Nope, they're not NPCs, they are new households moving into my empty homes. 

That's kind of what I figured.   Technically I don't need to start looking at my game or me being the problem, because I already suspected that.  But at least this gives me something more concrete to take back to the other forum and say no, this is not an AM issue.  Now I just need to figure out what the hell is actually wrong with it or what I did to it.     Thanks!

Since the latest patch and AM update I cannot disable Story Progression. I'm not sure if this is an AM problem or if it's EAxian.  (I have been using AM very happily with no problems for a long time so I feel like this is an EAxian thing, but the moderators of another TS3 forum directed me here, insisting that it must be an AM bug because "If [AM] is installed and working properly, it hijacks the story progression code.")

My game is patched and I have the current version of AM.  My AM seems to be installed correctly because I get all the proper pop-ups when I do the "showconfig" thing.  I have the Story Progression checkbox unchecked in the Game Options but I am getting new random Sims spawning into my empty houses, which I do not want.  I have tried playing with AM Story Mode enabled and disabled in the config, either way I can't disable SP.  I have Ambitions, Pets and Supernatural if that makes any difference.