Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Child-safe in minutes.

Meet the Other Phone.
Child-safe in minutes.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Mumsnet classics

Relive the funniest, most unforgettable threads. For a daily dose of Mumsnet’s best bits, sign up for Mumsnet's daily newsletter.

See all MNHQ comments on this thread

Original poster

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

935 replies

RevoltingPeasant · 15/04/2014 21:23

....inspired by the intriguing threads thread!

Does anyone have a mini-mystery, or a story they want to know the end to? We can all supply improbable answers Grin

Here's mine....

DH and I go for a walk around the block most nights before bed . Almost every night, at a particular point in the neighbouring street, there is an 'offering' of baked goods in the road.

Sometimes it is bread rolls. Sometimes, baguette. Once, about 8-9 Mr Kipling's Bakewell tarts. Just lying there in the road.

At first we thought it was for hedgehogs, but then the cakes? And in the road?? Confused

What's your unsolved mystery?

OP posts:
Thread gallery
16
marshmallowpies · 18/04/2014 08:22

The first house I lived in on my own had no carpets, just laminate floor on top of the original floorboards. Very cheap & poorly laid laminate, though, and lots of cracks and gaps and holes everywhere.

Anyway, days after I moved in, brown carpet moths started to appear and the house within a few weeks was completely infested with them.

I put up with it for a while & then got pest control in. They said it was the worst moth infestation they'd ever seen and couldn't believe it would happen in a house with no carpets. They were convinced the moths had come with me in my clothes but I had no sign of them at all in the flat where I lived before. I can only assume they'd been in the clothes of the previous owners of the house and had been dormant when I saw the house on my first visit.

At about the same time I came home one day to find a pile of sawdust on my kitchen counter, and a huge nest of black ants swarming out from behind the kitchen cupboard which they had been chewing up. Again, when I got the pest control people in, they were amazed as those kind of ants don't normally eat wood and the man said he'd never seen anything like it in 20 odd years as a pest control man!

FryOneFatManic · 18/04/2014 08:31

Laska It's interesting what you say about hearing and knowing someone's on the phone, but I used to know who was on the phone and I have partial hearing, with the loss being mainly in the high frequencies. I've been like this from birth. Doesn't happen with mobiles, only landlines.

ToAvoidConversation · 18/04/2014 08:53

aubergines is it a CO2 detector? Possibly losing its battery. Took ages for us to work it out and it sounds similar!

FruVikingessOla · 18/04/2014 09:00

Viva, maybe your frog beanbag was caught by a passing bird of prey which was moving so quickly that you didn't notice it/sun in your eyes?

LittleBellaMummy · 18/04/2014 09:15

It's not a mystery as such but just gives me the shivers when I think about it. I had an elderly client at work who I would see regularly every week. She always looked well dressed and made up. She would tell me stories of her family and husband, fancy days out, parties, her beautiful house, presents from her children/husband etc. one day when she left she said goodbye and touched my hand with hers, after that I noticed my watch was missing (no idea if that has any relevance or not). I didn't see her at work again over the next few weeks, then whilst reading the local paper one day I came across a story about a woman who had died in her flat and had not been found for weeks until neighbours had reported a smell and build up of post etc. the woman had no family and lived alone in her little flat. The paper had a photo of the woman along with the article and it was the same woman who i used to speak to at work every week!

nicename · 18/04/2014 09:17

With the phones - I wonder if the handsets make a teensy noise before it starts to ring? Our office phone make a little low buzz a couple of seconds before it starts ringing. Maybe domestic phones make a sound, too tiny to be consciously heard, but loud enough to be registered.

I always know when it rings if someone has died though - and not because of an unusual time. When I called my sister when mum died she just picked up the phone and wailed before I even said a word.

LittleBellaMummy · 18/04/2014 09:17

I've also never found the watch I was wearing that day! Shock

FryOneFatManic · 18/04/2014 09:54

LittleBella Odds are that nice lady took your watch. I've seen people do this, they can be very skilful and take watches without their victim noticing.

LittleBellaMummy · 18/04/2014 09:58

The watch is not the puzzling part to me, I was a bit annoyed about the watch but it was nothing irreplaceable. I just always wonder why this lady told me she was a completely different person to who she actually was?!?

FruVikingessOla · 18/04/2014 10:07

Perhaps she was inventing a glamorous life to cover her loneliness?

Or maybe she had had a glamorous and happy family life in her past - but which she still referred to in the present tense. Maybe her husband had died and her children had gone NC? Although the 'no family' comment might not add up, unless nobody knew about her past.

It sounds desperately sad though.

FryOneFatManic · 18/04/2014 10:08

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.

BumPotato · 18/04/2014 10:10

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

LittleBellaMummy · 18/04/2014 10:14

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

marshmallowpies · 18/04/2014 10:21

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?

GallstoneCowboy · 18/04/2014 10:23

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.

Openupyoureyes · 18/04/2014 10:27

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.

alemci · 18/04/2014 10:46

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 etcHmm

marshmallowpies · 18/04/2014 10:49

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...

TheNewSchmoo · 18/04/2014 11:14

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.

ebwy · 18/04/2014 11:17

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.

HowAboutNo · 18/04/2014 11:43

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!

BellaDesconocida · 18/04/2014 11:47

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.

QuietJackRabbit · 18/04/2014 12:27

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

BellaDesconocida · 18/04/2014 12:54

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

iwasyoungonce · 18/04/2014 13:09

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! Grin

You're welcome.