A man wearing a mask shaped like an old TV set spent a night leaving old TV sets on the porches of over 50 homes in Virginia this past weekend, and no one has any idea why.
In what has been described as a real-life episode of The Twilight Zone, a mysterious character wearing a fake TV set on his head spent a night carefully placing over 50 old TV sets on the porches of dozens of houses in Henrico County, Virginia. When residents woke up on Sunday they just found the bizarre gifts in front of their front doors and started looking around for whoever left it. Then they started calling police to report the unusual gifts. As of yet, no one knows the reason behind “TV Santa Claus”‘ August delivery run.
No one really knows if there was one deliveryman or more, as apart from some freaky footage captured by residents’ smart doorbells, there were no reported sighting of suspicious activity in Henrico County. Police think the person caught on camera may have had a helper wearing the same outfit, but they can’t be sure.
The deliveryman filmed by one of the residents’ smart doorbell is wearing a blue jumpsuit, brown boots, black gloves, and a big mask shaped like an old TV set. He can be seen dropping a TV set on the porch before turning around and walking away, but not before waving to the camera in a really creepy way. Still, the police think he poses no threat and have announced that they don’t plan to investigate further.
“We determined there was no credible threat to residents and that this was strictly an inconvenience,” Matt Pecka, a lieutenant with the local police department, told The Washington Post. “I mean, one TV neatly placed on the front doorstep of each resident … it wasn’t done in a malicious manner.”
Pecka added that, at most, TV Santa Claus risks being charged with leaving an unwanted item on public or private property, but encouraged people to contact police if this sort of thing happens again.
The response to this mysterious weekend event has been mixed. While some locals reportedly described it as “awesome” and “lighthearted”, others said they were freaked out by the deliveryman.
“My son was like, ‘Mom, we have got to get out of here, this is crazy, this is strange,’ “, one local woman told reporters, adding that the teen later changed his mind and actually filmed a YouTube video documenting the event.
As for the TVs, they have been collected by police and will be soon be recycled by the county.
