The strangest, scariest, most dramatic thing that you've seen in your n'hood

[LadyClaire]

I just remembered one from 1985 when I was living in Taipei, Taiwan.

We had a fantastic apartment to rent which was really cheap because it was surrounded by the hills where locals had their graveyards and they did not like to live near them.

One year we had a big Typhoon and had flooding and no power for a couple of days. Hunger (Lack of beer, and being sick of instant noodles really) drove us out to find something to eat and while we were wading through knee deep water we came across a very impressive Chinese coffin wedged between two trees. I choose to believe it was empty but the sudden thought of what else might be in the water.....

Did not feel good wading through the water so went back and waited and washed and washed and washed in cold water. Instant noodles were not so bad after all.

aaahhhhhhhhh...that is awful.

There's a cemetery close to where I grew up in Kentucky. It's at the top of a hill, but the road cuts through the hill and so the cemetery is actually above the road. The soil here is thick, red clay and it's prone to mud slides when there's a lot of heavy rain. The cemetery doesn't have any sort of retainer wall. It's just sitting on a slab of that clay soil above the road. As a kid I would get paranoid that one day there would be enough of a rain storm that the clay that the cemetery is on would slide and dump all of the coffins into the street below. It has yet to happen, but the soil has eroded a lot over the years.

[kisu]

Nothing very extreme in my 'hood:

One morning I was going to work and stumbled upon an unconscious man in our bike cellar. I called an ambulance and they managed to revive him. He'd somehow managed to get into the basement, which requires a key, yet he didn't live in our house and nobody knew him. The ambulance men hinted his unconsciousness was drug related.

One night I was alone at home and awoke to the sound of someone trying to open my flat door. They didn't succeed, though they made a lot of noise fiddling with the lock and trying to pull the door open. I looked through the peephole and the stairwell was in darkness. I shouted at the person to leave my door alone and to put the light on in the stairwell. They did, the offender turned out to be my neighbour, who was blind drunk and thought my door was his.

My university also had a school shooter scare, it was bizarre coming to the lecture hall to find it swarming with police and security men. One man from my course was a strange person, and had recently posted videos on youtube or similar, showing him target practicing. He'd also uploaded some weird manifesto. There'd just been a school shooting in the country, and naturally this kind of behaviour was pounced upon. He did later return to our course, after being thoroughly interviewed regarding the videos, manifesto and other things. The guy had been taken into custody the moment he appeared on campus, but we didn't know that - all we knew was that there was a school shooting scare and police all over the place. It was unnerving, we all watched the door to the lecture hall constantly, ready to drop down and hide!

All the home intrusion stories are scaring the living daylights out of me, I'm glad I don't have to be alone at home tonight!

Ooh, remembered a few more:

Our neighbourhood convenience store was robbed at gunpoint earlier this year, no casualties.

Years ago, when I was shopping in said store, there was a full-blown resuscitation attempt going on at the vegetable section -  a man had literally dropped dead, and now paramedics were doing all they could to save him. I heard later he didn't make it, I did offer my help to the paramedics but as I was only a 1st-year med student they told me I could continue on my way.

[faithlessone]

Oh, I completely forgot about university!!

Last year, during the exam period, we had a bomb scare in the library. I was working on my laptop in one of the study rooms when the fire alarm went off. We all dutifully trooped out, and sat on the grass outside - waiting for what we thought was a false alarm to be cancelled so we could go back inside. I mean, come on, it was a university campus, barely a day passed without a false fire alarm somewhere.

About 5 minutes later, a bunch of police showed up, and we were all pushed back to the other side of the grass. Someone said that they'd had an anonymous tip off about a suspicious package in the locker room in the library basement. At this point, I decided to go and work in one of the campus cafes.

Later that afternoon, I heard that the "anonymous tip" had been some spurned girlfriend trying to get her cheater boyfriend arrested. How, I'm not sure, but it made for an interesting gossip topic for a few weeks!

[pwv]

Years ago I heard a commotion in the hallway outside my apartment.  When I looked through the peephole, there was a woman pounding on the door across from mine yelling "G--d--- it open up let me in."  She would then take a wad of keys and try several in the doorknob.  then she would stagger back and bump my door, then stagger forward, pound on the other door, try more keys, etc.    She managed to get the door open (I found out later the guy only ever locked his doorknob; he never locked his deadbolt when he went out.)  Security got her out and management changed both of the locks on the guy's doors.   She was apparently drunk and just had the wrong apt.

[Midnight Kitty]

Warning: Suicides mentioned.

50 years ago, when I was little, our next door neighbor's son came home to visit his parents.  His marriage was on the rocks.  He shot himself dead.  Made a big impression on 4 y.o. me.

The building in which I currently reside had a lot of excitement before we change property management firms.  There was a stable of hookers working out of the building, bringing their *dates* home.  Foreplay started in the elevator.

There was a meth lab on one of the higher floors.  It was discovered while the firefighters were putting out the fire.  A couple months later we had a flood from a broken water line, complete with waterfall from the lanai.

