11 ms·

The House That Vanished

154 points by philbo 5y ago

danuker 5y ago
The solution to this is video surveillance. But in the EU, make sure not to record public land.
- fxtentacle 5y ago
  Or daily satellite photos. Nowadays, the resolution is good enough to spot these changes.
  - unixhero 5y ago
    Zoom Enhance Enhance
    - fxtentacle 5y ago
      Nowadays you can just rent a Chinese military satellite for the few minutes that it'll be above your house. You'd be surprised at their resolution ;) Of course, there's also publicly available US offerings like "SecureWatch® is the premier cloud-based subscription service for secure and timely access to Earth Intelligence, simplifying your ability to map, monitor and detect change for any location on the globe at a moment’s notice." EDIT: Found the price info for satellite rental again. $6300 per 30 seconds at 15cm per pixel resolution.
  - danuker 5y ago
    Detecting that your house is gone is pointless. A satellite photo does not show you who demolished it.
    - MayeulC 5y ago
      It tells you when, though. And could give some cues like vehicle paths.
- na85 5y ago
  People demolishing your house while you're gone is a social problem and requires a social solution. Being a good neighbor is how you solve this problem.
  - konschubert 5y ago
    I agree with the first part of what you said, but regarding the second part: We don’t know that he was a bad neighbor and even if he was, that’s not a reason to demolish someone’s house.
    - fxtentacle 5y ago
      You can't really be a good neighbor if you don't show up for 8 years.
      - CraneWorm 5y ago
        I consider that a perfect neighbor.
        pjerem 5y ago
        Haha, was going to say the same :D
  - kolp 5y ago
    People demolishing your house is a criminal act. Your proposed solution implies that the victim was somehow to blame for this crime, by not being a good neighbour.
  - yreg 5y ago
    That's victim blaming. The proper solution is teaching people to not burn down other people's houses.
    - pessimizer 5y ago
      Or teaching them to burn down people's houses. If someone had just set it on fire, it wouldn't have been mysterious or interesting.
- anotherman554 5y ago
  I can't imagine a surveillance system is going to be functional for 8 years without someone doing maintenance. Sounds like the guy abandoned the house.
MrBuddyCasino 5y ago
> He says he bears no ill-will towards the islanders and feels he has forgiven those he believes wronged him. Good for him, this is spiritually healthy. But if this happened to me, and I knew exactly who it was, and justice would fail me, I'm pretty certain I'd choose a very different path.
- kleiba 5y ago
  I don't think you have to be a Christian to subscribe to the thought that the idea of "turning the other cheek" - as unintuitive as it may seem - is more healthy in the long run than "an eye for an eye".
  - robbedpeter 5y ago
    That's becoming harder to see, it seems. Liberal, democratic governments are supposed to maintain our various social contracts by dint of a granted monopoly on the use of violence or force. Laws and justice systems are there as tools for governments to exercise justified and escalating force to elicit compliance with social contracts, e.g. social order. When enforcement fails, the social contract is broken, and an individual may find that they are left with no better course of action than to exercise the force that was inappropriately withheld. This guy could be justified in disappearing those who disappeared his house, if left with no better recourse and his property remains under threat. Basic tit for tat game theory overrides morality when social order breaks down.
    - Yoric 5y ago
      > This guy could be justified in disappearing those who disappeared his house, if left with no better recourse and his property remains under threat. Basic tit for tat game theory overrides morality when social order breaks down. Disappearing their house, surely? Not them personally.
    - ZanyProgrammer 5y ago
      You act like this is the first time you’ve heard of a crime taking place and the authorities are unable to prosecute the offenders. It’s not the decline of private property rights and the end of modern western civilization.
yosito 5y ago
He left the house apparently unattended for 8 years on an island of 120 people... not really surprising that someone would burn it down because they didn't like the sight of it.
- aivisol 5y ago
  Well, he did buy the house (article says) not built it, so the sight of the house probably was there already for years if not for decades. They most probably didn't like that the house was bought by outsider.
- smcl 5y ago
  I'd argue that it is very surprising that someone would wreck a house simply because they wanted a better view. What to me is surprising was that nobody bothered to contact the owner of the house, and that everyone responded that it was some mysterious act of god (a whirlwind or "a strange glow in the night sky") instead of just confessing the real reason. Remote communities can be weirdly insular and hostile to outsiders. We moved from a city to a village when I was 7 years old, I was still considered an outsider and treated with suspicion when I (gladly) moved to the capital for university aged 17 and never looked back. Edit: he was contacted but it wasn't particularly honest :)
  - dataflow 5y ago
    > nobody bothered to contact the owner of the house Did they mention anything about this one way or the other? Maybe they didn't know who the owner was or how to get a hold of him? Or maybe they did try to contact but didn't get a response? Unless I missed some part of the passage.
    - Scarblac 5y ago
      It says this: > The reason Neville had returned to the island in the first place was a letter from the local council warning this house had been damaged by a storm, but an engineer’s report found that the house was most likely brought down by mechanical means. So he was contacted, by the local council, and they lied to him. Sounds to me like the island as a whole decided he wasn't going to come live in his house anymore and it was in the way, but they had to keep that secret of course.
fxtentacle 5y ago
I can imagine how the others on the island decided on that course of action. If there's a house decaying for 8 years without anyone visiting, it's not too difficult to assume that nobody will ever return before that house naturally decays. So they just sped up what would happen anyway. But what I find remarkable is how strong the "don't snitch" spirit was in that community. I mean the deed was obviously done and surely people knew who did what. It almost appears as if most people in that community did not like Neville Presho that much ...
- a012 5y ago
  The population on the island was just 120, I can feel it's like the community in Hot Fuzz (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425112/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425112/) but less dramatic, it's still a closed community though.
  - bluebubble56 5y ago
    Yeah, with a community that small, I can see them managing to keep it amongst themselves. Especially since this guy was "an outsider."
  - progre 5y ago
    I was thinking "Wicker Man" https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0070917/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0070917/ Ah this is great: The *police in Wicker Man is played by the same actor as the old neighbourhood watch guy in Hot Fuzz! Edit: He would have been about 42 at the time of filming Wicker Man
- wirrbel 5y ago
