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Trip Planner by Expedia. You were made to have strong opinions about sand. We were made to help you and your friends find a place on the beach with a pool and a marina and a waterfall and a soaking tub. Expedia Made to Travel I wanted to share this story to warn people, but it's not necessarily a creepy encounter, just a sort of story that's really weird and freaked me out. I'm traveling around the country in my car. I've been driving for over a week from the city that I lived in, and I've so far slept in my car to save money. It wasn't until I got to a big enough city that I decided to treat myself to an actual bed that would be comfortable. I opted to choose Airbnb because, well, it's cheaper than hotels. I booked this Airbnb the day before I arrived to the city, so there weren't many options left. I had found this apartment on Airbnb that looked very new and modern and it was in a great location too. The price was decent for its location and it almost seemed too good to be true. The only downfall was that it was listed as a new listing and had zero reviews. I figured that the price was low because it was a new listing and decided to just give it a shot. I mean, it must be legit because I mean, it is Airbnb, right? When I got to the apartment building, it was older looking than I'd expected. I later found out and realized that my Airbnb was most likely the only renovated apartment in the building and the building seemed to be in very poor condition. It looked like a dorm hall rather than an apartment building. Anyways, I let it all slide because I wasn't really paying too much anyways, so what could I really expect? The apartment itself looked like the pics, so that was good enough. Everything went well for the first two days. As a female traveling alone, I always make sure to be safe. I don't go out when it's dark and I always lock the door. That includes every single lock, including the chain thing. Anyways, on the third day I was out all morning and came back to the apartment to change to head to the beach. I had again locked the door, including the chain. I was in front of the door watching TV while changing when the door suddenly unlocked and someone opened the door. I am beyond lucky that I'd put the chain lock on the door or else it would have opened all the way. I was naked and no one else was supposed to have the keys but me. My first reaction was, um, excuse me, and I closed the door right away, locking it again. I came from the back of the door and I didn't look or see who was opening it. I sat in front of the door, scared and shocked, realizing that this person could technically still get in here since they obviously have the keys to the apartment. At first I thought maybe it was the owner coming back after I checked out, but I wasn't supposed to check out until the following day, so that was impossible. After crying for a few minutes, I recuperated myself and called the owner and told her what had happened. She told me that no one else should have a set of keys other than her and I, and that she's at work and that it wasn't her. I was scared to stay in the apartment because someone else could come in. I didn't want to leave because I had all of my valuables there. So it was a lose lose situation. I then called my dad, who told me that it was not okay, that someone has the keys and that she needs to take care of this asap. So he talked to her and she told me that she'll be there shortly with the locksmith to change it and then give me a pair of new keys. She then proceeded to tell me that she had only had this apartment for six months and that before I stayed there, there was only one other Airbnb booking. She also mentioned that it had been sitting empty other than those two bookings because she had been renovating the apartment, which now makes sense why the building looks like absolute crap and doesn't match the apartment. She told me that the only possibility for who that was could be the previous owners or someone related to them. That possibility, in theory, really messed with me. How is it possible that I was gone all day, every day, and the 10 minutes I was home, someone tried to come in. Did they know I was there? What were they coming in for if this apartment has been sitting empty for half a year? Maybe they did this frequently or maybe they saw me come in and tried to do something to me. These questions are constantly on my mind. I just know that I'm so lucky that I put the keychain on the door. Or else. Well, I don't even want to know what else could have happened. Needless to say, I won't be leaving a good review and I won't be staying in an Airbnb that has no reviews or seems too good to be true. I definitely learned my lesson with this one. This happened in January or February of 2020. 4 I can't remember which. I was visiting family in southern France and I didn't want to stay at their place even if they offered for personal reasons that I don't want to share here. I want to note that I visit them quite often and usually last minute, so I would never book the same place and I would sometimes book a hotel room which was more expensive but better for me as I don't necessarily want to socialize with the hosts. Even when I would book Airbnbs I would always search for flats or studio flats and not a room in a flat or house where other people live as I want to be on my own so this is an important criteria for me. So I booked this Airbnb within walking distance to where my family members stay and it looks very nice on paper. I think it was marketed as a house or grand floor flat with access to a yard and a garden. It was probably one of the cheaper options. I don't remember for sure, but I wasn't going there for leisure or planning to have a very nice place for myself to have enjoyable holidays, if that makes sense. So I really just wanted something for convenience and wouldn't pay extra for any kind of luxury. There were not a lot of reviews but the few ones were very positive. So I go to that place with my suitcase waiting in front of the house. I contacted the landlord who should give me the keys, but he's late. I spent at least one hour waiting outside and I'm trying to be patient, realizing at least the neighborhood is still pretty nice and seems safe even if I need to walk through areas that are slightly dodgy to get there from where my relatives stay. The landlord finally arrives. He seems like a good man and apologizes profusely, saying he was in another town visiting his cousin or friends and that time just flew by. First red flag he says they were drinking and didn't have time to sober up, so he had to speed on the highway on his motorbike while being tipsy and drunk. He stops and he asks me half jokingly to not say that in my review. I get a bit serious and tell him that he shouldn't be drinking and driving, but he says that he really didn't want to make me wait any further. I tell him that I won't flag that in my review. Spoiler alert I will, but I didn't want to start off on the wrong foot. The guy is pretty nice otherwise and he seems trustworthy, very chatty and also pretty open to socializing. And frankly I was just happy I could finally get in and drop my stuff. The second red flag is when he tells me that I'll be living in a small flat adjacent to the bigger house that he lives in, but that I shouldn't worry because I'll have my own place, my own bathroom, my own kitchen, etc. I don't really like that too much, but I actually think it might be good because I'm not super comfortable being on my own in a ground floor accommodation knowing that anyone can get into the yard and access the front door. Again, I'm paranoid, so knowing that someone I know is close by in case something happens gives me a sense of safety. God, was I wrong. He shows me around and all seems okay. It's pretty old, but as I said, I wasn't looking for a luxury stay. The part where I would stay is on a lower level than street level, not exactly like a basement because there's still access to a garden, but I need to walk down a set of stairs outside to get into a flat through the backyard. This shows mostly when I'm in the bedroom as I see through the windows, that it's clearly at a lower level. Next red, or rather yellow flag is when he shows me a door close to the bedroom, which is the connecting door between my part and his house. I was kind of expecting that, but I thought that he might need to at least cross the yard or access through the front door to get into my part of the house. He says that this door stays closed and it's locked anyway. Not as a warning for me to try to open it, but more like you'll notice there's this door. It's useless for you, and what's beyond it is not part of what you're renting. We chatted for a little bit too long for my own taste because I was tired and was also still annoyed at his lateness and not in the mood to socialize. He gives me his phone number because the Airbnb chat feature isn't good. It's easier to use WhatsApp, he says, and then he leaves. I start to settle down and open my suitcase and then get changed before leaving to visit the family. I then go back to the place in the evening and decided to have a shower. If I remember correctly, what I'm saying next happened before I took a shower because I remember locking the bathroom door, which I never do when I'm on my own, and I recall being quite anxious when taking the shower. So the biggest red flag before the last drop was I'm sitting on the bed and then hear a knock and someone saying my name. Two seconds later, before I get the chance to answer or even understand where the noise comes from, I hear keys turning in a lock and a door opening. As you might have guessed, it's the connecting door next to the bedroom. The guy enters and he says he can't find his phone and that he might have left it downstairs. I'm a bit shocked, probably because if he had come 10 minutes later, I probably would have been naked, ready to take a shower, or maybe even walking around in a towel since I'm supposedly alone. I know it might sound like I'm a big wuss, but keep in mind that I'm a relatively young woman alone in a house with a man in his 40s or 50s and he has control of when he can get into my place at any time, I stay polite and try to tell him no that I haven't seen his phone. I would have noticed there's literally nothing except my open suitcase on a couch in the bedroom. He still gets in, speaking a lot and very fast while I'm still sitting there, not fully realizing what's happening and not having a chance to tell him to leave. He looks around the flat and obviously doesn't find the phone. Then he says sorry and asks if everything is fine, if I had dinner or something like that, then leaves again. At that point I'm really wondering if I should even stay or not, since I know you get refunded only if you cancel two nights in advance. I just thought that I would lose money for the night that it started. And the following one. Knowing that I had booked at least four nights, I really needed to take a shower, but questioning if I should. I tried to see if there are available hotel rooms, but it's already too late to book or already fully booked. I decided to take my shower really quick, wondering if he could hear the shower and decide that he forgot something else to get in again. Nothing bad happens. I then go back to the bedroom, get dressed as fast as I can just in case, and then sit down and think. I decided that I'll just stay for the night and that I'll probably be less paranoid in the morning. If I'm still alive, that is. That's when I notice the chairs in the bedroom. There are two and one of them has ropes tied around the armrests. The chairs are in good shape and the rope is definitely not there to keep the armrests fixed to the chair as they're just loose to this day I have no idea why they were there. I still think I should sleep there just for the night and try to use a chair to block the door handle in the bedroom, kind of like in the movies. But guys, this only works in the movies. I try with both chairs, trying to pile them up, even trying to use the ropes. One way or another, the handle can still go down enough to open the door easily. I think that at least if I leave them in front of the door, I'll hear someone if someone tries to open it but the door opens the other way. And in any case, I didn't know what I'd do even if the noise woke me up again. I'm paranoid and anxious, but living alone abroad. My motto is to never ever take risks for my own safety, as I'm usually the only one who can save myself, so better to avoid any tricky situation. It doesn't mean that I never go out, but I wouldn't get drunk around people I don't trust and I would take a cab if I feel unsafe going home on my own after midnight. I now live in a city that's rather safe, but I've had way too many bad encounters to not be careful. So from my external point of view, this is a story about someone booking an Airbnb with good reviews, with a nice and friendly landlord who's just overly open because he likes to meet people and the ropes are just a detail. But for my anxious and paranoid self, it's the premise of a horror story or thriller where you shout at the stupid and trusting victim to get away ASAP before the guy comes back. So I decided to call my brother, who came to pick me up around midnight for me to spend the rest of my stay at his place. I spent a year studying in Mexico recently, and as you do on exchange, I had tried to travel as much as I could between the semesters. There's a big break, and me and my buddy that I'd spent most of the time with during the exchange decided to go on a longer backpacking trip through Mexico together. We had a rough plan on where to go and what we wanted to see, but we hadn't even booked our flight back yet, nor were we sure where we would take it from. We wanted to keep it flexible, and a few days before our trip ended, we had finally decided that we would take our flight from a city that was close and had really cheap flights, but the city itself didn't really have anything to offer. Then on Airbnb, we found a room that was very Close to the airport and a house with a pool, and we thought we would treat ourselves to a relaxed pool day. At the end of the trip. It turned out that the hosts were a family. The husband was Mexican and the wife was from Europe and could even speak our native language. So we arranged that we would take a bus to the airport and they would pick us up from there. When we finally arrived at the city, it was already dark and the bus driver refused to drive us to the airport since it was not directly on his route. So he just dropped us off on the highway. That was already a pretty crappy situation to begin with. Standing with our backpacks at the side of the road in the middle of no nowhere in a not so safe city in Mexico. But I called the host and sent them our GPS location and they said, no problem, they'll come and get us. So the husband came to pick us up and it was a very uncomfortable situation getting into the car with a stranger in the middle of nowhere at night. It also didn't help that the guy looked like Danny Trejo without a mustache. And as I tried to make small talk with him, he only gave monosyllabic answers or straight out ignored me. Well, he's probably just not a big talker. I thought and hoped we would arrive soon. Looking back, I can see a million red flags, but for some reason at that time we just didn't see them. Either we were too tired, or to be honest, we didn't really have any other choice than going along anyway. But yes, we arrive and that really should have immediately set alarms off. We were in the middle of freaking nowhere. There were fields with sheep and goats all around, and all of a sudden a gravel road branches off from the paved road. And along that gravel road There are about six huge mansions, all with 2 meter walls around them, topped with NATO fence, huge gates, and at least two gigantic guard dogs per house. When we entered the house, we were greeted by the wife, a bubbly middle aged woman who was very talkative but pleasant. She had actually cooked dinner for us and we ate while exchanging small talk. The husband just sat at the table, not saying a word. After dinner we more or less went directly to bed because it had gotten late and we were really tired from a long day. The next morning we saw that the weather wasn't that good, so we decided to go into the town and just see the few touristy things it had to offer instead of spending it at the pool. When we came back it was already dark, but we decided to jump into the Pool anyway to cool off because it was very hot and humid. The wife had actually joined us at some point. My friend made the mistake to ask how they were able to afford such a nice house. It didn't really match the price range of the jobs they were telling us they were doing. And she deflected a bit, adding that her husband was very handy because he had grown up in the streets and had basically built the house himself. We realized that maybe it wasn't the best topic and broke the conversation off. That was the last day of our trip, and we had our flight back home early the next morning. We still had some weed left that we had brought on the trip, and we thought it would be nice to smoke one out since it was our last night. But as this was a family home and they had kids around, we thought it would be better to speak to our hosts, if they would mind. So later in the evening, we had asked the wife if it would be okay if we smoked on the terrace, which for some reason she found quite amusing and just started laughing. She shouted to her husband, who was lying on the couch watching tv. She asked her husband if it would be okay for us to smoke weed and asked what he thought of it. He had started laughing, but didn't really give an answer. We just looked at her with a dumbfounded expression and then she told us, sure, just go ahead. So we went to the terrace and it started smoking our joint. Later on, they had actually joined us and we just had a chat. And this is where things got really messed up. For some reason, they had started asking all sorts of questions about weed, where we got it from, and how much we would have to pay for that back in Europe. They just seemed way too interested in the weed. And at one point, the wife just nonchalantly revealed to us, yeah, well, we thought about doing that as a source of income, selling weed. But too many people die doing that because their cartels don't like it. Actually, my husband used to kill people for doing that. I immediately felt sober. Did she really just say that? As if he read my mind. Her husband added, yes, when I was about 16, I killed a lot of people for the cartel, for money. And he said it in a tone as if he just said he used to mow lawns when he was a teenager. I still thought that I must have misunderstood. So I texted my friend who was sitting across the table from me, trying not to make eye contact because I knew we would freak each other out. He confirmed that I had indeed understood. Right. We discussed what we should do next and agree that there's no immediate threat and that we should just stay. We don't have anywhere else to go anyways and it's already late. But then things got even crazier. We tried to keep our composure and not completely freak out while still making conversation with our hosts. A few minutes later though, the husband got up and went inside to get something and he came back with a literal kilo of weed pressed into a brick. He proceeded to break bits off the brick and roll them into a joint that probably would have knocked out Snoop Dogg. It was about the size of my thumb and I guess it had about 2 grams of weed in there. Of course, he offered the joint to us, but we politely declined, saying that we were already pretty stoned. He seemed a little offended, but fortunately he bought our excuse. But it got even worse. A few minutes later we heard a loud couple of bangs. The wife became a bit uneasy and asked what was that? To which he answered calmly, 9 mm. To confirm my suspicion that that had indeed been shots. I would say it was around seven or something. Shots fired pretty quickly after each other. The wife got nervous and asked if we should maybe go inside and what do you think they're shooting at? In the air? At cows? At people? But he just shrugged it off and we stayed outside Again, a few minutes later, there were even more shots, this time even closer. The wife got even more upset and asked again, should we maybe go inside? What do you think they're shooting at? Should we go inside? And I don't think I'll ever forget when he then answered in the calmest way imaginable, no, everything's okay. I didn't hear any screams yet. I don't know why, but the way he just calmly said that freaked me the hell out and it's still making my heart beat whenever I think about it. After that, we quickly excused ourselves and went to our room. When we could finally talk, we basically just both lost it and panicked. What the hell were we supposed to do? We're locked into a house with a contract killer in the middle of absolutely freaking nowhere and there's people shooting outside. We decided that it was probably our best bet to stay because we thought, well, we are his guests, he's not going to harm us, hopefully, and it's probably better to have walls and dogs and a potential serial killer in between us and the people shooting around. So we barricaded ourselves in the room and didn't sleep a second until the morning when we noped the hell out of there and went to the airport. I was never so happy to be patted down in security my whole life. This didn't happen to me personally. It happened to two of my cousins. They gave me permission to share this story, so I'll be telling the story from their point of view. My name is Leah. The story happened in April 2016. I was 29 years old at the time and I live in Atlanta. In April, me and my cousin, who I'll refer to as Kate, wanted to go for a Caribbean getaway. But we didn't want to go to these popular tourist destinations such as the Bahamas, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, or Puerto Rico. We chose a lesser known island called Dominica. It's a small island located between Guadalupe and Martinique, and the capital is Rosso. It has a population of about 72,000 people. So we booked an Airbnb located out in the countryside called Salisbury. It's 30 minutes away from Rosso. When we got there, the first two weeks went really well. We rented a car and our Airbnb was perfect. And it was located near a nice, peaceful beach. It was truly the getaway we needed. We explored the island, visited several beautiful waterfall locations, and even made some friends in the village we were staying at. But on the second day of the third week, something really horrible happened. One afternoon, Kate and I didn't go out and decided to just spend time at the nearby beach with the locals. Later on, the people left the beach to go home. Kate wanted to go back to the Airbnb, but I decided to stay there so I could enjoy some alone time. I closed my eyes, laying down near the beach, enjoying the peace and quiet. Before I knew it, it got dark. So I decided that it was time to get back to the house. I walked and arrived at the Airbnb. But as I was getting my keys to unlock the door, I two men wearing masks suddenly ran out of the bushes and started beating me with batons. One even threw a rock at me and I was screaming in pain. My cousin Kate came out and tried to defend me, but the men also overpowered her as well. They then ran into the Airbnb house and ransacked the entire place. And then they ran away. The other villagers saw what was happening and quickly came to our aid. But the two men had already ran away. They stole my laptop, my phone and my wallet. But by luck, Kate's laptop was also stolen. Luckily, our passports weren't stolen. I was bleeding profusely and Kate was bleeding even more. At some point, I felt like I was gonna pass out. The police came over and we told them what happened and even the police officers were horrified. Dominica is usually a very safe country, so everybody was in shock. Two of the villagers drove us to the hospital which was in Rosu. We got hospitalized because we were so badly injured. We even had to change the date for our return flight, but thankfully we got out alive. As far as we know, those two delinquents are still out there, but I really hope they got caught. This forever traumatizes Kate and I. However, I still like Dominica and I would love to visit again someday, but next time I'll definitely be a lot more cautious. Don't take this too seriously. I'm sure there's a logical explanation for this, but I'm just really glad I didn't take the chance super super creepy nevertheless, about two weeks ago I booked an Airbnb in another country. I was going there for a concert. The room was cheap so I knew I wasn't going to be staying in a five star hotel. But it was only for one night so I didn't mind as long as I had a bed to start off. It already wasn't a great trip because my data roaming apparently didn't work in that country at all. I logged into a cafe wifi and planned my route in advance as best I could. Managed to be at the house just in time, rang the only bell and waited. Nobody came out. I repeatedly rang and waited for five minutes. I noticed the door had a slot for mail and looked through it. I was shocked to see an entrance that looked like an abandoned barn, A super dusty couch right in front of the door, pieces of furniture covered in cloth, very dirty and extremely old. I usually love old houses, but that just did not look like a house that was in use or prepared for guests at all. I wondered if I was at the wrong house and what do I do now? As a super old unwashed looking guy walked towards the door from the street, I asked him if he knew where the Airbnb was. He mumbled something which I interpreted as positive, so I asked him if he was Tim who was supposed to be my host. He said yes and opened the door for me. Well, I already described the entrance so there's no point in doing that again. The centerpiece was definitely the super old creaky staircase that led to the upper part of the house. I followed him upstairs. He was heaving and coughing and just absolutely stinking of cigarettes, which wasn't exactly pleasant, but whatever. The second floor was also abandoned looking. It was super dark with clustered Furniture hung with cloth and it was randomly thrown together and a super creepy curtain that I couldn't catch a glimpse behind. Another stair up and we were in my hallway, which was honestly the worst one. Cracks in the walls and old rural paintings and crosses hung up next to them. It seriously looked like the set of a horror movie. I usually don't have problems with decor like that. I'm goth, so anything darkly inclined is my jam. But everything looks so badly taken care of. So I got major