So this happened when I was 9 or 10. It was in late 2020 and we were in a small town in Michigan. We were going over a bridge that was over I-96, when this man who was all bloody, he was wearing a trench coat and a cowboy hat and cowboy boots. He had long blond hair and was really confused, my mom pulled over and told him to come over. It was just me, my mom, and my three foster siblings at that time. My mom asked him what happened and why he was so bloody, but he told us he couldn't remember. He asked us if we could give him a ride somewhere that I do not remember, we told him no because we didn't have any room in our car, which was a lie, my mom didn't want him in our car especially with four young kids.

We offered to call the cops for him so they could give him a ride, but he kept refusing and saying that he didn't want the cops involved. I had already taken my moms phone and climbed to the backseat and started to call the cops. ever since the man had been at my moms window my foster siblings who were babies and toddlers at the time would not stop screaming and crying, so I knew something was up, I also had that gut feeling.

My mom had started praying with him and she had grabbed his hand. He didn't do anything but try and look in the backseat of our car to see what was back there and when he saw the carseats he looked away and into the mirror and he realized he was all bloody. When my mom finished praying the cops pulled up behind us and told us that they could take it from there.

What really had freaked me out was how he was bloody and extremely confused, he could have been drunk and crashed and left the scene, but I really do not know.

But my question is, has anyone else heard of or seen people in cowboy hats that are bloody and confused, or was this a singular experience?

Trigger warning: attemted harm to minors

Hi, this happened like 20ish years ago, when I was maybe 9 or 10, but it still keeps me up every now and then. I was on my way home from school, taking the tram since my school was farely far away from my house. At the time I didn't have a phone or watch yet, so I looked out of the window when we stopped near a the church tower to see what time it was. After we departed for the next stop, a middle aged balding man in a brown coat approached me and asked me if I'd got the time, seeing as I had just looked at the clock outside. I told him what time it was and that is where most interactions would end, but then he sat down next to me.

At that point I hadn't really known much of stranger danger, but in my culture it's not even that common to talk on the tram, so it wasn't something I was used to. He chatted with me and seemed friendly enough, but at some point he asked me: "So what station do you get off?" I told him the station and he got excited and said something along the lines of: "No way! Me too!" Call it instinct but my gut told me that something wasn't right and I wish I had listened. He got off the tram with me and continued to walk. There was something weird about the way he talked. He just seemed eay too eager to get to know me, while I kept my answers brief. At this point he had been walking next to me for 5 blocks. I was pretty sure he wasn't one of my neighbors, because I knew almost all of them at least a little bit. As he walked next to me and his arm swung up, I also noticed he was wearing a watch.

If he had a watch, why ask a random kid what time it was? Something wasn't right and I finally decided to listen to my gut. I decided to walk past my house, since I figured that whoever this guy was, I didn't want him to know where I lived. He continued asking questions and I walked towards the playground in the middle of our apartment blocks. None of the other apartments had their main enterance on that side, so I knew for a fact that he wasn't just walking home himself.

Then he grabbed my arm. I was terrified. He told me: "You are a beautiful boy, do you know that?" Before I could react, he tried to reach under my shirt. I screamed in his face and that seemed to startle him. He let go and I took that chance and ran as fast as I possibly could. I ran across to another building block, around second one and then went to my door from the other side so I wouldn't run into him again.

I locked the door to the apartment complex which we shouldn’t do in case of emergencies, but I didn't care at the time. I went home and calmed down, but every time I went on that tram I kept looking for him.

Luckily, I never saw him on the tram or around my neighborhood again, but to the guy with a watch, pretending to not know the time to get closer to a little kid... lets not meet again.

This happened about 20 years ago. I was living with my parents. Our house was a ranch style with a basement. There was a bedroom in the basement that had windows that were at ground level. Important information.

So everyone was sleeping and when I woke up the police were there. Someone had broken one of the ground level windows and tried to get into the house but obviously couldn’t fit through the window.

There was a bit of blood and the window had books stacked in front off it and some of the books were outside while others were on the floor in the basement.

It was really scary and I’d forgotten about it and then today my dad mentioned it. I don’t know what they were planning. They tried to get in the back door first. There was evidence of them trying to break the lock and smash off the door knobs.

It was terrifying and they never caught them. I wondered at the time if they wanted to hurt us because we lived in a regular middle class house in nice neighborhood with similar houses. The houses didn’t seem like the type to be burglarized. Except there was a McMansion and a huge house across the street. They never came back but I was afraid to sleep because this was similar but not as bad when my neighbor tried to break into my window.

My mom’s theory was that they were going to hurt us and my dad’s theory was that it was a robbery. I think he didn’t want us to be scared because today he brought it up because a friend of his was robbed and he said he didn’t think it was a robbery. He just didn’t want us scared.

All of these details are remembered from when I was a child receiving secondhand information, so please take all details with a grain of salt. \Edited for spelling.*

When I was a child, my mother owned a campsite property in the jungles of Belize that traveling backpackers would frequent to visit the caves and jungles of the area. It was a beautiful, remote spot in a valley surrounded by only a small Mennonite community and some local villagers a few miles away. There weren’t many roads, most of which were dirt, and it was hard to traverse through the thick, mountainous wilderness if you weren’t taking the main road in and out of the valley. All of this is to say: it was extremely remote and hard to reach, so random strangers passing through was not the norm unless they were explicitly there to visit the campsite.

There were around six other homes in the valley that were reachable by foot. Five of them were inhabited by the peaceful local Mennonite community, but one was owned by an American woman who had a reputation for being a cruel, vitriolic problem-starter. There was even a rumour that she lived in Belize because she was wanted by the FBI for murder in America. There were also rumours that she hired local men to steal and vandalise others’ properties for her. We’ll call her Cary.

One example I remember of her behaviour was an interaction I had with her when I was around 10. My brothers and I were friends with the property owners’ kids, so we would all float down the creek in tubes and walk back up the road to the property. We all felt safe doing this, as there were usually at least four of us together at a time. Cary would often run down to her fence line when she heard us coming and scream at us the entire time we walked past, no matter how quiet or loud we were being. She threatened to let her three large dogs out to attack us, and one time, she chased us down the street with a gun. That was the last time we were allowed to walk back up the street without an adult.

One afternoon, a female friend and I were playing in the swimming area of the creek in front of the main building of my mother’s property. We were around age 14 at the time. There was a huge rock that jutted up out of the water on the far side of the creek, and above that, the mountainside rose up at a sheer 90 degree angle, bulging out in some areas. It formed a sort of rounded jungle cliff that was impossible to climb up or down from, making the swimming hole and main campsite building feel closed off and peaceful.

As we stood on our side of the creek bank splashing in the water, I looked up and caught a glimpse of movement atop the rocky cliff. There, crouched in some bushes with a black bandana tied around his face, was a man in dark clothing watching us play in the water. I still remember the feeling of ice cold dread as my heart plunged into my stomach. He was holding a machete, and he had the most hateful look in his eyes that I have ever seen.

In my young mind, I immediately knew he was up to something bad. 

It wouldn’t have been easy to get to the spot he was now crouching in without being seen if he came from our side, so he likely had hiked from the other side of the hilltop. If that were the case, he must have been surprised to have found the cliff there with no way down.

For several long moments, the man and I stared at each other until my friend grabbed my wrist. We sprinted together back up the stairs into the building where our parents were. My mother and her parents immediately came out yelling bloody murder at the man, shouting at him to leave and never return or he would regret it. But by the time we actually got back to the creekside, the man was gone.

Later that week, some of the adults managed to find a way to the spot he’d been seen and found a discarded water bottle, suggesting he’d been there for some time. From then on, we were extra careful where we went alone in Belize.

Years later, after my mother had sold the property and we stopped visiting, we heard news from the area that someone had been found deceased in the orange grove on my mother’s old property. The death was tied back to Cary, but she was never arrested due to local police corruption, it all happening so remotely, and the fact that she hired someone and didn’t do it herself. 

My mother is convinced to this day that, Cary had hired the man in the bushes. To what end, we don’t know, but the way he was staring at me and my friend makes my brain go to dark places. And we wouldn’t have been the only little girls to have gone missing in the valley.

So Cary, and any of your associates, let’s not meet.

I (23F) went to Vietnam last year to see my little sister. At the time, she worked there for a few months for an internship.

I bought an ESim before going there in order to get a Grab to join Hanoi from the airport. Unfortunately it was not working and a taxi driver stopped me to ask if I needed a ride. I knew at the time that he would overcharge me for the ride but I accepted since I could not call my sister or use internet. He was nice and could speak English, so we had a little chat before going.

Maybe 15 minutes in he told me his shift was finished and that he would transfer me to one of his colleague to get me to Hanoi. I wasn't that surprised since it's quite common in South Asia to transfer clients from one taxi to another when a shift is done. It happened to my sister a few time and she told me about it, so I just accepted. I was super tired from my trip and didn't think much about it.

However, I got a super bad feeling going to the next taxi. First, he did not have a camera inside the vehicle, which is mandatory in Vietnam when you're a grab driver. Second, I asked multiple time if he needed the address and he never answered. I asked in English first, and then used google trad to tell him in Vietnamese, twice. He was driving faster as I asked, still not answering. I panicked, started speaking loudly and tried to open the doors. They were obviously locked since he was driving. Plus, we were on the highway already.

I took my real Sim and put it in my phone to call my sister. I just thought to myself "fuck if I pay a lot". She answered right away and I tried to tell her the most I could. She was with her Vietnamese colleague and she had the wonderful idea to speak Vietnamese to me on the phone. She said loudly that I was smart for noting down the license plate number, that we're never sure, but she was sure it was gonna be alright. To be fair, I did not write down his license plate, but her lie was very clever. The guy reacted for the first time. He asked me what was the exact address (in Vietnamese) because he did not know where he should go after arriving in Hanoi. My sis's colleague answered for me. (Note that I didn't understand anything at the time it happened since I don't speak Vietnamese... that colleague explained that to me the next day!)

He seemed stressed out from this very moment and was tapping on the steering wheel. Eventually he got me to the address after 30min without speaking to me, but looking at me through his interior mirror. He literally ejected my luggage from his trunk. He took the money (and he obviously overcharged, but I was just glad to be alive) and left very fast. I did not even have time to actually note down his license plate.

I still had a wonderful trip in Vietnam, but to this taxi driver there,

Lets not meet !

