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Scary Stories and Rain
Scary Stories For A Rainy Night - Ep. 226 - The Man In The Trench Coat
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Hey, welcome to Scary Stories and Rain. Real quick. Before we begin, I just want to remind you that if you want to subscribe to this podcast for just 2.99amonth, you'll get rid of all of the ads across every single episode and you'll be automatically entered to win all of my giveaways that I do every month. Right now we have a PlayStation 5 on the line, so if you want to be entered to win, subscribe for just 2.99amonth, get rid of all of the ads and you'll also be supporting the podcast, which is highly appreciated. And last thing before we begin, I just want to say thank you so much for being here and I really hope you enjoy this episode. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, Monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. Some background I, a 16 year old female, had just met up with my two friends, both 16 year old males, and they will be referred to as DD&DM to hang out at my local cricket field, sit two meters apart, talk and test out my friend's new mini amp. He plays guitar and I play bass. Another piece of important info is that I have serious baby face and when I put my bass on my back it makes me look like I'm their 12 year old little sister with the height between my head and the top of the instrument. So we had just met up and sat in the nice open area so that after not seeing each other for this entire fiasco, we could catch up and talk about our plans for after the restrictions were lifted. There were a few other people on the field when I arrived, but they seemed like they'd keep the distance well enough so I didn't really take them into account. We talked for a while and two of the three groups left. A lovely woman who said we should start a band and a family with two small children. The last person was a man sitting on the bench across from the field from us. To put it into perspective, DD was facing away from the man while DM and I had a clear line of sight to him. As soon as he was the only other person left, I got this strange feeling like I was being watched. I chalked it up to not being used to having my friends eyes on me after so long of just calls and messages. That's when I looked back over to the man and he was looking dead at me, not pretending to hide his gaze by looking away when I caught him. I looked away after a few seconds, really not wanting to cause anything and when I looked back he had diverted his gaze back to the trees or something. Alright, fine, whatever. Maybe he was just looking to see what we were doing and didn't know how to react when I looked back. I don't know if DM noticed this or if he actually wanted to move and sit at another bench, but he suddenly got up and started walking across the entirety of the field to sit on a bench under some trees around 30 meters or so from the man. We were waiting for him to come back, but after he got halfway we got our things together and got up to follow him. We get around halfway to the new bench and I'm trying to focus on talking to DD when he stops talking and looks to me that man isn't wearing any clothes. Record scratch as I feel my stomach drop looking past him to see that upon closer inspection the man is almost completely naked, the exception being these tiny underwear, an orange flat cap, socks and loafers. I lost my damn mind. I thought he was just wearing a red or orange trench coat, but nope. His skin was so red and burnt from sun that it was the same color as his cap. I looked away from him and attempted to share a laugh with my friend about it, although both of us were extremely uncomfortable with this new revelation. We asked DM if he had noticed and he told us that he had, but he said it like he didn't really care. The subject topic eventually moved on, but I was very much caught up on the man and even sat in a way where I could discreetly keep an eye on him. I didn't want to have to do anything, but it really got me riled up and at the end of the day the body of an electric base can dispense a pretty heavy blow if swung correctly. I could feel the Man's eyes on me as we sat there talking, my hand firmly on my instrument, and it eventually got to me so much that I convinced the boys that we should go and get drinks and snacks from the co op and then go sit in my back garden and pet my cats. Since DD sponsors one of them, they agreed to go DD happy to get away from the man and dm not really caring too much. It really freaked me out and I didn't stop thinking about it for the rest of the day. Now I'm no shrinking violet and if the man had tried to pull anything. I would have made it clear that he needed to get away from us or I would take action. But it shilled me to my core that he would come to a public park and stare at kids while wearing next to nothing, perhaps thinking that I was a child who had just started middle school or ended primary. I'm afraid to go back there. I'm afraid that we might see him again. I was on a hitchhiking adventure from British Columbia, Canada to Antigua, Guatemala, which started in September 2019. If you've ever hitchhiked before, you know how amazing it is and how many cool people you can meet. Out of thousands of rides across 40 countries, I have only had two bad