creepo vibes from this house. He showed me the bathroom which had a huge hole missing in the bathtub, tiling and the wall. Everything just looked super dirty. He showed me to my bedroom, which was honestly okay. There were just a lot of creepy dolls on the shelves that threw me off, but the bed seemed fine. I asked him if he had wifi and he said no, which really sucked. I really hoped they would have it because that meant I would have no way to communicate there. I asked him when checkout was the next day. He said it doesn't matter. Um, okay. He then dragged himself up to the fourth story, which was in complete pitch black darkness by the way. So that gave me very weird vibes. I definitely didn't want to get into the shower, so I just quickly changed and charged my phone. When I went to the bathroom, I realized that I didn't even notice the creepiest part. There were no locks like at all, which really freaked me the hell out. I also noticed that there were so many half used items that someone left there like shower gels, toothbrushes and toothpaste. I guess it was the guests before me. Our random lash curler just laid abandoned on the shelf. Not like a here you go for your use in case you forgot yours way, but it just looked like someone left it and nobody bothered to clean it away. I already made up my mind that I would definitely not stay the night in this house. My mind was just spinning scenarios. What if all these products were left by the people before me? And why did nobody leave horrendous reviews? Because they got murdered. I asked myself, laughing. I was super spooked out. I seriously debated if I should take all my crap to the concert because it just didn't feel safe in the slightest. But my back was really hurting from my heavy backpack, so I just took my essentials and left the room as soon as I could. Not without sliding a folded paper under the door so I'd see if someone tried to open it in my absence when I was coming down the staircase. I had heard Someone turning a key in the front door. I was a bit confused, but in the advert it said that a couple lived there so I expected to see the wife or girlfriend of the guy that I had already met. Instead, a middle aged man enters and then says hey, I'm Tim. All I could think of was then who the hell was the other guy? I was really crapping myself inside, but had brief small talk with them and then finally left the house. I was shaking. I luckily made it in time to the venue and the concert was well worth it. Afterwards, I was so tired that I knew I couldn't stay awake for the whole night. So I checked into a hotel. It wasn't perfectly clean, but at least it had wi fi, a proper shower and a door with a dang lock. The next day I got thrown out at 10am So I made my way to get the rest of my stuff. I don't know why, but I had checked the mail slot again and jumped back. The old guy was just snoring on the couch directly in front of the entrance door. I tried my best not to wake him and I sneaked into my room to get my crap. And then I finally left this godforsaken place. I also want to mention that the door actually hadn't been opened. Thank God. I really don't know if I overreacted, but honestly, from the first two attempts to the missing locks and a checkout that didn't matter. If I assumed the worst, this would have been the perfect setup to assault or murder someone. Best case scenario, nothing actually would have happened, but I probably would have had panic attacks all night. Usually I really love solo traveling, but this. This was just way too. This happened a few years ago, the year 2018. Me and three other friends decided to travel to Bali for about a week since it was cheap and we had the time. So I mean, why not? We were all males in our early 20s. Our itinerary includes sightseeing, trying local foods, mountain climbing, visiting bars at the beach, and basically just a typical vacation in Indonesia. It was honestly quite a surreal experience. The country is absolutely beautiful and the food was amazing. The only issue I had about the trip were, well, the locals. Drugs were really prominent there, especially shrooms. The streets were filled with druggies dying to sell us their drugs. I am not exaggerating when I say this. One dude even grabbed my arm because I ignored his two for one deal. For a one way trip to meet Jesus. I just shrugged it off while my friends laughed it off. He looked rabid and frantic like he was about to pounce onto me like a dog diagnosed with rabies. I didn't feel too afraid as we were confident that we could handle them since half of them were not even sober. However, that is only the tip of the iceberg. The real horror started when we went back to our Airbnb for the night. We had an early day the next morning and we were exhausted. The place was extremely cheap and it didn't even have a proper locking mechanism for the door. It had two wooden doors which swung inwards and the only way to lock them was to wedge a wooden block through the holes mounted on the door. It was quite a primitive lock, but it gets the job done I guess. Everything was going well until the last night of our trip when we realized that the wooden block was now missing. We looked everywhere for it, but to no avail. I just figured that one of us must have misplaced it somewhere. We settled for using a selfie stick. I know it sounds like a horrible idea, but we used that instead since we didn't have anything that fits the holes to wedge the door close. We turned in for the night, seemingly not expecting anything since we had already stayed there for six days with no issues. I woke up to strange clicking sounds in the dead of the night. I got out of my bed and thought maybe it's one of the guys. So I nonchalantly approached the noise. My friends were all sleeping, so I decided to investigate the cause of the noise. The ruckus seemed to be coming from the door so I headed towards them feeling extremely confused. Who could be at our doorstep at this time of the night? I wondered. I noticed the doors were slightly opened and the selfie stick was horribly deformed. I peeked outside and saw three people staring through the gap between the doors. They were really close to the entrance and were attempting to push open the doors. I yelled at them, questioning their intentions as I noticed one of them was holding the wooden block. I was shocked and puzzled at the situation as I then recognized one of the men. He did the overall cleaning for the Airbnbs and Pathways during the day, so there's no reason for him to be there at 3am the other dude had asked if the wooden block belonged to us as they allegedly found it outside of our Airbnb. I definitely smelled bullcrap in that moment as there was absolutely no reason to do that. At 3am I called for my guys and the three men immediately ran for it. I clue in the guys on the circumstances and we stayed up until morning came in case they tried anything funny. We decided to report to the reception about their employee, but the description I gave them was not synonymous with theirs. They told me that the housekeepers they usually hire really only consisted of females in their late 30s and 40s. This sent shivers down our spines as we came to realize that we had let a complete imposter in and out of our rooms while we were out. Luckily, nothing important was lost and we got out of that situation safely. I can't imagine what would happen if I didn't wake up on that fateful night. As the doors were so close to being open, I was just grateful that it was our last night there. This is gonna be long. So where to start? I met him when I was 15 and he was 17. Looking back, the signs were all there. It had started out with small things, us just roughhousing like buddies. We're both guys by the way. But it would escalate to him taking me back behind the shed where my friends couldn't see and then holding me against the wall, fake hitting me, like pretending to hurt me while laughing the whole time. But he actually did hurt me. I would have bruises for weeks. One time he literally shoved my face in stinging nettles. But my naive 15 year old self thought it was all in good fun. If only I knew then what I know now. We had started dating at the end of my sophomore year and over the summer things progressed. He used to beg me to give him massages and whenever I would refuse, he would pin me down and tickle me until I relented and said yes. And whenever I stopped before he was ready, he'd go back to tickling me. Sometimes he would just randomly pin me down and tickle me and I would beg him to stop. But the only way to get him to stop was to literally fight him off of me. This happened almost every single time we hung out and I grew to dread it. I don't know why I kept going back. Honestly, I guess I was just so in love with them. I'm 5 foot 3 and weighed even less than I do now, about 100 pounds and he's 5 foot 7 and he lifted for context. I learned a lot in those days on how to fight someone off that's bigger than me. It wasn't just the tickling though. As I said before, he just liked to jokingly beat me up. But the force of his punches were not jokes. I would have bruises all over my arms and thighs from him punching me. One time I got in the front seat of our friend's car when he wanted shotgun. So he proceeded to punch my arm the entire 15 minute drive until I was almost crying because I kept trying to move away and tell him to stop. My friend who was driving did nothing. I don't know why. I mean he was even older than both of us. I don't know why he thought that was normal. It wasn't just punching me either. I had recently gotten my ear pierced and he thought it was so funny to smack me upside the head One time. He made me bleed and when I told him he just said that he hadn't. I tried to talk to him about this so many times asking please just don't touch my ears. And every time I asked, all he would do was correct my grammar. This was over text. I was honestly just scared to say anything in person. We ended up breaking up and just staying friends. I spent all of my free time at his house like an idiot. Another thing he had started doing was always wanting to smoke me up but never smoking himself. Huge red flag, I know, but at the time all I was thinking was it was more weed for me. I say all of this to explain what our relationship was really like and how utterly confusing this all was for me. To this day, I'm still confused why he acted this way. And now for the part where I think he tried to kill me. I was 16 now and he was 19. The day started off normal. We were just hanging out. From what I remember, this time period is kind of spotty memory for me. The next thing I remember is him sitting on top of my chest and arms, pinning me down like you would normally do to tickle me. But this time he had both hands around my neck, choking me. Not in a sexual way either, like both hands on my windpipe. I couldn't breathe, could barely talk. I kept hitting his hands and arms, trying to pull them off my neck. It wasn't working. I was trying to say, I can't breathe, let go. But as I said, I could barely talk. I remember thinking in that very moment, am I gonna die? Is he really gonna kill me? The whole freaking time he was just laughing and smiling. I honestly don't even remember how I got him off of me, but I think I must have used my legs and somehow rolled over. The next day I almost forgot it even happened until I realized that my neck was sore and bruised. When I went to school, I texted him, you left bruises on my neck. And all I got in response was, oh, sorry, my bad. I wish I could say that this was the last time I hung out with them, but it wasn't. I actually forgot it all happened until weeks later when I was talking to my friend and she was horrified. So I decided that I never wanted to see him again and I texted him that and no joke. All he said back was that's understandable. That's all I freaking got. I have no idea what he would have done if we actually kept hanging out or if I was just a little weaker. Honestly, I don't want to think about it. I'm posting this on Reddit because it's not something I can ever really talk about being a guy. The response I've gotten is, well, you must have given him the wrong idea. He probably thought you were just down to wrestle. But now that I'm older, I know what wrestling with your friends is and it's always mutually agreed on and not like that. I'm still so confused. I'm 19 now and I can't imagine treating someone like that. Oh yeah, and our whole friend group at the time called me crazy and said I was overreacting, all for me not wanting to hang out with them anymore and they essentially all cut me out freaking wild. The story is about my dad's ex and my former stepmother. It's more so of a crazy stepmom story, but again, she was my father's ex and she put me through hell. So I had known this woman since before I could remember. She was really good friends with my mom and dad through high school, so I already knew her before all of this. Unfortunately, my mother was an alcoholic and a pill addict, which led to pretty bad neglect for several years when I was very young. A story for another day after missing most of my third grade year, DCS got involved and my dad got custody of me. He was dating stepmother at the time and at first everything was fairly normal. She was like an older sister, a friend. It wasn't too long before I noticed things start to change. One day when I was about nine, I was sitting on the living room floor playing with my back against the couch. Stepmother crossed the living room to go down the hallway and as she did, seemed to shoulder check the doorway. As soon as she did this, she turned around and started yelling at me, accusing me of pushing her. I stared at her dumbfounded because I hadn't moved from my spot in the floor. She continued yelling and accusing me as I tried to rationalize it all in my head. Maybe I got up and don't remember, but why would I push her? I really had no negative feelings towards her at this point, so it didn't make any sense. But she was an adult and I was a child. Surely she knew what she was talking about. Stepmother was a taller, skinny woman with long golden blonde hair straightened through the length with those poofy 80s bangs on top. She typically wore high waisted jeans and kept long pristine red nails that would end up being a horrifying symbol to me in my teen years. Things only got worse as I got older. I would speak to my mom on occasion over the phone or in a letter the first few years, but each time I did Stepmother would become more and more hostile towards me, claiming that my contact with my mother was making me misbehave. But I was always an introvert. I loved reading in school and I was a bit of a nerd and hated getting into trouble so this accusation didn't make much sense to me even. But what could I do about it? Before too long I noticed that Stepmother had looked for any opportunity alone with me to treat me however she wanted. Stepmother quickly became extremely militant. Each morning she woke me up for school by bursting into my room and aggressively jerking the covers right off my body. Some mornings even grabbing my feet, digging her nails in and twisting my toes. I was expected to follow a strict schedule on school mornings. At 6:15am get out of bed at 6:15, 6:25am get dressed for school at 6:25am Breakfast. At this time I was expected to stand in the exact center point of the threshold between the kitchen and dining room, ready to take my breakfast and sit in my spot at the table at 6:35am Done with breakfast. 6:35, 6:45am finished getting ready for school and at 6:45am they sitting Indian style in the center of the living room waiting on everyone to be ready. If I did not follow the schedule down to the minute, punishment would be doled out. She would grab my hands while taking my breakfast, twisting one or two fingers out of socket, pulling me close to grit through her teeth at me with glaring hateful eyes. Sometimes she would step in, including my feet, grinding her heels into my bare skin, twisting and glaring hate into me. On a few occasions she even broke my wooden hairbrushes right across my face, leaving busted blood vessels and massive bruises. When the damage was too obvious, she would try and hide me for a day or so, gently waking me the next morning, acting as though I was sick and telling me that I was too ill to go to school, then brushing my hair back and telling me to go back to sleep. This treatment rolled over into my days after school and it would evolve into other aggressive behaviors. She made sure to conceal any sign of mistreatment from my father, but still something happened right under his nose. At the dinner table, she would dig her nails into my leg and scream so hard that she would shave off chunks of my skin from my shins with her toenails. Even at church, placing what looked like an affectionate hand on my back, Bo would proceed by giving me an extremely painful and deep pinch into my neck, leaving huge bruises in their place that no one else would see. I was given an hour and a half after school each day to do my homework. After that, I was expected to go to our playroom where I was to entertain her daughter. Stepmother's daughter was between five and seven when things started to get really bad. I was expected to play whatever she wanted, when she wanted and to abide by any requests made. This was never actually said, but understood and later learned that way. One day during the summer, while eating lunch with her daughter in the playroom, she had asked me to open her dessert. She had a kid cuisine that she had merely taken all of two bites of. Stepmother would typically leave the plastic on her dessert as a system to encourage her to eat her dinner first. Of course, when she asked me to open it, I asked her if she was done eating her meal, passively addressing the fact that she had barely touched it. I was about 14 at the time and it seemed like a plausible thing to big sister her about. But when I didn't give her what she wanted, she got up in a huff to go tattle to her mother, as most 6 year olds would do. Stepmother was immediately enraged and barreled down the hallway in my direction. I don't even think I was out of view of her daughter when she grabbed me by the hair and started dragging me. I tried to keep up, but I lost my balance and fell to the floor as she continued to drag me down the hallway by my hair. Once we reached my bedroom, she had started kicking me in the stomach and then pulled me to my feet to face my bed. She then began rummaging through my belt drawer and pulled out my woven leather belt that she had already used more than once and then proceeded to beat the hell out of me with the belt, starting at my shoulder blades all the way down to my ankles. Heaven forbid if I screamed she would just beat me even more. The abuse also did not stop physically as she seemed to get a real kick out of bullying me. She wasn't so worried about hiding from my father as she would make us seem light hearted and jovial when he was around. One evening while having a family dinner at one of our local go to sit downs, she had started kicking me under the table, passing me horribly evil glares. After a few minutes of this, she spoke up, you chew like a cow. Then started laughing. Why can't you chew right? Doesn't she chew like a cow? My dad chuckled, thinking it was meant lightheartedly. But as he looked down at his meal again, her death glare was staring a hole through me with a tight jaw and the gritted teeth told me otherwise. This became a new target for her abuse. She did this again later on when she noticed that I walked on the inside of my house shoes one day, kicking me in the back of the knees, making me fall to the floor. She began kicking me in the back, knocking the wind out of me all simply over the way I walked. This became my daily life. Speaking out seemed ridiculous because all of these punishments just felt so absurd. I didn't tell anyone for a long time, but as I got older, people around me got wiser. When I was in middle school, my dad and stepmother were called in for questioning by the school. Two of my teachers were highly suspicious of my bruises and constantly swollen fingers. Stepmother proceeded to put on an act, crying and acting hurt and shocked that they would even think she would hurt a child. I changed schools after that year. Things only got worse once I went to high school as she seemed intimidated by my aging and gaining maturity. My male friends were off limits and my curves were to be hidden in horribly unflattering clothes. I didn't really mind so much as I really had very little interest in boys or displaying my womanhood to any degree. However, one afternoon while taking a shower, she burst into the bathroom to remind me of my timing. As she whipped the bathtub curtain open, she saw the hair growing below my waist. Before I could react, she grabbed the hair and jerked it down, pulling out a handful of my pubic hair. She cursed me for not telling her that I had started maturing in that way. I couldn't tell anyone about that for years. After the belt beating, however, Smil saw my backside and had called my dad at work, cursing him and threatening him to report it. I started going to her house on the weekends after that. After this, I got braver and became less scared once I saw people reacting to what little they saw of my stepmother's behavior. I knew that I was in the right for sticking up for myself. So I did in subtle ways. At first I brought jewelry and makeup to school and I started to give myself space to express myself. Then one morning while running a minute or two behind on breakfast, Stepmother came to the kitchen in a rage. Why wasn't I finished getting ready for school? Before I could turn around from rinsing my dishes, she was rummaging in the utensil drawer and then pulled out a fork. She backed me against the kitchen counter, pressing the fork to my throat. I don't remember what she said to me in those moments, but I remember her hot breath in my ear, hissing through her teeth at me, and I remember the chill of the cold metal prongs on my throat. I was 16. My last day there was a field day of my junior year in high school. I decided to wear a cute little outfit that her sister in law had bought me for casual days. It was a cute cap sleeve striped T shirt. It was cut femininely to suit my curves with long matching shorts. I knew she wouldn't like it, but I also knew that it was completely appropriate for a girl my age, even very conservative in comparison to my other peers. She saw me as I was walking down the hallway towards my bedroom and I saw the rage fill her. She came at me nails first, grabbing my arms and digging her nails in. This is when I snapped and fought her off, shoving her into a wall. Rage filled me as I went to the living room to grab the phone. If you touch me again, I'm gonna call the cops. She went pale and suddenly I wasn't scared for myself anymore. I couldn't control myself and I laughed. You're scared, I said, suddenly enlightened. Her face went blank as she walked towards me. If I have to make your dad choose between you and me, it's not going to be you, she said coldly. I ignored this sentiment because I knew she was delusional to think something like that. I went to my bedroom and packed a bag. She didn't stop me, but she did make sure to let me know that if I left, I wasn't welcome back. I ended up spending that summer in Florida with my stepmother's sister in law and I moved in with my grandmother for the next several years. I only saw Stepmother again once in my 20s. She had left my dad by the time I was out of high school for the man she had been cheating on him with. She and I spoke briefly over Facebook that next year and I confronted her all about what she put me and my dad through. Her response? I'm sorry if you ever felt unloved. I was just really stressed. And you were a pretty rebellious kid. This first started when I was in my first year of sixth form. My friend, let's call her Candle, introduced me to her other friend, who we'll call Amanda. I used to chat with Amanda every day for the next two weeks simply because she used to message me constantly. She seemed like a nice girl at first until she had started to make me feel uncomfortable around her as she used to message me, I want to cuddle you like a big teddy bear, and similar things to that. And I shot it down and she got upset and threatened to call the police on me if I didn't go on a date with her. I'm a gay guy, by the way. But I wasn't out of the closet at this point in my life. I screenshotted everything she said to me and I showed my friend Candle and then she stated, yeah, I believe you. She's a compulsive liar and she actually lied about a teacher assaulting her. And she used to make things up to make herself sound better than everyone else. I was so glad Kendall believed me and advised me to block Amanda, which I did. Fast forward two years later. I was now in college and I encountered her again. I didn't recognize her, and I was chatting to her without realizing she was the same Amanda from two years prior. That was until I messaged Candle on Facebook. As Amanda told me she knew Candle, Candle sent me a long paragraph. Erm, you do realize that's Amanda, right? Then it all came flooding back to me. She's right. It's the same girl who threatened to call the police on me for not going on a date with her. She was dating a friend of mine in college who's now my bestest friend. I tried to warn him, but he didn't listen to me. Amanda claimed to have a crush on me a second time, and I shot it down right away and told her I'm not interested. She obviously took offense to that and threatened to call the police again. To which I just replied, oh yeah, what's the police going to do? This isn't even a police matter. Which, by looking at her facial expression, angered her more. But she walked off. The next couple of weeks went by and I ended up telling my friend about what she had been messaging me with. And he obviously believed me as he saw her messaging me in real time. She kept asking me on a date and saying that she liked me since day one. But here's the thing. She was in a real relationship with my friend. Naturally, my friend got Upset and called her in front of me and she claims she had no clue what he's talking about and told him I'm making up lies. Then he forgave her as she admitted it was true. Just a week later, to my annoyance, she began hanging out with us. I was nice to her because I didn't want my friend to get upset. She tried telling me that she had two children at 17 with one being 13 and one being 3 years old. I thought that's odd. Something wasn't adding up. I should have called her out but my friend was there and I didn't want to upset him. She even stated that the three year old child was my friend's daughter even though he looked confused like it was his first time he ever heard of this child. When she went