A New Meaning of Coming Out of the Closet

I saw a story recently about a homeless woman who was living in the closet of a man's apartment in Tokyo undetected for over a year. It made me think about all of the places in my own house that I do not frequent...I wonder if we could have some undeclared guests as well.

In one of the lectures I give to the medical students about how to distinguish Alzheimer's Disease from other forms of dementia, I refer to the common occurrence of the delusion known as "the phantom boarders." Since Alzheimer's patients misplace things and forget where they've put them, they develop delusions that their things must have been stolen. And since no one has been in or out of the house, then they must have someone living in their house who is stealing their stuff, ie the phantom boarder. Maybe I shouldn't be so quick to judge those patients as having Alzheimer's Disease. Maybe they just have the same problem as the man in Tokyo from the above story...