  What baffles me is, if you leave a house FOR YEARS, why don't you hire a neighbour for upkeep? I mean every now and then a roof tile must come off in a storm that needs to be refitted, a house that you don't heat in winter starts to rot, etc. pp. I can actually see that in a moderately short time span of 8 years a lot of decay can happen naturally after which 'hands-on' neighbours might have just not felt too bad to tear down the remains.
kolp 5y ago
I'm Irish. Just for context, Tory Islanders have a certain reputation dating back many centuries. The word Tory comes from the old Irish word for bandit.
- FerretFred 5y ago
  That still applies ;-)
redis_mlc 5y ago
This happens every day, all day in Detroit. The police do occasional helicopter overflights, but there's an endless number of "brick thieves." Items like aluminum doors go for $5 a piece at the local bar, and you can do "custom orders."
- pessimizer 5y ago
  But not enough, at least in Chicago. Abandoned homes are garbage tip rat farms.
  - redis_mlc 5y ago
    I'm curious how Detroit and Chicago are different. It might be that Detroit residents have had more practise destroying their city, whose population has fallen from 2 million to 800,000 in 50 years. Stealig and selling bricks is literally sabotage. The city was partially destroyed in the 1969 riots and never rebuilt, plus thousands of residential fires per year, so that's 52 years of dystopian living like Mad Max. (Eminem's "8 Mile" album and film refers to the road where city taxes extended to. After Detroit imposed the tax, companies and workers migrated beyond 8 Mile Road to avoid paying it.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8_Mile_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8_Mile_(film) Richard Wolff, the virulent Communist, has a lecture whining about how capitalism is responsible for the destruction of Detroit, and how the public (ie. taxpayers) should have paid to rebuild it. His lecture is nonsense to people who lived there, as the real problems are city mis-management (taxation, education, leadership, city council, etc.) https://www.democracynow.org/2013/7/25/richard_wolff_detroit_a_spectacular_failure https://www.democracynow.org/2013/7/25/richard_wolff_detroit... Anyway, Detroit is a microcosm of what is happening in America today, where Democrat mayors are destroying what took over 200 years to build. The sobering reality is that if you encourage lawlessness, your city will get burned down and companies and taxpayers will flee in droves.
aaron695 5y ago
> Neville and his solicitor commenced civil legal proceedings, alleging that an islander had decided that Neville’s house was blocking his view of the sea... and had decided to get rid of it. Clearly since the people on the island are human beings they too would hate with a passion anyone who did this. So, there's a huge part of the story missing. No one wants to lose property rights either. If you leave the island, people might destroy your stuff would scare anyone.
- pjc50 5y ago
  > Clearly since the people on the island are human beings they too would hate with a passion anyone who did this. Other way round: since they're human beings they have loyalty among each other, and a relationship structure they're unwilling to compromise. Destroying the house of a resident obviously wouldn't stand, but who's going to be a snitch for the benefit of the outsider? This happens a lot in abuse situations. You will find out afterwards that a lot of people knew to some extent what was happening, but were unwilling to have the confrontation that would result from speaking out about it, or to put up with the long term social consequences of being the person who spoke up.
  - dclowd9901 5y ago
    > but who's going to be a snitch for the benefit of the outsider? I would, but I also have something of an antagonistic streak and a finely tuned sense of justice. I imagine there are many people out there, even in a small community of 120, who would have no problem sticking it to the establishment out of spite. It doesn’t take a big community to sow a faction of dissidents.
    - meltedcapacitor 5y ago
      Your "finely tuned sense of justice" is just a way to say everyone who disagrees with you is a piece of shit. Very nice.
- underwater 5y ago
  The law is just an agreement with a large group of people that says "don't do anything bad and we'll watch out for you". These people have just replaced that with their own informal arrangement. They probably prefer their got-your-back arrangement because they trust their neighbours more than they trust people outside the community. In addition it tips the scales in their favour because their law doesn't need to protect everyone equally. In this case outsiders are not afforded the same benefits as islanders. They just need a reasonable belief that they won't be steamrolled by the actual law, which comes from having a tight knit community where people don't run to the police. You see the same pattern amongst cops, the mob, remote communities, etc.
helsinkiandrew 5y ago
If he bought a house and then left it empty for 8 years when he moved to New Zealand then he has nobody to blame but himself - holiday homes left vacant for 11 months of the year can be a huge blight on a small community, but to leave it empty and unmaintained for 8 years when you move to the other side of the world and then be shocked and upset that it is no longer there is hard to believe.
- saiya-jin 5y ago
  Seriously, WTF? Its his private property. There is legal system last time I checked, and citizens should abide by it. Some mob rules about 'blight on a small community' perfectly ignore that the same fucked up community a) let the house be destroyed by some arrogant a-hole neighbor; b) knew perfectly well who it was; c) lied him & police straight to face, including priest. These were his childhood friends and 'friendly neighbors'. Because of sea view? That's one fucked up small community. Defending such behavior takes some serious moral twisting or plain absence to make it look OK.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - helsinkiandrew 5y ago
    I'm not saying that it was right - I'm saying that's what would be expected. Foreigners buying holiday homes have long been hated by small communities - particularly in Ireland and Wales and targets for arson. They can make property too expensive for locals and reduce demand for local businesses. A holiday home would be maintained but leaving a coastal property empty for 8 years it would likely it would also be an eyesore - this wasn't some farmhouse in the middle of nowhere it was 'downtown'.
  - pjc50 5y ago
    > These were his childhood friends No, he was an outsider who moved to the island. As with a lot of comments on crime, there is a difference between "explaining" and "exculpating". I agree that "explaining" usually makes it look like the victim's fault.
ORioN63 5y ago
There's a narrative that I hear often about Corvo island: Corvo is a small island in the Azores archipelago, which is home to less than 500 habitants. Every time a police officer, joins the island, it usually has a bit of a tough time, as it tries to write fines and issue warnings to the small population. The small population, not only disregard its orders, but they actually shut them out. Since there's very few establishments, the police officer, eventually, has to comply with the population. To be honest, I don't know how much truth there is, in this story, but I don't find it hard to believe.
- dclowd9901 5y ago
  It’s almost impossible to imagine this in light of the “all or nothing” approach American law enforcement has toward its job. Would it really be as simple as ignoring the police that would undermine their authority?
  - pjc50 5y ago
