Storyteller 1 (25:31)
This happened four years ago at the time this happened, I was 12 going on 13 in just a month or two. The friend I will mention in this story was 14 at the time. Her name was Sally, who I was staying with that night. At the time, the two year age gap sales seemed quite big. At 12 to 13 years old, I was about to start my second year of middle school, whereas Sally was about to begin her sophomore year of high school. I met her in the beginning of my first year at the new school. She was older than the other kids in our grade and was considered one of the popular kids and I think that's what drew me to her at first. We became fast friends and before we knew it, we were spending every single weekend together. Together. Seriously, every single weekend. Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary. It was your typical Friday night. We carpooled to her family's apartment after school. I have always been a picky eater, so when our family had dinner, I didn't eat with them. I just snacked on the pop Tart that I had stowed away in my backpack in case they ordered something that I wouldn't eat. Something to note is that our family was pretty pretty religious. I wouldn't go as far as to say they were fanatical, but they didn't allow their kids to watch horror movies or anything that was rated PG 13 or R. It did not stem from the desire to protect them from something inappropriate. Sally's mother had an irrational fear that scary movies had certain messages. We asked to watch the Purge and our mom obviously said no. After some negotiating, she agreed to let us watch Hunger Games instead. After the movie, Sally and I went to hang out in her room. She put on some music and being the age that we were, we gave each other makeovers. By the end of it, we were looking much older than just 12 and 14. This part of the night is when things started to seem off to me. Sally wasn't the most positive influence. Despite being my best friend at the time, she was manipulative and got off on putting me down. She had a habit of talking to men online and lying about her age. Sally showed me some texts between her and the man she was talking to. I can't give you an exact recount of them, but they consisted of him trying to convince her to meet up with him and just the usual things you would expect from a creep online. According to him, he was 19, tall and blonde, with soulful blue eyes. Once I saw the texts, I asked if she had a picture of him. Something did not sit right with me. After seeing the messages, she showed me what he looked like and he was very clearly not 19. This man was at least 40 and looked like he lived in his mother's basement. That night we got a call from him. Sally answered without hesitation and when I heard the voice on the other end of the call, I felt like I was going to be sick. You're so pretty, why don't you come meet me? Sally said that she couldn't because she was spending the night with a friend. The mention of that sparked his interest and then he proceeded to try and ask us both to meet him. Sally, lacking any common sense, said yes. Thus begun her plan for us to sneak out and walk 15 blocks to meet him in a deserted McDonald's parking lot. I did not want to go. I was raised on stories of what happens to teen girls who meet random men from the Internet in person. But after adamant pleading from Sally that she didn't feel safe going by herself, I agreed. We took our phones with us for the walk. I had a kitchen knife hidden on me in case something were to happen and I needed to defend myself. The route that we had to take to get there didn't have very many street lamps and there weren't any houses. We were surrounded by trees on both sides of us. When we got to the parking lot, the only car parked nearby was a black beat up 2000 Toyota Corolla. The car was still running when we got there, and from what we could tell, there was more than just one person inside. The man from the picture got out of the front passenger seat and left the door open behind him before approaching us. I turned my flash on so I could see and he was obviously on something. I can't tell you what it was, but his eyes were so wide they looked like they were about to pop out of his head. He was jittery and kept twitching. I became very Conscious of how big he was, maybe 6 foot 2, around 280 pounds pounds. For reference, my friend and I did not look our ages. Even without makeup. I'm about 5'two and my friend was taller, probably around 5'six but we were both significantly smaller than this man. He reached out for us and caught my friend by the arm. I went to get my knife as quickly as I could and that's when I saw his friends getting out of the car. He invited us back to his car and offered us booze and drugs. But after seeing my knife and that I was ready to call the police, he released my friend. I took Sally's arm and ran faster than I ever had in my life. We took the long way home to avoid them finding out where she lived in case they were following us. Once we got there, her family was still sound asleep. We locked all the doors, closed the blinds and blocked him on everything. There wouldn't be any sleep sleeping that night. We were constantly peeking out the window and to our dismay, that same Toyota was circling around her apartment building. Not once, not twice, but three times. I never mentioned any of this to my parents out of fear of getting grounded or in some kind of trouble. I'm 16 now and they still have no idea. I still get nervous when I see a car similar to the one one from that night. As for