3 HOURS Of TRUE Scary Stories From The Internet

Summary

Southern Cannibal’s Scary Stories

Episode: “3 HOURS Of TRUE Scary Stories From The Internet”

Date: July 29, 2026
Host: Southern Cannibal

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Overview

This extra-long episode is a curated compilation of true scary stories sourced from listeners, viewers, and Reddit. With the host away due to a family emergency, the episode brings together a wide array of personal horror tales—ranging from internet and dating nightmares, stalkers, retail creeps, violent encounters, and chilling road trip incidents. The stories are all narrated in Southern Cannibal’s signature atmospheric style, with a strong focus on real-life fears, survival instincts, and the dark corners often overlooked in ordinary life.

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Key Stories & Discussion Points

1. Stalker Ex-Girlfriend Saga

[00:02 – 12:03]

• Summary: A man recounts a year-long relationship that spirals into emotional manipulation, lies, self-harm threats, and escalating stalking behavior from his ex, Natalie.
• Escalation: Natalie disappears for days, sends disturbing messages, and even leaves a handwritten will at the narrator’s door.
• Climax: She is eventually found with frostbite, having hidden under the man’s deck, and her parents reveal she was the abusive partner in her past relationship.
• Memorable Quote:

  “Imagine trying to explain to the police why your ex's body stayed all winter under your deck.” — Narrator (08:35)

• Closing Sentiment: The narrator wishes Natalie well, but firmly requests permanent no contact.

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2. Tinder Date Turned Nightmare

[12:04 – 18:25]

• Summary: A woman meets Jared at the gym, dates him for two months, and ends up being terrorized by his obsessive, aggressive, and emotionally abusive behavior.
• Red Flags: Rudeness to servers, anger at missed calls, showing up unannounced, and direct threats.
• Aftermath: Jared stalks her for two years through various social media and even sends a disturbing tattoo photo.
• Quote:

  “To think that this maniac was really doing this for years over a two month long relationship was disturbing as hell to me.” — Narrator (17:20)

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3. High School Crush to Creep

[18:26 – 28:58]

• Summary: An Australian woman recalls a high school friend-turned-boyfriend “Teddy” whose intense fixation after a brief relationship grows into stalking, public confrontations, and disturbing behavior (including being caught taking upskirt photos, and dating much younger girls).
• Climactic Incident: “Teddy” corners her in a stairwell to read her a love letter contemplating marriage after mere weeks of dating, inducing a panic attack.
• Intervention: Two passing girls rescue her.
• Message:

  “Please be highly alert to any red flags and you should always trust your gut instinct with these sort of things.” — Narrator (28:40)

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4. Culver’s Parking Lot Tragedy

[28:59 – 31:33]

• Summary: A family witnesses a shooting outside a Culver’s restaurant as an ex-boyfriend kills an employee following a breakup, shattering their sense of safety forever.
• Quote:

  “The image of that woman laying in a pool of blood is still burned into my mind forever.” — Narrator (31:21)

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5. The Creeper at Burger King

[31:34 – 36:45]

• Summary: Stephanie, 17, starts her first job at Burger King and attracts the attention of a much older man who becomes obsessed, showing up nightly and eventually waiting outside late at night—cornering her by the dumpsters.
• Climax: Her manager’s intervention prevents the situation from escalating.
• Lesson:

  “Creeps don’t always look like villains. …You don’t owe anyone your silence, your smile, or your time.” — Stephanie (36:37)

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6. Taco Bell Dumpster Horror

[36:46 – 43:12]

• Summary: A young woman working her first-ever job discovers a human finger in the Taco Bell dumpster outside during a late shift; the police later link it to a murdered missing woman.
• Aftermath: Though the killer is never caught, the trauma and nightmares linger.
• Quote:

  “Danger doesn’t feel distant. When it’s real, it can be as close as a dumpster behind your work, as near as the shadows beyond a parking lot light.” — Narrator (42:10)

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7. Aggressive Stranger at Pizza Hut

[43:13 – 47:32]

• Summary: A woman’s ordinary morning trip for pizza nearly turns into a confrontation when an entitled, well-dressed stranger demands a ride to the terminal and turns aggressive, banging on her car and chasing her when she refuses.
• Reflection:

  “If she had just asked for money, she probably would have gotten a 20 from me. But she didn’t ask.” — Narrator (47:15)

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8. Knife Threat at McDonald's

[47:33 – 52:10]

• Summary: A 16-year-old working closing shift at McDonald's is held at knifepoint by a homeless man demanding food. The story ends with her quitting the job and reflecting on lost innocence and vigilance.
• Quote:

  “The world isn’t always about smiling customers and drive-thru timers. Sometimes it’s about survival.” — Narrator (52:02)

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9. Dunkin’ Donuts Stalker

[52:11 – 58:01]

• Summary: A woman covers a night shift for a friend and encounters a scruffy man who quickly grows obsessive, asking for rides, returns, and is defended against by a brave male coworker—who ultimately loses his job for protecting her.
• Lesson:

  “I still wonder sometimes what might have happened if John hadn’t taken out the trash that night.” — Narrator (57:41)

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10. Barista Management Gone Wrong

[58:02 – 01:04:16]

• Summary: As acting manager of a Starbucks, a woman is targeted by her new boss’s crush after leaving for Dunkin' Donuts. He stalks her nightly after closing, culminating in a disturbing confrontation and police involvement.
• Quote:

  “Sometimes it all started with a simple job at a coffee shop.” — Narrator (01:04:11)

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11. Gas Station Ambush in Dangerous City

[01:04:17 – 01:11:01]

• Summary: Three friends narrowly avoid a violent carjacking by a group of thugs at a notorious Newburgh gas station, surviving physical assault and threats before the police arrive.
• Advice:

  “Please, everyone. Be aware of your surroundings.” — Narrator (01:10:57)

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12. UK Gas Station—Trafficking Escape

[01:11:02 – 01:19:57]

• Summary: A female night worker comforts and aids a trafficked Vietnamese boy escaping sexual abuse, as police intervene. The story lingers as both a warning and a heartbreaking testament to resilience.
• Quote:

  “The way he clutched onto me and cried into me still makes me incredibly emotional to think about.” — Narrator (01:19:29)

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13. Creepy Coworker at Night Shift

[01:19:58 – 01:26:14]

• Summary: A woman describes enduring working night shift with "Rose," whose increasingly brazen exhibitionist and fetishistic behaviors become both menacing and disturbing until an outburst leads to Rose vanishing.
• Reflection:

  “We wouldn’t be joking about it if a man was jerking in the bathroom and telling us about it.” — Narrator (01:23:57)

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14. Predator Pair at Target

[01:26:15 – 01:29:38]

• Summary: Two women at Target try to befriend and extract personal info from unsuspecting shoppers with persistent, suspicious questions—possibly for trafficking or scams.
• Advice: Trust your intuition and avoid pushy strangers.

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15. Target Stalker—“You Look Familiar”

[01:29:39 – 01:32:37]

• Summary: A young woman is repeatedly approached and followed by a stranger using various tactics to establish contact before trying the same on someone else.
• Quote:

  “I have no idea what her end goal was, but it definitely gave me the creeps.” — Narrator (01:32:30)

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16. Homecoming Horror at Walmart

[01:32:38 – 01:35:36]

• Summary: A mother and daughter face harassment from an unashamedly predatory man inside Walmart; a mother’s protective rage forces him to back off.
• Quote:

  “I asked him if today was a good day for him to die.” — Mother (01:33:45)

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17. Followed Inside Target by Three Men

[01:35:37 – 01:39:14]

• Summary: A tired 19-year-old is shadowed around Target by three silent men until staff use a security protocol (“Code Yellow”) to walk her safely to her car.
• Advice:

  “If something feels wrong, it probably is. Always park in your lights. Trust your instincts, even when the world tells you you’re overreacting.” — Narrator (01:39:04)

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18. Stalker in 24/7 Walmart

[01:39:15 – 01:45:47]

• Summary: Late-shift worker Kevin is methodically followed through empty Walmart aisles by a silent, expressionless man. Later, a security photo reveals the stranger has stalked multiple stores, following employees home.
• Quote:

  “Danger doesn’t always come in shouting. Sometimes it comes in silence and stillness...” — Kevin (01:45:39)

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19. Jewelry Counter Stalker

[01:45:48 – 01:53:57]

• Summary: A young saleswoman is serially targeted by a man posing as a customer, fixating on her during repeated fake purchases, following her, calling for personal info, and eventually prompting police and HR intervention.
• Notable Detail:

  “He always had a weird smile on his face while he would stare... even though I’m trying to get him to look down at the rings.” — Narrator (01:48:24)

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20. Cornered at Macy’s, Saved by a Friend

[01:53:58 – 01:59:34]

• Summary: A woman is stalked through Macy’s by a persistent stranger who blocks her in the aisle and possibly waits by her car. A male friend’s arrival causes the predator to back off.
• Quote:

  “I sincerely hope we never cross paths again.” — Narrator (01:59:27)

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21. Highway Roadside Ambush—BC

[01:59:35 – 02:01:17]

• Summary: Two kids stop to rest in a dark remote area and are surrounded by men trying to break in. Quick thinking and luck allow them to escape.

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22. Highway Stalker Survived by Drawing a Gun

[02:01:18 – 02:03:48]

• Summary: A single mother and her toddler are chased off the highway by a determined stalker. She brandishes a revolver, forcing him to retreat.

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23. Grandchild and Grandma Followed Across Country

[02:03:49 – 02:08:33]

• Summary: A child and her grandmother are trailed for 12 hours by a leering gas station clerk; only intervention at a police station finally ends their pursuer’s interest.
• Notable Moment:

  “He watched us... while my grandma talked with the lovely lady at the desk. Thankfully, the cops handled the creepy man with ease...” — Narrator (02:07:57)

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24. Attempted Break-In During Gas Station Nap

[02:08:34 – 02:10:23]

• Summary: A woman and her mother wake in their car late at night to hear someone attempting to open their door handles; a white van is lurking nearby.

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25. Masked Roadblock on Country Road

[02:10:24 – 02:15:28]

• Summary: A teen alone on a rural drive finds the road blocked by masked adults wielding bats and flashing lights; her quick reflexes likely save her from harm.
• Quote:

  “Those were definitely people and I was definitely afraid.” — Narrator (02:15:20)

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26. Foreign Student, Nearly the Victim in California

[02:15:29 – 02:24:54]

• Summary: A grad student and his girlfriend narrowly escape a potential predator in a motel and a menacing van that follows them through San Diego’s deserted streets.
• Notable Quote:

  “That entire day felt like an intro to a slasher movie.” — Narrator (02:24:48)

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27. Truck Road Rage in Mexico

[02:24:55 – 02:27:32]

• Summary: A family on a toll road is harassed and tailgated by an 18-wheeler whose driver attempts to run them off the road after a minor traffic misunderstanding.

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28. Van Full of Predators in Kansas

[02:27:33 – 02:31:28]

• Summary: Two young adults are picked up by a “helpful” van only to overhear chilling plans to harm them before one man's conscience spares them at the last second.
• Quote:

  “From the moment we entered the van, my friend and I didn’t speak to each other. We barely looked at each other. We were afraid.” — Narrator (02:29:17)

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29. Whistling Stranger at Deserted Gas Station

[02:31:29 – 02:35:32]

• Summary: On a late-night road trip, a woman pumping gas is harassed by a menacing stranger—only saved from a possible attack by her alert roommate making her presence known.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “Imagine trying to explain to the police why your ex's body stayed all winter under your deck.” — Stalker Ex Saga (08:35)
• “I asked him if today was a good day for him to die.” — Homecoming Horror at Walmart (01:33:45)
• “Danger doesn’t feel distant. When it’s real, it can be as close as a dumpster behind your work, as near as the shadows beyond a parking lot light.” — Taco Bell Dumpster Horror (42:10)
• “He never came back after that, though. I think he got scared. But sometimes, when I’m alone in a parking lot or walking home after dark, I wonder if he just found someone else.” — Burger King Creeper (36:45)
• “Trust your instincts, even when the world tells you you’re overreacting. We don’t get the luxury of brushing off our fear. Not in this world.” — Target Three Men (01:39:04)

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Conclusion

The compilation is a powerful reminder that real-life danger and predation often wear the face of normalcy. Each story—whether about a manipulative partner, a persistent stalker, road rage, or a seemingly helpful stranger—delivers both chills and cautionary wisdom. The community-driven stories affirm the importance of trusting one’s gut, being vigilant, and making noise when something feels off.

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Listener Advice (Themes Repeated Throughout):

• Always trust your instincts and act on gut feelings.
• Never hesitate to ask for help or make a scene if you feel unsafe.
• Be aware of surroundings, especially in seemingly safe environments like retail, gas stations, or parking lots.
• Creeps come in many forms; vigilance is for everyone, regardless of gender or age.
• Don’t apologize for protecting yourself—your safety comes first.

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For listeners craving genuine, chilling true stories that illuminate the darkness lurking in everyday life, this compilation maintains Southern Cannibal’s chilling, evocative narration and leaves listeners both rattled and more resolute to be safe out there.

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For more stories or to submit your own, visit SouthernCannibal.com.

Transcript

[A]