    It only works with a lone police officer. It's extremely hard to cope with being totally socially excluded on a remote island. Any situation where the police themselves can form a community because there's enough of them, this approach won't work. (I would note that one of the great American novels, To Kill A Mockingbird, deals precisely with the loneliness of trying to administer justice without community support) Then there's horror classic The Wicker Man, about a police officer sent to a remote island to investigate a vanished girl and wall of silence ...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - jfoutz 5y ago
    it's a question of scale. in a small town of 120, yes, absolutely. In a city of a million, it's hard to get everyone to hold the line. A few fall, which causes more to lose their nerve, and more fall, and authority is enforced. but a group of say 500? that know each other on sight? Sure. I grew up in a small town in the US southwest. There's a reason Texas has successful defenses for murder that were "he needed killing". It can be terrifying to be on the wrong side of a popularity contest.
jfoutz 5y ago
This is baffling. It's a good hook to listen to the podcast, but I'm not going to. My second thought was about insurance. The house is gone, it's up to their investigator to determine the cause. In the worst case, they say, too bad. thanks for the premiums. My first thought was to build a big ass fence at the property line. Generally be an ass, using my property in the least helpful way possible. given the dearth of information about the story I'm still a bit befuddled. given the timeframe 1994, it's understandable there isn't much available on the internet. I doubt an island of 120 had a local paper, I doubt even more that the archives would be online. Apparently no records were found for the court case. There's a temptation to victim blame, there's a temptation to think Presho and Digger cooked up a scheme to get a little attention for the island and Presho's career. I think there's more information, but it seems unattainable. He won the court case, but got a pittance. There are no answers from the trial. In the end, I suspect this is a story that will end up much like "where is the other sock" it will vaguely nag at me for a few days, then fall out of mind. Interesting situation, possibly worth a listen, but clearly no satisfactory resolution is possible (for me anyway). Another fabulously unimportant unanswerable question to irritate my psyche for a few days.
- shawabawa3 5y ago
  Seems pretty clear cut to me. Outsider buys property on tiny island community, then disappears for 8 years. Islander gets annoyed about the vacant property blocking their view so decides to remove it. Other islanders refuse to rat them out due to being a tight community End of mystery
  - tobltobs 5y ago
    This tight community also did have to accept a high loss to the value of their properties as their houses became unsaleable. It is a mystery to me how all property owner would accept this, when only one or two have an improved view.
    - Freak_NL 5y ago
      The article mentions that the damages awarded by the judge wouldn't suffice to even buy a chicken coop on the island. My guess is that property prices are quite unaffected by this stunt.
sbierwagen 5y ago
⬞
- dclowd9901 5y ago
  He seemed to think 54 thousand pounds wouldn’t pay for a “chicken coop” on that island so maybe it’s a bit more pricey there than one might suspect? From my understanding island life can be a pretty expensive proposition all around.
  - sbierwagen 5y ago
    ⬞
    - smcl 5y ago
      The guy was from Northern Ireland (where the “civil war” you are taking about was happening) and bought a house in Ireland (where it wasn’t). Also comparing NI during The Troubles to Iraq is a bit of a stretch.
  - Stevvo 5y ago
    With only 150 inhabitants, properties will not go at market value. 54k will not pay for a chicken coop, because nobody will sell him a chicken coop.
  - ornornor 5y ago
    Elsewhere in the comments it says the judge awarded 48k eur based on the owners own valuation at 60k eur. And the hotel next door is now for sale for 400k. So maybe that’s the actual value of that house after all.
  - rsynnott 5y ago
    The house was probably virtually worthless, in that no-one would want to buy it, but on the other hand 60k euro certainly wouldn’t replace it. Build costs in Ireland are in the 100-200euro range per sqm at the moment, and that’s before considering that it’s an _island_.
jonathanhd 5y ago
For those looking for closure, this case was litigated to the Supreme Court https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/courts/supreme-court/appeal-over-value-of-disappeared-tory-island-house-struck-out-1.3079795 https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/courts/supreme... To my reading the house was destroyed in “mysterious” fire, and then demolished for use as a car park by the adjacent hotel. The court ruled that the hotel owner must pay replacement cost for the house.
- illwrks 5y ago
  I was wondering... why does a hotel, on an island, need a carpark? I checked it on Google and it looks like the house was near the pier so it makes sense that residents might park their cars there to head to the mainland. Google Earth link: https://earth.google.com/web/search/Tory+Island,+County+Donegal,+Ireland/@55.2649113,-8.22669486,5.10324624a,289.79874948d,35y,-23.91883378h,30.54843386t,0r/data=Co8BGmUSXwolMHg0OGY1N2U4YmYzOWZjNGYxOjB4MTgwMGM3YTkzN2RmYTQ3MBmIAzKFGKJLQCEHx3YILXUgwCokVG9yeSBJc2xhbmQsIENvdW50eSBEb25lZ2FsLCBJcmVsYW5kGAEgASImCiQJXMZGqhG6SUARB0Uv_sO5SUAZYHiu6W9guT8hQPv27EmNuD8 https://earth.google.com/web/search/Tory+Island,+County+Done...
  - rsynnott 5y ago
    I doubt there are many/any cars. The island’s less than 4kmsq, and the ferry is passenger only.
    - jonathanhd 5y ago
      In this article from 2017 an islander claims that there are 60-70 mostly broken down old cars on Tory island https://donegalnews.com/2017/05/tory-islands-car-graveyard-cleared/ https://donegalnews.com/2017/05/tory-islands-car-graveyard-c...
willvarfar 5y ago
It could be that the islanders were supportive of the house being destroyed, or it could be that the islanders were scared to snitch on the bully that demolished it?
- Talanes 5y ago
  It doesn't need to be fear, necessarily. They live on an island of 120 people with whoever did it. Like the guy or hate him, they're gonna be seeing him every week from here til the end. Why turn on him for some bloke who doesn't even have a house here anymore?
- woutersf 5y ago
  Maybe everybody got their share. The materials had to go somewhere.
tudorw 5y ago
“It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.” I've lived in both, I'm happier in a city...
DrMonkFish 5y ago
I have spent a couple of great weekends on Tory. One special night with the late King of Tory, Patsy Dan, and the local Priest in the hotel bar will live long in the memory. Patsy had his squeeze box and there was plenty of 'craic agus ceol'. But people on those small islands are a different type altogether.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
aliswe 5y ago
> Neville Presho is scanning the horizon for the house that he hasn’t seen in eight years. /.../ But there’s a problem. The house isn’t there. It has completely vanished. Interesting story, but doesn't look like it evaporated into thin air if you look at the photo. https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/1008xn/p09n3zd7.jpg https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/1008xn/p09n3zd7.jpg Either I'm missing something, or the intro is very badly (and sensationally - silly season!) written, possibly by someone who didn't listen to the actual program.
- helsinkiandrew 5y ago