home I asked him. He stated no idea. She never mentioned a child before now and we definitely never had sex. Very strange. Fast forward a year and I was working in a shop. She had suddenly showed up and asked to speak to me. My manager let me go on my 30 minute lunch. She was with her friend and she wanted to tell me that my best friend was manipulating her and that he was always hurting her, which I knew for a fact wasn't true. I'm also going to be referring to my friend now as Marcus. Marcus wouldn't hurt a fly. But I just listened to whatever else she wanted to say. She said that she was trapped in a relationship with him and felt scared of him. No idea why she was telling me this knowing I don't like her. I just acted like I believed her and headed back to work. I then came home and FaceTimed Markus and I told him everything that she told me earlier that day. He started crying his eyes out because he found out she cheated on him with another guy. A friend of his showed him a picture as proof and forwarded it to me. It was definitely a picture of her with some guy kissing on the bus. I told Markus that he needed to get away from her asap, which he did until the next day they were back together as he yet again forgave her. We started doing group video chats, me, Marcus and Amanda at her request and remember her 3 year old from the year prior? Well now she's a five year old named Lily who literally never existed. And I asked her about the 13 year old she mentioned and she just replied with I don't have a child other than Lily. And the next couple of months go by and she used to say Lily's in bed or Lily's at school, etc. Well, I called her out. She used to show us Lily by turning the camera to a pitch black area of her bedroom and then quickly put the camera back to her. I thought this was odd and I then said, why did you move the camera so fast? We didn't even see anything. She then replied, well, because she's camera shy or she's asleep. I just couldn't take it anymore. It was excuse after excuse. If Lily was Marcus daughter, he deserved to see her as he literally never met or saw Lily, not even once. I sent her a long message stating that Lily simply does not exist and why aren't there any pictures of her then I blocked her because I just had enough of her playing games with my best friend. She then went on people's Facebook and I kid you not, she took photos of random people's children and claimed them as Lily. Marcus and I looked at each other and we knew these were different pictures of random kids. Some of them weren't even girls. This went on until one day me and Marcus went to Amanda's mother's workplace and Marcus showed her all the messages, especially the ones about Lily and the many pictures of her and the random guy she meets up with. Some of the men Amanda met up with were like 50, 60 year olds and we found her on a dating website asking for men to fatten her up. We showed everything to Amanda's mother. Her mother was furious. She said that Amanda never had kids, she was never assaulted as a child, and she knew that something was odd as she got into some random man's car just the day before. I really thought that this was the end of Amanda, but I couldn't be more wrong as Marcus, like an idiot, met up with her that evening and forgave her for like the millionth time. And then something strange happened. The next day Marcus called me on FaceTime and he was furious with me. I asked him what was going on, what did I do? He told me I was a bad friend and he wanted to cut me out of his life. I was in shock and I actually heard Amanda laughing in the background. Then it clicked. She said something about me which wasn't true and now me and Marcus are arguing like crazy and he blocked me on everything, which really broke my heart as this guy was my best friend and now he's believing his compulsive lying girlfriend over me. Marcus and I were having an on and off argument all the time and Amanda was at the root of it, telling him lies and manipulating him like she was jealous of our friendship. Maybe she thought I was a threat to her relationship with Marcus and tried to split us up as best friends. She literally used to invite me out with them and when I turned up, she used to be like, I wanted to spend time with you. Why is he here? Excuse me? You're the one who invited me. This happened every single time until one time I snapped back at her, which made her cry. But I didn't care. She needed to stop doing this to me as it wasn't healthy for my mental health. A few weeks go by, Marcus was texting me on Facebook messenger and we were having a laugh like we used to. He went to the bathroom as he was with Amanda. Then I suddenly got a text from Marcus again saying, hi, it's Amanda. I just replied with hey. And she had started sending me more threatening messages saying that I need to leave Markus alone and that he doesn't like me and I need to move on. I was just like, what the hell? I ended up arguing with her over this, asking why the hell she's using his phone to send me these messages. Amanda was like, I dare you to come say that to my face. At this point, I'd had enough and I contacted a friend of mine who we'll call Jasmine. I told her all about the situation and I ended up in tears on the phone. I've known Jasmine since primary school and we've been close friends since, so she naturally got defensive and she asked me to get in her car and she'll draw me off where they are so I can say it to her face. Jasmine wanted to hurt Amanda for what she's done to me. We saw them and then we confronted them. Marcus genuinely had no clue what was going on until I showed him the messages that Amanda had sent on his phone. He was furious and he walked off in tears. I ran after him, leaving Amanda and Jasmine alone. Marcus and I hugged it out and we had a talk about what's happened. He was telling me that he isn't allowed friends anymore and Amanda even made him choose between her and his family, which made me even more furious. I had had enough of the way she was treating my best friend. The next day, Jasmine messaged me and said she can't be friends anymore as I was bullying Amanda for months, which wasn't even true. I would never bully anyone. I said to Jasmine if she was really my friend, she would know that Amanda was lying. But obviously not to this very day, I never saw Jasmine again. This felt like a big betrayal of our friendship. Honestly. And I would never talk to Jasmine ever again. But this was over six years ago. Marcus and I were doing better, and he wasn't letting Amanda manipulate him anymore. That was until these boys came into our lives. Well, first was another girl I was friends with named Alice. I knew Alice for years, and I invited her out with Marcus and I to a pub for a few drinks. It was a nice evening, and Alice even called Amanda and told her that she needed to leave Marcus alone. Later that evening, we said goodbye, and I was naturally worried for Marcus, as he's like a little brother to me. At this point, Alice asked if I was gay, which I am gay, but I wasn't out of the closet yet, so I responded with no. Alice then said, then why are you worried about Marcus? You obviously fancy him. Well, no, he's like a brother to me, and we've been through a lot because of Amanda, so I obviously do care about him. I thought to forget about this conversation, so I assumed that she was just making conversation. Alice messaged Marcus asking him out on a date on a messaging app, and by the end of the week, they had started dating. I was really happy that he's moving on from Amanda, but, boy, was I wrong. I had started receiving messages from Alice's brother and his friends stating that they're gonna slice my throat and messaging Marcus to help them beat me up. We were talked into joining a group video call, and the call contained me, Marcus, Amanda, Alice's brother, and his friend. They were saying horrible things towards me, saying I should die and that I hurt women, which wasn't true at all. It was just more of Amanda's lies. And I was messaging Marcus to back me up because he was quiet while I'm trying to defend myself against these crazy guys. He just read my messages and still sat there not saying anything. At this point, I had enough, and I just left the call in the group and I blocked all of them apart from Marcus. Marcus called me the next morning saying sorry for not defending me. I just replied back with, well, that's not good enough. They were literally threatening me, dude. Marcus went quiet and said sorry again. By that point, I had ended the call because I couldn't be bothered with distress anymore. Next thing I know, Alice was denying that she ever dated Marcus and claiming that I had made a fake account of her on the messaging app. Are you serious? I also noticed Alice was being besties with Amanda on Facebook. So that's the puzzle fitting. At this point, I wanted to just end my life. I was at my Lowest. I was losing all of my friends because of this psychotic Amanda. This was the start of my depression getting worse and worse. Marcus and I eventually made up and were best friends again. But there was a time period where we didn't talk for over a year. I guess that's me trying to move on with my life. But we eventually started talking again, and Marcus and I met up again, just the two of us. And he was saying how sorry he was for everything he's done. I told him it's okay. He was just under Amanda's control. Fast forward to 2024. Marcus has a new fiance who is a very lovely girl, and I'm gonna be the best man at his wedding because I stopped him from jumping every time Amanda cheated on him. This part I did leave out in the story, but, yeah, that happened. He now sees I was always there for him and we're closer than ever. He defends me a lot nowadays, and he always has my back. I've seen Amanda here and there a few times, but when I do, I never acknowledge her. She truly was a psychotic woman. Back in my single days, I often tried to use online dating apps. I talked with this one guy in particular. For the sake of this story. I'll call him Tom. Tom and I had started chatting after we matched, and it went well. So we progressed to talking over the phone. He had a nice voice, and I liked that he could carry on a conversation because I always feel sort of awkward with talking to people, and I have the problem of running out of things to say. My mind will draw a complete blank when I'm nervous. So having him talk to me on the other end of the line was a nice relief. After some successful phone conversations, we went on a couple of dates in person that were surprisingly very pleasant. We met up at public venues, a couple of restaurants, the usual. We both had a background in English, and he was also a writer, just like me. So it was nice to have these interests in common. Our conversations were easy, in depth, with a nice flow. I invited him to a function in my community where he introduced himself to my neighbors, friends, and family. They kind of looked at me questioningly, like, is this your new boyfriend? Raising their eyebrows. I told them no, that we were just friends who were still getting to know each other. It felt too soon for me to call him my boyfriend, but Tom said something different, telling everyone that I was, in fact, his girlfriend. I had to keep correcting him. I felt a little embarrassed, and I had really regretted bringing him to the gathering. Overall, we really Only dated. I used that term loosely. And it was for about three weeks before things started to get really weird with him. Tom was increasing his number of text messages and wanting to spend a lot more time with me, asking to see me almost every single day. At first I thought it was flattering. I enjoyed the attention and the feeling of being wanted. But at some point, I'm not exactly sure when, it had escalated to a really uncomfortable level. I remember just feeling smothered. He'd blow up my phone, asking me what I was doing, but it didn't seem like he was asking me in a normal how are you doing? Kind of way. There was a controlling undertone to the question. When I answered, he'd want to know every detail about where I was, what I was doing, what time I was doing it, everything. I considered that maybe he was just feeling insecure and he would calm down with some time. On our next outing, I met up with him and my friend so we could go out to a bar and hang out. At some point, though, my friend wanted to leave because she wasn't feeling good. We said goodbye to Tom and I left the bar to go take her home. When I checked my phone after arriving home late that same night, I saw that I had a bunch of angry text messages from Tom about, why didn't you kiss me goodbye? And things like, you don't really like me, do you? I just wrote back saying that I had to take my friend home. I didn't know I was supposed to kiss you. Kissing shouldn't be an obligation. Sorry, I just didn't think about it because I was occupied. Can we let this go? I'm really tired and I want to go to bed now. He just said back, okay, you're right, I'm sorry. Please don't ghost me, okay? Or something along those lines. I don't know why, but I just felt really weird and that he was way too clingy and it worsened from here. Moving forward, whenever I talk to him, it seems like he would deliberately be trying to initiate an argument or fight. I'm not the confrontational type, and this was incredibly energy draining for me to keep up with. Why does everything have to be an argument? I asked him. He explained how he grew up in an abusive household and that he was used to the members of his family fighting and arguing all the time. This felt normal to him. I explained, well, I'm not used to this, and frankly, it feels a little scary to me. People in my family talk things out calmly. Whenever we have disagreements, we don't raise our voices, jump to accusations, or have temper tantrums. You're right, he said. But of course, this didn't change. I lost the spark. The initial attraction I had for Tom was now gone. I actually felt repelled by him now. I decided I just couldn't see him anymore. I felt really sad and guilty for his life situation and the way he grew up. But at the same time, the rollercoaster dynamic of our communication was really starting to take a toll on my own mental health. When I broke up with him, he had threatened to commit suicide. I didn't know what to do, so I asked my parents and some of my old psychology course classmates for advice. Everyone advised me that Tom's mental instability wasn't my responsibility and that he needed to go seek help. He kept flooding me with messages on all of my accounts. As I mentioned before, he was a writer, so he'd send beautifully written, lengthy pleas for forgiveness. I replied with, I really just need a break right now. But he ignored my messages and would keep trying. At one point, he had sent me a photo of his dog, telling me that his dog says, hi, I miss you. That's what I thought. Okay, this is weird and manipulative, so I'm going to block him. And I did. I blocked him on phone numbers, social media accounts, etc. When he couldn't reach me, he resorted to some drastic measures. He emailed my parents. Yes, my parents. Why is he messaging us? My parents asked me. This feels weird and creepy. I don't know, I said. Honestly. He's pleading us to convince you to get back with them. I don't want to be involved in this, my mom told me. I don't want you involved either, I said. My parents knew the whole ordeal already because I'd asked for their advice when he threatened suicide. So while having a discussion about it, our consensus was to offer no response. They proceeded to block him as well. Next, it was my friend who had gone with us to the bar. Uh, Tom is messaging me saying that you broke his heart or something, she informed me. What happened? Did you do something to him? I broke up with him. Just don't respond and block him, I said. She obliged, but that wasn't the end of it. Then Tom reached out to my neighbors. I guess he remembered their names at the community function, and he memorized them all by heart. He reached out to each and every one of them with a lengthy, elaborate story about how we had been together for at least six months and that we were passionately and madly in love. In this story, he had portrayed himself as some kind of a victim and I was this villainous man eater or something. Something weird, I don't know because I didn't want to read it. What did you do to this poor guy? I kept being asked over and over again by different neighbors. I was forced to keep repeating an explanation about what happened. We only went out for like a few weeks. I said a month at most. I advised them to please not respond or encourage him. Honestly, I'm a very private person, so having my whole community know about my situation was deeply humiliating for me. This went on for about a year. I'd have someone tell me Tom tried to reach out to me again. There was one older lady neighbor of mine that actually continued talking to Tom over email, even though I asked her to stop. She told me, but he writes so beautifully and he's a beautiful dark soul. The whole thing had actually put a rift between her and her husband. So yeah, that was a thing too. A separate neighbor told me that she was afraid for my own personal safety. She said, he seems like a stalker type, like from those crime shows. Which didn't do much to help my anxiety. I spent a lot of time indoors. For a good while after that, I felt withdrawn, insecure, deeply embarrassed, and most of all, scared. I felt like I had to look over my shoulder whenever I stepped outside of my own home. I took a long break from dating apps, feeling a bit shaken up from the whole experience. Two years later, in 2018, he texted me from a different number saying, you know who this is. If you still don't want me back, don't respond and I'll leave you alone forever. Even though he didn't give me his name, I just knew it was Tom. Frankly, I was relieved. My first inclination was Tom. Wow, I'm finally free. Thankfully, he hasn't messaged me, my friends, parents or neighbors again since. I just hope it stays that way. Some extra information before I bring this to a close. I must have a personality type that draws in these sorts of people because when I finally met my current husband in the same year of 2018, his mother pulled the same stunt on me. The smear campaign. This happened in 2020 and we were forced to cut contact with her, but that's a whole nother story. So I'm currently a sophomore in college and the bar scene here is pretty big. Going out for the night to get special deals on alcohol so you can get plastered with your friends is the kind of go to here. Despite this, I'm not really a huge drinker and I don't enjoy it a lot because it tastes so bad and hurts my stomach. I do enjoy the company though and I often just go out with my friends or meet new people. A lot of times I'm called the dad of the group because I end up taking care of them all the time. That's the prelude to what happened when I decided to go with them on one Friday night. So we all got dressed up pre gaming a bit at my friend Q's apartment before we took an Uber downtown to one of our pretty well known college bar clubs. After we got in, my friends immediately split off into tiny groups coming over the club for girls that they wanted to try their shot at spending the night with. This is going to make me sound weird, but one night stands aren't really my thing and I don't want to end up cog blocking my friends. So instead of looking for girls I usually find someone at the bar and just make friends with them. I was chatting with some dude that was wearing a cowboy hat when eventually a girl approached me. She was pretty cute, probably 5 foot 6 with dirty blonde hair and eyes that I think were light brown but they were so light they almost looked gold, which threw me off a bit at first. She asked me if she could buy me some drinks in exchange for being her friend for the night and I of course accepted because hey, that's what I came here for anyways, right? Anyway, she kept her word and we had started talking to each other and she introduced herself as Alexia, but to call her Alex. I asked her some basic stuff about if she came with friends, if she went to college here, etc. To which all the answers were no. That struck me as pretty odd as it's honestly pretty unsafe to be in the downtown area alone, especially for a girl like 1am in the morning. She said that she wanted to hear more about me though, and she actually seems pretty excited to listen. It felt like a really nice change of pace because I'm usually the one learning about other people, not the other way around. It also could have just been the alcohol starting to take effect since I'm actually a pretty big lightweight as like I said, I don't actually binge drink often. The whole time I was talking she had stared into my eyes and had this warm smile that made me feel so acknowledged, if that even makes sense. I felt like she was really enjoying her time as much as I was and that just made me even happier because I thought I had really made a new friend. That was when her demeanor then began to change though. She started to get kind of flirty and eventually asked if I wanted to go home with her. Like I said, I'm not really the one night stand kind of guy and I explained to her that I like to get to know people a little bit better before sleeping together. I'm pretty sure I saw what I think was anger flash across her face, but it was quickly replaced with another smile and she suggested just going home and watching a movie instead. I agreed and pulled out my phone to begin ordering an Uber, but she basically grabbed my wrist and started guiding me outside. I was confused at this, trying to ask if she was planning to drive after drinking, but she wouldn't really answer me. We eventually got outside the club and she had pointed to a black Honda Civic parked right at the front of the club. That was when all of the warning bells rang like a tornado had just passed through them. I was pretty drunk at this point in the night, maybe six or seven drinks deep, but I was still aware enough to see the red flags. She said that she had come alone, but the lane the car was parked in was only for pickups and I never saw her order an Uber. Somebody would have had to be driving the car. This was enough to make me uncomfortable and I asked again if she was planning to drive the car. She said yes as she continued walking me closer to it. I knew right then that she was lying and as we got closer, my heart sank as I noticed the outline of three other guys in the car. Right at that point, my adrenaline kicked in and I yanked my hand away from her and said there's no way in hell I'm getting in that car with her. She tried begging me one more time, saying that she really wanted to have sex and would let me do whatever I wanted, but I had already turned around and started to walk back to the club. She started cussing me out then practically screaming at the top of her lungs as I walked back up to the bouncers to go in. I texted my friends what all happened and we all met back up and went home. It was obvious she was going to college bars trying to get guys drunk before offering to sleep with them so she could get them in that car with the three other men to then rob them and do God, God knows what else. I called my city's anonymous tip line and I left a detailed description of the girl car and the place where it happened. That night was a real wake up call for me and I'm so thankful that despite Being drunk that night, I was able to piece together what was actually happening before it was too late. Please remember to always be safe when going out with your friends, especially when it's late at night or if alcohol is involved. I'm currently a 17 year old male, so when I was 13, I went to Comic Con with my grandparents in my country, which was held in our capital city. I met up with some of my older online friends who were in the ages of 17, 19. Yeah, I was a stupid kid back then. They invited me to a bar near my hotel and asked me to bring my grandparents with me just to be safe. And thank God they told me to do that. The moment we sat down at the bar, my grandparents sat a few tables away but still being able to see me. And basically I mostly just spent time talking with my friends. It was nice, but I had noticed a man sitting on the same bench as me, but on the other end. Each time I looked over at him, he was closer and closer. Well, finally my grandma comes over to me and told me to get up because we're leaving. And so I did. I then told my friends that I'll see them the next day. Well, when we got to the hotel, my grandmother told me that she saw the guy rubbing himself while he was looking at me and it looked like he was relieving himself while staring at me. And that when he got too close, my grandma saw him start to slowly reach for me under the table, probably trying to grab my private part. Since then, I never met up with any of my older friends in any kind of bar or anywhere. I was really young and stupid back then, but yeah, pretty crazy. The story isn't mine, but my grandmother's. My grandma, we'll call Mary, was a very small woman. A stiff breeze could blow her away. My dad and his three brothers would make jokes about how she could fit in their pockets for my whole childhood. She told me this story when I was a teenager as a way to remind me to always be vigilant. We're in Canada and the drinking age in my province was, I believe, 18 at the time. This would have happened in the late 60s into the 70s. My grandma had gone to the bar for some drinks. Now, it's been a long time since this story has been told to me as I'm now 30 years old myself and my grandma told me when I was under the age of 18. So some of the details are fuzzy, but my grandma had been having a few drinks and had gone to the bathroom, leaving her drink unattended. She came back and drank it as if nothing had happened. She was having a good time but it started to feel funny. She said that her body started to feel weird, so she got up and managed to get herself up to the bathroom again and locked into a stall before her body stopped working properly and she lost the ability to move. I'm not sure how long she was in the bathroom for, but she stated that she stayed in that stall until whatever had been put into her drink started to wear off and she was able to go home. She never found out who drugged her and never left a drink unattended again. Now the story isn't all that scary compared to many others, but that could have ended very badly for my grandma. Moral of the story Never leave your drink unattended and if you do, just buy a whole new drink. You never know if someone could have slipped something into your drink and you may not be as lucky as my grandma was. Stay safe everyone Names have been changed for privacy reasons. This story begins at the end of 2011 when I had just