Cassie Brummitt can’t remember exactly when she first saw bananas.

It wasn’t long after she moved to Beeston, a small town near Nottingham, England, about two years ago.

She passed the junction of Abbey Road and Wensor Avenue, and there they were – a bowl of more than 15 peeled bananas “all in a heap”.

“I remember thinking it was very strange,” Brummitt said As it happens host Nil Köksal.

It would not be her last encounter with bananas on that corner. The amount of bananas, he says, varies. Sometimes they are in a container. Sometimes they are on a plate. But they are always peeled and stacked and left near the hedge at the same intersection, like some kind of potassium-rich offering.

‘It seems kind of hidden’

At first, Brummitt felt as if she had stumbled upon a secret that no one else knew about, as if the sightings were her “personal private little thing.”

But then she learned from social media that bananas are a long-standing — and occasionally divisive — local mystery.

“I don’t think anyone knows (where they come from). Or if they do, they keep quiet about it,” she said. “But yeah, I have no idea. Like, I heard they might show up really early in the morning or late at night, so it seems kind of stealthy.”

Beeston resident James Oviedo walks his dog past the corner almost every day and says bananas have been popping up for “at least a couple of years”.

“There’s always a big pile of them peeled on the plate and they always look like they’re covered in what looks like honey,” he told the CBC.

“It’s very strange and, to be honest, I’m surprised it’s taken so long for people to start asking questions.”

Oviedo says the neighborhood is residential, but the banana corner isn’t in front of anyone’s home. So, as far as he’s aware, no one has ever captured a video of a fruit dropper in action.

According to a recent BBC News story, bananas seem to appear, like clockwork, on the second of the month.

“I was kind of wondering if maybe it was a sentimental thing. Like, I don’t know, like superstition, maybe,” Brummit said. “Sometimes people leave scraps of food for the fairies at the end of the garden, for example.”

But if so, the fairies don’t seem to be hungry.

“Usually they start to mold and eventually someone will throw them in the bush around the corner,” Oviedo said. “The plate often ends up disappearing and I think it’s because people who collect rubbish remove it. I’ve also seen the plate end up on the side of the road smashed up before.”

The Canadian banana mystery

The strange British phenomenon has echoes of another long-running banana mystery in northern Canada.

For years, someone has been dropping a banana peel at a stop sign on the concrete traffic island at the intersection of North Klondike and Alaska Highways in Whitehorse, resident Jenny MacKinnon said in an email after hearing about the Beeston bananas As it happens.

“It’s a known fact to most locals,” she said, “with zero context or anyone saying it.”

Lewis Rifkind, who often cycles past the traffic stop, says he’s been seeing peeling for “at least a decade.”

He’s heard speculation that it started as a protest against composting bylaws, but suspects the real story may be far more down-to-earth.

“Maybe it’s just a routine that that person, you know, who eats a banana maybe every day or whatever, whenever they come to town, and they just got into the habit of throwing it away,” Köksalu said.

‘RESPECTFULLY PLEASE: NO MORE BANANAS!’

Meanwhile, in Beeston, rotten fruit has become a nuisance and an eyesore for some residents.

One frustrated neighbor recently went so far as to put up a sign that read, “PLEASE RESPECTFULLY: NO MORE BANANAS!!”

“Unpicked plates and rotten bananas leave such a mess!” the sign goes on to say. “Happy New Year to you all! From the Nottingham Clean Street volunteer cleaners.”

But there was no success, Oviedo said. Bananas were coming.

When Brummit saw the sign, she was surprised that someone was angry about bananas. For her part, she’s come to appreciate the little thrill of being privy to a bizarre local mystery.

Plus, she says, it gives people something fun to talk about.

“It doesn’t really hurt anybody, and it brought me a little bit of joy, you know, just walking down the street,” she said. “It’s unusual and there’s nothing wrong with things that are a little unusual.”