  Presumably that was after the fire. Fed up with the eyesore someone then knocked it down and the hotel next door started using it as a carpark.
hycaria 5y ago
I thought it was really vanished but instead it is visibly destroyed.
- fsiefken 5y ago
  i was hoping for an x-files or parallel universe type mystery myself.. that would really be something.
- samwhiteUK 5y ago
  Right? It's not "vanished" at all. There's a fucking photo of the ruins
deleted 5y ago
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NalNezumi 5y ago
I only read the article and not the entire story but what baffles me the most is that Neville claims that the house he left unattended for 8 years disappearing made him so mad he had to go in and out mental health ward several times and collapsed his marriage. Why would he become so startled(and obsessed) by a house he never visited for 8 years? To the point that a marriage had to collapse, nevertheless. My guess is that Neville probably had schizophrenia, and thats unique thing about this story; I've heard a lot of stories of closed rural communities treating newcomer as pests. As a example from my life, as a teenager I went to help a family-friend that had newly switched to agricultural lifestyle in Japan, over the summer holiday. I remember arriving at the rice field for the first time, noticing that the field was dried up and there was cracks in the soil. I asked the friend if this is how it is supposed to be, and he replied "no, probably some of the old farmers clogged the water channel". I asked why they would do that, and he said that the old farmers here didn't like newcomers, and would in the night go out and sabotage his farm. I took a look around the farmland, and noticed a rotting hut, rusting tools, and how most of the rice field was now filled with bushes and weed and in no condition of agriculture. I again asked why, and he told me that because the old people can't take care of the land, and because they bully away any newcomer, most of the farmland have been taken back by the nature, pointing to a forest telling me that it used to be farmland. It baffled me how these old people would rather see their entire village, way of life die out than letting any new person in. Someone that just bought a house and left it unattended 8 years in such community, is to me not surprising at all that someone there took an ire. Maybe Neville just didn't catch that in his documentary about the island, and couldn't process the deeds done to him
- fsiefken 5y ago
  Yes, I was wondering about that too. Of course without knowing the details, or having listened to the podcast it's easy to come up with quick judgments. I was thinking that perhaps original film material or personal belongings were lost. Or additionally perhaps the island symbolized something important to him and that the island, or it's inhabitants rejected him in this way hurt more than we can imagine. Or perhaps it was just a lot of money and he and his wife were financially ruined. I am also reminded of people whose friend or family member goes missing for years and people don't know if the person dead or alive so they can't give it rest, perhaps it's similar. I never lost my house and my belongings, so I wouldn't know. I suppose I would make the best of it and accept the situation and try to move on. Once I was scammed by a bank for a lot of money, I spent half the amount of money on a lawyer to get justice. I am normally quite stoic, but was quite upset. After a few years the government arranged a (poor) deal I took, this meant closure to me and a lot of people.
tobltobs 5y ago
Maybe the real reason why nobody spoke out was the fact that the guy flattening the house was Tory’s biggest employer. The hotel Óstan Thóraigh has been at the centre of island life since the late 1800s. The hotel and general store was supplying everything from salted fish to marine chandlery to the island. The hotel is actually for sale currently, for €400,000. It didn't survive Covid. See https://www.irishpost.com/news/irelands-stunning-tory-island https://www.irishpost.com/news/irelands-stunning-tory-island...
- mattowen_uk 5y ago
  Link not working for me, only place I could see it is via google cache: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:aTLr7-u5UqYJ:https://www.irishpost.com/news/irelands-stunning-tory-island-hotel-put-market-just-e400000-166346+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:aTLr7-...
account42 5y ago
> The only sign that a house ever stood there is a bit of plastic pipe sticking out of the ground. > The ruins of the house https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/1008xn/p09n3zd7.jpg https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/1008xn/p09n3zd7.jpg So which one is it?
- null_object 5y ago
  Reading the story carefully it seems that the photograph was taken before a digger totally removed the ruins of the house, which had been burnt down in the arson attack that preceded its total demolition and removal.
  - mercantile 5y ago
    That seems to be right, but your parent's point still stands — the house may have burned down during an eight year absence, but it really doesn't seem to have "vanished". The title and lead into the story have been heavily sensationalized for click purposes.
    - monkeynotes 5y ago
      My thinking is he was unreachable for 8 years, house burned down (for whatever reason) and became a dangerous eyesore, so they took it down. The islanders faced with his reappearance decided not to incriminate anyone and keep quiet. The only question I have is how did it burn down? I imagine it was in quite a state of disrepair after almost a decade of low to no maintenance. Part of it may have been falling down already and the islanders may have assumed he'd simply abandoned his house and the island.
PufPufPuf 5y ago
This story reminds me of the game Alan Wake -- maybe the creators were inspired by it?
BasDirks 5y ago
NEVILLE PRESHO V PATRICK DOOHAN AND ORS https://www.casemine.com/judgement/uk/5da053ed4653d07dedfd58b0 https://www.casemine.com/judgement/uk/5da053ed4653d07dedfd58...
dfadsadsf 5y ago
Assholes leaving house without maintenance for 8 years and letting it become eyesore are the reason to have HOA. With HOA owner would have got escalating fines for not keeping up house up to community standards and house would have been foreclosed in a year or so. No need to burn it down.
- yarcob 5y ago
  Look, if you care about what your neighbours house looks like, then go move to some US suburb. In most rural areas in the world if you don't like what your neighbours house looks like you can go pound sand. People generally like the fact that noone can tell them what they do on their own property.
- hyperman1 5y ago
  Don't need a HOA for that, just a functioning governement. At least in my country, if your house gets bad enough, you get fined until it gets fixed.
Andy_G11 5y ago
Non-story: individuals in a community will tolerate unjust behaviour of their community as a whole provided they are not affected. Communities pretend to recognise rights of others out of principle, but in reality 'rights' are only actually recognised to the extent that 1) you can defend them; or 2) there is an impartial body who (mostly) enforces them; or 3) there is no advantage to be gained from overriding them. This is a simple story of bullying that is played out in a million different ways every day - it is a difficult thing for victims to cope with. In this instance, the owner of the house has had not only his asset destroyed, but also his dreams of idyllic retirement in a friendly remote village: a hard thing to accept after years of slog to secure it.
lenkite 5y ago
Would military satellites have this information ? Maybe beg the NSA / NOAA ?

