To ask if anyone has ever met a Walter Mitty type character?

[Mrspoopoohead]

Just that really it always amazes me to hear how people manage to get jobs impersonating doctors for example. Has anyone had any real life experiences?

Ex's friend dw. First time I met her, she told me she had advanced cancer and her treatment made her infertile but her dh didn't know because she didn't want to worry him!
She also said she was a nurse but I already knew she served the meals and refreshments on the wards. She went on to have two dc in quick succession and the cancer never came up again.
A friend of a friend went to school with her and said she'd always been a liar. Her nickname at school was costa del Skeggy after bragging about her holiday abroad but was at the same Butlins camp as a classmate. I've had nothing to do with her for two decades but I'm aware her lies have caused a great deal of harm to innocent people over the years.

Also worked with someone who was in the army and had been on active service. But, he started embellishing stories as the years progressed which we knew were untrue.
Flying in chinooks, dining with officers, non existent injuries etc.
Later discovered that he was kicked out for going awol on drinking binges. He still has a drink problem. The made up stories gained him free drinks at the bar for anyone taken in by him.

Desperate social climbing mum at school whose FB profile included a local private school. Someone queried it since they didn’t remember her at school so she had to admit she actually went to the state school next door ( name of schools is almost the same only one word different). She was also in the same class as one of the dads I knew but hasn’t once acknowledge him.
The list of other lies would be too outing I’m afraid.
As someone commented, if you are going to lie don’t do it in your own back yard.

I do know one or two ex special forces individuals. They take the official secrets act very seriously so would never volunteer stories in a pub.

That's a fair comment, SB1189; in his defence, he never made any pretence of being an authority on the subject; he was more interested in the medals! I still wonder, though, why she confected a dead Australian husband, rather than an American GI. She'd obviously done her research, although not to the extent of the chap PolyEthyls dad encountered.
The revelation on disrobing, however, was confirmed by other (rather surprised) witnesses.

Yup, I went to school with a lad who would tell the most outrageous lies...

He went on to do so as a teenager and later ended up in big trouble pretending to be a military veteran amongst other things (would frequently pretend to have suffered serious injury doing heroic things).

He was caught out in a photo of him with Alec Salmond, wearing borrowed medals, it reported in one of the scottish newspapers a while back which was the first time I'd heard of him in 20 years or so.

Weird bloke, absolute fantasist and incapable of telling the truth I think.

DH has an old friend (grew up together and their parents are friends) who lies constantly about his personal life. The usual story is he meets someone in a rather unusual sounding way (eg. his boss's best friend's ex wife/delivery woman writes her phone number on his parcel etc etc). the relationship quickly becomes serious but there are complications that mean she can't meet his friends and family (eg. a violent partner with hints that one of us may know him/elderly parents who have threatened to disinherit her if she has a partner/illness that means she can't travel etc). Several times arrangements have been made for us to meet her and we have started to think we have got it wrong- only for them to break up just before we were due to meet. He claimed to be engaged once and even sent us a wedding invitation (which just looked like a blank card with 'come to our wedding on x date' written inside- no venue/time etc). There is always some complicated reason for the break-up, never just that she has second thoughts/finds someone else etc

Apparently when they were at school, on more than one occasion friend persuaded other friends that he was seeing DHs girlfriend and they were just trying to find the right way to tell him. One girlfriend heard about this and called him out- so he claimed that she had changed her mind.

although Australia had no direct involvement in the Vietnam conflict

wut?

@twoshedsjackson

That's a fair comment, SB1189; in his defence, he never made any pretence of being an authority on the subject; he was more interested in the medals! I still wonder, though, why she confected a dead Australian husband, rather than an American GI. She'd obviously done her research, although not to the extent of the chap PolyEthyls dad encountered. The revelation on disrobing, however, was confirmed by other (rather surprised) witnesses.

I had assumed she was the “dead husband” and the medals were hers from her previous life.

Yes, one of my DCs. He claims his homework has been done, his room tidied, to be in bed asleep with his phone turned off at a reasonable time, to be innocent of taking the missing beer and chocolate and that he and his gf haven't gone further than hugging and holding hands.

I used to work with a young woman (let’s call her Debbie) who lied about the most random obvious crap.

Innocuous things like a new car (borrowed her dads and turned up in her old one the next day, said she’d changed her mind), imaginary boyfriends, mortgage (lived with her mum).

But also batshit stuff about the disabled adults we worked with, think non verbal clients talking to her, wheelchair users randomly getting up and walking to her.

It was so very blatant and odd that I think we were all too stunned to call her out on it.

I often wonder how she’s getting on, this was about 25yrs ago.

I was terrible for this as a child but fortunately grew out of it past the age of 8 or 9! I was moving to Australia, my mum had just had a baby (bit awkward that one when the teachers mentioned it to her), I had twin big brothers, I saw a ghost in the toilet, my best friend was really my cousin, I could speak Polish (a chunk of my family is Polish, however I can’t speak a word)

A colleague was like this - older man with wild stories that he loved to tell, like being suspected of drug smuggling going on holiday to the US, having multiple gorgeous young girlfriends, also liked to claim MI5 knowledge. He had a photo of "one of his women" on his desk, turns out it was his daughter

Someone I know used to always ‘one up’ you, no matter what it was you said you’d done. If you’d run a marathon, he’d run an ultra marathon. If you had climbed Everest, then he had climbed it with a broken leg whilst dragging his injured partner. If you did a charity sky dive, he had done a sky dive without a parachute and survived. Etc and so forth. It was all absolute rubbish, it was almost like he had a compulsion where he couldn’t stop himself.