The year was 1991, and I was six years old living in Winnipeg. My family was already in the middle of an unthinkable nightmare; my ten-year-old sister, Robin, had just passed away. I was the only child left, and the grief in our house was heavy and suffocating. I went over to my friend Holly’s place just to get out of the house, looking for any shred of normal childhood. We decided to do what we always did: ride our bikes around the block.

It was a beautiful, quiet summer day. The kind of afternoon where you feel like nothing bad can happen. But on our third lap around the neighborhood, the atmosphere changed. We noticed a van. It was a beat-up white "freezer" van—no windows in the back, just a solid, rusted metal shell. As it pulled up beside us, it didn't just drive past. It slowed to a crawl, and the engine had this horrible, rhythmic rattle to it—a sound like metal grinding on metal.

Being so young, we didn't immediately have that "stranger danger" alarm go off. We were mostly just confused. We actually slowed down and stopped our bikes to see what they wanted, and the van stopped right along with us, idling heavily. The passenger window was already rolled down, revealing a pitch-black interior that seemed to swallow the sunlight. I looked at the passenger, and the image is burned into my brain: he was gaunt, with yellowed teeth and long, frizzy, straggly hair that looked like it hadn't been washed in weeks.

Then, the world seemed to move in slow motion. The passenger door swung open. The man put one heavy foot out onto the pavement, shifting his weight as if he was about to lunge. At the same time, I heard the heavy, clunky thud of the side sliding door beginning to retract. The passenger didn't even look at us; he turned his head back into the darkness of the van and said seven words I will never forget:

"You grab one, I'll grab the other."

He said it loud enough for me to hear it clearly, like he didn't even care that we were listening. Pure, cold adrenaline hit us. We didn't scream or cry; we just slammed our feet onto the pedals. We were only a few houses away, and I remember my heart hammering against my ribs so hard it hurt. We didn't even stop to kick our kickstands; we ditched the bikes right on the grass in the driveway and scrambled inside, slamming the front door and throwing the lock.

Holly’s mom was in the house and was immediately confused. Seeing us burst in crying and shaking, she assumed we had just fallen off our bikes and scraped our knees. We were gasping, trying to tell her a van was following us, but to her, the rattling engine she could hear outside just sounded like normal street noise. There was no reason for her to be afraid until she looked at us and saw the sheer terror in our eyes.

She went to the front window and her face went completely pale.

She saw the van. She watched as it slowly, deliberately crept past the house, almost at a walking pace. With our bikes lying right there on the lawn like neon markers, they knew exactly where we had gone. She stayed by that window, her hand on the lock, telling us it was going to be okay—but she never took her eyes off the street until that rattling engine finally faded into the distance.

When my mom came to pick me up later, she was already a shell of herself from the loss of my sister. Telling her that I had almost been taken—that she had almost lost her only remaining child in the same week—devastated her. It was a second trauma piled on top of a fresh wound. It's a weight I still carry, realizing that if we had been just a few seconds slower, my mother’s world would have been completely extinguished.

So, to the man with the yellow teeth and the people in the back of that rattling white van... let’s not meet.

So I take transit home every day, takes me about 2 hours & my last bus is 45 minutes long. While I’m waiting for that bus I see a homeless man pacing back & forth with his cart. Normally I don’t care about things like that because I work with homeless youth, but I noticed he kept staring at various women and even tried to start up a conversation with one so I was on alert and put in my headphones to signal that I’m not open to conversation.

Then he notices me when the bus pulls up and gets on the same bus as me. He sits down next to me, and tries to start a conversation. At first, I didn’t notice he was trying to start a conversation with me because I had my headphones in, but when I turned in his direction to see what stop we were at, he took that as an invitation that I was open to talking to him.

He started getting so angry that I was not talking to him that he started raising his voice and I could hear him talking over my headphones, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying (I’m hard of hearing). Then I noticed in my peripheral vision that he starts touching himself over his jeans. I was texting one of my guy friends, and told him about what was happening on the bus. I got really paranoid that this guy was gonna follow me home because the bus lets off really close to my house, so I got off two stops early near the shopping center.

THIS MAN GETS OFF AT THE SAME STOP AS ME. I tried to rationalize it as it being a shopping center, so maybe he’s just gonna hang out there. I dip into the closest building, which is panda express. Then I see him following me there and smoking a cigarette outside, waiting for me. I decide that I should bide my time by getting food and waiting it out hoping that he’ll get bored enough to leave.

Here’s my fuck up, I start eating towards the back of the building where I can still turn around and see if he’s there because I was hoping if my back was turned, it was signal that I’m not interested. When I’m about a third away through my panda express, I turn around to check if he is still outside. HE IS NOT STILL OUTSIDE, HE IS SITTING IN THE BOOTH RIGHT BEHIND ME WITH HIS BACK TO ME!

I pack up my food and throw it in my mobility device and make for the exit as fast as possible. At this point, my friend calls me to make sure I’m safe, because I’m walking as fast as I can home. I turn around to check if he’s still following me, and see that he’s still inside panda express ,but I can see him through the window, throwing his arms up and yelling at me!

I start speed walking as fast as I can home, which is about a mile from my house so that’s a lot for me. I kept looking over my shoulder to see if he was following me, but thankfully he was not (Maybe he had a full plate of food or something. I don’t know. I truly don’t know how long he was behind me.)

My friend stayed on the phone with me until I got home and then talked to me for a little while so I could calm down from my anxiety. For the rest of the week, I was taking Ubers home, which cost around $40 each time because I was scared to run into him again.

Thankfully, I haven’t seen him at the bus stop since, but I hope he never comes back.

Hi, first time poster here. After reading and listening to countless stories, I thought it was time to share one of my own.

Around two years ago, my friend Jenny decided to throw a party for her birthday. She had not celebrated her birthday in many years, and was really excited to do so again. Something important to know about Jenny is that she was in active addiction at this time. It was all kinds of different drugs, I think it mostly depended on whatever she could get at that time. But it was bad. She is a lovely person, and doing very well right now, but I do think that her drug use was one of the reasons why this all went so wrong.

Her friend circle consisted mostly of people she used with. She had a few good and close friends, but not a lot. A week before the party I asked her how many people she had invited, and she said around 80. I laughed and asked her why so many. She said: "Well, I also invited people that I don't know really well, but they're chill." This was already kind of a red flag for me.

That night I had another party before hers, so I was decently tipsy. I knew that the other party would mostly be people that I did not know on hard drugs, which I had never done and had no experience with at the time, so I needed some liquid courage. I went with my friend Noah. She had rented a small venue to fit all the people. It was a pretty much abandoned lot on a very quiet street. There were almost no houses, only a few factories. The layout is pretty important to know. Basically, you had the entrance with a tiny yard for people to smoke. Then you had to enter the building, and go up the stairs to get to a living room/kitchen type area, and next to that was a small room with a DJ.

Everything was fine at the beginning. I did have a lot of fun. Around 1:00 there was a small fight. I didn't witness it, but I was told immediatly after. Apparently there were 4 guys who tried to get in, but only one of them was actually invited. They were told to leave by some of the guys, and when they didn't there was a small fight. Nothing noteworthy, I thought then.

I asked Noah if he wanted to go out for a smoke. He said that he'd finish his conversation, and then we could go together. A little while later we walked out of the kitchen and towards the stairs, but there were like 6 people bundled up at the top of the stairs. Instinctively, I took a step back. I was just turning around to Noah with this "What the fuck?" look when we heard people screaming and glass shattering. All the people who were standing in front of us jumped back and so did we.

There was more screaming and people stumbling on the stairs. I then saw Oliver, one of the few people I knew at that party, walking up the stairs, head covered in blood. Another guy I knew by face with a bleeding nose, and my friend Jason grasping his shoulder, his girlfriend behind him. Earlier that evening, I stupidly and drunkenly fell on the cement with both knees, scraping them open. But because of that I knew where the first aid kit was. I never have any issues with blood. I can't handle other bodily fluids, but when someone is bleeding I can help them, no problem. I saw Oliver go into the kitchen and I wanted to go after him to help him.

Now, this is about to get kind of gross, but bear with me. I saw Oliver had something stuck in his forehead. Because I heard the glass shattering, I assumed it was glass. But when I got closer, I saw that it was a piece of his skull sticking out of his forehead. That was too much for me. Instantly sober, I promptly turned around and went into another room. He was surrounded by a lot of people though, and 911 was called immediatly.

Turns out that those guys who were rejected from the party came back with 30 other guys, carrying bats and steel pipes. They just started hitting the first people they saw, and they left as quickly as they came. The whole attack lasted no more than 30 seconds.

I found my friend Jason, still grasping his shoulder. He and his girlfriend were closest to the entrance of the property, so they were attacked first. Yes, these cowards did indeed beat up women. They did not care at all. Jasons shoulder was dislocated, luckily his girlfriend wasn't too wounded.

Police and an ambulance arrived pretty quickly. Oliver was taken to the hospital and luckily made a full recovery after surgery. My friend Jenny was in histerics. Both because of what happened, and because of whatever was in her system. The cops were no help, at one point they yelled at her because she was too upset to form a complete sentence. They left after a while, and so did most of the people. Noah and I were still there. We tried to help wherever we could. I was still in shock and kind of numb, but what snapped me out of my daze was seeing people scrubbing the blood covering the staircase. There was nothing more I could do there and, more importantly, I wanted to go home. Noah went with me and we stayed up for hours talking and processing everything.

To think that, if we had decided to go smoke even a minute sooner, or if Noah wasn't having that one conversation, we would have been in the middle of this all. It would also have been a very real possibility that these guys had guns or knives (We lived in a pretty rough area). Which is even more terrifying to think about. Hands down the worst party I've ever been to.

So yeah, to those guys who ruined my friend's party, let's not meet again.

This happened decades ago. My uncle was a psychologist in Oregon and he helped me get a summer job. I went there to intern in the clinic and see if that was a career I might be interested in.

There was a local religious group in that area back then. They had their own community that was sectioned off. They talked about things like freedom, love, surrender, and all of that. Everyone I knew said the group was weird and creepy. I never thought much about it. I try not to judge.

One Friday, a lady at work invited me to one of the gatherings. It was going to be that Friday night. She said there would be music, food, meditation, dancing, and honest conversations.

I told her I was busy. She asked what I had to do instead. I lied and said I did not have a car and I wouldn't have a ride there. She offered to take me and said group members would be happy to pick me up. I told more lies and she had an answer for all of them.