turned 19 years old. I was a freshman at the university in my city that I grew up in and I was looking for a new job. I had finally found one as a server at a downtown bar that was just shy of a mile away from my dorm. I didn't have a car at the time, so I would either walk to work or ask friends for a ride. I actually liked walking though. It gave me some time to clear my head from my crazy college schedule. My co workers at the bar were really nice and welcoming by one certain worker, a bouncer named Jason gave off extremely creepy vibes. He was a big guy, about 6 foot tall and well over 350 pounds. Not the muscly type of 350 pounds, though, more so the obese type. Not trying to be mean, just trying to paint a picture. I never really spoke to him, but oftentimes I'd feel him staring at me or he'd just stand uncomfortably close to me. I just always had a bad feeling when he was around, which is not how you want to feel around someone whose job it is to protect you. I think the only words ever exchanged between us were a quick hi or thanks. One night I ended up closing the bar and my manager asked how I was getting back to my dorm. I told him I was going to walk, but it was 1:00am at that point and my manager insisted that I let Jason give me a ride. I tried to politely decline, but he wouldn't take no for an answer. I also figured that maybe I was just paranoid about the bad vibes. I reluctantly accepted the ride and got in his car. We didn't talk the entire ride, aside from me giving him directions on how to get to my dorm. Luckily it was a short ride. He followed my directions and dropped me off. I just said thank you, got out and then went inside. I breathed a sigh of relief and told myself that I was just way too harsh on the guy. I shouldn't judge someone just because they're awkward and conventionally unattractive. I only worked at that bar for another two months and I never really spoke to Jason again other than our usual greetings. And luckily I didn't have to take any more rights from him before I quit. Now I'm going to give you some background information about my social media presence. I have a Facebook that I've always kept very private and that's where I have only very close friends and family. My Instagram, however, was public, although I only post it every few months, so it wasn't really a big deal to me anyway. A few months after I stopped working at the bar, I got a notification that I had a friend request on Facebook. The name on the account was none other than Jason the Bouncer. He didn't have a profile picture though. It was just his name and a fairly blank profile. I never told him my last name nor tagged the bar on my Facebook, so I thought it was weird that he'd found me, but I just figured he'd seen my name on some paperwork at the bar or something. I had no interest in being friends with him, so I declined his request and blocked him. A few months later I checked my new followers on Instagram and I saw his name and blank profile picture yet again. I got a sinking feeling in my stomach, but I figured he just didn't get the hint on Facebook. So I decided to block him on Instagram and just be done with it. A few years went by and I'd forgotten all about him. But then randomly in 2014, I had a new friend request from Jason. He had created a whole new Facebook profile. This one was also faceless. I was really annoyed because like, why would he think that I would accept him after I had already blocked him on both of my socials for the third time, I blocked him and just went on with my life. Fast forward a few more years when yet another faceless Jason profile popped up on my Facebook and tried to add me. At this point I was really annoyed and creeped out because he was being way too Persistent and clearly didn't know how to take no for an answer. So what did I do? You guessed it. I blocked him again. This pattern happened a few more times throughout the next few years, but never really escalated beyond new profiles and friend requests until this year in 2024. I'm 31 years old now, married, with two beautiful daughters. We were hanging out at home one night when I got a text from a random number that I didn't recognize. It said, you're a beautiful person, Alyssa, inside and out. It confused me because this was such a random yet personal message. It seemed friendly, though, so I wasn't initially alarmed. I responded and then said, thank you. I'm sorry, but I don't have your number saved. Who is this? The response I got was, to be honest, it's Jason from, like, a decade ago. I read online about someone who was struggling. She said that if it wasn't for her babies, she wouldn't be here. I got upset. I wasn't going to text you, but I did anyway. If that was you, I want to help you. I'm sorry for everything. And if you want me to go away, just tell me and I'll never bother you again. I come in good faith. I was immediately on edge. But again, I was confused because I knew two Jasons. One was the creepy bouncer that I'd never truly spoken to, and the other was a guy that I'd dated for a few months back in 2016, which was pretty close to a decade ago. I was honestly thinking it was my ex, because there's absolutely no way that bouncer Jason would have my number. So I reluctantly replied, jason who? He replied, jason that used to work at the bar with you. My heart sank. I was too stunned to speak for a few minutes. My mind was racing. What was he even talking about in that message? I'd never posted anything of that sort on any of my social media, nor had I even had those thoughts. I had no idea what he was talking about. And more importantly, how did he get my phone number? I had never given him my phone number 13 years ago, and even if he had somehow gotten it from our old boss, my phone number has changed a few times over the years. There's no way that he should have had it. I went on a googling spree to try and figure out how easy it was to access my personal information. And unfortunately, it was pretty easy. I was able to find my current workplace and my current and past addresses. I could not, however, find my current phone number, but I suspect he went on one of those public info websites, paid the fee, and then got access to my information. I started internally panicking and immediately blocked his phone number. I decided to fill in my husband on what was going on. I hadn't ever told him about the persistent friend request because it happened so infrequently and it never really escalated beyond that, so it never seemed important to bring up. Anytime he popped up, I'd be annoyed for a few seconds and then just hit block and just forget all about it. My husband asked what he looked like, so I decided to google his name to see if I could find a picture of him online. This is where the true horror starts. The first thing that popped up when I googled his name was a mugshot. What was the mugshot for, you ask? Stalking Jason had been stalking a child. It started in 2006 when she was 11 years old while he was her school bus driver. He hacked her teacher's email and ordered her school pictures. For what reason, I don't even want to think about it. He proceeded to stalk her for eight years. I'm still not even sure of the entire extent of the stalking, as the articles didn't go into full detail, but I do know that her family had taken out protection orders against him every year starting in 2007. In 2015 or 2016, her family captured video footage of him lurking on their property at least twice, prompting the police to arrest him and then charge him with stalking. He was convicted and went to jail, but only for a very brief period of time. Interviews with his victim's family said they were terrified of his release and that they were certain he would come back, that he doesn't think like the rest of us, and that he seriously needs psychological help. I couldn't find any further updates about that situation, so I can only assume that he left her alone, but I can't be certain. I do, however, now know exactly why I felt such creepy vibes radiating off of him back in 2011. He was actively stalking a child at the time. After learning all of this information, I was beyond terrified. Why was he still trying to contact me after 13 years of me blocking him? What was he trying to achieve? Had he driven by my work? Had he been parked outside of my apartment? What was the extent of his stalking behavior? The unknown of it all is what was scariest. I've watched enough true crime to know that I should have a paper trail of this. If the friend requests and texts had been all, I probably wouldn't have made a police report. But with a prior long term stalking conviction. I wasn't going to chance it, especially since I have daughters now. I called the police and told them what had happened. Truth be told, part of me felt like I was making a big deal out of nothing. But then I reminded myself that 13 years of him trying very hard to contact me was not normal behavior. The police officer was very sympathetic towards my situation and told me that I made the right decision by starting a paper trail just in case anything else happened. He also advised that I should go to the courthouse to take out a protection order. With his past, it would be easy to get one and that would ensure that he can contact me in any way, shape or form. Otherwise he'd go to jail again. So I did exactly that. I got an email back a few hours after filing the protection order saying that my request was granted. I felt an immediate sense of relief. However, for the first few weeks after this all went down, I was still extremely paranoid. I thought that he'd be outside of my work or my apartment just waiting for me. I was looking over my shoulder constantly. After a few more weeks, I realized that the protection order probably did the trick and I've since relaxed a bit. Fingers crossed it can stay that way. So to everyone out there, Google yourself to see how much of your personal information can be found online. And do your best to wipe as much as you can. You never know who's watching. Hey everyone, Before I get started on this story, I wanted to say that this is a very popular story. You've probably heard this one before, either by me or another narrator. I'm pretty sure I narrated it a long time ago, but I felt like it really fit this topic. So I decided to just re narrate it and include it in this video. I'm sure that once you start listening, you'll recognize it if you've already heard it, but if you just want to go ahead and skip it. I have the timestamps in the pinned comment if you want to do so. I just wanted to mention that before we get started without any more interruptions, let's continue. One time I went to the bar with one of my friends. I had just turned 21, so I hadn't been to much bars up to that point. My friend was drinking on the way to the bar, so he was already pretty drunk when we got there. When I sat at the bar, a really cute girl came and talked to me and my friend. She said that her name was Candice and I noticed that she had really bright red hair. I Assumed that she dyed it. It was pretty but unnatural. Anyways, this girl was flirting with both me and my friend. You could tell that my friend was already very drunk. To be honest, I played along like I was drunk already too, since it seemed to be working for my friend. I didn't know if she was just trying to get free drinks, so I told her that we didn't have much money. She offered to buy us drinks. She kept buying us drinks and I started to get confused as to who she liked between me and my friend. My friend then went to the bathroom before he came back. He was then kicked out by the bouncers. He was too drunk, I guess. Candice and I went outside with him. She kept telling him to go home with her. He was so out of it though that he could barely answer her. I told her that he was too drunk and that I couldn't let him go anywhere. I didn't want him to wake up hungover in some random house with no car and no idea of what happened. Candice kept pushing it, saying that she would take care of him, but I told her no because I had to stay with them and I was more sober than him. He was my responsibility. I told her the only way he was going anywhere was if I tagged along. I assumed that she thought I was jealous or cock blocking. But my friend could barely stand and had lost interest in Candice already. At that point. She immediately had started flirting with me and offered to get my friend a taxi to drive him home and said we could go to her place alone. At this point, I had already had a few drinks and I was pretty buzzed, so I agreed. We took my friend to the taxi and walked to her car. I stumbled slightly on the way to her car. Wow, you're pretty drunk, huh? She said, smiling as she held onto my arm. Yeah, I said. I don't know why, but I just felt slightly shy and anxious. Everything was just happening way too easy for me, so I felt uneasy. We got in her car and we drove down the street. You want to stop at the liquor store and get some more to drink? I'll buy it, so don't worry about paying, she offered. I didn't want to drink any more than I already did. I was already buzzed and I wanted to be able to carry myself through the rest of the night. Sometimes I make myself look stupid when I'm drunk, so I didn't want to ruin anything with Candice more than I already did earlier by telling her my friend was too drunk. I told her that I was Already drunk enough, but she insisted. I didn't want to seem lame, so I told her to just get me a pint of liquor with some apple juice to chase it with. She went in the store and came out with a lot more than just a pint. I assumed that she wanted to drink more also, and that's why she got a fifth instead of a pint. On the car ride, we passed the bottle back and forth, but she took tiny sips. I tried to take tiny sips too, but she just kept passing me the bottle and telling me to drink. I somehow managed to drink all of my apple juice and pretend to drink the bottle by spitting the liquor in the apple juice bottle. I tossed the apple juice bottle full of liquor out the window before she saw it. I didn't want her to know that I was acting drunker than I was. She actually believed I was sloppy drunk when I was simply just buzzed. I took a couple more sips of liquor and finished the bottle. Throughout the car ride, I had called her the wrong name a couple of times to get a reaction out of her. She didn't react to it. She just kept letting me call her Carla without correcting me. For some reason, I thought she had lied to me about her name initially. We drove up to her house. I pretended to trip and then stumbled into her front door. She helped me walk inside by holding me up. She opened her front door, which was unlocked. We walked in her house and she closed her front door and then locked it. I thought that was strange, but assumed that she just didn't want anyone walking in on us. I told her that I had to use the bathroom. I walked into her bathroom, locked the door and looked in the mirror. I just felt strange. Like I felt like something was off. I felt myself becoming more drunk from finishing the bottle earlier. I turned on the sink to make noise and I made myself puke up the liquor. I drank. I flushed and went to the sink and started to drink the tap water out of my hands to sober up. I just didn't want to be drunk anymore. But I still wanted to hook up with Candice, so I wanted to pretend to be drunk. I turned off the sink and I could hear her talking to someone. He's drunk as hell. He can barely stand up. You do it. Who was she talking to? And do what? I walked out of the bathroom and into the living room. The very moment that I stepped into the living room, I saw her walking into another room. All I could see was the back of her head. That strange, very bright Red hair going into another room. I didn't see her face or anything. I just saw her kind of walk fast into the room. The living room was pretty dark. Hey, where are you going? I slurred like I was drunk. She walked back into the dark living room and up to me. Let's go in my room, she said. I looked at her bright red hair and then into her eyes. They were different. Her face was different. That's when I realized it was another girl with the same wig on. It was a wig the whole time. She changed it with the girl from earlier. For whatever reason, my heart felt like it stopped. But I tried to look like I had no idea that it was a different girl. I kind of smiled at her and told her that I just needed to use the bathroom one more time and told her sorry I was so drunk. It's fine, just hurry up in there, she said. I went into the bathroom and locked the door. I then heard her whisper something to someone again. This time I think I actually heard a male voice whisper back. I honestly didn't concentrate on listening to exactly what she said. Something sketchy was happening and I had to get out of that house. I opened the bathroom window and jumped straight out of it and ran faster than I've ever ran in my life. I didn't look behind myself for anything. I just ran through the backyard, jumped the fence, ran through someone else's backyard, hit a road and ran toward the main road. I kept running down the main road until I saw a 24 hour convenience store. I ran into the store and stood straight at the front of the store and in front of the camera. I then called a taxi and went home. I tried to think about what happened that night. What was she or they planning that night? Why did she tell me a fake name? Why was she trying to get my friend and I so drunk? I thought that maybe it was a robbery. But she kept spending money on us. She kept buying us drinks and even paid for my friend's taxicab. And mostly, why did she wear a wig that she gave to another girl to wear? Who was she talking to? What did it mean? And what was in that room they tried to lure me into? The next day after this incident, I went back to the house with a couple of friends just to see what was going on. Nobody was there. No cars, no people, nothing. Just an empty house. I ended up finding out that the house was a summer rental. And whoever those people were, they broke into that house and used it only for that night and never came back I'm a female About a decade ago When I was 19, I lived in a small college town with my sister and her best friend. I worked graveyard shifts at a gas station that was almost a 10 minute walk from my house. The town was very safe and I never had any incidents walking alone at night before, so I didn't really have an issue walking to work late at night. It was a Thursday night and it was about 10:40pm When I left for work. The road was pretty dead and it felt like I was the only living soul traveling along the road until a white sedan pulls up to the left of me. The guy rolled down his passenger window and looked to be in his early 50s. He bluntly said, hey sexy, where are you going? I just glared at him and continued walking, ignoring him. He drove keeping up with my pace and asked, you want to go to the bar with me? I just told him no and continued walking. He gets annoyed and tries guilty me into going by saying that he's lonely and that he wants a girl to keep him company, but I then yell for him to go away. He gets pissed and pulls a gun out of the side door and then points it at me yelling get the hell in the car. Now you're gonna go to the bar with me. Hell no I'm not. I told him. I was internally flipping my crap and my mind was racing trying to figure out how to get the hell out of this, but thankfully an idea came to my head. I yelled a lie. My dad's a sheriff in this town. If I go missing, he'll find you. I don't know if he actually believed me or realized I was more work than I was worth to him, but he then screamed, you whore. Then he sped away. I stood there frozen for a minute taking in what just happened, but then I came to my senses and sprinted to work where my supervisor comforted me and I filed a police report. I never walked a word by myself again after that night. So my username is gonna be fatgranddaddy just for the sake of this story. I had just turned 22 and I was working F and B and they had just promoted me from server to behind the bar and I couldn't be more excited. Now, being a young, somewhat attractive female in F and B, you get a lot of creeps. You learn to shrug them off almost as they're not even being a creep though. With that said, it takes a lot to creep me out. So I'm being trained behind the bar one night when this random guy comes In I say random because you see the same people every day. He's probably late 40s or early 50s. He sits down, asks me some questions about some beers and makes general small talk. His first impression was polite and kinda chatty, but nothing out of the normal. He finishes his food and orders another beer. And then his demeanor changed. He made a comment about how cute I was after I did something ditzy and clumsy. I laughed it off and just made a dumb blonde joke. Then out of nowhere he actually says, you know, I could totally just kidnap you. What the hell? Okay, that's awkward. But I don't want to make this an even more awkward situation. I should joke it off. So me being dumb. I respond back, pfft. I'm working a double. I really wish I could get kidnapped. Yeah, I messed up. What are you doing after work? What time do you get off? He asked me. I immediately become short with him shutting him down and name dropping my boyfriend left and right. When I started name dropping my boyfriend, he made it very clear that my boyfriend ain't crap, that my boyfriend has nothing on him, etc. I was becoming rude at this point to this man and he was still not even letting up. I tried just ignoring him and just staying away from that general area of the bar, but he would not stop calling me by my name when I'd go to check on him. If he didn't need anything, I'd walk away, but he wouldn't let me out of sight and his stare was predatory. And I kid you not, he literally would lick his lips when I looked his way. I finally admitted defeat and told the girl training me that I didn't want to serve him anymore and that I refused to interact with him anymore. She took over and anytime that he tried calling me over, she'd cut him off and be like, how can I help you, sir? I figured he got the hint because he stayed glued to his phone and avoided looking at me or anyone else. I got cut. Maybe an hour later, I grabbed my car key and walked out the back door and started walking to my car. I wasn't really worried about anything until I started crossing the street and the voice in my head started screaming, run. I took off running to my car, but since you could see my driver side from the back door, my inner voice told me to climb in through the passenger side. As I'm trying to climb into my driver's seat from the passenger side without being seen, I come to the realization that I'm being ridiculous. So I pop my head up, and guess what? This guy is right in front of my car. I almost ran him over hauling it out of that parking lot. So, yeah, you'd think that's the end of the story, right? Wrong. The next night, I'm helping my manager with a catering order that's about to be picked up when the phone rings. I answer the phone. Hey, this is Fat Granddaddy. How can I help you? Oh, hey, Fat Granddaddy. It's Greg. How you doing, baby? Um, I'm doing fine. No idea who this is at this point. I'm really glad you answered the phone. I wasn't sure you were working tonight. Uh, okay. You don't know who this is, do you? Uh, no, I don't. It's Greg from last night. Remember? It finally clicked and I looked mortified and my manager was mean mugging me because I sounded like an idiot and we needed to knock out this order. So did you want to place a to go order? No, baby, I just wanted to make sure you were working. I'll see you soon. I hung up and my manager was like, what the hell was that? So I told her everything about the night before. So when he shows up, she has me point him out to her. He sits at the bar and tries to speak to me right off the bat, but the bartender intervenes immediately within five minutes of him showing up. The manager was not digging the vibes from him as well as the way he was watching me. She calls me over and tells me she's sending me home early. Now, our restaurant has an upstairs for storage and offices. There are two staircases. One towards the back of the restaurant and one to the front. She tells me to grab my stuff and go up the back staircase. I totally understood what her plan was. I ran up the back staircase and halfway down the front. If you stand about halfway up the front staircase, you can pretty much see the whole restaurant. So I peeked my head and my manager immediately waved me to hide back upstairs. A few minutes later, a kitchen guy comes up the stairs and grabs me and we go out the front door and he walks me around the block to the back parking lot to my car. My manager caught me in the parking lot before I left. Basically, since the back staircase is near the back door, he thought that I left and went to follow me out again. My manager confronted him and he got banned. Haven't seen him since. It was November 2017. This was a time in my life when I severely struggled with alcoholism and drug addiction. As many in the town that I live do so please judge my decisions. Knowing that a friend and I were pretty broke most of the time, we used to frequent a pub. Now this particular pub had a bad reputation, but had recently been taken over by a new landlord who had begun to turn it around. It had an okay crowd, the usual for the type of working area. On this particular evening, I had come into about £50 in cash. So I called my mate and before long we were hitting the town. We started in this particular pub that we'll call the Imperial. I rocked up to the bar and ordered two drinks for my friend and I. As I did, I noticed a very scruffy looking woman dressed in disheveled clothing and naturally I just ignored it and sat down. About an hour went by before my pal noticed the scruffy looking middle aged woman was lurking about 3 meters behind us, just staring at us. This gave us some fear and we decided to go out and just smoke a cigarette. We headed outside, donned our hats and coats and smoked two cigarettes each before returning to see the woman sitting at our table. This wasn't a problem for us, we could just get another table. But as we walked over, she stood up and returned to her original position. So we took back our old table. Upon sitting down, I see the woman begin to approach the table. She stands behind him and then starts touching his shoulder. He turned around and then asked, hey, what are you doing? She swiftly replies in a very high pitched voice, can I please sit here? This was when I realized that my friend had completely misheard the question. He thought that she said, hey, can I have a cigarette? So he just replied with um, yeah, sure. She then dropped herself down in the seat next to her. It was really awkward in this