154 points by philbo 5y ago

danuker 5y ago

The solution to this is video surveillance. But in the EU, make sure not to record public land.

fxtentacle 5y ago
Or daily satellite photos. Nowadays, the resolution is good enough to spot these changes.
- unixhero 5y ago
  Zoom Enhance Enhance
  - fxtentacle 5y ago
    Nowadays you can just rent a Chinese military satellite for the few minutes that it'll be above your house. You'd be surprised at their resolution ;) Of course, there's also publicly available US offerings like "SecureWatch® is the premier cloud-based subscription service for secure and timely access to Earth Intelligence, simplifying your ability to map, monitor and detect change for any location on the globe at a moment’s notice." EDIT: Found the price info for satellite rental again. $6300 per 30 seconds at 15cm per pixel resolution.
- danuker 5y ago
  Detecting that your house is gone is pointless. A satellite photo does not show you who demolished it.
  - MayeulC 5y ago
    It tells you when, though. And could give some cues like vehicle paths.
na85 5y ago
People demolishing your house while you're gone is a social problem and requires a social solution. Being a good neighbor is how you solve this problem.
- konschubert 5y ago
  I agree with the first part of what you said, but regarding the second part: We don’t know that he was a bad neighbor and even if he was, that’s not a reason to demolish someone’s house.
  - fxtentacle 5y ago
    You can't really be a good neighbor if you don't show up for 8 years.
    - CraneWorm 5y ago
      I consider that a perfect neighbor.
      - pjerem 5y ago
        Haha, was going to say the same :D
- kolp 5y ago
  People demolishing your house is a criminal act. Your proposed solution implies that the victim was somehow to blame for this crime, by not being a good neighbour.
- yreg 5y ago
  That's victim blaming. The proper solution is teaching people to not burn down other people's houses.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    Or teaching them to burn down people's houses. If someone had just set it on fire, it wouldn't have been mysterious or interesting.
anotherman554 5y ago
I can't imagine a surveillance system is going to be functional for 8 years without someone doing maintenance. Sounds like the guy abandoned the house.

MrBuddyCasino 5y ago

> He says he bears no ill-will towards the islanders and feels he has forgiven those he believes wronged him. Good for him, this is spiritually healthy. But if this happened to me, and I knew exactly who it was, and justice would fail me, I'm pretty certain I'd choose a very different path.

kleiba 5y ago
I don't think you have to be a Christian to subscribe to the thought that the idea of "turning the other cheek" - as unintuitive as it may seem - is more healthy in the long run than "an eye for an eye".
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  That's becoming harder to see, it seems. Liberal, democratic governments are supposed to maintain our various social contracts by dint of a granted monopoly on the use of violence or force. Laws and justice systems are there as tools for governments to exercise justified and escalating force to elicit compliance with social contracts, e.g. social order. When enforcement fails, the social contract is broken, and an individual may find that they are left with no better course of action than to exercise the force that was inappropriately withheld. This guy could be justified in disappearing those who disappeared his house, if left with no better recourse and his property remains under threat. Basic tit for tat game theory overrides morality when social order breaks down.
  - Yoric 5y ago
    > This guy could be justified in disappearing those who disappeared his house, if left with no better recourse and his property remains under threat. Basic tit for tat game theory overrides morality when social order breaks down. Disappearing their house, surely? Not them personally.
  - ZanyProgrammer 5y ago
    You act like this is the first time you’ve heard of a crime taking place and the authorities are unable to prosecute the offenders. It’s not the decline of private property rights and the end of modern western civilization.

yosito 5y ago

He left the house apparently unattended for 8 years on an island of 120 people... not really surprising that someone would burn it down because they didn't like the sight of it.

aivisol 5y ago
Well, he did buy the house (article says) not built it, so the sight of the house probably was there already for years if not for decades. They most probably didn't like that the house was bought by outsider.
smcl 5y ago
I'd argue that it is very surprising that someone would wreck a house simply because they wanted a better view. What to me is surprising was that nobody bothered to contact the owner of the house, and that everyone responded that it was some mysterious act of god (a whirlwind or "a strange glow in the night sky") instead of just confessing the real reason. Remote communities can be weirdly insular and hostile to outsiders. We moved from a city to a village when I was 7 years old, I was still considered an outsider and treated with suspicion when I (gladly) moved to the capital for university aged 17 and never looked back. Edit: he was contacted but it wasn't particularly honest :)
- dataflow 5y ago
  > nobody bothered to contact the owner of the house Did they mention anything about this one way or the other? Maybe they didn't know who the owner was or how to get a hold of him? Or maybe they did try to contact but didn't get a response? Unless I missed some part of the passage.
  - Scarblac 5y ago
    It says this: > The reason Neville had returned to the island in the first place was a letter from the local council warning this house had been damaged by a storm, but an engineer’s report found that the house was most likely brought down by mechanical means. So he was contacted, by the local council, and they lied to him. Sounds to me like the island as a whole decided he wasn't going to come live in his house anymore and it was in the way, but they had to keep that secret of course.

fxtentacle 5y ago

I can imagine how the others on the island decided on that course of action. If there's a house decaying for 8 years without anyone visiting, it's not too difficult to assume that nobody will ever return before that house naturally decays. So they just sped up what would happen anyway. But what I find remarkable is how strong the "don't snitch" spirit was in that community. I mean the deed was obviously done and surely people knew who did what. It almost appears as if most people in that community did not like Neville Presho that much ...

a012 5y ago
The population on the island was just 120, I can feel it's like the community in Hot Fuzz (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425112/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425112/) but less dramatic, it's still a closed community though.
- bluebubble56 5y ago
  Yeah, with a community that small, I can see them managing to keep it amongst themselves. Especially since this guy was "an outsider."
- progre 5y ago
  I was thinking "Wicker Man" https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0070917/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0070917/ Ah this is great: The *police in Wicker Man is played by the same actor as the old neighbourhood watch guy in Hot Fuzz! Edit: He would have been about 42 at the time of filming Wicker Man
wirrbel 5y ago
What baffles me is, if you leave a house FOR YEARS, why don't you hire a neighbour for upkeep? I mean every now and then a roof tile must come off in a storm that needs to be refitted, a house that you don't heat in winter starts to rot, etc. pp. I can actually see that in a moderately short time span of 8 years a lot of decay can happen naturally after which 'hands-on' neighbours might have just not felt too bad to tear down the remains.

kolp 5y ago

I'm Irish. Just for context, Tory Islanders have a certain reputation dating back many centuries. The word Tory comes from the old Irish word for bandit.