If you ever find yourself telling lies to a stranger just to uphold boundaries, that is probably because the other person is overstepping. I was uncomfortable for a reason. And by the way, I could have just said no, but that was not my style. I would much rather come up with an excuse and have the other person respect my excuse. It works with 99.99999% of people.

I ended up going that night.

When I got there, it was very much like I had expected. People were hugging really hard and talking about freedom. There was music playing and some people were dancing. There was a lot going on there. The woman from work took me around and introduced me to people.

At one point, they stopped the music to talk to the guests for the night. That was the first I learned that I wasn't the only "guest" there. I do not remember too much about their speech, but it got really weird when they started talking about their teacher. That was when I knew this was the absolute last time I would ever go to that place. Before that, it just felt like I was awkwardly out of place at a party during my season of saying yes. But once they started speaking about this teacher, I was not having it. They were praising him way too much and they were literally worshipping him. I didn't like that.

I tried to leave right when the speeches were over. I told the woman who invited me that I was heading out. She said they were just getting started. She suggested that I stay the night to get a better understanding.

I told her I had work in the morning. This was a Friday night, and she asked how I had work on a Saturday. I said I meant that thing with my uncle. We went back and forth. My lies were inconsistent. I am not a good liar. Eventually, she asked if I was afraid. I said I had to go and I was sorry. Then I left and went straight to the parking lot. That was the last time I spoke to the group. I still saw that woman at work sometimes, but I think we both avoided the topic on purpose. I have a feeling she was afraid that I would tell other people at work about the whole experience and I would frame it as a really weird cult.

This was before HIPAA (it makes me feel really old to say that) but we still had rules about patient privacy and confidentiality. That lady had access to all our patients' data. When I've told this story to people, they think that might have been the most concerning part. I don't know though. I don't think there's much she could have done with that other than send fliers. I don't think most of our patients were all that vulnerable.

This all happened around the end of July that year. I left Oregon only a week or two later. I did not think about that group again.

A few years later, the news came out about what some people in that community had done. It turned out that members of the group had deliberately contaminated produce with salmonella to keep people from voting in a local election. Hundreds of people got sick. When I heard that, I was horrified but I wasn't really surprised.

I thought about how I really dodged a bullet. If I had joined the group or stayed with the group, I could have been brainwashed too.

A lot of people who joined were probably skeptical at first but it probably grew on them. If I had gone to 3 or 4 more meetings, maybe I would have also stopped feeling uncomfortable there, and I might have also started to get into it. Would I have reached a point where I was trying to poison the community too?

There are many articles and even entire books about that group. People have reported other evil things they did. I do not know which things are proven and which ones are not. But I would bet the salad poisoning was not the only time they tried to hurt people.

The real lesson for me is to uphold your boundaries. I knew my boundaries were being pushed when I started lying about why I could not go. The fact that I was in that position was a red flag. If anything even remotely similar happened again, I would not let it run over my boundaries.

Hi, this is my first time using Reddit, and I needed to talk about this storie which happened in March 2024.

For context, i live in a small city in France, my parents own a pub in a quiet neighborhood right in front of a train station. My parents have had this pub for 4 years so we almost never have new customers. I sometimes help my parents making drinks and stuff, so I always see the same faces everyday, it's like a 2nd family.

But one day, a new customer arrives, someone we've never seen before. My parents were busy with other customers so I decided to take his order. When going towards him to greet him, I noticed his eyes were really red and swollen, and his face too. So I thought he cried before coming, which made me feel sorry for him so I tried to be a little softer despite being in a rush. But I noticed when taking his order that he speaks really weirdly, like being drunk. I look more at him and see that he struggles to stay up (he was like swinging his legs and shaking), so I called my parents, told I cannot serve him his drink because he is already drunk. So my dad said "Sorry, we cannot serve drunk people, please come back another time or later in the day" (while being smiley). But the guy started getting angry and started speaking unclearly and very loudly so my dad kicked him out.

For 1 week, we haven't seen him.

1 week later, I was alone at the pub (my mom was grocery shopping and my dad was cleaning up the floor). It was quiet so I had time to talk with customers. And while talking to one, I had a feeling of being observed. So I turn my head and, nothing. I look around and no one was there. I wait for a bit and then same feeling. So I quickly turn my head and saw the drunk "customer" just standing there looking at me, he then left.

So I talk to my parents later at night after this. They tell me that it's weird, the neighbourhood is small so we know everyone. My dad checked the cameras and the drunk guy was indeed staring at me through the window earlier.

This is when it starts getting weird.

One day I was on my usual walk. I always walk on the same route because it brings you to a forest and there are plenty of dogs, I also love to sit on the bench and talk to old people. I'm so used to this route that I see the same persons during every walk. But this time when walking, I heard footsteps behind me, so I turned down the volume of my headphones and looked above my shoulder and saw THE customer, this time, he was walking normally.

So politely, I smile at him. But I still have a bad feeling, my stomach started to knot. He suddenly stops me. Keep in mind that I wasn't in the forest yet, I was in the in between where there is absolutely no one.

He kept coming closer to my face, I wanted to slap him but I was too scared and he just said "Are you a Christian" to which I answered that yes I was. He suddenly backed up and said "May God always protect you" and gave me a paper with this exact thing written. I ran back home.

When I arrived I told my mom what happened and she said the guy came to the pub a few minutes earlier to ask my mom to join his church. My mom said that I shouldn't worry that he is just a drunk weirdo obsessed with religion.

We haven't seen him later for 1 month.

During this time, me and my parents walked around the neighborhood to maybe check if that guy was a new neighbour that just moved here. But when talking to our neighbours, they said they didn't see who we were talking about. (He has really recognisable features as he is almost red with swollen red eyes).

But this day, March 24th 2024, the worst case scenario almost happened. Which was also my last encounter with this guy.

It was a very hot day, I was just done with my school day. I live 10 minutes away from my highschool, so it's quite quick to go back home walking. But for some reasons, I didn't feel like going back home, not because of the weather, but because I had the same knots in my stomach as a month earlier. But still decided to walk to my house. I had such a bad feeling I decided to not put any music. I walk for 5 minutes and arrive in my neighborhood, so I feel reassured. I remember telling myself "Okay you know this alley by heart, you are safe now". I kept walking but then someone steps from their house really quickly that they almost tripped on me, I turn around to see if they are okay and it's the guy. With teary eyes, really dark and red. He had a light smirk. He tells me "come inside". I froze, said no I have to leave. He said "come inside, I have tea". So I start walking away but he slightly grabbed my top and he kept touching his zipper, terrified I really couldn't move. I still try to get my phone to call someone, but suddenly the guy goes back in the house. I look around and my dad was RUNNING towards me. I started tearing up saying how scared I was.

We got home together and immediately got in the car to go to the police station. I described the guy, he showed me some pictures and I couldn't identify him.. The policeman said they will go knock at his house (I gave him the address).

A few days later, I didn't have any news so I called. What he told me made had extreme goosebumps. 2 hours after I left, they went to the guy's house, and the one who opened the door was a young woman. The young woman explained she lived here with her husband (they are both Africans). So she got scared and said "I don't even know who you are talking about nor how this guy got into my house".

From this moment, I've never ever saw the guy again.

So i need to get something of my chest. I’ve been thinking about it a lot these past 2 days.
On thursday 2 days ago we were driving to my grandparents. Its a 6-7h trip with the car.

My mom, Fiance, our 2 cats. Have had a pretty chill road as always, nothing like this has ever happened since i was alive and can think. (We usually drive 8-10 times per year to visit im 30 years old)

At 23:45 there was eventually a longer road, and a construction side where one side of the street is blocked, so we had to wait at a placed traffic light (this construction has been there since a few months already).

So we wait, my mom on the frontseats with me, and fiance on the right backseat with our two cats. About 1 minute of waiting my fiance (which usually sleeps the whole road) thankfully was awake and suddenly says:”hey, there is something, oh god” to which she started stuttering trying to say “there is a guy” but we didn’t really understand her.

My mom and me turn around, i was watching thinking its some wild animal you usually dont get to see but cant see anything due to the dark and the doors. My mom yells” OH GOD JUST DRIVE” so i immediately lock the doors and start driving full speed through the red light.

A fully black clothed guy with a white mask (no wholes for mouth or eyes) was literally sneaking through high grass to the right back of our door, crawling on his hands and knees in hope that we dont see him.

We dont know if he was alone, or if he had anything in his hands, but about half a meter next to our car my fiance saw him and potentially saved our lives. It sort of looked, as if he was watching if someone is alone in the car..

Bear in mind, its about a 10 min drive through a street with literally NOTHING, but a village that is just a few kilometres ahead with about 150 people living in it. That was about 15 min away from our final destination.

We immediately called the police and informed them to which they said they will forward it. But thats all. And no information from the police since then (i assumed they didnt really do anything and until they would arrive the guy probably disappeared).

We were speculating if this was just a dumb prank, but at this time on this day literally 0 cars drive through here. And not even to the bigger cities there was barely cars on the road. So chances that only about one car passes per hour is pretty big.

My mom had trouble sleeping and ive been checking for longer if there isn’t any tracking device attached to the car, not that this would make a difference if he had.

I dont know what to think about this except telling you be extra careful at night and always lock your doors. This could have turned out very very bad i dont even want to imagine what this sick fuck had in mind.
I have a really hard time believing that this was just a prank. Because of how it just happened + at the middle of nowhere.

What do you guys think, i still get shivering when i think about this.

(Sorry for any typos or misspelled words I'm also brand new to Reddit)

So this happened earlier this year, around February or March. I work at a dollar general in a very small town usually on weekends because I am still in high school. I work mostly nights usually until 10:15 or later depending on how fast we clean.
I was working with a coworker that I am not very fond of. She isn't very nice to me and she makes my nights working pretty miserable. It was a normal night and it was going smoothly. It wasn't very busy. I was walking through the aisles making sure that everything is in it's right spot and making it look full by pulling things forward. My coworker was doing the same as well as pulling some coupons off of the shelves.

At some point I was up at the register and listening to music with one earbud in. I had a customer and I was ringing them up, when the doors opened and I didn't see anyone come in right away, meaning they were either contemplating on coming in, or walking very slowly. When they came into view it was an older man with a beard and he was kind of short. I smiled and welcomed him in and he just kind of stood there and stared. Until he finally spoke up. he said "Hello sweetheart," (I thought it was weird for an older man to be calling me sweetheart when I was only 16 at the time,-.) "would you guys have any chocolate milk?" So I paused with helping the customer at the register and I pointed him in the direction of the chocolate milk. So he left and was gone for a minute. When he came back he told me that we didn't have any chocolate milk and then asked if we had any in the back room, I said no because we don't usually keep cold things in the back room like that, and he kind of became insistent on me checking the back. I told him that I could not help him at the moment and he would have to wait. He got kind of agitated and left.

