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Hey, welcome back to Scary Stories and Rain. So great news. Carolyn Lajoie actually did respond to my email last night and I went ahead and shipped out her Nintendo Switch 2 bundle today. You can click the link in the description to be taken to my brand new Instagram page for this podcast, which will always show photo proof of every single prize that I ship out to winners. If you'd like to be entered to win the PS5 giveaway that's happening right now, subscribe to this podcast. For just $2.99 a month, you'll get rid of all of the ads on every single episode and you'll be automatically entered to win every single giveaway that I do every single month. Again, it's just $2.99 and you'll be helping support this podcast. As always, I just want to say thank you so much for being here and I really hope you enjoy this.
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Episode Alaska is the perfect place to go if you want to get away from the rest of the world. As America's least densely populated state, you have plenty of breathing room from any kind of authority or prying eyes that may want to know what you're up to. For this reason, my home state is very attractive to all sorts of weird and unsavory groups. I have stumbled across Scientology centers at the end of a dirt back road with nothing else for miles around, heard stories from doomsday preppers who claim to have bunkers made out of shipping containers in the sides of mountains, and met people who have come out of religious cults in the interior that wanted to keep their followers away from any contact with the outside world. All of this and more you can find in Alaska. I was born and raised in Anchorage, the only big city in the state. Growing up, we had about 250,000 people in a city it takes about 30 minutes tops to drive across. So that gives you an idea for what we up north can consider a big city. The only other real city in the state is Fairbanks. These two cities are connected by 360 miles of a two lane highway. It's a seven hour drive one way to get between them through one of the most beautiful landscapes on the planet. Mountains rise up on either side of you between Anchorage and Denali National Park. Before you drive through these colossal canyons carved out of the rock over tens of thousands of years by melting glaciers and rivers, past Denali is another three hours of driving through a vast, flat interior plain with mountains in the distance. I say all this to help you understand just how desolate it feels in the Alaska Even on the highway after you get out of Anchorage or Fairbanks, there is nothing but wilderness as far as the eye can see, save for the occasional small town with a max population of about 1,000 people on a good day. Ten years back it was even less. Alaskan girls are built tough. We change tires, hunt, fish, camp and generally have a great appreciation for the great outdoors that women in the lower 48 don't really have if they're near a city. The joke is that Anchorage is the biggest rural city in the country. All this brings context to the following story. In high school things were different. Or at least they felt different. I was a young and stupid woman who thought I could conquer anything due to the aforementioned built tough attitude that I was raised with. Senior year of high school, I decided to treat myself to a camping trip into the mountains up past Talkeetna. Nothing fancy, just an overnight or two in the most beautiful state at the most beautiful time of the year, mid June. Going up north in peak summer here has a weird feeling to it. The sun never really sets. If you've ever seen the movie Midsommar, that's what it's like. It gets to about dusk and that's it. It's still bright and sunny out the whole night through. The false sense of security I had thinking that the midnight sunlight would mean safety probably nearly got me killed. Or worse. My second mistake was not telling anyone where I was going. I just packed up for my trip, stopped at Subway for a lunch and headed out into the great beyond. The drive was fine. A solid two and a half hours of driving north along the highway took up most of the afternoon as I jammed out to the greatest hits from the radio on Cool 97.3. After you get through the Mat Su Valley, you get into the mountains again. Tall spruce and evergreen trees line the road on both sides with the occasional empty space where there has been some clear cut logging. All of this gives you a sense that while you're out in the wilderness, you are still connected to civilization in some way. This led me to my biggest mistake, not staying at a state park campground. I was in high school with only a part time job and didn't want to pay the $15 overnight camp fee and was too scared to risk the fine. So I found a spot that looked good and pulled off the road. The map I got from my dad said there was an old mining site up a nearby mountain, so I decided that would be the best spot to head to for an overnight. My logic must have been that it was badass to spend a night in a mining ghost town or something. Pulled off the road, packed up my backpack, put on some bug spray, grabbed my map and compass and started off into the woods. Now this hadn't been the first time I had done this. I have been on wilderness backpacking trips on my own with my dad throughout my childhood. I knew my orientation skills and had taken some wilderness survival courses at camp. I wasn't just some dumb blonde wandering off into the woods with no idea of where I was. Or so I thought. A solid 45 minute hike up into the hills and I finally made it to where the old mining camp was supposed to be. There was nothing there, just an old concrete