and or dangerous encounters. This was my second one. I was taking a break from traveling to find some weed trim work in California's Nevada City, a beautiful little town with a very interesting crowd, but got stuck a few towns over for not getting a ride all day. I ended up sleeping at night at the Loves gas station, which I had done plenty of times before. In the morning I was a little more desperate to accept rides because no one was stopping and it had already been a whole day. I just wanted to get out of there. A pickup truck is speeding past me and slams the brakes ahead, then slowly backs up. Inside is a man and a woman in their late 50s and he says in a husky voice, where you headed, boy? Nevada City. Any distance helps. We'll get in. We're going to Yuba. They seemed normal enough even without most of their teeth and hair, so I jumped in. It all happened in rapid succession. I toss my bag in the back and jump in. I shut the door. I notice a pile of guns and bullets on the floor. Before I have time to rethink my decision, we speed off. So as I'm trying to assess whether or not I'm in danger, they start telling me how this guy just got out of jail for aggravated assault, how he beat that mother effer so bad he can't think straight no more. And they both laugh. She's holding his seatbelt over his chest. They both smell like crap and they start asking how much money I have. I think, yep, I'm not safe with these two. After hitchhiking all this way, I don't look particularly wealthy. I'm filthy. I need a shower. I look no different than the stereotypical homeless guy. So I try to seem more poor than I am and more tough than I am too. I'm broke as hell, man. That's why I'm going to the city. I'M hoping to make some cash trimming. The man looks me in the eye. Well, you'll find it all right. You'll find it good. Don't be afraid to do no dirty work. If people try and they'll try to mess with you, you mess with them first. You get what I'm saying? Put your eyes on the damn road. Jesus. The woman points forward and he swerves back to the right lane. He asks me if I smoke and knowing that California has legalized weed, I put two and two together. He's offering me a joint, so I say yeah, I smoke. With a wild look in his eyes, he exclaims great. And we turn off the highway and start down a dirt road. I am more than worried and I look behind us. In the back of the truck is my bag, a chainsaw, pickaxe and a plastic tarp over something that did not help my anxiety. Finally we stop in front of a clearing. The woman takes out not a joint but a meth pipe. It's the first time I have seen a meth pipe and a lot of things start to make sense. While he lights up, he exhales into the car. I have never seen smoke so white. I rolling the window down as fast as possible cause I don't want to smoke that stuff. The woman takes some as well and they tell me how they are going to collect money that a woman owes them. That damn woman is gonna pay today one way or another. Damn straight. She better have the money. I'm gonna grab her and say where's my money? Oh, she'll have it alright, she'll have it or else. Say, son, you ever steal something? Cause we could make $20,000 today. I don't know exactly how to answer this guy and. And he repeats $20,000 today. Here, smoke some of this. And he hands me the pipe. Nothing like meth, ain't that right? I gently reject it and say that meth's not really my thing. Which he surprisingly takes well and smokes some more before putting it away and driving off back towards the highway. His driving is terrible. Swerving, speeding, hitting. Breaks abruptly and starts trying to convince me to help them steal marijuana plants. You'll hold my gun and I'll drill the hole and I'll keep a lookout. Yeah, baby girl will keep a look. Now you gotta be careful if you hear the dogs because them sons of bitches are nasty. Nasty. See this bite? And he reveals what looks like a terrible scar on his arm. I didn't really know how to get out of the situation. So I sounded as confident as possible and said that I was meeting a friend to look for work together and they would be expecting me today. We neared the end of Yuba City where they pull over the side, well, it's your funeral. You don't want to eat, fine by me. But if you want that cash, you call me. He hands me his number. Hell no, I think. Thanks, I will. Quickly retrieving my bag, smiling nervously, the woman says with a wave, take care now. God bless. And they speed off. I'm standing on the side of the road thinking, what the hell was that? Happy to be out of that car. Meth heads one and two. Thanks for the offer to steal marijuana plants, but I truly hope I never see you on the side of the road again. A few years back, I had just moved into a new condo with one of my longtime friends. It was a cozy little place, a very party and drama free zone for the most part, which suited me just fine. While we were moving in, we met the previous tenants, a very sweet older woman and her son, who was maybe a few years older than I was. She explained that they used to live in the condo before us and had just recently moved out since they had saved up enough money to buy their own across the way from us. All in all, she seemed like a very sweet older woman and the son henceforth referred to as Tim seemed nice enough. He was incredibly quiet, didn't say a word, and wouldn't make eye contact