Friday OT #1 - Knock Three Times

[ruxCYtable]

In the early 90s I was an assistant manager for Pizza Hut. A full year after I left (to return to ISU) I got a call at 3am. The silent alarm had gone off and the police still had me listed as a keyholder. They asked if it was okay for them to enter the building. I said, "Sure, go ahead. Oh, by the way, I don't work there anymore."

 

[throwittoblythe]

In college, I lived in the apartments right by the arboretum, behind where Taco Bell (now Dunkin I think) used to be. My dad comes for a visit and sleeps on my couch. I sleep soundly that night with no issues. When I get up in the morning, he has this tale to tell:

About 2AM there is a pounding on our door (our front door was exterior). My dad gets up, cracks the door and finds a very drunk dude in his tighty whiteys. Dude is asking to see Brent. My dad says "there's no one here by that name, you've got the wrong apartment" and closes the door. The dude starts pounding on the door again calling for Brent and to let him in. Dad cracks the door again and says to get lost, there is no Brent here, and shuts the door.

A few minutes go by and my dad hears a rustling coming from outside the door. He peaks out the blinds to find tighty whitey dude prying the screen off our front window. Dad pops the door open, tells him he's calling the cops. Dude runs off.

I never heard a minute of this and slept all the way through it.

 

[Antihawk240]

Not at home and not a phone call, but I was at one of our cattle feedlots with my 3 teenage sons feeding cattle. It is 5:00 in the morning with the only light coming from the feedlot lights, the barn lights, and the old school "yard light" that is in every older farmstead. The boys and I are done in the feedlot and are walking back to the barn when we notice this silhouette of a man standing under the yard light by my truck. He came out of no where! Neither me nor the boys could understand what in the world he was saying except that he went in the ditch up the road and wanted to be pulled out. I gave him my token "my insurance agent doesnt want me pulling cars out of ditches with the tractor, but I'd be happy to call a tow truck for you." Dude freaks out yelling "No, No, No, No!!" with his hands over his head, turns and sprints down the driveway. It had to be only like 5 seconds but felt 5 minutes and the boys and I are just watching this dude run down the driveway. My oldest breaks the silence by saying "This is why you dont do drugs." We call the sheriff, shut things down, get in the truck and start driving to the next feedlot when we see the Sheriff has his lights on talking to the guy. We continue driving and 3 MILES past the sheriff we see a car in the ditch.

 

[JayV]

I don't remember this personally but apparently when I was about 2 months old someone basically enlisted me in the US Navy. My parents had Navy recruiters calling and knocking on the door trying to get me to sign the paperwork and make it official. Took a couple months for the system to get caught up and they accepted the fact that I didn't meet the physical standards to be a sailor.

 

[Cyclones_R_GR8]

Not sure this is what thread is really getting at but it was weird and annoying so putting it here.

We got notified by mail that we were part of an extra census on crime data. It was at the time most things like schools were closed down for Covid.

So no one is home but me and the dog and I am brushing my teeth. I hear pounding on the door but before I can get there some woman is just trying to walk into our house and my old dog is rushing the door and growling at her so she backs out. Secure the dog and sure enough she is census person collecting crime data. Dog has pushed her to the porch and she wants back in. No mask. I am like nope, not coming in my house like that. Then she says we can talk in her car. Right, the world is locked down and I am going to go sit in a car with maskless stranger for 20 minutes. She finally leaves and says someone will call. Fine, maybe better starting place with things locked down.

So a different person calls and is very polite. The only crime I have to report is the census woman unlawfully trying to enter my house. She kind of laughs but agreed they should never do that.

Same nice lady calls about six months later, Rambo census woman still all I’ve got.

Last fall, the woman who tried to break and enter my house shows up again. By now, old dog has died but have a new pup. I am in the kitchen rolling pie crust so wash my hands when I hear the doorbell. She tries to just walk in my house again. New dog rushes her like a bat out of hell and she just runs to her car. Was able to yell at her before she got to the street that I was getting her plate number and calling the cops. The most I did was mention it to cop that lives on our block.

About a week later, nice lady calls again, I report unlawful entry by census woman again. We recently got another follow up letter. Dog is prepared.

I would tell nice census lady to take my name off her list and to never bother you again

 

[CYdTracked]

Not sure this is what thread is really getting at but it was weird and annoying so putting it here.

We got notified by mail that we were part of an extra census on crime data. It was at the time most things like schools were closed down for Covid.

