Classic Prudie: My creepy relative won’t let anyone set foot in his house.

[minoanmiss]

Could he be hiding something terrible?

I have an older relative in his mid-40s, who is, for lack of a better term, a creeper. His mother was a wonderful woman with one huge blind spot: her youngest son. She babied him incessantly and supported him financially. He never moved out of her home, is socially stunted, and though friendly on the surface, can be a huge temper-tantrum-throwing man-boy. Unfortunately he also has a habit of stalking women. We’re not aware of any violence, but he will frequently fixate on a woman, usually a polite co-worker, waitress, store clerk, etc. He then drops by often and uninvited, brings little gifts, and talks constantly about this nonexistent relationship. When he is rebuffed, he will follow the woman after work until she complains to management, at which point he is fired or banned from the place of business. The family is at a loss as to what to do. After his mother died, the very first thing he did was change all the locks on her house and vehemently tell all family members that nobody was allowed on “his” property. Unwilling to make a fuss, everybody has respected this, and not a single person has even attempted to set foot in that house in over three years. Last week he was in an accident that shattered several bones. His sister rushed to the scene and his first words to her were, “If I have to stay in the hospital, I’d better not catch anybody in my house!” At the hospital, he asked for a phone charger and ear buds, and when his brother offered to pick them up at the house, he demanded a new set be purchased—and they were. He was told he could convalesce at home, which was made completely handicap-accessible for his mother, but he refused to have any family members or caregivers come there. So he is going to a rehab facility four hours away for several months. He has demanded his siblings purchase all new clothing and toiletries for him so they don’t go in the house. I have two questions: 1) What do we do about his behavior? 2) What are your thoughts on poking around his house while he’s in rehab? His paranoia and the news about the Cleveland captives has me a little concerned that there is evidence of violence or really unhealthy obsession there or worse.
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—Scared Kin

Dear Kin,
Hearing your account it’s impossible not to wonder whether your relative’s home is another 2207 Seymour Avenue, the Cleveland house of horrors where Ariel Castro kept three women captive for a decade. In cases like Cleveland, the monsters hiding kidnap victims relied on the natural reluctance of people to force the issue, or the door, and inquire as to what was going on in the mysterious house with the unwelcome mat. Sure it’s more likely that your relative, who’s a disturbed and disturbing person, has simply filled the place with embarrassing memorabilia of his various obsessions that he doesn’t want anyone to see. But since your account is going to make the hair on the back of the neck of many readers stand on end, I agree with you that it’s important to find out what’s going on. Your late grandmother may have enabled and indulged her perpetual baby, but there is no reason for the rest of the family to quake at the idea of a Rumpelstiltskin-like fit from him. You notably put quotation marks around “his” property when referring to his mother’s house. Now that your relative is going away, this is a propitious time to clarify just who owns it. His siblings have to talk to a lawyer and find out the legal status of the property. They should also mention their concerns about his past behavior and his paranoia about anyone going inside. I hope it turns out his siblings have a clear right to enter and inspect the property. If so, call a locksmith, and once everyone’s in they should call out, “Is anybody here?” Look for locked doors and false fronts. I hope all you find are dust bunnies. As for trying to reform your relative, in the absence of his wanting to join the rest of his family in the real world, I don’t see that there’s much you can do to change his approach to life and romance. It’s kind of a miracle he hasn’t entered the criminal justice system, but for the sake of the innocent women who become his obsessions, his siblings should continue to keep a close eye on him. And carry an extra set of keys.

—Prudie

Comments

I'm a terrible person

[minoanmiss]

But all I can think is STORY IDEA STORY IDEA STORY IDEA

[ashbet]

OMG, I would commit ACTUAL MURDER if my nosy-ass relatives used me being incapacitated to “poke around” my house >:(

(My suspicion is that he’s a hoarder and is afraid of having the place condemned.)

[lemonsharks]

My first thought was hoarder and my second was "he has booby trapped the house"

[conuly]

That's how the Collyer brothers went out - hoarding + booby traps.

[shanaqui]

My assumption, primed by my own family, is hoarding, which has made me think of the book Planetfall by Emma Newman. Which doesn't have much in common with this letter, just with the assumptions my brain made about it. (Good book.)

ETA: I'd kinda hate my family being in my space, TBH. I have cupboards at my parents' house that I'm resisting letting them clear out, because I don't want them going through my stuff. That comes out of a lifetime of my mother's invasions of my privacy and refusal to grant me any kind of autonomy, so you know, there are valid reasons to be all "you know, I'd rather a new set of earbuds were bought than you look in my stuff". I absolutely did similar while at university. Not saying anything like that is going on here, necessarily, just that it's not actually a 100% guaranteed sinister thing.