with us, but I just figured he was a shy, introverted type. Maybe a month or so into our stay, I ran into Tim while I was getting my mail and he looked noticeably worse than the last time I had seen him, to the point I barely recognized him. He looked like he had lost about 20 pounds, had scratch marks all over his neck, shaved his head completely, and was way more jumpy and fidgety. I had exchanged a few pleasantries with him when he suddenly dumped the whole story about how him and his girlfriend had broken up onto me. He explained that he had wanted to move in with her, get married and start a family, but how his girlfriend was reluctant to do so. He went on for at least five minutes, complaining about anything and everything about his relationship and going into way too much detail for my liking. Meanwhile, I'm just standing there nodding along, holding my mail and wondering when he's going to stop. Eventually he wraps up and thanks me for listening since he had been holding it in for so long and tells me how beautiful I am. I thought it was kinda weird at the time, but brushed it off as him just being socially awkward. It wasn't long after that when the visits started happening. At least once a week he would knock at our door asking if he could could look around for something he was sure that he had forgotten to grab when he was moving out. He would never find anything, of course, and it was pretty obvious that he was just coming over to try and see me since he would just kind of linger around trying to make conversation. It was kind of cute at first and I didn't really pay it much mind since I thought he was just going through a rough time, that he was just lonely and looking for some kind of connection. I thought it was a harmless little little crush and that it would fizzle out in time once he realized I wasn't interested. This went on for a week or two, with his visits becoming more frequent and his attempts in flirting becoming more blatant and him asking me out several times, with me doing my best to let him down gently each time. Eventually I got tired of it all and asked him to stop coming by, but that only led to him coincidentally running into me every other day. To make matters worse, he was now starting to leave poetry taped to our door, which my roommate found to be hilarious at first until they started to go further off the deep end. They had started off as typical mushy poetry, but eventually they started turning into quasi religious nonsensical rants and would be pages long, mostly talking about how he was an angel or some kind of divine being. I had gone to the security team and the police several times, but neither one seemed to care all that much since he had apparently hadn't done anything illegal. However, the security team said they would talk to him. Fast forward a few weeks and it's summertime, my roommate was gone on vacation with her family and I've got the whole apartment to myself for two weeks. To make matters better, I haven't seen or received any new letters from Tim. I am lounging in my room when I hear someone knocking at the door, but by the time I get up to check nobody was there. I am getting ready to go back to my room when I heard a loud and strange sound coming from the balcony which is connected to my room via a window. It sounded like something was being ripped or snapped off and a second or two later I heard the sound of something heavy hitting the floor of my room and I immediately ran out the front door, running as fast as I could to the security office. To make a long story slightly shorter, the police eventually came down and pulled Tim out of my room. Apparently what happened was he tried using his old apartment key on the door, but didn't know the locks had been changed when him and his mom had moved out. When I didn't answer the door fast enough, enough when he knocked, he somehow managed to climb up 15ft onto the balcony and rip off the screen on my window, easily managing to slip in since I had kept the window open to get fresh air. He was completely naked when they found him, and apparently high as a kite on mushrooms. He told the police that I was the reincarnation of Mary and in order for Jesus Christ to be reborn and save the world, I would need to have his child. I moved out the next day and never looked back. It didn't exactly go over great with my roommate or the landlord, but I just couldn't stay there after that. Abercrombie is an official fashion partner of the NFL and I'm Ceedee Lamb, wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys. You know I'm here for Abercrombie's Cowboys gear. That's not a question, but I need a whole wardrobe to go with it. No shade to the guys, but I'm used to having the best tunnel fits. This season, Abercrombie has me covered. Shop NFL by Abercrombie in the app, online and in store when did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans, send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom 60th and never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone. Learn more@WhatsApp.com Mint is still $15 a month for premium wireless and if you haven't made the switch yet, here are 15 reasons why you should 1. It's $15 a month. 2. Seriously, it's $15 a month. 3. No big contracts. 