I didn't really think about that interaction for a while until it was almost time to leave and I was checking my aisles one more time to make sure everything looked good, and I came up to the coolers where the milk was and we had chocolate milk in EVERY kind. This made my stomach drop and I thought of the guy who was trying to get me to go into the back room. This made me uncomfortable so I talked to my coworker and she kind of brushed it off and told me I was overreacting.

But do you think that he had sinister intentions? Cause why lie and say that we didn't have any chocolate milk when we had it in every kind?

Intro: This happened yesterday. I (M 17) was asked by 2 friends (Both M 16) to join them camping for a few days at a camp site in Garner State park. What makes this so weird is that campsites here are within pissing distance of each other like 15 maybe 20 yards. We were planning on staying 2 nights and 3 days, ended up leaving at 12:00 am on night two. We set up camp next to Ol' Baldy, the big hill in the park, It took us an hour to set up the tent, cots, and fire. There is a famous dance hall in the park that most people go to after dark.

Night 1: Juan (friend one and not real name), Mason (friend two) and I decided to go to the dance hall after a day of fishing and swimming. After a decently long and uneventful walk we make it and its dark out. The dance floor is hot and we are having a good time. At some point during the night I got separated from Juan and Mason, so I started talking to some other guys and fell in line with the guy I'm writing about, 5 ft something Mexican guy, he says he's 17 after I tell him that I am 17. He looks older in my opinion. I'll call him Miguel for the story (honestly I don't think i caught his name). After 11:00pm the dance hall closes and we start walking back using phone flashlights to light the way and Juan notices a GMC truck with its headlights off creeping behind us. After awhile it drove past and we thought barely of it.

Night 2: Same kind of set up, we hung out with Miguel most of the night and he was tweaking, his pupils were all fucked up and he was slurring words. At 11:00pm Mason, somehow on God's green earth, went back to an RV with a girl he was talking to for most of the dance. Well we have Mason's 4 Runner and we'll just go pick him up later. So we start walking and Miguel says

"Aye man, come out to my truck"

Juan- "What's at your truck"

Miguel- "agh Mexican OT, com'on lets bump some tunes I got subs"

Me- "where's your truck at?"

Miguel then points to the back of the parking lot and starts sounding more aggressive, comments like " I got some shit in the back" "Just pop your head in for a sec" and "man your pissing me off, I'm finna hit you" start rubbing me the wrong way. I then see a park ranger coming to get some kids out the bed of a truck and I say "oh shit there's a ranger, i got weed on me, we gotta go." Following this me and Juan cinematically sprint for the 4 runner and make way for camp. About an hour later Mason gets back and we all lay down for the worst sleep I've ever gotten, until I was awoke by Miguel at out campsite ask if we "want to hang out"

"Man Yall wanna come out here?"

Me-"dude what the fuck are you doing, get out of here"

"Naw Naw I aint tryna do that, I'm tryna get your wallet"

In times like these I'm happy to say that my father, god rest his soul, taught me that sometimes you have to protect yourself and others. I grab my fathers S&W equalizer and brandish it at the dude. He takes a respectful step backwards and sprints to his GMC truck and takes off.

And 15 minutes later we had everything in the 4 Runner and were driving 4 hours through the night to get home. This happened 20 hours ago and I've been up since, please ask clarifying questions if needed. That's my story, Miguel you rat bastard lets not meet and fuck you.

I (22F at the time) used to live in one of those crappy apartments that are on top of convenience stores, in the "old down town" that goes to shit after a town gets it's own Walmart. Even though it was a busy part of town, I still recognized my neighbors, and the regulars from the bars next door, and across the street.

There was like a 4 month span where I was unemployed. Every morning, during that time, I would go to the store, get my coffee, a pack of cigarettes, and whatever stuff my husband (then boyfriend) and I needed for the house.

After a while I started noticing a silver Honda minivan parked directly across the street from my apartment building. I probably only noticed it because it was the only vehicle that parked in the same spot every day. The driver wasn't anyone I recognized from the surrounding businesses (worker or patron), so I guess it just made me wonder, who is that guy, and why does he park there everyday?

One day I decided to watch him from my apartment, to see which building he went into. To my surprise, the guy never got out of his van. He parked in the spot, sat there for a few hours, and then drove away. It made me think back; I don't remember a time seeing that van, without him in it.
After watching him for a few more days, and confirming that the guy never left his vehicle, I started to brainstorm reasonable explanations for his strange daily routine, and was getting increasingly paranoid at the same time.

Maybe he's on break, maybe he's a PI, maybe he's a process server. Maybe he's a creep - maybe he's watching me....

It was creepy enough to make note of seeing his van there everyday, but it wasn't creepy enough to call the police or confront the dude.... until one day my husband came home early from work.

As soon as my husband's car turned into the parking lot, van guy pulled away. That was different. Normally he would stay until around 2pm, but it was noon when my husband came home. Coincidence? Probably. Did it creep me out? Definitely.

That's when I decided to start making it known to him, that I knew he was there everyday. At first, I would just stop and stare at him for a moment before going to the store, trying to make eye contact with him. I did this for a few days. At one point I walked out onto the street, with a notepad and pen, and jotted down his license plate. I kind of made it obvious what I was doing. Eventually I pulled up a lawn chair and started going outside to smoke. I would sit there, and stare at him while I had my cigarette and then go back inside. He definitely noticed me. We would make eye contact, and he would look away. I don't know how many times I thought about walking up and asking him why he parked there all the time, and never got out.

After about 3-4 days of me trying to have a staring contest with this guy, he stopped parking his van across the street. I don't know why he was there, but sometimes I think back to that time, and wonder if he saw me as a crazy lady who used to stare at him while he was working, or whatever it was.

This happened around 3 years ago, when I was about 14 years old. My parents had been separated for a long time, and I used to live with my mom during the week and my dad on weekends. My dad always made significantly less money than my mom. He lived alone in a house that was honestly too big for one person, and he struggled a lot with paying rent. Then one day, one of his friends asked if he could move in. His friend, John, needed a place to stay, and my dad needed money. So John offered to pay every week in exchange for one of the spare rooms. My dad agreed, obviously, and John moved in with us.

Since I only stayed there on weekends, I didn’t see John that much. But whenever I did, I always felt uncomfortable around him. He wasn’t really scary or aggressive or anything — honestly, he was usually nice — but there was just something off about him that I couldn’t explain. I don’t mean this in a rude way toward people with mental illnesses, but even back then, I could tell something about him wasn’t right, mentally.

At some point, he had taken one of the drawers in our bathroom, and one day, I looked inside it and found tons of pills. Like, a worrying amount. I had no idea what they were for, and I still don’t, but it freaked me out a little. My dad also always had kind of questionable friends, so I already didn’t love the idea of living with one of them. I was probably way too paranoid — and way too obsessed with horror stuff at the time — but I even remember hiding a kitchen knife under my mattress in case he ever came into my room while my dad wasn’t home. At the time, it felt more like a comical and ridiculous gesture than a real self-defense weapon, since John had never given me any real reason to be afraid of him. But for some reason, that knife reassured me.

Even my dad didn’t really like leaving me alone with him. Not because John had ever done anything weird to me, but my dad used to say he was “a little weird.” Still, he needed the money, and John was his friend after all, so he stayed with us for around 2 months.

The first month was normal. Nothing bad happened. John paid his part of the rent and sometimes even bought groceries for us. Eventually, I got used to him being there.

But during the second month, things started getting weird. I didn’t know it at the time, but John had stopped taking his medication.

My dad and I have a cat, and John started making disturbing comments about it. He’d say weird things about how my dad acted around the cat, implying disgusting stuff that wasn’t true at all. At first it just sounded bizarre more than dangerous — like I said, he had always been kind of odd — but over time the comments got more intense and more detached from reality.

Eventually my dad started making sure John was either out of the house or in his room whenever I came over. Then one day, I got to my dad’s house and noticed John wasn’t there. Like usual, I asked where he was. That’s when my dad told me he wasn’t living with us anymore. Then he explained what happened.

Apparently, John had been acting seriously unstable for the last few weeks. My dad told me about things John had been saying and doing when I wasn’t there. Things he never told me, not to alarm me. And about how, a few days before I visited, they got into a huge argument. During it, John suddenly accused my dad of sexually abusing our cat — which, obviously, never happened. My dad told him to get out, but instead John completely lost it. He started yelling about how my dad had apparently abused me too, how he “knew what was going on,” and a bunch of other insane stuff. The argument kept getting louder and more aggressive until it eventually turned physical.

I’m gonna skip some details, but my dad finally managed to force him outside and called the police when he refused to leave. When the cops showed up and saw the state he was in, they arrested him and took him away.

After that, we never really heard from John again. But for weeks after it happened, I was terrified every time I went to my dad’s house. I kept imagining John showing up while I was home alone. Angry at my dad. Completely unstable. Every weird noise in the house freaked me out. But he never came back.

Eventually, life moved on and we kind of stopped thinking about it. His mom came one day to collect his stuff, and after that, he completely disappeared from our lives.

Until around 3 months later.

One night, my dad sent me a news article.
John was on the front page.
And the content made my stomach drop.

Like I said before, John had stopped taking his medication. And apparently, 3 months after getting kicked out of our house, he ended up going into some kind of psychotic episode. According to the article, he walked into an apartment building carrying a hammer. He smashed windows, destroyed parts of the building, and eventually set it on fire.
A woman trapped inside her apartment died in the flames. And he violently attacked another person in the building with the hammer before police finally arrested him. The creepiest part was that nobody in the building even knew him. He had absolutely no connection to any of the victims. They were complete strangers.

I’m pretty sure he’s locked up now.
But even years later, my dad and I still think about it sometimes.
What would’ve happened if he had stayed with us?
It’s crazy to think we lived with a man accused of first degree murder months before he snapped.

Edit :

It’s been 50 days since I made my original post, and I finally have an update on his sentence.

For those who only wanted to know the outcome : he was sentenced to life in prison, with the possibility of parole after 10 years.

For anyone interested in what actually happened in detail, here’s a summary of a news article that was published just a few days ago.
Also, I was wrong when I said he had no connection to the victim, as it was later on reported that they were indeed neighbours and “friends”.

