We have lived in our house for 9 years. The people before us lived here for 1yr6months.

No one in this house who presently nor currently lives in this house is called any of the to names, and we know no one in the from names.

We always get a card, every now and then a run down of their year as a family. It comes by Royal Mail with no return address now a stamp from the sorting office.

It’s become our Christmas tradition, but also breaks our hearts that a friend/family member is missing out.

The envelope is only addressed to “Henry and Layla” at our address, in full.

by Mglfll

25 comments

  1. I don’t want to alarm you but I think Vicky sees dead people.

  2. Must be someone in your street then surely? I’m guessing you don’t have a neighbourly WhatsApp group.

  4. Lily and James were the names of Harry Potters parents. Can’t think of a reason for the other two names. But those three are a bit of a coincidence.

  5. Good selection of quite unique names there!

    Is the sorting office stamp your local one? You know which part of the country the sender is in from that.

  6. I’ve been sending my sister birthday and Christmas presents to her old address for the last 5 years. I knew she moved but somehow hadn’t clocked on that the new address I wrote down was actually the old one. Not once had she complained she hadn’t received anything (to me anyway, apparently my mother got an earful every year and never passed on the whining).

    After we figured this all out she knocks on the door of her old flat to be handed 5 years of cards and parcels. All opened in hope they’d be able to trace the sender. Not one of them stollen.

  7. It’s the family who lived in the house before you who mysteriously disappeared after receiving a strange letter

  9. Haha! You have one like me! I posted about my Christmas mystery a few hours ago.

  10. For the best part of a decade they have never thought “Henry and Layla never send us a card”

    Every year I get about half a dozen “what’s your address again?” Messages

  11. Does your local area have a Facebook group? Might be worth posting to see if anyone knew or still has contact with previous owners of your house.

  12. This is beyond what I’d expect you’d to be willing to do. You can check the land registry for previous years to see who owned the house previously. You know your own move in date and roughly the home owner before you. So those are years you could avoid. So you could request the land registry details for the year prior to the year you know the owner before you was living in the house to see who was the owner then. It does cost £7 though for a request of a copy.

    Additionally it might not be your house it was intended for. Is there similarly named roads in your village/town/city? Like Main Road, Main Street, Main Close, Main Crescent etc. If there is then I’d guess that’s the intended address and I’d assume the house number was correct as it seems far fetched that both house number and street name would be incorrect

  14. Is it someone taking the piss? I’ve seen people do a prank thing where they send family members a fake card from strangers, sometimes for years, just to see how long it takes for them to cotton on/because it’s amusing to watch them go mad over it

  15. Those have to be names of pets otherwise what a ridiculous group of names

  16. My dad started sending christmas cards to the wrong house number many years before he was officially diagnosed with dementia. (Not saying thats the case here….the writing is too young etc) The house it went to decided to tell me after he died. Wish theyd stayed quiet to be honest.

    Just saying, if youre in the christmas spirit, maybe knock a few doors. The road will be right, just the number wrong.

  17. Someone’s on the wind-up. My fiancee’s sister sends their parents a Christmas card from a fake couple every year – To the point that they are convinced they know who the mystery people are

  18. I sent cards and presents to a wrong address for two years. Just typed in something wrong so got wrong street name and only found out when we visited.

  19. I actually had something kinda similar but it was the previous owner. The previous owners of my house were a British guy and his Hungarian wife and their young daughter. They sold the house as they were divorcing.

    For years I would get their old post. I’ve been in my house 12.5 years now and I still occasionally get banking letters for their daughter’s account. For years, every Christmas we would get Christmas cards from Hungary. No return address. One year my ex-husband got curious and he opened them and apparently used Google translate on them. He told me, that they were all addressed to the whole family and were from her parents, another from grandparents, another from uncle and aunt. It seemed she hadn’t actually told her family she divorced and moved.

    We finally stopped receiving the Christmas cards but it was a good 6 or 7 years before they stopped.

  22. Have you asked on local Facebook groups to try and locate the sender/intended recipient? Seems to work fairly often.

  23. We’ve been getting a family newsletter card from a family in New Zealand for the last 23 years. I’m going to really miss them when they finally figure it out.

  24. I know a family with these names, Northern England. I’ll ask them if they’re aware of the senders and to get in touch.

  25. I need to start doing this to my neighbours, just send them cards from mystery people. I live here on a new build estate with most of the people on my road being the first people here, so there’s no way it would be a previous occupant

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