FerretFred 5y ago
That still applies ;-)

redis_mlc 5y ago

This happens every day, all day in Detroit. The police do occasional helicopter overflights, but there's an endless number of "brick thieves." Items like aluminum doors go for $5 a piece at the local bar, and you can do "custom orders."

pessimizer 5y ago
But not enough, at least in Chicago. Abandoned homes are garbage tip rat farms.
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  I'm curious how Detroit and Chicago are different. It might be that Detroit residents have had more practise destroying their city, whose population has fallen from 2 million to 800,000 in 50 years. Stealig and selling bricks is literally sabotage. The city was partially destroyed in the 1969 riots and never rebuilt, plus thousands of residential fires per year, so that's 52 years of dystopian living like Mad Max. (Eminem's "8 Mile" album and film refers to the road where city taxes extended to. After Detroit imposed the tax, companies and workers migrated beyond 8 Mile Road to avoid paying it.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8_Mile_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8_Mile_(film) Richard Wolff, the virulent Communist, has a lecture whining about how capitalism is responsible for the destruction of Detroit, and how the public (ie. taxpayers) should have paid to rebuild it. His lecture is nonsense to people who lived there, as the real problems are city mis-management (taxation, education, leadership, city council, etc.) https://www.democracynow.org/2013/7/25/richard_wolff_detroit_a_spectacular_failure https://www.democracynow.org/2013/7/25/richard_wolff_detroit... Anyway, Detroit is a microcosm of what is happening in America today, where Democrat mayors are destroying what took over 200 years to build. The sobering reality is that if you encourage lawlessness, your city will get burned down and companies and taxpayers will flee in droves.

aaron695 5y ago

> Neville and his solicitor commenced civil legal proceedings, alleging that an islander had decided that Neville’s house was blocking his view of the sea... and had decided to get rid of it. Clearly since the people on the island are human beings they too would hate with a passion anyone who did this. So, there's a huge part of the story missing. No one wants to lose property rights either. If you leave the island, people might destroy your stuff would scare anyone.

pjc50 5y ago
> Clearly since the people on the island are human beings they too would hate with a passion anyone who did this. Other way round: since they're human beings they have loyalty among each other, and a relationship structure they're unwilling to compromise. Destroying the house of a resident obviously wouldn't stand, but who's going to be a snitch for the benefit of the outsider? This happens a lot in abuse situations. You will find out afterwards that a lot of people knew to some extent what was happening, but were unwilling to have the confrontation that would result from speaking out about it, or to put up with the long term social consequences of being the person who spoke up.
- dclowd9901 5y ago
  > but who's going to be a snitch for the benefit of the outsider? I would, but I also have something of an antagonistic streak and a finely tuned sense of justice. I imagine there are many people out there, even in a small community of 120, who would have no problem sticking it to the establishment out of spite. It doesn’t take a big community to sow a faction of dissidents.
  - meltedcapacitor 5y ago
    Your "finely tuned sense of justice" is just a way to say everyone who disagrees with you is a piece of shit. Very nice.
underwater 5y ago
The law is just an agreement with a large group of people that says "don't do anything bad and we'll watch out for you". These people have just replaced that with their own informal arrangement. They probably prefer their got-your-back arrangement because they trust their neighbours more than they trust people outside the community. In addition it tips the scales in their favour because their law doesn't need to protect everyone equally. In this case outsiders are not afforded the same benefits as islanders. They just need a reasonable belief that they won't be steamrolled by the actual law, which comes from having a tight knit community where people don't run to the police. You see the same pattern amongst cops, the mob, remote communities, etc.

helsinkiandrew 5y ago

If he bought a house and then left it empty for 8 years when he moved to New Zealand then he has nobody to blame but himself - holiday homes left vacant for 11 months of the year can be a huge blight on a small community, but to leave it empty and unmaintained for 8 years when you move to the other side of the world and then be shocked and upset that it is no longer there is hard to believe.

saiya-jin 5y ago
Seriously, WTF? Its his private property. There is legal system last time I checked, and citizens should abide by it. Some mob rules about 'blight on a small community' perfectly ignore that the same fucked up community a) let the house be destroyed by some arrogant a-hole neighbor; b) knew perfectly well who it was; c) lied him & police straight to face, including priest. These were his childhood friends and 'friendly neighbors'. Because of sea view? That's one fucked up small community. Defending such behavior takes some serious moral twisting or plain absence to make it look OK.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- helsinkiandrew 5y ago
  I'm not saying that it was right - I'm saying that's what would be expected. Foreigners buying holiday homes have long been hated by small communities - particularly in Ireland and Wales and targets for arson. They can make property too expensive for locals and reduce demand for local businesses. A holiday home would be maintained but leaving a coastal property empty for 8 years it would likely it would also be an eyesore - this wasn't some farmhouse in the middle of nowhere it was 'downtown'.
- pjc50 5y ago
  > These were his childhood friends No, he was an outsider who moved to the island. As with a lot of comments on crime, there is a difference between "explaining" and "exculpating". I agree that "explaining" usually makes it look like the victim's fault.

ORioN63 5y ago

There's a narrative that I hear often about Corvo island: Corvo is a small island in the Azores archipelago, which is home to less than 500 habitants. Every time a police officer, joins the island, it usually has a bit of a tough time, as it tries to write fines and issue warnings to the small population. The small population, not only disregard its orders, but they actually shut them out. Since there's very few establishments, the police officer, eventually, has to comply with the population. To be honest, I don't know how much truth there is, in this story, but I don't find it hard to believe.

dclowd9901 5y ago
It’s almost impossible to imagine this in light of the “all or nothing” approach American law enforcement has toward its job. Would it really be as simple as ignoring the police that would undermine their authority?
- pjc50 5y ago
  It only works with a lone police officer. It's extremely hard to cope with being totally socially excluded on a remote island. Any situation where the police themselves can form a community because there's enough of them, this approach won't work. (I would note that one of the great American novels, To Kill A Mockingbird, deals precisely with the loneliness of trying to administer justice without community support) Then there's horror classic The Wicker Man, about a police officer sent to a remote island to investigate a vanished girl and wall of silence ...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jfoutz 5y ago
  it's a question of scale. in a small town of 120, yes, absolutely. In a city of a million, it's hard to get everyone to hold the line. A few fall, which causes more to lose their nerve, and more fall, and authority is enforced. but a group of say 500? that know each other on sight? Sure. I grew up in a small town in the US southwest. There's a reason Texas has successful defenses for murder that were "he needed killing". It can be terrifying to be on the wrong side of a popularity contest.