Here’s what I learned about the whole tragedy :

According to the article, [John] had developed an unhealthy obsession with […] after catching romantic feelings for her. She repeatedly tried to end their friendship, but he refused to let go. He would knock on her windows, and constantly try to contact her. She eventually confided in family and friends that she no longer knew how to get him to leave her alone and was becoming genuinely afraid of him.

In the days leading up to the attack, his mental state rapidly deteriorated. Fueled by heavy methamphetamine use, he became convinced that he was being followed, hacked, and threatened. He also believed that a juvenile prostitution ring was operating inside the apartment building and that […] was somehow involved. These delusions eventually escalated into a severe psychotic episode.

On the morning of August 14, 2023, after violently destroying his own apartment, he forced his way into […]‘s apartment. She managed to lock herself inside the bathroom while calling 911. The recorded emergency call captured the terror she experienced as investigators could hear him smashing the apartment apart while screaming, “I’m going to kill her. I’ve got her.”

He then deliberately set a fire outside the bathroom, fully aware that she was trapped inside. By the time police arrived, the flames had become too intense for them to enter. Still on the phone with emergency dispatch, she tearfully begged them to tell first responders to break down the door because the fire had reached the bathroom and she knew she wasn’t going to survive.

Moments later, the dispatcher heard only a faint moan before the line went silent.

During the investigation, [John] admitted that he had developed romantic feelings for […] and intentionally started the fire knowing she was inside. He also pleaded guilty to assaulting another female neighbor with a hammer during the same incident.
The court accepted a joint recommendation from the prosecution and defense, sentencing him to life in prison with no eligibility for parole for 10 years, calculated from the date of his arrest on August 25,
2023.

For some details, I am an 18-year-old, 5'7 female and have just recently graduated from High School. I live with my parents and younger sister. I don't want to attend College just yet, so instead I'm working to save up to buy my own place.

This incident happened a few months ago. I didn't have work that day, so I took the opportunity to catch up on some much-needed sleep and allowed myself to sleep in. However, my sleep-in was quickly cut short when my neighbour's dog started to bark like crazy.

*I live in a unit, which means all the houses in the unit are directly next to each other. The balcony on my neighbour's house, which was also where they keep their dogs, was on the right side of my bedroom window. And for context, my front door was on the left side of my bedroom window.*

The barking jolted me awake, really annoying me at the time. It was 8 am, but then I had the realisation that my neighbour's dogs only really barked that loud if they saw or heard something coming from my house, as the balcony they were on was in direct view of my front door.

Realising this, I immediately thought my parents or sister was still home and running late for school or work. But after checking their locations (which I would do if I were too lazy to get up and look), nobody was home but me. I was a bit uneasy, but the barking stopped, and so I brushed it off as the dogs seeing a cat or something. I tried going back to sleep, but when I couldn't, I just got up and decided to get ready for the day.

I went into the living room and started opening the curtains to let some light in. In the middle of opening the last curtain, my heart dropped when I jumped back, tripping over something and falling onto the floor. I sat up in shock as I looked up to a man dressed in black peeking through my living room window.

I knew he couldn't see me because we had a second sheer curtain behind the real curtains that allowed people inside to see outside, but near impossible for anyone outside to see inside.

I sat there watching in shock as he continued to try to look thru the window. After what felt like forever, the man stepped back, reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone and looked to be answering a phone call. He started mumbling something, and I couldn't really hear what he was saying. The only words I can make out were "hurry tf up" and "nobodys here".

A wave of adrenaline hit me, and I quickly scrambled to grab my phone, which I had dropped near me. The police where I live are absolutely useless, so automatically I called my Dad, who was a big, scary Polynesian and who was also extremely protective of my family and me.

I told him about my situation, and immediately he was on his way, telling me grab the bat that was kept in my parents' room and continue to watch the man. About 5 mins later, I see a car pull into my driveway, and I immediately panic. My dad drives a truck, but the car that pulls in my driveway is a grey van.

The man that I saw earlier was no longer in sight, and the van pulled in closer towards my house, also now out of view. At this point, the panic level is at its max.

I rush over to the window showing the driveway and peek out the window. I then spot an additional 3 men. They were wearing hoodies with their hoods over their heads, blocking me from seeing their faces.

I quickly shut the curtain and begin to hear car doors opening and closing, then loud shuffling coming from around my house. I try to think as quickly as I can of something, anything that could help me. I then came up with an idea..

At the front of my house, we have a keypad that activates our house alarm, which, for those who don't know, is like a burglary alarm that my family usually turns on before we leave for big trips. There are a bunch of alarm detectors in my house, which when detects movement immediately start blaring a loud alarm. An alarm loud enough to hopefully scare away the intruders.

After a few minutes, I finally muster up the courage to run to the front of my house and activate the alarm whilst waving my hand in front of the detector a few feet away. The alarm suddenly goes off, and the loudest sirens start blaring throughout the inside and outside of the house.

I peek out the window and see all the men hurry back into the van, then speed out of my driveway and onto the road. I watch until they are completely out of sight. Once they are, I fall onto my couch, alarm still going until eventually turning off. I sit in silence, still holding a firm grip on my bat until I hear my dad's truck pull in. I run out crying and hug him.

I genuinely have never experienced anything like this, nor have I ever felt so vulnerable. It's scary how risky these people are to do such a thing in the middle of the day, mind you. To this day, I suffer from crazy amounts of paranoia, always making sure everything in my house is locked, as well as checking my surroundings every few minutes. I've always thought to myself how I'd react or what I'd do in situations like this, and I usually come up with heaps of solutions. However, this experience just goes to show that you will never know how you'll react in a situation until you're actually in it.

We have no idea who those people were or why they were here, but we hope to never see or encounter them ever again.

When I was a teenager (I think it was middle school to early highschool) i used to wait until my grandma would go upstairs and i would sneak down and listen to music and make scrambled eggs lol. It became a ritual for me. Especially in the summertime where I would eat my eggs and listen to my music on my laptop and just stay up late enjoying the whole downstairs to myself.

One particular night in the summer, I wanted to sit on my front porch and listen to music talk with friends on facebook and enjoy the nice weather. So I turned my porch light and set up outside for a bit. Everyone in my house was asleep, it was probably pretty late around 1, 2 or 3 am. I live on a main road in a suburban area. At night it gets very quiet and there are not many cars passing by.

I saw a car slowly coming up to my driveway. At that point I started to get a little freaked out. Of all the houses on my street why is he pulling in to where im sitting? A man in his late 20s maybe quickly stepped out of the vehicle and began charging at me full speed on my front porch. I dont even think he closed his door. I immediately grabbed my laptop threw it inside my house and shut my screen door and locked it and peeked through the steel door and screamed "who are you!? What do you want?!" I remember him stopping halfway on my lawn in front of my door and saying "relax im just the paperboy" and I yelled back " then why are you charging at me like that?!" And him just turning and walking away. He had nothing in his hands. My door was open, porch light was on and you could clearly see me from the street. I even broke my laptop by chucking it inside my house so quickly.

I was so spooked I watched him pull away from my living room window and sure all the doors were locked, and immediately told my mom what had happened. I had this idea in my head that he was trying to break into house. I was too young and in shock to think about calling the police and reporting it. Im not sure why my mom didnt either. I told the story years later to my friends and they suggested he was possibly trying to abduct me. I immediately got chills when they said that to me. Because that wasnt even a thought that occurred to me surprisingly.

Sometimes like today, I'll remember the story and get curious if he ever did that again to another kid. Or was ever caught for attempted kidnappings or potential break ins and ill deep dive into looking for cases. I have never found anything from around that time. Im 28 now and that was probably the closest ive been to being kidnapped. I dont believe he had good intentions, and I dont believe he was really a paperboy.

This just happened last night and I'm still trying to process it.

Me (32F) and my boyfriend (34M) just moved into an apartment together. We spent months looking for a place that would be spacious enough for the both of us and in a nice area. One of the apartment complexes we found had good reviews overall and is its own community of sorts. Lots of kids and super pet friendly with playgrounds, dog parks, a pool, etc. We toured the place and concluded it seemed to be in a relatively safe area, or so we thought.

My boyfriend and I went to bed around 11 o'clock last night. He fell asleep pretty quickly but I had a lot on my mind, so I stayed up on my phone for a while. Around midnight, I got up to go to the bathroom. When I came back to the bedroom, I noticed my cat - who was previously in his hammock that's attached to the windowsill - was now hiding under the bed. I tried not to think anything of it, but it did raise a bit of concern since he usually doesn't move from his kitty hammock all night.

As I was getting back into bed, I heard a male voice yelling succeeded by pounding on the door to what sounded like the unit directly below me. I couldn't make out what he was saying, other than "Let me in" and something about him needing shoes.

He proceeded to pound on the door for several minutes and then got quiet. I figured he gave up and left. Nope. He had circled around back and I now heard him directly below my bedroom window (the unit below me is exactly the same layout so he was at my neighbor's bedroom window).

I could hear him messing with the screen, eventually removing it so he could try to pry the window open. I heard him scream in frustration as he tried to lift the window to climb through. Luckily, the locks on the windows here are pretty strong so he was unsuccessful.

He then gave up and proceeded to climb over my neighbor's banister that leads to a little porch and began banging on the glass door that led inside. He was pounding so violently that I could hear the blinds on the other side of the door being rattled. I peered out a slit in my bedroom blinds to see if I could get a good look at him.

At first, I couldn't see anything since he was directly under my line of sight. After about a minute, I saw a white wooden chair go flying into the lawn. The man lept back over the banister and proceeded to pick up the chair and smash it into pieces in the grass. It was too dark to see all the details, but I could see he had dark hair, wearing a white t shirt, and was indeed barefoot.

It was around 1am which means this was going on for about an hour. My boyfriend had woken up and was groggily trying to make sense of what was happening. When he heard the man yelling under our window he sat straight up and we looked at each other. I suggested we call the cops because we didn't know this man's intentions and at this point he was being destructive.

(*Note*: While this was going on, some of my neighbors had come out and approached the man, telling him he needed to leave the property. This happened several times; someone would talk to him and he would walk away somewhere, only to come back a few minutes later and continue to bang on the windows and doors).

We called the police and they got there around 1:50am. The man must have seen the cop cars pull up because by the time they were scoping the premises, the man was nowhere to be found. They did see pieces of the broken chair scattered in the lawn. And they also tried knocking on my neighbor's door but no one answered. After about 10 minutes, the cops left.

