MAN PAID TEENS TO SPIT IN HIS FACE
A Southern California man was arrested in 2009 for allegedly paying a teenager $31 to spit in his face. According to a sheriff ’s statement the man also paid high school students to yell profanities and slap him in the face. His motive was unclear.
JAPANESE TOURISTS SUCCUMB TO PARIS SYNDROME
At least a dozen Japanese tourists a year have to undergo therapy after visiting Paris. The psychiatric problems are caused by a discrepancy between the tourists’ expectations and their actual experiences while visiting the French capital. The condition, known as “Paris Syndrome”, arises when their romantic vision of the city is shattered by a rude taxi driver or waiter. In 2006 alone, four traumatized Japanese visitors had to be sent home from France. Two women became convinced that their hotel was bugged and that there was a plot against them, another woman thought microwaves were attacking her, and a man believed he was the reincarnation of the French king Louis XVI.
WOMAN KEEPS POLICE TALKING FOR SEVEN HOURS
A woman who called the Roanoake, Virginia, Police Department set some kind of record by talking non-stop for seven hours and fifteen minutes. She called shortly before midnight to report a stolen watch but once that complaint had been dealt with she launched into a prolonged conversation which covered everything from politics to home furnishings. Busy officers answered other calls in the meantime but the woman just kept on talking. She finally ran out of steam around seven o’clock the following morning. She began to slur her words, then came what officers described as a soft bump followed by snoring.
NEIGHBOUR COMPLAINS ABOUT SNOWMAN’S BIG BREASTS
Police called on a woman in Kent, Ohio, in 2003 following complaints from a neighbour that a female snowman in her yard had disproportionately large breasts. Crystal Lynn’s snowman had celery for the eyes, a carrot for the nose and two blobs of snow for the breasts. Lynn told reporters: “The officer said that I should cut off her breasts, but I said no woman wants that.” In the end she agreed that the offending breasts be discreetly draped in a tablecloth.
FESTIVE BALLOONS LEAD TO FEARS OF ALIEN INVASION
Thousands of callers besieged a UFO hotline in Germany on New Year’s Eve 2008 after mistaking mini hot-air balloons for a mass alien invasion. The red and gold lights that hung eerily in the night sky had UFO watchers across the country rushing for the phone but turned out to be nothing more sinister than new Chinese-style paper balloons which are lifted by a tiny burner and then hover in the sky until the paper burns up.
MAN IS STOPPED FROM CHANGING NAME TO SANTA CLAUS
Even though Robert Handley did holiday work dressed as Father Christmas and had a car licence plate 1MSANTA, Ohio magistrates turned down his application to change his name legally to Santa Claus. Their reason was that children would be upset when he died. Announcing his intention to appeal, Handley said: “Children who believe in Santa Claus generally don’t read newspaper obituaries.”
CHEF DISCOVERED LIVING IN FREEZER
Immigration officials who raided a Chinese restaurant in Llandudno, North Wales, found the chef living in its freezer. The man – a Chinese national who had overstayed his visa – had removed the freezer door and laid out a bed inside. He was arrested and deported within 72 hours.
PRANKSTERS TURN HISTORIC STATUE INTO HOMER SIMPSON
On New Year’s Eve 2009, pranksters in Dunchurch, Warwickshire, turned the village statue of nineteenth-century benefactor and MP Lord John Scott into a replica of Homer Simpson, complete with yellow skin, bald head and pronounced overbite. The statue of Lord John, who died in 1860, was also dressed in Homer’s standard attire of white short-sleeved shirt and blue pants. It was not the first time the statue had undergone an overnight transformation. In previous years Lord John had been decorated in the guise of such icons as Harry Potter, Spiderman and Shrek.
WOMAN INCLUDES HERSELF IN HOUSE PRICE
Deven Trabosh included an unusual optional extra in the sale price for her four-bedroom home in West Palm Beach, Florida – herself. The 42-year-old single mother listed the home for $340,000 on a sell-it-yourself Internet site, but increased the price to $840,000 if the buyer decided to take her as part of the package. “I figured, let’s combine the ad because I’m looking for love and I’m looking to sell the house,” said the tanned blonde. Her daughter reportedly described her as “embarrassing”.