4. I use it. 5. My mom uses it. Are you. Are you playing me off? That's what's happening, right? Okay, give it a try. @mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for three month plan $15 per month equivalent required. New customer offer first three months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See mint mobile.com this happened about two years ago in my second year at university. I was 20. For context, I'm French, so if anything's weird about how I describe the uni experience. That's why at the time I lived in a government owned apartment building, third floor. My direct neighbor was my younger sister who was studying in the same university as I did. One other thing important to the story is that I'm disabled. My right leg is useless and after an accident when I was 13. And I suffer from debilitating chronic pain to a degree that keeps me bedridden and non verbal unless I take a twice a day dosage of prescribed morphine. All of those details are important. Bear with me. When I take my medication, I'm able to leave my bed. On the worst days, I have to either use a wheelchair or a cane to get around. Isn't it great that we lived on the third floor floor of a building with no elevator on top of that? As you might guess, morphine is a very strong pain medication. It screws with your visual and hearing perception. It makes you sleepy and dizzy, lessens your reflexes, numbs your nervous system, makes you paranoiac. You get the idea. At the time I had only been taking morphine for less than six months after 10 years of various other pain medication. So I was dealing with the side effects in full force. Most of them are gone now. So for me that meant mainly auditory hallucinations, sleepiness, dizziness and bad reflexes and nervous response. At that point I had gotten used to hearing stuff that wasn't there. Mostly clapping noises, clicking noises, small things. Ultimately, I never hallucinated human voices. That night I had gone out to the center of the city to meet with friends. This was a rare occasion for me, and I do mean rare. I didn't go out more than once every two months or so. It was rare for multiple reasons that my friends, bless them, understood perfectly. Morphine means no drinking, so that's half the fun of going to the bar. Removed from the start, despite the very useful nature of the meds, I was still and still am in a tremendous amount of pain if I stand for more than a couple of minutes. And I was sure to do a lot of that at the bar, plus walking back from the bus stop to my building, about a five minute walk. But I went anyway, like I did, exceptionally for a few days. There had been rumors going around about a group of people that were going around kidnapping people from my university. From memory, two girls had disappeared already and it was suspected that a blue van was the vehicle used. Those reports were circulating on our major's group and on the university's group as well, about the same details each time. But my friends and I Were skeptical mostly about the blue van because we didn't believe the van would still be running around if the information had spread enough that we were hearing about it on Facebook. You know, not that I was thinking about any of that as I came back from the bar around midnight early, I know, but I was in a lot of pain and the bus stops at half past midnight and missing it would mean waking up my sister so she could pick me up from the tram station. Since I was physically unable to walk the 20 minutes required, I got into the bus, only three people were there and none got out at my bus stop. Now bear in mind that I was in an extreme amount of pain. So much that my vision was blurring out on the edges and I was swaying a bit from side to side trying to minimize the weight being put on my leg. On top of that, I had just taken a fast working morphine dose to help me get through the 5 minutes walk back to my building. And unlike my twice a day high dose, those pills I could take to my discrete whenever I needed a quick relief. The downside of that very practical pill is that it basically knocks you out in 30 minutes. You get so sleepy you can barely keep your eyes open and basically you're high for about 20 minutes before either passing out or getting through it. And it gets better after a while. I get out of the bus. On my right is a parking lot in front of a bakery with a lot of cars. It's normal because there are a lot of government owned student flats around that block and that's where most of them park, so I am not concerned. The road I take is straight from where the bus dropped me off for the whole walk before my building is to the right, a couple of parking spots in front of it and a wheelchair slope going to a magnetic door. You need your magnetic student ID to open the door. Then a key to this specific door to your building. Building. As I walk by the parking lot I see movement in the corner of my eye. But since I'm half out of it from pain and meds, I don't turn to look at it. I hear some noise and I just assume I'm hallucinating it. So I keep on walking. But then the street lights reflect on a car window and I don't know why that made me turn around. My brain was catching onto weird stuff so I briefly looked the to the side and I see an old beat up white car pretty long and low to the ground. On the driver's seat is an Algerian man in his mid-50s, the neighborhood being half students, half France born, Algerian. The thing that gives me pause is more the fact that there's