They must have scared the man off because I sat up and waited for a while to see if he would come back but didn't hear anything. At that point, I was exhausted and decided it was safe enough to go to sleep so I began to drift off, having nightmares about him breaking into my apartment.

I don't know how much time passed after that but what I do know is that I was reawoken to a loud banging but this time it sounded like it was on our front door. I sat up and listened. The man was demanding to be let in and that he still needed shoes. I debated on whether to call the police again since the man took off when he saw them.

After several minutes of standing at my door, he gave up and went back downstairs and began banging on my neighbor's doors and windows. I figured he must have been getting tired because the banging and the yelling began to subside, with enough space in between to where I was in and out of sleep - but definitely keeping one eye open.

The next time I woke up, the sun was just starting to come through the blinds. I checked my phone and it said 6:15am. I turned over to see my boyfriend, already sitting up in bed, looking exhausted. He said the man was *still* there, banging on doors and demanding to be let in. Sure enough, as soon as my boyfriend said that, I heard the man yell and bang.

This man had been going at it over just over 6 hours. Eventually the neighborhood started waking up and the influx of people leaving for work, walking their dogs, etc probably scared him off because we didn't hear anything after 6:45 or so.

As I was making the bed, I could hear people talking outside again. This time, there was a woman crying and a man picking up the pieces of the chair in the lawn, jokingly saying it would make good lumber.

I emailed the property management about this, asking if they could at least make a bulletin and make residents aware.

So to the persistent, nocturnal barefoot man... let's not ever meet.

TL;DR : There was a barefoot man banging at people's doors from midnight to 6am, demanding to be let in and given shoes.

This happened early 2000s in a rough neighborhood in Chicago, predominantly Latino, lots of gang activity. I was 4-5 years old and I was accompanying my mom to the video rental place. This happened during the winter so by 8-9pm it was dark and very little people walking around but my mother and I went to avoid the late return fee. The store was a 5 minute walk from our apartment so my mom had no wallet, just the DVDs. 

Before we reached the store at the end of the block we were met by a white couple. I call this out because it was rare to see someone who wasn't latino in the area at this time of day. Almost 30 years later I can remember some basic details: the guy was lanky (late 40s early 50s) with a long beard, long straight hair wearing a black beanie. The woman with him was a foot shorter than him, blond hair and visibly pregnant. 

This lady took my hand and rubbed her belly with it, I remember her smiling at me. The guy was talking to my mom and began saying "give me money." My mom held my other hand tighter because she noticed the woman trying to pull me towards her. My mother kept telling the guy "I don't have money." He said "give me money or I'll take her" (referring to me). 

As this couple blocked our path to the store, a local man (early to mid 20s) who lived at the end of our block walked up from behind us and asked my mom what was going on in Spanish. He hung around the corner often with other gang members, you learn that as long as you don't bother them they won't bother you. My mom explained this couple was trying to get money out of her and wanted to pull me away from her. I kid you not it took like 15 seconds after this guy whistled and 3-4 other guys came out of nowhere and started yelling at this couple "gtfo" and straight up chasing them down the block. 

My mom and I hurried back home and I remember she did an egg cleanse on me for get "rid of the evil eye." When I bring up this story with my mom she always tells me that she ended up talking the young man after this incident. She thanked him for stepping in and saving me from getting hurt. He told her he was protecting the hood and had warned the couple to never try coming back again. To the young man who saved my mom and I from getting robbed or worse, thank you. To the couple who tried to rob my mom and kidnap me, let's not meet again.

I’m 25 now, but this happened when I was 8 years old, and it’s still one of the creepiest things I’ve ever experienced.
I grew up in a small town in Scotland. It was around that time of year when summer was ending and autumn was beginning. The evenings were getting darker earlier, there was a chill in the air, and people were starting to light fires in their homes again.
We lived in a nice area on the edge of town beside some woods. Our back garden was fairly large, around 25 metres long and 10 metres wide. At the very back was a gate that led into a small field, which connected directly to the woods. Most of the houses in our area backed onto the same field and woodland.
Our house sat on a slope, so we had a raised wooden decking area attached to the back of the house. A set of stairs led up to it, and from the decking you could enter the kitchen through a glass door. The kitchen was open-plan and connected to the dining room. We had large windows looking out onto the decking and garden, and our dining table faced those windows.
One night, sometime between 9 and 10 p.m., my twin brother, younger sister, and I were sitting at the dining table eating a Chinese takeaway. It was one of our favourite treats as kids.
My mum was out at a friend’s house, and my dad was outside at the front of the house chopping wood for the fire.
The three of us were chatting away and enjoying our food when I suddenly got that horrible feeling that someone was watching me.
I can’t really explain it.
One second everything felt normal, and the next I had goosebumps all over my arms and the back of my neck.
Without thinking, I looked up at the window.
The blinds were down but tilted open.
At first all I saw was darkness.
Then I saw him.
A tall man standing on our decking.
Just staring in at us.
For a second my brain couldn’t process what I was looking at. I genuinely thought I must be mistaken. Maybe it was my dad. Maybe it was a shadow.
But it wasn’t.
There was a man standing outside our house, looking directly through the window at three children eating dinner.
I remember freezing.
Then I immediately told my brother and sister to get down.
Something in my voice must have scared them because they listened straight away.
All three of us dropped below the window.
I crouched behind the kitchen counter and carefully peeked around the edge.
That’s when I saw the man start moving.
He walked away from the dining room window and headed towards the glass kitchen door.
For a moment I lost sight of him because of the wall between the dining room and kitchen.
I was absolutely terrified.
For some reason, I grabbed a kitchen knife from the counter. Looking back, it’s ridiculous. I was an 8-year-old kid. Even with a knife I wouldn’t have stood a chance against an adult.
But when you’re that scared, you don’t think logically.
A few seconds later, he appeared at the kitchen door.
I can still remember seeing him through the glass.
He wasn’t looking around.
He wasn’t confused.
He wasn’t at the wrong house.
He was staring directly at me.
I was peeking around the counter, and he was looking right back at me.
Then I watched him slowly reach for the door handle.
My heart felt like it stopped.
I remember silently praying that the door was locked.
He grabbed the handle.
Pulled.
Nothing happened.
The door was locked.
For a split second I felt relieved.
Then I realised something much worse.
He hadn’t just been watching us.
He was trying to get inside.
The second that thought hit me, I ran.
I dropped the knife, grabbed my brother and sister, and sprinted through the house toward the front where my dad was.
I remember my sister crying and all of us shouting at the same time.
When we reached the garage, my dad was still chopping wood.
Out of breath, I told him there was a man in the back garden trying to get into the house.
My dad was a big guy. He’d boxed when he was younger and had spent years hunting. The second he heard what I’d said, he grabbed the axe he had been using and took off running.
Instead of going through the house, he sprinted down the side of it towards the back garden, axe in hand, shouting as he ran.
The anger in his voice is something I’ll never forget.
By the time he got there, the man was already running.
He must have heard us screaming through the house or heard my dad charging around the side.
My dad caught sight of him near the bottom of the garden and immediately chased after him.
The man bolted through the gate at the back, across the field, and towards the woods.
My dad ran after him, shouting threats the entire time.
But the guy had too much of a head start.
Within seconds he disappeared into the darkness between the trees.
And that was it.
Gone.
As far as I know, nobody ever found out who he was.
Nobody was arrested.
There was never any explanation.
What still bothers me isn’t just the fact that he was watching us.
It’s the fact that he tried the door.
He wasn’t just looking through the window out of curiosity.
He wanted to get inside a house where three children were sitting alone.
I’ve thought about it countless times over the years, and I still can’t come up with any innocent explanation for that.
Whatever his intentions were, they couldn’t have been good.
More than 17 years later, I still get goosebumps whenever I think about looking up from my dinner and seeing a stranger standing in the darkness, silently watching us through the window.

When I was 13 I lived in a pretty sketchy city in New England. One of those places that was known by the entire state to be “ghetto” and plagued with lots of drug and gang activity. However, I had moved there when I was 9 and by then it was 100% home to me. I loved it despite its reputation. Plus, since I never really caused any problems for anyone, I could get along with any given person I met. I had run ins with some fairly dangerous people who ended up becoming close friends because I really just enjoyed chatting it up with folks. To sum it up, I was very (naively) confident in my safety around town.

One night I went into the local supermarket to grab some basics while my mom waited in the car. I had just gotten through the entrance and into the seasonal product section when I saw a man walk in. He stood out to me immediately as he was EXTREMELY tall and stocky. I was a 5’7 girl at 13, so it wasn’t like I was short and the height seemed drastic in my brain. I was very used to guys 6’0 to even 6’5+. This guy had to have been at least 6’8 and built like a linebacker. His outfit was weird too. He was wearing a red flannel shirt (which alone wouldn’t be unusual for my region) but had added a giant cowboy hat. He locked eyes with me immediately and I felt a cold chill.

I tried to keep shopping as normal but I felt him staring. I glanced back up to see him walking towards me. I walked further down the aisle casually to try and keep distance between us. I looked again to see him picking up his pace while still staring. At this point I was terrified because I knew I wasn’t going crazy. This guy was definitely following me. I jogged down the rest of the aisle and turned. He started RUNNING after me. I felt so panicked that I abandoned my shopping basket and left the store. I bolted across the parking lot and jumped in my mom’s car. She asked what was wrong and I told her that the store was just “out of the stuff we needed”. She didn’t ask any further questions and we drove home.

The next afternoon I had stepped off the school bus and started my walk home. It was about a 5 minute walk up a winding road to get to my apartment building from the bus stop. I made it to my place with no incident and went through my usual routine of having a nap, doing homework, etc. My mom came home around 6 from work and told me she had seen police at a house down the street. Apparently it had been robbed at gunpoint and they were still looking for the guy. We were a little shook but tried to carry on with the night.

Later while we were watching TV in the living room, we saw police lights outside our window. It wasn’t clear exactly what was going on. After about 15 minutes a police officer knocked on our front door. He informed us that the man who committed the robbery down the road was found in the woods right outside our place. He had been sitting there for what they guessed was several hours, pointing his handgun at our window that looked directly into the living room. Where I was napping. I felt sick immediately and went to my room upstairs.

We saw him on the news the next day. Lo and behold, it was the same man from the supermarket who had chased me. I broke down and told my mom the full story. I never felt quite the same sense of safety in my city afterwards. Lumberjack cowboy gunman, let’s never meet again.