BOSNIAN SAYS ALIENS ARE TARGETING HIM
A Bosnian whose home was struck five times in the space of six months by meteorites told investigators in 2008 that he was convinced he was being targeted by aliens. Radivoje Lajic’s house in the village of Gornja Lamovite was always hit during heavy rainfall and he became so disconcerted that he had his battered roof reinforced with a steel girder. “I am obviously being targeted by extraterrestrials,” he said. “I don’t know what I have done to annoy them but there is no other explanation that makes sense. They are playing games with me. When it rains I can’t sleep for worrying about another strike.”
ODD SHOES RIDDLE STUMPS POLICE
Mystified German police were trying to work out in 2002 how a hoard of 19 size eight shoes and 19 size nine and a half shoes came to be dumped. All of the shoes were new and the same brand, leading detectives to suspect they had been stolen from a shop display. However the truth was considerably more bizarre. It turned out that they had been thrown away by a man with odd-sized feet and who, because of his imbalance, always needed to buy two pairs of shoes at a time, one in each size, before discarding one from each pair.
HUSBAND GIVES BIRTHDAY GREETING IN MANURE
Stuck for a novel way of wishing his wife Carole a happy 67th birthday, farmer Dick Kleis used a manure spreader to spell out “HAP B DAY LUV U” in a field visible from the couple’s home in Zwingle, Iowa. It took him three hours and four loads of liquid manure to create the message. “I was going to put a heart out there after the happy birthday,” he said, “but I ran out of manure.” His wife was surprisingly happy with the gift of more than 50 tons of dung. “He’s done weird things before for birthdays,” she told reporters, “but maybe not this weird.”
MAN COMES BACK FROM THE DEAD TO WIN LOTTERY – TWICE
An Australian man who was pronounced clinically dead after a massive heart attack lived to win the lottery twice in the space of two weeks. Bill Morgan’s heart stopped for 14 minutes and he spent 12 days in a coma in 1998 before defying the odds and pulling through. The following year a lottery win enabled him to buy a $17,000 car, and the story captured the imagination of a local TV station in Melbourne who filmed the 37-year-old truck driver returning to the store where he had bought the lucky ticket and re-creating the magic moment by scratching a duplicate card. As he did so, he held his face in disbelief at the realization that he had just scratched another winning ticket – this time for 250,000 Australian dollars ($170,000). “I’ve just won 250,000!” he exclaimed. “I am not joking! I don’t believe this is happening. I think I will have another heart attack . . .”
WOMAN IS STRANGELY ATTRACTED TO GARBAGE BAGS
An elderly woman dumped 12 kilos of garbage in a man’s garden in Owariasahi, Japan, in 2006 – just so that she could take home the bags. On 30 separate occasions, she picked up bags of household garbage from a collection spot, emptied the contents in a nearby garden and took the empty bags home. “I had an irresistible urge to collect rubbish bags,” she told police. “I don’t know why I wanted them.”
WOMAN TAKES REVENGE ON JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES
A mother-of-three, who claimed she had been visited by Jehovah’s Witnesses every month for 12 years, stormed into a hall in Peacehaven, East Sussex, during one of the religious group’s services in 2002 and began handing out free magazines. “I just wanted to see if they would like any copies,” she said, “as they have been doing to me month after month with The Watchtower. Nobody seemed to want them though”.
“MAN IMPERSONATED DEAD MOTHER FOR SIX YEARS”
A New York man was charged w
ith impersonating his dead mother for six years so that he could steal $117,000 in government benefits. Prosecutors said that following the death of his mother Irene in 2003, Thomas Prusik-Parkin wore a wig, thick make-up, nail polish, dark glasses, a long red dress and carried a cane and fake ID to collect benefit cheques, visit banks and even renew his dead mother’s driving licence. On each occasion he was said to have been joined by an accomplice, Mhilton Rimolo, who, posing as her nephew, would help the supposedly frail old lady to walk and communicate with officials. When members of the district attorney’s rackets squad arranged to interview Mrs Prusik in 2009, “she” turned up breathing through an oxygen tank. They claimed Prusik-Parkin wore a scarf around his neck to hide his Adam’s apple but failed to conceal his “rather large hands”. When arrested, he reportedly told authorities: “I held my mother when she was dying and breathed in her last breath, so I am my mother.”