jfoutz 5y ago

This is baffling. It's a good hook to listen to the podcast, but I'm not going to. My second thought was about insurance. The house is gone, it's up to their investigator to determine the cause. In the worst case, they say, too bad. thanks for the premiums. My first thought was to build a big ass fence at the property line. Generally be an ass, using my property in the least helpful way possible. given the dearth of information about the story I'm still a bit befuddled. given the timeframe 1994, it's understandable there isn't much available on the internet. I doubt an island of 120 had a local paper, I doubt even more that the archives would be online. Apparently no records were found for the court case. There's a temptation to victim blame, there's a temptation to think Presho and Digger cooked up a scheme to get a little attention for the island and Presho's career. I think there's more information, but it seems unattainable. He won the court case, but got a pittance. There are no answers from the trial. In the end, I suspect this is a story that will end up much like "where is the other sock" it will vaguely nag at me for a few days, then fall out of mind. Interesting situation, possibly worth a listen, but clearly no satisfactory resolution is possible (for me anyway). Another fabulously unimportant unanswerable question to irritate my psyche for a few days.

shawabawa3 5y ago
Seems pretty clear cut to me. Outsider buys property on tiny island community, then disappears for 8 years. Islander gets annoyed about the vacant property blocking their view so decides to remove it. Other islanders refuse to rat them out due to being a tight community End of mystery
- tobltobs 5y ago
  This tight community also did have to accept a high loss to the value of their properties as their houses became unsaleable. It is a mystery to me how all property owner would accept this, when only one or two have an improved view.
  - Freak_NL 5y ago
    The article mentions that the damages awarded by the judge wouldn't suffice to even buy a chicken coop on the island. My guess is that property prices are quite unaffected by this stunt.

sbierwagen 5y ago

⬞

dclowd9901 5y ago
He seemed to think 54 thousand pounds wouldn’t pay for a “chicken coop” on that island so maybe it’s a bit more pricey there than one might suspect? From my understanding island life can be a pretty expensive proposition all around.
- sbierwagen 5y ago
  ⬞
  - smcl 5y ago
    The guy was from Northern Ireland (where the “civil war” you are taking about was happening) and bought a house in Ireland (where it wasn’t). Also comparing NI during The Troubles to Iraq is a bit of a stretch.
- Stevvo 5y ago
  With only 150 inhabitants, properties will not go at market value. 54k will not pay for a chicken coop, because nobody will sell him a chicken coop.
- ornornor 5y ago
  Elsewhere in the comments it says the judge awarded 48k eur based on the owners own valuation at 60k eur. And the hotel next door is now for sale for 400k. So maybe that’s the actual value of that house after all.
- rsynnott 5y ago
  The house was probably virtually worthless, in that no-one would want to buy it, but on the other hand 60k euro certainly wouldn’t replace it. Build costs in Ireland are in the 100-200euro range per sqm at the moment, and that’s before considering that it’s an _island_.

jonathanhd 5y ago

For those looking for closure, this case was litigated to the Supreme Court https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/courts/supreme-court/appeal-over-value-of-disappeared-tory-island-house-struck-out-1.3079795 https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/courts/supreme... To my reading the house was destroyed in “mysterious” fire, and then demolished for use as a car park by the adjacent hotel. The court ruled that the hotel owner must pay replacement cost for the house.

illwrks 5y ago
I was wondering... why does a hotel, on an island, need a carpark? I checked it on Google and it looks like the house was near the pier so it makes sense that residents might park their cars there to head to the mainland. Google Earth link: https://earth.google.com/web/search/Tory+Island,+County+Donegal,+Ireland/@55.2649113,-8.22669486,5.10324624a,289.79874948d,35y,-23.91883378h,30.54843386t,0r/data=Co8BGmUSXwolMHg0OGY1N2U4YmYzOWZjNGYxOjB4MTgwMGM3YTkzN2RmYTQ3MBmIAzKFGKJLQCEHx3YILXUgwCokVG9yeSBJc2xhbmQsIENvdW50eSBEb25lZ2FsLCBJcmVsYW5kGAEgASImCiQJXMZGqhG6SUARB0Uv_sO5SUAZYHiu6W9guT8hQPv27EmNuD8 https://earth.google.com/web/search/Tory+Island,+County+Done...
- rsynnott 5y ago
  I doubt there are many/any cars. The island’s less than 4kmsq, and the ferry is passenger only.
  - jonathanhd 5y ago
    In this article from 2017 an islander claims that there are 60-70 mostly broken down old cars on Tory island https://donegalnews.com/2017/05/tory-islands-car-graveyard-cleared/ https://donegalnews.com/2017/05/tory-islands-car-graveyard-c...

willvarfar 5y ago

It could be that the islanders were supportive of the house being destroyed, or it could be that the islanders were scared to snitch on the bully that demolished it?

Talanes 5y ago
It doesn't need to be fear, necessarily. They live on an island of 120 people with whoever did it. Like the guy or hate him, they're gonna be seeing him every week from here til the end. Why turn on him for some bloke who doesn't even have a house here anymore?
woutersf 5y ago
Maybe everybody got their share. The materials had to go somewhere.

tudorw 5y ago

“It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.” I've lived in both, I'm happier in a city...