Hi everyone. I'm recording this intro because I'm not gonna be able to record stories this week and I had to make a compilation instead. There's been a loss in my family, someone that was very, very crucial to me in my life throughout my childhood. And yeah, I've gotta do a nine hour drive to go see my family and attend a funeral and you know, that whole process. And yeah, so not gonna be able to work on any new stories at least for about a week. So I thought I would throw together a compilation. I haven't done one in a while, so hopefully you guys don't mind, I'll have new stories when I come back home. Hope you guys enjoyed the compilation and take care. In 2009, I had met a girl on Plenty of Fish that I'll call Natalie for this story. We really did hit it off at first. She was fun, adventurous, outdoorsy and curious about nature. Things went awesome for almost a year. She also had a three year old son when I met her that adored me. I had actually started to save some money to buy an engagement ring and that is when the cracks started to show. This was when she went to court over child custody with her ex, which she told me he was abusive and had once held her at gunpoint and tried to hit her with the car when she tried to leave. On the day of the custody case, she had started to cry and become incoherent. Before the judge came into the room, she said out loud, you win, I give up. You can have him, I don't care anymore. I'll just have another baby. Or something along those lines. Everyone in the courtroom looked at her bewildered. I got her to be quiet before the judge walked in. Her lawyer did all of the talking with negotiation. She managed to get primary care for 5050 custody. That is when I learned that she had some charges for assault, but it wasn't specified. I just assumed things were rough between them and that she was stressed. But I had started to really question her emotional state and if I wanted to risk starting a family with her. I still intended to stay by her side though. As time went by, I kept encouraging her to call her friends and hang out with them as she would often talk about them. But I had never once met any of them or talked to them or even seen a single photograph. It seemed like she only had me, her son and her parents in her life. I thought that she needed some friends for her mental health. Then one day she just told me she was finally having a girls night out with old friends. From high school. I was happy for her and I encouraged her to go from there. The girl's night happened, but the details of the night didn't make any sense. I then talked to her parents on a visit to their place. Turns out they had no clue what I was talking about and that none of those so called friends even existed. When I confronted her about this, she admitted she had met a guy who was a high school friend and that they met at a specific Tim Hortons and talked till 3am over a hot apple cider. The problem was that location didn't sell that drink and they closed at midnight. I knew she was lying and she just asked for us to be friends. She wanted for me to keep doing all the family things together, but no kissing or anything else and just be friends. We broke up three or four days later. I received a call. She was then crying for us to get back together but she wouldn't tell me where she was and it was clear she wasn't mentally stable. She threatened to hurt herself if we didn't get back together. It turns out she had dropped her son off at her mom's place and then disappeared for three days without telling them where she was. I called the number on the call display and it was the most expensive hotel in town. I told them to call the police and send them to her room because she might hurt herself. Well, a few weeks later she showed up to my place and asked for us to get back together. She even offered to add another girl to the relationship so we could have threesomes. I just said no and I shut the door in her face. She then went to my parents place and told my parents that on one of my trips to Europe that my friend and I shared a girl. And just for the record, no, that never happened. As you can imagine, My parents told her to leave. But then she told my father that he should disown me because I was a bad son and he wouldn't believe all the things I told her about him. My father just replied back with I'm a hard man to get along with. If he told you bad things about me, it's probably true. And then he just slammed the door right in her face. So a few weeks later or so after this all happened, my phone and my parents phone totally blew up while I was visiting them when I was at their place for dinner it was ringing every 10 seconds. So I turned off my phone and my parents took their phone off the hook. A few hours later. We listened to her messages. She clearly needed help she claimed that she was in a forest behind my parents home and that she's lost and her cell phone was almost dead. And again we called the police. We made them listen to the voicemail and they went to go get her. They found her with no shoes, some 300 meters away from my parents place and near a highway that you could hear traffic. Was she done? Nope. After four months I didn't hear from her. I thought the saga had ended and I had just started to date the woman I was with for seven years. Tons and tons of phone calls started up again. Now she was telling me she was pregnant. I asked for proof, but she said she had a miscarriage. I then told my new girlfriend that I think my ex is gonna show up at my place. And she told me to come and hide at her place. A few days later I came home and we had 4 inches of permanent snow on the ground. My yard was full of footprints and an empty bottle of rum. On my door there was a bag with a 15 page handwritten will that she's leaving her son to me and that it's her fault her son won't have a mother. I actually refused to read the whole thing. I just called the police again. I told them I couldn't find her car, that I have her driver's license, health card and an empty bottle of rum. They informed me that they already have her and that they would send some officers to get her stuff. As I hung up, my neighbor came out and told me that earlier in the morning he had heard her whimpering in my yard and that he actually saw her under my deck. She had frostbite and hypothermia and he had called the ambulance. To be perfectly honest, I would have never thought about looking under my deck. If she would have died there, she would have stayed there till spring and her body would have started to fall out. Imagine trying to explain to the police why your ex's body stayed all winter under your deck. The snow had also started to come down a few hours before my neighbor found her, so there would have been no signs of her going there. When I finally found her car some blocks away from my house, I called her father and I told him where the vehicle was. That is when her parents apologized and they told me that they hoped she was going to get better with me in the picture. That is when I found out that it wasn't her ex who held a shotgun at her and tried to run her down with the car. It was her. She was the one who held him at Gunpoint. And it was her who tried to run him over with the car. They also told me that she never showed any signs of being pregnant. And they admitted that their daughter was very conniving. Yeah, that was a pretty fun chapter in my life. I haven't heard from her for a very long time. Thank God. Natalie, if you happen to hear this, I really hope you're doing much better and I hope your son's doing okay. I really loved your parents. Please take care of yourself, but please let's keep a permanent. No contact. This happened about five years ago when I met a guy at the gym. I never went to the gym with dating in mind, but I was single and I was interested in meeting someone. There was a guy there who would usually try and make small talk with me and I would sometimes be in the mood to entertain it. He wasn't the typical guy talking to a girl in the gym. He would listen to what I had to say and never even tried to mansplain workouts to me. He was a tall, strong and muscular guy whose name was Jared. One night I saw Jared on Tinder and we had matched. We chatted for a little while, but for some reason I had stopped responding. A few days later and we ran into each other at the gym. He came over and chatted with me and he then asked me on a date, which I agreed to go. I really didn't want to go, but I felt like I had to say yes since he had asked in person. And we went to the same gym the next night. We had met for dinner and he was actually very charming. He cleaned up well outside of the gym and he was dressed up very nice. He made me laugh and our chemistry was there. The first red flag I noticed was that he was very rude to the waiter. Waiters, they don't have real jobs because they can't do jack shit, he said. I thought I was a bit rude, but I tried to look past that. After about a month of seeing each other, Jared and I were officially boyfriend and girlfriend. But things started to feel different. He would show up to my apartment late at night unannounced, get angry if I wouldn't answer the phone and have serious anger issues, I would miss his call and he would call me names, belittle my friends and just make me feel worthless. One night he actually showed up to my apartment drunk and demanding sex. I refused, but he was being very pushy, so I asked him to leave. Thirty minutes later, I can hear him by my window, let me back in and give Me what I want. I need to feel you. It's really hurting me to not be fucking you right now. I told him that he needed to fuck off. He then told me of something along the lines of breaking down my door and forcing himself on me. Yeah, he threatened to rape me. This is when I threatened back to call the police and he left. I then texted him and I told him we were done. This was the last straw and I just couldn't take being with him anymore. A few hours later, I was woken up to him banging at my door and crying, please let me in. I swear I'll be more considerate. The truth is that I love you and I just need to get therapy. I told him we could get back together once he began therapy. This was a huge mistake on my part and I should have left way earlier in the relationship. At this point, we were not really together anymore, but we were still having sex and spending some time together. He seemed okay for about a week until his next meltdown. I was having a pretty bad day and I wasn't really in a social mood. I was in a weird place when I had lost all interest in Jared. But I was also scared to date. For my own safety. I had gone to the gym to help relieve some stress and I was talking to an older guy there. He was being friendly and we may have been talking for about three minutes until I then heard. So that's why you won't answer me. It's Jared, you disgusting whore. I just knew you were already fucking other men. Why don't you answer your phone? This was extremely embarrassing and he was causing a huge scene in the gym. He began tossing gym equipment and it frightened me. I ran out crying and I got in my car to leave. I left my workout bag and water bottle in the gym and I didn't even care because I just wanted to get the hell away from Jared. He then came out of the gym and came running up to my car screaming. I had the windows up, thankfully, but I could just hear him verbally tearing me down outside of my car. I then drove off and that's when I received a text from him. I'm going to destroy you one day. If not today, then someday in the future. I blocked his number and just drove home. A few nights later, he was once again at my window. He was blaring that stupid song, so Sick by Neo. From his car I could hear him screaming and crying, talking about killing himself. I then called the police and I told him to go away and stop coming around me. At this point in my life, I had never gotten a restraining order because of how much I was working as a bartender. It just seemed impossible at the time. The cops didn't show up to my house until an hour after he had left and they said to just call again if he came back. The cops in my city don't really do a whole lot about these kinds of things. A few months went by and every once in a while he would make a new Instagram to try and chat with me. I would just block all of his efforts and I even started going to a new gym. He would try and contact me for almost two years from different social media accounts, emails and even LinkedIn. The most disturbing thing is he had sent this one email. It was an image of a tattoo they had gotten of a teddy bear holding onto a gun to its head and above it were the words that read Jerbear, which is some cringy childish pet name that I would call him. The email he sent contained that image as well as a message saying he's sad with a sad face emoji. To think that this maniac was really doing this for years over a two month long relationship was disturbing as hell to me. I advise anyone who hears this story to please be careful of who you let into your life. I'm a female and this takes place back in the early years of high school. For me, I was always an incredibly shy person, and I mean really shy because I was still in my phase of hiding behind my parents legs whenever they walked me into school since I really hated all these strangers eyes being on me when entering the classroom. Thankfully though, I had started to meet some really lovely people who shared my same interests at the time and they ended up becoming some of my closest friends, some of which I still talk to to this day after graduating. Unfortunately, one of these people who I met turned out to be someone that I really wished I hadn't included in my group of friends. We'll call him Teddy since that's when a lot of people in my school had started calling him. From what I can remember at the time, he was pretty similar to my friends and I being a bit of an introverted nerd who loved cartoons and drawing. Now at the time I didn't sense anything off about him and I was pretty friendly with him. But now, with hindsight as to what would happen later, he definitely had some well off vibes about him. Our small group was full of socially awkward people and at the time I had undiagnosed severe anxiety disorder. So I was especially socially inept, but he gave off especially awkward vibes that I simply didn't pick up on at the time. Fast forward at least a few months and our friendship had started to develop into crushes for one another. This then led to us becoming a couple. However, I say that loosely because I mean, we were still young adolescents at the time. Still, it did truly feel like a relationship because he was surprisingly mature with the whole thing. What I mean by that is that we had started dating a week or so before Valentine's Day, and when the day was being celebrated at school, he bought me lunch during our first break time, as well as a little octopus plushie and a loving card at the time. I was definitely taken aback by this, but I did ultimately think that it was really sweet of him, though I did feel a little guilty as I hadn't gotten him anything for the day since I hadn't expected all these gifts during our first week of dating. That honestly was the first red flag looking back on it now, because this guy ended up becoming creepily obsessed with me in an immensely short amount of time. A few other things happened throughout our time of dating, and all I remember was that he started to become more and more attached to me. Now I'm completely fine with having a partner who loves being around me and physical affection, as I can be pretty clingy too with someone I love. But he was pretty much following me around everywhere and he always had to be attached to me, either by linking our arms or hugging me in some way. Some of my friends found it cute, whereas some of my other friends found it just as annoying as I did and a little odd. At the time, I didn't really know how to feel about it, but I knew it definitely made me uncomfortable and it actually slowly made me lose interest in him. Though this could also be because my gut had just been telling me not to continue dating this guy, and this gut instinct had contributed to me slowly losing any feelings that I had for him. Like I said earlier, I had severe anxiety at the time. That was unfortunate, unfortunately undiagnosed during my early high school years. And I also just wasn't a very confrontational person. I utterly despised drama of any kind. Well, with this in mind, you can imagine how much I was stressing over telling this guy that I simply didn't like him anymore and that I just wanted to go back to being friends, especially because of how quickly it had taken for him to become attached to me. I can't remember the finer details, but I do know that one way or another, we did actually break up after only a few weeks of dating, so it wasn't like this relationship had been long term or anything. You'd think that would have made it easier to just go back to being friends, right? Well, not for Teddy. I was relieved at first because it seemed like we both could actually just forget pretty easily that we dated. But oh how wrong I was. I want to say, at least a week or so after the breakup, Teddy had still been lingering around me like a bad smell. He wasn't getting super close or anything, but I knew for a fact based on my own feelings and from what friends had been telling me then, he was always pretty close by whenever I either sat by my friends at lunch or in class and he would always just be constantly staring at me. I would sometimes catch a glimpse of him staring at me since it felt like he was burning a hole in the back of my head at times, and I was always greeted with this dead pan and unwavering look in his eyes, as if he were in a deep state of focus before he would quickly pretend that he wasn't just ogling at me and start frantically typing on his laptop or scribbling in his notebook. This pattern of behavior definitely unnerved me, but it was overall just pretty annoying to deal with. I do remember I got one of my more no bullshit best friends to stand up for me and tell him to get lost and leave me alone, since honestly, at this point his behavior was enough to put me off from being friends anymore. Things just felt way too awkward. I really wished it ended there, but the moment that still stands out in my memory so vividly to this day is one day when lunchtime was a couple of minutes from ending and I decided to leave early for my fourth period class. I'm not sure how American high schools work, as this is set in Australia, but it's essentially our final class of the day. I don't remember exactly why, but I wasn't with any of my friends for this lunchtime and so I was walking towards one of our school's many large stairways since my class was on the highest floor. Well, I just made it into the stairway. One guess who shows up behind me out of seemingly nowhere. Teddy. I immediately felt my throat and mouth become dry upon seeing him after he then tapped on my shoulder to get my attention and even though the food courtyard was literally a couple of feet away from the stairway, it truly felt like I'd been suddenly trapped in some inescapable cage with just him and I I was frozen still. Now that I look back on it, this guy had to have been still fucking stalking me since there's no other way that he would have known that I'd be walking all alone to my class early without any of my friends near me at this exact damn time. I mean, unless he had been watching me, it was far too coincidental and perfect for him. With his usual awkwardness, he then spoke up in his awkwardly pretty creepy voice, telling me that he just wanted to speak to me alone for a moment and that he had the perfect opportunity to do so now that my more comforting friend wasn't there to act as my much needed protective guard dog. I wish I had more courage at that time. To be honest, I would have just told him to leave me alone as I didn't want to hear anything he had to say and that I needed to get to class. But the side of me that was full of anxiety and just wanting to be nice to anyone and everyone got the better of me and so I just staying quiet as he then put his hands on me and then physically pulled me to the side of the stairway so that the sides of our arms were now pressed against the cold stone walls. I didn't mention this before, but I've always been an incredibly short girl because even as I'm writing this, I stand at 4 foot and 7 inches tall, and I was obviously even shorter at this time in high school where people were starting to go through all their growth spurts. I mention this now because this Teddy guy made sure to stand right in front of me in a way that made it so that he could easily stop me if I just simply decided to try and leave. It also made it so that my reaction to what was happening was easier to conceal from anyone who may walk by the hallway just below us, as my short stature was completely hidden by him. That's when he then pulled out a letter and said that he had written it for me and then he wanted to read it out loud to me so that I would understand him. I already knew where this was going and hearing him read out the letter only made my anxiety rise. With every word, I'll give a brief summary of what the letter contained. Now his words Dear Cheery, I'm sorry I failed to make you happy and that I can no longer be there to give you hugs and prayers presence because you deserve to be showered in all the love in the world. I want to be the only one you can rely on to do that for you if you would Please just give me another chance. I promise I can change and be the perfect man for you, the one you deserve. I'll start by going to the gym for you if you so desire. I want to make you happy so that hopefully one day we can start waking up in the same bed together after we settle down and finally get married. Please give me another chance. I can change. This isn't the exact words, but everything from the wanting to date me again and wanting to change into a better man so that he could marry and live with me were all the statements that were played vividly in my mind whenever I remember this moment. I don't know about you guys, but as a kid, hearing this guy talk about how he had this whole future of us planned out and how he legitimately thought about making himself an ideal man for me so that I would end up marrying him when we had only dated for only a few weeks was just super creepy and really sent my heart into my stomach. He then looked at me expectantly, but honestly, in my eyes it was the sort of stare that had a hint of creepiness behind it. This guy was way too obsessed with me and that realization had finally hit me all at once. In and near the bell signifying the end of lunch had gone off at some point during this creepy reading, but it was highly unlikely anyone would actually walk up to the stairway where we were since there were only two classrooms that rarely had any classes scheduled inside them, as well as a less populated teacher's lounge on the top floor, meaning I was pretty much left there on my own. I had definitely gone into fight or flight sort of mode at this point, except my body had decided to do the unfortunate third option, freeze. I was unable to say anything in response to what had just been said to me, and I was also unable to just run away and turn back on this obsessive guy. I was just scared he would grab me again, or that ignoring him would make him angry and thus cause the stalking to get worse. Before I knew it, my anxiety had reached a boiling point and I started to have an anxiety attack as I then broke down crying right in front of him, unable to get a word out before it all just turned into sputtering tears and heavy breathing. Teddy seemed pretty startled and flustered by my reaction. It was obvious he hadn't expected this as he tried to think about what to do