Where's Waldo?

Three years ago when we bought this house, we never dreamed we'd be haunted by a former owner--let's call him Waldo. He's not the guy we bought the house from but the one who owned it before that, so he hasn't even lived here for the past six years; nevertheless, he is a daily part of our lives. Why? Because for some time after he moved out, he continued to use this address.

For three years we've been getting his medical bills--from hospitals, radiology labs, ambulance services. I feel sort of sorry for the guy, but that doesn't mean I'm willing to pay his bills, so we mark them "return to sender." Now the debt collectors are calling two or three times a day, and they are not, generally speaking, nice. I always tell them there's no one here by that name, and they say, "Right. That's what they all say"--or they laugh as if I've said something funny.

My new tactic is similar to the one my brother likes to use with telemarketers: talk their ear off. Someone calls to sell you vinyl siding? Give him the Amway pitch or try to convert him to your cult. Or let the telemarketer talk, leading him on with agreeable listening noises, and then at the end say something like "I don't think I'm allowed to have vinyl siding in my prison cell." The idea is to waste the caller's valuable time in hopes that he or she will get frustrated and not call back. (Sadly, it doesn't work with recordings.)

So lately when someone calls for Waldo, I give a detailed rundown of the full names of everyone who now lives in the house, how long we've lived here, how long our German exchange student lived here, his full name and the names of his siblings, what we've done with the house since we bought it, and then if the person hasn't hung up yet I start on the weather. At some point they'll either leave us alone or escalate their efforts. What then? When a former owner haunts the house, who ya gonna call?

And don't say "Ghostbusters" because they don't deal with debt collectors.