, but his trousers and coat were literally hanging off him in strips. When he saw me he let out a stream of incompehensible slurred gibberish, with the odd understandable word. More or less indicating that he wanted to stay, I explained (slowly and clearly) that the hostel was closed. He came up close, right in my face, put one hand on my shoulder and said, clearly and with no small amount of menace, "I know you mate," before stumbling off into the darkness.

Somewhat rattled, I went back inside and locked myself in, but about twenty minutes later, I could hear him moving about in my garden, muttering to himself. After a while (and after he'd been right up to my windows - luckily the curtains were drawn!) he seemed to have gone, so I risked sticking my head out of the door again, wielding my trusty Maglite, just in case. He was in the dense undergrowth at the bottom of the garden, which backs onto National Trust open land, including woods, which is where he seemed to be heading for, with some difficulty (it was pitch black and he had a ditch and some closely packed bushes to get through.) For some strange reason I didn't feel like going straight to bed after that, but when it got to the small hours and he hadn't returned, I thought I'd better get some kip!

He was probably one of the nutters who appear and disappear in Glastonbury every now and then, who'd somehow found his way up to me, but it was pretty unnerving. Reading the London Underground thread tonight, it struck me that he looked a lot like the cannibal man from Death Line... I'm just glad it didn't occur to me at the time! :shock:
 
I work in Colchester and there is a very odd man that walks past our store every day and makes a real point of looking at us. Sometines he stands outside doing robotics dancing!
He's very tall and walks bolt upright. He's always imaculatly dressed sometimes in a white suit sometimes black. He's often reading somehting when he walks past and makes a point of holding it so you can see what it is. Often it's books about Gary Newman, who he seems to love. Sometimes its Mein Kampf!
The really odd thing is that I've see him in Colchester nearly every day, talk to any shop owner in Colchester and they know him, but I live in Ipswich and I see him there all the time too. Other people have seen him in the suburbs of Colchester and out at Great Yarmouth.
 
hedgewizard1 said:
Johnnyboy, no coppers to call and run the guy off?
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It didn't occur to me at the time, oddly - maybe it's because I'm used to people coming over and peering in my windows when they find the hostel closed (happens all the time, but usually in the middle of the day when I'm trying to relax) and I've had to deal with my fair share of nutters over the years. The raggedy man was a little more scary than usual, due to his appearance, manner and the lateness of the hour, but if he'd got nasty, I reckon one good push would have had him over!

In any case, going from past experience of the polis, if I had phoned them, they'd have taken almost an hour to turn up, and then told me there was nothing they could do!

A more benign one now: Anybody from Cardiff remember "Karate Joe", a middle-aged man who used to stand in the middle of Albany Road in Roath, sometimes stripped to the waist, making martial arts moves at the passing cars and buses? He mainly stuck to Roath, but I once saw him in the city centre, laughing uproariously and doing an enthusiastic highland fling to a bagpipe-playing busker. It would be around the mid-late 80s - I went back to Cardiff to do a post-grad course in 1993, and found that he'd been hit by a car and killed a few years beforehand. Only a matter of time, I suppose... :(

Also in Cardiff was the "Hello" man who hung around the railway and bus stations - he'd come up to you, very chatty, shaking your hand and saying "Hello, how are you?" in a valleys accent, then hold his hand out and demand 20p. Judging by the state of his face, I'd imagine that quite a few of his 'victims' responded with a bunch of fives, but it never stopped him, or seemed to affect his cheeriness.
 
Yes - I went to college in Bristol, and myself and a group of friends used to go to visit friends in Cardiff quite often. I remember this bloke well - but we knew him as "Karate Eddie". We saw him once in high summer, doing his usual karate kicks, etc, at the traffic, wearing nothing but a pair of trainers and some very tight bright yellow Speedos. :shock:

So sad to hear he was killed. But, as you say, pretty inevitable. :(
 
Fizz32 said:
I remember this bloke well - but we knew him as "Karate Eddie".
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Aha! When I moved back to Cardiff, one of my flatmates (the same one who told me of his sad demise) mentioned that Eddie was his real name! I think back in the day, we just knew him as Karate Joe because that's what somebody referred to him as early on. The only other thing I know about him is that he lived in one of the houses just behind the Claude pub with his incredibly aged mother. Sometimes he could be seen drinking in the Claude - not making any of his moves indoors, but he'd let out a loud roar every now and then, just so that everyone knew he was there!
 
