Good thinking, (feel kind of silly that it hadn't occurred to me before) and it did solve the problem in a roundabout way! While it didn't initially result in the destruction of my people-pile, it did somehow kick my game into acknowledging their existence thus making their names appear, and from there I was able to use "resetsim" to pull each and every one (all 12 of them) out of purgatory.

Thank you! 

The problem, in my case, is that there doesn't seem to be any way to direct anyone to interact with my big tangled mess. The affected sims have no names, when I try to click on them there are no options available, its as if the game doesn't actually think that there are sims there.

It appeared in the middle of my town shortly after installing AwesomeMod and I have no idea what it is. I tried combing through other posts looking for someone else who has had a similar problem (preferably someone who has already found a solution to said problem), but I came up empty. (It is also rather hard to describe in a search bar: "Help! Random people pile!") It looks like everyone in my town converged onto one spot and then got stuck in purgatory never to be interacted with again. I can't talk to it or get rid of it in any way that I have come across yet. I tried all the generic disabling CC and mods, reloading old saves and what have you, but ever since it appeared it wont go away. It just stands there all day and all night never moving, just ominously peering into people's souls. This currently only affects Sunset Valley, so obviously I did something there that left my npcs or townies all amiss and very patchwork humanoid-ey. In any event - it's driving me nuts. Any thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks in advance for any help!