The man immediately struck the bartender as a bit off.

His beard was disheveled, he was in a daze, and his clothes seemed straight out of the 1980s. It was near closing time at Chris Westerbeek’s small pub in a rural Netherlands village, Café De Kastelein, and he sent the stranger away.

But a short time later, on Sunday night, the man returned and this time, Mr. Westerbeek decided to find out his story.

And what a story it was.

As the bearded man in the dated outfit quickly gulped down five beers, he said that for the last nine years, he and his siblings had barely seen the outside world. Instead, they were mostly confined to a small room in a Dutch farmhouse on the outskirts of the village of Ruinerwold “waiting for the end of days,” Mr. Westerbeek told Dutch reporters.

“He said he was the oldest and wanted to end the way they were living,” Mr. Westerbeek said.

By Monday, after the police went to the farmhouse and found the family living in strangely isolated conditions, the bearded man’s story had spread far and wide.