MAN WEARING SUPERMAN T-SHIRT SAVES FAMILY FROM FIRE
Wearing just the Superman T-shirt that he was sleeping in, father-of-two James Irvine single-handedly saved his wife, their children, their two dogs and seven puppies from a fire that swept through their home in Stowmarket, Suffolk, in 2009.
FRIEND ATTACKED WITH KNIFE IN ROW OVER HAIRY BUTTOCKS
An argument between two friends over which of them had the hairiest buttocks escalated into a brawl which ended with one allegedly slashing the other with a knife. Emmanuel Nieves, 23, and Erik Saporito, 21, were talking in the parking lot of an apartment complex in Mansfield Township, New Jersey, when the hairy butt debate got out of hand. Nieves boasted that he had the hairiest ass but Saporito begged to disagree. As tempers became frayed, police said Nieves then pulled out a knife and slashed Saporito’s face and ear. A police spokesman remarked: “Some guys will fight over anything.”
GIRL CHANGES NAME FROM CHICKEN DUNG
A Chinese girl who was named Chicken Dung by her father had it legally changed in 2009 when she reached the age of 18. The girl was named Ji Shi, which means Chicken Dung, on the advice of a doctor after chicken manure had been used to treat her as a baby. Her father Zhu Xiansheng said: “She had a serious illness when she was one and we didn’t think she would survive, but a local medical practitioner advised us to paste her with chicken dung while taking medications he prescribed. She always hated the name but now at last she is no longer afraid to show anybody her ID card.”
ROLLERCOASTER RELATIONSHIP: WOMAN IN LOVE WITH FAIRGROUND RIDE
Amy Wolfe’s love life centres on objects rather than people. She has been in relationships with models of spaceships, the Twin Towers, a church organ, a banister, and the Empire State Building, but her main lover is an 80-foot-high fairground ride called 1001 Nacht, located at Knoebels, an amusement park in New York State, 80 miles from her Pennsylvania home. She joyously kisses, caresses and talks to the fairground ride and truly believes that it talks back to her. She has had a crush on 1001 for over 20 years, riding the machine 300 times a year and even gazing at a picture of it on her bedroom ceiling. “I was instantly attracted to him sexually and mentally,” she told reporters. “I wasn’t freaked out as it just felt so natural but I didn’t tell anyone about it because I knew it wasn’t ‘normal’ to have feelings for a fairground ride.” Sympathetic staff allow Amy to go on 1001 after the theme park has closed. “I tell him how much I’ve missed him and what I’ve been up to since my last visit. And I kiss the bits I can reach. Obviously we could never have sex where he lives because it’s public and it would be indecent, but I use photos of 1001 to help me in private. He makes me happier than any human ever could. I know we’ll be together forever.”
ANGRY AT BEING OFFLINE ON INTERNET STREET
After buying a house on Internet Street, Warsaw, Poland, Andrzej Gromek announced that he was selling it because he was unable to get a broadband connection.
GUN DUEL LEAVES BOTH PARTICIPANTS UNHARMED
Two old timers from Cleveland, Ohio, who decided to settle a long-standing feud with a gun duel in their apartment block, survived the experience without so much as a graze. Armed with antique pistols, the pair stood five feet apart in the hallway separating their apartments and each fired 12 bullets. Every shot hopelessly missed its target but left the walls peppered with bullet holes. Police officers speculated that the lack of accuracy may have been due to the fact that one antagonist needed a stick to prop himself up while firing and the other had difficulty seeing because of glaucoma.
WOMAN WINS COMPENSATION FOR SWEARING AT TOILET
A Scranton, Pennsylvania, woman who was arrested and prosecuted for swearing at her toilet was awarded $19,000 in compensation in 2008. Dawn Herb was arrested the previous year after a neighbour – an off-duty police officer – heard her swearing at her overflowing toilet through an open window. She was charged with disorderly conduct and faced the prospect of spending 90 days in jail, but the judge at her trial found her not guilty, ruling that swearing was not illegal and her language was constitutionally protected free speech.