I was a Directory Assistance Operator in the Chicago area in the early 90's. DA calls were free from payphones, and we would get a chap calling from the payphone at the mental hospital in Elgin. He was known as the Area Code Man because he always asked for two area codes. But he would also rmable on about stuff. One time, he gave me a quick lecture on to calculate actual horsepower as opposed to horsepower at the engine. Sometimes, he would talk about how US Attorney General Thornburgh had railroaded him into the hospital. He was obviously well educated in a technical field, and mad as the proverbial hatter. Some days, he was the sanest customer I spoke to.
 
There are several loons where I live, including:

A man who came into a place I used to work every single day. He had a hunchback, a stump instead of an arm, one squinty eye, and was quite dwarf-like too. I was told that he had murdered his mother- either from smothering her with a pillow, or stabbing her. I heard both scenarios. Even now that I don't work there anymore, sometimes on my way to work in the mornings I still see him walking down the same road.


A girl of about 27 who came into a shop I worked in 5 years ago, and who I still see around. She always wears those big glasses that are mirrored and a Buffy baseball cap. Indeed, she claimed to have met David Boreneaz (sp?) in the local park, and that she herself had been bitten by a vampire. She also claimed her Aunt had been the Yorkshire Ripper's final victim and her body was still undiscovered.

A woman I used to see at my bus stop when I was at school. She always wears a white cycling helmet and two pairs of glasses, and has a dust mask thing over her face. She wheels along one of those tartan shopping trolleys so beloved of old ladies, and it's covered in pages that have writing on them in black marker- saying things about Hitler and Satan and suchlike. The last time I saw her was a few months ago when Mike Baldwin had just died in Coronation Street, and her trolley was covered in pictures of Mike and Ken Barlow.
 
I've just remembered another bus-stop related incident my friend told me about. My friend was waiting for the last bus home and reading a copy of Kerrang! magazine. There was a woman off to one side, muttering to herself, but this being Yeovil, my friend ignored her. Out of nowhere this woman leans across and tries to rip the magazine from my friend's hands, saying she'd seen the man in the photo 'being bummed by his dad! he's dead now!' My friend was a bit.. taken aback and tried to retrieve the magazine when the woman looked her straight in the eye and said 'I've seen you, you were dead in a ditch in Newton Abbott! You had big boots on and your ribs were poking out!!' She also said something about zombies with lead filled boots on, marching down the road, but by that time my friend had spotted the bus driver coming over and shot over to get on the bus as soon as possible.
 
There's a man I often see when I drive down Burley Road in Leeds. He stands in the doorway of an empty shop and waves at everyone driving past. He looks very friendly and happy and I usually smile at him and sometimes wave back - I think he's harmless. I was delighted to see the other day that he seems to have a companion (or at least a counterpart) over the road who waves at traffic going the other way.
 
I'm reading the nice book "Brightonomicon" by Robert Rankin and on page 198 he describes the "masked walker":

I had seen him many times, of course. He was, and as far as I'm aware still is, a Brighton character. He wears a green anorak, and matching trews and sturdy walking boots. A scarf hides the lower portion of his face, a large pair of sunspecs the upper. And he is never to be seen without his gloves. And in this costume he walks, no matter the weather, he walks and he walks and he walks.
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I wonder, did he base this on a real character? Or has he been reading this forum? From many of his subjects I get the impression that he is an experienced Fortean.
 
There's a man I often see when I drive down Burley Road in Leeds. He stands in the doorway of an empty shop and waves at everyone driving past. He looks very friendly and happy and I usually smile at him and sometimes wave back - I think he's harmless. I was delighted to see the other day that he seems to have a companion (or at least a counterpart) over the road who waves at traffic going the other way
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You're not thinking of the two wino's who sit in the doorway oppositve the Bengal Brasserie, near Burley St Mathias School?

I think they're harmless too, but they can be a bit creepy after dark, and sometimes seem to be bugging the keeper of the nearby off license...
 
