To be scared of my neighbour? Weird noises at nights...

[Mikadua23]

So this is going to be very messy and long..
We moved here 2 years ago, we live in 2 semi detached house and our neighbour is on our right.

We live in cul de sac and the area is very quiet and peaceful.
I dont work right now due to taking care of our young child and being pregnant with our second so I am home all days.

My neighbour is a man in his ( I believe 50s)
He is very shy when you try to say hello but usually kind, we don't have problems and never had.
He lives alone and have no family or friends, nobody ever visited him for the last 2 years..
He was always alone on christmas, easter or other celebrations..
We would check on him through the covid situation when he would not leave his house for few days at all and we would do some food shopping for him, he was very happy with the help.
I would give him christmas cards but never had one back (not that I expected him to give one! I have purerly felt sorry for him)
I would also give him a portion of christmas dinner last year and he was very happy although never really came back with dishes , he just left them outside our door 2 weeks after..

Our landlord did say to us when we first moved here, that our neighbour is weird and nobody in the road likes him but I never asked questions.

I wouldn't care about the way He chose to live if not the fact that he works night shifts every other week and every time he leaves the house, you can hear noises from his house like someone is still inside which is odd because he does live on his own.
As I mentioned before...
He never even had a friend coming over...

We share walls and it usually takes about 5 mins after he leaves around midnight and then you can hear someone coming down the stairs inside his house .

I dont know why, I am scared of this man and always find him a bit weird, it shouldn't really be in my intesrest whats happening inside his house but the whole thing is just odd.

Despite all this..

He never goes anywhere except his job where he works 12 hours shifts around 4 times a week.

The best scene in The Burbs is undoubtably when the Vietnam veteran neighbour falls off the roof.

OP, it’s clear you find this is all hilarious and are overly dramatising it all, in the mean time, you have a neighbour who lives alone and seems a decent man who has done nothing to you and returned your dishes and who is probably lonely.

It seems a shame that your LL has already badmouthed him to you by saying no one likes him but giving no reasons and you seem to be doing down the same route.

@CFLandlordStory how does anyone know that no one else is supposed to live there. As far as I can see the OP hasn't asked her neighbour and why shouldn't he have guests or someone else there.

Maybe he has a guest who goes in around the back as he knows his next door neighbour tracks his every move and he doesn't want to be subjected to more neighbourhood gossip?

Placemarking

On MN when you hear hooves it's always a psychopath/kidnapper/pedo/weirdo.

If you moved there 2 years ago then it would have been summer 2019, and presuming you didn't know him well enough in the first few months to bring food or realise his work schedule. If you only noticed the movements recently then it could also be he lives with someone who is continuing to shield from covid for whatever reason. The pandemic has given a lot of people MH problems, especially those who were instructed to shield in the beginning. There are certainly a small percentage who still don't feel it's safe to go out or might actually equate going out with death (common false thinking for agoraphobes but this time it's unfortunately, arguably true).

@NerrSnerr no one knows. Thats the point. The cops will ask these questions and if its easily explained, no problem. Its very odd behaviour after midnight. It happens often. No evidence of a guest has ever been seen. Its worth checking. It probably is nothing. But given how odd it is id want to check.

[quote CFLandlordStory]@NerrSnerr no one knows. Thats the point. The cops will ask these questions and if its easily explained, no problem. Its very odd behaviour after midnight. It happens often. No evidence of a guest has ever been seen. Its worth checking. It probably is nothing. But given how odd it is id want to check.[/quote]
‘No problem’? I would find it unwelcome, very intrusive and actually quite upsetting if police turned up at my door asking questions because a nosy neighbour was thought my comings and goings were odd.

^ ‘was’ shouldn’t be there!

@PotassiumChloride

Do you have any flaming torches? If so, you could put an unruly mob together.

Totally snorted at this

Yeah, my money's on an agraphobic, nocturnal twin brother horder who's being held hostage. Almost certainly.

There is an elderly shopkeeper near me.
Recently somebody was talking about the shop and said it was a shame about his wife dying, I've been in this family run shop a lot and seen him out and about and said I didn't know he had a wife.
Apparently she was very very overweight and hadn't left the house for five years. I would have hated for him to be the subject of sinister gossip.

[quote CFLandlordStory]@NerrSnerr no one knows. Thats the point. The cops will ask these questions and if its easily explained, no problem. Its very odd behaviour after midnight. It happens often. No evidence of a guest has ever been seen. Its worth checking. It probably is nothing. But given how odd it is id want to check.[/quote]
What sort of questions do you suppose the police are going to ask? “Hello Sir, your neighbour has reported hearing noises coming from your house when you’re out - can you explain this?” If he has abducted somebody he’s not going to hold his hands up and admit it, is he? He’ll say “she must be mistaken or hearing air bubbles in the pipes, it’s only me here” or “oh, that’s my wife, because I work night shifts we both keep a nocturnal schedule, it suits us best.” And the police will go away satisfied, because they have absolutely no grounds to do anything further.