Sally, her parents never found out either. We agreed to never speak about it again. Thankfully, she moved into a new house just a few weeks after that happened. It's safe to say that Sally and I haven't spoken in years. She was upset at me for ruining her night and our friendship did not last long after that. We had a pretty bad falling out, but looking back on it now, it was definitely, definitely for the better. Who knows what would have happened if I wasn't with her that night. And who knows what those men were truly planning. In high school, I had a stalker. Here's the story I'll try to keep keep it concise, but there's a lot of information. I was 16 and we met on Facebook. He went to a school nearby and we decided to meet up for a movie. We had a great time together and ended up dating. The first time he came to my parents house he had an ankle monitor on for house arrest and wouldn't tell anyone why, which was the first red flag that I ignored. And since he was a minor, we couldn't find out. My parents obviously did not allow us to hang out, so we hung out at his house or around town. At the YMCA camp. I was rebellious and naive. Things started to get weird when I noticed his family was pretty odd. One day we were making out in his bedroom and I saw his father looking through the blinds. I screamed and called him out and his dad ran off. He told me that his dad was just into redheads. I went to leave and his mom was smoking something in the kitchen. So I decided it was time to break up. And this is when it got bad. He started crying and told me that he's in cancer treatment and that's why he needs me, quote unquote. And that he doesn't have long to live. Unfortunately, I believed him and told him that we could be friends. This is when the stalking started. He switched schools to my high school but never went to college class. He would just stand outside of my classroom looking inside until it was passing period. When I would leave class, he wouldn't address me. He would just follow about 10 to 15ft behind me to my next period and stand outside the classroom again. I was too intimidated to say something to him, so I just let it happen for weeks. It started to progress to where he would follow me home. Every day he would get on the same buses me, despite living across town, and walk 10 to 15ft behind me all the way to my house. He would stand outside just staring up at the window until around the time my parents got home. And then he would just leave. Finally, I told him to shove off and leave me alone. I told him that we could no longer be friends or acquaintances and he had to forget about me. However, that escalated things way farther. I started getting like a hundred calls a day. Half of them were him screaming to death threats at me and in detailed torture methods that he wanted to do to me. And the other half were him singing me love songs that he wrote. Every time I blocked his number, he seemed to just magically get a new one and begin leaving more messages. I woke up one day to see that overnight he had left me one of those dancing, singing snowmans on my porch. He had stabbed it in the head and the knife was still sticking out. He covered it in this liquid deodorant that I had previously mentioned liking the smell of. And I noticed there was a hole where the little song recording device was. When I pressed the hand, it was not the regular Frosty the Snowman song that played. It was his voice singing eerily. I'm going to have you forever. I'm never going to let you be. I was done at this point and told my parents who contacted the school they suspended him, but he still waited at my bus stop every day and walked to my house with me. One day he charged at me like he was going to tackle me. When I tensed up for the impact, he stopped and hugged me. Me. It wasn't a regular hug either. It was like he was trying to crush me. I am very petite and he ended up cracking one of my ribs. I started crying and then he started crying too. Before running off, he left me a voicemail apologizing in song form. Now this is the night that it happened and it's a night I will never forget. It's the reason that I got a restraining order. I woke up one evening for no reason. Just was fully awake. I got up to go to the kitchen to get a glass of water to relax and in the reflection on the fridge I saw movement in my backyard. I couldn't see well because it was so dark outside and the light in the kitchen made it even harder, so I went to the back sliding glass door to get a better look. When I got closer, I was met with the silhouette of a tall man standing just outside the door. He was there, the stalker under my room at 3am he was just staring at me. I screamed, which woke up my parents, but he was gone by the time my dad went outside. There's a patio right outside my bedroom window that goes all the way to the ground, so it's possible he could have been on top of the patio looking directly into my bedroom window before. I got a restraining order shortly after that and the guy eventually dropped out of school. I haven't seen him since in person, but every six months or so he makes a new Facebook and tries to friend request me. I just block it and report it every time. Scary stuff. Have you heard of that myth that if you wake up in the middle of the night for no reason, there's likely someone watching you? Well, maybe it's true. Through way back when I was in my mid-20s in the late 1980s, I used to be hardcore into hiking and camping. But given that my home state of Rhode island is like the size of a postage stamp, relatively