next. That's when, through my tears, I also saw him start to reach out to me or maybe even pull me in for a a hug, which would have helped if this was one of my friends, but this was some creepy ass guy who was unnaturally infatuated with me. The same guy who had caused me to go into an anxiety attack in the first place. Before he could lay a hand on me though, some voices came from beside us and I looked over to see two girls who I'd never met before. They had thankfully walked up the stairs and took notice of what was going on between us, deciding to confront us instead of ignoring it as I was clearly in a lot of distress by this point. Teddy tried to explain the situation, saying that it wasn't as bad as it seemed, but these two girls weren't idiots. They saw that this guy had clearly made me cry and instead cut off his pathetic explanation with extremely dirty looks. One of the girls started to get all up in his face while also raising her voice at him, telling him to leave me alone. Meanwhile, the other girl quickly came to my side and made sure I was okay, before then glaring daggers at Teddy whilst her other friend chewed him out. Eventually, the two strangers managed to peel me out of that whole situation whilst I was still a hyperventilating and unresponsive mess of tears, leaving Teddy to stand there dumbfounded. It turns out my class had been moved elsewhere for the afternoon and so we were told by a teacher that we would have to walk all the way to the other side of our massive high school, to the library. Thankfully though, these girls were utter sweethearts and didn't care about being late for their own classes as they only cared about getting me to my class safely. Bless their hearts. Honestly, they were so comforting despite not even knowing me. My friends were obviously utterly appalled to see me in this state once I had made it to the library, and their dislike for Teddy had grown a lot after that day. Thankfully, he never spoke to me or hung around me since that day outside of classes, and I felt like I could finally walk around doing my own thing without having his eyes burn into the back of my head constantly. I was still scared deep down that he would pull me aside again whenever I wasn't with my friends, but I'm grateful that never happened. Just as senior year was getting closer, I noticed that I hadn't actually seen Teddy anywhere lately. And that's when I was told by a friend that he had moved to Sydney and that he was going to be a permanent resident there, having been enrolled to a new school and everything. That was such a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. To be honest, he hadn't been stalking me as much, of course, but Just knowing he would be nowhere near me at all just made me feel feel a lot safer. I slowly forgot all about him as time passed, but unfortunately it turns out his so called permanent residency to Sydney wasn't so permanent as right around year 11 he had returned to my school. Having moved back from Sydney for unknown reasons. I was initially a little weary about this, but thankfully being in senior year meant we mostly had elective classes now and from my knowledge he took mostly classes that were in the lower level area, whereas I had taken a mix of both low and high level classes plus a few certificate classes and he wasn't in any of them save for one of the few higher tier classes that we both shared, that being literature. It's a little funny because our literature teacher very clearly didn't want him in her class since he was actually really bad at the subject and in her eyes he clearly didn't take it very seriously. I mean for one of our assessments he literally wrote his whole essay in his own made up language and expected the teacher to be able to understand it. Eventually this continued behavior led to him being forcibly removed from the class and then put into a lower level English class. That might sound pretty mean since it was clear he definitely had some mental health issues, but honestly I was a little relieved since I think he had finally recognized me after not seeing me for so many years and had started to stare at me every now and then during our class. There was only one other time that we had shared a class together and that was because my lower level math class got merged with his for an afternoon due to our teacher being unable to attend and there being no teacher aide assigned to us. I simply sat with my best friend whilst we worked, but I could feel him staring at me again and every time I would look back in his direction he would do that same shit he did back in junior year where he quickly scrambled back to looking intently at his laptop screen when he got caught staring. And if none of this convinces you that he was an obsessive creep, it turns out that at some point during senior year he had been suspended due to him being caught taking multiple upskirt pictures of girls in our grade. On top of this, he had also started dating a girl who was still in her junior years, meaning she was probably in the 1315 age range, whereas he was around 17 at the time. Now to some people that might not seem odd, but in the future that would mean that he would already be 18 and graduated when she was still at most 16. And that's pretty fucking weird to me, especially considering everything else that he had done. I know this may be a little long and not as scary as other stalker stories on the channel, but honestly at the time I was so uneasy and genuinely scared of how this guy would react towards me not accepting any of his feelings. It sends a shiver up my spine remembering how weirdly obsessed this dude got after only dating me for a small handful of weeks, especially just as kids. I really really hope after all the stuff he got caught doing that he did some self reflecting after high school and got some help and is doing much better mentally. I also hope that he's no longer dating that young girl as that still really grosses me out to remember. Thankfully I haven't seen any trace of him since graduating three years ago. And whilst this experience on top of another terribly mentally abusive, abusive relationship that I got into during 12th grade made it very hard for me to trust someone as well as feel comfortable in relationships, I'm happy to say that I've finally found someone who truly makes me feel like I'm cared for in a non creepy way. He truly makes me feel like I'm an actual person and he's honestly massively helped me in getting over these relationship hurdles that have scarred me all these years. I'm happy to say we'll be having our one year anniversary this this December to end things off. I honestly got really lucky that this guy wasn't easily angered or anything and that I also had some strangers pull me out of the stairway situation before things got even more uncomfortable for me. This whole situation could have gotten a lot worse for me. My advice to anyone out there that might relate to this in some form is to please be highly alert to any red flags and you should always trust your gut instinct with these sort of things. You shouldn't even care about possibly hurting someone's feelings because your safety is all that matters and realizing these warning signs early is super important. Please take care of yourselves out there. You're all so much stronger than you know. Thank you all for taking the time to listen to this and thank you to Southern Cannibal for narrating it. Be safe out there everyone. The story happened just last week and it's still fresh in my mind. My family and I had decided to stop at Culver's for lunch. It was around noon when we pulled into the parking lot of a newer Culver's in our town. We parked and got out of the car and began walking into the restaurant. As we're walking walking in, I notice A strange guy sitting in a black Chevy pickup with the driver's door open. It looked to be in his 30s and he was smoking a cigarette and seemingly watching everything and everyone around him very carefully. I didn't think much of it since our town has a lot of weirdos in it and we just went inside. We were sitting at a table near the window and I could see the guy's trunk a few feet spaced away and he was still sitting there smoking a cigarette. I thought it was weird, he wasn't getting any food or anything, but I figured maybe he was waiting for a door dash order or something. It took a while to get our food, but eventually we got it. We had been there so long at this point that the employees were doing shift change. All of a sudden I hear three loud pops and look out the window to see a female employee drop to the ground, blood getting all over the concrete and the man closing the door in his truck and peeling out of the parking lot. My parents and I were in shock and everything was just a blur after that. But basically the police showed up and shut down the restaurant and we had to leave. Later on the news we learned that the man was the woman's ex boyfriend who she had just broken up with and he had decided to end her life because of it and waited for her outside of her work. And little did she know, at the end of her shift she'd be walking right into her fate. The man was arrested and charged with murder, public endangerment and discharging a firearm in a public space. And he was given 190 years in prison. The image of that woman laying in a pool of blood is still burned into my mind forever. And I'm never going back to that Culver's again. My name is Stephanie and this all happened when I was 17 years old a few years ago. I got my first job the summer before my senior year in June of 2022. Burger King wasn't exactly my dream, but it paid better than babysitting and didn't involve cleaning strangers houses like my mom's job. I wanted to help her out with the bills and save up for a beat up Honda Civic that I saw parked at a neighbor's house with a for sale sign in the window. It was $2,000 I figured I'd get. I could make that by the fall if I picked up enough hours. I was hired two days after I filled out the online application. My uniform was a little too big and the visor made me look like a dork. But I didn't care. There was something exciting about clocking in, putting on a headset and pretending that I was part of something real. I made burgers, bagged fries, and restocked napkins. I learned to refill the soda machine without making a mess. I liked the buzz of the drive thru during dinner rush and the way that my manager, Tanya, called me kiddo when I got things right. For a little while things felt normal. Then he started coming in. The first time I noticed him was on a Tuesday night. I remember because my feet were killing me and I was counting down the minutes until close. He came in just after the dinner rush, around 6:45pm he looked out of place, older than most of our customers, maybe late 40s, with graying hair and skin that looked like it hadn't seen a moisturizer in a decade. His eyes didn't move the way most people's did. They stayed fixed on me for way too long. He walked up to my register, ordered a Whopper with cheese and a medium fry. When I asked if he wanted a drink, he didn't answer me right away. Instead, he smiled in this way that made my stomach just twist. You're new here, he said. Yep, it's my first month. You've got a nice face, he said. I bet you hear that a lot. I didn't know what to say. I just handed him his receipt and told him that his food would be right out. He sat down at the table closest to the counter, eating slowly, watching me between bites. I told Tania all about it after my shift. Oh, he's just a long way, she said with a sigh. We get a lot of regulars like that. Don't let it bother you. I wanted to believe her. But then he came in again the very next night. And the night after that too. Every single night. Always during my shift. Always my line. He never changed his order. A Whopper with cheese, medium fry, and no drink. But he'd started adding little comments every time. Love that braid you're wearing tonight. You look tired, sweetheart. Long day. I could take you somewhere nice if you ever wanted a break from this place. It wasn't just the words. It was the way he looked at me, like he was measuring something. I tried to keep it professional. Short responses, eyes on the register. But it started to get harder to smile. Even when I wasn't working the counter, I'd feel a stare from across the dining room. I started dreading my shifts. One of my coworkers, Eli, noticed something was off too. You good? He asked me one night while restocking the sauce packets. That guy gives me bad vibes. I nodded. He's been here every night, always talking to me. Well, did you tell Tania? Eli asked. She thinks he's harmless. Eli frowned. I don't like it. Neither did I, but I didn't want to make drama over a creepy customer. I mean, what if I really was just overreacting? Then came the night everything changed. It was a Thursday night, just after 11pm Tanya was finishing the register count and I was taking out the trash before clocking out. I remember checking my phone 11:22pm and I had texted my mom that I'd be home soon. I walked out the back door into the alley behind the building, headed toward the parking lot. It was quiet. Too quiet. That's when I saw him. He was leaning against the wall near the edge of the dumpster, half in shadow, smoking a cigarette. Hey there, he said. I froze. I hadn't seen him in the restaurant that night. I thought you'd come out sooner, he added. I waited here for a while. My heart dropped into my stomach. What do you want? He took a step forward, flicking the cigarette away. I just wanted to talk. You're always so busy inside. I tried to move past him, but he had stepped in front of me. Look, I like you, okay? I think we'd get along. You seem smart. Kind. I could take you out sometime. Maybe show you something better than this greasy place. No, I said, my voice trembling. You need to leave. I'm not trying to scare you, he said quickly. I just Tanya. I screamed. The back door slammed open. Tanya appeared in her work polo eye scanning the alley. Steph, what's going on out here? The man's eyes went wide. He bolted, running into the darkness behind the building before Tanya could catch more than a glimpse of his outline. I couldn't stop shaking. Tania walked me to my car and stayed with me until I calmed down enough to drive. We called the police, filed a report, even showed them security footage, but nothing ever came of it. He never came back after that, though. I think he got scared. But sometimes when I'm alone in place a parking lot, or walking home after dark, I wonder if he just found someone else. Someone who didn't scream in time. If you take anything from my story, let it be this. Whether you're working fast food, retail, or anywhere that puts you in contact with strangers. Trust your instincts. Creeps don't always look like villains. They don't always break laws. Sometimes they wait. They watch. They wear you down until they think they can cross the line. It doesn't matter if they're a customer. It doesn't matter if no one else believes you. You don't owe anyone your silence, your smile, or your time. Speak up, make noise, ask for help. Because the truth is, danger doesn't always kick the door down. Sometimes it walks in, orders a burger and stares at you from across the counter. And you have every right to walk away. Every right to be safe. And every right to say no. I never really had to work. Not in the way most people do anyway. I come from a pretty well off family. The kind where birthdays meant weekend trips instead of presents. And if I ever needed money for books or clothes or rent, my parents would just venmo it over before. Before I even finished asking. And I don't say that to Bragg. Honestly, it's always made me feel weird. Like I was watching life from behind glass while everyone else was out there living it. So at 20, halfway through college and smack in the middle of a pretty cushy existence, I decided to do something completely out of character. I got a job at Taco Bell. It wasn't for the money. God knows I didn't need the $10 something an hour that were offering. I think I just wanted to feel something different. Something normal. Something real. Maybe I was bored. Maybe I wanted to prove that I wasn't as soft as I secretly worried I was. Whatever the reason, I filled out the application during a break between classes and I didn't think twice about it. And to my surprise, I got hired. No interview, no questions beyond can you work weekends? Just like that. I had a purple visor and my name written in Sharpie on a piece of masking tape. It was my first job ever. The rush. The first few shifts were almost fun. There's a rhythm to fast food, the strange choreography of beeping friars shouted orders, hands moving fast but knowing exactly what they're doing. My co workers were a mixed bunch. College kids like me, single moms, one guy out on parole who made the best burritos I've ever seen. They were all kind, sharp in unexpected ways and weirdly funny. They didn't treat me any differently. Even though I knew I stuck out my hands were soft. I flinched at grease pops. I said please and thank you way too much. But no one ever said anything. They just showed me how to do things. Things. How to reset the register whenever it froze. How to fold a Crunch wrap without it falling apart. How to keep your cool when someone threw a drink at the drive. Thru window because we were out of Baja Blast, and I would say that I did okay better than I thought I would. I started to look forward to the shifts, especially at night when the store got quiet and we were all just killing time until close, laughing over broken headset mics or sneaking extra cinnamon twists. It felt like I was part of something. Then that night happened and everything changed. The truck. It was a Friday, one of those strange in between nights where the rush dies early but the store stays open late. 11:03pm I remember because I had just checked the wall clock, wondering how much longer I had to stay. We were on cleanup duty. I was in the bag, stacking up the trash bags for the usual trip out to the dumpster. That's when I noticed the truck. An old white pickup, beat to hell, rust eating the lower panels, dug tape over one of the tail lights. It had been parked there for a while, near the very back of the lot, right at the edge where the lights didn't quite reach. I thought it was weird, but it is a Taco Bell, weird as standard. Maybe it belonged to a customer from earlier who left it overnight. Maybe someone was sleeping in it. We got that sometimes people who just needed a place to rest, scroll on their phones or leech off the free wi fi. Still, though, something about this truck. It unsettled me. It was too still, like it had been waiting. I shook it off. I tied up the bags, grabbed two, one in each hand, pushed open the back door into the night. Outside it was quiet. No stars, just low clouds smothering the sky. The parking lot lights buzzed overhead, flickering slightly. The wind carried the faint smell of fries, bleach, and wet asphalt. The Truck said. Maybe 20ft away, half in shadow. I didn't look at it. Well, not really. I kept my eyes forward, focused on the dumpster. Then I opened the lid. The finger. I threw the first bag in and it landed with a wet smack. The second bag snagged onto something, maybe a box, maybe metal, so I leaned in to shift it. That's when I saw it. Near the corner, half hidden by a flattened soda box. There was a finger. At first, of course, I thought it was a prank, a fake Halloween prop someone tossed in for a laugh. But then I saw the dirt under the chipped nail, the dried blood crusted on the knuckle, the pale soft look of the real skin. It was real. I froze. Everything in me just stopped. My stomach dropped and I couldn't hear my own breath. Too loud, too fast. I couldn't think. I couldn't even feel anything. I was just staring at it. Then I turned and ran, bursting through the door, shouting for my manager, and tripping over a mop bucket. At first she laughed, thought I was messing with her. I then insisted, borderline hysterical. She came with me, reluctantly. The moment she saw it, her whole face changed, like someone turned out the lights behind her eyes. She didn't say anything, just backed away, locked the door, and called 911. The aftermath the cops arrived pretty fast. Blue and red lights lit up the parking lot, bouncing off the wet pavement. They roped off the back area with yellow tape. Flashlights scanned the dumpster. The truck, which by then was gone, vanished. I hadn't heard it leave. None of us had. I gave my statement. So did my manager. The rest of the crew stood in the back room, quiet and confused. No one had seen anything unusual. No one had even noticed the truck arrive or drive away. It was like it had been there just long enough. Days passed. Eventually we heard back. The finger had belonged to a missing woman. She was homeless. I'm not going to share her real identity just for anonymity sake. She was in her early 40s. From what I heard, she at one point had a really great life. But like many, she went down the path of drugs and I guessed too many mistakes caught up to her. The rest of her was found dumped in a lake 40 miles north. No arrests, no suspects, nothing else. But I couldn't stop thinking about it. The wait. I kept working there for a few more months. Pretended everything was fine. Smiled through orders, cracked jokes, stayed late when someone needed help. But I felt different. Like a thin crack had formed somewhere deep inside of me and no one else could see it. Every time I took out the trash, I felt like someone was watching. Like the shadows were holding their breath. I started dreaming about it. Not the finger exactly, but the dumpster. Always the dumpster. In the dreams, it was way deeper than it should be. Endless. Something waiting at the bottom. Breathing. Eventually I quit. Told everyone I needed to focus on school. Exams were coming up. But that really wasn't the truth. The truth is, I just couldn't stop thinking about that woman. About how close I had come to something that I didn't understand. Something I still don't. I wonder if I'd looked earlier, if I'd said something about the truck sooner, if anything would have changed. I'll never know. Here's what I learned. People say the world is small, that we're all connected. But I think what they mean is danger doesn't feel distant. When it's real, it can be as close as a dumpster behind your work, as near as the shadows beyond a parking lot light. I never expected to find anything out there. Certainly not a piece of someone's life or their death. But I did. And now I carry it with me. I still think about her. I still wonder who did it. And I still wish I'd never had to see what I saw. I love a good Pizza Hut personal pan pizza, especially when it's piping hot straight out of the oven and the cheese is still trying to escape you when you take that first bite. Greasy, slightly too salty and somehow exactly what my body craves at 9:30 in the morning. Morning. I know it's not technically breakfast, but it's my comfort food whenever I'm running late, under caffeinated and annoyed at life. I love them so much that when the drive thru is packed and the line is winding around the building like it's Black Friday, I'll park and go inside like a peasant. Like a noble pizza hungry peasant. Who has better things to do than sit in a line of idling cars for 20 minutes? Yesterday was one of those days. Already behind schedule for work, hungry and trying not to let my mood spiral, I pull into the lot and notice the line of cars in the drive thru, sigh audibly to no one and decide to be brave and go inside. As I'm walking toward the door, this girl is just standing there right in front of it, blocking it with her whole body. She's facing me but still kind of pushing the door open like she's going to hold it for me from the inside. Except she doesn't move. She just stands there with this weird vacant