Sometimes reports like the following two will yield “yeah, me too,” or “actually, here’s what that was about” – so toward that end, here are two notes that arrived in the WSB inbox late last night, one from the Genesee area, one from Highland Park:

First, from Jen in Genesee:

I live near the corner of 46th and Dakota. My husband and I just arrived home from dinner [Friday night] to find a suspicious person standing in front of our house. The individual had completely concealed his or her face with a bandana and large coke-bottle glasses. They appeared to be carrying a bag of some sort with a sign stating “Stop Stalking” (or something to that effect). As soon as we pulled into the driveway they began to wander off, in an unsteady gait, south on 46th and then turned east up Genesee hill.Not sure if they were up to no good, but certainly a strange encounter.

And from DM in Highland Park:

This seems like the fastest way to compare notes with my general neighborhood (Holden/15th Ave SW/ Highland Park). We do have a block watch, but I was curious if anyone in our general neighborhood vicinity has had this particular experience:

My neighbor called me at 5:15 am (Friday) morning. She asked if anyone had banged on my door at 5am. Evidently, someone “banged” on her door at 5am. Because she was still half asleep when she heard the banging, she thought it might be me, or any number of semi-reasonable scenarios that could go through your head at that time of the morning. She opened her front door to find a six foot-plus man standing there, that she didn’t know. He asked her if she had a cell phone he could use, claiming that he needed to call 911 because he’d run out of gas and he didn’t want his car to be towed. She was shocked to see this guy standing there. She woke up fully, told him “no” and closed the door. She was very shaken and called me 15 minutes later. We were on the phone for a while. I suggested she call the non-emergency number (I was half asleep as well) since half an hour had passed since it’d happened. I assured her the police would want to know.

When I spoke with her this evening she said that she DID try to call the non-emergency number for the police early this morning after we spoke, but she said it was nothing but recorded messages. Since then we have agreed to ALWAYS call 911 when something troubling has happened, no matter how much time has passed or how asleep we are, and we will never open the door if we don’t know who’s banging on it. May seem like a no-brainer, but sometimes there are those moments where you simply react before you think.

ANYWAY, I felt I should mention this troubling experience to the broader area of my neighborhood.