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- [00:00]
Advertiser
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- [00:57]
Narrator
People who know bikes like I do.
- [00:59]
Advertiser
I'm happy as a clam Disclaim no.
- [01:01]
Narrator
Conclusive scientific research has shown clams can experience happiness.
- [01:04]
Advertiser
It just meant that I feel really.
- [01:05]
Narrator
Good about my coverage. I mean, even if you took the clam out for the best day ever, visiting the zoo, taking a scenic ride, knowing you're insured by specialists, and sharing a strawberry ice cream cone together, the clam would not feel happy and your strawberry cone would taste sort of clammy. Geico's motorcycle specialists who know bikes like you do assume no liability for clammy ice cream cones. Geico expertise for your motorcycle this was years ago when I was living in a different city. I hadn't really been on my own all that long and my housing situation fell apart at the last minute, so I had to scramble to figure it out. Meaning, you guessed it, random roommates. Now, the year before, I'd had a random roommate that was the most amazing person ever and ended up becoming a really great friend. So I figured this would be the same. It wasn't, but that's actually not the focus of this story. Enter the roommates. Ben, who I did actually know a bit from the previous year and was becoming great friends with, and Tom and Mike. Now, this was the very first couple of days after moving in and we'd all hung out and gotten to know each other, but Tom and Mike hadn't fully moved in yet. It was a big old house separated by floor and the top level locked at the stairs. This is important to note. Ben and I lived upstairs with Tom and Mike downstairs. I've always been paranoid and definitely have good reason. So when I'm home, all doors are locked. When I leave, all the doors are locked and When I sleep, my bedroom locked. I was home alone with Ben at work and Tom and Mike sort of in and out moving stuff in. I'll note that both had a lot of expensive stuff, like in the five figure range. Well, I was watching something on my laptop in my room. Bedroom locked and both entrances to my part of the house locked. I started hearing a lot of noise coming from downstairs. Sounded like doors and cupboards opening, furniture moving around, etc. I figured it's just Tom or Mike until I heard footsteps coming up the stairs. I was technically supposed to be somewhere at that time, which they knew, but it had been canceled at last minute so no one would have known I was home. And they had no reason to come upstairs when they knew that both of us were supposed to be gone. That was when I got panicky, hearing them closer and closer to the top of the stairs. I never said so. Still. Then the knob began to jiggle. I could hear it clearly as my room was closest to the entryway. At this point, I'm on the phone with 911 whispering that someone's in my house without giving away that I'm there to whoever it was. The house was super close to downtown and the cops arrived in mere minutes. But they were the longest of my life. At that moment, the downstairs was completely ransacked like something right out of a movie. It was just so surreal to see they had taken over 20 grand in electronics. I honestly don't remember the exact amount. Just about the amount that I think broken furniture plates and stuff even rips through the mattresses. Turned out Tom and Mike had left a door unlocked when moving. This would not be the last time before I fled this house. They were gone before the cops showed up, so I'd spent the next several months afraid they'd come back. Though it would turn out to be the least of my future worries. I'm so glad that I always locked the doors. Considering the way the downstairs looked, I don't know what they would have done to me, to whoever was on the other side of the thankfully locked door. I'm really glad you weren't able to get into my room. This is so bizarre. This isn't even a memory I forgot. Just one that I basically turned into my own fun anecdote to make it less scary. Eleven years later, it's still freaking scary. And I know just how lucky I was. For context, I was a fresh 21 year old and had recently discovered a love of dance and had started really enjoying concerts and festivals I had attended. My first festival at 20 and had the most amazing time volunteering and meeting new people. It was a last minute and unexpected situation that first year. But after the amazing experience I had, I was hooked. It's prudent to add that I was extremely naive and obviously new to that kind of scene. So the next year I had to cut off the friends I'd gone to festivals with before, but still had friends of friends that went that I got along with really well and had good memories with. So even though I was going my second year at the same festival, I was going