Weird thing happened in our garden

[TheFireflies]

We live in a Victorian terrace with a roof terrace above a kitchen extension, accessed by steps from the garden. Three of the steps bolt on and off, we remove them to get to our external tap if we need to water the garden, as this is on the wall underneath the steps. Our roof terrace borders that of our neighbours, an elderly couple who we are friendly with. The terrace doesn’t directly connect to our other neighbours (converted flats) - there’s a few feet gap between our terrace and the external staircase to the upper flat. I should probably attempt a diagram.

Lived here 6 years, no neighbour issues at all. Generally quiet.

Yesterday we heard water running. Husband went out to investigate and found the external tap was turned on. When he went to unbolt the steps to get through to it, he found that someone had pushed a screw into the step which he had to remove before he could get through to turn the tap off.

Our garden is generally secure with tall fences and our back gate was bolted.

I am 🤔 about who has done this, how, and why.

We have put up a cheap camera on the terrace now (can’t currently afford a proper security system) and luckily we aren’t on metered water, but I think what really bothers me is why someone would go to this sort of trouble, and what other unpleasant surprises we might come across.

Help settle my mind!

Any neighbours having building work done? Possibly builders used your water supply then thought they'd better secure your steps so you wouldn't notice? Not sure why they left the tap running though, unless they'd turned the water off at street level briefly while they 'fixed' your step then didn't realise they'd left your tap on.

Not sure why they left the tap running though, unless they'd turned the water off at street level briefly while they 'fixed' your step then didn't realise they'd left your tap on.

Taps frequently get lef running by people with hearing problems who think they've turned them fully of but haven't quite.

Also where the tap is a bit stiff and needs a full hard turn to close it entirely.

My money is on something like that - a window cleaner or someone needing external water and leaving tap on by mistake.

We have an inside stopcock just for the garden tap-have you one that you could use just whilst you're sorting out a more secure system?

Builder or window cleaner borrows the tap as described. Worried the tap is not turned off properly, they instruct gormless apprentice to 'check the tap is secure'. Devoid of common sense, apprentice secures the tap by preventing access via now-immoveable steps.

Probably someone that just wanted to freak you out for a laugh, Probably a neighbour. Camera very good idea as next time might be more intrusive

Dognappers hun xoxo

Ooh something similar happened to me & I cannot still find an explanation.
So I work on my own in a salon which has a bath (for dogs), bath has a plug & shower over. One morning I went in & the bath was full to the top with water, shower was off & no drip. And the water had stopped just before the top of the bath.
So weird. 12 years never happened before or since.

Husband and boyfriend?! Maybe one of them was trying to catch you out 😂😂

We had a whole pig’s head left on our doorstep once. Never got to the bottom of it. Just put it down to weird shit that sometimes happens.

Maybe David Cameron was around...

From Wiki:
"It was alleged in Call Me Dave – an unauthorised biography of the former British prime minister David Cameron by Michael Ashcroft and Isabel Oakeshott – that, as a student at Oxford University, former British prime minister David Cameron inserted "a private part of his anatomy" into the mouth of a dead pig, as part of an initiation ceremony"

😂😂😂😂

Then boyfriend, now husband 😂

Did you ever get to the bottom of it OP?

It has to be a person that knows where your tap happens to be. Either a neighbour on metered water. Or maybe a neighbour that feels overlooked when you are on your terrace.

Does your DH like playing pratical jokes on you @TheFireflies? This didn't happen on April 1st did it?

Think uou may have missed the joke there

Op, you’ve got to come back and tell us if you’ve found out anything.

Nope, not figured it out yet! The elderly neighbours haven’t seen anything dodgy and nor have the shopkeepers (though I’ve no doubt they’ll be asking other locals now when they nip in for their papers). Cameras so far have picked up nothing at all except a pigeon, so hopefully it’s been enough to deter any repeat transgressions.

Its definitely not my husband playing a prank (he’s the one who discovered it and is as confused as I am).

Are you saying that you have in effect a ground floor flat and the neighbour with the son is in the upper flat?

If there is an upper flat, is it possible they had a window cleaner who wanted a tap?

No we live in a house with a garden and roof terrace, next door is a Victorian house converted into flats and our terrace is the same height as the upstairs flat’s external door. It’s possible that a window cleaner may have jumped over, but I don’t think that explains the screw.

Please tell us more about the bodge jobs. The tap is almost too weird to believe so I would love to know what else they did.

The other stuff is quite boring (albeit potentially dangerous) such as installing the gas supply for the cooker in the wrong place behind a cupboard, using the wrong piping for the water boiler causing leaks, and not properly levelling the kitchen floor before tiling it. Nothing quite as bizarre as a tap under stairs.

Well @BorgQueen wins the thread

We've gone from mysterious intruder with a dripping tap to being freaked out by a similar mirror on a door step to

We had a whole pig’s head left on our doorstep once.

Only a horse's head in the bedroom can top that.

I think the screw is most likely explained by your DH seeing something for the first time and mistaking it as something that wasn't there before because removal of the step was a bit stiffer/tougher than before.

He had to remove the screw to take the step off, so I can’t see how that’s the case. It’s the screw that makes it weirder I think! Though at least it wasn’t a pigs head or a replica of one of our belongings 😂

I got goosebumps reading that. It would traumatise me.

Young apprentice theory is VERY plausible.

Honestly it did a bit. I started closing the blinds all the time because I felt like I was being watched, and I only really felt comfortable once we moved house.

My aunt had some weird annoying things happen to her garden/car and it turned out to be one of her neighbours was pissed off that she had the affront to get a car and park it in her own parking space. (Basically she had lived there for years without a car so the neighbours were used to there almost always being an 'extra' space even though it was technically for her property). They caused significant amounts of property damage. Luckily Aunt had already made plans to move. People can be fucking nutty.

I was going to ask if you moved, as I thought that I would definitely want to. But then I could not decide if I was being dramatic. That is honestly so creepy though!