speaking in way, I exhausted a lot more of low local campgrounds pretty quickly and began to long for something a little wilder. I had heard a lot of great things about the Appalachian Trail, how hiking it was a badge of honor for a lot of people who shared my passion for the outdoors. My uncle on my dad's side had hiked the whole thing over the course of a summer back in the 50s and he never shut up about it. Whenever he would see me and the subject of hiking came up, he made it sound absolutely magical, like there was true wilderness out there just waiting to be explored. And so I made up my mind to mimic the journey my uncle took over one summer. I couldn't get the time off work to walk the whole trail, but if I timed it right, I could walk the southern portion of the trail from Harper's Ferry to Asheville, North Carolina in just a couple of weeks, fulfilling a hiking dream I had had for what seemed like an age. Then, in the summer of 1989, I traveled down to Harpers Ferry by bus and by train with all my hiking and camping gear on my back. After picking up a few final supplies for my journey south, I hiked up onto the Appalachian Trail and kicked off the journey of a lifetime. Needless to say, the first few days walk were pretty tough, but I got used to the level of strain pretty quickly. And I'm telling you, I have never, never been as hungry or tired as I was on those first few nights up in Appalachia. I brought a hammock with me as I had heard some pretty intense stories about the bugs down in West Virginia. Nasty little beasties with names like the assassin bug, which basically has a big spike for a mouth, or cow killer ants whose sting are so painful they are said to have felled an actual cow once or twice. That had to be pure rumor, but it was intimidating nonetheless. So every night after my day's hike, I'd take it out of my pack, unroll it, and tie it up between two trees before getting some shut eye. It didn't make for the comfiest night's sleep I'd ever had, but I wasn't complaining, especially if it kept the black widows off me. But since I was out in the woods most nights without cover, every little hoot or squawk from nocturnal animals animals would wake me up. It was irritating, sure, but it was part and parcel with being out there bonding with nature. So this one night I wake up pretty sure I had heard something rustling in the leaves close by. I shift in my hammock, peering over shoulder, and then feel my blood run cold as I see this big dark shape looming over me. I froze for a moment, feeling my eyes adjust to the darkness, and I could tell that it was a person just standing there, statue still, staring at me. In one fluid motion, I rolled out of my hammock and hit the ground running, bolting off into the trees. I did not care who it was standing over me. Whoever does that kind of thing definitely did not have the best of intentions, and I wasn't about to stick around to make small talk either. I ran a safe distance into the woods, caught my breath, circled around, and then started sneaking back towards my camp. My intention was to make sure it was clear before gathering up my stuff and moving on to a safer spot. I took it slowly, scanning the darkness for any sign of the shadowy figure, eventually finding my way back to my camp to discover it was completely deserted, with all my gear apparently untouched. I had this horrible feeling in my gut that whoever had been standing over me had just backed off to watch from a distance and would wait for me to come back to get my stuff before ambushing me. If they weren't there to steal from me, it was obviously something else they wanted, and I dreaded to think exactly what it was. But regardless, I managed to grab my stuff and get out of the area without anyone managing to sneak up on me. The next few days, I walked hard and fast, exhausting myself in my attempts to get as far away from the area as possible. After that, I figured I was safe. No one had bothered me during the previous few days hiking, so I figured I would be okay from there on out. But I was wrong. Hideously wrong. Every single night since that incident had me struggling to get to sleep. I kept picturing that person standing over me, just staring down at me in the darkness. I had no idea how long they had been there or what they had in mind for me, and I was just glad that I had gotten out of the area. But still, I didn't start to feel safe again until I had bought some fishing line from a sporting goods store in one of the small towns I passed through on my way down the trail, which I could then use to make trip wires that ran between the trees close to where I was camping. Then a couple of empty cans of beans strung together, and whoever snagged their foot on the wire would make the cans clank together, alerting me to their presence. I had one big scare when a fox snagged the line and I rolled out of my hammock with a knife in hand, ready to take on whoever was about to creep up on me, only to see the furry little guy scurrying away in the moonlight. I did end up losing, laughing to myself about that one. And after that, I stopped sleeping with my knife in my hand, because all it would have taken was one little slip and I would be in a whole world of trouble. About a week went by And I had just gotten over the whole shadowy figure in the night incident. I had to be almost a hundred miles away from where it had taken place. And I had no trouble at all on any of the other nights, save the incident with the fantastic Mr. Fox. That had just about scared the crap out of me. So with the help of