look on her face like she's buffering. I do that awkward shuffle thing, squeeze through the sliver of space she's left me and say thanks. No response. She just closes the door behind me and then walks over to one of the tables and sits down. Didn't even order anything, didn't even look around. Just sat. Whatever. I figured she was just waiting for someone or maybe just charging her phone. It was too early and I was too hungry to care. I placed my order, grabbed a cup for my drink and stood around trying to look patient while my stomach made sad hollow sounds. Eventually I get my pizza, thank you melted cheese gods and I head back outside. I'm already running 10 minutes late so I walk fast. I may be 10ft from my car when I hear someone yelling behind me ma'. Am. Ma'. Am. I keep walking. I'M not in the mood. People yell random stuff all the time. For all I know, someone's trying to sell me magazine subscriptions or convince me to sign up for a gym. But then I catch movement out of the corner of my eye. Someone running fast and toward me. I turn my head and it's the same girl from before. She's got a suitcase now, and a big one at that. Roller wheels, extendable handles, sleek and expensive looking. She is also wearing a really nice coat and a travel backpack that probably costs more than my monthly car insurance. So not exactly someone down on her luck. She's yelling. Ignoring me is rude. Ma', am, I know you can hear me. Okay, I'm officially unsettled at this point. I reach my car and get the driver's door open. I'm grateful now that I parked in that weird end spot with the concrete and decorative rocks to the left of me. No car beside me, no car in front or behind me. Just a little bubble of escape potential. She closes the distance and stops just short of my car door. I need you to take me to the terminal, she says. Not can you please take me? Not hey, I'm stuck. Do you mind? Nope. It's a demand. Like I'm her Uber driver and this is a scheduled pickup. She doesn't even look. Out of breath, I tell her I'm sorry, I can't. I'm already late for work. I motion vaguely down the road like work is just around the corner. It's not, but she doesn't need to know that. The terminal is right there, I add, pointing in the direction of the transit center. You can literally walk. It's a five minute walk, tops. She ignores that completely. You have to take me, she repeats, like the logic of it is self evident. Now I'm getting pissed. This isn't someone in trouble. This isn't a scared traveler looking for help. This is someone who's decided that I'm responsible for her and doesn't care whether I agree. I'm not taking you anywhere, I say flatly. I'm leaving. I sit down and close my door and as I'm turning the key in the ignition, I see her grab the passenger door handle and start yanking on it hard. Then she starts pounding on the window with the palm of her hand. Thankfully, my Jeep is a beat up early 2000s model with manual locks. There was no way that door would open. She tries again. Then she starts shouting again, louder this time. Something about me being a horrible person, about how she needs this ride and that I'm selfish. And then, just when I thought she might walk away, she drops her suitcase and runs to the back of my Jeep. She starts digging through her purse with one hand, slamming her fist against my rear window with the other, over and over. If you know old Jeeps, you know the rear glass isn't exactly bulletproof. At that point, I'm not just freaked out, I'm genuinely scared. I have no idea what she's reaching for in that purse. A knife? A key to slash my tires? A weapon? I don't wait to find out. I shift into four wheel drive, spin the wheel and gun it. My Jeep lurches over the concrete curb, tires gripping the rocks like they were made for it. I bounce my way out of the lot like a paranoid stunt driver in a bad action movie, pepperoni grease still on my fingers. In the mirror I catch one last glimpse of her chasing me to the sidewalk, still screaming. And just like that, she was gone. So yeah, to the wild Pizza Hut lady. Hopefully I won't encounter her again. I do have some lingering thoughts though. Am I a bad person for not giving her a ride? Or was this one of those self preservation tests? I've read way too many stories where good Samaritans end up in body bags. How did she even get to Pizza Hut? And I mean with a backpack and a suitcase. Someone must have dropped her off for she walked. Why not just keep walking to the terminal? She had a working phone. She was holding it when she first demanded the ride. What if I had given her a ride and there were people waiting at the terminal? What if this was some kind of setup? If she had just asked for money, she probably would have gotten a 20 from me. But she didn't ask. I still have way too many thoughts about this. I got my first job the summer I turned 16. It wasn't glamorous. In fact, it was the opposite of that. I worked at McDonalds. My parents were thrilled. My dad said it would build character and my mom said it would look good on college applications, even though I was pretty sure Ivy League schools didn't really care how many McChickens I handed out to customers. But honestly, I was kind of excited. I wanted to make my own money. I wanted to feel like I was doing something with my time instead of melting into my Xbox every night. And for the first few weeks, it was fine. Easy even. Take orders, smile, keep the line moving, clean the lobby, stock sauces, deal with weird customers. It wasn't fun, but it wasn't bad either. Not until the night when everything really changed for me. It was a Thursday in late July. Hot, humid, dead quiet except for the hum of the ice cream machine pretending to work. It was around 9:45pm about 15 minutes until closing and I was finishing up lobby duty, wiping down tables. No one had sat in for hours. The place was practically empty. Just me, the manager, Rita, who was barely older than than me, but somehow already jaded by life, and a guy named Marcus in the bag prepping stuff for the morning crew. That's when he came in. The door swung open with that little dink and I looked up, expecting some last minute customer rushing to beat the clock. Instead, it was a man. Homeless probably. He appeared to be mid-50s and he was wearing three layers of dirty clothes even though it was boiling outside. His beard looked like it hadn't been trimmed in a year, and his eyes, they were wild, unfocused, like he was seeing something else entirely. He shuffled in slowly, looking around like he wasn't sure where he was. Then he locked eyes with me. He then walked straight up to the counter. I put on my best employee smile. Hi, welcome to McDonald's. What can I get for you tonight? He didn't answer. He just pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of his coat pocket and slid it across the counter. I looked at it. The handwriting was barely legible, but I could make it out. Two Big Macs, one large fry, two apple pies, one Oreo McFlurry and a large Coke. I looked back up at him. Okay, that'll be I'm not paying, he interrupted, voice low and gravely. You're going to make that for me? All of it? I blinked, trying to keep my tone polite. Sir, I can't give out free food. Company policy, you know. He just stared at me for a second. Then slowly, almost casually, he reached into his coat. Then he pulled out a knife. Not huge, just one of those folding pocket ones, but the way he held it had made my blood turn cold. He didn't raise it, didn't wave it around. He just showed it like it was part of the conversation. You make the order or bad things will happen tonight. That's all he said. Bad things. Not loud, not crazy, just calm, like he was telling me the weather. I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. My hands were shaking so badly I nearly dropped the receipt paper. Rita had gone in the back to count drawers. I was alone out front, just me and this guy and the knife. I nodded. Okay, I'll get started. I turned and walked into the kitchen like I'D done a hundred times before, except now my heart was pounding so hard it felt like my ribs might crack. I caught Marcus eye and tried to mouth something, help. Knife, danger, something, but he was wearing earbuds and just gave me a thumbs up. I made the order, every piece of it. Big Macs, fries, pies, even the McFlurry, which I knew was going to piss off Rita because technically the machine was in cleaning mode. But I didn't care. I just wanted him gone. When I handed it over, he took it silently, just nodded once, stuffed the food into a torn grocery bag and walked out without another word. No scene, no running, just gone. I stood there for a full minute after he left, still gripping the edge of the counter like I might fall over. Rita came out a second later and looked around. You alright? You look like you saw a ghost. I didn't answer because it wasn't a ghost. It was real. Very real. It happened. And I couldn't unsee that knife. I couldn't unhear those words. Bad things will happen. I stayed until closing, but I didn't sleep at all that night. The next morning I texted Rita that I was quitting. Didn't even give a reason. She just replied with K and that was it. And I never went back. Not to work, not to visit, not even to grab fries. I drive past that McDonald's sometimes. It's still there. Same golden arches, Same drive thru menu. Same smell of fry or grease that somehow leaks through your car windows. But I never go in because every time I think about it I remember how close that knife was, how calm he sounded. How small. I felt like the world wasn't safe. Not even in a place with Happy Meals and birthday balloons. I know people deal with worse. I know it could have ended way differently. That was the night I realized the world isn't always about smiling customers and drive thru timers. Sometimes it's about survival. I remember working the night shift recently at a small Dunkin Donuts in my neighborhood. I was covering for my friend Sophie who had called in sick last minute. Honestly, I wasn't really thrilled about pulling a late shift, but it was one of those help a friend out deals. Little did I know that night would end up being one of the most unsettling experiences I've ever had on the job. The store was practically empty, quiet except for the hum of the espresso machines and the occasional beep from the fryer. Around 11pm the manager asked me to sweep the floors until a customer came in. That's when he walked through the door. He looked rough, bald, with a long, scruffy gray beard that was uneven and tangled, thick glasses sitting crooked on his nose. His sandals were worn thin and his clothes looked like he had been wearing them for days, stained and dirty. He shuffled to the counter and I greeted him as usual. Hi there. Can I get you anything? I looked up, tired eyes meeting mine, then said, just a large black coffee please. I took his order, handed him the cup with a smile, and then said, have a good night, sir. He smiled back, a small, quiet thing, but something about it seemed genuine. I grabbed the broom again and started sweeping, but I noticed that he was sitting kind of close to where I'd be working, right under the tables and near the trash bin. I tried to keep my focus on sweeping, but when I got near his table he suddenly spoke up. You're very pretty, he said. I smiled politely, a little caught off guard. Thank you. He leaned in just a bit and asked, want a ride home? When is your shift over? I shook my head quickly, no thanks, I have a ride. His smile vanished. The warmth in his eyes turned cold, almost sharp. What's your schedule? He demanded. I'm not allowed to give out that information, I said firmly. He grumbled something, grabbed his coffee and went back outside without another word. I shook off the encounter, chalking it up to one of those weird moments you try not to think about too much. The next night Sophie was back at work with me and our friend John was working the drive thru. I told Sophie about the man from the night before and she gave me this worried look like she was trying to figure out if I was joking or not. Then John came over and asked if everything was okay. I repeated the story. His face went pale. That guy actually called the store earlier, he said quietly. He asked about you. My blood ran cold. I hadn't even thought about the fact that he might know who I I was. Just then I saw him walk back inside the Duncan. Sophie went ghost white and John looked like he had seen a ghost too. I forced myself to greet him again. Hello, can I get you anything tonight? He shook his head and then said with a crooked grin, no, but can I take you home? Before I could answer, John stepped outside the drive thru window and shouted, man, no way she's going anywhere with you, dude. Get out of here before I call the cops. The manager was pissed off at John for leaving his post to confront the guy while Sophie was busy making sandwiches. John didn't argue. He just switched shifts with me until the morning crew arrived. Later on the manager asked me to take out the trash to the dumpster. My heart was pounding just thinking about going outside alone. Okay, I said, trying to keep my voice steady. John was furious. The manager expected me to do that, so he grabbed the trash bag himself and went outside instead. When he came back, he had pulled me aside and whispered, that guy was waiting for you in his truck. There were five other big guys with him. I felt my stomach twist into knots. I told the manager what John said, hoping she'd do something, but she just waved it off. He's harmless, she said. Stop worrying and get back to work. I didn't feel safe. The next morning, John and I worked the early shift. Our co worker Maya came up to me looking serious. That guy came back last night, she said quietly. Said he'd be waiting for you when you got here. I was sick to my stomach. I couldn't believe this was happening. When the guy showed up again later, John didn't hesitate. They told him to get the hell out and never come back or he called the cops. John's tone was so fierce that the guy left immediately. Sadly, John lost his job because he left his post to protect me. The manager fired him, probably because he was making her job even harder. I actually cried when John got fired. He was really the only one watching out for me. Sophie and I would have been completely alone otherwise. After all that, Sophie and I both quit working at Dunkin Donuts. We couldn't work there, feeling unsafe every night like that. Now John, Sophie and I all live in the same apartment building and we work at a grocery store. It's quieter, safer, and for now it really feels like a fresh start. I still wonder sometimes what might have happened if John hadn't taken out the trash that night. I'm just grateful that I never have to see that guy again. This is actually my second post here and it's the second time that I've had a creepy experience that felt like stalking. I'm going to try and keep it organized, but some backstory is necessary to understand what happened. Bear with me, it's a bit long. For about two to three years I worked as an assistant manager at a Starbucks located in wealthy neighborhood. It was one of those stores where the customers were mostly professionals and the staff tended to be pretty well off themselves. A lot of my co workers treated it like a fun part time gig while they finished college or waited for their real careers to start. I had some genuinely great memories there and honestly, a lot funny and wild stories too. The job had its ups and Downs. But things got particularly stressful when our store manager manager left unexpectedly. She took a position at a boutine coffee shop across town, and suddenly I was the highest ranking person left at the store. That meant I was running the place until corporate found a replacement. The next three months were rough. We were so understaffed, it was borderline chaos. One night, a few baristas just walked out mid shift because they were fed up with how everything was being handled. I stayed behind and kept the store open, juggling customer orders, stocking and cleaning, basically doing everything myself. It was exhausting. But I got a raise for holding down the fort, which was actually nice. Finally, corporates sent over some help. A new manager named Jason, along with a few employees from another Starbucks about 30 minutes away. Jason came in like he was the new sheriff in town, immediately barking orders at everyone. The problem was no one listened to him. But when I asked the same things, the team responded quickly and efficiently. Jason came to me frustrated, asking why they ignored him, but listened to me. I explained something pretty simple. These employees weren't there for the paycheck. They were there for the experience, social atmosphere, and the chance to put something on their resumes while they were figuring out their lives. Most of them already drove expensive cars, wore designer clothes, and treated the job as a stepping stone or a fun hangout, not as a strict workplace. I told Jason that if he wanted to earn their respect, he needed to be both their friend and their boss. Earn respect through empathy and leadership, not just orders. To his credit, he listened for a while and started easing up. He made an effort to connect with the staff and they seemed to respond well. But after a few weeks, things took a turn. Jason started making unreasonable demands, mostly about closing duties, late night cleaning, stocking and organizing. Things that he knew I couldn't do myself because I was busy handling deposits, schedules and other management tasks. He was micromanaging in ways that didn't make sense and piling on work that wasn't realistically manageable. I was stressed and frustrated, and one night I finally lost it and I told him to screw off. After a few more tense weeks, I decided that enough was enough. I put in my two weeks notice and started applying for jobs elsewhere. Luckily, I had a few offers lined up and I accepted a general manager position at a nearby Dunkin Donuts, just a couple miles away. At Dunkin, things were different. We were also short staffed, but I liked the new role. However, I ended up working a lot of late shifts, often closing the store by myself. That meant everything from Mopping the floors to counting the tills and locking the doors fell on me. I didn't mind. It was quiet and it gave me some peace after the chaos in Starbucks. But something weird started happening. Every night around closing time, I noticed the same car would pull into the parking lot and park directly in of front front of the store. It was an older, dark colored sedan with tinted windows. The car's headlights stayed on, but it never moved. At first I thought maybe it was some kids hanging out or couples making out. But the car just sat there for hours every single night. I was always the last to leave. I'd set the alarm, lock up and head out. One night, just as I locked the front door behind me and walked to my car, I heard an engine start. I looked over to see that same car's headlight shining directly at me. It didn't move. It just sat there with the engine running. I felt a knot tighten in my stomach. I hurried to my car, locked the doors and started pulling out of the parking lot. Almost immediately, the car followed me. My drive home wasn't far, but I had a gut feeling it wasn't safe to go straight home. I took the highway, which was almost empty at 1am and I tried to lose the car. I switched lanes, speeding up a bit to see if they'd pass me. Instead, the car just stayed behind me, matching my every move. At this point I was terrified. My phone was almost dead, but I had managed to call my husband. I whispered quickly about the car following me. He told me to drive straight to the nearest police station, which was only a few miles off the highway. As I approached the station, the car suddenly sped past me at a reckless speed and then disappeared into the night. I felt shaken, but relieved. I turned around and went home. That should have been the end of it. But a week later I saw that same car parked outside Duncan. This time my co workers insisted that I call the cops immediately. When the police arrived, the driver stepped out. It was Jason. He told the officers that he wasn't doing anything wrong and that he had just developed a crush on me during our time working together at Starbucks. He claimed that he just wanted to say hi. The police didn't arrest him, but they told him to leave and did not come back. That was the last time I saw Jason. Even now I get chills thinking about how things could have gone worse. It was one of the creepiest experiences of my life. And it all started with a simple job at a coffee shop. I'm a 31 year old male and I live about 50 or so miles north of New York City in a region known as the Mid Hudson Valley. The story takes place when I was around 1920 years old in a small city known as Newburgh. For those who don't know, New Newburgh has a notoriously high crime rate for its small size, it consistently ranked as the murder capital of New York and it's one of the most dangerous cities in the us. This will be very relevant throughout the entire story. In addition, it's also home to a relatively well known college known as Mount St. Mary College. My two friends and I, who will refer to as Mark and Brian, were going to a party somewhere in town that we had found out about through some friends at the college. On our way, we had saw a few cop cars zoom past us with their sirens on. This will also be important later. Brian decided to stop and get some gas in the main road downtown. As we're pulling in, I had spotted a group of sketchy guys across the street adjacent to the gas station, start to cross and then approach approach our car. I tried to tell Brian, bro, don't stop here. Those dudes are about to pull up on us. Drive away man. The dumbass disregards me and then just says bro, it's all good man. As he then gets out to pump gas. Of course as this is happening, they approach us aggressively and one of them pretends to be whimpering in pain. Yo, my boy got shot. We need a ride to St. Luke's right now. St. Luke's is the hospital in the city. When Brian hesitates and then says I can't dude, I'm staying out of this. The group of thugs start banging on the car and shaking it violently, then screaming, open the fucking door or I'm gonna kill all of you. Along with all kinds of other crazy ass threats. They then notice a taxi drive by and try to carjack the taxi driver. I tried to use this opportunity to escape and go inside the store. To my horror and anger, I couldn't unlock the door to get out. The fucking dumbass has the child safety lock on. They then return to our car. After failing to jack the taxi cab, Mark is now screaming call the fucking cops. They start beating on the car yet again and trying to shake it. One of them screams at Mark, if you don't get out of the car now, I'm going to kill you and your fucking friend. Okay dude, chill. I'm getting out. Mark says, don't tell me to fucking chill. He then leaves the car and goes inside the store. The Thugs then cram themselves in the car with me at the very back. One of them had said something to me very calmly that I don't remember now. Then out of nowhere, they start jumping me. I don't really remember what happened next, but I managed to fight my way to the front passenger seat and I made it out of the car. As I was leaving, the largest one actually kicks me in the face, knocking off my glasses. I then run into the store where my friend is trying to call the cops. As this is happening, another random rough looking dude starts trying to take the phone from him. In the middle of all this, this random lady then starts saying, what's the matter? You scared? You're in Newburgh. Don't you know you have to be tough out here? Go cry home to your mommy, you little pussies. Then she says, they're gone. Now you can go outside. Right? As she says this, the police pull up. Mark and