The Neighborhood Fort

… continued from Neighborhood Secrets.

The creepy, run down house two doors down was finally painted and the yard cleaned up. The new renters seem fine, so we put the mess from the previous occupants behind us. The dust had only been settled for a couple of weeks, when odd things began to happen with a house around the corner. On a peaceful morning stroll with my dog (Max), I noticed what appeared to be a motley-looking child’s play-fort built in the front yard. I didn’t know who lived there, but figured some family with grade school kids.

<This is not the same house, but the same eerie Spanish moss hung low in the yard with the fort.

The following morning Max and I made our way toward that same house again. This time, in addition to the fort, there were a myriad of items placed intricately on the driveway into shapes … almost like crop circles. I squinted from across the way, but couldn’t pinpoint exactly what items were used for this unusual work of art on a driveway. Plus, the house looked empty.

The third morning we walked past the house, the fort had disappeared, but the crop circles remained in the driveway. Along with Spanish moss, items from junkyards dangled from the large trees, and an older man sat on a beach chair in the front yard. He appeared in desperate need of a bath and grooming. Wearing disheveled, dirty clothes with a knotted beard and ratty hair, he whittled away at something. A small, mangy dog sniffed the ground around his chair.

That night I asked my husband if he’d noticed anything funny about the house around the corner. The words barely left my mouth and he was describing the same things I had seen. We thought maybe the man was a vagrant using the vacant grounds as his home. But, we  live in a deed restricted community, and there are sectioned off subdivisions behind cement walls. How did this guy find that particular house among thousands?

Several weeks went by, and each day, different shaped crop circles popped up in the driveway. The man sometimes whittled in his chair, or he paced around the house talking to himself. Weird scribbles appeared on the garage door as if drawn with crayon. Sometimes, he left the front door and garage doors wide open, which meant he had access to the house. Several piles of junk began to grow on the garage floor.

One day a hand written sign pasted onto the mailbox said, STOLEN DOG. MUST RETURN NOW. The next day the sign was gone, and I saw the dog sniffing around again. It’s not surprising for an unleashed dog to wander off.

I called our Homeowners Association to report these odd occurrences, and they told me they were aware of the situation.

“We’re working on getting him removed. In the mean time, make sure not to walk your dog past there anymore, and tell your other neighbors to stay clear of that house.”

That was not about to happen. Most of us neighbors passed there to exit the subdivision. Click here to read the rest of this story.