Anyway, it all started to spiral out of control when he met a new girlfriend and brought her home to our town for a visit. He was an old school friend of an ex and contacted him to say, if my new gf asks, then my parents live in the big house on the hill. The big house on the hill was a huge mansion which overlooks our town. It turns out he had driven past the mansion and told the gf his parents owned it. He also rented a fancy sports car for the weekend and claimed it was his, also took out a loan to buy a fancy watch etc. All very odd.

Eventually it all came out that he was actually broke and in debt due to gambling and when the girlfriend confronted him, he doused himself in petrol and threatened to set himself on fire! The police managed to detain him and I can only hope he got some help. Haven’t spoken to him in years.

The new girlfriend was so lovely as well, not s gold digger or anything so I don’t know why he felt the need to make out like he was super wealthy.

A couple.
One at university was a talented musician but claimed he'd written a song used in an advert for a global multinational.
Another I reckon has built his entire career on half-truths and his plausibility and charisma. One of my faves was letting people believe he was the son of a senior politician with a similar but differently spelt surname. There was a rumour that his politician got in touch and asked him to stop as Walter was by then working as a lobbyist - helped along by this perception of family contacts no doubt.
Just looked him up now. He says he was an advisor to Diana, Princess of Wales.
Nope. I know someone who actually was. I reckon what he really means is that he worked for a charity she was a Patron of...
He's got away with so much I doubt he will ever be discovered now - too senior in his field.

I am not sure if this is Walter Mitty but I worked with a guy who told the most outlandish lies. He was absolutely lovely, very calming and the sort of person you gravitated towards. He was in sales in our business and started before me. When I started everyone said what a hard time he had been having, his wife had a baby who became poorly and he had to have a lot of time off to go to hospital appointments etc. Then he split up with his wife. He worked from home and used to have to come to the office perhaps once a month. Every time he was due to come to the office something happened on the way down or the day before. Once he had a car accident, another time he was driving and shit himself on the motorway, another time his father died, which he literally found out about on the way to the office. It was very tragic. He had lots of empathy from our less than empathic boss. A little time later a client called, they had been trying to place an order and needed him to visit their offices. He had cancelled on them 4 times, because he had a car accident, then his wife had a car accident, then he got run over, and then another bizarre and random reason.

He genuinely and obviously had a lot of issues and I think the reason for not coming to the office was due to panic attacks or stress rather than anything else. He said he had been a marine and when asked about it just said he had been in active service. I guess we will never know the extent of it, whether his father actually died? Was he a marine previously? Was so sad to see because he was genuinely a really lovely guy and I wonder whether he had been a marine and perhaps was suffering from PTSD. Although you do have to wonder if he had actually been a marine. I went on to a different department and I think he went off sick for some time and then left. I always wonder about him.

@twoshedsjackson

That's a fair comment, SB1189; in his defence, he never made any pretence of being an authority on the subject; he was more interested in the medals! I still wonder, though, why she confected a dead Australian husband, rather than an American GI. She'd obviously done her research, although not to the extent of the chap PolyEthyls dad encountered. The revelation on disrobing, however, was confirmed by other (rather surprised) witnesses.

Entirely possible that the dead husband was a dead boyfriend from the days when this was illegal.

Yup, my ex 😳

Mrspoopoohead there are numerous groups on Facebook dedicated to exposing Walts (especially military ones). These are often run by people who are Walts themselves. Some people seem to need to bring others down to boost their own self esteem. I know of one group where anyone who defends the current target is automatically excluded from the group.

@SB1189 thank you for saying this, I thought of all our diggers who served in Vietnam, including some of my relatives.

I know no disrespect was meant by the pp saying Australia wasn’t involved.

I must say I am finding these stories fascinating!

Yes I know someone who killed off various members of their family followed by tears looking really sad, he also had a heart attack and returned to work two days later and would have been a professional footballer if it wasn’t for a knee injury

Another told her boss her mum had died as she booked a last minute holiday she was Australian. The company paid for her to fly back home (first class) that messed up her holiday obviously

I’ve met a few men who have trusted me enough even though I don’t know them to tell me that they served or are serving in the SAS of course I keep very quite about this. Remarkably they also all seem to have a Ferrari that in the garage. Amazing coincidence. I felt too in aware to be able to go out with them

@Pippapotomus if your grandad is planning a post Covid cruise more power to his elbow. Since WW2 ended almost 76 years ago, he must be in his late 90s at least if he served in the RAF.

I worked with someone who had stirring tales of being in the Navy of his home (continental Europe country). It was where he learned various trades. Ultimately someone contacted said Navy and they had no record of him. Coupled with certain other things we discovered, we are fairly sure he was in prison at that time, where he had the chance to learn skills and read stories of serving on warships.

I've had 3 (I think) blokes mentioning they were in the SAS. This was back in the 60s and 70s. It was part of chatting me up (like it would cause me to fall into bed with them!)

I've known two men claiming to be ex SAS but this was in the 90s. One is a bit of an alcoholic...
the other taught boxing/street fighting...
but neither were