Brian tell them everything that happened. As this is happening, Brian notices a huge crack on the windshield. One of these scumbags smashed the windshield. Brian then went. They were arrested up the road. Brian went along in an unmarked car just to confirm their identity and press charges since he then needed to file an insurance claim. After we were done with the police and headed home, we smoked a fat ass blunt to try and calm down after what had just happened. I couldn't sleep that night. I kept hearing nangs around the house that weren't there and I was jumping around the entire night. I remained hypervigilant for a while after this incident. I even remember one day hearing a party across the street, believing I was hearing screams of terror like people were getting slaughtered, only to find out it was just a bunch of kids running around having fun. It's really crazy how it affected me. As for the sirens we saw beforehand, we later learned a shooting that had just taken place further up the road at a party close to where we were heading at. As a result, it had set off a chain reaction of several violent incidents throughout the city that night and the days following. One thing I found out that happened a few days later really had me shook. Apparently just a couple of days after that same incident we were involved in, someone got jumped while pumping gas at the same gas station. The perpetrators beat the shit out of him and then ran him over with his own car before they took off. The man later died from his injuries. I'm very lucky to be alive after that incident. I really hope that I never have to deal with something like that again. Please, everyone Be aware of your surroundings. I'm a female in the UK. I'm in my 30s now, but when I was younger I'd worked at a gas station situated very close to a motorway. I did a night shift along with the two other people and we had quiet periods during the night. Behind the said gas station there were some thick trees and if you ran through them, you would have ended up in a really wooded area. This incident took place on a Thursday. We were in a quieter period, so me and my colleague were doing some cleaning while my other colleague had his break around the back. Our entrance doors were automatic and right in front of them was the sandwich aisle, then the juice section. I was at the sandwich area checking dates when I had heard the doors then open and loud footsteps. Before I could turn around, I felt someone grab onto me as if they were trying to hug me. It took me a second to comprehend what was happening because I was so confused and it happened so quickly. I looked to the side, then I realized a young boy was holding onto me and he felt freezing. It was very late January, so it was horrendous outside for weather. I sensed something was wrong so I didn't freak out. My other colleague couldn't see any of this because she was down a different aisle, so it was just me. I remember not pulling away, but I had kept my arms lifted upwards, sort of stiff, and I asked him what was going on. He lifted his face while still holding on to me and it was then that I noticed he had a busted lip and a black eye as well as tears that were streaming down his face and looked absolutely terrified. And it was then that I realized he was shaking. I asked him what was wrong, but he just started sobbing loudly. I pulled him into a hug and I told him it was okay, he was safe now and we would get him help. I then shouted at my colleague, who I'll call clear. She came dashing to where I was and I then told her we needed to call the police. She had her mobile in her pocket so she was able to call right then and there. The operator asked to speak to me, but the boy I was holding grabbed my arm. When I tried to take the phone, Claire ended up holding it to my ear and I tried my best to answer the operator's questions. I told him the boy had just ran into our store and he had facial injuries and he was clearly very petrified and crying. I explained that he was holding onto me and the operator told me to just try and keep him calm. He asked if he could speak to the boy, but I couldn't get him to speak as he was crying so much and he was burying his face under me. He was small and young looking. I figured that he must have been like 13 at most. He also appeared Asian and I wasn't even sure at this point if he knew English or if he was even British. Claire ended up going off the phone and the officers arrived rather quickly. The boy was still holding on to me, but he did look up when the police arrived. I'd just been telling him everything would be okay and I was honestly holding back tears myself. It just broke my heart to listen to this kid crying his heart out. I knew something dark must have happened, but even I wasn't expecting it to be as dark as it ended up being. When the officers arrived, they were male. The boy saw them and started freaking out. He turned to me and he begged for me to keep the men away from him. He just kept repeating no, no, no and saying that he didn't want the men to touch him anymore. This was really hard for me to hear because I had a horrible feeling as to why he would say something like that. The police didn't get too close, but one of the officers did speak to the boy. He gently told him that they wouldn't touch him or hurt him and he asked if he would feel more comfortable with a female officer. He nodded to this and then started crying again. I kept trying to comfort him while also talking to one of the officers whilst the other spoke to Claire. Our colleague who had been on his break was now aware of what was going on and he made his presence known. But we agreed that it would probably be better if he stayed at the hills while we dealt with this. I asked the boy his name and he did tell me but I'll call him Jack for privacy. I told Jack that we needed to move into a private area of the store and I assured him he would be safe now. I walked with my arm around him to the staff only area around the back and we went into the office area. We kept the office door open and the police stood at the door while me and Jack sat down. Jack sat with his head in his hands and his legs were trembling violently. I asked him if he would like some water, but then the police officer interrupted and he said he was sorry but that I couldn't give him any water. I was annoyed at the time, but looking back I get could have erased evidence or something. Female officers arrived and the male officers went to speak to my other colleagues. Jack refused to talk unless I was there. So I had to stay with them, which I honestly didn't mind. He was still very cautious with the officers, but had seemed more relaxed with the female officers. He said his name and that he didn't know where he was. His English was pretty good, but I could tell that it wasn't his first language and he had an accent. He said that he was from Vietnam and he had been in another country before ending up here. He said that he escaped from a van and that he didn't know how long he ran for, but that he just ran through a wooded area and down to our gas station. I don't know exactly where that wooded area leads, but it has mountainous sections and there's a road really far up, so they must have had him there. He told us he was 12 and that he had escaped from the back of his captor's van. He told us that he had been forced to be with other men, but he clammed up when he said that. The police then said they needed to take him to the hospital to be examined as well as to the police station to talk to him some more. He was really upset at the idea of leaving me. I told him that he had to go with the officers and that they would keep him safe. It was surreal and very emotional. I remember giving him a hug and telling him that he could face what lay ahead and that he was so brave for escaping his captors. I was supposed to be working the night shift on the Saturday, but my boss had told me to take some time off after what happened. The incident reached the news, although the police had switched around some of the details, which I assume was for privacy. The news said that they were searching for human traffickers after the boy had been found by a member of the public, which was obviously me. It turned out that he had been trafficked from Vietnam to another European country before coming to the uk. His captors were actually planning to take him somewhere else, but I have no idea how the police or news knew that he had been physically as well as sexually abused. I assumed that his captors at least beat him up, but I don't know if they were selling him for sexual abuse or if they did that to him too. It makes me feel sick. The news had also mentioned that he was in the care of social services and that he was receiving lots of support. They also mentioned asylum seekers were involved, which leads me to believe that his home life wasn't safe, or maybe he didn't have any family. I have tried to google the story since this all happened, but I've never been able to find out if his captors were caught or any of the other men, or if he was sold to others. It makes me so angry that these sick fucks exist. And it was a cold reality check for me. I might sound naive, but I had no idea sex traffickers were anywhere near the area I lived in at the time. It wasn't a well known city or tourist attraction, but I guess that's why the traffickers brought him through the area. I'll never forget that little boy. And I'll never forget the fear and pain that he had in his eyes. The way he clutched onto me and cried into me still makes me incredibly emotional to think about. I was the first person he encountered in God knows how long. I wasn't out to get him. I can't imagine what he endured. I don't even know how long he was being held for. It could have been years. For all I know he was 12 years old and already had all that to carry on his shoulders. I hope wherever he is now, he's found some peace. I don't know how he would, but I hope he somehow found it. I know it sounds weird, but I'm glad I was looking at the sandwich dates that night. If my male colleague had been doing it instead of me, I really worry that Jack wouldn't have came in and he would have been found by his captors. I felt like he felt safe seeing a woman because none of his tormentors were female, at least from my understanding. It's been years now and I don't live in that area anymore and I'm not in that line of work. I continued working there for another year after this incident and I never saw or heard from Jack again. I want to thank Southern Cannibal for allowing people to share these stories. They're dark, but it really brings awareness to the darkness in our world. I hope everyone listening stays safe out there. This world really is a dark place. This took place in the mid-90s when I was in my early 20s working a night shift at a gas station. I'm a female, I would occasionally work the day shifts, but this was very rare. We had a new girl start who I'll refer to as Rose. Rose was around my age, covered in piercings literally from head to toe, which will become relevant later. And she was very loud and brash. She had started on the day shifts, but our manager told us they should be moved to nights with me. Eventually we had three night shift workers so we did feel understaffed and I was glad we had someone new. However, I didn't immediately warm up to Rose. I can't really explain why, but she just gave me a bad vibe. And I believe you should always trust that feeling inside you when it rears its head, no matter how ridiculous it may appear to the outside world. Anyway, I met her for the first time on a night shift. That night, three of us were working so that me and my other colleague could train Rose some more. The first month of her working there was fine, but like I said, I simply didn't take to her. I didn't let her know this, obviously, and I behaved as if I liked her. On our first shift alone together, I was really dreading it a little because Rose got on my nerves so much. She was one of those people who was brash and annoying and was always trying to show off with a voice like a foghorn. She constantly made sexual jokes and it got old very fast. I'm sorry to stereotype, but she had the sense of humor of a 12 year old boy. She told me how she had nipple and genital piercings and how she wanted to become a nudist, but claimed that her boobs were way too large to not wear a bra. I didn't know how to respond to any of this because I just found it really cringey. She barely knew me and I obviously didn't want to know these intimate details. On our first night together, it had gotten to the slower hours, as once the taxi driver crew left at about 3am it could be very quiet until about 5 or 6am it was during this time, after all those drivers had gone, when Rosen told me that she was popping to the toilet. I said okay, and I told her to take her break if she wanted. She said thanks and then disappeared. Now we didn't have staff toilets, so we had to use the ones open to the public. They were close to the counter though, so I would have heard and seen Rose exit the toilets. When she was done, however, a really long time passed without her coming back out. Like 20 minutes had passed. I thought this was strange, but I didn't want to seem like a weirdo by going and asking if she was okay. But after 30 minutes had passed, I decided that I had to, just in case that she had somehow hurt herself. I knocked on the door and asked if everything was alright and Rose replied back a little breathlessly, it's all good. I wondered why she sounded so breathless, but I figured that maybe she had an accident and was Just embarrassed or something. I hesitated and then I told her if she needed anything to just give me a shout, but she didn't even reply. I walked back to the till and sat down and I looked up at the cctv. No one was outside and the road looked quiet. I decided to stock some shelves and and I don't know how long I'd been doing it. When Rose finally came out, she looked sweaty, but I didn't say anything. I just nodded when I saw her standing by the till. She looked red and kept looking at me, which I found weird. When I was done stocking the shelves, I tried talking to her but she seemed distant. I asked her if she took her break and she told me yes, then grinned at me very creepily. I told her that I was going to take a breather myself and then she just smiled at me. That shift had ended and every shift afterwards she would go into the bathroom for long periods of time and then leave all sweaty and red in the face. I was convinced that she was doing drugs or something, but whenever I went to clean I could never find anything suspicious. I told one of the other night shifts girls about it and all they told me was she did the same thing with them. We didn't know what she was up to, but it was really annoying to be doing all the work while she was in there doing whatever she was up to. I was determined to uncover what exactly she was up to though. So one night when she exited the bathroom, I decided to ask her. She stared at me, then smiled before then telling me she was in there playing with her genital piercing. I guess she was using a euphemism, but she really said it like that. I actually burst out laughing at the absurdity of it and I asked, but doesn't that hurt? It sounded so crazy and unexpected. But Rose wasn't laughing. She just kept smiling at me before then saying that's how I like it. That wiped the laughter lines right off my face. I felt shivers ripple through me and I didn't know what to say. So I told her that since she was out now, I'd go for my break. I really couldn't wait to go home and I just wanted the shift to be over already. After that night, Rose got more brazen about her activities. She started telling me I'm away to touch my piercing. Then she'd wink at me and go into the bathroom. This made me extremely uncomfortable and when I told one of the other night shift girls, she joked that Rose probably wanted me to follow her into the toilets. I told her that wasn't funny and that we wouldn't be joking about it if a man was jerking in the bathroom and telling us about it. My colleague agreed, but said we couldn't report her to the manager because Rose would know it was us so that we might as well cope with humor. She hadn't told anyone else what she was doing, but they now knew better than to ask. When Rose and I were alone, she began doing other weird stuff as well. I walked into the stockroom and saw her rubbing her chest against the wall with her head flung back and when she saw me, she grinned. I turned away and sat at the tills, way too scared to go back there. I was absolutely disgusted with her behavior and every time I had to work with her. I could barely sleep that day because I was dreading it so much. I was too scared to tell my parents because they're the type who would show up in my workplace and grapple Rose outside. I did tell my friends outside work though, and they all agreed that Rose was a creep and really escalating her behavior. They told me I needed to do something, but I was nervous. I'm not a very confrontational person. I'm pretty reserved even now. However, things came to a head one night and I lost my cool. Me and Rose were once again on the same shift together. She did her disgusting bathroom routine, but this time, once she got out, she wouldn't stop going on about how she'd been touching herself. I don't know why, but I just lost it. I ended up telling her to shut the up and that she was being disgusting for telling me about it. I told her that customers have been known to do wild shit in that bathroom, literally shitting on the floor and smearing it on the walls. Yes, she's in there jerking it with all that gross bacteria. I then told her if she didn't stop being a pervert, I'd tell our manager and I'd walk out of the store right now and that I didn't care or want to be involved in her weird fetish bullshit. She just stared at me before pulling the chair out behind the till and throwing her body down. I continued stacking shelves and neither of us spoke at all for the rest of the shift. The next time I was on the shift with her, I had arrived for 11pm Rose wasn't there and one of the girls had been on the evening shift had to wait with me as we couldn't be alone on night shift. We tried calling Rose's house phone and mobile but she didn't answer it. Just rang and rang. We ended up calling one of the other night shift girls and she came in letting the other girl go home who had to wait with me. We had told our manager that morning and he was furious and tried to contact Rose but she never picked up and she never came back. I guess she quit her job due to my outburst and to be honest, I'm glad she did. It's been years since this happened, but I will always remember. Might not be scary to some, but it was horrifying for me. Rose was a certified creep who, looking back, was clearly trying to act out some fetish or something. I've never seen her since and I hope I never do. Police, Target and shopping center security have already been made aware of this encounter. This happened to my friend and her cousin at a Target store. They were in the candle aisle minding their own business when two young women in their early 20s walked up to them. One of them said hey, can I smell that? Referring to the candle that my friend was holding. Then it got unsettling. Out of nowhere, one of the women took a completely different candle from a different section of the store and put it directly in their faces without asking, and then told them to smell it. It was not from the same aisle. It looked like she had brought it from another part of the store just to use as a weird excuse to start a conversation. My friend immediately felt something was off. They started asking questions, what are your names? Where do you live? What do you do for work? When my friend gave vague answers, they pushed for specifics like what neighborhood, what exact job, etc. It felt invasive fast. Then they brought up how they were into fitness and looking for friends with an active lifestyle. They mentioned several hiking trails and tried to make plans. My friend and her cousin pulled politely, said no, but the women kept pushing the idea. They would not let it go. As my friend tried to move on, the women suddenly asked about their jewelry. Then again they circled back to the hiking idea for a third time and felt like they were trying to keep them talking for as long as possible. Then came the phone number. Ask. My friend declined and asked if they had social media. They said no and then pushed for her number again. They asked up to four separate times, ignoring the no each time. Eventually my friend just walked off, but she noticed the two women didn't leave. They stood in the exact same spot for about five minutes. Not shopping, just watching. Ten minutes later, as my friend and her cousin were leaving the store, they saw those same Women outside now talking to a young couple. They noticed the girl putting her number in the woman's phone. It was like they were just waiting for their next targets. This whole interaction really felt fake and calculated. The candle being from a different part of the store made it feel plain. The personal questions, the pushy behavior, the constant attempts to stay in contact, all of it just felt like a setup. Possibly trafficking, possibly a scam. Either way, it did not feel safe. Please stay alert and always trust your gut when something feels off. I, a 29 year old female, often go to the Target near my office during my lunch break. I either go pick up stuff for the office as I'm the office manager, or I go to pick up stuff from my apartment. I also just like to browse around the aisles to unwind. On this particular day I just went to browse. I was looking through the dollar section near the entrance when a woman around my age approached me and asked, hey, I really love your shoes. Where did you get them? I told her thank you and I mentioned the name of the store that I bought my shoes from. Then she looked at me with her face all scrunched and said, you look so familiar. Did we go to school together? She seems genuine enough, but she looked super unfamiliar to me so I just responded with no. She looked a little taken aback by this and then quickly said well, my mistake. Have a good day. And then began looking at something on the shelves behind me. After about a minute or so, I decided to move on to the snack aisle. I was looking at some chips until I noticed the same woman at the end of the aisle holding something and looking looking at me. When I turned to look at her, she looked back down at the bag of candy that was in her hands. At this point, I didn't really think anything of it. If anything, I had assumed that she was still trying to place me as someone she knew. It wasn't until three to four hours later when I kept catching her looking at me that something began to feel really off. I walked over to the cleaning section to see if she'd follow me and I noticed her again. This Target was particularly busy so I felt okay approaching her. I asked her why she was following me. She just replied with no, of course not. I'm just shopping around with a fake smile on her face. I told her that she was making me feel uncomfortable because it felt like she was. She stated it was just a coincidence. I didn't want to press it any further, so I told her that if I saw her again I would be telling Target security and I will be asking them to to escort me to my Uber. After I'd made my purchases, I actually drove my own car, but I didn't want her to know that if she didn't already. A few minutes later I saw her following me again and without hesitation I told her that I was going to speak with an employee about her and when I began walking up to a store employee I saw the woman walking back to the store's exit to leave. Or so I thought. The employee stated that they couldn't kick the lady out since she