Tell me about a random unsolved mystery in your life....

LadyEmma, I would call, tbh. Just say you have been seeing all the stuff about human trafficking and modern slavery on the news, you are concerned and want to be sure it is all okay.

I used to get tiny patches of hives on my wrists and hipbones, really itchy, when it's not something I have ever suffered from. Within 2 days of these patches coming up, I would bump into my ex (DDs dad) unexpectedly. Very strange, and there wasn't any sign that I would see him to give me a stress reaction. I remember a friend asking why I kept scratching my wrist, telling her it meant I was due to see him and have an argument. The next night he broke into my home and assaulted me.

Yes, it is wholly genuine. Do you speak with any authority? I kind of feel that I already called the police once and don't want to pester. And yet it still niggles. I am seeing my policeman friend in a few nights time (he and his wife are coming for dinner) so I will talk to him for advice.

A few streets up from me there is a house with a cardboard cut out of Dorothy from The Wizard Of Oz with cardboard sharp pointy teeth added and a luminous green wig. Can't remember when it was put up but it's been there for months now (over a year?) and I haven't a clue why someone would put it in their window. My DC are creeped out by it and walk past very quickly without looking! I'm soo tempted to knock and ask why it's there!

I feel a bit like I would be wasting their time (but not sure!)... I have a friend who is a policeman so when I next see him I am going to ask him what the procedure would be in general (sure he couldn't talk about a specific case) when they get a call like mine and to what extent they would follow up beyond a knock on the front door to be told it was all fine. For some reason, I would be more bothered if it had been a woman shouting she was locked in the basement but I can't explain why.

LadyEmma can't you phone the police (101) and ask what the outcome was? Say you're still concerned about it?

My mystery is my next door neighbours. The old tenants moved out, and new tenants moved in, about 6 months ago. Their curtains are permanently drawn but there are people in there (I hear noises: footsteps, washing machine etc) yet neither I nor my other neighbours have never seen them come or go (???what do they eat?). About a month ago, a man started shouting "Help! Help!" from their house. A passing woman asked him what was the trouble and he said he was locked in the basement and couldn't get out. She knocked on our door, told me and asked me to call the police as she had no mobile (I had been woken up by the cries myself and already was near the front door). We called the police who came after about 10 minutes by which time the shouting had stopped. They knocked on next door's front door. Someone answered, they had a conversation and the police left.

So my mystery is: are there people locked up in next door's basement?? Would the police have looked any further into this if someone at the door said it was all fine? In 20 years time will people look at me and my neighbours and wonder why we never did anything?

PS Are we safe in our beds?

The morning of being induced for dc2 after I had opened the curtains at 7.30am a single pink helium balloon floated down past my neighbours garden along the bottom of ours and off down the road.
I was stunned ,called dh who saw it, I was desperate for another girl and until that point 40+ 2 did'nt know the sex of the baby. Of course we had a girl.

JulietBravo I have solved your one. Someone you knew when you were 15 either stole your keys, or somehow acquired them. Maybe as a prank? Or maybe to be mean. Anyway, 4 years on they find the keys in a drawer, and feel bad about it. They know you now work at this pizza place, so they come into the shop and leave them on the counter for you to find.

Ta-da!

You're welcome.

I have another slightly odd but again explainable one.

I was at uni, and a friend came round and started talking about what an acquaintance had said. I interrupted saying "oh yeah, he said ... (Can't remember what!)".
Friend: how do you know that?
Me: I was there
Friend: no you weren't
& thinking about it, I hadn't been there.

it was years ago, I may well have already heard the same thing from a mutual friend? But at the time I didn't remember

Found 3 old cherry stones in a line on the floor in the middle of the living room a few years ago.
Probably fell down the chimney, but a bit odd.

Where did my favourite pair of jeans go?!