foundation with some holes in it and nothing else. I was very disappointed, but unsurprised at the outcome. I set up camp off in the woods and set to building a fire for dinner on the concrete slab. Here. You're supposed to set up cooking a ways from your camp just in case bears are nosy. The last thing you want is a 1300 pound grizzly poking his nose in your tent wondering why you smell like Campbell's soup and s'. Mores. By this time it was getting late. I was about 10pm but the sun was still high in the sky and by the time dinner was over it was nearly 11. I was starving and dug in. About an hour later. It was about as dark as it was going to get, so I hunkered down in my tent for the night, confident that the overgrowth was private enough for whatever animals might come out around. Then I woke to voices in the distance and slow moving crashing through the underbrush. My first thought was hunters. My dad and I had run into a few on some campouts so it wasn't uncommon. I relaxed and figured they would just pass through without incident and closed my eyes again. That's when they found my fire pit. A man's voice cried out into the brightish forest. Who the hell is camping on our property? I froze. I knew I had messed up and was getting up, grabbing my purse and putting on my shoes so I could go apologize before I heard the man again. When we find you, you're dead. You're on private militia property and trespassers get shot. That's when the whole situation changed. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't just pack up my tent and stuff with some armed guy lurking around. I carefully put my shoes on. I put my keys in my purse and slung away into the underbrush as quietly as I could. My thought was to slip away, wait until they got bored and left, and then go back, pack up and leave. I spent 20 minutes hunkered behind a log in the woods, barely in earshot before I heard a second voice calling for the others. They had found my tent and were tearing it apart. Going through my stuff, I heard one shout out, bed's still warm and trespasser's a chick. She left her underwear. The first man shouted out, okay, fan out and find her. She thinks she can trespass, then there's gonna be hell to pay. At that point, I wasn't concerned that I had left my spare change of underwear in my bag or that these creeps had found it. I needed to get out of there quietly. I made my way down the mountain for a good 30 minutes, tiptoeing and taking care not to step on twigs or make a ruckus. After the rustling and shouting of the men had faded quite a bit, I said, screw it, and booked it as fast as I could. Into the midnight sun down the hills. I tripped and fell and got scraped up more times than I would care to remember. Finally, I made it back to the road, but much to my horror, there was no car. I knew I had come up or down the road from where I had been. I couldn't quite remember where I was at the time, but picked a direction and started walking. I rounded a corner on the road and saw my car and the two men standing beside it. They were armed and dressed in surplus military gear. I hid in the brush on the side of the road and watched. A while later, several more men appeared from the trail I had taken. They dumped all of my stuff next to my car, hopped back on their ATVs and drove off. I went up to my car, careful not to be seen, and found a note on my dashboard. It read something like, if we ever catch you on our property again, we will not hesitate to use force. Consider this a warning. I went back to start loading stuff into my car and noticed what they had done. They had cut up or destroyed all of my gear, probably as punishment for trespassing. Honestly, I am thankful they did that because I am grateful I didn't get shot. Ever since then, I have taken great care to camp only in designated camping areas. Please don't judge some of my incredibly stupid decisions of my creepy encounter. I was very young, so When I was 15, my sister and I ran away from home. That was dumb decision number one. I was gone for a total of about six months. At some point for about two weeks, we Were living in a run down motel. One night while I was by myself, I was sitting on the stairs of the motel flipping through a magazine. Stupid decision number two. A grown man walks by me and starts to talk to me. He asks my name and why I am sitting outside. I ask him if he is a cop. Extremely stupid decision number three. Since this shows him I do not want cops involved as I was a runaway. He asked, do I look like a cop? He didn't. He said he had some alcohol in his room. He was willing to share if I would like to come up and drink with him at 15. To me, free alcohol sounded great. I said OK and went with him to his room. Stupid decision 4. We got to his room and began drinking and talking a bit. I forget what I asked him, but at some point I asked him something that made him get out his ID and show it to me under his name. I noticed it had offender under his name in red. Warning bells went off and I asked what that meant. He replied, what do you think it means? At that point I just wanted the hell out of there. As I'm thinking that an additional grown man walks into the room. He sees me, smiles and they both nod to each other. I am now in a locked motel room with two grown men. I turn to the first guy and tell him something like I have to get something out of my room real quick and I'll be right back up. I must have sounded believable. He said, you'll come right back. I said, of course I want to keep drinking. He then asked what room number I was in. I lied and made up one. Of course by the grace of God, he let me out of that room and I briskly walked back to my room. Not even a minute later the phone