someone awake in the front seat of a car at 1 in the morning. But again, I'm out of it, so I don't question it. I don't even stop walking because at this point my only thought is put one foot in front of the other. There you go, you're almost there. You're almost done with the pain. Literally all my attention, my focus was put on one foot after the other because of the debilitating pain. I walk past the small roundabout to my left, still going straight, when I hear a car starting. I don't know why that was the thing that slapped me in the face, but suddenly I was worried. My heart was beating fast, probably half the meds and half the fear. But also I was well aware that morphine tends to make me paranoid. So I tried to calm down. I see the headlights coming from behind me, drawing a long shadow in front of me. In a second I run through the calculations. I am still about 300 meters or 1,000ft from my building. Then I need to get my ID out and open the door. A slow automatic magnetic door. I can't run. I can barely walk. I'm up to my head in morphine. It's the middle of the night. I'm alone with no residential building close enough to hear a scream. That's when I start to panic. I'm right to do so. The car catches up to me, slows down to my walking speed. I notice that the man isn't alone in the car anymore. Someone is in the passenger seat and there's movement in the back. But I don't turn my head because I tried to pretend I didn't notice them slowing down. I had my earphones in with no music. As I didn't turn it back on after the bus ride, I just keep walking, hoping with every everything I have that they'll leave me alone. I'm trying to walk faster, but I am in so much pain a few tears fall down. I can hear that they're calling for my attention, but not what they're saying. Finally I see the lane going up to my building. I take my backpack off and shove my hand down the front pocket, fumbling because my nervous response is shite. Thanks meds. And I can't feel my fingers and I am shaking like crazy. I can't find my id. At that point I am close to a panic attack. My heart is beating too fast and I'm feeling close to fainting from the combined pain and terror, I turn to face the wheelchair slope when I see from the corner of my eye the car stopping abruptly right next to the slope and the car door slamming open. I don't know how I did it because I was close to fainting, but I managed to run the last 10ft to the door and slapped my ID on the reader yelling at the door to open faster. I could hear people running behind me. The door finally opened enough for me to slip in and I slammed it shut behind me. I heard the men run into the door with a loud noise and them cursing, then yelling things to me. I didn't stick around to hear what they had to say. I fumbled with my keys to the point of almost dropping them before opening the door to my flat complex. I got inside on shaky legs and as soon as the door closed behind me I dropped to the floor and had the worst panic attack of my life. When I managed to put myself back together and painstakingly climb the three flights of stairs, I crawled into my sister's flat and woke her up, telling her the whole story she told me later. I was deathly pale, so much so that I scared her enough that she offered for me to share her single bed that night. I was too messed up to refuse. The worst part is this isn't the end of the story. My sister went out to bars a lot more than I did, as she's able bodied and drop dead gorgeous. About three weeks later she called me in the middle of the night as she was coming back from a bar. She had seen the exact car I described in the parking lot at the bus stop. She didn't stop to see if there was anyone inside. She reacted and sprinted to our building. Of course, she was a lot faster than my drugged disabled ass, so she made it to the door where I was waiting for her, having it opened from the inside just as the car stopped in the lane. After that, we left a note on our flat complex's door to explain everything to other people, posted about it on every university group we knew of, and we contacted the police who helpfully told us they could do nothing without catching them in the act, but that they'd probably send someone to go patrol as it matched the reports they had gotten that sparked the whole blue van rumors in the first place. In the following year, it took to finish my degree. Neither me nor my sister saw those men or their car again. But we still hear from people the same kind of story being shared from other parts of the city. As far as we can tell they are still active and two years later I am still messed up about it. You say you'll never join the Navy, never climb Mount Fuji on a portfolio visit, or break the sound barrier. Joining the Navy sounds crazy. Saying never actually is. Learn why@navy.com America's Navy forged by the sea Amigos, vivimos para ofreservaquetes de hulo yo tel pormenos expedia Vivimos paraviajar well I was down on my last dollar and then I started saving cause the bank said fiscal restraint is what you're craving so I put my earnings in a high yield account let the savings compound and the interest mount I'm optimizing cash flow putting debt in check now time is my friend and not a pain in the neck and we've got a little cash to rebuild the old debt Boring money moves make kinda lame songs but they sound pretty sweet to your wallet. Brilliantly boring since 1865 I'm Ashley Graham and as a parent I know the back to school transition can be a lot when it comes to wellness. Ollie supports me and my family through it all. Kids multi is big in my house. It supports their immune system and they love to take it. A win win for everyone. Shop these products@ollie.com or retailers nationwide. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. Since the moment I started working at this restaurant six months ago, the alleyway behind the restaurant has always given me an uncomfortable feeling. To gain a layout of this restaurant, it's located in the middle of downtown, five minutes from New Mexico Mexican US Border. Since we're located in the tip of Texas in the Rio Grande Valley, the alley itself is not located right behind the establishment. You must walk past its patio, then past our garage until you reach the side back door that you have to prop open as the door locks behind you once it's closed during the day, I will usually see people walking back and forth across the alley when I go to take out the trash. It's typically a safe location, though it is also prominent for its homeless population. They are usually harmless despite a few that are noticeably mentally ill. My colleagues have even gotten to know a few and have given leftovers whenever possible. I work as part of the kitchen staff at this restaurant and most of the time we'll work past 10pm at night. My boss usually never lets the women take out the trash just to be safe, especially a petite, 5 foot Hispanic, 28 year old female. Since the quarantine started, our kitchen staff had become quite small, so I'll usually take out the trash with one of the other men working. This night was pretty slow and my fellow co workers and I were encouraged to clean up and leave early. At around a quarter to 10, I decided to get two of the slightly full trash bags and take them out back in myself, assuming someone would see my actions and take the other two after me. As I walked past the patio to my garage, my gut began to fluster. I got to the back door and paused. Maybe you should wait, I told myself, but the smell protruding from the bags was nauseating. I pushed the door and propped it open with a brick we usually kept nearby. The alley was dark and silent. The air felt menacing. The only light illuminating was from the bulb above the door. I walked quickly to the bins and lifted up the top and dumped the trash. Then, slowly, a man stood up from the other side of the dumpster. He wasn't very big, but he looked a lot older. He was sweating but his demeanor seemed agitated. He must have been crouching and waiting for some time. Time. I jumped back, holding my hand above my heart that seemed to be pulsing through my chest. The man looked at me, eyeing me as my steps moved backward. He shook his head, motioning me to stop. He was far too close for me to outrun him. I looked at his bushy dark brows and dark black eyes. Most of him were still cloaked in the night that surrounded us. His cloak clothes didn't look homeless, but I still assumed he was since it's common for them to be out here at this hour, usually waiting for food. I told him I had no leftovers, but he shook his head again and took out a medium sized knife. My eyes widened as I took in a breath. The following exchange took place in Spanish, but I'll translate. I don't have my purse. I was working. I'm still working. Just come with me, he said, using his knife as a pointer. My mouth grimaced. Having no idea where this small amount of courage came from, I said, my friend, come in right now with the rest of the trash. No, come now. He said more hurriedly and stepped closer and I stepped back again, speaking again with a little more 10 tenacity. They all saw me Come over here. There's more trash and he's coming right now. He's outside right now. I just need to yell. You are not going to scream. I'll gut you. To this day I don't know what came over me, but I replied with watch me. We looked at each other, daring each other. Then we both heard footsteps coming from inside the garage and he ran past me. I stood there breathing again. I didn't even know I was holding my breath. I turned to see my friend John come out the door. We're almost done. Over. He stopped talking after seeing my face. What happened? I explained everything as tears ran down my cheeks. My friend decided to run down the alley to try and catch him even though I told him not to and that he's gone by now. It was about 55 minutes until he came back. John relayed to me that no one was around except for some homeless guys we were familiar with. He asked them if they saw anyone running from the alleyway and they said yeah, but they didn't recognize the man and he took off in the opposite direction towards the border. John took me back inside and told our boss what happened. They called the cops, whose station was pretty close by. They sent someone to patrol the area and gather a description for me, which I gave. My boss let me leave early and John walked me to my car. He told me it's too bad we don't keep a camera back there. It would have been cool to see how I handled the guy. I smiled slightly, but my stomach was still in knots. He looked at me and apologized. I moved my hand to stop him and told him I'll be fine. Unfortunately, I still work there, but I've been excused