(The cupboards are not locked or anything, but my dad is a better guard of my privacy than any dragon with his treasure. He's almost always there because of his disabilities and he has very strong opinions. My sister still lives with them too and shares said opinions. It'll be fine.)

[azurelunatic]

Hooray for guardian dragons!


There was a time before my depression was adequately medicated where I refused to let any family into my apartment. It hadn't sunk to the level of hoarding, but I was overwhelmed with the stack-up of failed chores and didn't want anyone to see me like that.

[melannen]

It's fairly unlikely that he's keeping living people captive there, or he probably would not have agreed to go elsewhere for several months with no notice.

There's a nonzero chance there's corpses though, not gonna lie. Maybe even ones he didn't kill himself.

LW, as someone in the sort of profession where I regularly encounter that sort of "creepy" man - if he can't even let temporary hired caregivers into the house, he is probably seriously mentally ill. (A significant percentage of them will quickly start sharing his paranoid delusions or ongoing compulsions with a service-industry female-assigned-by-him person who he has decided is On His Side, so, let's just say, it's a common comorbidity). Maybe he's a hoarder, maybe he has some kind of other obsession or delusion or anxiety disorder centered around the house, but he needs to be seeing a therapist (and likely one who can refer him to a psychiatrist.) And while I can't say a quick check for corpses is completely uncalled for, breaking into his space definitely won't help if it is a mental illness.

Also yeah, if there's any lack of clarity around legal ownership of the house or estate, you need to clear that up really quickly and this is a good time to do this. (It's possible the underlying issue with the house is that he thinks that letting other family members in the door will somehow undermine a legal claim he thinks he has to full ownership, legal-based fixations are pretty commmon with white dudes of this type.)

[minoanmiss]

OMG I forgot that you work in an adjacent field. If it's not too horrifying, can you expand on why there might be dead bodies in there?

[melannen]

Oh, I don't actually work in mental health, sorry if I gave that impression - I work in a library, which is ground zero for People Who Have No Other Socialization Opportunities Staying There All Day And Deciding They Have A Close Relationship With The Staff Because They Are Polite.

So I have heard a lot of stories about how people are being watched by the CIA through their teeth or their relatives break into their car if they look away from it for five minutes or if they just file this form to the Supreme Court their patent on electric cars will be validated and they will be a billionaire or if enough people sign this sheet of notebook paper the local government will be obligated to build a water-park on the vacant lot next door or they were fired from their job because the woman they followed home every night was possessed by Satan or they have to get on the computer because this nice Nigerian banker they were corresponding with just proposed marriage 0r ---- (And any of those people might have very firm justifications for why nobody else can go in their house.)

You just. You learn what to expect. And a lot of those people probably mask a lot harder with relatives than with customer service staff at places where they're regulars (the customer service staff don't argue with them).

I have never actually encountered a corpses situation in real life, I just think it's a lot more likely than living people being held captive. Both practically and statistically. (Do the relatives actually know for a fact that the mother's corpse was properly disposed of and isn't still in the house? just... wondering.)

[minoanmiss]

takes notes

[harpers_child]

It is not uncommon in hoarding situations for animals to enter the home, be unable to find their way back out, and die in the hoard. Most commonly insects, mice, rats, and little lizards. If animals are part of the hoarding, that can have bad outcomes.

Having helped intervene in hoarding situations I consider small insects and mummified lizards to not be too bad. Any insect bigger than a quarter I'm going to make someone else deal with the box. I don't do mammals at all.

[minoanmiss]

writes frantically Oh, I was imagining human corpses.

[melannen]

I mean, it *could* be human corpses, there are several *extremely* lurid cases of that. Mostly relatives though, and I think LW would notice if they had missing relatives? And a couple of cases of things like heavy drug users where somebody was visiting and overdosed and they just kicked them under the bed and carried on for months without doing anything. Also a reason to not let people in!

(And I mean he might be murdering people and storing them in his closets. That's still way more likely than live captives!)

But if you would like nightmares/horror story ideas, my first thought reading this letter was Carl Tanzler and Elena's mummy (feel free to NOT google that if you don't know it though.)

[minoanmiss]

I am so glad that I already know who Carl Tanzler is because I am not strong enough to learn such a thing at the current moment.

screams into my pillow

[bikergeek]

I watched one of Caitlyn Doughty's ("Ask a Mortician") videos about Carl Tanzler. *shudder*

[conuly]

That happens too, though usually it's less "murder" and more "totally overwhelmed, meant to get to that".

There was that case a few years ago in Brooklyn - what was it, 2014? 2015? - woman died and when they finally cleaned out all the garbage from her house they found her estranged son on the second floor. Except he wasn't estranged, he was just dead, and it's not clear whether or not she knew he was there. She'd been unable to manage stairs for years before her death.