rings. I pick it up. Why did you lie to me? I said, what do you mean? You lied about your room number. I watched you go into your room. I told him it must have slipped my mind when I was talking to him earlier. He then told me to come back upstairs to his room so we can keep hanging out. I told him I would be right up. I then proceeded to unplug the phone from the wall and curl up in a ball. Since I was so afraid he would try to come for me. I still to this day do not know why he let me leave. He didn't have to. Lord knows what would have happened to me that night. Scary to think since I was a runaway no one would have known anything. I had no ID and was going by a different name. I looked up what offender means. Most websites say that it means the person is a sex offender or out on parole. I was so lucky. Surprisingly though, it took me to becoming an adult to realize the danger I was in that night. To me at 15, he was a creepy guy and I instinctively knew I had to get out of there. But it wasn't until years later that I really understood how bad that situation could have become. When I was 15 years old and just got into junior year, I created my first Twitter account that I deleted because of this story. Some pieces of information I didn't tell anyone my username, neither my family nor my friends because I didn't have any. My profile picture was an avatar, so no pictures of me on the account. And as location I said Paris. Because I lived in the suburbs, I didn't have many followers, 20 or maybe 30. And I didn't follow that many people. One evening in October, someone sent me a quite strange direct message. It was a 200 followers account and the message was hi, my name is Rob. I just turned 17 and wanted to know if you lived in my city because I will soon move in and go to the town high school and I'm looking for friends. The town he named was obviously the town I lived in. I immediately thought something was wrong because there was nowhere on my profile I said where I actually lived. But after some time thinking, I remembered of a tweet I made weeks ago about buses and I mentioned the city. So I told myself he just looked up for my city and found my tweet. His age wasn't shocking because I'm two years ahead of my classmates. I was bored and as he was polite, I answered him. I told him I indeed lived in that city and go to the high school there. The discussion was natural and we talked a lot that night, mainly about high school, about the food at the cafeteria, about the teachers, that kind of thing. But as it was getting very late, he tried to interpose some personal questions, like do you live far away from the school, in a house or in an apartment? Do you live with both your parents? There's five of you, you're not often home alone, right? I never answered because it was way too shady for me. And unfortunately he didn't insist. Unfortunately, because if he did, I would have probably blocked him. The next day, the same thing. We talked a lot and he was still asking personal questions, to quote, unquote, know me better. So I asked some too, and he always answered with what seemed like honesty. I still didn't answer the Questions about my house, though, because he didn't need to know anything about, lasted two or three weeks. But it was enough for me to develop feelings for him. He was handsome, super kind, and it was everything I needed because I was bullied for years. And even today I still develop strong feelings, but most importantly, blind trust in people who are friendly to me. In France in October, we have a two week long vacation and the day before back to school day, he finally told me he was coming to my high school because he finally moved in with his mom. And he asked me a place to meet during the morning break. I was so happy and relieved to be able to finally meet him and told him to join me in the hall. But when he understood that there would be people around, he said he would prefer an isolated place because he was afraid he would not recognize me and didn't want to spend the break looking for me. It was a good excuse for me. So I told him to meet me in the third floor bathroom because we weren't allowed to stay there during the breaks and no one would disturb us. In my head, even though it was a little bit creepy, I was still in school, so so nothing could happen to me. The next day, back to school day, I made myself pretty. I wore my best clothes and counted down the minutes. And finally, when break time arrived, I ran to the bathroom and waited. And when he arrived, it was him. He was not a catfish. He looked quite like his profile picture. But I noticed that he seemed a little bit older than he told me. I thought 20 years old instead of 17. We talked a lot, we got along well. I was so pleased. And at the end of the break, he asked me to go to fast food with him for lunch. I said no because I didn't have any money and I always refused for people to pay for me. It's a principle I have. He seemed disappointed, but offered to walk me home after classes. I explained that I have to take the bus, but that he could walk me to the bus stop. He looked disappointed again, but finally accepted. And that's exactly what happened. And it was so great that it quickly became some kind of routine. We met in the third floor bathroom during the morning break and he walked me to the bus stop after classes. Surprising fact. I never saw him in the hallways nor at the cafeteria. But I thought at the time that the building was huge and that there were over 50, 1500 students in here. So if our schedules didn't coincide, there was no way we could meet each other. This little game lasted until December So almost a month and a half. 14 December. A Thursday. I complained