DrMonkFish 5y ago

I have spent a couple of great weekends on Tory. One special night with the late King of Tory, Patsy Dan, and the local Priest in the hotel bar will live long in the memory. Patsy had his squeeze box and there was plenty of 'craic agus ceol'. But people on those small islands are a different type altogether.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

aliswe 5y ago

> Neville Presho is scanning the horizon for the house that he hasn’t seen in eight years. /.../ But there’s a problem. The house isn’t there. It has completely vanished. Interesting story, but doesn't look like it evaporated into thin air if you look at the photo. https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/1008xn/p09n3zd7.jpg https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/1008xn/p09n3zd7.jpg Either I'm missing something, or the intro is very badly (and sensationally - silly season!) written, possibly by someone who didn't listen to the actual program.

helsinkiandrew 5y ago
Presumably that was after the fire. Fed up with the eyesore someone then knocked it down and the hotel next door started using it as a carpark.

hycaria 5y ago

I thought it was really vanished but instead it is visibly destroyed.

fsiefken 5y ago
i was hoping for an x-files or parallel universe type mystery myself.. that would really be something.
samwhiteUK 5y ago
Right? It's not "vanished" at all. There's a fucking photo of the ruins

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

NalNezumi 5y ago

I only read the article and not the entire story but what baffles me the most is that Neville claims that the house he left unattended for 8 years disappearing made him so mad he had to go in and out mental health ward several times and collapsed his marriage. Why would he become so startled(and obsessed) by a house he never visited for 8 years? To the point that a marriage had to collapse, nevertheless. My guess is that Neville probably had schizophrenia, and thats unique thing about this story; I've heard a lot of stories of closed rural communities treating newcomer as pests. As a example from my life, as a teenager I went to help a family-friend that had newly switched to agricultural lifestyle in Japan, over the summer holiday. I remember arriving at the rice field for the first time, noticing that the field was dried up and there was cracks in the soil. I asked the friend if this is how it is supposed to be, and he replied "no, probably some of the old farmers clogged the water channel". I asked why they would do that, and he said that the old farmers here didn't like newcomers, and would in the night go out and sabotage his farm. I took a look around the farmland, and noticed a rotting hut, rusting tools, and how most of the rice field was now filled with bushes and weed and in no condition of agriculture. I again asked why, and he told me that because the old people can't take care of the land, and because they bully away any newcomer, most of the farmland have been taken back by the nature, pointing to a forest telling me that it used to be farmland. It baffled me how these old people would rather see their entire village, way of life die out than letting any new person in. Someone that just bought a house and left it unattended 8 years in such community, is to me not surprising at all that someone there took an ire. Maybe Neville just didn't catch that in his documentary about the island, and couldn't process the deeds done to him

fsiefken 5y ago
Yes, I was wondering about that too. Of course without knowing the details, or having listened to the podcast it's easy to come up with quick judgments. I was thinking that perhaps original film material or personal belongings were lost. Or additionally perhaps the island symbolized something important to him and that the island, or it's inhabitants rejected him in this way hurt more than we can imagine. Or perhaps it was just a lot of money and he and his wife were financially ruined. I am also reminded of people whose friend or family member goes missing for years and people don't know if the person dead or alive so they can't give it rest, perhaps it's similar. I never lost my house and my belongings, so I wouldn't know. I suppose I would make the best of it and accept the situation and try to move on. Once I was scammed by a bank for a lot of money, I spent half the amount of money on a lawyer to get justice. I am normally quite stoic, but was quite upset. After a few years the government arranged a (poor) deal I took, this meant closure to me and a lot of people.

tobltobs 5y ago

Maybe the real reason why nobody spoke out was the fact that the guy flattening the house was Tory’s biggest employer. The hotel Óstan Thóraigh has been at the centre of island life since the late 1800s. The hotel and general store was supplying everything from salted fish to marine chandlery to the island. The hotel is actually for sale currently, for €400,000. It didn't survive Covid. See https://www.irishpost.com/news/irelands-stunning-tory-island https://www.irishpost.com/news/irelands-stunning-tory-island...

mattowen_uk 5y ago
Link not working for me, only place I could see it is via google cache: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:aTLr7-u5UqYJ:https://www.irishpost.com/news/irelands-stunning-tory-island-hotel-put-market-just-e400000-166346+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:aTLr7-...

account42 5y ago

> The only sign that a house ever stood there is a bit of plastic pipe sticking out of the ground. > The ruins of the house https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/1008xn/p09n3zd7.jpg https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/1008xn/p09n3zd7.jpg So which one is it?

null_object 5y ago
Reading the story carefully it seems that the photograph was taken before a digger totally removed the ruins of the house, which had been burnt down in the arson attack that preceded its total demolition and removal.
- mercantile 5y ago
  That seems to be right, but your parent's point still stands — the house may have burned down during an eight year absence, but it really doesn't seem to have "vanished". The title and lead into the story have been heavily sensationalized for click purposes.
  - monkeynotes 5y ago
    My thinking is he was unreachable for 8 years, house burned down (for whatever reason) and became a dangerous eyesore, so they took it down. The islanders faced with his reappearance decided not to incriminate anyone and keep quiet. The only question I have is how did it burn down? I imagine it was in quite a state of disrepair after almost a decade of low to no maintenance. Part of it may have been falling down already and the islanders may have assumed he'd simply abandoned his house and the island.

PufPufPuf 5y ago

This story reminds me of the game Alan Wake -- maybe the creators were inspired by it?

BasDirks 5y ago

NEVILLE PRESHO V PATRICK DOOHAN AND ORS https://www.casemine.com/judgement/uk/5da053ed4653d07dedfd58b0 https://www.casemine.com/judgement/uk/5da053ed4653d07dedfd58...

dfadsadsf 5y ago

Assholes leaving house without maintenance for 8 years and letting it become eyesore are the reason to have HOA. With HOA owner would have got escalating fines for not keeping up house up to community standards and house would have been foreclosed in a year or so. No need to burn it down.

yarcob 5y ago
Look, if you care about what your neighbours house looks like, then go move to some US suburb. In most rural areas in the world if you don't like what your neighbours house looks like you can go pound sand. People generally like the fact that noone can tell them what they do on their own property.
hyperman1 5y ago
Don't need a HOA for that, just a functioning governement. At least in my country, if your house gets bad enough, you get fined until it gets fixed.

Andy_G11 5y ago

Non-story: individuals in a community will tolerate unjust behaviour of their community as a whole provided they are not affected. Communities pretend to recognise rights of others out of principle, but in reality 'rights' are only actually recognised to the extent that 1) you can defend them; or 2) there is an impartial body who (mostly) enforces them; or 3) there is no advantage to be gained from overriding them. This is a simple story of bullying that is played out in a million different ways every day - it is a difficult thing for victims to cope with. In this instance, the owner of the house has had not only his asset destroyed, but also his dreams of idyllic retirement in a friendly remote village: a hard thing to accept after years of slog to secure it.

lenkite 5y ago

Would military satellites have this information ? Maybe beg the NSA / NOAA ?