GRANDMOTHER AUCTIONS SEAT IN FRONT OF TV
Fed up with petty arguments about who was going to sit in the favoured seat in front of the TV over Christmas, West Yorkshire grandmother Bev Stewart decided to auction the coveted spot on eBay. With 25 people descending on her Keighley home for Boxing Day, 2008, she advertised the seat as “a very comfy and popular item” and saw her daughter-in-law Alexis Stewart trump 17 other bids with a winning offer of $27. The enterprising grandma said: “There is always arguing over who gets it, it’s the perfect seat. It is straight in front of the TV and has got the coffee table at the side for you to rest your drink on and the TV remote, so everybody wants to sit there.”
HOMEOWNER DIGS 60-FOOT HOLE IN YARD IN SEARCH FOR GOLD
A homeowner digging for gold in his front yard said he got “carried away” and ended up with a hole that was 60 feet deep. Henry Mora, 63, began digging after his gold detector picked up a signal near the patio of his home in Montclair, California, in 2006. “I figured, well maybe there’s something down there, so I started digging,” he said. “I only intended to go down three or four feet but I started finding gold dust in the dirt and the detector was still beeping, so I kept digging.” The excavation was eventually brought to a halt when fire officials, concerned for public safety, ordered Mora and his two helpers to stop digging. He was then informed that he would have to fill in the hole.
EX-CON SAYS GOD TOLD HIM TO DRESS AS A RED PEPPER
A former drug dealer and jailbird who travelled around stores dressed as a red pepper said God made him do it. Kenny Carter, of Rosedale, Maryland, started dressing as Peppy the Pepper in 1997 following a message from the Almighty. “It was a very powerful worship,” he recalled. “I was crying out in the middle of church: ‘Oh God! Oh God!’ And suddenly I heard an audible male voice that said: ‘You will be a vegetable.’ I looked round, I thought I was going crazy. I began to worship again. I said: ‘Lord, speak to me.’ And I heard it again. ‘You will be a vegetable.’” Following the Lord’s guidance, Carter asked a friend to make him a costume, and his routine as a singing pepper proved so popular with shoppers that Super Fresh appointed him community relations manager and encouraged him to perform it at the company’s different branches.
FISHERMAN HAS DAY THAT GOT AWAY
Staffordshire milkman Steve Carte enjoyed a remarkable day’s fishing in 1995. He arrived at the River Teme only to find that all the best spots had gone, as indeed had his bait, which had fallen from his car roof somewhere between his home in Tamworth and the riverbank. So he hurried to Worcester to buy some more bait but in doing so collected a $25 fine for parking in a restricted zone. Back at the river, after nine hours’ patient but unsuccessful fishing he finally got a bite but as he reeled in a large barbel, he stepped on his other rod – worth $150 – breaking it into three pieces. The shock caused him to lose the fish. Giving up, he decided to head home but as he was loading up the car he noticed that it had a puncture. He managed to repair it and call
ed into a pub for a consolatory beer but there he succeeded in gashing his hand on a wall. When he finally arrived home, he accidentally locked all of his keys in his car and had to wait on the doorstep for several hours until his wife returned.
MAN CONFUSES VANDALISM AND SNOW
A Gambian man newly arrived in Germany called the police in December 2002 to report that vandals had painted his car white overnight. The “vandalism” turned out to be a snowfall, a form of weather with which the man was not familiar.
TEENAGER PAINTS 60-FOOT PHALLUS ON ROOF OF FAMILY HOME
Inspired by a TV show about Google Earth, a teenager climbed on to the flat roof of his parents’ house and daubed a 60-foot phallus in white paint. The parents of Rory McInnes did not discover their son’s rude artwork for a year until a passing helicopter spotted it on top of their home near Hungerford, Berkshire.
FORGOTTEN BIFOCALS WIN $3 MILLION JACKPOT
The Mammoth Book of Weird News (Mammoth Books) Page 52