Things have been quiet under the new management, except for the suicides.  Two of our upstairs neighbors jumped (a couple years apart) from their lanais and landed right under our lanai.  We are on the 8th floor and they landed on the 6th floor parking deck.  For as long as I live, I will never forget the distinctive *thud* that a body makes when hitting solid concrete.  I hope I never hear it again.

I live in the heart of Waikiki.  "Jumpers" are a neighborhood secret.  The police don't report suicides in the police blotter and the news media never covers them, but several people jump to their deaths every year.  I don't think Waikiki is a particularly depressing neighborhood.  I think it's more that the tall buildings offer an opportunity not found elsewhere.

[Pinky830]

My neighbor directly across the street, "Don," has a mentally ill relative, "Mike," living with him. It's actually kind of a sad situation...as he tells it, since he's the only single adult, the rest of the family has informed him that he must deal with Mike. He says Mike is bipolar, but the way he acts makes it sound more like he is deeply paranoid.

So anyway, one afternoon I was leaving the house and I saw Don and a friend who hangs out there a lot, on the front porch yelling at Mike while pointing at another neighbor who was standing in the driveway.

Don later told DH what had happened. Their next-door neighbor's wife had come outside, and Mike yelled something rude to her (he does that sort of thing a lot, and has had run-ins with nearly everyone on the cul-de-sac). She went inside and told the husband, who came outside to take it up with Mike. That was the part I saw. The cops got called, they told Mike to keep a lid on it, and then Mike pointed at the neighbor. He slurred loudly "Yeah, well, I wanna do a restrainin' order!"

Cop: "Sir, have you been drinking?"

Mike: "I'm not drinking, I'm medicated!"

Mhm. Fortunately, Mike behaved for awhile after that...

[Kaesha]

I have a couple. 

1.  A couple of weeks ago, my stepdad accidentally shot a hole in their bedroom wall, and the (.38) bullet went all the way through that wall, the molding, into the bathroom and then through the ceiling.  I think they should check the roof before the weather gets bad!

2.  15 or so years ago, my mom started her car and then went inside for something, and when she came back, the car was gone.  Highway patrol found it abandoned several days later with grease and battery acid all over the interior. 

3.  A few years ago, I worked closing shift at a restaurant near my apartment, so I walked there and back.  One of the guys I worked with didn't want me walking around alone at night so he always walked me home and then rode his bike to his place (so nice!).  I had been home for about 5 minutes (after 2300) when I heard three rounds fired.  I went outside and called 911 at the same time.  I took 8! rings for someone to actually answer, and I told them what happened.  A cab driver was shot and killed on the street right outside. They never found who did it.  If we had been about 5 minutes earlier walking home, we probably would have seen what happened.   

[ZaftigWife]

A few years ago, I was awakened at 2:00 a.m. by shouting and banging.  I got out of bed and found a woman lying on my porch, yelling for help.  She had been shot in the leg!

Our next-door neighbors were drug dealers (we don't think anyone lived there full-time; they dealt out of the house and kept their stash there) and this woman had been alone in the house (she said she was cleaning - I don't think so) when someone kicked down the door and chased her out of the house; they shot her in the side yard and left her there.  She managed to drag herself across the yard and my driveway and onto my porch.

My husband did NOT want her in our house, but it was freezing and I couldn't leave her out there.  I helped her inside and got her a blanket and pillow, and she lay on my living room floor until the paramedics came.  They brought the police with them.  Turns out this woman had 4 warrants out for her arrest, so they either took her to the hospital wing of the jail or the jail wing of the hospital.  One of the paramedics asked me for a bucket of water and some bleach, and he cleaned the blood off the floor, which I thought was awfully nice of him to do.

The gunshot victim survived; she had been hit in the thigh.  She recovered, but with a limp.  And whatever those warrants were for couldn't have been too serious because she was back in the neighborhood a couple of weeks later. 

[White Dragon]

Most of my childhood neighbourhood drama involved wildlife - usually bears or cougars - wandering into town. Kids would stay to main roads and off our woodland shortcuts for a couple of weeks, but it was no big deal.

The scariest thing happened one summer when I was working at a small military post. This was a training base had a small full time staff and saw a lot of trainees in the spring and summer.
On the day in question, I was supposed to be the Duty Officer (ie - the responsible party) for the day. For whatever reason, I'd swapped out with one of my roomies.

I was hanging out and one of the soldiers came up to me and said "Ma'am, I need to show you something."
Took me into the men's room and I was expecting a maintenance problem or something.
He took the lid off the back of the toilet tank and showed me a bomb. 
Now, I don't know much about bombs, but it had batteries, and wires, and a container of an unknown, coloured liquid. Given all that, I went with "bomb."

Went back to my roomie and said "Lee, there's a bomb in the men's bathroom." It took several tries, but eventually she believed me.

We evacuated the buildings.
She called the police.
They called their bomb team.
The bomb team consulted the military bomb squad.

All this took forever because the main military base was an hour away, as was the police bomb squad.