So no one is home but me and the dog and I am brushing my teeth. I hear pounding on the door but before I can get there some woman is just trying to walk into our house and my old dog is rushing the door and growling at her so she backs out. Secure the dog and sure enough she is census person collecting crime data. Dog has pushed her to the porch and she wants back in. No mask. I am like nope, not coming in my house like that. Then she says we can talk in her car. Right, the world is locked down and I am going to go sit in a car with maskless stranger for 20 minutes. She finally leaves and says someone will call. Fine, maybe better starting place with things locked down.

So a different person calls and is very polite. The only crime I have to report is the census woman unlawfully trying to enter my house. She kind of laughs but agreed they should never do that.

Same nice lady calls about six months later, Rambo census woman still all I’ve got.

Last fall, the woman who tried to break and enter my house shows up again. By now, old dog has died but have a new pup. I am in the kitchen rolling pie crust so wash my hands when I hear the doorbell. She tries to just walk in my house again. New dog rushes her like a bat out of hell and she just runs to her car. Was able to yell at her before she got to the street that I was getting her plate number and calling the cops. The most I did was mention it to cop that lives on our block.

About a week later, nice lady calls again, I report unlawful entry by census woman again. We recently got another follow up letter. Dog is prepared.

Stories like this is exactly why our front door is always locked unless we are going in/out at the time or expecting someone that is stopping by. I just don't have much trust with people these days to give them a chance to pull some crap like this and just walk into my home. Finally caved in this month and installed a camera on my garage that looks out over the driveway and path to my front door and may put the doorbell model in next if I like how this one works.

We've had some middle of the night activity in our neighborhood this winter and just the other month we apparently slept through a 2:30am sting by the sheriff's department that ended up in our driveway when they had about half a dozen deputies surround and confront a group that had been checking cars on the street and drives to see if they were unlocked to steal from. Had 2 neighbors send me video and stills of the events and apparently the getaway vehicle pulled into our drive and 10 seconds later the street was light up with sheriff vehicles and the getaway vehicle was eventually towed away.

 

[carvers4math]

Stories like this is exactly why our front door is always locked unless we are going in/out at the time or expecting someone that is stopping by. I just don't have much trust with people these days to give them a chance to pull some crap like this and just walk into my home. Finally caved in this month and installed a camera on my garage that looks out over the driveway and path to my front door and may put the doorbell model in next if I like how this one works.

We've had some middle of the night activity in our neighborhood this winter and just the other month we apparently slept through a 2:30am sting by the sheriff's department that ended up in our driveway when they had about half a dozen deputies surround and confront a group that had been checking cars on the street and drives to see if they were unlocked to steal from. Had 2 neighbors send me video and stills of the events and apparently the getaway vehicle pulled into our drive and 10 seconds later the street was light up with sheriff vehicles and the getaway vehicle was eventually towed away.

I have pondered this but seems like a hassle cause the dog likes to go in and out frequently, and likes the huge front porch.

We do lock it at night. We have also had the middle of the night car bandits around. The getaway vehicle is one they stole before just going for stuff in cars based on neighbor’s doorbell cam. Our old dog stopped a theft from neighbor’s garage with his barking.

 

[cycloner29]

Knock at the door around 2am growing up on the farm I was about 10 years old. Guy at the door was covered in blood. Scared the crap out of me. Turns out our neighbors cows had gotten out and he hit it with his car. Cow was almost in frontseat. Windshield completely bashed in. I don't remember, but the I think the guy just had cow blood all over him. Talk about nightmares after that!!

 

[Sousaclone]

In college, I lived in the apartments right by the arboretum, behind where Taco Bell (now Dunkin I think) used to be. My dad comes for a visit and sleeps on my couch. I sleep soundly that night with no issues. When I get up in the morning, he has this tale to tell:

About 2AM there is a pounding on our door (our front door was exterior). My dad gets up, cracks the door and finds a very drunk dude in his tighty whiteys. Dude is asking to see Brent. My dad says "there's no one here by that name, you've got the wrong apartment" and closes the door. The dude starts pounding on the door again calling for Brent and to let him in. Dad cracks the door again and says to get lost, there is no Brent here, and shuts the door.

A few minutes go by and my dad hears a rustling coming from outside the door. He peaks out the blinds to find tighty whitey dude prying the screen off our front window. Dad pops the door open, tells him he's calling the cops. Dude runs off.

I never heard a minute of this and slept all the way through it.

Would this have been in 2004? One of my roommates friends had a very similar incident around Halloween that year...