I don't know the bengal brasserie (unless it used to be Kushbu) but the rest sounds right. I saw them this morning at about 6.30am sitting in the doorway of the shop that used to sell wallpaper or art supplies or something. I've never seen them after dark but they always look very friendly in the daytime. Or at least the younger one does. I can see how the other one would look a bit creepy. They must sit there 24 hours a day. I go up and down that road at all hours of the day and night and they're almost always there.
 
Yup, i always remember it as the khyber pass, then i think it was kushbu after that... by the launderette, and the shop i think did sell wallpaper...

They do always seem friendly enough... if a bit creepy... and it's a very odd place for wino's to hang out...
 
Yup. Definitely the same ones then. I always assumed there was some connection with that big house on the corner a little bit further up - over the road from the medical centre. I have a feeling it's a halfway house or something along those lines. I could be wrong though.
 
In Malmö in Sweden there is a guy who stands in the city center with a sign saying "Mr Lundgren shot Olof Palme". Olof Palme of course being the swedish prime minister who was shot in the eighties, and whose murderer was never found. Oh, and the name was not Lundgren, I just can't remember the name on the sign. But according to my sisters friends, the man with the sign has been there 3 years. What is more, today he was on the front page of the newspaper. That Mr Lundgren apparently feels he is being harassed. Whereas the guy with the sign says they were friends since childhood, untill Lundgren admitted to him that he shot Olof Palme. I didn't read the article more closely.
 
uair01 said:
I'm reading the nice book "Brightonomicon" by Robert Rankin and on page 198 he describes the "masked walker":

I had seen him many times, of course. He was, and as far as I'm aware still is, a Brighton character. He wears a green anorak, and matching trews and sturdy walking boots. A scarf hides the lower portion of his face, a large pair of sunspecs the upper. And he is never to be seen without his gloves. And in this costume he walks, no matter the weather, he walks and he walks and he walks.
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I wonder, did he base this on a real character? Or has he been reading this forum? From many of his subjects I get the impression that he is an experienced Fortean.
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I can confirm that this person really exists - I mentioned him in the “Freak Town UK?” thread… basically you can spot this man dressed as if on an Artic expedition, rain or shine, winter or summer, trudging around the Brighton area. I’ve even seen him on the South Downs near Jack & Jill in Clayton / Hassocks. What your quote fails to mention is the large hollow 5ft long staff / pipe that he rhythmically pounds as he trudges along.

curzone said:
I currently live in Brighton and frequently see Jesus attired in a kilt, ringing a bell whilst carrying a life size wooden crucifix, walking around the Clock Tower in the centre of town.

Also, I occasionally see this mad rambler, dressed to the hilt in old fashioned arctic style explorer garb, as if he's embarking on a polar expedition (Even in the summer time), rhythmically and vehemently beating a long plastic pipe/walking stick on the ground every other step. I've never seen his face - he's always wearing a balaclava.

Just outside Brighton, just off the A23 going towards Hassocks on the South Downs, I often see this other character walking in the middle of the road, holding up motorists, shaking his fists and muttering to himself under his breath. He walks with this long, straight, stilted gait, as if he doesn't have any joints in his legs. Once saw him in Hassocks, armed with some secateurs, jeering at all the pedestrians walking by. Unlike most of the other strange folk mentioned in this thread, who mostly appear benign, this guy scares the bejesus out of me! He's straight out of "Friday the 13th"… You know, the guy at the beginning who proclaims … "You're all DOOOMED!!!".


:eek!!!!:
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Curzone, have you seen "Jimi Hendrix" in Brighton?
He looks and dresses like Jimi, plays all his hits on the guitar (very well), while grinning, and I have it on good authority that he has actually changed his name to Jimi Hendrix.
 
Perhaps you should start some "Hendrix is still alive" conspiracy, like with Elvis.
 
met a couple of other interesting/beyond all help old guys since I've been here, one of them WAS the roadie out of wayne's world II.
 
I swear that this happened. I was with my college roommate at a supermarket. We noticed a guy with a rather charred baseball cap and flannel shirt. And by charred, I mean it was still smoking. He had soot on his face and hands. He was walking toward the registers with a large bag of charcoal slung over one shoulder.
 
There´s a kid here in the neighbourhood who looks rather like a progeria sufferer. Thin nose, puffy eyes, large overbite. Poor kid.
 
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