from trash duty from now on. Obviously they never found him. I don't want to think about what would have happened to me if I was more complicit. Something gave me the courage to argue back to him and thank goodness my friend came out just in time. Now I work in the criminal justice field where I see a lot of crime and I'm also naturally a follower of scary movies and scary stories in general, so I have to disclaim that I do have a heightened sense of paranoia sometimes, but my girlfriend and her roommates both agreed this was weird. I was out walking my girlfriend's roommate's dog as she was working a night shift in their neighborhood, which is a very safe suburb of New York. I walked across the parking lot into this field in the middle of a rotary or a roundabout, whatever you call them. I lived in Boston for a while and they call them rotaries and I was screwing around on Reddit since it was near midnight and in the middle of quarantine and there was no cars out. The dog had a long leash, so she was sniffing around and then I kind of saw her stop and stare towards the road. I looked up and saw a black SUV stopped in the rotary. I pulled on my Covid mask that was on my chin. Since no one was around, I had it half off as some people in New York are touchy about that, understandably. Just in case they stopped to lecture me and I didn't care to engage in a dumb argument. I looked back at my phone and then back up and the SUV was still there. There was a family, mother, father in front and 12 year old daughter in the back seat. And I was a bit startled because they were all just blankly staring directly at me. I sort of waved and nodded and started walking the dog a bit around the grass again and they started to slowly move. They came around the rotary and I looked back and all of them were again staring directly at me. Me. I figured they may talk to me, so I stopped and waited for them to get around the circle. But when they approached they kept driving very slowly, all staring directly at me. Still. I gave another half wave and they drove past me, still slowly and staring back around the circle, then again around the circle. Literally all of them locked eyes on me, even the little, little girl in the back seat. I put my arms up like in a shrugging gesture as if to say what the hell. They did this a couple more times and I started to walk up the edge of the circle to engage. They sped up a bit and went around the corner and turned off the rotary. I started to feel even weirder so I decided I would walk back to her apartment building. When they entered the rotary again, I was walking watching them out of the corner of my eye and they were still staring. I started picking up the pace and they turned off the rotary towards me and I picked up the pace as they followed me. Once I got to the sidewalk I turned around because I didn't want them to know which door I was walking into and they stopped about 30ft behind me and they were all just staring out the front window. The little girl was in the center seat now staring too. I once again raised my arms to say can I help you? And I got no response at all. I kinda stood there and no movement and took my phone back out and typed their license plate into a note app. Then they slowly turned to the other side of the parking lot, all still staring until they got to the end of the lot and I rushed into the apartment building, which luckily needs a code to enter her. I got up and told my girlfriend and her roommate and they both kind of freaked out. I watched them out of her window and they pulled back up to where I was standing on the sidewalk and just sat there in their suv. I couldn't see anything at this point except the roof of their car. It felt like about 10 minutes. They sat there and then they slowly drove away. I cannot stop thinking about their creepy blank stares at me. Somehow it made it creepier that it was a normal looking family with a young daughter. Like maybe if it was just two guys I could have marked it off as they were just bored screwing with me. But this was just blank unmoving expressions that made it so eerie. So obviously, more than anything, I hope I never see this black SUV or this family again. This happened to a friend of mine who lived in the same neighborhood as me when we were about eight or nine years old. My friend E and her family lived just a few houses down the street from mine. We lived in a neighborhood where almost everyone knew each other. The biggest worry we ever had was that some outsider would come into the neighborhood and caused trouble. Some people left their homes unlocked because we felt that safe. There was an incredibly nice family that lived directly across the street from E's house. A mom, a dad, a 16 year old son, and their other mentally challenged son who was about 22 years old. I'll call him Tim. Tim was always home because he wasn't employed due to his disability. But his parents were working full time and his brother had school all day. Every day he would be outside waving and smiling at anyone who drove or walked by. Big smiles, showing all his teeth and sometimes giggling just out of pure excitement and happiness of interacting with other people. Since he spent most of his time alone, he was not creepy at all. One day E was sick and didn't go to school even though she was about 8 or 9 years old. E was allowed to stay home