 

[ImJustKCClone]

The woman who had the office next to mine for a year or so had a serious drinking problem, to be completely blunt. She kept it under control at work, but every now and again she would call me in the middle of the night, drunk off her ass, and "air her grievances"...basically accusing me of sabotaging her work (despite the fact that our two jobs were TOTALLY unconnected) and her life. I would just hang up. Next day she'd be all nice & friendly again.

I guess she was what you would call a "mean" drunk.

 

[Bipolarcy]

Thanks so much to @Bipolarcy for this one! He has a great story that I'm hoping he'll share below, but here's the setup question:

Have you ever had a random person show up at your door in a very weird situation?

Or, to expand on it, have you received a weird phone call?

I remember receiving a call one time at 3 am asking me if I was a tow company. There was some beeping and stuff in the background. In my half-awake stupor, I said "wrong number" and hung up. At the time, my husband worked at a hospital, and I was still in that ridiculous state where you're not awake so you're not thinking rationally at all. So somehow I convinced myself that either he was cheating on me with a nurse or someone on staff, and that they'd broken HIPAA rules and looked up my number in my patient chart to call me and stalk him. I got good and stewed up about this wild leap in logic until I fell back asleep.

A few days later I was driving home from Des Moines with a friend, and telling her about this situation and how I hadn't been rational, but was it possible, etc. I was explaining what had happened - when the truck for the tow company the caller had asked me if I was drove up right beside us... and I saw that their number was one off from my cell.

Unfortunately, I've had several experiences like this, the latest being just last Friday. A guy on a motorcycle shows up at my door asking me if I know his wife, an Amanda or Mandy Gregory. I told him I'd never heard the name before. He said, "that's funny, because her car was parked in your driveway a couple of days ago." I said "My driveway?"

Now my driveway is on a street that was expanded from two lanes to 5, so it is very short and barely enough room for my vehicle, which very rarely ever leaves that spot. So for her car to be parked in my driveway, it would nearly have it's a$$ end hanging out in the road, or at least on the sidewalk. I said no car was parked in my driveway. It was obvious this guy, who was probably in his early 30s, was trying desperately to contain his rage because he thought I was seeing his wife on the side. I'm in my late 60s and not exactly a chick magnet, if you know what I mean. I think when he realized that, he finally started to calm down a bit and eventually left.

I got to thinking because just a month or so before that, I got a text from a former co-worker and neighbor who asked me about a domestic disturbance that supposedly occurred at my house, where a woman got beat up by her husband, or significant other and ran down to another neighbor's house to get away. My former coworker said that this other neighbor insisted that it had occurred at my house. Nope. Nothing like that occurred here. I live alone.

Thinking it might be more than a coincidence that two such strange stories happened less than a month apart, I asked the former co-worker if the name Amanda or Mandy Gregory rang a bell and she said the domestic violence victim had a different first name and she didn't know a last name.

But that was not the first time a jealous husband has showed up at my door asking embarrassing questions. The first time, I was guilty as charged. That happened 20-plus years ago when I found a hook-up on the internet. In my defense, I never knew she was married or with someone else.

Apparently, the husband went through her browser history to find me and he came knocking at my door. A big African-American guy who wanted to beat the snot out of me. I think it gave him pause when he saw I was nearly the same size as him if not a little bigger. I told him she's the one who contacted me. It was her he should be mad at, not me because she never told me she was with someone else. I don't know if I talked him down or if my size surprised him, but he decided it wasn't worth it and left.

 

[throwittoblythe]

Would this have been in 2004? One of my roommates friends had a very similar incident around Halloween that year...

It's about that time, but would've been at least 2005 or later. I know we didn't move into this apartment until 2005.

 

[CYdTracked]

Not exactly my story but I was still kind of involved with this one back in my college days... I was a RA in Towers and there was a student security officer who also had the same first name as me but lived off campus I believe. One of the hall directors was friends with him and had told him if he ever needed a place to crash after the bars or something just call him if he couldn't drive home. Well apparently 1 weekend he took him up on that offer after closing the bars and called him from the phone outside of the building drunk. The hall director apparently thought it was me and told him he was almost home, he just needed to go to the next building over and he was home. Well the next day he told this story to one of the RA's on his staff and told him to have a talk with me about it because he's friends with me and make sure I didn't have an alcohol problem. Here's the hitch to the story... I was not in Ames that weekend I went home to my parents!