Eventually, all the experts agreed that yep, it sure looked like a bomb.
Now, in the middle of all this, people were saying "Uh...that's a prop left over from some training we did last week. We were supposed to do leadership exercises and one of them was to command a team doing a search for a bomb. We forgot to put the prop away."

Unfortunately, they had to treat it as real.
And since they couldn't move it, the decision was made to "blow it in place", ie set a small charge on it and detonate it.
They put up shields around the stall and...blew up the toilet. The object was destroyed and did not explode.

Since it was now the middle of the night and the building was still full of assorted bomb-people, there was a whole training camp of people who could not get back to our rooms.
So they sent us across the road to the government's underground emergency nuclear bunker and we spent the night deep underground in small concrete cubicles. 

The only sigificant falll out that I can recall was my poor roomie. It seems that in all the confusion she'd forgotten to call the Base Commander at home and tell him that people were blowing up his buildings...he was a little testy about that.

[Diane AKA Traska]

Holy thread necromancy, Batman!  I have a story!

The police closed off our block.  Where I live, there is a house to one side, and an empty lot to the other.  Well, the house that's on the other side of that lot had their entire household arrested.  So I was about twenty feet from the twenty or so officers that were milling about, some with visible weapons, all with prominently worn cuffs on their belts.  I wish I knew what did it, but whatever it was, it cleared the house.  So drugs are my best guess.

[oz diva]

 I didn't see it, but down the road lived a family. The wife converted from Islam to Christianity, then she disappeared. The husband was distraught. Turns out he had just installed a new concrete patio with unusual foundations.  so now their kids have no mother and a father incarcerated.

[Diane AKA Traska]

I didn't see it, but down the road lived a family. The wife converted from Islam to Christianity, then she disappeared. The husband was distraught. Turns out he had just installed a new concrete patio with unusual foundations.  so now their kids have no mother and a father incarcerated.

He Hoffa'd her?!  Whoa... now that's hardcore.

[Miss Misery]

While not happening in my neighborhood, I have the distinction of living in possibly the only major metropolitan US city that had an entire city block razed due to the mayor ordering a bomb dropped on it by helicopter.

They evacuated everyone who would leave (that is, everyone the bomb was supposed to take out).  The house that they bombed had incendiary materials within it.  Add a bomb made of four pounds of C4, drop, mix well, and voila!  Sixty-five houses burned to the ground.  Five adults and five children, plus the leader of the group they were bombing, died as a result.

At the time it happened, this was a little bit like our 9/11.  I mean, it isn't every day the mayor does a bombing run on his own city.

That was in May 1985, right? I was living in the same state. That was all over the news FOREVER.

Then about a year and a half later there was the infamous press conference suicide on live TV....*shudder*

[Diane AKA Traska]

While not happening in my neighborhood, I have the distinction of living in possibly the only major metropolitan US city that had an entire city block razed due to the mayor ordering a bomb dropped on it by helicopter.

They evacuated everyone who would leave (that is, everyone the bomb was supposed to take out).  The house that they bombed had incendiary materials within it.  Add a bomb made of four pounds of C4, drop, mix well, and voila!  Sixty-five houses burned to the ground.  Five adults and five children, plus the leader of the group they were bombing, died as a result.

At the time it happened, this was a little bit like our 9/11.  I mean, it isn't every day the mayor does a bombing run on his own city.

That was in May 1985, right? I was living in the same state. That was all over the news FOREVER.

Then about a year and a half later there was the infamous press conference suicide on live TV....*shudder*

Yep, '85.  That was the weirdest year ever for me.  It's not every year your city gets bombed from a police helicopter.  Or, at least, I *hope* not!

[Cami]

1. This was fun. We used to have a hot air balloon company down the road.  In nice weather, it was quite common to look out our back window and see the balloon high up in the sky. One particular day, however, I looked up and saw the balloon right over my house. As in if I'd been standing on the roof, I could have touched the bottom of the basket. The balloon landed in the middle of our street.

2. This was not fun. Our street was a brand new suburban development of middle class homes. (Upper midwest).  Right from the beginning, we were all curious about one neighbor. Appeared to be a husband and wife with one teen son. Normal, nothing extraordinary. Except.... that the son seemed to have some rather... colorful friends. And a lot of them. Tons and tons of teens and young adults coming and going from that house, all the time. Lots of loud parties. Lots of swearing and bonfires. Cops were called on several occasions.  This goes on for a few years. Then... they get a pit bull that they leave outside with no chain -- just one of those invisible fences. The dog would LUNGE at anyone near that house and would go ballistic even if you were on the OTHER side of the street. Numerous calls went in about that too and they finally had to get rid of the dog.  Some more time goes by and one morning we hear all this noise coming from their general direction. It was a SWAT Team!  They were invading the house and taking everyone there into custody. Turns out that this "normal" if annoying family were running a business out of their home -- selling drugs.  That was pretty exciting. (The house was confiscated and sold to a very nice family without a snarling pit bull.)