new formed threesome. What made it particularly worse is that she just maintained the same overbearing smile, not moving at all. It was with all this that I had presumed that she may be mentally challenged. My cousins have similar issues. So I decided to be nice and involve her for a little while. After all, she seemed harmless. This was a mistake. After trying to involve her in the conversation, with no luck, I signaled to my friend to go for a cigarette and she stayed at the table. While outside, my friend and I talked about how awkward it was and how we wanted to leave and decided to leave the back way without her seeing us. It was at this moment that I realized I had left my phone on the table with her. I walked over to the table and as she saw me coming, she had snatched my phone up. Playing dumb. I then said, hey, thank you for your company tonight, but I have to go. You haven't seen my phone, have you? After saying this, her face changed and the mood took a dark turn. I could feel something brewing although her face was still ecstatically smiling. Why are you leaving? There's no reason to. She said while making the creepiest eye contact that I've ever seen in my whole life. You can have your phone back for a kiss, she said as she held up my phone. I thought fast and snatched it out of her hand before storming off fast out the door and then meeting my friend outside. I was shook and I told him to walk fast. The road outside the Imperial is long and straight. You can basically see from one end to the other. We were walking fast for a while before slowing down and then stopping to light a cigarette. While we were stopped, we noticed the silhouette of what appeared to be this woman coming towards us at some place. Frightened, we turned a corner and took the back streets and alleys, turning at every opportunity we could. There was no chance that she could have followed us and we even waited to see if she was coming. After about 10 minutes we had started walking to a smaller pub called the Brunswick. We walked and talked about the strangeness of her, but really forgot about it pretty fast. Upon arriving to the Brunswick publisher, we had scanned the room for her just in case and then headed to the bar area. We got more drinks and just stayed at the bar. An hour passed and we were both quite drunk at this point so we decided to leave. This and I can't really stress this enough, was a huge mistake. We walked outside and around the corner when perhaps by coincidence, we bumped right into her yet again. She began screaming things about how I should love her and how she had done so much for me. Completely taken by surprise and totally in shock, I watched her run towards me. My friend ran back and watched in horror as she grabbed me and began licking and spitting on my face while she bear hugged me. I managed to slip out of her grips and then sprint off into the main road. Needless to say, I got very drunk that night so I'm currently a 23 year old student living in London. The story takes place about eight months ago when I was still in my hometown. It still freaks me out to this day. So about one year ago I had started working in a local pub right near my house. I had got the job there as my friend Louise was the manager and she desperately needed staff. My first few weeks there were uneventful. The pub was pretty dead most of the time other than A few of the regulars, Harry and Ben, that Louise was friendly with and eventually so was I. As it was nearing Christmas, the pub had started to become busier and there were more unfamiliar faces. One face in particular was this man whose name that I never learned, but for the sake of the story we will call him Tim. Now, Tim was probably in his late 40s or early 50s, was of quite stocky build, bald and often wore tattered clothes and smelt like he didn't wash himself very often other than the weird vibe that he generally kept to himself, ordered pints and set on his own. Tim's presence started off as seldom, but increased. He would appear mostly when the pub was empty and when I was there on my own and always silent as a mouse, I would be doing something such as wiping the back of the bar or cleaning the nozzles and I would turn around and he would just be standing there silently waiting for me to serve him. He wasn't a particular talkative kind of man, but my pub attracted quite a few quirky and colorful characters, so this wasn't a strange occurrence. One Friday night when we were quite busy, he kept trying to get my attention. I apologized to him and advised I was serving someone else who had a large order, but that I would be with him as soon as I could and he became increasingly angry. When I eventually got to serve him, he just stared at me blankly and then left the pub. I thought nothing of it and just got on with my shift. Now my friend Louise, being the manager, also lived right above the pub, so once everyone was out and we had closed, she would go upstairs and I would lock the door behind me and then post the keys through the letterbox. Normally after my shift I would go to the 24 hour Tesco's to go grab a late night snack as we often didn't have time to eat during our shifts on the weekends. My home is then only a 10 minute walk away from the Tesco's. As I was crossing the road to get to the shop, I noticed Tim sitting on a wall staring at me, which made me feel uneasy. I walked quickly to the Tesco's, got my meal deal as well as some sweets and then left. As I was walking out of the Tesco's, I had noticed a figure lurking in the car park which was badly lit. I walked as fast as I could to get out of the car park and I heard walking behind me. As I reached the brightly lit main road, I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Tim. He asked if he could walk me home. I panicked. I advised him I would be staying at the pub tonight as I had to open in the morning. I then ran to the pub and called Louise and told her that I didn't feel safe walking home. She let me come upstairs and we ended up just laughing about it. A few hours later at about 3am I felt that it was finally safe now and that he had to have left by now. So I walked home and I was fine. I woke up the next day to a banging on my door. It was probably about 11am which is normally the time the postman comes. I was a little confused cause I hadn't ordered anything and I lived on my own but since it was nearing Christmas I thought maybe my parents would send me a present. I went downstairs in my half asleep state and opened the door but there was no one there. I passed it off as just kids on the street messing around. Throughout the day though, this kept happening. I would hear a knock and then there would be no one there. Work time rolls around so I leave to go to work. Headphones in as it was still relatively light outside and work was close. Literally five minutes after I walk through the door, there's Tim. I explain to Louise that Tim really freaks me out and that we should ban him. My friend laughs and said that he's harmless, that he probably just thinks I'm good looking. I laughed it off nervously and just got on with my job as normal. Harry and Ben walk in and they order their two pints of dark fruit and Jaeger bombs which I had already started pouring. Now the way the bar is laid out is it had two sides. There's the sports bar side which has a pool table and TV for football games and the restaurant side which has tables and chairs for eating. Harry and Ben always stayed on the sports bar side so they could put on music on the jukebox and play pool. I went to place their drinks on the bar and collect money and ask them how their week's been. When they pointed it to him, he was at this point standing on the restaurant side of the bar staring at me. Despite Louise working and asking him if he wanted a drink, he just replied no and stood there. Well, they then told me that he had been asking them questions about me such as where I live, if I had a boyfriend and then some more inappropriate questions such as how old I am and if I was a virgin. He had also made a passing comment on how he wanted to deflower me. For the record, in case it mattered, I'm Not a virgin. However, I'm about 5 foot 2 in a slim frame and I've always been told that I have a baby face. I pulled Louise into the office and again asked that we ban him as he was making me increasingly uncomfortable. She also mentioned that he was asking about me as well as what time I finished and if I would be here alone, if I had a boyfriend, etc. So she obliged and she told him to leave. This would have been about 9pm at the end of the night. Louise wasn't feeling very well and since everyone had left the pub, I told her that I would finish up closing and she could just finish now. So I get on with it, wiping tables and restocking the bar. I came up from the cellar where we kept all the bottles and I saw a figure standing by the door to the smoking area. As soon as I looked it was gone and I had convinced myself that I was going mad. Time comes to leave and I lock the door and post the keys like normal and start making my way home. I cross the road and am about to turn when suddenly Tim grabs me and then pins me against a fence. He starts smelling my hair and stroking my neck and then whispering all the nasty things that he's going to do to me. I was just standing there, frozen, unable to move or scream, paralyzed by fear. Luckily Ben turns the corner, sees, rips Tim off of me, gets into a bit of a fight with him and then Tim runs off. I just started crying my eyes out and Ben walked me home and I called the police and told them everything. I gave a description of him and they said they would get back to me. About a week later I got a call from the police saying they had apprehended him and I was to come in to verify that it was him. I obliged and yes, they had in fact caught him. Turns out he was actually wanted for assaulting two local women, which I had read about in the weeks before. I believe that he is now serving a sentence in prison. This happened three summers ago, but I remember the main events. To preface this, I've been on a shocking amount of dates and I've put myself in many foolish situations in the past. I'm a female and I was 25 at the time. If it matters, it all started on the Pollenia fish app. I came across a cute guy. He was my type, physically kind of nerdy looking. On his profile he had very adventurous photos of him hiking and traveling. He seemed really excited to get to know me. Once he saw that I looked at his profile. He sent me a message. We flirted a bit back and forth and exchanged phone numbers even though we lived about an hour away. He said on the app that he's never been to my city and didn't plan on it so we probably wouldn't meet. I respected his honesty. I don't like wasting my time. One day, shortly after meeting him online, he had texted me randomly saying he's in my town for some work thing and he invited me to a bar that he was at. I decided to meet up since I was already in the area. He said he would pick me up. I was dumb and naive and agreed even though that it was just over four blocks away. It took him way longer than it should have to get me and I honestly don't think he was ever actually at the bar. Once in plenty of fish date's car I noticed it was a rental and that it seemed like he had just gotten his license because he was a terrible driver. After driving in circles, he told me to pick a place but not in the area because parking is impossible. I picked a place 15 minutes away by car with lots of parking but also a busy place since I was with a stranger. Once there, he had started pressuring me to drink. He insisted I'm not a huge drinker, but I do enjoy pub style bars. I caved and had a drink and was again pressured to have another one. He was very pushy and seemed really irritated that I wasn't going for it. Now. Usually I'd end a date pretty quickly if I was mistreated, but he became charming enough to keep me there at least until we were done with our date. I saw an old acquaintance at the bar and I wanted my date to know that I knew him. In my head, I think I just wanted my date to know that someone could identify him. I'm not a paranoid person, but I think my subconscious was on alert. After about an hour talking in the bar, I tell him that I'm ready to head out. He then insisted that we go across the road to get coffee. At the time it seemed strange to me. Neither one of us had much to drink and we didn't need to sober up. Coffee seems like an odd choice otherwise. I entertained it though. Once there we sipped our drinks. He told me that he rented a beautiful Airbnb in a nearby neighborhood that is more out of the city and in the country. He told me how he had it all to himself and invited me, going on about how nice it is. I kept politely saying no and throwing around different excuses which he would encounter with a reason for me to come with no actual intention of going. I agreed, but only if he would drive me home to get overnight things. I felt like he wasn't going to let me say no. He seemed happy with that answer, so we headed out. While driving in the direction of my place, he said that instead he would stop at a 711 and grab me travel sized toiletries so I wouldn't need anything. I felt panicked because my plan was not to go with him. Something about him was off and I really felt stupid for even getting back in his car to begin with. He turned his car and we were then headed towards the more country area. Literally There aren't any 7/11 or any open stores in the middle of nowhere. Then I mentioned that I'm actually thinking that I'd prefer not to stay with him and then ask to be brought home. He then said something that made me completely nervous to be around him for much longer. He said that he's sharing the Airbnb with the owners and he said they're really fun and sweet and they like to drink and play games together. He originally said that he had it all to himself. So which is it? I knew that I didn't want to make it obvious that I was catching on to his lies, so I went along with it and just said oh, but I have to wear my cute fluffy overnight PJs instead of my date dress because I'll be way more comfy that way. Then I spewed off a few other things. I mentioned that I needed my medication and absolutely can't miss a dose. Surprisingly, he turned around and as we drove back into the city I felt a bit more calm, but at that point, still not safe. Finally we got close to my place. I had absolutely no intention of letting him close enough to know where I live. He was mentioning that he was going to come into my apartment once we got there and that is just a huge hell no. I don't know what I would do, but I looked for any opportunity to get out of the situation, knowing that he could turn around and take me somewhere private in the matter of 15 minutes if he wanted. We got to a stop sign where people were crossing. Thank God. I then quickly but calmly got out and then said hey, you know, I think I have a headache. I'll text you. I closed the car door and then went through a public park which was right beside a building that his car wouldn't be able to drive into. I looked back just to make sure that he wasn't getting out of his car and following me. And I could see him staring at me. He was so furious and I have chills right now just thinking about it. Within the hour, he had blocked me on plenty of fish. Looking back, I think that he possibly wanted to get me a coffee to possibly put something in it. I think that he told me on plenty of fish that we wouldn't ever be able to meet to maybe cover his ass. And I know that he didn't have good intentions with me. Since then, I've met my fiance on plenty of fish and was super careful about dating up until then, always making sure the first few dates are very public and to arrange my own transportation. This happened about 15 years ago. @ the time, I was dating around and I had a few creepy encounters during that time. But this guy takes the cake. He was an acquaintance. My brother admitted to barn a few times and was showing around the local area because he was new to the country. My brother set us up because he was apparently desperate for a girlfriend. And I guess I was pretty desperate too, because we went on a date together. The date was probably the worst date I've ever been on. I showed up to the restaurant we were meeting at. He was late, which isn't a huge deal, so I let it slip and we went to sit down. To be honest, I knew from the start I wasn't really attracted to him. But I thought I would be polite and see if we'd have a nice night. He started off polite too. He held the door for me, pulled my seat out. You know, the usual. It wasn't really necessary, but it was nice anyway. Then when we were sitting down waiting for someone to come and take our orders, I was reading the menu and he had started talking about how much his fiance would have loved this place. That took me by surprise. And naturally I had asked about his fiance. He revealed that he had a fiance before moving over here, but that he had just left her to move to another country. I asked why they had broken up and he said they never really broke up, but he just got fed up with her nagging him about various things and just moved away. I really didn't know what to say after that, so I changed the subject and just started asking him more about himself and where he used to live. He wasn't really forthcoming. Eventually our waiter turned up and started talking to us to clarify for the next part. Our waiter was a man of color and he had an unusual accent for our area. So my date stares blankly at him. For a while, then turns to me and says, you understand this guy? I said that yes, I could understand him before telling him our orders. After he left, my lovely date continued to shock me. He said I wouldn't normally leave ordering to the lady, but that brown guy talked really weirdly and I didn't get it. Wow, way to tell me you're a racist and a sexist in one breath, dude. Again, I was speechless for a few moments before I got angry with him. I don't remember exactly what I said. It was something along the lines of, well, I'm not a lady so I can order for myself just fine, thanks, and why make racial remarks? Then he got annoyed with me and told me that he wasn't racist, he just wasn't used to that kind of person where he was from. I pointed out that he wouldn't have met me if he just stuck to people he was used to in his own country. He calmed down, then told me that he wouldn't want that because he's glad he met me. Honestly, I found that a little weird given that I didn't see any way to say that this date was going well and he didn't know me very well at all. But I decided since we had just ordered, I should stay, get my meal and try to redeem the evening before I leave and then never see this man again. So I answered some of his questions about me, basic getting to know me and small talk stuff for the most part. Then started on about my previous dates and if I was a virgin, whether I would be willing to wait until marriage and then be submissive to my husband or not. So I settled for a none of your business. Now I need to leave. I had checked the prices on the menu and I left money for my half of the food plus a tip on the table and got up to leave. He said he didn't see why I was being so unreasonable with him, as though this had been a normal date, but then told me that I couldn't expect him to take my money because that was an insult to him. Fine, dude, you want to pay for a meal that's not getting eaten, you pay for it. I'm not that mad about spending money that I'll stop you. So I took my money back and walked straight out. I just assumed that yes, it was an awful evening, but I wouldn't have to see him again. I wasn't even back to my house when my brother started texting me asking where I was because my date had called him in tears because I had gone off for no reason and he didn't know where I was or what to do. Thankfully, my brother was pretty calm about it and assumed that I had left for a reason. I explained everything to him and he was pretty surprised too. After that night, we both tried to cut contact. My brother had stopped meeting up with the guy and we both blocked the Facebook account we had for him too. My brother also blocked his number because he wouldn't stop texting him, asking about me, alternating between being really weird, worried about me, to saying that he hoped I dropped dead. Then he had started making endless different accounts on social media to harass us. He told my brother that he didn't know why we weren't talking to him. He posted a bunch of weird posts describing me in detail before going on to call me a lot of horrible names. We kept blocking them and moving on. Then the harassment got worse. He either found me and followed me at some point or got my address from a friend and turned up one day standing around outside my house asking to come in and speak to me. When I refused to let him in, he grabbed my arm to prevent me from going in either. And he started to tell me that he didn't want to let me go because I would never find a man who would love me like he did and that if I walked away from him again, I would really regret it one day when I was old and lonely. He went on and on like this for ages and ages while I tried to pull my arm away from him before I got fed up with this and yelled at him to get off of me and leave me alone, then kicked him in the shit. He let go of my arm but cursed at me and he said I was being ungrateful to him. But I took my opportunity to run inside and lock my door. He started banging on my door then trying to push it inwards. I was getting both upset by this man and just super fed up with his presence in my life. So I grabbed my phone and called the police, telling them that someone was trying to get into my house. I was told that someone would be with me soon, but 20, 30 minutes later there was no sign of them anywhere. And I was getting quite upset because this man was forcing my door and I thought the lock was going to break soon. So I called my brother who lives nearby, just because I knew he would come, even though I wasn't sure if he would be able to help much. About 15 minutes later, my brother turns up and after a brief conversation that I didn't quite hear Outside, the pressure was gone off the door. I waited a few minutes and then texted my brother to see what was going on and if I would be alright to look outside. Now he didn't reply and the next thing I heard was the police turning up. I went to see what was going on. Apparently after my initial call, they had received another call from a neighbor saying there were two men fighting on my lawn. I had guessed this was my brother and the guy since my brother looked pretty out of breath and pretty shook up and the guy wasn't around anymore. My brother explained to the police that he had tried to stop the man getting into my house and then the man had hit him. I had told my side of the story and some of my other neighbors were asked what they had seen as well and were able to tell them about his attempts to get in. Plus, there were marks on the outer side of the door where he had tried repeatedly to get inside. The police went to look for him and a few weeks after I was called and I was told that they thought that they found him, but when they wanted me to look at the suspected person, it wasn't the same man. I never heard anything else and I don't know what happened to him. I didn't see him again and so I'm probably safe after 15 years. Regardless, I don't ever want to see him again. This was an experience I had alongside my BFF in high school. This was about 2006, maybe 2007, in rural upstate New York. We met in third grade and are still friends to this day. We're both 27 now. Let me give you some background information. Now. My friend B and I became instant best friends when we met in the third grade and we were inseparable. We frequented each other's homes so much that her mom set up her guest room as my room. I had toys, clothes, pictures. I mean, everything I needed was there. I was. Family pictures of Bea and I hung up on the walls of the home owned by our very proud mother. Shelly Shele had always wanted two daughters and she loved me so much that she actually considered me her second daughter. Now onto the meat of the story again. This incident took place when Bea and I were sophomores in high school. Her mother was divorced and dated a few different men, meeting some off sites like eharmony. She had been speaking to a man for a few weeks, gushing about how manly and charming he was. She was really excited and always showed us their profiles before she decided to go on an actual date with one of These men, she would always say. I need my daughter's stamps of approval. One night she called us to her room and showed us this man that she had been talking all about. His profile was simple as one would imagine for a middle aged man in 2007 on eHarmony, the headline Looking for a strong Mother. I made a joke about his odd placement for caps and just how strange a way to start out, but we moved forward. It told of his metalwork background, his love of cold steel and his work in a foundry that kept his icy heart just warm enough. I was honest and I told her it sounded off, but he was handsome, sporting black, well groomed hair, a beard, a strong jaw, icy blue eyes and a relatively fit body for a 40 something year old male. I really stressed on the weird vibe. Then B joked how Shele always picked out the antisocial ones and we laughed knowing this was a rock. Shelly's brought some really weird stories home, but what do you expect from meeting men online? We told her to go for it so they planned on dinner. It was a haul for him, about a two hour drive. He was driving to our location where they would then take one car into town. Bea and I helped Shelly pick out her outfit, helped her with her hair and makeup, and then went back upstairs so she could have some free time to herself before the long night. We headed up the stairs where Bea and I were painting a wall in her room, just listening to music and cutting up. He had just let himself in the house like no big deal and then just came upstairs without saying a word. No knocking, no doorbell, the dogs didn't even bark, nothing. So we get spooked, jump, scream and crap our pants a little when we hear a man start walking behind us. We don't know how long he had been in the house. We don't know how long he had stood behind us without speaking. But when he did speak, we shook. Well, well well. I didn't know I was getting a two for one deal. He said quietly in a gravely low voice. He chuckled as we stood there in shock of the stranger in her room. He sauntered over to us like a man on a Sunday walk. The smell of cigarettes filled the room as if Rod Serling himself was standing in the corner explaining our situation to the audience for our own personal episode of the Twilight Zone. Right