It get's better... So he tells my Hall Director this story as well which she obviously knew I had taken the weekend off to go home. So instead of telling him this she knew we had a 1 on 1 that week and wanted to mess with him so she told me what he had told her and said she was going to call him over to her office to "have a talk with us about what I should do about it." He comes over and he starts to tell me what happened and how something about something about how it was not a good choice. So my HD asks him "do you know where he was at this weekend?" He says "yeah he as drunk outside my building calling me after 2am." She turns to me and says "tell him where you were at" which I smiled and said I was home for the weekend so it couldn't have been me. He looks confused now and you can see the wheels are spinning and he says "well if it wasn't you then who the heck was it?..... AH CRAP!" and he realizes it was the other guy. "Guess I ought to call him up an apologize for turning him away!" A few days later the guy he asked to talk to me about "my problem" confronts me and I tell him this story and he gets a good laugh out of it too.

 

[Cyclones_R_GR8]

Many moons ago, about 1985, I was sitting in my apartment and the phone rang. I answer and a female says in a seductive voice "hello" so I answer "hello" back in my attempt at a seductive voice.
She continues on to ask me "How are you doing" so I reply back still attempting a seductive voice that I was doing just fine and asked her how she was doing. This goes back and forth about another minute and then she says, still using the seductive voice, "So, can I speak to xxxxxxx" (some female name).
I reply back still attempting a seductive voice "You've got the wrong number"
Long pause and she now speaks in a regular, albeit panicked voice "This isn't xxx-xxxx?"
I say no it isn't. After a shorter pause she apologizes. I replied No, thank you for the thrill.

 

[Cybone]

The second week or so when I moved to Austin, TX, I got a knock at my apartment door. It was a younger woman who went on to explain they she used to live in my apartment. She asked if I had received any packages in the mail for her. I told her I had not. She begged me to check again.

Sure enough there was a package for her, she tore into it and explained it was her ACL bands. I had no idea what she was talking about. I looked at her knees, thinking she had a knee injury, but she was walking fine.

I relayed the story to my co-workers and they explained that I had given her the Austin City Limits festival bands. I was doing “Austin” wrong.

 

[Ms3r4ISU]

Not idea, but this one was at slutty level made up. One reason I was excited when I answered the door. Maybe they thought it would attract more people?

Also, I don't think they go out alone. At least all who've come to my house are in pairs. And they're guys.

 

[BCClone]

Also, I don't think they go out alone. At least all who've come to my house are in pairs. And they're guys.

There was a group of them. I did notice one across the street in a suit and maybe another at the neighbors. Been 25+ years so outside of her, it’s not fully clear.

 

[mywayorcyway]

I received a few hard pounding knocks on the door of my house a few years ago in the middle of the day. I open it up and say hello. A guy around sixty just stares at me and says "soooooo....." and I look at him and say "who are you, and what do you want?" He angrily says "are you serious? Rent! I want my rent money, now!" I wasn't prepared for that and snapped back, "I've owned this house for five ****ing years, and you have five ****ing seconds to get off my property." He opened his mouth but no words came out, and something in his head clicked. He turned around and walked away.

He came back a few minutes later with a check from our neighbors house which he owned, and he sheepishly apologized. He said he was lucky I didn't knock his teeth out and he said I looked like I was close to doing so. Offered to have his son mow my yard for the summer! I declined.

 

[ScottyP]

I received a few hard pounding knocks on the door of my house a few years ago in the middle of the day. I open it up and say hello. A guy around sixty just stares at me and says "soooooo....." and I look at him and say "who are you, and what do you want?" He angrily says "are you serious? Rent! I want my rent money, now!" I wasn't prepared for that and snapped back, "I've owned this house for five ****ing years, and you have five ****ing seconds to get off my property." He opened his mouth but no words came out, and something in his head clicked. He turned around and walked away.

He came back a few minutes later with a check from our neighbors house which he owned, and he sheepishly apologized. He said he was lucky I didn't knock his teeth out and he said I looked like I was close to doing so. Offered to have his son mow my yard for the summer! I declined.

He must be a really nice landlord.

 

[mywayorcyway]

He must be a really nice landlord.

To be fair to him, the neighbors were flakes and later they did bail on three months rent after he had postponed eviction yet again. They left the house in shambles, in the middle of the night, leaving almost all of their crap behind. Filled a 30 foot trash container.

I did get to know the landlord's son who was the "property manager". He was my age! When he offered to "have his son mow the yard", I thought he meant a 14 year old, not a 40 year old.