my little tripwire alert device, I had just started being able to get to sleep without any trouble again. But that night I woke up suddenly to find that I couldn't move properly. I couldn't bring up arms from my sides at all. And the material from my hammock seemed to be pushed up right into my face. I was cocooned by it, like the fabric was wrapped around my entire body. This has only just registered in my half awake brain when I heard the sound of fabric snapping. Then boom. I hit the dirt hard, completely knocking the wind out of me. I had no idea what was going on. Struggling to break out of the hammock. Only I couldn't. That's when I felt the hammock being dragged across the forest floor. Then it hit me. Whoever was dragging me across the ground had bundled me up in my own hammock with some kind of cord, cut the ropes tying me to the trees, and was proceeding to drag me off to God knows where. I screamed at the very top of my lungs for whoever it was to let me out, but no one responded. All I could hear was the sound of the hammock's fabric rustling against the forest floor. I knew I had to think fast or whatever was going on wouldn't end well at all. Like I said, I had stopped sleeping with my knife in my hand or nearby me in the hammock, because that was just an accident waiting to happen. So I had absolutely nothing handy to cut through the material and make my escape. Or so I thought. In a flash, I had an idea. A few years back, my dad had gifted his old wristwatch to me. It was a reliable old thing, but I had just one complaint about it. The little latch thing that kept it tied to my wrist was worn with age and was actually a little sharp from the years of use. I had managed to accidentally poke myself a few times with it in the process of picking it up or putting it on. And one time it actually drew blood. I knew what I had to do. I unbuckled the watch as quickly as I could, which wasn't easy considering I was getting dragged along the ground in pitch black darkness and managing to pinch the sharp clasp between my thumb and index finger was even Harder. But still I managed it. And when I did, I began to rake it against the fabric of the hammock. It was just as effective as cutting canvas as it was cutting skin, and although it took a few tries, it didn't take long until I could see the subtle glow of silvery moonlight from the other side. I kept cutting as quickly and quietly as I could manage until there were so many cuts that I could rip myself out of the canvas cocoon like some sort of a terrified newborn bursting out of a womb. You'll have to excuse the analogy, but in retrospect, that's exactly what it seemed like happened. I was born again. That night I got a second chance at living. Escaping that hammock meant life because I knew that staying in it would have meant death. For the second time in about 10 days, I found myself bounding through the dark woods. Only that second time, the terror in me dwarfed what I had felt the first time around. I don't even know how I managed to escape. Assuming it was the same figure standing over me the first night, they had somehow managed to track me for more than a hundred miles and sneak past my trip wires. They were a far better woodsman than me, probably physically fitter, too. I just know that by the time. By the time I reached a house with its lights on, I turned to look behind me as I was banging on the door, there was no one else around. The family who lived there were kind enough to put me up for the night. After I called the local sheriff, who came out in the morning to help me retrace my steps through the woods. We found my camp, but not the hammock. And although I told him everything in excruciating detail, I could tell he was skeptical of my story. He even suggested that I had just gotten lost and frightened in the dark and had ended up jumping at shadows. Maybe even had a bad dream that seemed a little too vivid because of the lack of proper rest. But I know it was real. Just from the way my palms were sweating riding this back, I'm certain that night really did happen. The way I remember it, I never did finish that dream hike. The next day I caught a bus back towards Harper Ferry, then took the train all the way back to Providence. And I only ever told a handful of people about what happened on the trails. I figured not many would really believe me. They would just think I was telling a campfire tale or something. I didn't tell my hiking uncle for the longest time. I thought he would just gloat or whatever. Tell me that I didn't have it in me to do something that tough. But when I finally did share my story story, I got a reaction that I definitely wasn't expecting. He just nodded and told me that there were some nights that he didn't think he would make it out alive either. That there are people that live up in those mountains who have been outlaws for generations, who live outside of society, outside of the natural order of things. He had had some pretty close calls himself at times, bumping into people who weren't nearly as friendly as the majority of West Virginia Virginians, and sometimes seeing things he knew he was not supposed to see, but just what those things were he didn't seem to want to say. I always told myself I would try my little Appalachian adventure another time. Maybe when I'm a little older, a little wiser, and when I have got something a little bigger to defend myself with. The trail will still be there waiting for me. But then again, so might whoever tried to drag me off that night for some backstory. I was in seventh grade