about how lonely I was going to be that evening because my dad was abroad for work. My brother was always at his friend's house, my little sis was on a school trip and my mom had to work late that very night. It was very reckless of me, but after weeks I thought I could trust him. That evening he walked me to the bus stop. We both waited. I got on the bus, waved at him and put in my earphones. I had two stops before my house. It was about 5:45 in December, so it was already really dark outside. And as I got out of the bus I had a really bad feeling. Feeling there was that very uncomfortable sensation in my stomach and I felt like I was being observed. I pressed pause on my music but kept my earphones in so that people thought I couldn't hear anything. And that is probably what saved my life. I lived in a suburban neighborhood, very silent, especially at night with no visibility. On the big road, the bus passed in. When I heard from footsteps behind me, I understood that I was right. There was someone following me and he was not well intentioned. At least I could hear that he was not accelerating so he was not trying to catch me up. But I couldn't guess how long it would last. As quietly as possible, I tried to reach for my keys in my pocket and when I finally pulled them out, I ran as fast as I could. The best sprint of my life. I don't know how it worked, but I managed to open and close the door before he could reach me. I then deactivated my alarm, which by the way confirmed that I was home alone and took a look through my glass panel on the door. It is not a peephole, it is a whole window. So if someone wants to see what's happening inside, they can. It was Rob, a few meters away, looking at me with a really creepy face. He followed me to my home, probably with a car, and he was clearly not here for chit chat. I still don't know why I didn't call the police. I was totally paralyzed. We both stared at each other for a minute and when I took back control over my body, I ran in the kitchen to get a knife and got back to the door. He was there too, banging against him. It I feared for a second that the glass would break, but it didn't happen. That moment when I was pushing against the door, praying for it to not break, while he was kicking harder and harder was the longest I've ever experienced. After maybe five minutes, he stopped and got around the house, knocking against every shutter and got back to the door. He looked very angry. But then my neighbor's car reached my house and Rob ran away, probably thinking it was my mom coming home. On Twitter, Rob sent me a thousand messages before I could block him. He then deleted his account and I thought I was done with this story. But quickly after, some accounts which have just been created followed me. Their handles were all a series of numbers and the first letter of his name, and as soon as I blocked one, another one followed me. I chose to delete my account because I couldn't make it stop and it was too hard to endure because they were sending me dozens of insulting DMs. Later I talked to the people who were supposed to be Rob's classmates because I haven't met him again in days. But not a single one ever heard about Rob. This guy was never a student and my high school. That is why I have never met him apart from our daily meetings, and that is probably why he seemed so old. I never heard about him again and I am still asking myself, what did he want and what would have happened that night if he had gotten inside my house? When I was younger, around 11 years old, my mother used to take me to visit her boyfriend who lived in one of the dodgier parts of town. It was always kind of a long walk and me being a child, I would complain a lot. On the day this happened, it was a very cold day and I remember it was on one of the walks to his house. We passed by a bus stop. Waiting at the bus stop was an older man with jet black hair and the creepiest grin you could imagine. I looked at him as we passed and he smiled at me, revealing that half of his teeth were missing. My mother did not seem to notice this man as we walked past. He got up and began to follow us. I looked behind and thought it was weird that he wasn't waiting for this bus anymore, but I didn't bother to say anything. We arrived at my mother's boyfriend's house and I forgot about the man. He let me play Resident Evil 4 on his PS2. I ate a cheeseburger, watched a couple episodes of Friends, and then my mother said we were going to the corner shop to buy some milk and bread. We all put on our coats and headed around to the corner shop. When we arrived, my mother and her boyfriend went to buy what they needed and asked me if I wanted any chocolate or chips or anything like that. When they turned the corner. I saw the man again, staring directly into my eyes with the same smile that he had earlier. I ignored him the best I could, examining the selection of chips and chocolate that they had and grabbing whatever I wanted when suddenly I felt two hands under my armpits picking me up. At first I was just confused. I turned around expecting my mother or her boyfriend, but it was the man and he was already on his way out of the store with me in his grip, basically running out of the store. I screamed and began crying and that's when my mother screamed also and ran towards me, putting her hands around the man's neck while her boyfriend grabbed me. She punched him, screaming at him, all kinds of obscenities. All I remember at this point is the person working in the corner shop coming to ask what just happened and the man ran out of the store. The person working at the store rang the police and when they arrived I told them what happened and gave them a description of