then I noticed how much this guy looked just like the guy in the picture Shelly had showed us, except he had salt and pepper, not jet black hair and his eyes were not ice blue but black, not brown. But black. It looked like this guy was 100% pupil. Are you. I was then interrupted by Shelly shouting, who got hurt? She must have thought we were horsing around and that one of us got hurt. This was normal for us because we goofed around a lot. She was jolted at the sight of this man blocking her from us. He turned around just as soon as she reached the top of the stairs and then he held his arms out and said in a way less low tone than he used earlier, shelly, you look beautiful. I knocked but no one answered. I hope it's okay. I let myself in. These are your girls. They're beautiful, just like their mommy. I'll never forget how he said mommy. It felt dirty. Bea and I both side eyed each other then stepped down off our stepladders. We were both very in tune with each other. I felt weird and I knew she did too. And we both felt the odd air of the room. Shele glanced away from him and at us who were behind him looking at her with wide eyes, both kind of shaking our heads side to side in disbelief. Shelly looked back to him. This exchange only took a few seconds, but it seemed like an eternity. She had forced a smile at him and said, oh, I'm sorry. Next time just ring the bell, I'll open the door. He nodded and he walked towards her with open arms and then hugged her like they had been the oldest of friends. She looked at us as they hugged and just kind of rolled her eyes to show us what she thought of his excuse. She proceeded to tell him that it wasn't appropriate as she led him down the stairs and we had heard him apologize over and over. B and I instantly ran to our phones. We agreed to text her mom what he had just said to us so we could tell her without him knowing. We hit send and about 10 minutes later we had heard footsteps up the stairs. It was Shelly and she shut the door behind us and asked us if we were okay. She hugged us and she told us she was sorry. He made us feel uncomfortable. She explained to us that he said we reminded him of his girls and didn't mean to scare us. We nodded. Then they said they were leaving out for the date. We hugged her, said to be safe and we would see her soon. As she headed down the stairs, B and I just looked at each other. We both knew that something wasn't right, but we were both speechless from the good scare we received from this dark man. Just about 15 minutes prior we heard them walking and talking, heading towards the front door. A Few minutes later, Shelly shouted up the stairs that she loved us. We yelled back that we loved her too. And then the door shut. We instantly had started talking to each other, saying the same things. B spoke over me. He laid that charm so thick. As soon as he saw Mom, B exclaimed further and did you see his eyes? What the heck was that? He looks so much like the guy from the pictures, but not exactly. We both concurred our feelings about the stranger, his scent, his demeanor, his voice. He was just like something out of a classic stranger danger advert. Again, we agreed to text Shelly how we felt. She thanked us and told us it seemed to be going well and she would let us know that she was safe every hour. Bea and I were just freaked out and even more so that Shele was not. It was like a weird spell he'd cast on her. It was odd, but we wanted to thank the best for Shele as she was really excited about this guy. She texted us every hour until she got home. Her last text said I'm okay but I'm officially freaked out and I'm coming home now. Be home soon. We freaked out and paced around until we saw headlights pull into the driveway. It had been about five hours since she left and only about an hour since that last text. We were inside with the lights off, watching through the side window, trying not to be seen when the motion sensor light flooded the yard and light fell into the driveway. A truck flew into the driveway, the passenger side door flung open before the truck was at a full stop and Shele's feet were on the pavement just as fast. She waved at the driver and she had kind of jogged at the door wide eyed. She reached the front door, turned and waved the truck off. She had her house key ready in the hand that she wasn't waving with. She then unlocked the door and slid into the safety of the house. Keep the lights off, go upstairs. Shelly said as she locked the two deadbolts in the chain, not once looking at us. We headed up the stairs behind her. We walk into B's room and look out the window down to the truck still parked out front with the lights on and the engine running. As we all stared at the truck, Shelly told us of the ordeal that she went through. Long story short, he had made reservations at the wrong restaurant so he suggested they go buy some food and have a picnic style dinner at a local park. Shele didn't do well outdoors, she was an office woman so she declined. However, he had just drove so long to get here and then he hit her with, well, you kind of owe me. And Shele said that made her feel bad knowing that he drove two hours. So when he mentioned that he had a vacation home and he could cook for her close by, she agreed. She said they got to the house and it was nice enough. A long cabin near Bethel, New York, only about 35 minutes from our town. Shele said he kept talking about how easy it was to get her alone. He also kept saying that he liked strong mommies because they have such fight. But she caved. This made her skin crawl. This wasn't the man she thought it was. This also wasn't the man in the picture. And Shele had started to slowly realize this. Shele said that when she had asked for a ride home due to her feeling ill, he wasn't the happiest, but he complied and he stopped cooking and had started looking for the keys that she knew that he had in his pocket. He had then started asking her about our girls, referring to myself and Bea. This freaked Shele out so bad, and she said she was going to get someone to come get her and that he didn't like. And he found his keys instantly. Once they were out of the house and in the truck, the truck wouldn't start, so they had to move to his work truck. Shele was visibly shaken and wouldn't take her eyes off the truck in the driveway as she had spilled the story out post haste. She said that there was a garage that he said they had to walk around the house to hop in the work truck. She said that she felt she had no choice but to play it cool and just agree to go. She hopped out and walked around the house and there indeed was another garage with a truck in it. The same truck that we were all currently staring at, just sitting in the driveway. It smelled like bleach and metal. Shele whispered, she told us on the way home that he just kept asking about us. What did we do that she didn't like? What got us spankings? What were the naughty things we got in trouble for? What would she do without us? And the one question to scare you out of your pants as a parent, would you sacrifice yourself for our girls? Shele said she just stared at him and all in disbelief and then he just laughed. She got more and more concerned as she noticed her surroundings. In the back of the truck that she was riding home in there were what she thought were chains in a bucket sitting on a desk that was drilled into the floor, a duffel bag, and very large metal Objects she wasn't too sure of. This is when he had started to pull out pictures on his little flip phone that he had of us. He must have found Shele's Facebook and he took pictures of our pictures and had them on his phone, waving it around, telling Shele what a good strong mommy she had been to us and she should be proud of what she had accomplished. By this time, they were pulling into the driveway and Shele was done with this crap. She was just about finished when we saw the truck lights then turn off. Shelly immediately picked up the phone and dialed the sheriff and told him quickly that there was an unwelcome person outside our home. Being in such a small town, the sheriff not only went to school and graduated with Shelly, but he only lived three doors down. Just as we see this guy getting out of his truck with a duffel bag, we saw the sheriff whip up behind him. The man panicked and literally threw his duffel into the truck and tried to back into the sheriff to get out. When he realized that he was blocked from the rear, he went through the yard. We couldn't believe our eyes. The truck peeled out, taking some of the lawn with it. The sheriff came to the door to check on us, and he told us that he had units down the road just waiting for him. We all shared a good collective cry and rejoiced in our safety. It did, however, create some paranoia issues in the next couple of weeks due to the fact that we didn't know how long he was in the house when he just let himself in. Did he put cameras anywhere? Did he mess with the food in the house to hurt someone? I mean, it was bad, but we worked through it. We never heard anything about him being caught, and we did occasionally receive eerie messages on Facebook, two of which we knew were him, but we put that out of our minds. Haven't heard anything from or about him since about three months after the incident when the last message was received. It's been about 11 years since the incident, but we'll still talk about it when we can. Up until junior year of high school, I flew mostly under the social radar and stuck to my status as a nerd girl. But When I was 15, I joined Varsity cheer. My school's cheerleaders weren't popular by definition, but everyone kind of knew who we were because we were on the announcements, performed at pep rallies, and generally engaged with the students a lot. I made a lot of friends that year, and some of them happened to be the cool kids. For a while, I thought this was my long awaited karma payoff for the years of bullying that I'd suffered at their hands. I even developed a crush on one of them. A crush which the junior cheer captain herself volunteered to help me pursue. Homecoming is a big deal where I'm from, and I began fantasizing about my crush, asking me to go with him. I had heard rumors that he was planning a dramatic proposal, and as homecoming season approached, I became more and more sure I would be his date. The junior cheer captain who was close with them kept dropping hints that I was right. One day at practice, she asked me what my favorite candy was, and I knew it would be so my crush would know what to give me. You can imagine my surprise when, after an exhausting theater rehearsal, I walked into the parking lot and was confronted by a guy I'd hardly spoken to asking me to be his day. My theater friends all applauded, Assuming I was overjoyed. I saw both of my parents in the parking lot recording the whole surprise. But most importantly, the cool friends that I'd recently befriended were standing right there behind him, egging him on. I didn't understand why, because he wasn't popular at all. In fact, he was known to be kind of creepy. The junior cheer captain was laughing, encouraging him to give me a box of my favorite candy he was holding. She had definitely orchestrated the whole thing. I didn't really know the guy, but I didn't want to humiliate him in front of the coolest kids in school. So I faked a smile and rolled with it. I promised myself that I'd deny him later in private so that he wouldn't be embarrassed afterwards. When my parents excitedly asked me how I felt about the ordeal, I explained how uncomfortable it made me. I said that I got strong creepy vibes from that guy. That didn't fly with my parents. My mother had accused me of having my expectations way too high, and my father demanded to know if I was secretly a lesbian. I had never had a boyfriend or shown much interest in dating, which is why he had asked this to make his case stronger. I had just become best friends with the only openly gay girl our school had ever seen. Long story short, I knew that if I shut down my date, I'd effectively declare war on my parents. However, I played my dad's protective instinct against him and persuaded him to let me friend zone my date. After all, he knows how high school boys think, right? I texted my date that night and explained that I only saw us as friends, but would still be happy to go to homecoming with them. He was very polite about it, although I could tell he was interested in me romantically. It seemed we had reached a deal until the next day at school when one of my cheerleader friends referred to my date as my boyfriend. I corrected her and I told her that we were just going to homecoming as friends. She seemed confused and told me my date was telling everyone who could listen that I was his girlfriend. A few more of my friends approached me with similar comments, and I confronted my date about them. He denied all involvement and suggested it was just a rumor. I reminded him that we were just friends and that I had zero romantic interest in him. He said he understood. I got a call from the junior cheer captain. She pretended to be sweet and conspiratorial, but I was still annoyed that she had led me to believe that my crush would be asking me to homecoming. She began her attempt to persuade me that I was wrong to friend zone my day. She said that she had spent many, many afternoons planning his proposal with him, and she knew he was kind of creepy from afar, but he was sweet and caring underneath all that. I said if he was such a catch, then she should date him. Annoyed, she dropped the sweet act. She told me that I had to date him because he liked me so much and he had gone to so much trouble to ask me to homecoming. I had to give him a chance because she'd gone out on a limb for me. I told her she was wrong, that I didn't have to do anything I didn't want to do, and I owed him nothing. I ended up hanging up on her soon after that, but that was just the beginning. Starting the next Monday, he would corner me in the hallway and give me a rose he held in his teeth. He usually did so between my sixth and seventh periods when my path through the hall crossed his. I was deeply uncomfortable with this, and I told him so, but he wouldn't stop. I took different routes to escape him, but the junior cheer captain and her posse made a point of tracking me down so he could find me elsewhere. Every time he did this, everyone in the area would treat it as a sweet, romantic gesture, despite my obvious discomfort. Wouldn't any girl be lucky to have a boy so devoted to her who gave her a rose every day? He was still telling everyone I was his girlfriend. The final stroll for me was when he walked into a class he wasn't in to find me and then give me my daily rose. When he came in, I told him to get out and leave me alone. His feelings were clearly hurt, and he left looking like a kicked puppy. My classmate started calling me cold and heartless. It didn't matter what I had to say about him. I was an ice queen refusing the sweet boy's advances. Everyone in the school had decided that I was in love with them and that nobody cared what I had to say about it. My actual crush, who was part of the popular group, joined the junior cheer captain in pressuring me into returning my date's feelings. At every event where the cheerleaders were present, my date would push his way to the front of the crowd. He would go to great lengths to get my attention. At football games, he would have a flag in the student section, so I'd look at him when we were cheering. The other girls would make comments on how endearing he was when he waited in the parking lot by our bus back to the school, all to hug me and tell me how great I did. I didn't know what else to do other than let this happen. I had only recently ascended to a position of visibility. If I conflicted too hard with the cool kids who were dead set on setting me up with this guy, I could be an outsider all over again. I hoped that if I just kept ranting to my real friends about how creepy he was and publicly let him do what he wanted, it would all blow over. My school had a 15 second attention Spanish, so some scandal had to one up me sooner or later. The truth emerged, as usual in the locker room. It turns out the junior cheer captain had been telling him during their afternoons together that I was into him. He would come to her for help, announcing his crush on me, and she'd gone a step further and convinced him that I felt the same, despite the fact that I didn't even know his name. She lied to him for weeks prior to the homecoming proposal. And when I told her that was wrong, she didn't care. She told me I should be grateful because everybody was starting to think that I was gay. My best friend and I inspired to spread a rumor that we were dating. After all, everybody thought I was gay, right? But my date wasn't fazed. In fact, he told everyone that he'd just turned me straight again. Gross. Three weeks after he asked me, it was finally homecoming night. Thanks to cheer obligations and a complete coincidence involving a switch backpack that left me without my dress, I ended up only attending the dance for half an hour. My date awkwardly stood on the side of the room while I danced my heart out to Mr. Brightside by the Killers. I almost felt Bad for him when right at the end, the junior cheer captain appeared like a summoned demon to suggest that we slow dance at the next opportunity. Thank God I escaped that one by walking to the DJ and suggesting he play Footloose. My date walked me out to the parking lot to wait for my mom to pick me up. While we waited for her to drive around, which took entirely way too long because she still hoped I'd stop making a fuss and date him, he asked me out. I politely declined. He quickly stammered that we could go with a group of people like the junior cheer captain and my crush. I denied him again and made it clear that we were only friends and I wasn't interested in romantic endeavors because I was too busy. That was actually true. I was in all advanced classes, varsity theatre and cheer, and I worked part time. A few days later, a teacher eloped to Vegas and nobody cared about my love life anymore. My date and I were distanced again by classmates and activities and work. It finally appeared that everything was going back to normal. That Friday at the football game, my crush had asked me to sit on his shoulders for the Alma material kind of a romantic thing at my school. Overjoyed, I accepted. And I hoped that this was the beginning of a new chapter for me. I ignored the frantically waving flag in the stands. On Monday, my date stood on a chair in his second period class. And then he announced that everyone should be wary of my crush because he would steal your girl. I heard everyone buzzing about it a few hours later when someone called me a horrible name again for breaking my date's heart. I knew I was being dramatic, but I decided to not go to lunch that day, terrified of running into him. I'm so glad I didn't. Later on, I saw on Snapchat that my date had carved my name into his arm with a pair of scissors. His bleeding arm was screenshotted and sent to me by half a dozen people, most of them demanding why I'd hurt him like this. He did it in the middle of lunch in a crowded cafeteria, and somehow no administration noticed or cared. The school was buzzing, my day was a broken hearted victim, and I was the evil, secretly gay girl who wouldn't give him a chance. I got so many dirty looks from people by fifth period I was ready to just walk out. But my good girl instincts kicked in and I decided to tough it out for two more hours. Around that time, I got a panic text from one of my cheer friends. While she had initially been insistent that I date the creepy guy, she had apparently changed her mind after the lunch incident. Earlier, she told me that my date, who was in her fifth period class, was going off the rails. He had started out saying that he wanted to kill himself because I wouldn't love him. This had then escalated to saying that he'd kill my crush for lying to me and stealing me away. Finally, he had started talking about how he knew where I lived. My parents had given him my address when he'd initially wanted to ask me to the dance at my house, and he would make me pay for wronging him. I knew that after sixth period, our paths through the hall would cross. Since the beginning of this ordeal, the school would crack down on students getting outside, and my alternate route to escape him was no longer an option. My class was at the far end of the hall with nowhere to go but into the central hub, and he would be coming from the other end of the hallway towards mine. I was stuck up a chimney, basically. Desperate, I texted the junior cheer captain to finish what she'd started and tell him that I wasn't and have never been interested in him. She made this mess, and I would make sure that she had to clean it up. She said that she'd go to the counselor, but that she didn't know what else to do. This was way beyond her control now. For the first and only time I skipped class, I hid out in the theater hall and waited for the seventh period. I got a few texts during the passing period that my date was waiting for me by the bathrooms. There was a little alcove right there where you can't see people coming from around the corner, and the thought of him hiding there and waiting for me to walk by alone horrified me. Right before seventh period began, a few of my classmates burst in cackling and proclaimed that my date was coming down here after school to kill my crush. They thought this was hilarious, but judging by the look on my crush's face, this wasn't a joke to him anymore. Our teacher brushed this off as typical theater drama pun fully intended. I watched the clock and tried not to cry, knowing that by the time the bell rang, my date would be outside waiting for me and my crush to emerge. That day ended up being a work day, so my crush and I were able to escape the classroom and hide out elsewhere in the theater hall. To get away from him, he opted for the black box theater and I went for the lighting closet. Obviously, I didn't witness what happened, but my best friend filled me in afterwards. Allegedly, my date had turned up three minutes before the bell rang and stood outside the classroom where we couldn't see him. When we opened the door, he told everyone standing around that he was ready to have a knife fight with my crush. We don't really know if he actually had a knife or not, but the idea that he might was enough to terrify me. His arm was wrapped in paper towels that he was bleeding through. My best friend told him that my crush and I were gone, but he didn't believe her. He stood outside for 25 minutes until the administrators began walking through to make sure that no one was in the school who shouldn't be. My date wasn't in theater, so he wasn't allowed to stick around that night. I texted him that not only would I never date him, but but could no longer even see a friendship between us. I then sent him a number to a suicide hotline and I told him to get help. Finally, I told him that he needed to learn what no meant and that I never wanted to speak to him again. He responded that he was sorry and he asked if there was anything he could do to fix this. I told him no. I don't think he learned the meaning of the word after all because the same pattern repeated itself a few months later on Valentine's Day. The next year at homecoming, senior year, Valentine's Day, and also prom. But those are other stories. I've since graduated and gone off to college hundreds of miles away from him. My family back home moved from the address my parents gave him. Contrary to popular belief, I'm not gay. My crush, on the other hand, came out a few months later and we were friends for the rest of high school. I'm working on handling romantic endeavors in a healthy way, but he really got in my head. He was the first person to ever show interest in me. Ironically, the last time I saw him was my first and only homecoming game after graduating. But this time I actually had true friends to defend me when he predictably tried to pull some weird stuff with me. The worst part, looking back, was somehow being at fault for everything, even to this day. People from my high school reference the whole situation as that one time you wouldn't date that poor shy kid. I can't even appreciate red roses anymore. This is gonna be part two. The whole first part of the story that you just heard happened in 2015 when I was a junior in high school and I'm a junior in college now. I was 15 during the first homecoming debacle. Because I'm young for my grade, everyone else involved was 16 or 17 at the time, my parents, after all this played out, had very different reactions. My mother apologized for not believing me in the first place and pressuring me to lower my standards. My relationship with her has become a success story in the past four years and this experience jump started its evolution. On the other hand, my father has rewritten the narrative entirely and he insists that he never once advocated that I go to homecoming with my date. He says that he was always wary of this kid and he also didn't ever ask if I was gay. I'm not. I'm bi actually, but I didn't realize it until my senior year of high school. I didn't go to the counselor yet because she was shown to be bad at her job. As you'll see in this continuation, she liked to victim blame a lot. Well, she was fired After I graduated in 2017, my high school and home district in general was an administrative nightmare. I've heard from younger friends that after a massive staff turnover, things are finally starting to look up, but none of it improved during my time there. My story was perfectly in character for the level of ignorance my school expressed towards unhealthy activity. My day didn't and doesn't use social media, at least not to my knowledge. I found an abandoned Twitter account that looked like it might belong to him, but it was Last active in 2016. I have no contact with him at all anymore, which I guess is a happy ending. A few people have implied that I'm making all of this up. They're not the first and they probably won't be the last to say so. Even I know this crap is wild and that's why I didn't say a word about it for years. I don't feel the need to prove my honesty to random strangers on the Internet. If there's anything that I learned from this nightmare, it's that people will only believe what they want to believe. The truth is that I had a weird as all hell experience and it's affected my life in a lot of ways. Believe it or not, I still have to deal with its repercussions on a daily basis. This post is less of an update than it is a continuation since all of this happened years ago. Long story short, my ex didn't get the message after the homecoming junior year and he ended up pulling some seriously weird shit even