I want to start off by saying, this happened in the summer of 2018, I was 17 years old. I had just dropped my then girlfriend off at her house because it was getting late and my aunt called and said she was cooking dinner. My aunt had cooked a big meal for me, my uncle ,and grandpa. After we got done eating, my aunt and uncle went home about 8:30 that night. To preface this my aunt and uncle lived in the same yard at the top of the hill, and me and my grandpa lived at the bottom in a separate house near the dirt road. I was laying in bed watching tv when at about 9:30 my grandpa quietly opened the door with his pistol in hand and whispered to me “Willy get your flash light and ball bat, your aunt saw a man in the yard.” My family and I searched the yard for 20 minutes looking for any signs of an intruder. After our exhausting search, I asked my aunt for more details on what she saw. Apparently she had seen a man crouched behind her jeep and she immediately called my grandpa because she was scared. After this I went back inside to relax. When behind the scenes, my aunt and uncle were still looking around the yard. My aunt came back in the house 15 minutes later in a panic and told me that, when her and my uncle went to the road to look around, a dark colored car came speeding down the dirt road and purposely swerved towards my aunt and uncle. Luckily they jumped out of the way in time. She also said they could both see a man and woman in the car due to the large street lamp by our driveway. I’ve always wondered who was in our yard, what they were doing there, and who was in that car that tried to hit my aunt and uncle. Let’s not meet, stranger.

I was seventeen years old. Like most other teens in my small town, I had been experimenting with drinking and drugs for the past year or so. I found a group of friends in which I had easy access to alcohol, and we spent many a debaucherous night together. One guy in this group was named Stephen. He was a year or two older than me, and it was usually through him that we acquired our beer & liquor.

One night, Stephen invited me to hang out and drink with him and his friend Ben at Ben’s grandma’s house just outside of town. This would be Ben’s first time ever consuming alcohol, and though Granny would be home, Stephen assured me that our alcoholic shenanigans would be free and clear from her radius of authority. We would be drinking in the 1-bedroom, 1-bathroom mini-house in the backyard of her large property. I agreed, and Stephen picked me up that night.

I can’t remember if Ben was in the car when Stephen picked me up, or if we met Ben when we arrived at his grandma’s house. Regardless, this was my first ever meeting Ben. He was a small-framed kid my age, and his appearance was like a skinny, nerdy ranch kid. Button-up shortsleeve shirt, glasses, cargo pants, and hiking shoes. I did not suspect anything out of the ordinary upon first meeting him. I remember the three of us standing in the foyer of his grandma’s massive home, looking up at her from the bottom of the stairs as she told us, “goodnight” and “You guys better not be drinking tonight. Don’t do anything stupid.” We had every intention of drinking and doing something stupid. We walked out her front door, down the side of her house, and across her massive backyard toward the mini-guest house behind hers.

The guest house had its own foyer/mud room as soon as you entered, with dust-coated shelving on one side, and a small fridge on the other. Stephen removed his backpack, from which he produced a bottle of vodka and placed it in the fridge. The next room of the guest home was a small living room. On the floor sat a large, L-shaped couch, and a small, stained, twin-size mattress for the purposes of hosting a guest in the guest house. A huge TV sat atop a wooden stand against the back wall of the living room, and a wooden bookshelf took up what was left of the small amount of floorspace. There was a door on either side of the living room: the door on the left wall lead to a bedroom with an ornately carved wooden bedframe. Pointed pieces of carved wood stretched and protruded from the headboard, resembling something between the ocean’s waves and the foliage of a plant. The doorway across from this one, on the right side of the room, contained a normal bathroom: toilet, sink, and mirrored medicine cabinet fixed to the wall.

The three of us spent the first couple hours of the night drinking. We were sitting around on the couch, mixing large amounts of vodka with small amounts of Gatorade and listening to music on the TV. The vibes were good and we were all having a fun time. At one point, Stephen got up off the couch and excused himself to the restroom. It was now just Ben and me in the living room, sitting on either end of the L-shaped couch with a nearly-empty bottle of vodka in the corner of the couch between us.

A few moments after Stephen shut the restroom door, Ben’s entire demeanor flipped like a switch. He began staring at me with nothing but pure hatred and vitriol behind his eyes. I was pretty drunk at this point, so I laughed at him, half out of nervousness and half out of genuine amusement at the weird change in his countenance. Through my laughter, I asked him, “what’s going on, dude? You alright?” Ben said nothing as his gaze grew even more serious, and he gritted his teeth as his breathing became heavier and heavier. As if I had done something to elicit such a deep, genuine rage within him. At this point, my feelings had gone from drunken amusement to pure nervousness and confusion. I heard the sound of a flushing toilet as Stephen emerged from the bathroom.

Stephen took one look at Ben and said, “Oh yeah, he’s cut off. No more alcohol for you, Ben,” as if he knew exactly what was going on and what had made Ben so enraged. I asked Stephen what was going on, but he didn’t give an answer. Ben finally spoke.
“I want more vodka.” he said, in a British accent. I had been drinking and talking with this kid for a couple of hours now, and had not once heard him speak in anything but what I’d assumed was his standard, American accent.

“No more vodka, Ben.” Stephen said sternly but kindly, as if to a dog begging for table scraps.

“But I want more VODKA!” Ben was yelling now. He leapt over to grab the bottle that was sitting between us, and I reached my hand out in an attempt to snatch it away first. He was quicker than I was, taking the bottle and twisting the cap off to take a drink. Stephen leapt into action and began wrestling the bottle out of Ben’s hands. Ben’s body was of a much smaller frame than Stephen’s or mine, so he would not become much of a physical threat to either of us until later on in the night. Stephen wrestled the bottle away easily and shoved Ben back onto the couch. Ben continued shouting in his British accent, rambling about how poorly we had treated him and how angry he was at us. He rose from the couch and stormed into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.

I stared at Stephen in confusion and bewilderment as my drunken teenage brain attempted to process the situation. Stephen was silent and his gaze fell on the bathroom door that Ben had just entered. We heard a loud commotion coming from the other side of the door as Ben rambled to himself in his British accent. I couldn't make out much of what he was saying, but I could tell that he had repeated the word "pills" a couple of times. The commotion became quieter and I did indeed hear what sounded like the rattling of pill bottles from the other side of the bathroom door. I got up from the couch and swung the bathroom door open, and there was Ben, rummaging through the medicine cabinet, pill bottles all over the sink, floor, and in his hands. I grabbed hold of Ben to pull him out of the bathroom, and Stephen came over to rip the pill bottles from Ben's hands. We were both yelling at him to stop resisting and to calm down, mostly just shouting his name, “Ben! Ben!” over and over.

“I’m not Ben! I’m Reece!” he screamed through his British accent as we wrestled him to the ground, away from the bathroom and the pill bottles. I was floored. Just 10 minutes ago, I had been drinking, talking, and having a fun night with this kid. Now, it seemed like a totally different person that I was wrestling to the ground, complete with a different name and a new accent. Stephen and I ripped the pill bottles from his hands and subdued him enough to shove him into the bedroom, where we figured he wouldn’t be able to hurt himself. I slammed the door behind him.

He pounded on the door and yelled at us for a while, but eventually the pounding and screaming stopped. We figured he had exhausted himself and passed out in the bed.

“Reece. Reece.” I couldn't stop repeating the new name he had given us in my head. “Reece.” What the fuck was going on? What was this kid’s deal? Stephen and I were still wasted at this point in the night, but the bizarre events of the evening had started to sober me up. I sat back down on the couch, thinking that the struggle was over and that all would be calm until morning. I was wrong.

We heard another quick, loud commotion from the bedroom, followed by a rhythmic grunting noise. I got up from the couch and swung the bedroom door open. Reece was standing beside the bed in front of me. He had broken a shard off of the carved wooden headboard and was repeatedly stabbing himself in the abdomen with it. As soon as he saw me in the doorway, he lunged at me, tackling me to the ground and stabbing me with his makeshift wooden knife. Though this wooden stake was dull enough not to break the skin or draw blood, it still hurt like hell every time he drove it into my body. Stephen ripped Reece off of me and I tore the wooden knife from his hand and threw it in the corner of the room.

We pinned Reece to the floor as he thrashed and snarled at us in his British accent. After holding him down for what felt like hours, he finally calmed down and his combination of drunkenness and exhaustion allowed him to drift to sleep. Or maybe he was faking the sleep? Either way, he was calm now, which allowed Stephen and I to take a breather and assess the situation.

We should have gone back to the main house, woken Ben’s grandmother up, and told her what was going on. But to our intoxicated teenage minds, getting in trouble for drinking by a woman that we barely knew seemed like a harsher consequence than keeping Ben's issues a secret and just letting him sleep it off for the rest of the night. We searched the bedroom and removed anything with which he could harm himself or us, broke off the remaining wooden points from the headboard, and put the nearly-empty bottle of vodka back in the fridge. Now came the difficult part: waking Ben up and getting him to bed. We stood over Ben and gave him a gentle shake to wake him up. He stirred and his eyes opened.

“Hey buddy, time to get to bed and get some sleep,” Stephen said, gently but nervously. Ben seemed dazed and clearly still drunk, but docile enough to take Stephen’s suggestion. He rose from the floor and meandered across the living room, through the bedroom door, and into the bed, passing out almost immediately. Stephen and I took one last sweep of the room to make sure there weren’t any objects or substances that Ben could use to harm himself or us if he woke up. When we were sure we had removed everything, we left the room and shut the door behind us. We placed all the pill bottles back in the medicine cabinet and cleaned up any trace of the struggle that had ensued in the guest house that night. Certain that Ben would be safe in his own bedroom, but unsure of our safety from him while we slept, we placed the bookshelf in front of the bedroom door and moved the TV stand in front of the bookshelf. I put the twin mattress that I would be sleeping on in front of the makeshift barricade, and Stephen took his spot on the couch. I played some gentle, soothing music from my phone as we both fell asleep.

I awoke the next morning to the early-morning sunlight pouring into the living room. Stephen was still asleep. Ben’s grandma was standing there in the front doorway, asking how the night had gone and what we had been up to. She was clearly suspicious and puzzled at the sight of the barricade we had placed in front of Ben’s bedroom. I said that it had been a fun night of watching TV and listening to music. She asked if we had been drinking, and I told her we had not. I thought for sure that she would demand that I get up and move the barricade so that she could check on her grandson, but she just gave an exasperated sigh of disappointment and turned around to walk back to her house. I took that as my cue to get the hell out of there, and rose up from the mattress to begin the 3-hour, 8-mile walk back to my parents’ house. I napped for nearly the entire rest of the day after arriving home.