going from my school in the downtown area of my city to my house. The buses usually are composed of a certain constant distant demographic. The teenagers coming home from school, the working class adults and sadly, single mothers with their children trying to save a buck by using the bus. In addition to this demographic, there are the two types of disturbances. Drug addicts or alcoholics that are loud and disruptive, usually begging for a dollar, and the middle aged male creep or predator preying on middle schoolers or young women, both of which I had had my encounters with. But today's story is not my own experience. I did have a front row seat of this crazy encounter though. Now that we have the exposition onto the story, I find a seat near the end of the bus by myself. Because of the way the buses work, there is one row on each side of the bus and each seat has two sitting spaces. I'm sorry if that doesn't make sense, but there's also a twisty area in the middle of the bus. Two seats are directly across from each other in this area. On the opposite side of me is a working class man, some teenagers behind me and in front of me are the main characters of this story, a dingy unshaven man and three teenage girls. The man being directly in front of me and the three girls in the twisty seats in front of the man being that there's only two perceit. One of these girls decides to sit in one of her friends laps to stay close to and not have to sit beside a stranger. Upon seeing this, the man begins to sort of creepily laugh to himself before obnoxiously adjusting the way he's sitting in a suggestive manner. As the ride begins and the girl notices him, he starts to pat his thigh as if to suggest she sit down there. Then leading to verbalizing these actions, saying things like Come here, come sit here instead or you belong right here. Everyone inside of this disgusting behavior catches on and they are all watching him. The girl simply scowls at the man and turns away. Her friends throwing light insults at him, his attempts in vain. He turns to the working class man who's watching what's going on? He then says something along the lines of why is she sitting there? She needs to be on my lap instead. Further commenting on this high schooler's body and doing the buddy buddy arm nudge with him as if the two were pals. Just a note, she is visibly a high schooler. Our district requires standard school attire, so she's in khaki shorts and a button up short sleeve shirt with a backpack. So there is no way this man could couldn't have known she was underage. But I digress. Anyways, hearing these outrageous statements from the man, working class man replies with something like eh, don't you ever associate me with whatever you think this is. This is a child you're talking about. I come from Detroit. We put people like you in the dirt. The man, not at all deterred, scoffs and does that hand flinging motion as if to blow him off. The working class man's stop is coming up and as he stands, he tells the girl that he apologizes for what she's going through and leaves. The girl tells him on his way out, thank you but I'll be able to handle it. Just gotta wait. The gross man turns back to her and says handle what me? And laughs to himself. I was appalled. That is gross statements. But even angrier than me were the adults and male thugs who started standing in the area where the situation was all witnesses to this atrocity. I remember hearing the guys all started getting riled up behind me in defense of the girl. Now this guy starts to get a bit scared. He has now stopped talking upon seeing how many people are against him. The girl again goes on to assure the crowd that she's got everything under control and things calm down a bit. That is until he pulls the string to notify the driver that he wants to leave at the next stop. In a split second everyone's eyes were back on him. The thugs begin standing up again just in case he plans to run from whatever the girl has in store for him. The bus begins to arrive to this stop and as the man stands up, so does the girl. He attempts to walk past her, but upon approaching her, she pushes him back. Not to get him off his feet, but to get him back from the forming group of people. She does this because he stumbles backward. She swings her belt off her waist and yells, you like to prey on little girls? You like flirting with little girls as a grown man? And starts beating the brakes off this guy with it. And yes, she was using the metal side. My ears filled with clinking of metal on his body and his head, the slapping of the leather on his skin and the moans and cries of this fully grown man who is now on the ground in tears, attempting to escape his well deserved beating. The bus ends up completely stopping, the driver running back to separate the two. The girl is still beating the man with all her might as the bus driver rushes over to pick her up and pull her away from the man. The man ends up crawling on hands and knees off the bus where he had then laid on the concrete moaning and crying in pain. Everyone was escorted off the bus and the police were soon called to get the man medical attention. The police ended up detaining the girl and I couldn't find any information about her charges, but I hope wherever she is, she's having a good day. As for the man, all I can say is just don't be a creep and bad things won't come to you. I admire that girl's bravery and the passengers that bonded together for the safety of the girl were the best demonstration of what a community should be that I have ever seen.
