Every neighborhood has one. The blinds are always shut, the car hasn’t moved since the Clinton administration, and if you do spot them outside, it’s usually at an hour when normal people are asleep. They don’t come to cookouts. They don’t wave from the driveway. And the truth is—nobody really knows what they do.

Which, of course, leaves plenty of room for speculation. Are they a novelist hiding out to write the next bestseller? A vampire with an odd shift schedule? Or maybe a CIA agent living undercover in a house that blends in just a little too well.

I once had a neighbor who worked for a government agency (don’t ask me which one, because even after eleven years, I never knew). Every few years, a man in a gray car would pull up, clipboard in hand, sunglasses on, and knock on my door. In a flat, no-nonsense voice, he’d ask a handful of questions about my neighbor’s character. Then he’d vanish into the night like something out of a spy movie. That was the extent of my neighborly interaction for over a decade.

Oddball neighbors keep communities interesting. They’re the blank spaces where our imagination fills in the story—and let’s be honest, those stories are usually way more exciting than the truth. Because let’s face it, in every neighborhood someone has to keep the rest of us guessing… otherwise how would we entertain ourselves on trash day?