The Collyer brothers

Homer and Langley Collyer were compulsive hoarders during the 1940s. For decades, neighborhood rumors swirled around the rarely seen, unemployed men and their home at 2078 Fifth Avenue, in Manhattan, where they obsessively collected newspapers, books, furniture, musical instruments, and many other items They even set up booby-traps in corridors and doorways to protect against intruders. 


After an anonymous tip called that there was a dead body in the Collyer house, and much initial difficulty getting in, the police found Homer Collyer dead and Langley no where to be found. About two weeks later, after removing nearly 100 tons of garbage from the house, workers found Langley Collyer’s partialy decomposed body just 10 feet away from where they had found his brother. Langley had been crawling through their newspaper tunnel to bring food to his paralyzed brother when one of his own booby traps fell down and crushed him. Homer, blind and paralyzed, starved to death several days later.


brb, I have to obsessively clean my house now.