the guy and they said they would look into it. We never heard from the police if they found the guy or not. And every time I go back to that part of town I shiver at the thought of what could have happened if my mother did not spot him leaving with me. I work at a convenience store. I have had some creepy customers come in before but this one was a little more disturbing. If it wasn't for what was said and done, I don't think this would have been that bad. I normally work the third shift which is 4pm to around 12am and I am by myself for the last four hours. This man had come in earlier that day and was acting odd, jittery, chewing at his lip, constantly fumbling with his debit card to the point that I did everything for him except for putting his PIN number in. Fast Forward to around 10:30pm I'm sweeping the floors as I'm supposed to do every night when the man entered. He approached my register and I asked him what he needed, can I have one of those lighters? I pick one up and go to scan it but he tells me that he doesn't have any money. I tell him he can't have it and he glares at me. Before leaving, a man was in line behind him and the entire time I was scanning his things the creepy guy was staring at me through the window right next to my register. He eventually walked off. Off and the man I'm helping jokes about the creepy guy asking for a lighter. He tells me to be safe and then walks out to the Gas pumps. I start sweeping again, but when I turn around to move a small crate out of my way, the creepy guy is standing right behind me, staring at me, just watching me work. I quickly make my way to the back room to make mop water so I could get away from him for a second. He stayed there for a solid five minutes before walking away again. I grabbed a random receipt as a cover and basically bolted to the man at the gas pumps. I got close and asked if he was in a hurry to go anywhere. I told him that the creepy lighter guy was still hanging around and that it was really freaking me out. He promises me that he didn't plan on actually leaving after getting gas. At this point, I thought it would wouldn't take up too much of his time since we both thought the man was already wandering away from the store. Unfortunately, he went back toward the store a few seconds later. Soon an older woman comes in and I warn her about the creepy guy. She asked what I was talking about and I subtly nod in his direction. Mind you still hanging around my window. She looks a little disturbed, leaning in and whispering, what does he want? I explained that he wanted a lighter but didn't have any money so I didn't give him one. I told her to be careful and she quickly told me to worry more about myself since I was at the store alone. She left and I saw the creepy guy approach the window again. Thankfully he didn't look in, just hung around like he was waiting for someone. After a while, the daughter of a family friend comes, comes in with her girlfriend and we quietly make small talk like the last woman. I warned them that the lighter guy was still roaming around and he could be dangerous. Before they get to tell me anything, a woman who was talking with the guy from the gas pumps hurried in and told me to call the cops. Obviously not familiar with the area I worked in and hearing three different people telling me what numbers to call, I was shaking and near tears. The family friend said that she would call while I calmed down. Another girl had run out at this point and I don't blame her. The family friend's girlfriend told me that the lighter guy threatened to throw rocks through the window and hurt or rob me. After about three minutes of pacing and trying not to cry, I saw my mom's truck pull in. I bolted to her, telling her what was going on. She calmed me down and walked me back to the entrance. As this happened, the creepy guy had climbed the hill and crossed the street to Bojangles and sat near the front door. The cops arrived. The man from the pumps gave his statement, I gave mine, and finally the family friend gave hers. From what was said, he was about to break into my car. The man that stood stayed with me stopped him, but that didn't stop the creep from roaming still. After we talked to the cops, they went to Bojangles and confronted the guy. After arguing, a quick pat down and more arguing, the man was put in the back of the cop car. Needless to say, I hope he never visits my store again. And who knows what would have happened if all those people that helped had decided not to stop by that day. Day this took place when I was around the age of 7 years old. And I remember not thinking it was too much of a big deal back then, but in retrospect, dear God. So I used to live in a bad neighborhood next to a lot of criminals and sex offenders. I had a lot of friends at school and one day one of them was getting ready for school with his little sister. And while they were getting ready, his sister was kidnapped. Luckily they found her along with a bunch of other kids in this creepy guy's house. But that happened right under the care of her mother in the span of maybe 40 seconds. So yeah, bad neighborhood. I had a couple of friends I would spend my days playing with till our mothers would call us for dinner. Fabian, Valerie and Jacob. Jacob was about my age and had an older brother, 17, with autism. Sometimes we kids would all play with Gabriel, the older brother, because his brain conjured up some very fun imagination storylines for us 7 to 9 year olds. But on this day it was just me and Jacob. We had been hanging out all day playing around with these new walkie talkies we had just got. And allow me to describe the environment. I lived in a weird upstairs downstairs apartment, but as