Spoiler'd for length of text.
A few years ago, my sister-in-law and her family were living in #6 of a particular street address. The neighbours in #5 were unruly, loud, and destructive. They were also tenants rather than the owners, so there wasn't much that could be done about their treatment of the property.
About two years ago, my partner and I were babysitting his niece and nephew at #6. They were tearing up and down the driveway in the back yard on their bikes, playing "bike tag" and screaming a lot. The driveway has a gate on it, so they could only go as far as the gate, before turning around and racing back to the garage at the other end. My partner and I were sitting on the elevated deck parallel to the driveway and fence, watching them.
All of a sudden, a kid's head popped up over the fence. He said "hi!" and kept climbing until he was sitting on top of the fence. Now, this was an ordinary, Australian kid. He was kind of grubby, but it was summer and kids in summer are all kind of grubby. It's like a rule. If you're not filthy by the end of the day, you didn't do it right.
Our niece and nephew were about 3 and 4 at the time, so they weren't really interested in this older kid, who looked about 7 or so. They kept on screaming up and down on their bikes, and we kept an eye on them while talking to the kid.
"Did you just move in?" he asked, also watching the younger kids go tearing past.
"No, we're just babysitting today. Are you visiting the Delaneys?*" I asked him.
"Kind of, we're travellers," he said, and at that point, I noticed that there was an old-style, two-wheel aluminium caravan parked out past the shed, near the fence between the Delaney's place, and the house they back up to. It was pretty beat up, but properly parked and looked like it had been there a while. No truck attached, just the caravan and a post propping it up. The grass had grown long around the wheels where they couldn't mow it, so I reckon they'd been there a week or so. We kept making small talk, with me asking how long they planned to stay. The kid explained that he didn't know, that his mum liked the area, but his dad wasn't as keen. After a while, someone inside the Delaney house started screaming her head off about something, and he excused himself. Just like that, he popped over the fence and went into the house through the back porch. We didn't think anything of it, and forgot to even mention it to the sister-in-law when she got home. The next time we went to visit, the caravan was gone, so again, I didn't think to mention it.
Now, we have to fast forward about two years.
My sister-in-law and her family have moved out of that house, and bought #5 so that they can combine the two properties for redevelopment. They're going to build town houses and villas on the land, sell one, and rent the rest out. This has been in the works for about a year now, and they're in the process of drawing up papers for the official proposal. In the mean time, they've been renting out #5 to the Delaneys and #6 to a different family.
Yesterday, we met my partner's sister and her family at their mum's place for a Good Friday luncheon. After we ate, and everyone was enjoying their tea, the sister-in-law brought up the development plans. One thing led to another, and soon we were talking the Delaneys in #5, and how they're as much trouble as ever. Her husband joked that he wishes they'd just burn the place down and be done with it, that it would save them trouble with demolition and asbestos removal. We all had a laugh, but my partner took it a bit more seriously: "They've always been like that, though. Right? What can you do?"
"Nah, yeah. I suppose," the sister-in-law said, and just kind of shrugged. "They've just wrecked the place and I never know what's coming next."
At this point, I'm reminded of the kid on the fence, and I perked up a bit to say: "Like that time with the travellers that stayed with them, how'd that go?"
"I've always wondered the same, how long did they stay?" My partner joined in.
His sister and her husband both looked at us like we'd lost it, and at the same time said: "Travellers?"
So I recounted the story of the kid climbing over the fence, and my partner chimed in about the caravan being parked out back. His sister interrupted us all of a sudden.
"That's not possible," she said. "Lhia, there were never any travellers staying with them. They've never had anybody stay with them. And they couldn't have gotten a caravan back there even if they tried."
"Yeah, Lhia," her husband added, a bit more slowly. He was still looking pretty concerned, though. "They had to ask us to help them get that trampoline in, since they couldn't just drive it through."
"Why not?" asked my partner, looking exceedingly confused. "They could just take it up the driveway."
And that's when it dawned on me. The property for #5 is arranged oddly. Their "driveway" is a little loop in front, rather than a long drive that leads into the back like at #6. The house spans the full property on one side, and is fenced off, then grown in with huge palms on the #6 side. There's nowhere for them to bring a caravan through, and there's no alley or secondary access point. In short: the caravan could not physically have been put into that yard, and removed again, short of using a crane.
I explained this to my partner, who was looking more and more green the longer the conversation went on, and his sister just looked at us both and said: "... now I really hope they burn it down."
*name changed, obviously; the rest of this story is being retold with as little embellishment as possible (since I can't recall exact conversations word-for-word, and they'd be pretty boring because we danced around the "that's impossible!" bit for a good five minutes), but it would appear that we encountered a ghost two years back
Having talked to some people since then, we're not convinced it was a ghost. One friend has decided it was a dimensional slip, and that we briefly overlapped with another "universe" which is otherwise identical to our own in most ways. She said in an amused tone that she'd love to hear what that kids' parents had to say about the strangers on the porch next door.