This was 2 yrs ago. Had been wearing them, and had left my debit card in the front pocket while we were out. Got home, took them off and when I looked for them the next morning to get my debit card out of them, they were gone! Searched high and low, again and again. Never found them. Had to order a new bloody debit card and have never had a pair of jeans that fit me as nice as those since. First world problem, but it still pisses me off!

my youngest child is 18 months old, and looks very like the one photo we have of my dad as a child. My father died more than 25 years ago. he had a distinctive writing style, which I still recognise.

my child likes to draw using his brother's magnetic drawing board thingy.
The other day he was in his high chair, and I heard "mam! Mam!" which is unusual, he hardly ever uses his words. He was doodling away so I just smiled and told him he's a clever boy. Then he got insistent, "MAM! MAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAM!!!!"

so I looked, and on the doodle thingy I saw my dad's initials, in my dad's writing. Very clearly his. Then my smallest boy slid the bar and wiped the thingy, and threw it across the room.

On the day off my Mum's funeral, I was washing up in her house and took a cheap but sentimental ring off and put it on the window sill. I was in the kitchen alone at that point. I finished washing up, dried my hands and went to pick up the ring to put it back on. Gone. Never seen again. Couldn't have fallen anywhere or anything like that. Odd.

Ooh - I've remembered one which has always puzzled me, though it isn't very exciting:

There used to be a lovely second hand bookshop in Greenwich market, now sadly gone, and I used to go there at weekends quite often to have a browse.

A particular book caught my eye and I had a good read of it in the shop but decided not to buy it. Then every time I went back, it was still there, and I thought one day, what the hell, no-one else wants it and I'm interested in it, I'll get it.

As I took it up to the counter, the shopkeeper said 'Someone else came in today and looked at that book, and said they had been searching for it for years, but walked out without buying it - and now you're buying it!'

I often wonder if the other person had gone to get some cash out and was going to come running back to find the book gone, and spend the rest of their life pursuing vengefully the person who got it before them? But if they'd really wanted it they would have asked the shopkeeper to put it to one side for them, surely?

It has always pricked my curiosity to wonder who that other person was, why they didn't buy the book then & there if they wanted it so badly, and if they've been searching for it ever since. It was fairly obscure and almost certainly not in print now, but you can track almost any book down via the internet these days...

we have funny lavae that appear in corners of our home infrequently. they are dead and brown/yellow but never see them alive.

were in our old kitchen cupboards. we sent some to the council for analysis but they were no help.

i think I may have seen them this year but we have re carpeted etc

My father died 20 years ago and from that day every few months or so my doorbell rings at about 5 a.m. The first few times it happened I would get up to see who was there but there was never anyone, so now I ignore it.

My mum lives 25 miles away and her doorbell rings on the same days and at the same time as mine.

Another one - I was once involved in a fund-raising treasure hunt. We were in teams and given a list of items to find. One item was a Rolls Royce. I knew someone who had a beautiful Rolls, although I hadn't seen him for a few months. I went into a phone box (no mobiles then) and called him, explained what we were doing and asked if he would be able to pick us up in his Rolls. He was very sorry but he had sold the Rolls 3 weeks before. I came out of the phone box and was just telling the team, when round the corner came the very same Rolls! We flagged the driver down, he stopped and we told him what we were doing, and he was happy to take us back to the hall where the organisers were waiting. We won the treasure hunt.

Re: the dogs who know when their owners are coming home - they don't. They pick up on subtle signals from the other humans in the house. They also have incredible hearing so can distinguish between different engine sounds. It isn't a "phenomenon" at all.

Rupert Sheldrake is pretty much accepted to be an unscientific, biased loon.

HTH.

BumPotato I want to know why the people on the street round the corner from us keep their decorations up well into Feb/March!

It all gets taken down little by little: the tree is still in their window in January, then that goes, then the wreath goes from the door at some point in Feb, and last year they had a tatty old Xmas stocking hanging out of the bedroom window that was still there in May or June! This year their next door neighbours also kept their wreath on the door well past Twelfth Night so I wonder if it's some Christmas cult which is gradually spreading 1 house at a time...

The Xmas tree in June, though - perhaps they have family in Australia who only come over once a year and they do an extra 'Christmas' for them?

It is very sad I agree! It shocked me so much because I used to think how much I would love to be like her when I'm old. I'm sure there is a message hidden in there somewhere

People on my old street used to put a Christmas tree up every July for a couple of weeks. No idea why.

She probably ended up inventing everything because she was so lonely and had nothing. It may have been something that helped with the pain of being lonely.