[melannen]

Yeah. It's also not unlikely for someone with any of various disorders kind of related to hoarding to keep the remains of beloved pets around while they rot, even if they aren't classically hoarders. Or for people (mentally, emotionally, or physically) disabled enough to be living in other sorts of squalor to have rats or other pest animals die in the house, sometimes in quantities, and not do anything about it.

[bikergeek]

It's possible the underlying issue with the house is that he thinks that letting other family members in the door will somehow undermine a legal claim he thinks he has to full ownership, legal-based fixations are pretty commmon with white dudes of this type.

Like "allodial deed" or "allodial title", a thing commonly asserted by homeowners or landowners who've fallen victim to assorted other "sovereign citizen" type crap. Basically a belief that by asserting allodial title their land will be immune to having property taxes levied on it and to government seizure for any reason, including nonpayment of property or other taxes.

Of course, as with "sovereign citizen" status, there are a bunch of grifters going around who, for payment of suitable monies, will instruct you in how to claim allodial title over your land by going down to the county courthouse or land records office, and filing a bunch of official-looking (but totally bullshit) paperwork.

Like I said, this is in the same category with "the courts are admiralty courts because there's gold fringe on the flag" type "sovereign citizen" nonsense.

(If you get into reading about this at all, holy shit, is it ever a rabbit hole.)

[melannen]

Yeah, I've "helped" people with Sovereign Citizen stuff at the library. :/ (It, like most things, has gotten all mixed up with Q-Anon lately though.) I'm also currently on a jury at a federal courthouse with a historical exhibit about *actual* admiralty law, which is interesting...

But even without that, if the house's ownership didn't clearly come solely to him with the estate, he might be working from some misunderstanding of squatter's rights or tenancy law or something where if he blocks all possible owners from access to the house somehow for long enough, they lose any claim they have. He may think he's "tricking" them into losing their share of the estate by doing this.

[bikergeek]

It's possible he's misunderstanding "adverse possession", although then it's odd that he not only wants to exclude potential other claimants from the house but everybody else, too.

I think hoarding is the most likely explanation, here.

The "sovereign citizen" "allodial deed" nonsense isn't the exclusive province of white people any more. There are a bunch of people going around selling African-Americans on it, based on some idea that the government owes their "natural person" "sovereign citizen" selves some kind of reparations for slavery, and/or that because their "natural person" isn't recognized under the original US Constitution, they're not liable to paying federal income taxes. Wesley Snipes fell victim to one of these gonifs and that's how he ended up going to jail.

[melannen]

Well, it may not be 'anyone else' just a) potential claimants (family) and b) agents hired by the potential claimants for the purpose of fucking him over (could be literally anyone!! but the more the family insists the more likely.)

Paranoia is not fun.

[azurelunatic]

Corpses of what species? I'd vote for at least mouse, or whatever the local invasive small-to-moderate pest is.

[julian]

On the one hand, as Melannen says, there's probably some mental illness going on.

On the other hand, why is LW saying it's his property in quotation marks? Is there an actual question there, or is it, in fact, his house? Is he actually being demanding when he asks for these things (like the headphones), or does he request them, instead? Or, IOW, LW is slanting things A LOT.

But I mean. I hate people in my space. (Though less than my partner does.) So while I recognize the objective signs of an issue, I also sympathise.

[melannen]

I hope I didn't come off as unsympathetic, I try to be sympathetic to people in those circumstance! (Possibly that's why i hear so many of their stories.)

But I would be much more likely to go with the "LW's family are busybodies, he just doesn't want them in his space and LW is slanting things" if it weren't for the stalking. That doesn't really read like a family conflict that LW is putting in a bad light. Unless LW is outright making things up there, he is a stalker with a tenuous grasp on reality, and he has serious mental problems even if the house thing is a red herring.

[minoanmiss]

I have to admit, as sympathetic as I am to people not wanting our possessions rummaged by our unsympathetic family members, I do agree that the man's repeated incidences of stalking need to be factored in.

[cimorene]

+1. It's more likely just hoarding, but if he's hoarding it's also not a bad idea to at least check for active health risks. Not to mention that as melannen says above, the mere fact he's so secretive suggests he may be in need of help. But a violation of privacy should definitely be done legally!

[melannen]

I'm leaning against classic hoarding just because it sounds like the house was OK for visitors before the mother died, and locked up *immediately* after.

It definitely might have become a hoarding situation since, sometimes it happens on that order, but it seems like something other than "the house is shamefully full of junk" must have been the original reason. (Unless it was already an issue before Mom died and LW is just glossing that over.)

[julian]

No, no, you're fine, I was just reacting to the letter.

The stalking is, indeed, a big ol' red flag, and as reported seems *really* problematic, so: Yes, basically, you're right.