after we graduated. None of it was as epic as junior homecoming, but it definitely cast a shadow over the latter half of my high school experience from here on out, due to his activity for the next Two years. I'll be referring to him as my stalker. For the months after homecoming, things had started to settle down again. I didn't have any classes with my stalker and the only person I still had to deal with was the junior cheer captain. She would go out of her way to be nice to me, inviting me to parties and buying me coffee and giving me rights to games, basically bribing me to keep quiet about what a manipulative person she was. My stalker appeared on Valentine's Day 2016. I was still a junior, but I had almost forgotten that homecoming had even happened when halfway through my day, he'd corner me in the hallway and gave me a rose out of his tea. I had hoped that that would be the end of it, but I underestimated my classmates appetite for drama. During seventh period theater. We were in the library computer lab after the rose thing. My crush from fall semester, who had since come out as gay, warned us that my stalker was carrying around a present for me in his backpack. I thanked him for the heads up and I told my best friend, the gay revolution lesbian. She and I were sitting together on the inside of a row when the bell rang. We stood up to leave, but the girl on the other side of me turned to face us, blocking us from the exit. She was a close friend of the junior cheer captain's. She asked me what I was doing after school and I knew that she must be trying to herd me towards my stalker so I could collect my presents. I leveled with her and said that I knew that my stalker was waiting for me somewhere and I told her straight up that I wasn't going to play nice with him anymore. She turned on the same old guild trip as everyone else, telling me how much he cared about me and how hard he had worked on those presents, but I refused to go. I knew that I needed to get out of the school as soon as possible before she just told my stalker to come meet me at the library instead of the theater hall to get her out of my way. I said I'd go meet him. After I went to the bathroom and she moved out of the walkway. My best friend and I hid out in the bathroom farthest from the theater hall. I knew that he wouldn't leave until he delivered his gifts and we had rehearsal that day, so I knew I'd have to go down there sooner or later. My best friend suggested that she go down and retrieve the presents for me so that he'd leave before I had to go to rehearsal. Two more of my friends happened upon our bathroom crisis and they decided to link up with my best friend on our mission. I waited in the bathroom while they went to intercept the gifts. Twenty minutes later, they returned. Among the gifts were three boxes of my favorite candy, an expensive Doctor who jewelry box, and a full bouquet of roses. Again, they told me, laughing uncomfortably, that there had been a whole group of people waiting for me to walk into the theater hall. My stalker wasn't too happy to hand over the presents and but my best friend made it clear that I wouldn't be coming to get them so he could hand them over to my friends or never deliver them at all. After about 10 minutes, the group waiting for me dissipated and my stalker gave away the gifts. I was so creeped out that I didn't keep any of them, not even the jewelry box, which was TARDIS shaped and actually kind of cool. For my birthday a few weeks later, I got out of school after fourth period and went to a theme park with my cousin. I didn't tell anyone I was leaving or where I was going. My best friend told me that my stalker had waited outside the theater hall for me with a letter and he had a rose in hand. Until the school kicked everyone out who wasn't in theater, I was assistant director and light crew for one act play during that spring. An acquaintance of mine who didn't keep up with the gossip was in charge of making the program, and she mentioned how cute my boyfriend was for taking out an ad in the program for me. I was sufficiently freaked out, I told her that I didn't have a boyfriend and I asked to see the ad that he'd paid for. It was a picture of my stalker and I from Junior Homecoming, along with a note that said something like Good luck, Nancy, I love you. I begged my friend to not put it in the program, and she didn't. Seeing my obvious discomfort, she refunded him his money and made some excuse about a local business buying more ad space. He tried the same trick for the last show of the year, which I was actually in. He showed up to opening night and got kicked out for filming. The theater department has now instituted a widespread rule of checking with the person an ad is targeted at before printing it, which is more than school administration ever cared to do. During a cleanup day for theater the summer before senior year, a guy from a different school showed up to help. Help in quotations. He had been talking to me over social media for a few weeks, and I knew I was his next target. He'd made a game out of going On a date with every girl in our department. Sure enough, he asked me out while I cleaned up the prop closet and I agreed. He was decent looking and he wasn't mentally unstable, even if he was a player. I also knew that if I played my cards right, I could turn this to my advantage. He was using me, so I just made sure I got something out of it too. We went on our date. It was okay, no weird advances or anything, and he bought me dinner on the way home. I directed the conversation towards homecoming. He caught my drift and he asked me right there. No muss, no fuss. I said yes. Senior year had started. My new date was all the way over at his school on the other side of town. My stalker was in two of my classes and had the same lunch as me. I was hyper aware of him staring at me every day, but didn't want to make a big deal about it. I knew he wanted my attention and I refused to give it to him. Instead, I went about my life as usual. I made friends with the teachers who were lunch hall monitors so I could leave the cafeteria, effectively avoiding my stalker. I ate lunch in the theater hall with my best friend every day. I asked my biology and English teachers to not make me sit by him or work in groups with them and they agreed, if somewhat reluctantly. They, like pretty much everyone else, thought I was a dramatic cheerleader making up stories. I was a senior and I really didn't want to deal with the bullcrap of a crazy stalker anymore. Not that I ever wanted to in the first place. Homecoming was even earlier this year than last year. In my English class, my stalker sat near two theater girls who usually walked to seventh period theater with me, and he turned around to ask them for ideas on how to ask me to homecoming. They were in the camp of classmates who were amused by my stalker's antics, so they wanted to rile him up and watch the fireworks. They also knew about the player who I was talking to because the Innerkins are the worst gossips ever and they gleefully told my stalker that I already had a date. He proceeded to attempt to bite his own finger off in class, which went about as well as you might think. Obviously, he didn't succeed, but he did draw blood and he absolutely terrified my two theater friends who had incited his instability. He stared at me the whole time and I sat on the other side of the room and ignored him. I didn't care what he did. I refused to give him my attention and I wouldn't be intimidated by him anymore. After class, my two friends came up to me and told me the details of what had just happened. Together, the three of us approached the English teacher. She believed me fully this time. He was moved into a different English class by the next week. Side note, bless this teacher. She was the first adult I encountered who actually took action to protect me and she continued to check in with me about the situation throughout the rest of the senior year. Sixth period became nothing less than a sanctuary for me because for once somebody believed me and they were listening. I didn't have to worry about him after fourth period because I skipped lunch every day. I was getting confident about my escape maneuvers. I forgot to mention the third and weirdest self harm incident after getting kicked out of English class. He had desperately wanted my attention, so he got a pass out of his class one day and found mine. He walked to the trash can outside the door to my class and I watched in horror and disgust as he pulled out a tooth and held his face over the trash can spitting out blood. I know that I said I wasn't giving him any more attention, but the kid just ripped out a body part. I feel like I'm allowed to be terrified. Then my usual hall monitor was gone and I got stuck in the cafeteria. I had been out of lunch for so long that I had forgotten my stalker was in the same one until I accidentally made eye contact with him staring at me from across the room like some kind of grudge ghost. The second I saw him, he started speed walking across the room to my table. I ignored him, hoping he was just trying to psych me out, but it didn't work. He sat down in the seat next to mine. I was freaking out. I looked at the girl on the other side of me and I begged her to get him out of here. She simply laughed at me. A year before I would have kept quiet and dealt with my discomfort for a fear of people hating me. But I was a year older and I was already contracting senioritis. So I stood up, grabbed my backpack and stomped out of the lunchroom. The hall monitor stopped me asking where I was going and if I had a pass. I said that I was going to talk to the crisis counselor and he let me go, probably because he didn't want to touch that with a ten foot pole. I walked directly to the counselor's office, signed in, and found myself sitting in her office a few minutes later. I told her the whole story from the beginning. I had been to her office once before and she shooed me away after saying I was being too dramatic. This time she didn't. Instead, she spent the greater half of the hour I was there asking why I hadn't come to her when this all started. When I finally got her to address the actual problem, her first question reaffirmed my fears. She went on to ask me after I told her about the self harming threats and general creepiness. What about him made me so opposed to dating him? I thought I was going to scream. I had a gut feeling that the truth wouldn't get me anywhere and I needed action. I didn't care how I got it done, but I needed him out of my life and definitely out of my classes. So knowing full well her attachment to Jesus, I pulled the Saving Myself for Jesus card. I put all of those Sundays being forced to go to church to good use. And it worked. She finally stopped asking me why. I waited. Why not just date him? And asked what would make me feel safer. I told her to get him out of my schedule and she said she'd look into my options. Within a day I was called back into her office. She had gotten him placed in another lunch period, but biology was only offered fourth period and both of us needed it to graduate. I still considered this a victory though. I only had to see him for 50 minutes every day. She told me to come talk to her whenever I needed someone to lean on and she would make sure that my teachers understood. Well, My stalker found new methods of seeing me My best friends didn't make the cast of the winter musical, but I did. I didn't realize that I had been isolated until my stalker joined the crew and regularly tried to intimidate me. He would drill holes in set pieces that didn't need work because I was sitting near them and he wanted to watch me flinch. He would steal the props I used and hide them in the shop so I had to be near him to retrieve them. My new crush and I were co dance captains and she convinced her friend that the set had to keep my stalker off stage at all times. After the musical ended in spring, my new crush told me that she heard my stalker was getting angry about me playing hard to get. I was hanging out in the theater hall with a few crew kids getting ready for a one act play when one of them pointed at me, shocked and then went your Nancy. He told me that he had seen pictures of my backyard. I was confused and weirded out so he explained that my stalker had shown him pictures of my backyard and porch. I asked to see them and he said he didn't have the pictures. He'd just been shown them by my stalker. I didn't really believe him, and he could tell, so he said, you have a big bay window in your living room, a bunch of bikes on your back porch, and a big rose bush. It was an accurate description. I don't know for sure how to explain that, but I've theorized that my stalker had at some point been in my backyard before we adopted our purebred Doberman. The dog had freaked out in the middle of the night a few times, but we always brushed it off. Now I wasn't so sure. My bedroom was in the front of the house, so I tried to reassure myself by thinking that he hadn't seen me changing or anything super scary, but it didn't really help. My best friend was disowned by her mother and stepdad, and within a weekend she was shipped off to go live with her biological father. I told myself I could survive the next four months and graduate and that I'd never see my stalker again. I persuaded my parents, as prom and graduation had approached, that I only wanted one present. My best friend. They paid for a plane ticket both ways and flew her home to be my date to prom. I kept her a secret so I could surprise our other friends when she showed up at prom to dance with us. My stalker only briefly entertained the thought of asking me to prom, which I later discovered was the cheer captain's doing. I guess she had finally started to realize the full effect of her actions because she told him he needed to leave me alone. I don't know what else, she said, but he went eerily silent in the weeks leading up to promotion. He still came to the last play of the year, but he didn't film me this time. He waited for me outside the auditorium afterwards, but I was with other people on our way to the cast dinner, and he didn't try anything. At prom. My best friends were elated when they saw that my best friend had returned. We danced and talked crap and had a great time together. It was honestly one of the best moments of my life when they walked in and saw her. Of course, my stalker tried one last time to change my mind. My friends and I were sitting at one of the tables together, laughing and catching up, and I saw my best friend's expression turn into a glare when someone walked up behind me. I turned around to see my stalker waiting behind my chair. I stood up and said as calmly as possible that he wasn't welcome here. I was also 17 and pissed off and feeling unstoppable So I tacked on if you ever speak to me again, I'll rip your balls off. It was the last thing that I ever said to him. My best friend flew back home and we all graduated and everyone went our separate ways for college. I saw my stalker again at the first homecoming after I graduated high school, but he didn't talk to me. He just stared at me the whole time. Later on he showed up to my sister's fall play at her alma mater and he asked a cast member where she was and if I was there. Lucky me, the cast member was one of my littles and he told my stalker he needed to leave immediately. I guess this story has a happy ending. I got away in one piece with no foreseeable appearance of my stalker in my future. I'm quite an awkward person and I can struggle to make friends due to my shyness. So in late 2019 to early 2020 I decided to join my sixth form's DND club. I was hooked and the fact that I had met a very lovely girl there who I'll refer to as May, well it made it all the more enjoyable. It was the new type of friendship where all you want to do is spend time with your new best friend and so when Mae asked me to join their DND party, I was overjoyed. I really did like her. She started off a little awkward as was I, but she was really sweet and understanding and we ended up having a lot of our more nerdy interests in common. The first time we hung out on our own was a lot more uncomfortable than I was expecting of course as we had only been friends for a couple of weeks so I knew it would be a little awkward, but I wasn't expecting how terribly unpleasant it turned out to be. Weight didn't seem to click for some reason. Everything was fine when we were in a group chat, but one on one Mae was strange. She would completely ignore me for no reason all of a sudden make very odd jokes, but in a serious manner, leaving the pause a little too long and would then laugh as well as other strange mannerisms. That was just before I left sixth form early due to personal reasons. It wasn't super off putting. I wanted to get closer to her believing once she got used to me, maybe she'd mellow out a little. Boy was I wrong. Once I did officially leave school, May became intense. It started out with her asking to meet up with me every to every other day. Keep in mind I'd started working full time by this point and had very little time to see people. Which was fine because she'd understand that I was busy, right? Wrong. She started getting annoyed and upset to an inappropriate level. For example, she would make me send a picture of my calendar to prove that I was too busy to see her, and even when she could see it was chockablock, she would start to try and manipulate me and make me feel bad for not being able to see her. Messaging me things like I love you but you're so difficult to meet up with, calling me her best friend and telling me she was crying because she couldn't see me. These conversations would happen around two, three times a week and honestly I had started getting creeped out by this point. We had only known each other for around 23 months. We had met up alone around 56 times and had seen each other almost every day at school before my departure. My creepometer had really started to rise, but it wasn't at a point where I wanted to end the friendship yet. Sure it was annoying how possessive she was, but it's not like she was stalking me yet. I distanced myself from her a little just for my own sanity as her neediness had progressively gotten more and more intense and it became taxing on my mental health. But I still wanted to be friends with her. Underneath everything, Mae was really lovely. But that was until they came to my house for the very first time back when I was living with my parents. May turned up a lot later than we agreed, which peeved me out a little as they knew I had to work the next day but it wasn't a biggie and that's when the really uncomfortable comments had started. Now my parents house is very nice, it's big, they have a gym and a hot tub, lovely garden, etc. By this point I was used to my friends making a couple of comments like wow, your house is so nice or damn, I really love your house. My favorite was probably when my cousin compared the house's size to a horse ding a ling. Now that was funny. But May wouldn't stop. She would drop how large or nice she thought that my house was in every other sentence, which later developed to her slating the house and my parents jobs, constantly telling me that I was shoving my parents wealth in her face or that my parents got their money because they take advantage of vulnerable children. Please keep in mind that I had not spoken about my parents money or the family home once in this conversation because talking about private things like that is just very uncomfortable to me. Then she started to get even Stranger asking me to cuddle and spoon and telling me that I couldn't escape going on and asking if I was really happy with my boyfriend. Then making jokes that didn't really feel like jokes at my expense. I was very uneasy and my parents could see it too. So after that day I told Mae that I was way too busy to meet up so the police stop asking me. She didn't. She started making jokes that because I wouldn't see her, she would just show up on my house and catch me off guard. She even changed her jog route so she ran past my parents house every day. And then she had started messaging my boyfriend. It was completely out of the blue. I hadn't even given her his social media or name. I hadn't even really discussed my relationship with her at all. It was very uncomfortable for everyone involved and my boyfriend was obviously not interested in being her friend due to how uncomfortable she made me. She told him things like, you need my permission to date because I'm her best friend and you have to be friends with me and like me because I'm her best friend. We were not even close to being best friends. She would spam my phone with messages and I would reply back around twice a month. I was completely smothered by her. It was so strange. But when I received a screenshot of their conversation from my boyfriend because he was so creeped out, I was livid. The screenshot showed them having a very one sided conversation on her behalf where all of a sudden she told him she loved him. I didn't know what to say and neither did he. So I confronted her. May tried to turn it around on me and said, and I quote, I was talking to your boyfriend and he knew about me. Impossible. I figured out you talked about me without my consent. Heartbroken. She really said it just like that. It was surreal. I told her that I had mentioned that we met up and that she was a friend from school, which was true. Of course. I told him that she made me uncomfortable, but she didn't know that and the conversation ended there. Then she went to uni and we didn't really speak for a while. It was relaxing. All of the anxiety around the situation faded. May had made new friends and I was free. But when she came home for Christmas, everything started up again and all the anxiety came back. I was going through a really tough time, so me and my mom went away for a few days. But when I didn't respond to Mae for three days because I was busy, she went crazy. She spammed me on every social media I have, daily Instagram, Snapchat, discord, text messages, and more. The messages started off normally with her asking if we could meet up and that she was home from university, but they gradually became angry and I won't lie, it was scary. I believed her when she said she would just show up at my house and I was terrified that she'd ask my friends for my new address under the pretense that I had forgotten to give it to her as they'd threatened to do this in joking form before. It felt obsessive and I didn't know what to do. She wouldn't stop messaging me and it became a constant stream of creepy messages. So I exploded at her. I told her that this behavior was really creepy, that I have never been made to feel this uncomfortable by someone before, that she didn't have boundaries and I was scared about the joke disguised threat she made. I ended it off with the fact that I didn't want to see her again and could she please stop messaging me. I could have definitely been nicer about it, but that never seemed to work. In our prior conversations, when I tried to defend why I was busy and couldn't see her, she became incredibly apologetic, then got angry, then started to try and manipulate me into meeting up, apologizing and putting herself down, and then telling me that she loved me. I was just so over all of her nonsense and weird behaviors. I felt bad for her. I had wanted to be her friend so much, but she was so obsessive and overbearing and even though I tried for so long to make it work, she had ended up pushing me away because of her behavior. I do wish her well and I hope she gets help for whatever's going on with her. But creepy stalker friend, you're definitely not my cup of tea. Please stay the hell away from me. My encounters with this individual, who I'll call Ben, began in November 2024 at school. He was a friend of one of my friends named Tom, and eventually we became part of the same friend group. I have always found Ben to be a bit creepy, which seemed to be the school population's general view toward him. However, once we began regularly socializing, I had started to feel bad for my presumptions. That was until we were added to a WhatsApp group chat and that's when things started to take a turn. First it was the mindless, constant images of gore that he would send, involving very graphic details of horrible things. I don't know if these images were even real or not. But they made me very uncomfortable to the point that I had to ask him to stop, to which I was then told to just take a joke and stop being a puss. This was followed by messages where he stated that he had harmed animals along with other sick fantasies involving people I knew. I wasn't sure if Ben was just your average edgelord or what, but something just didn't seem right. Then one Saturday I was alone Christmas shopping in my town when I had noticed Ben standing down the road from me, just staring directly at me. I waved at him awkwardly, to which he just stared before walking casually down a side street for the rest of the trip. Every time I turned Ben was just standing, just staring at me from a distance. I eventually gave up shopping and went home pissed off. I texted him about it, to which he just stated that he didn't know what I was talking about. Then in school and lunch, Ben and another friend Jack convinced me to come with them to the forest behind our school with another friend named Zach. It was stupid, I know, but I was bored and I went along anyway. We had started getting deeper into the forest and Ben was becoming weird. He was laughing and he just kept repeating closer, let's get closer. Eventually both Zach and I agreed that it was creepy and off putting, so we turned back. Ben seemed pissed when he and Jack returned. However, when we asked why they wanted us to go further, he responded that he had wanted to set a fire and show us. After this I really distanced myself and I left the group chat, though I was eventually re added while on my hiatus from that group, Ben had actually attacked Tom with a homemade blade. He did this in school and it resulted in a wound near his wrist. This resulted in Ben being expelled from school, though no legal action was taken. It's now been a month that I was re added to the group chat only to find that Ben has been sending graphic self harm photos and talking about his hatred for his own family, blaming them for his misfortune. I'm worried that he genuinely gives off serial killer vibes, but perhaps I'm just being paranoid. I often wonder about that time in the forest and in the town plaza. Anyways, thanks for listening everyone. I guess I'm just wondering if I should really be concerned or maybe I'm just overreacting. I sometimes worry that Ben knows where I live and isn't far away. I'm a 23 year old female and from the UK. From the ages of 9 to 11 I was best