Six adults lived in an isolated house in the middle of fields, cut off from the world, for 9 years.

They were waiting for "the end of time". Six people were found by police in a "small closed room" inside an isolated farm in the north of the Netherlands. They had been living there for almost 10 years. Many questions remain around this strange case that took place in a locality where no one seems to know the occupants of the farm, nor even to have been aware of their presence there.

Some "had no idea of ​​the existence of other people" in the world

"We found six adults who immediately said they were a family, a father and his children, all of them are of legal age, according to their statements," police said in a statement. According to local television channel RTV Drenthe, the family owned a vegetable garden and a goat for food and lived in a room "waiting for the end of time". Some of the children "had no idea of ​​the existence of other people" in the world, added this media.

One of the sons, aged about 25, went to a village bar on Sunday night in a "confused" state. Dirty, wearing old clothes, his hair in battle, he was asking for help, told RTV Drenthe coffee manager Chris Westerbeek. When he began the conversation with the young man, he said it was "nine years" that he had not been out of the house and had never been to school. "He spoke in a childish way," said Chris Westerbeek, who immediately alerted the police.

When she went there, she "discovered six people, in a small room that can be closed, but not a cellar". At this stage of the investigation, it was not known whether these people were there voluntarily or whether they had been forced to stay there. The police, who say they study "all possible scenarios", have in this respect implemented important means to try to unravel the mystery, to know what this family was doing, all of whose members are adults, thus confined in a so small space.

An autarkic way of life

According to initial reports, "it is possible that these people have been living there for nine years," investigators said. The family "had an autistic lifestyle" in the property. Many of the children, now adults, "have not been registered in the birth registry," said the mayor of Ruinerwold. It would also appear, according to the police, that the name of any of these persons does not appear in the least municipal administration.

The police arrested a 58-year-old man, the tenant of the farm, "for failing to cooperate with the investigation". However, this is not the father of the family and the investigators are still wondering about the possible link he had with the people discovered. He is currently being interrogated and kept in detention.