hadn't really done anything but that I could have someone walk me to my car if I wanted. After about 10 minutes or so after I had completed my purchase at the checkout, I went over to the customer service to have someone escort me to my car and I saw the same woman in the clothing section speaking to another young woman and gave her the same line she gave me. Did we go to school together? You look so familiar. I have no idea what her end goal was, but it definitely gave me the creeps. This happened in November of 2014. I went to Walmart to buy groceries while my 16 year old daughter was attending her homecoming dance. I tried to do my grocery shopping to coincide with her 11pm pickup. All at once I realized it was about 5:11pm and I was still standing in line to get checked out. Right about that time one of their customer service supervisors walked by me and I motioned to her explaining that I had to pick up my daughter and if she could hold my card I'd come back and check out as soon as I picked up my daughter. She agreed and had someone take my car into the cooler and told me to tell them at the service desk when I got back. So off I go. I picked up my daughter and arrived back at Walmart at about 11:15pm Daughter came inside with me and as we were coming into the store a man about 50 something walked over in front just past me and peered down the front of my daughter's strapless pink formal which from a couple of hours of teenage bobbing around dancing had become looser and he then mentioned what all he could do with her and she happens to be well endowed. He had a female companion with them. When he walked in I could see both him and her out of the corner of my eye. I don't know if this was his girlfriend or related to him, but she watched and heard him and said nothing. I felt like I was in a stupor. Like did this really just happen I was stunned that anyone would have the audacity to walk up and say this to my daughter right in front of me, her mom walking right beside her. I became completely enraged and stepped between his leering eyes and my daughter. He asked her another inappropriate question. After stepping in front of him and putting myself between him and my daughter, I asked him if today was a good day for him to die. Honestly, I was running on pure rage and adrenaline, which probably gave me more guts than brains in that moment. He glared at me and tried to walk in tighter and intimidate me. I told him to get the hell away and he finally walked over to who he was with but continued to glare at me as they went inside Walmart ahead of us. I absolutely couldn't believe believe this had actually transpired. My daughter was in tears and scared beyond all reason. I took her straight back to the women's department and had her put on a sweat jacket, zip it up and pay for it online with my groceries. If I'd have really thought about it and not been running on adrenaline and still having the shock factor going on, in hindsight I should have left the store, called the police and gone straight home at the same time the fog crossed my mind mind he might have followed us to the car and then what? I think if she had been alone, regardless of what she was wearing, he still would have approached her. If someone is this brazen inside a public store, what is he capable of in a dark isolated place? The whole situation just chills me to the bone. I think the only reason he walked away was because I stood up to him and didn't flinch. To have walked up to my daughter past me on her left and stand so close to her and look down the front front of her dress and say what he said to her is unbelievable. I never thought, I just reacted with pure rage that he would dare do what he did. I never again went to Walmart that late at night and I've warned my daughters to always be aware of their surroundings, not be carelessly talking on their cell phones and to always be aware of their surroundings coming and going. I'm a 19 year old female and this happened to me about a month ago. It was a Thursday night, cool and quiet and just the right kind of still that made everything feel slower than it was. I had just gotten off a long shift to the diner, hair pulled into a messy bun and my sneakers coated in syrup and spilled soda. The kind of night where all you want is a hot shower and some silence. But but I needed stuff. Face wash, tampons, dry shampoo. And I was out of popcorn, which felt like a crime in itself. Target was open until 10 and it was only 9:42 when I pulled into the half empty parking lot. I parked under a flickering lamp post, something that I always try to do out of habit. Lie at equals safety. Or so they say. As I grabbed my little red basket and walked inside, the automatic doors whooshed open and let out a quiet sigh like they were just as tired as I was. The store felt peaceful, almost therapeutic. The kind of place where you would walk in for one thing and leave with 20. I meandered to the beauty section, enjoying the cool air, the hum of the fluorescent lights, and the oddly comforting scent of plastic and laundry detergent. That's when I noticed that three men, mid to late 20s, maybe even early 30s. One wore a black hoodie, the second a backwards cap. The third had shaggy hair and this way too long stare. At first I thought nothing of it. People exist. Men shop. No big deal. But it wasn't the kind of glance that ends they kept looking. I turned down the skincare aisle. After a minute or two, one of them rounded the corner. Hoodie guy. He stood a few feet away, pretending to look at body wash. I kept my cool and grabbed a random cleanser off the shelf. Then I walked to the feminine hygiene section. Cap guy appeared. He didn't say anything, just lingered. I moved again toward snacks. Shaggy hair followed. It felt like a game that I had in a agreed to play a sick, silent version of Tak. I circled aisles, taking random turns. Once, I stopped in a nearly empty section and just waited. Ten seconds later, two of them passed the end of the aisle like they were patrolling. My hands started to shake. I didn't want to overreact. I didn't want to be that girl who assumes the worst. But I stopped walking and so did they. And when I doubled back, they did too. That's when I realized something. They weren't shopping. They were watching me. I clutched my basket tighter and walked briskly, but not running, to the front of the store. I found the customer service desk where a young guy in a red shirt and khaki stood restocking a shelf of returns. His name tag said Jeremy. Hey, I said, trying to keep my voice calm. I think I'm being followed. He froze and then looked me in the eyes. I must have really looked terrified, because he didn't question me, just said, stay right there. He spoke into a walkie talkie clipped to his belt, mummering something about code yellow, then turned back to me. You're okay. You're not alone. We'll walk you out. He called another employee over, an older woman named Carla, who had the no nonsense energy of someone who's seen everything. Together, they walked with me toward the exit, flanking me on both sides. I glanced behind us. The men were at the other end of the store now, standing together, watching. I couldn't hear their voices, but I could feel their eyes burning right into me. No purchases in hand, no cards, just standing, waiting. Once we reached the sliding doors, I told Jeremy which car was mine. He insisted on walking all the way with me, scanning the lot like a hawk. I thanked him maybe three times before I finally got to my car and slid inside, locking the doors instantly. He waited until I turned on the ignition and pulled away. I didn't cry until I made it to the stoplight at the edge of the plaza. My body had been on autopilot, hyper aware, adrenaline fueled. And now that I was finally out of there, it all just hit me at once. The truth is, nothing happened in the traditional sense. They didn't touch me. They didn't speak to me. But the threat was there, unspoken, looming. And that kind of fear stays with you. To every woman hearing this, please never let your guard down. Don't wait to make sure it's real. If something feels wrong, it probably is. Always park in your lights. Keep your head up, Watch for shadows. Trust your instincts. Even when the world tells you you're overreacting, we don't get the luxury of brushing off our fear. Not in this world. Speak up. Ask for help. You're not being dramatic, you're being smart. And maybe, just, just maybe, that awareness could save your life. Be safe, watch your back, and never apologize for protecting yourself. My name is Kevin and I was 25 years old when this happened. This was in 2019, before COVID back when Walmart was still open 24. 7. AKA the best time to be at Walmart, in my own opinion. Well, anyways. I worked the graveyard shift at a Walmart in a small Florida town, one of the old school ones that stayed open 24. 7. My hours were 10pm to 7am Five nights a week. I stocked shelves, unloaded pallets, cleaned up spills, and dodged weirdos who wandered in at 3am to buy one bandana or ask if we sold live Bay. It wasn't a bad gig, honestly. I kind of like the stillness. No customers yelling, no kids crying in the toy aisle. Just fluorescent lights humming overhead, the occasional chatter from the overnight crew members and the sounds of boxes being sliced open that night. This was February, I think, maybe two or three weeks before COVID hit the headlines. For real was no different. I had a cart of disinfectant spray, Lysol wipes, and all that other cleaning stuff no one cared about at the time. I was in aisle 16, minding my business, zoning out when I noticed someone standing at the far end. Tall, slender, wearing a faded brown hoodie, hood up, torn jeans. Could have been any dude just killing Ty. But he wasn't moving. Not browsing, not touching anything. Just standing there, staring at the shelves like he was lost in thought. Or worse, like he was waiting. I gave the usual line. You find everything alright, man? He turned towards me and that's when I got the first hit of something off. His eyes looked blank. Not tired, not high, just empty. Like there was nothing behind them. He didn't say a word, just slowly shook his head. No. One small movement. Then he turned back toward the shelves. I let it go. You see weird people working nights. Rule of thumb, don't push. I moved a few aisles over to the cleaning tools. Mops, buckets, sprooms. You get the point. Ten minutes in, I feel it again, that prickly sensation, like I'm being watched. I look up. There he is again. This time he's at the opposite end of the aisle, same posture, hands in his hoodie pocket, head tilted just slightly, not close enough to be in my space, but definitely close enough to keep tabs on me. Hey there. Need any help? I ask again, louder now. Another head shake. Nope. Still no words. I'm starting to get annoyed now, but also uneasy. People who want trouble usually make a scene. This guy wasn't doing that. It was lingering. Existing, but in a way that felt deliberate. I leave the aisle, push my car toward the back. I'm halfway to the break room when I glance behind me. He's not there. Good. Maybe he was just a quiet guy with poor social skills. But. But you know that feeling when your brain tells you something's off? That gut instinct mine just wouldn't shut up. A half hour passes. I'm back in aisle five now, working through a fresh cart of paper towels. I'm talking with Mike, another overnight guy, when I see the man yet again. This time he's not even pretending to shop. He's just standing by the end cap, facing sideways like he's listening. His eyes are on us. Mike notices too. You know that guy? He asks me under his breath. Nope. Just keeps popping up, though, I say. Mike doesn't say anything else. He just mutters weird and rolls his card away. I keep working. Time crawls. Every so often I see that hoodie pop up across the store, never holding anything, never saying a word, just appearing. By 4am I'm so keyed up I start skipping aisles, moving quicker, trying to stay unpredictable. It doesn't help. Eventually he shows up again, like he's playing some kind of game with me. The only time that he almost interacted with me was when I took a detour through toys. I caught him watching me from the bike section, just standing behind a Spiderman helmet on display. We locked eyes for maybe three seconds. My stomach dropped. Still. Nothing. No words. Just that long, frozen stare. At 6:30am Daylight started to push through the tented front doors. A few early shoppers then trickled in, mostly seniors, people grabbing prescriptions or getting a jump on groceries. The air felt a little safer with others around. By the time I clocked out at 7:04am I I hadn't seen him in about 15 minutes. I figured that he must have finally left. I walked in my car alone, keys clenched between my fingers. It was a dumb habit that I picked up for my sister, just in case, she always said. That morning it didn't feel so dumb. The next day I slept in. I got up around noon, threw on the news while eating leftover Chinese from the night before. And that's when I saw it. Local Walmart issues Trespass order for stalker man accused of targeting overnight employees the image was grainy, pulled from a security camera, but it was him. Same hoodie, same expressionless stare. The report said that he had been visiting different Walmart locations in the county during the late hours. Never bought anything, just followed employees observed. At one store, he had apparently waited outside in the lot until an employee got off their shift. Didn't approach, just followed them halfway home in his car before peeling off. Cobbs said that he hadn't committed a crime yet, but Walmart banned him anyway. Said they were erring on the side of caution. Good. I didn't see him again after that. A few months later, the pandemic hit and the world flipped upside down. Walmart stopped doing 24 hour shifts. Our crew broke apart. Some of us got laid off. I got a new job eventually, something in delivery, but I'll never forget that night. Not because of what happened, but because of what didn't. That tension. The questions, the gut instinct. I almost talked myself out of listening to People are strange. It doesn't matter if you're a man or a Woman doesn't matter if it's day or night. If something feels off, trust it. We live in a world where danger doesn't always come in shouting. Sometimes it comes in silence and stillness and a stare that lasts way too long. Be careful. No matter who you are, be aware. Stay sharp. Because the truth is, some people are just wired wrong. Hey everyone. So the story I'm about to tell is actually still going on. Apologies in advance for how long this ended up being. It's just so crazy and I didn't want to leave out any of the details. I'm a 23 year old female and I work in a department store at the jewelry counter. I've experienced a fair share of crews while working there, but this guy really takes the cake. About four weeks ago, a guy, kinda short and stocky who looks to be in his mid-30s, comes up to the counter and my coworker approaches him asking him what he can help him with. The guy is staring over at me and then says, well, actually she always helps me when I shop here, so I would like to be helped by her, if that's okay. I looked over at him and I didn't recognize this man at all. But I help so many people per day that I figured that maybe I have, but I just forgot. So I go over to him and ask him what he needs help with. He tells me that he wants to propose to his girlfriend and wants to look at engagement rings. I take him over to our ring section and begin to show him our engagement ring styles. I ask him questions to see what he's looking for and it seems like he has no idea, which is not uncommon. A lot of guys don't know jewelry and it can be pretty intimidating. So I do my best to try and help him and find something she'll like. The whole time I'm trying to help him, I noticed that he kept staring at me. Like instead of looking down into the showcase to see the rings, he would just stare at me. I would have to say things like, see these diamonds on the side? Just to get him to look down. I was starting to feel a little uncomfortable, but I tried to ignore it. Literally an hour goes by of me trying to help him find a rink and no progress at all has been made. When I ask him what kind of styles he thinks that she would like from the ones we've looked at, he just says he doesn't know. When I ask if she wants white or yellow gold, he doesn't know. When I ask what her ring size is, he doesn't know. Then, as I'm trying to help him, he started going off topic and he was telling me about about some band that he's trying to get to perform at a party he's having. And he was asking if I had ever heard of this band. I say no and try to divert the attention back to the rings. And then he starts saying, well, money's really tight right now. Will you have better deals next week if I come back? Then I tell him that I'm not sure because our profile for next week hasn't come out yet, but that he can check back with us. He then does a 180 and pulls out his wallet with the biggest wad of cash in it and starts counting it and then says, well, actually, money's not a problem, while staring at me. Then he starts going on about how he doesn't even know if he should buy a ring because he's scared she's not going to like it and he'll be so embarrassed. At this point, I'm getting really tired of helping him. It's over an hour, so basically I just said, sir, I would suggest browsing rings with your girlfriend. That way you'll get a feel of what she likes. He agrees and then finally leaves. I told my coworkers about how weird that whole situation was, especially him staring at me so much. They agreed and eventually I continued working and forgot about it. A week later, the same guy comes back in. He asked for me, so I went over to him and said, have you finally decided on a style? He says no and asks to see the selection of rings again. So we go back over and I start to show him, but again, he's constantly staring at me instead of looking down at the rings, and the stare was creepy. He always had a weird smile on his face while he would stare. I literally had to tell him to look down at the rings, otherwise he would just continue to stare at me. Also, this time he's now asking me more personal questions. He told me he's Hispanic and he asked if I was too, since I looked like it. I said no. And then he asked what I was. I'm Middle Eastern, so I told him, but I tried diverting the conversation back to the rings instead. He started going on about how he had a friend who was also Middle Eastern and was telling me stories about that. Then he started asking me how old I was and how long I've been working in jewelry for and if I liked it. I vaguely answered his questions and then immediately went back to trying to discuss the rings. Again, he continued to stare at me and not look at anything I was showing him. At this point, it was pretty clear he had no intention of buying a ring and just wanted to talk to me. I told him once again to come back when he had a better idea of what his girlfriend would like. He finally left. Twenty minutes later I saw him walk back over to the counter, but thankfully I got tied up helping a customer for a while, so eventually he left. A week later goes by and you guessed it, he's back. This time I was over in the costume jewelry section cleaning up and the guy came up to the counter and asked for me. My co worker told him I was busy but that she could help him. She knew that I was starting to get very creeped out by him. He just walked away and walked around trying to find me. When he eventually spotted me and then walked over saying, hey, I'm back, I looked over at him just thinking, aw crap, here we go again. I'll spare you the details, but he's literally doing the same thing he does every time. Stared at me, doesn't know what he wants, asked me personal questions, wasted a full hour of my time. At this point, I was really done trying to help him. I told him that he shouldn't come back until he had a better idea of what his girlfriend would want, even though I knew the that there most likely wasn't even a girlfriend. Finally he leaves and I tell my counter manager that I no longer want to help this guy out because I feel very uncomfortable. Even two of my co workers saw how much he kept staring at me and said while he was doing so, he had a creepy smile on his face and wouldn't look anywhere but at me, even though I'm trying to get him to look down at the rings. My manager told me that the next time he comes in, he'll tell this guy that I'm busy and that someone else can help him. Another week goes by from the last time I saw him. This happened four days ago and here he comes. I was actually over in the watch section helping a lady resize her watch when all of a sudden my manager comes power walking over to me and said he tried telling the guy I was busy and that he would help him, but the guy refused and just said he would wait. I look up from what I'm doing and I see the guy a few feet away by the watch counter waiting for me. He then says, hey there, I'm back and this time I want to look at gold chains for myself. I look back at my manager and whisper that I'm uncomfortable helping him. But then he just says I'll stay close by. If he says or does anything weird, I'll tell him to leave. So I finish what I'm doing and go over to the jewelry. The guy follows and I show him our gold chains. He sees one that he likes and he asks to try it on. I say sure, take it out of the case and hand it to him and then bring over a mirror. I literally see him put it on, clasp it and then take it back off and ask if I can put it on him. I obviously didn't want to, but it was awkward so I just said okay. He puts his head down and comes closer into the counter facing towards me. I quickly put it on and he looks at himself in the mirror and then starts staring back at me and asks if I like it. At this point I'm really short with him and just say mhm. He then puts his head back down and says take it off. So I do. He does this with four other chains. We actually had no sale going on so I figured this would be a good reason to get him to leave. I tell him, I remember you said you only like buying jewelry when we have deals going on. Well right now we are completely off sale, so everything is ticket price. We aren't going to have a sale for another week or so. To which he then responds with oh, okay, yeah, I won't buy today. I'll just get ideas. I'll come back next week then too. I finally get him to leave after an hour and my manager immediately tells me how much he saw. This guy stared at me and how creepy it was. A couple hours go by and our counter gets a phone call. My coworker answered it and when I looked over at her she was waving and gesturing me to come over. She then lowered the phone and whispered, it's that guy Evan. Put the phone back to her ear. She told him, no sir, she left for the day, but I can help you. What is your question? Then he says something to which she responds with no. I'm not really sure when she's working next, but how can I help you? Eventually she just hung up and told told me that he kept asking when I was working next. Another hour goes by and we get another phone call. This time my manager answered and sure enough it was the guy. I listen to the conversation and my manager says no, she left for the day. I'm the jewelry manager though, so allow me to help you. This guy says that he wants to only speak with me because I know what he's talking about since we looked at so much stuff. My manager asked him for his name and phone number and says I'll call him back. So after my manager hangs up, he tells me to call the guy back and just see what the hell he wants. I told him, but didn't you say I left for the day? And he told me to just say that I was still in the store shopping after my shift and that my manager flagged me down to