I doubt thread even bother going around in the first place, frankly.

I remember when we moved here and some of the neighbours informed us the people next door to us were ‘a bit weird’. We haven’t had much interaction with them but they seem like regular people tbh. They don’t leave very often, do a lot of gardening though and they seem reasonable enough. No idea why they have been flagged as weird people, I think people are just judgemental twats really.

This guy lives alone and doesn’t seem to have visitors so automatically must be a weirdo. He still goes to work so not totally reclusive, he’s probably just a regular human being and you’re watching his every move Rear Window style.

If you’re genuinely concerned, contact the police but I’d put money on this being your imagination.

Someone else lives there
May not be sinister. Could be ill, a recluse, he might be getting his council tax single person discount.

Doesn't sound like a pet to me

So any man who lives alone and keeps himself to himself is a pedo/kidnapper?! This is why people who don't follow social 'norms' can get targeted in real life. It's awful

The panic from some pps is ridiculous

@ConstanceGracy

Bloody hell.. how do some of you function in daily life if you think every single man who keeps himself to himself is a “pedo” or murderer. Some of the comments are vile.

It's ridiculous.

If someone called police on me for this, I would make sure they, mot I, would be moving very soon.

Fucking weirdos

Nobody is saying he's a weirdo / paedo because he lives alone, people are saying it's strange that he pretends to live alone but there is somebody else in there.

OP I would ask him if he lives alone. If he says yes then I would look into it. I don't care what the other posters say about hysteria.

@Bridezillamaybe

Nobody is saying he's a weirdo / paedo because he lives alone, people are saying it's strange that he pretends to live alone but there is somebody else in there.

OP I would ask him if he lives alone. If he says yes then I would look into it. I don't care what the other posters say about hysteria.

You don't know if he pretends to live alone.

Houses make noises, pets make noises and in combination with paranoia about anyone not being societal standard and men on here, it's a perfect combo for drama lammas.

Only weirdoes are the nosey ones here

@MrsTulipTattsyrup

I’m confused about why you haven’t asked him a straightforward question given you seem to have a good relationship (I have never, even with neighbours I like and get on with, cooked or shopped for them if they were of working age and well).

Next time he’s out and you hear someone moving around, why can’t you text him (you say you message him so must have a mobile number) and just say “Is there anyone staying with you, Jim? I can hear someone in your house and wondered if I needed to call the police!”.

But Tulip - that would require the OP to act as if her neighbour was a perfectly ordinary, although shy man, who she has previously communicated with clearly enough to enable shopping/dinner deliveries.

Now that we all know with absolute certainty & the illuminating light of a torch mob that he's definitely an axe murderer with dark secrets, don't you think she'd be wiser to cancel the cheque call 999 inform a documentary team & get the rights to an instant hit Netflix series?

@Bridezillamaybe

Nobody is saying he's a weirdo / paedo because he lives alone, people are saying it's strange that he pretends to live alone but there is somebody else in there.

OP I would ask him if he lives alone. If he says yes then I would look into it. I don't care what the other posters say about hysteria.

In what way does he pretend to live alone? Has he ever said he lives alone or has the op just assumed this? (Hint, it’s the latter)

If a neighbour approached me and asked if I live alone, they wouldn’t get a straight answer, that’s for sure. They’d get a quizzical look and be asked why they want to know, at best.

[quote Silversmithster]@NewLifeInTheSouth

Exactly!
You never know what’s going on behind closed doors and there’s too much evil in this world today to not be suspicious!
I personally couldn’t just assume it was a relative because surely you’d hear them in the day too?

Anyone watch that programme on C5 where the police were catfishing paedophiles? Almost all the men they ended up arresting were sat in their houses all recluse like with the blinds down all day grooming kids 🤮 Blegh![/quote]
The vast, vast, majority of paedophiles present themselves as decent members of society. Husbands, brothers, uncles, community leaders, all with "perfectly normal" looking lives.
Sometimes - gasp! - they are even women. Including mothers!

OP herself has said that she doesn't hear daytime noises because she's busy making noise herself with her children. That's why she only hears the noise at night. You could have read that for yourself instead of winding yourself into a frenzy of belief that this guy must be a paedo because he's shy, & possibly single.

OP doesn't know if he's single, or whether he lives with another socially avoidant person. She's just assumed so, & now, rather than asking a simple neighbourly question of the guy in order to put her mind at rest, is scaring herself shitless for no reason.

Bloody hell, leave the man alone.
So, everyone thinks he is weird and no one likes him, so it is somehow a good idea to have the police show up and get tongues wagging and lead to more gossip and suspicion?

Nobody is saying he's a weirdo / paedo because he lives alone

Plenty of people have said exactly that @Bridezillamaybe.
It's a revolting & ignorant mindset, & far more damaging to society than a quiet hardworking geezer who happens to work night shifts.