friends with this girl who we'll call Sarah. She and I formed a little group at primary school with two other girls who we'll call Lauren and Ellen. But we were each other's best friend first as we lived so close. Sarah lived one street over from me, so I would always sleep over at her house. But she never came over to my house as we were very, very poor and I was really embarrassed about the state of my house. The sleepovers became a weekly thing and it was just her and her mom who worked every weekend. So we spent a lot of time in the house alone. It started off odd. She would show me her mom's pornos from like the 80s that all included vampires. And as a nine year old kid I had no idea what was going on and I'd just sit there blankly. She'd always say, doesn't it just make you want to do it? And things like that. She would also get out her mom's sex toys and show them to me and then make me hold them, which never really seemed odd to me until I was older. But even at the time I felt uncomfortable. I was a pretty nervous child and I had really struggled to make friends, so I'd often go along with whatever she said just because I felt lucky to have a friend outside of school. She would often make up scary stories or do mildly creepy things at night, like sing Patty cake in a babyish voice close to my ear while I was sleeping, or pretend her dolls were alive and wanted to punish me for taking her attention away from them, which creeped me out but never outright concerned me. Though my mom was worried that I was having constant nightmares, none of this affected me too much and so I stayed friends with her. Later that year I got mauled by a dog, a Japanese Akita, and had reconstructive surgery on my face. Due to this, I had to take medication at certain times and would be escorted to and from the school office every day by my other friend, Lauren. Because of this we became best friends and I had started sleeping over at hers instead of Sara's. Sarah didn't like that I was getting a lot of attention due to my fresh scar or that I had replaced her with another friend. So she said that she was pregnant at 10, complete with tears and plans and everything, including Ellen telling her mom at the end. This went on for months and as kids we didn't even question the validity of her claim. At some point she had dropped this and next she pretended she had cancer. I called her out on that one as I knew a lot about cancer because my Auntie had it at the time, which she really didn't like. After that, she had started calling me names, stealing my school stuff, made up lies about me, and more making our other two friends pick between me or her. It really fluctuated a lot, so sometimes they'd be my friends and other times they'd be hers. During this time, I'd slept over at Lauren's house a lot and a lot of my stuff went missing. A pink flip phone that I just got as my first phone ever and my DS Lite, which was my prized possession. This was like 2010 by the way. My mom had gotten involved at this point and demanded that they find it as she knew I'd taken it to the sleepover. In the end, Lauren supposedly found them both smashed up on a road far from where either of us lived and then returned them to me completely broken weeks later. Later on, both Sarah and I got invited to the swimming baths for Lauren's birthday and for once we got along. It was like really having my best friend back. Us kids were basically left alone in the pool to just mess around for a few hours. An important note here is that I couldn't swim. I still can to this day. I had chickenpox during school swimming lessons and I'm really terrified of water now, so I haven't learned since. Anyway, at one point I was so sick of being stuck in the shallow end like a baby. At the age of 11, when all of my friends were swimming at the deep end, Sarah had noticed this and came over to me. She offered to piggyback me and swim to the deep end so I could play with everyone else. I was so happy to be included. I didn't even think about the fact that she didn't regularly like me or that if she left me, I couldn't swim back. I just hopped right on and she swam us out. She started mock tipping sideways like she was going to drop me and I cried and begged her to take me back. I was terrified of getting water in my face or going underwater. I still can't go underwater to this day. She just laughed at me and dropped me, ducking me under the water and holding my head there where I struggled and couldn't breathe. I remember struggling and being unable to breathe, but the next thing I knew was a lifeguard had pulled me to the side of the pool and I was choking on air and shaking. I also have horrible reactions to the smell of chlorine and it makes me sneeze and my eyes swell, so I had to be picked up. But everyone told me it was an accident and just kids messing around. She later told me that it was a joke. I should learn to swim and stop being a baby. Which I guess is true. But still, after that day, I didn't want to be around her anymore. Our friends still flip flopped between us, some days being her friend and others being mine. But that was fine. I didn't care anymore. I was sick of her. I avoided her like the plague. Primary school was almost over and I never had to see her again. Eventually we all went to secondary school. This was between the ages of 11, 16, and we all went to the same one. But my school was categorized into classes, the top being the smartest. And I, Lauren and Ellen were all in the top class and Sarah wasn't. It was a nice little buffer and I got my best friends back as well as making even more friends. For the first time ever, I really completely forgot all about her, in all honesty. Then one day as I walked home from school, I passed the corner shop on my way home and she was there, blocking the path, waiting for me. Her skull tie was tied around her head like a headband and she was crying. I had to go around her and she literally growled at me and launched herself at me. I was like 4, 780 pounds if that. And she was much larger than me and I'd never been in a fight ever. I had no idea what to do to get her off me while she clawed on my neck and alternated kneeing me and elbowing me. I just wanted her off me. I grabbed the tie wrapped around her head and pulled as hard as I could until she fell to the ground. And with that, she just ran away crying. I remember walking the rest of the way home just so confused. What had I even done to her to deserve that? I hadn't even spoken to her in like eight months at that point. And she and our other friends were in the same tutor group and they hadn't mentioned anything to me. Eventually I forgot about that. I turned 12 a couple of months later and the day after my birthday I walked into school having spent all my birthday money on new pens. And I was so excited to show them off. I was a weird kid. I know. First lesson of the day begins and Ellen runs up to me and says, Sarah's brought a knife to school. She showed me in tutoring. She said that she brought it for you. I kind of just laughed out loud at that, assuming it was a joke of some kind, since any sort of weapon brought to our school was Grounds for immediate expulsion. And nobody was stupid enough to try that, especially at 12 years old. I think I even made a joke about it probably being a butter knife. She repeated that she was serious, that she'd told the teachers about it and that they called the police. Again, I didn't believe her. To me it just seemed crazy that they would call the police over a 12 year old bringing a knife to school. But they did. The police arrived minutes later and that was that. I never saw the knife, but she was immediately expelled. I don't know for sure why me or what she had planned to do, but she must have told multiple people that she was going to do something to me because it was an ongoing joke for the rest of the time that I was at school. She ended up going to the school that my little sister had just started at. And she had apparently also told my sister it had been for me, but it was just a joke. Side note, my little sister is a year younger and she's a fighter. Even at this age now, I've still never been in a real fight and my sister's always fought anyone who badmouthed me. She's a real one. My sister punched her for that and that was the last I heard from her until I was 18 years old. I turned 18 and was at university and then out of the blue, I was tagged in an old primary school photo by Sarah. It had the whole class in it, but for some reason she had only tagged me. I found this odd but didn't do anything about it and it was my old Facebook account anyways, so I ignored it. A couple of months later it was Sarah's birthday and she had sent me a message asking if I would come to her birthday party. Mind you, I hadn't spoken to her in like six years and the last time I had, she fought me and then brought in a knife. I simply just ignored the message and moved on with my life. Later on, I saw that she and Lauren had reconnected and were best friends again. What's always concerned me is Lauren and I stayed friends for years and she knew everything about how Sarah treated me. But I've never really put much thought into it other than it's highly likely that they were still friends the whole time and that Lauren had stolen my DS and phone because of Sarah and they broke them together. The last time I saw her, I was 19. I was on a date with my boyfriend, walking down the street and I saw her standing at the bus stop. I wasn't really bothered since I'd Neither seen or heard anything from her for years until our eyes met and she grinned and pulled out her phone and it started filming me until I was out of sight. I have no idea why she did any of the things she did and I mostly just feel sorry for her based on the way her life has turned out so far. But I still hope that I never have to see her again. When I was seven years old, my mom and father got a divorce. This event prompted her to move and follow her career in a different small town, which would pay much better as she was a single parent now. On our long 12 hour drive to the new location, we stopped on the way in this little town which was very hippie, sort of had lots of art, little shops, etc. My mom said we were here to meet up with our friend Paulette. I guess they went way back in her college days and just recently got in touch after a decade. We ended up going to this East Indian restaurant where we would meet for dinner. The slender, somewhat fragile woman walks in and she was very tall, well over six feet. She had big frizzy curly brown hair with blonde streaks in it. She was caucasian, wearing a colorful shawl with feather earrings with very pale blue eyes. She looked like a mosaic tapestry or something. She walks over to the table and gives my mom a greeting and a big hug. Then she makes her way to my older brother and shakes his hand. After coming around to my side of the table I lent my hand out to her and she just stood there expressionless, with her mouth partly open with a blank gaze, just staring at me. It briefly made me uncomfortable and then a flick of a switch, this spark ignited in her face. She made this huge Cheshire cat smile, kneels over and then hugs me tightly. She goes back to sit with my mom and they catch up over the years while we eat dinner. My mom gets the bill and says to her in the parking lot, you can just follow us to Paulette. We get in her car and my mom explains to us that Paulette is actually coming over to live with us for a while. She followed us for the next several hours. We got to the new place and unpack our necessities as we had a moving truck hired with the rest of our stuff arriving in the morning. There was a bunk bed already set up at this place for me and my brother. It was fairly late into the night, roughly 11pm when we arrived. My brother and I set up our sleeping bags and I took the top bunk. My mom says good night and I fell asleep pretty quickly. I woke up around 1:30am I guess the patio deck light got turned on somehow, which was right beside our room. I gazed out through the blinders and I saw the back of Paulette's curly hair. She was sitting on the deck cross legged, smoking a cigarette. I didn't think much of it and just laid back down until I noticed the light from the window gets partly blocked out. I looked behind me with my head still on the pillow and I see the unmistakable outline of Paulette's shadow facing my window. She was there for a few minutes, but I didn't want to lean up, so I just pretended to sleep. Her shadow moves and I hear the front door close. The patio light turns off after a few minutes. I reposition myself facing the wall to go back to sleep. As I begin to drift off, the door to our room opens slowly and I quickly turned my head around and it wasn't my mom. It was Paulette wearing a nightgown. I turn back facing the wall and close my eyes. She quietly makes her way to my bunk. I feel her fingers in a claw formation start to comb the back of my hair. Running her nails on the back of my scalp. I kept my eyes closed tightly, nearly holding my breath, trying to give no signs that I'm awake. I smell some essential oils like lavender and she starts rubbing oil into the back of my neck and also pinching the back of my neck muscle, sometimes holding it and releasing. I began to kind of accept whatever's happening because it didn't feel all that bad. After a while, I actually ended up falling asleep to it. After my initial confusion, I wake up in the morning and my mom is off at work and Paulette is waiting at the table with cereal for me and my brother. She had put chocolate chips in my bowl, but not my brother's. My brother and I made small talk with her. She was very giggly and seemed to be trying to make us comfortable with the new situation. My brother heads back to his room to set up his gamecube after he had his cereal. I was a much slower eater than my older brother, so I was always the last at the table. As I slowly ate, she was just sitting there watching my every move. Once I finished, I told her thank you and then grabbed my bowl to bring it to the sink. She places her hand on mine and then says, I gave you a neck massage so that you wouldn't pee in your bed. I know that lots of young ones pee beds when they sleep in unfamiliar surroundings. I just looked up at her and said um, I've never paid my bid before, but thank you. She continued to massage the back of my neck for the next few nights. I ended up telling her that I'm comfortable here now, that she didn't need to do this anymore. She reacted to that with a sigh, but acknowledged it. I had started elementary school the following week, which meant getting earlier night sleeps around 8pm her and my mom would stay up much later than me and my brother and they would drink wine together. I always waited for them to go to bed before I used the washroom at night to go pee because my mom would kind of scold me for being up late on weeknights. Once things got quiet at around 11 in the house, I would sneak out and tippy toe to go use the washroom. This was my ritual for the next few weeks. That is, until Paulette started doing the exact same thing at the same time every time. Every night when I needed to use the washroom, it just so happened Paulette needed it too. And she would blaze down the hallway across from my room when I opened the door. I'd just go back to my room and wait for her. It started happening so frequently that I would just go outside to pee from the back mudroom door. This had started to piss me off. I'd opened my door as quietly as I could and then sprint into the washroom. This seemed effective for a while. One night I got up slightly later than usual around 12. I was a little more careless with noise because I was half asleep and groggy. I opened the door and Paulette's door just slammed open. Instantly, she barges out in the dimly moonlit hallway completely naked and just starts quickly walking down the hallway. I was already so down the hallway I couldn't turn my back to my room. I jumped behind my mom's jade plant and squished my knees to my chest and tug my head down. She whizzed straight by me so fast that I felt wind push my hair. She stays in the washroom for almost an hour with the door open to crack the lights off and in silence. I stayed there beside the washroom, tucked in the corner behind the plant pot, not making a single sound. I hear the washroom door open completely and she starts pacing up and down the hallway. I kept it small and insignificant behind the plant until she went back to her room. I brushed this off as just a complete accident. That it was just unfortunate timing. But now, every night going forward, she would literally sprint down the hallway naked. If I'd ever made a single Noise, creak, the floorboard, open my door, etc. About two months into this, my brother and I were sword fighting with tree branches outside. He ends up clipping my forehead, causing it to bleed pretty badly. Paulette sees this happening and she walks up to my brother. I thought she was gonna scold him, but no, she stompkicks him in the head with her boot, causing him to fall on his back. He gets up off the ground crying and runs into the house. She grabs me and starts cradling me, rocking me back and forward. She's shaking so much that she was actually vibrating repeatedly asking are you hurt? In a shaky voice. Anyway, my mom finds out through my brother what had happened and decides that she had to leave. On her final day. She had made a point to see me one on one in the driveway before entering her car. She then knelt down and said to me, I hope I can see you in a different life. You remind me so much of my husband. Goodbye. And she actually starts bawling her eyes out, hugging me. I asked my mom who her husband was. I guess he was a marine that died in Afghanistan a few months prior to her moving in with us. My mom said that she would frequently say how much I reminded her of him on a daily basis. My mom hasn't spoken to her since. I've never told my mom about the massages or anything to this day as she was already exiled and I felt it would just cause even more drama. Out of respect for everyone's privacy, names in this story will be changed. The important people to know are my cousin and I, who we'll call Drew, some of the prominent neighborhood kids we'll call Josh, Kylie and Devin, and of course Gabe to set the story. This was around the time that my mom and dad divorced. It wasn't a clean divorce either, and there was a lot going on around this time. My mom had to move out of the school district and into a small home quickly and my dad kept the house in our neighborhood. I bring this up to explain that although my two brothers decided to stay with my dad, me and my cousin, who lived with us most of his life, decided to move in with my mom. The issue was that my mom's new place wasn't within the school district, which meant no buses. So the setup was that she'd bring us to school before work and then after school we would catch the bus to my dad's house and stay there for a couple of hours until she got off work. Work. Now that everything's explained, let's get into what you're really here for. There were quite a few kids in our neighborhood and I guess you could say we all got along and hung out quite a bit. We would all ride the bus together, hang out after school, and hell, even try to build forts in the vine. The vine was a spot in the woods you could access through a small opening at the end of a cul de sac. This is important. Later. It was an everyday thing for us really. Until one day a new family had moved into the neighborhood and with them their son Gabe. He had semi long brown hair and he was skinny. We first met Gabe on the school bus and us being curious about a new kid in our neighborhood, we were all eager to talk to him. You probably think we got some off vibe from him or maybe something about him was creepy, but honestly he just seemed like a regular kid. He seemed to fit in with the other kids in the neighborhood. It became normal to see me, Josh, Kylie, Drew and Evan and Gabe all hanging out. Rather all of us or a combination of the few. After getting to know him, we learned that Gabe actually used to go to our school, but that he got expelled after he threw a desk at a teacher and only just that school year let him back into our school. Back then we had brushed it off as just something edgy that he did. But knowing the events now, it should have been the first red flag. You see, Gabe, Drew and I really became close. I'd argue closer than the other kids. I would have considered him a friend instead of just another neighborhood kid to hang out with. Which is why we didn't immediately drop him after the following events. I wasn't there for this, but heard about it after the fact. Drew and I got on the bus one day and immediately I noticed that Gabe wasn't there. We sat next to each other every day on the bus. I just assumed he was absent and Drew decided to sit by me. Kylie and Evan, who sat near us, had started talking about something that happened and we joined into their conversation. Apparently not long after Drew and I left to go to my mom's, Gabe had invited Kylie, Evan and Josh to his house. Now I don't remember what set this in motion or what really happened, but the hangout ended with Gabe chasing Josh home with a machete in his hands. Josh lived on the other side of the neighborhood and once he got home, his mother came out to see what was going on as she had heard him yelling for her from the front yard. Once she stepped out, Gabe had chased both of them inside. The scariest part was they heard from Josh that he was laughing and he had a smile on his face as he did it, like he enjoyed terrorizing them. The cops were called, and honestly, I don't know what came out other than Gabe was gone from school for a few days after that. When he came back, he acted like it never even happened. The kids in our neighborhood had started growing apart from Gabe after that. Especially Josh, who I actually never saw talk to him again. I mean, who would blame him? I guess I felt bad for Gabe a little bit. My stupid brain must have decided it was just a bad prank that went too far or something like that. Oh, how dumb was I? I truly believe Gabe had changed after that. Like something had clicked in his brain. Not long after that, we were on the bus, and I was talking to him as we had sat in the same seats. All of a sudden, he just pulled a pencil out and tried to stab me with it. Not only tried, but he actually did stab me right in the neck. Luckily, it only broke the skin, but it shocked me. He laughed about it like he was joking. And I decided to move seats. When I got off, I had felt the need to explain what happened to the bus driver. I never should have done that. I believe to this day that one choice caused what happened next. He was kicked off the bus for a couple of days. When he returned, they made him sit at the front of the bus. He knew it was me who snitched on him. When I'd walked past him to get off the bus, he would glare at me and it felt evil. He called me names and a snitch, and I was scared of him. Fast forward a week later, and all the kids in our neighborhood just decided that they wouldn't hang out with Gabe anymore at all. And I wish I could say the same. Even after everything I had just spilled to you all, I was naive and dumb. Eventually, he messaged me, apologizing, and he messaged me to ask if Drew and I wanted to hang out. I don't know why, but we agreed. I think I remember him saying that he and some of the other kids were gonna go hang out at the vine and build some forts. And I think that's why we agreed, you know, because the other kids would be there, too. So we set off to meet him at his house, which was just down the street from ours. We knocked on his door, and he answered it holding a knife. Screwed the red flag. I was ignoring a whole red alarm at this point. It was a kitchen knife with some sort of orange Handle. He had a smile on his face. He held his arm up and just, well, started cutting himself. We should have just left right there. Why didn't we just leave? After a couple of cuts, he laughed all like it was some sort of joke. It wasn't until now that I realized that this kid was truly psychotic. Like something was really wrong with him. He had a couple of tools with him and he told us to follow him to the vine. And for some dumb reason we did. I was really holding out hope that he would be normal when all the other kids would be there. We got to the small opening to the vine and walked in. To get to the small pond in the vine, you had to go down a slightly steep hill and through the brush and you'd be there. I bet you could feel my surprise when I realized that nobody else was there. I looked at Gabe, who just chuckled. They must be late. Let's just get started, he said to me. Both Drew and I were on edge and I bet Gabe could feel it. Hey, go find some sticks and logs to build the fort, he told me. He pointed over towards the pond. I obeyed and made my way over to the area. About 10 or 15 seconds after I'd started walking, I just got the feeling telling me to turn around and I'll never ever stop thanking God for doing just that. Gabe was there, creeping up to my cousin who was picking up a large rock. Gabe had a hoe looking tool in his hand, raising it slowly. I then shouted at him. My cousin jolted up and Gabe quickly lowered the hoe and then looked at me in confusion. I ran up to them, telling them my mom messaged me and that it was time to go. That was a lie of course. My phone only worked on wifi at the time. I felt that Gabe knew that I saw him. So I grabbed my cousin, who didn't for a second question me, and we quickly started leaving. And at that very moment he chased us. We booked it through the woods for a solid half of a minute and got to the steep part, quickly climbing it. I looked back and saw Gabe with the face that I could only describe as a psychopath chasing us. I prayed that we wouldn't slip or fall, and thank God we didn't. Luckily, Gabe had struggled a bit, giving us time to bolt out of the entrance. We ran halfway up the street and turned around. Gabe wasn't there. In fact, we never even saw him leave. We went home and the next day we told some of the other kids what had happened. The weirdest part is though, we never saw Gabe again. Not on the bus or at school. Very shortly after, his parents moved from that house and my dad moved out of that neighborhood. A year later, my mom also found a newer house in our school district. This was years ago. I recently looked Gabe up to see whatever happened to him, but nothing came up. No Facebook page, no Instagram, nothing. It's like he just vanished. Like he never even existed in the first place. But I know he did. I don't live anywhere near there anymore, and thank God for that. Gabe, I don't know where you are or what happened to you, but as long as I don't ever see you again, I'm fine.