call him back. So I hesitantly call him and he picks up after the first ring. I ask him what he wants and he asked if I'll be in later that night. I told him that I was actually off the clock, which was a total lie, but that my jewelry manager would be more than happy to help him. He then says, well, I live far and if I come in, I would like to be when you are there. Are you there tomorrow? I didn't answer this question and again reiterated that my manager could help. I then told him, but remember earlier when you were here? I said there was no sale. Why don't you wait for a sale? And his answer didn't make any sense. It just kept saying that he wanted to come back in. Eventually, I hung up and I told my manager about the call. He said that he believes this is the same guy who called three months ago asking about me. So let me rewind. Three months ago, on my day off, my coworker and manager told me about two weird phone calls that they received regarding me. They said the first call they got, my coworker answered and the guy on the other end asked if I was there, saying, is Jessica still there? I think that's her name. She's the tall, really pretty girl, right? When my coworker said I wasn't there, he asked if he could get my entire schedule for the whole week. My coworker told him that we don't give that out. And then the guy said, well, can I get her number? My coworker just hung up and thought it was someone pulling a prank. Then 10 minutes later, the same guy called back and this time my manager answered. The guy basically asked the same thing if he could get my number or work schedule so he could come back in when I'm there. When my manager asked what he needed help with, the guy didn't elaborate and he just said he wanted to speak with me. My manager and I both think that those calls from three months ago are all linked to this same guy since my manager and coworker both agreed that he sounded the same. My manager said that this is getting ridiculous and that I should call the local police department to report his creepy behavior. So I did and they basically said that this is very stalkerish and there's nothing normal about his interactions with me. They said I should tell my boss to put a trespass ban on him so that he could no longer come into the store and if he starts acting belligerent to call the police and he'll be arrested for trespassing and that if anything else happens to give them a call back the next day. I told HR about this since the store manager was off and they took notes and said they're going to open an HR case and see about the ban. They would need a last name to make the ban official, but I don't know his last name. They basically told me they'll work on it and in the meantime if he comes back to just leave the counter and to come sit in the office until he leaves. I've actually been off for the last couple of days, so I obviously haven't seen him, but I'm dreading the next encounter with him. I'm just going to go to the office and make no contact with him. I'm not even going to look at him. Hopefully he stops coming in. I've never felt this uncomfortable before with a customer. Back in late 2019, before life got turned upside down, I had what I thought would be an ordinary day. I went to lunch with a group of my friends, just something casual at a local cafe. It was one of those nice early fall afternoons, crisp but still sunny. The group included a younger guy who we'll call Chris. He's 30, works in marketing, a little goofy, but always friendly. I'd known him through mutual friends, and though we weren't especially close, we always got along. By the way, I'm a female and I was in my 40s at this time. After lunch, I headed home, changed out of my daytime clothes, and decided to take a long walk around my neighborhood. It's just something I do often. Just me, my thoughts, and a pair of earbuds. The walk turned out longer than I expected, and by the time I got home it was already around 8pm that's when I made what now feels like an almost reckless decision. I drove over to Macy's to grab a few things before they closed. I was low on skincare stuff and needed a new pair of tights. Plus I had a coupon expiring that night, and I figured, why not? It's just Macy's, a quick in and out trip. The store was winding down for the night. Low music, almost empty with that slightly eerie calm that department stores get after dark. The lighting felt too bright in some areas, too dim in others. I wandered between the cosmetics and accessories section, not in a rush, just browsing. I had just turned down one of the smaller aisles near the Women's Basics when he appeared. He came out from behind a shelf like he'd been standing there already. I noticed him right away because he startled me. About six feet tall, maybe more. Dark matter, messy hair, patchy stubble. Something about him just felt off from the start. His clothes were a little too dirty, like he hadn't changed them in a few days. But what really caught me was his eyes. Wide, unblinking, like he had way too much caffeine or something much stronger. Hi, he said quickly, like he was waiting for me. I blinked. Hi. Just doing some shopping. Tonight? He asked in that overly casual way some strangers do when they want to strike up a conversation. I should have shut it down. I really should have. But wanting to be polite and not wanting to escalate anything, I answered vaguely. Yeah, just grabbing a few things. He kept asking questions. Little things at first. What kind of skin products do you use? Do you like shopping this late? Are you here often? I laughed, awkwardly brushing off his questions while slowly edging my way past him. But before I could fully end the conversation and walk away, he leaned in just a little too close and said, you're really pretty. Let's go out for a drink tonight. I froze for a second. That was not a friendly compliment. It felt like a proposition wrapped in Prince pressure. Trying to keep things calm, I used the oldest trick in the book. I have a boyfriend. He grinned and tilted his head. So what's wrong with having two? I really have to finish my shopping. Have a good night, I said and started to move past him. That's when he pushed his own shopping cart slightly forward, blocking the aisle. I looked him in the eye and tried not to show my discomfort. Please move. I need to get by. Before I could say anything else, I heard a male voice behind me. Hey. Fancy seeing you here. Didn't expect to run into you again so soon. It was Chris. I didn't know whether to cry or hug him, but I forced a smile. Yeah, what are the odds? I was just grabbing a few things before the store closes. The man backed up quickly. When Chris approached, I noticed his entire demeanor change. Shoulders stiffened, faceless, animated. Chris glanced at him and then turned to me, lowering his voice. Everything okay? No, I whispered. That guy's been following me around, cornered me in the aisle. He asked me out and wouldn't take the hint. Chris looked over suddenly, but clearly enough that it sent a message. The man had moved down the aisle but was now pretending to check a rack of scarves while still watching us. You want me to walk with you? Chris asked. Please, I said. We walked side by side, casually but intentionally, through a few more sections. Macy's is big enough that if someone isn't actively following you, you'll lose them pretty quickly. But he wasn't lost near the coats. I saw him again, this time half hiding behind a mannequin. He kept a distance, never too close, but always there. When we looped around to the home goods, he was there again, pretending to look in luggage. Chris noticed this too. Let's finish up, he said, and we'll walk out together. At the registers we checked out using self checkout. I tried to relax, thinking it was almost over. Bob Woman looked towards the store exit. There he was, not browsing, not looking for anything, just standing by the exit doors, pacing slightly, watching. He didn't even have any items in his cart. I caught his eye and he gave me a grin. Not friendly, not flirty. It was menacingly cold. I pointed him out to Chris, who immediately suggested we hang back a while. We stood near the perfume counters, chatting, killing time. 30, 40 minutes passed. Still he lingered as if trying to wait us out. Finally, he walked out of the doors and disappeared into the night. Chris and I made our way outside very carefully. The parking lot was nearly empty. When we approached my car, we saw something that made both of us just stop cold. A vehicle, a black suv, was parked in the space right next to mine. Engine off, no driver visible. I froze. I think that's his car. Chris didn't say anything, but I saw his jaw tighten. Then headlights clicked on. The engine started. The SUV pulled out slowly, turning away from us, and then drove off without stopping. I didn't even realize I'd been holding my breath until the car was gone. Chris walked me the rest of the way to my car and waited until I was safely inside. I got home that night feeling shaken but safe. I think about that night more than I'd like to admit. What if Chris hadn't shown up when he did? What if I'd left the store alone? What would have happened in that dark, empty parking lot to the creep in Macy's? The one who followed me, cornered me, blocked my path and maybe waited for me in the lot. I sincerely hope when you never cross paths again. And to anyone hearing this out there, it really doesn't matter what your age is, single or married, male or female, people are strange. Period. Always trust your instincts and always beware of your surroundings. Even in public. Even in the well lit safety of a department store. This episode is brought to you by Facebook so you were scrolling on Marketplace and there it was. The bike you'd been searching for. You sent a message and it turned out the seller was super chatty, kind of funny, and an avid cyclist. The next thing you know you're in a cycling crew. Well, a community cycling group. The thing about Facebook, you might find more than what you're looking for from a browse to a bike ride this summer. Find more on Facebook. This happened almost 25 years ago, way before cell phones were a thing. When I was 17, my brother and I were traveling in northern British Columbia in mid November. This is important as the darkness of the time of year in the mountains is absolute. We were in the Pine Pass between Chetwynd and Prince George, British Columbia. Anyone who knows this area knows knows how desolate it is. I'm talking hundreds of kilometers between gas stations and any kind of people and buildings. We were just about at the Powder King Ski Resort turn off and it was getting late. We pulled into a roadside turnout around 10 to 10:30pm because I was super tired. My brother was already sleeping. I pull in and park near some tourist signage, lock my doors and put my seat back to sleep. I was dead asleep when something had snapped me awake. To this day I'm not sure what it was that woke me up. I was looking around trying to figure out what was happening when all of a sudden my car was surrounded by four to five men. They had started yanking on the door handles trying to get in the car. I'm not sure if they saw I was awake or not, but I sat up, slammed the car in drive and peeled the hell out of there. I'm honestly not sure if I hit one of them or not, but I didn't care to check. I didn't stop again until I reached my aunt's house in Prince George. It was one of the most terrifying times in my life. So to the four five men in the Pine Pass who tried to get into a car with two kids, I hope I ran at least one of your feet over. When my daughter was 2, I was having a tough time as a single mother and decided to take a road trip up Highway 1. I made reservations in Trinidad at a cool cabin in the woods within walking distance of the beach. Before I left, my stepfather gave me a loaded.38 revolver which I had stored under the driver's seat. Sometime after driving through San Francisco, it was very late and dark and nobody else was on the highway. My daughter was sleeping peacefully in her car seat next to me. Back then we could legally have the car seats in the front. I noticed a car coming up behind me and passed, but then slowed down, driving alongside me. I sped up and slowed down, but I couldn't shake him. I looked over and this guy had his interior light on and he was furiously gesturing for me to pull over. I knew I had to find a safe place first. There was nobody else on the road and I was running low on gas. There was just nothing on this highway for miles. I kept driving, but this guy wouldn't leave me alone. I was getting very frightened, but the mama bear in me was coming out and I was getting very angry as well. I knew he could see my kid who was still sleeping. Finally, there was an exit up ahead and a gas station in the middle of nowhere. So I took the exit with the guy closely following me. I wasn't sure what to do. The gas station was brightly lit but had no customers. I didn't feel that it was safe to pull in, so I slowly passed it, drove further into the dark deserted landscape and pulled into a large dirt area and drove quite a few ways off the highway with him following, absolutely nothing was around. I knew I was in big trouble and the that I needed to take control and I wanted to put him in a vulnerable situation. Mama bear was in full protective mode and I was pissed. I stopped the car, grabbed the gun and jumped out, locking the car behind me. As he pulled up, I had ran around to the passenger side and waited. He then got out of his car and quickly moved towards me and I suddenly held the gun up, visible in the moonlight. He came to a halt, surprised, and then I leveled the gun across the car, taking aim, and I waited. He stood there weighing his options. Then he turned around, got back in his car and left. Not a word was spoken. It totally freaked me out. I'm in my 20s and this story happened when I was still in munchkin below the age of 12. You'll have to excuse how overly sarcastic this story may seem. It's still pretty scary to talk about and humor is my defense mechanism. Anyway, when I was still in knee highish, my grandmother, whom I'll call Tilly and I used to go on yearly road trips either across our own country or the one next to ours. We lived relatively close to the border. Well, on this particular occasion we we decided to travel across our neighboring country. Let's call my home Country A and the neighboring Country B. My grandmother had a friend in the More Yee Haul part of Country B that she hadn't seen in a minute, and after some planning, they figured out the best time for the two of us to make our trip. I was excited when my grandmother first told me about the trip. I had no idea where we were going, but the idea of going on a road trip with Gramgram was so freaking exciting I could hardly contain myself. Fast forward a few months and we finally hop in the car and head off on our merry way. The trip would take approximately a week. My grandmother wanted to see all the neat stuff along the way, and traveling with a child such as myself required a lot of pit stops. I wasn't necessarily a bad traveling companion. I just had a small business bladder. Anyway, we were on the last stretch of the trip when my grandmother had to pull into the gas station to fill up on gas. We were practically running on fumes and I really had to go to the bathroom. We pulled into this middle of nowhere gas station and after my grandmother had filled up the car, we hurried inside so I could empty my bladder. The moment we walked inside, all of the alarm bells in my tiny brain went off. I had no idea why I was feeling the way I was up until I set my eyes on the clerk. I'm not usually one to judge a person by how they present themselves, but Old Boy, we'll call him, looked like he walked straight out of a serial killer documentary. Currently we're smackdown in the center of yeehaw territory right in the middle of nowhere. And this man looked like he should be selling you high end cars, not working at a rundown gas station. Old Boy was giving me all kinds of bad vibes. I really don't know how to explain it other than that. Worse still, he was still smiling a little too widely when he had spotted my grandmother. She was petite, blonde and beautiful. Granted, I am a bit biased. She is my grandma. However, when he saw me, you could have sworn he was looking at Sunday dinner. Somehow his already very wife wide grin only grew. Remembering it even to this day gives me the heebie jeebies. Thankfully, Graham Graham could sense a disturbance in the force and shielded me from his predatory gaze. She paid for the gas and asked for the key to the washroom, which he took a sweet time in getting. She then walked with me to the bathroom, which was disgusting by the way, and I quickly did my business and we returned the key with great reluctance. Here's where things get progressively worse. When we were piling back into the car, Old Boy closed down the shop and got into his own car. It doesn't seem too weird, right? Sure, he was super creepy, but he hasn't done anything too odd yet. Now, technically, we had two days left on the trip. My grandma would drive in increments 4 hours on the road, an hour off to explore, fill up, etc. Then we'd find an inn or motel and spend the night. We traveled about eight hours a day before turning in for the night. Well, when we left the gas station, Oldboy followed us for I kid you not, the whole rest of the trip. At first we just assumed that he was heading in our general direction. It was just the one road after all. But after the third turn off in Old Boy was still telling us, my grandmother finally realized that we were being followed. This man proceeded to follow us for and I really wish I were joking, but 12 hours. My grandmother refused to stop driving unless it was absolutely imperative for anyone wondering why she didn't just call for help or why she didn't pull into a police station. Don't worry, you're not the only one to be perfectly fine. Fair to my grandmother, she didn't have a phone and despite somewhat knowing where she was, it was still unknown territory. At the end of the day, she wanted to get to familiar surroundings so there wasn't the risk of getting lost. We finally made it to the city where her friend resided and that's when we pulled into a police station. The mad lad pulled up next to our car just as we headed inside the building and he watched us. I don't know what Old Boy was taking, but he sat there while my grandma talked with the lovely lady at the desk. Thankfully, the cops handled the creepy man with ease, but I'll never forget the damn smile that never left his face while he was being escorted away. Needless to say, that was the last time we road tripped to Country B and one of the last times we actually took a road trip. In general, This happened at the beginning of this month after traveling home from a gaming convention. It was a little over a 14 hour drive and me and my mom had just gotten over the halfway mark. Being that we were both tired and it was about 10pm, we had pulled over at a gas station to have a nap. Our initial Thinking was that this gas station was a 247 one and being right off the highway it would be okay. And being that we stopped at that gas station before, just not as late, we thought it would be okay. So we parked, locked the doors and decided to nap. It had been about two, three hours after we stopped that I woke up and looked over to see my mom fully awake. She told me to get back on the road and she seemed slightly on edge. I asked her if everything was okay and she said that she'll tell me once we're on the road. Turns out she had woken up about 45 minutes to an hour after we stopped to the sound of someone trying to open the handle on the driver's side passenger door. She sat there for a few minutes and then turned on the inside car light and the movement just stopped. She never saw anyone, but she had noticed that the store had closed and that there was a white van that was parked facing the side of our car by the side of the gas station. Not wanting to frighten me, she'd let me sleep a little bit more. The white van never left and she never saw anyone after that. Thankfully our doors were locked and whoever it could have been didn't follow us. I remember in my dream I had heard a door handle trying to be opened. So maybe it was my brain trying to tell me in my dream, but either way it was a creepy encounter nonetheless. Back when I was about 16 years old, because of my living situation, at least twice a month I'd have to make a two hour drive from a city back to my parents house in a rural area. I'd say about one and a half hours of that drive was just country road with nothing but valley corn or some other crop on either side with the occasional farmhouse or something that you think people might go in and out of willingly along the way. Because of how used to this drive I'd already been beforehand, I didn't think much of driving that long stretch of no cell phone service, no booth area. Nothing had happened yet, so surely nothing would happen ever, right? Wrong. In the middle of one of those drives back, while the night was slowly taking over, as I was driving, I saw a flash of light. Huh. That was weird. Maybe just a momentary anemic moment. But then there was another flash. Well, maybe someone coming this way has their high beams wonky or something. Another flash. Alright, something's wrong. I slow down a bit so as to not get blinded periodically and swerve off the road and try and figure out what was ahead. Further in the distance, I think I see a person actually multiple. My eyesight's well and good at this time in my life, so I was putting two and two together, getting close enough to realize that there were four people on this crappy country road. They were lined up across it as if to make a roadblock to prevent any cars from passing through. Another note to this is that I didn't see any car around them that they could have come in. I don't remember any farmhouses or sheds nearby either. The rest of this encounter felt like it took place in the span of an hour because of my anxiety, but it was likely no more than five minutes. In hindsight, I'm driving maybe 10 miles per hour now as I'm getting closer and realizing that I'm definitely without a doubt approaching a line of four grown people with huge bright white masks on staring in my direction. Two of them definitely have bats, and one person's holding something that the flashes are coming from. I've seen enough horror movies and heard enough stories about crimes on roads like this to think that in that moment I only have two slow down and hope they eventually part way around my car, running the risk that they could very well get the jump on me in my dinky car or pick up the pace and disregard whether or not they'll have the chance to move out of the way when I potentially accelerate through them. I decided on the latter. I had no means things to protect myself with other than a bat in the trunk of my own car, and at the time I was a young teen who could easily get knocked down with a solid slab because of my build and my car was crap enough to where if I stopped, I wouldn't doubt someone could break in with just easy force. Now, hearing gravel and dirt kick up from under my tires, I was more freaked out at the potential I could drive myself off the road, along with taking out some strangers who I am now certain are carrying bats. As I accelerate towards them, I'm properly freaking out, but I've accepted that this was the decision I made from the adrenaline of fear of any situation. I accelerated more and thankfully the two that were directly in my way lunged out of the way just in time not to get hit. I stop accelerating to catch my breath and see them in my rearview mirror. The other two for some reason are trying to haul ass towards my car as if they could catch up. And it became so real in that moment that there were