a single one. So it looked like a big house with a staircase up the side. We had a shed and a yard and on either side was a wall separating us from an apartment complex. On the left of where I lived from the angle of the driveway was the complex where Fabian lived. And about 25ft of wood chips separated me from Jacob's house. A strange layout, I know, but I could just walk up and knock on Jacob's door anytime. But we were on the complex on the left playing with our walkie talkies, seeing how far the range would let us speak from. We started waiting on the steps of Fabian's house, waiting for him to get back home from the mall. We waited for about 20 minutes and noticed an old creepy man looking at us through through his window. We didn't think much of it and got bored and decided to start using the walkie talkies again. Testing the range, saying things to each other that was the comedy gold standard for a 7 year old. When a door opened and out walked the old man that had been looking at us. He had a strange short top hat on with some 70s era round color tinted beetles like glasses on. Along with a white thermal sweater, tan brown pants and suspenders. He had a beard too. He smiled at us and said hello. We had seen him before a few times, so we said hello back. He started talking about various things. I can't exactly remember what, but he eventually moved on to about how he had all these cool collectible antique figures, toys, action figures, dragon statues. It made my little 7 year old self go wild. He invited me and Jacob in to see and so we went in. It stunk in there. It was damp, musty, humid. He smelled like cigarettes and other things I can't put my finger on. There was a strange hum coming from his house and he was talking still. Still just sort of directing us around and telling us the stories of the figures. I started feeling a bit odd and he said he needed help with the dishes as he walked me into the kitchen. I didn't fully enter, but I got close enough that I could see a filthy kitchen that stunk badly, visibly was infested. And I mean infested with cockroaches. My parents had taught me about stranger danger and my dad actually taught me self defense and ran little kidnapping drills on me. He isn't a military man at all, but he would give me lessons in all of that just in case. But my alarm bells started ringing. I said no, as polite as I could. And he said oh come on, can't you spare some time to help a poor old man? And I felt him move behind me. Something in me just knew. And I turned and he was shutting the front door that had been open this whole time. I was always a quick thinker, so I jammed my foot between the door and the frame to wedge it open and said no thank you. And he said oh no, really, come on, it's okay. I started thinking about ways to defend myself. He was old so I knew I could take him if I had to. My dad had taught me a way to hit someone in the bottom of the nose with your palm to really screw them up. Jacob had been looking around the whole time and had been in the corner for the past 30 seconds. And he started to notice and Jacob started saying things and the old man started trying more to shut the door. Just then, Jacob's mom furiously screamed his name. Now Jacob's mother, to put it lightly, was vile. She got angry at all of the kids to an inhumane extent over practically nothing. But she didn't want Jacob over at this complex and he knew that. He said, oh crap, crap, I gotta go. As he ran past and shoved the door open, causing the old man to stumble. I took the only chance that I would probably get and ran out. I remember not wanting to face the reality of that sit situation, so I kept downplaying it in my head and back then, convincing myself it wasn't that bad. I still didn't ever want to see him again. Again. In retrospect, that was stupid. I did tell my parents, but I never told them the full story cause well, Fabian lived in that complex and I didn't want them to stop me from going there and seeing Fabian. Stupid, I know. Still, I wonder about that old man and I wonder what was up with him and the apartment and the smell. God, the smell. I honestly don't want to think about what would have happened if I had missed it by a second to lodge my foot in that door. A little About Me I am a personal treasure trainer and I share a space in an office that also has an acupuncturist and a chiropractor. Usually they operate during the day and I will go around 7 or 8pm at night to work out and do the heavy lifting so their clients don't have to hear metal clinking or banging in another room. As a preface, every once in a while the door will unlock and a cleaning person will come in. The door will chime and and they will clean and leave. The family that cleans the building is Hispanic. Usually a taller man who is very nice will clean our office and a woman I assume is his wife will walk around with a trash bag and pick up the other buildings in the area. Tonight was the usual routine. Go to the office, drop off some paperwork and squeeze in an evening workout. I'm putting away some stuff stuff and printing off a few things and I hear the door unlock. The door is older and it makes a very distinct clink sound when the key turns in it. The door chimes and a man comes in asking me in Spanish if he can come in. I don't speak Spanish and he repeats in English, can I come inside? Of course. I think it's one of the members of the family to come clean and I say yes. It isn't until 10 minutes later, after I go to throw away something, that I notice the trash is still there and this man is just sitting in front of the door. I didn't want to be rude, but I did not understand why on a Sunday night at 8:30pm this guy is just sitting here in the