Is there a Grinch stealing holiday joy in this Bluffton neighborhood?

The residents of Cypress Ridge at Mill Creek in Bluffton have been in a flurry trying to figure out the answers to a mystery — Who keeps unplugging the community Christmas lights and why?

“Whoever did this has put a lot of effort into making this happen,” Cindy Stanga Thomas, a neighborhood resident, said Saturday. “It is like someone wants to steal joy.”

The community hired someone this year to install the lights around its entrance which includes a row of palm trees. The lights were installed right after Thanksgiving.

“It makes everyone really happy when they drive into the neighborhood and see the lights,” Thomas said.

Soon it became apparent something was wrong. Thomas started getting texts from neighbors asking why the lights weren’t working.

A call to the “Christmas Lights Guy” was made and he discovered someone had unplugged the lights in multiple locations. He replugged them — to have them once again unplugged the next night.

This isn’t the first time this has happened in the neighborhood. Several years ago, the lights were unplugged throughout the holiday season by a mysterious person.

It also doesn’t seem to be only Christmas. The night before the neighborhood’s Halloween judging contest, someone deflated a significant portion of the blow-up decorations in the neighborhood.

Who is doing this? There are several thoughts, Thomas said.

The first assumption is always kids. It feels different than just kids, Thomas said.

Whoever did this, crawled through a window into a shed to unplug the timer, then unplugged every single palm tree in the median at the entrance.

“This really has to get exhausting after awhile,” Thomas said. “It feels more like someone with a grudge or someone against the Christmas lights.”

The neighborhood has had a few ideas on how to solve the mystery. Game cameras or night shifts to watch for the suspect have been a few ideas thrown out.

There is some hope that maybe the person has stopped after a community wide discussion started about the issue, Thomas said.

It has been a few days since the lights were last unplugged, Thomas said.

This story was originally published December 2, 2017 at 5:34 PM with the headline "Is there a Grinch stealing holiday joy in this Bluffton neighborhood?."