sick by herself. Plus her mom was going to be home around 2 anyways since she only worked part time and the neighborhood was safe. E locked all the doors except the one that led into the garage. They used this as their front door because it was easier in those cookie cutter homes to just open the garage, pull in, get out of the car, close the garage and walk into their house through the unlocked door that led from the inside of the garage to the inside of their home. This is obviously not the safest way to protect your home from intruders, but we literally all did this. The worst part is they had an outside cat and kept the garage door cracked just enough for him to get inside for his food or shelter if he needed to. So E is asleep feeling sick with a fever. All the doors and windows are locked except the door leading to the cracked garage door. Tim was bound to know that she was home alone since he was outside the front of his house all the time. E wakes up to pounding on the front door. Startled, she walks downstairs and looks through the peephole. It's Tim. She cracks the door and he says something along the lines of how he notices everything and would guard her home since she is home alone. She says thanks but there was no need to and to have a nice day and that it was beautiful weather. He looked pissed. He got angry and said you think I can't do it because I'm dumb but you watch and see cause me ain't dumb. She said sorry and didn't mean it like that. But she had to rest now. She dozed off and went woke up to a noise downstairs in the kitchen. The room the door from the garage led into. She hadn't heard the garage door open, but she was sick so she figured she was deep in sleep and just hadn't noticed. Completely disorientated from the time she looked over at the alarm clock. It was 10:20, way too early for her mom to be home. At that moment she heard noises again downstairs. She didn't call out. She had been sleeping in her parent bedroom and ran into their bathroom slamming the door loudly. Then she remembered their bathroom door had no lock on it. The noise she made slamming the door alerted the intruder to where in the house she was at and big footsteps started coming upstairs. She moved quickly and quietly to her parents closet which was on the other side of the big room. She closed the doors and hid behind some clothes, all the time thinking how someone would have gotten inside. She remembered that the garage door was cracked for the cat slightly, but not close enough for a thin person to slip underneath. Tim walks into the bedroom. Tim is tall and thin. She can see him through the slatted closet doors. She sees him holding a knife and did everything she could to not scream. He quickly went to the master bathroom where she was just moments before. These cookie cutter houses only had about three floor plan layouts so it wasn't hard for him to find. He looked inside the bathroom and didn't see her, then started making loud throaty noises like someone would do if they're frustrated and angry while pacing the entire house. She stayed in the closet for for hours even after she heard him exit through the front door. She stayed until her mom got home. She was crying hysterically and told her mom what happened. Had she not been so upset and had one of their kitchen knives had not been left by the front door, her mom might have blamed it on being delirious from a high fever because nobody would expect Tim to do that. The police were called, an official report was filed. I am not sure if he had any charges pressed against him because after she told me the story once, she refused to talk about it again. I overheard her parents a few times talking about the situation to my parents but never heard what the consequences were. E was so traumatized she went to therapy afterwards for several years and still wouldn't talk to anyone about it because she didn't want to remember or remember relive the experience. We even moved to an apartment together years and years later for college purposes. She never talked about Tim. It was like he never existed and I never asked. I noticed she always locked the door that led to the patio and balcony, even though we were on the seventh level, and always locked her bedroom door onto which she added an additional lock. And when she locked all these doors doors and the windows, she always checked three times every single time. I often wonder if there was more to the story than what E told me. We were kids after all, and sometimes kids don't know how to explain things they don't understand. It is terrifying to think about what his intentions were and if he perhaps did find E and something else happened. As horrifying as the experience must have been for her, it made a huge statement in the neighborhood for everyone to be more careful. I will always make sure everything is locked. Did you know you lose 91 days a year to scrolling? That's your entire summer gone. So this summer, log off and show up with friends and some ice cold Heinekens. Then instead of commenting on your crew's stories, he'll be making memories with them. Sorry, social media. The scrolling ends and the fun begins with cold Heinekens and good friends. Heineken social networking since 1873. Available at your local Heineken retailer or for delivery@heineken.com must be 21/ to purchase. Enjoy Heineken responsibly. It's. It's. It's.