people, people who were intentionally trying to get the jump on me in the middle of freaking nowhere. Probably not just crab kids trying to get the kicks and giggles out of freaking someone out, but real adults trying to harm someone that came that way. I just focused on driving out of there as fast as I could. I focused on going forward, didn't turn back on the radio to distract me, and I felt totally shook by the experience in general. The most messed up part, honestly was getting home and realizing that part of what I was driving on wasn't gravel, it was nails that were now embedded into my tires. I praise God for me somehow having those sturdy tires. I didn't tell my parents the full story about what happened and they just assumed I was being reckless and someone was playing a prank on me with just scattering some nails randomly on the road. I told the story to some of my friends and they told me that I probably wasn't in any serious situation situation and that they were just trying to scare me. Especially since being in a car was a pretty big advantage in this situation, which I can't deny. Still though, it creeped the absolute hell out of me and I remember it every single time I drive down a road that looks any type of similar. This is something that I add onto the end of the story after having told it to friends beforehand, but this actually happened before the Purge movie ever came out. Otherwise I would definitely have felt more comfortable saying it wasn't creepy and just annoying and bothersome. I still wonder where they came from since I very clearly remember there not being a car anywhere close by, nor were there any buildings around, but I guess I could have been wrong. I made a note of it every time I drove in the daylight. I know that this was mostly in a car, but because of the proximity and near intimate relation between my car in an external human's body, it definitely felt like a personal creepy encounter and I'll stand by that at least. Also, given the potential of direct one on one human interaction, should I have slown down enough? I had to tell this to someone other than my friends since they've mostly heard the story and I only just had a nightmare about it again just a day ago. And I still don't know if I'm overreacting about the situation. All I know for sure is that those were definitely people and I was definitely afraid. Just for some clarity on the Purge movie mention, I've had separate folks that I've told this story to mention that there had been some incidents they'd known of shortly after that movie came out of people scaring the absolute crap out of others using similar masks as well as being generally menacing, capitalizing off people being scared because they were reminded by that movie that some people scared would kill for fun. Given the opportunity, the folks that mentioned it would say that would be another reason to believe it was just a real mean spirited trick or prank or whatever to play on a stranger. I'm not sure if I agree, but I guess it's a possibility. This is a long story, so bear with me. It's all true and I'm very happy I'm still alive it was the summer of 1997 and I was a grad student in Northern California from abroad. I wasn't an immigrant, just a foreigner getting a degree and planning to go back to the old country afterwards. At the time my girlfriend was still back home abroad since we both expected me to return to Europe after graduation and maybe, though unspoken at the time, possibly get married after. So she came over for a summer vacation. Let's take the coastal highway down to South Carolina, see Santa Barbara, Monterey, Louisiana, Venice Beach, San Diego, hell even drive down into Baja. The whole tourist enchilada for 20 somethings visiting oh so cool California. My then girlfriend in this description of her physical features is entirely serving as a preparation for what was to come that day. She had perfectly shaped thin legs and curved body, long hair, and was, generally speaking, quite attractive. She was also borderline paranoid, which I knew then already, and she had already given me plenty of headaches when she dragged me into conflict situations where she demanded that I defend her like a man when the situation had actually been completely provoked by her and deteriorated due to her unstable, let's say, mental tendencies. Hence my tendency to not immediately jump on the thought of getting married. Frankly, I wasn't really sure about the marriage part, but I knew that then and I went along with her demands and plans as usual that day. We were nonetheless in love and all that, but me perhaps a little less than her. So we did drive down to South California from the Bay Area and eventually my old rusty but beloved Clunky's 80s convertible I had cheaply acquired as an almost wreck in the Bay Area took us along a beach road to a motel in San Diego. Let's pick a motel near the beach, she said, so we can step out and swim in the morning. Let's check in, get dinner somewhere and drive around town to get the feel. Okay, whatever she wants goes. She pointed at a motel along the coastal road. There was one after another, but she knew what she wanted so she chose this is the one, she said. Let's park and see. The vacancy sign was lit. The parking spots in the motel courtyard were all but empty. I drove in and parked. I had driven the whole day and she could see I was tired. I'll drive later, she said sweetly. I was grateful. She goes to the motel counter while I unload our suitcases, coming with the suitcases to the reception. She's talking to a youngish, tall dark blonde guy behind the counter. Not bad looking at all. He's looking her up and down with small eyes, clearly checking her out. He looks at me, then turns around, grabs a key from the board and says, I've got the perfect room for you. And he leads us up the outside stairs, the motel built like just a chain of rooms lined up front, all looking out towards the ocean doors towards the motel parking lot courtyard. He takes us to a room right smack in the middle of the long building's second floor. The entire motel seems empty. I'm tired. But why this room? I wondered, schlepping the luggage. Why not downstairs, or at least at one of the inns? The view is the same everywhere, I was thinking to myself. As we enter, I notice one smaller door next to our motel room door which says Service personnel only. Our room is right next to it. It was built narrow, but it was a big bed and bathroom, and on the left wall, just across from the big bed, a giant mirror. It was on the wall of that service room. The guy nods and leads us to it. As soon as we're alone in the room and he's left, I turn to the girlfriend and say, don't you think this is weird? To which she replies, what? I point at the mirror and take a closer look. Yep, it's built fixed into the wall, not actually hanging on the wall. I find this extra creepy. Don't be so paranoid, she says. Okay, maybe I was. I gotta get something out of the car anyway. So I step outside only to see Mr. Motelman just stepping out of the service room, locking it behind himself and heading downstairs. Once I was back up, I took a big textile blanket and hung it over the mirror. Maybe I'm paranoid, or maybe not. If he was a peeping Tom, he didn't get anything. We take a nap and later as we head out for some food and checking out the town, night is drawing near. The motel parking lot is now two thirds full. We were early. Good, girlfriend says. I feel foolish and swear to God to myself to be less paranoid. She usually is paranoid enough for the two of us. That mirror though. Well, never mind. So we spend the evening, having dinner, driving around until we finally decide that it's time to get back to the motel. It's dark and this was way before gps, so I consulted the city map we had. I sit in the passenger seat, glad that she's driving, all while I try to read the map of San Diego in the light of a feeble, tiny keychain light. We're driving roughly back in the right direction of the motel, somewhat parallel to the Beach Blvd. That we need to be on, but I realize that we might have gone too far. As I stare at the map in that dim light, she looks in the rearview mirror and then, see suddenly says that van there is following us. I look up. Surely now she's the one being paranoid. What? Behind us, one lane to the right, is an old silvery blue van, a bit run down with darkened windows. I swear he's been behind us for three blocks at least, and he took the same turns and he's not passing us. Even when I drive slowly. I look around. There's hardly any traffic in this direction as we roll on. I seriously doubt her, my rational mind telling me the victims rarely ever get picked randomly. I try to calm her down and look at the map again and get an idea. Look, I said, we actually have to take a U turn left around to get down into the lane that takes us back towards the beach boulevard with the motel. So, I said, looking down at the road at the next traffic light a block away. There's no cop here. Take an illegal U turn at the next light. Then we'll see. She nods. I know she's a way better driver than me. She has three more years driving experience with stick shift in narrow European streets, while I just learned driving in California. As we approach the next traffic light and crossing, a clear no U TURN sign is hanging next to the light. And with that eerie blue van behind us to the right, the light turns red. GFGone race car driver puts the pedal all the way down, motor howling, and shoots over the red light in an illegal U turn around to get to the opposite direction. And the van, I kid you not, it sped up, shot into our lane behind us and did the same thing, wheel screeching on the pavement. Then it accelerates full throttle to catch up, being barely an arm's length behind our bumper, its lights glaring into our rearview mirror, blinding like hail. Hit it, hit it, I mumbled, now panicking myself and my girlfriend accelerates, the van behind us staying on our tail. What now? We shoot down three blocks, the van right upon us, more cars join in our direction, though behind us the traffic gets denser and the lanes merge into one. Now the van is still speeding behind us, but close behind the creepy van are four more other cars, all speeding, all pretty close to each other. We can see their lights. We're back on the boulevard where our motel is. A one lane road. Many fairly closely parked cars to our right with just the occasional gap or entries to other parking lots. A concrete barrier on the left. No room to go but forward. We're moving forward Fairly fast, easily 60 miles per hour for sure. Way past the speed limit here, but so is everybody else. How do we shake this van? Surely we shouldn't lead them straight to the motel, right? Girlfriend's super driver suddenly hits the brakes and veers to the right. The van has no choice. It can break or it will get hit by the cars behind it. And it passes by us on the left, immediately followed by 3, 4, 5, 5 more spinning cars tailing it all fast in one lane, while my girlfriend swoops the car perfectly into what feels like a tiny pigeonhole of a parking spot. We can't stay here, I muttered after we come to a stop and catching my breath, totally stunned by her skills. I know, she says and then hits the pedal again, shooting out into the traffic. But now we're behind the van safely, at least eight or nine cars behind it they can't possibly know. Just 200 yards further down came our motel. She took a swing into the parking lot, we parked and then we rushed into our motel room, the one with the creepy mirror. I looked back the whole time, whether anybody had seen us, but nothing. Just a pleasant summer evening wind, the sound of traffic going by, and cicadas. I didn't sleep much that night during and neither did she. Just another tourist summer night in San Diego today. I think the thing that triggered the creep in the van was I had a run down car with a Northern California license plate and they must have just seen my girlfriend driving. They might not have even seen me, or if they did, just a silhouette. So they might have just assumed that it was just one or two women lost far from home driving around at night. I hear that San Diego is wonderful, and I'm sure it is, but that entire day felt like an intro to a slasher movie. This happened around two years ago. I was around 15, 16 years old. My family was on the way to Mexico. The main point of going was for my grandfather to meet my little brother, who was about 7 at the time. Some background for those who don't know the roads in Mexico. Once you cross the border in Laredo, Texas, you either take the freeway or the toll road. The freeway has a fast pass to getting thrown off the road and off a mountain, quite literally. The road isn't wide. Big trucks hardly fit in their own lane, as if they respect the yellow line in the middle. Toll roads are supposed to be the safer alternative. You pay a certain fee depending on your vehicle at different spots, and they're supposed to be federal policemen along the way anyways. About four hours before we get to my dad's hometown, we approach a bridge with a lot of traffic, which was odd since the rest of the road hadn't been so clustered. Being from the US we found it odd that some vehicles were driving along over the white line on the right side of each lane in the shoulder. My dad, the driver, assumed it was to give access to passing. Keep in mind, we had never driven to Mexico alone and it had been over eight years since we were last there. So there was an 18 wheeler, or should I say 26 wheeler in front of us. It was like those FedEx trucks that pull two short trailers at once, but this one was pulling three normal sized ones. It was moving so slow being the cause of traffic in the right lane. Since he was driving on the shoulder, my dad had decided to pass him, still able to do it without crossing the yellow line into other oncoming traffic. We noticed that the other cars weren't doing the same, but didn't think much about it. After a while I looked back out the window trying to take a picture of the sunset. When I did this, I saw the same truck coming at us with full full speed. I froze in fear as I saw the gigantic thing coming at our truck. My younger brother, 13 at the time, yelled to my dad that he needed to move as if things couldn't get worse. There was a traffic jam in the oncoming lane, so there was no way of passing the vehicle in front of us. My mom began to panic her. Then undiagnosed anxiety was getting to her and she was constantly turning in her seat yelling to my dad that there was. The truck didn't seem to be slowing down. My dad managed to calm her down and we refused to look back to build onto the anxiety. About three minutes later, my seven year old brother looked back and he said the truck was tailgating us. The truck was flashing its brights at us and the driver's arm was out the window, shooting us the middle finger and motioning us to pull over. As if a miracle, traffic was clearing out at an exit and my dad managed to leave the truck behind. Around 30, 40 minutes later the same truck came flying past us, passing us as we were going uphill. He blared his horn and pulled into the correct lane again as the tiny white car came over the steep hill. To this day I still get chills thinking about what could have happened if my dad had pulled over. Mexico is not a safe place if you plan on traveling there. Please be careful and always look at your surroundings. Thanks. Hey it's Christy from Lululemon. I'm here at the office and we just dropped some really fun new summer colors in the Flow y styles. If you're like me, you've loved the Flow y tank and bra for years and as of this year it also comes in a dress and a crop tank. These are made in our buttery soft nulou fabric and my favorite part is the built in bra. It makes it super easy to wear for yoga or honestly as an everyday basic. You can find Flow y styles in store store or [e-mail]. This is a true story. God is my witness. I'm not making it up. I'm 57 years old now. This is a memory that never goes away, never fades. In 1986 I stopped in Topeka, Kansas on my way back from working in the the Yellowstone national park for the summer. My friend had also just graduated from high school a few years before and had moved to Topeka with his parents. I stayed about a week. His parents invited me to stay an extra day for their family reunion before I headed back home. We drove way out into the country for their family reunion in his old beater car and spent all day with his extended family. In the late afternoon we had made our way back to Topeka in his older beater car with the broken gas gauge. We ran out of gas. He said that we were probably six to seven miles from the nearest gas station. This was pre cell phone by the way. We were trying to figure out what to do when suddenly a van with no windows pulled over and asked if we needed help. When you're young, you think these things just miraculously happen for you when you're older. You know better. We told him we ran out of gas. A friendly enough man offers to take us to the nearest gas station. We get in the van to discover there are a total of three men in the vehicle. There are no seats in the back. We're just sitting on the floor of what appears to be a work type beat up older model Y van. When we clearly hear the men discussing doing us harm, the driver says that he knows a good place to go. The other man in the passenger seat, eyeing me, agrees he's in and he nods his approval. Only one man sitting near us says that he's not in and that he doesn't want to be involved in this at all. That he's got a baby now and he's not cool with this, that he doesn't want any part of it. The driver and the passenger seat rider said something under their breaths that I couldn't hear. There was an angry silence while the driver thought this over in my mind. I prayed. One word. Help. My mind felt like I was stuttering thoughts. Part of me was in denial, another part was in shock. Fear hadn't even said in yet. Just like a jolted the system of an unreal horror happening to someone else because an hour ago I was completely safe, without a care in the world. And now the absurd identity idea of someone raping me. Yes, I was acutely aware of raping and murdering us both as what they were about to do as well as leaving us somewhere nobody would find us. Those things were flipping through my mind. Have you ever been to Kansas? Lots of lonely, godforsaken, desolate roads to nowhere. If at this point the third guy changed his mind or simply just said let him out first, I wouldn't be sharing this with you right now. They stopped talking to each other. They had never spoken to us at all. From the moment we entered the van, my friend and I didn't speak to each other. We barely looked at each other. We were afraid. I could hear the clanging rattletrap van's noises and the tires on the road. I saw my friend flexing as if to warn that he would fight to defend himself while they were discussing where they would take us. Everything felt surreal. But the guy in the back, the guy that said no. And just like that the driver pulled over and the guy in the back opened the side door and let us out. And it was over. The air smelled somehow fragile and tainted. The ground looked different, like I couldn't quite trust it. My friend looked as shaken as I felt. We had survived a close encounter with shark like predators, the blackest, darkest evil. I looked at the gas station in the late afternoon waning sunset. Just before dark, that gas station had transformed itself into a beacon of shining light, a safe haven of shelter and safety. And I knew once we got into that gas station there was no way I would walk back to the car. The white van with no windows pulling away from us felt so surreal. Like looking at it might give it the power to suck us up in its vacuum. A villain tent. Today I can still see that van pulling away. A sort of mirage from a nightmare that had crossed over into my waking reality. I'm so glad they changed their minds. To give some background information. I'm a female and I was doing the driving. My friend, who was a male, was in the front seat and my roommate, who was was also a female, was sitting in the back. This happened about a week ago. I went on a road trip to take a friend of mine home to Colorado. He wanted to fly back, but I really wanted to go on a road trip. I live in Ohio, so we had to go through Indiana, Illinois, Missouri and Kansas. It was a 22 hour road trip to get there, not including the rest stops. I'd never traveled this far before in a car. I've flown to Florida once or twice and I didn't see myself getting an opportunity like this in the future. Anyways, I drove most of the way because, well, I love to drive and no one seemed too concerned with it. The person I was taking home, Travis, said if we needed to switch, it wouldn't be a big deal at this point. I've been behind the wheels for nearly 12 hours and maybe it was because I was tired, but the creepiest thing ever then happened. I needed gas and the station was closed, so it was dark. Aside from the lights from the pump and the streetlight that was at the gas station, I was creeped out. But I also wasn't concerned because I hadn't had any problems beforehand. So I do my business with no issues now. This gas station was different from what I'm used to. To get gas, you do the usual select the type of gas you want, but as soon as you pull the nozzle from the pump and into your car, you then have to pull a lever up and then start to pump the gas. It took me a while of fidgeting in order to realize this. I'd seen it in a movie. But right as I realized this, I had heard a voice call out from beside the closed building of the gas station. I don't remember exactly what it said, but if I had to guess, it was a hey. Or psst. Over here. Definitely male. But when I set the pump to where I don't have to hold the trigger, I looked up and I saw nothing there. Again, though, I was tired so I didn't pay any attention to it. This was A deserted gas station. But about halfway through, I. I heard it again. Another male voice called out to me. Maybe he thought I was alone because my roommate was sleeping in the back and Travis had laid the front seat down. Stupid me. Didn't feel like stopping again, so I ignored it and just kept pumping while looking at my phone. The next thing I heard was a man whistling for me like I was a dog or something. And the absolute worst feeling came over me. Something that I've genuinely never felt before. But it was a mix of fear and. Oh, crap. I literally felt my stomach drop. I looked up and sure enough, there was a man right there. He was dressed in a brown coat with the hood up, and he had red shorts. I don't even know how I remembered that. But after I looked up, he let out a yellow. Hey, look at me when I'm talking to you. It was so loud that my roommate, lying in the backseat, shot up. Then she rolled down her window. You good? At this point, the man was now speed walking towards me. But it was like as soon as she made herself known, he turned himself around and then he booked it back to the back of the building. I heard a car start and gravel fly as he got out of there. I didn't look at his car or van or whatever he drove, but because I was admittedly stuck in my place, and I think my roommate knew it too. I know a lot of people try to plan for this type of stuff, especially women like myself. They have a fully thought out idea as to how to handle it. What they're gonna say, where they're gonna run, maybe even who to call. Even I did. But when it actually happens, we're clueless, stuck in fear. And I was stuck. I'm glad my roommate let her presence known when she did. I'm glad I wasn't alone. After I filled up the car, she took over for me. I don't know what that man wanted or why he was yelling at me, or even walking towards me, But I don't ever want to experience something like that ever again. It.