The Blotter: Ghoulish Behavior 

Deflated The Halloween season is upon us, and that means vandals terrorizing Charlotte suburbs, running around stealing and destroying all the crazy and spooky yard decorations they can find. In the Wildwoods neighborhood of east Charlotte, a 47-year-old woman reported that her Mickey and Minnie Mouse blow up decoration, along with her puppy dog skeleton blow up, was damaged, costing her $80.

Shit Got Real CMPD officers working at Scarowinds had to respond to the "Halloween Carnival Experience" in the park recently after a visitor decided to fight back against the zombies and demons that were chasing them. Three extras working in the haunted house told officers that one of the people walking through the exhibit assaulted each one of them by grabbing them by their costumes and shoving them away.

It's Lit Police recently responded to an Executive Stay hotel in southwest Charlotte after a child reportedly found a lighter and preceded to start a fire right there in their hotel room. In an unrelated incident, a 15-year-old student at Garinger High School lit her own jacket on fire while she was wearing it in class, which caused quite a scene, but did not injure her.

Fixed It A 40-year-old man called police after he brought his car into the shop to be fixed and they worked their magic on it, making it disappear completely. The man told police that he brought the car into a shop on Statesville Road in April for an estimate on collision repair, and for some reason didn't go back to check on it until late in September. By that time, the car was gone, and when he asked employees at the shop, they said they figured he had come by at some point and taken the car back. He now believes someone stole the car from the lot while he left it there for the longest estimate ever. Edible Arrangements

Family First A 46-year-old woman recently called police after her sister attacked her in her home in southeast Charlotte. The victim told officers that her sister tried to bring drugs into her home, and when she objected, the sister shoved, kicked and pulled at her. She did not suffer any injuries, but was "visibly disturbed by the incident," according to the report.

On An Island The beauty of The Blotter is that, while columns written in 1992 describe the same shit that occurs in 2017, we are still constantly coming across crimes we've never seen committed. That happened in west Charlotte last week, as a woman filed a report about a houseguest stealing from her home. That's a normal enough occurrence, but what's odd about this crime is what the thief made off with. The woman told officers the man took her island — the free-standing marble kitchen countertops and the shelves they sat atop — and left the home, not to be heard from again. Altogether, the island was valued at $1,300.

Chivalry Isn't Dead A 32-year-old south Charlotte woman filed a police report after realizing that someone had gained access to her debit card and was using it to score brownie points with some other woman. The victim told police that the suspect used her Wells Fargo account number to make charges online with Portland Florist and Edible Arrangements. The suspect also opened an AT&T account under the woman's name, so they better be sending those flowers and candies to her.

Cut the Cord A 28-year-old Fort Mill, South Carolina, man filed a police report with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department after falling victim to a scam while working in the Charlotte area. The man told officers he was doing landscaping work in Ballantyne when he received a call from someone claiming to be with DirecTV. The fake rep told him he was being offered five months at a low monthly rate (always fake news) if he would just buy $300 worth of Amazon gift cards and read the numbers off over the phone. When he called DirecTV later to confirm — probably should have done that first — he was told that, obviously, no promotion exists in which you have to pay more money in order to pay less money.

Self Promotion Management with Paradies Shops, a national company that runs the Carolina NewsBeat shop in the Charlotte Douglas International Airport, were shocked to find out that one of their employees at the CLT news stand had given himself a raise without letting the company know. The company filed a report with CMPD stating that, between March 1 and October 17, the employee had embezzled $6,000 in cash from the company by taking it out of the cash register, bit by bit. For good measure, the suspect had also stolen $300 worth of merchandise from the store, duty free. Police arrested the suspect while he was on the job one day last week.

No Return A thief on South Boulevard last week put a whole lot of effort into their caper, only to make off with an embarrassingly low bounty. Police responded to the Meineke Car Care Center in Tyvola Square after some unknown suspect went to work on a drink machine in an attempt to get money. The suspect punched out the bill accepter, then went to work prying away at the drink dispenser. In the end, the thief left the scene with one dollar. I'm sure after all that work, he would have rather had a drink.