office alone with me. I text the chiropractor and tell her what's going on, to which she calls me immediately and says, you need to leave. There is a button on the alarm to notify the police. Do you want me to come over? I tell her yes, and I grab my stuff and approach the man. I tell him I'm leaving for the night and turning on the alarm, so you need to leave. He looks at me and shakes his head and says no very firmly. I freeze up, thankful that I still have someone on the phone and say, what? Why are you here? He mumbles something along the lines of I'm on probation. I tell him that the office isn't for probation and in my mind I am thinking, why would someone be reporting to an officer at 8:30pm on a Sunday? This office is holistic. We have Buddhas and incense around. It says Oriental medicine on the door. He stands up and blocks the door. He starts asking what the office really is and I tell him it's for an acupuncturist and other specialties. As I'm telling this story I wonder why he cared to know it wasn't for probation. Why would he care so much to know what the office was? I wonder if I made a mistake in telling him. He then pulls out his phone and begins to scroll through it. He says he doesn't know the address. Maybe I can help him, suggesting I walk over to peer at his phone. I tell him I can't help him and he needs to leave. He scrolls for five minutes on his phone and at this point I am hoping the Cairo will get here soon. He holds his phone up at me and shows me a random list of 20 to 30 addresses. I tell him, maybe what you are looking for is across the street but not here. You need to leave. He seems hesitant to leave, but finally turns around and walks out slowly. As soon as he gets outside, I lock the door. I guess it didn't matter because this man somehow had a key and got in, but I locked that door as soon as I could. It was only then that I noticed there was a van parked in front of my car outside. This man gets in the passenger side so he isn't alone I decide to wait until the car leaves before I get in my own car. The way they parked, it would only take them backing up five feet to box me into this space. The van is huge with suicide doors on the back and it then proceeds to wait for 15 minutes before slowly pulling out. It stops in front of the office as if they are taking one last look at the building and then slowly pulls off. I wait and notice that they have only pulled up 50ft just out of my sight. They are still there and I can barely see the headlights. It's like they are waiting for something. Thankfully, the chiropractor pulled up in her car in time and the van was gone. The whole experience was unreal. I can't seem to wrap my head around it. The fact that this man came in with a key and acted like he was there for probation doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense at all. The fact that he wanted to know what the office really was and he blocked the door is also bizarre. A few weeks ago when I was moving equipment into the place, I felt like I was being watched. I ended up burning some sage and thought maybe I was just paranoid about being in a new space at night. But now I'm wondering if there was something I was picking up on and I just didn't know it. I will keep this updated as things progress. Hopefully that man doesn't come back in and hopefully we get a security camera installed and the locks changed. So this just happened to me like 15 minutes ago. And more than anything I'm just embarrassed that I couldn't have just rolled it off my back and not gotten scared. I live in a fairly low rent shady apartment complex since I'm in college and it's what I can afford. Obviously we are all social distancing, but I really wanted to try and get a bit more sunlight to help me keep my sanity from being home all day every day. So I went out of my apartment and sat on a bench near the bus stop just to sit for a little while. I put my earbuds in and called a friend. In my peripheral vision I could see people standing outside their doors to have cigarettes and a lady walking her dog. But we were all at the very least like 40ft away from each other so no one seemed worried. A couple were talking outside their door and for a moment I thought they were looking at me. I figured I was just being paranoid though, until the woman started walking my direction. As she was walking I was keeping an eye on it but trying to keep acting like I hadn't noticed the bench I was on was near the mailboxes for the whole complex and the bus stop, so I figured there were plenty of reasons other than me she could be coming that way. That was until she stopped just in front of me. I looked up, noticed I had seen this woman once before on the bus. She wears a lot of very heavy, dramatic makeup. Makeup including drawing on a set of eyebrows just below the ones she's already growing. She once started talking to me on my morning bus ride to school and gave me an itemized list of the things that she didn't like about my face. I had just sort of smiled and nodded and then looked the other way the rest of the trip. It looked like maybe she was talking, so I pulled my earbuds out and hung up on my friend abruptly. Sorry, I said. Could you call the police for me? She said. Uh, o okay, I said back, picking up my phone. Actually, never mind, she said quickly. She looked nervous. Are you sure? Yeah. Could I have a dollar? I told her I didn't have any change and apologized. Oh, okay. Actually, could you call the police for me? Yes, I said again, unlocking my phone. Wait. Actually, it's fine, she said now, smiling at me. Now. When she said it the first time, my brain at first thought, she's not visibly injured. Maybe she's in trouble. Had she been fighting with