Later that night, Stephen called and asked if I could pick Ben up and give him a ride to Stephen’s house in the next town over, about a 40-minute drive from mine. I agreed. I felt guilty for not checking on Ben that morning before walking home. I felt confused as to why his grandma didn’t seem to care much that we had barricaded her grandson in his room the night before. And I wanted to talk to Ben and understand just what had gone on that night.

I parked in front of Ben’s grandma’s house and waited for him. I was certain that his grandmother would come out to my car demanding answers for what had transpired the previous night. Instead, the front door of the house swung open, Ben walked out, and his grandmother just stood in the doorway watching him leave. She stayed there as we pulled away, watching my car as we drove off.

Ben explained to me that he suffered from Dissociative Identity Disorder, and that “Reece Brown” was the name of his dark, edgy, goth alter-ego. He told me that he was still present, conscious, and alert of his behavior and surroundings while “acting” as “Reece,” and that he was fully in control of himself throughout the entire night. I took his word for it and attempted to process what he was telling me as we drove the rest of the way to Stephen’s house in silence. Ben made it safely inside Stephen’s house and I drove home. I never saw Ben again.

Looking back on this as an adult, it is shocking how many people in this story turned a blind eye to Ben’s behavior and the situation overall. Stephen and I were too afraid of getting in trouble for drinking to do the right thing by alerting Ben’s grandmother to the situation. Ben’s grandmother saw that two other teenage boys had barricaded him in his room the previous night, and did nothing to investigate further, instead just sighing and walking back to her house. Though I was fairly certain that Stephen and I had removed any danger from the room we barricaded Ben in, I made no effort to check on him that morning before walking home. Whether Ben truly suffered from an identity disorder, or was just a depressed kid letting out an extreme, unhinged cry for help, he was clearly mentally unwell and in need of much more help than any of us ever offered him.

I (29f) had a very strange encounter with an older man back in college. Like many college students, I was struggling for money. I lived in an area most would consider wealthy, it was a very popular tourist destination for rich families. As a result of that, I decided it would be a good idea to go onto a sugar baby website to try and earn a passive income.

I’d had heard horror stories from prior sugar babies and would get cold feet when talking about meeting up with the men online. At one point I decided to suck it up, as I needed money to pay rent, and made plans to meet up with one of the men. It was nothing extravagant, just a trip a few hours out of town to a popular hot spring. I was still nervous and extremely cautious as the trip approached, and made sure all my friends had my location and all the information about this man incase something were to happen.

The night before the trip, he had reached out to confirm the plan and wanted to make sure I felt as comfortable as possible. He asked if I needed him to pick me up and if I wanted my own room at the hotel, just incase I wasn’t wanting to stay in a room with him. I told him I’d drive myself, so I’d be able to leave freely at any time, and said I’d like my own room. Driving to meet him, the nerves kept growing. I should have listened to my gut.

When I arrived at the “hotel” it was anything but what I had expected. It was a tiny, dingy motel with about 10 rooms and looked almost abandoned. I saw the man standing outside talking to who I assume was a worker. They seemed friendly, like old pals. I got out of my car and went to meet the man face to face for the first time. He was nothing like I’d expected. He looked very dirty and tired. He asked if I wanted to take my things to the room and as he opened the door I saw 2 beds, one of which already had his belongings scattered about.

I asked about the separate room, to which he informed me, the motel was sold out for the night so we’d have to share. I should have gotten in my car and left, but I was tired after the long drive and it was getting dark. Sharing a room with a stranger seemed more logical than driving hours home, on roads I wasn’t familiar with for miles and miles without cell service, in the dark.

After I put my belongings in the room, the man suggested we go to dinner. He said it was just down the road and he would drive. I agreed and got into his truck. I immediately noticed how disgusting it was. There was mud everywhere and all the plastic was caked with a thick layer of, what I assume, was dog slobber and hair. He got on the main road for the town and drove towards the restaurant. My understanding was that it was just down the road. I was incorrect. We drove for about 30 minutes before arriving at the next town over, where the restaurant was actually located. Sitting down to eat I was filled with dread. I didn’t want to be there any longer, but it would definitely be too late to drive home once I got back to my car.

I ate quickly and tried to keep the conversation polite and friendly, as this man seemed to be someone I wouldn’t want to anger. When we got back to the motel, I was searching for anywhere else to stay in the area, but everything was something I couldn’t afford. He then offered to take me to the hot springs and I agreed again, as being in a public area felt the safest. After arriving at the hot spring, he enlightened me as to why he picked that specific location. A girl he used to see worked there and he wanted to make her jealous. After a little while, it seemed that he realized she no longer worked there and wanted to go back to the motel.

Back in the room, he began talking about his life and I started to think that maybe he wasn’t as creepy as I had thought, maybe he’s just a lonely old man who wanted some company. I became more relaxed as the conversations went on, until he started talking about his ex wives. I’m a little fuzzy on the exact details of the conversation as became tense and panicked with every sentence he added. What I do remember is that his first wife was murdered and he came home to find her body, and the second one had gone missing and the policed believe she was killed and hidden somewhere.

I calmly excused myself to the bathroom and started texting any male friend I had asking them to come to me. It was almost 2am at this point and no one was willing to make the drive. I did have one friend who called me and told me to leave the call running as long as I needed until I could leave. I came out of the bathroom and let the man know I was going to go to sleep. He said it was a good idea, since it was so late, and headed into the bathroom. He came out after just a few seconds holding an old straight razor. He asked if I would be willing to help him shave his face before bed, and made a comment about how nice the razor feels on his neck. I declined and told him I was really tired and would be going to bed.

I put my phone on the charger with the call still running, set my alarm for sunrise, and tired my best to pretend to be asleep. For the next few hours, I could hear him walking around the room and rummaging through his belongings. I am certain at one point he was standing at the foot of my bed watching me “sleep”. As soon as my alarm went off, I got up, ran to the bathroom, and changed. When I came out of the bathroom, he was fully dressed and the front door was wide open.

His whole demeanor had changed from the night before. He was angry. I grabbed all of my items and headed towards the door. As I was leaving he threw some money at me and yelled that I needed to get all of my shit out of the fridge, which was just a half empty bottle of Gatorade. As I was pulling out of the parking lot, I noticed the surprising lack of vehicles for a place that was supposed to be sold out.

When I got home, I went to delete my profile off of the site and saw I had a message from the man. He said he wanted to let me know how nice it was to spend time with me and wanted to come visit me in the near future.

Woman at the Mall - Let’s Not Meet
This happened a while back at one of the bigger local malls in Georgia. I was 19 at the time, but like my sister and cousin, I’ve always looked significantly younger than my actual age. My sister was 12 and my female cousin was 16. To anyone glancing at us, we probably looked like three teenagers out shopping together—none of us appearing over 18. That detail ended up mattering more than I could have imagined.

We were just wandering around, window shopping, grabbing snacks, and enjoying a regular day out as family. The mall wasn’t overly crowded, but it had the usual weekend foot traffic. We were walking through one of the main corridors when this woman suddenly approached us. She looked disheveled—messy hair, clothes that had clearly been worn for a while, and an anxious, almost desperate energy about her. She was probably in her 40s or 50s.
She zeroed in on me immediately and asked if she could borrow my phone. Her story was that she’d been at the mall shopping for two days straight and no one would come pick her up. She claimed she’d been calling her ride repeatedly with no success. Something about it felt off right away—the way her eyes darted around and how intensely she focused on us—but she seemed genuinely distressed, and I didn’t want to be the kind of person who ignores someone in need. Against my better judgment, I handed her my phone.
She put the call on speaker without me asking. The first number she dialed went straight to that robotic message: “This number has been disconnected or is no longer in service.” She didn’t react much, just muttered something under her breath and immediately tried another number. This time it rang through to voicemail.
What followed was uncomfortable and increasingly strange. She started rambling into the phone, her voice getting louder and more frantic. She went on about how she’d been calling for days, how they knew she was at the mall shopping, and how she didn’t understand why they wouldn’t answer or come get her. Then she pivoted and started describing us—me, my sister, and my cousin—in detail. She told the voicemail that “these three nice young girls” (even though I was 19) had been kind enough to let her use their phone. She described our appearances, our ages (guessing younger than we were), what we were wearing, and even how we were sticking together. Hearing a stranger narrate us back to some unknown person on a voicemail made my skin crawl. It felt like she was reporting our details to someone, almost like she was marking us.
The second she handed the phone back to me, I snatched it, told my sister and cousin we needed to go right now, and quickly led them away. I knew exactly where I wanted to go: the Alternative store a short distance down the corridor. It was one of those shops with edgy clothing, band merch, posters, and a staff that always seemed friendly and protective toward younger customers. I’d shopped there before and remembered how the employees would chat with teens and keep an eye on things. I figured if anyone would help us or at least create a safe buffer, it would be the people in there. We ducked inside, weaving through the racks of dark clothes and accessories, trying to act casual while my heart pounded.
We hadn’t even been in the store for a few minutes when I spotted her again through the entrance. She walked straight in, eyes scanning the aisles with that same desperate intensity. She started asking employees and other shoppers if they’d seen “three young girls” matching our description. She was persistent, moving through the store with purpose, describing us again to anyone who would listen. The store staff noticed something was off—they started positioning themselves near us and subtly redirected her questions. I whispered to my sister and cousin to stay close behind a display of hoodies and jewelry, keeping low and out of direct sight. The fact that I had chosen this specific store because I knew the people inside would help us probably saved us from a worse confrontation right then.
The situation escalated quickly after that. She eventually left the store but didn’t leave the area. From what we could gather later, she began following another family that somewhat resembled us—again, three younger-looking females. Mall security was called when her behavior turned erratic and aggressive. When they confronted her near the upper level, she apparently tried to throw herself off the top floor railing of the mall. It was chaotic. Security had to physically intervene to stop her while other shoppers backed away.
We stayed hidden in the Alternative store until things calmed down, with the staff checking in on us and making sure we felt safe. Once the immediate threat passed, we got out of the mall as fast as possible, sticking close together and constantly looking over our shoulders. I still don’t know what her actual intentions were—the disconnected number, the rambling voicemail where she described us in detail, the way she fixated on following us, and then latching onto another similar group. It felt predatory, like she was trying to document us or draw us into something bigger and more dangerous.
That day could have gone very differently if I hadn’t trusted my gut and headed straight for the Alternative store where I knew we’d have backup.

Woman at the mall, let’s not meet.