that man I saw her with before? Was she in danger? Was she being so casual with me because she needed help help, but did not want to alert someone that she was trying to get it? I looked her in the eyes and said, are you sure? I really can call someone if you need it? She responded, no, it's fine. Now some important context about me is that I have some history of trauma. I don't really want to elaborate too much, but the short of it is I am left with a lot of fear of people touching me or violating my personal space because some things from when I was growing up My body now has basically the worst response when someone violates my boundaries, which is to go very limp and let the other person do whatever they want to me in the hopes that if I don't struggle, they won't hurt me as much. It's basically the worst response I could have, but it's very hard to reprogram my body due to my mental health issues. I have also spent significant periods of my life in psychiatric hospitals for treatment. I have met a lot of different people with different issues in the hospital, so I have a bit of a Sense for when someone might not be all there mentally. The longer I talked to this woman, the more of a sense I got that she was perhaps not totally in her right mind. Now, in the hospital, I've had similar experiences where someone who wasn't fully lucid cornered me and I got trapped in a potentially not safe situation. This is all made worse by my inability to A get people to just leave me alone and B protect my physical space when my body's been triggered into fight or flight. In the hospital. When this happens, the hope is that staff notice and help me get away with mixed results as a lot of things go on in hospitals that staff end up either unaware of or not noticing until it's too late. But that's a different story. So at that moment, my body decided it was time to screw me over. I started to realize that this woman was getting closer and closer to me and probably not totally well in the head. My body started pumping adrenaline, which made my hands and legs start to feel weak. I felt like I couldn't get enough breath and my head started to go a little fuzzy. The woman positioned herself to sit down next to me and I started to try to get up. Hey, do you want to walk to the store with me? She said. I stood up. Sorry, I can't. I have to take my friend to somewhere. I realized I couldn't think of a lie fast enough. My brain wasn't cooperating. He's been texting me all day and I'm sorry. Okay? She said. Now standing next to me, I started to walk from the bench back over to my building. My legs were feeling pretty wobbly, but I tried to walk as casually as possible. Behind me, I could hear her following. She wasn't moving too fast. I thought maybe she thought I wouldn't notice. Still, I tried not to seem scared. Not that my legs would have been able to run anyway. I got into my building about 60 seconds before her and she was still definitely following. I kept thinking I just need to get into my apartment and lock the door before she sees which one is mine. My apartment is on the second floor, but it's a short flight of stairs and you can see my apartment door from the bottom, where the main door to the building is. I tried to run up them, but my head was swimming and my legs weren't cooperating. It's like that feeling when you're half awake and you try to move your limbs and they sort of do what you tell them, but not really. Like they feel sort of far away from you. And only semi under your control. I made it up the stairs and luckily I had left my door unlocked. I got in and closed it behind me just as I heard her opening the main door to the building below me. I locked all three locks on my door and went over to the window to see if I could see her. She wasn't visible from the window, which meant she was still in my building. I texted my dad and asked if he thought I still ought to call the police. He said I should. I went into my bedroom and called 911 now. The windows in my bedroom show the other side of the building and the back door. The operator asked for for a description and if I knew where she was now. And I told her I couldn't see her out my front windows. So I thought she was still in the building. Then suddenly I saw her walk out and stand just below my window. The 911 operator said she would send a few officers and to call them back if she left. I backed away from the window a bit. I was worried she would see me looking at her and then know which unit I was in. She looked around for a bit and then just slowly started wandering away towards a different building. Within about five minutes, three cop cars rolled in and stopped behind my apartment. They noticed her standing over by the other building, looking like she might try to talk to the woman walking her dog. Two of the officers parked and went to talk to her while the third drove off. I was watching as they talked to her for a while and then eventually the man I had seen her talking to at the start came out of a different building than they had been standing in front of before and seemed to coax her in. The officers let her go and talked to the woman with the dog for a moment and then finally left. I think probably they decided she had mental health issues but wasn't actively a threat to anyone. So they let it be, which is okay with me. I know that some people deal with chronic issues that can be a little alarming to people in their community, but most of the time don't actually pose much of a threat. Now I'm just sitting here feeling like an overdramatic fool and waiting to regain full control over my limbs and for my heart rate to go down. But the lady with the four eyebrows. I really hope I never see you again.