solo and just camping with friends of friends, which I suppose was the beginning of the problem. I got going kind of late. So when I got to the festival the lines to get in were extremely long. I had packed diligently but the service wasn't great and I was having a hard time contacting my friends that I was camping with. By the time I had found the minute setup, it was dark. It was a newer but pretty large festival and I had a really bad sense of direction. In future years I'd learned to bring battery and solar lights and obnoxious decorations because of this night. It was also in a different location that year, so unfamiliar with where I'm camped with my surroundings. The second part where I messed it up. My ex roommate Tom and his girlfriend Gina were the ones I was closest to. And Tom was bringing some special acid for me as kind of an apology for not sticking up for me in a roommate situation. We all went to the first show together, but all got really high so fast. I took too much and I knew it was pretty quickly, so I knew the night was going to go sideways. But by the time I realized Tom and Gina had wandered off, I leaving me completely alone. I tried to find my way to my tent thinking I'd lay down for a bit and be okay. But I couldn't figure out how to get to it or where it was. It was dark and I was starting to panic being that I was high as hell and didn't know where anyone I knew was. I didn't know how to find my campsite or anything. I was in a crop top and jean shorts in high desert at nighttime, so I was starting to get cold. I wondered over to the disco area because it was the first thing I found. Had a legit disco ball and everything. I'm wandering around and I saw this woman in the most unusual clothing, think almost pioneer. So I went to talk to her. I genuinely to this day don't know if this person was real that's how messed up I was. We end up wandering around again, not really sure if this was a real person or a hallucination. And I'm trying to find my campsite. When we reach the RV and car and camp area. This man, maybe early 30s, with glow sticks, asked if we want any and we say, hell, yeah. She goes first, and as soon as it's on her wrist goes skipping away. I call out to her to wait, but she doesn't stop. The man then looks at me and.
- [08:33]
Witness
Says, are you okay? Do you think you can find your friend?
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Narrator
I then stupidly say, oh, I don't really know her, really. I can't find my campsite. And she was helping, but, oh, well. He responds with, you remind me a lot of my little sister. I wouldn't want her running around lost like this. Look, my buddy are gonna go watch.
- [08:56]
Witness
These shows and I wouldn't feel right.
- [08:58]
Narrator
Leaving you so you could just stay in his RV for a few hours to sleep it off. Obviously, I was too high, too young, too naive to see where this would go, and I stupidly complied and followed him. It was fine at first. It was a toy hauler. I think that's what it's called. So the back end was like a U haul that stayed open. The first guy put on an album that I had previously really loved as a teenager, but now can barely even listen to. He then tucked me in and left. I didn't see his buddy at that point. Fast forward. God knows how many hours I've been tripping out and listening to this music and actually been getting to the point of feeling okay when they get back. For the record, I didn't request this particular band. It was in a loop. The first thing I know was the guy that told me that I looked like his sister is climbing on top of me while I was half conscious, kissing my neck and touching me. Then I felt the second one in his hands. I was still so high and out of it, but immediately told them to stop, that I wasn't in a place for that. They got angry. And the one who'd got me there was the most frightening. I saw his eyes change in that moment and I knew I was screwed. If I couldn't get away. It didn't matter how high I was. I needed to get away from them. I don't even recall formulating a plan. I remember the man then saying, we helped you.
- [10:25]
Witness
Now you owe us.
- [10:26]
Narrator
And then slamming my knee into his groin. I may have forgotten that he was on top of me at that point. All I remember is running for my life into the very prickly bushes, not knowing where I was going but desperately running away. The man seemed a bit nervous about the whole thing and didn't do much except touch me while the other one held me down with the weight of his body. I met a couple of kind souls that calmed me down when I was completely freaking out, crying, covered in dirt and thorns and they gave me a safer space. I didn't sleep that night at all as I could no longer trust the kind stranger. But I also couldn't find my camp. It was 10 yards away as I discovered the next day. So to the two men who tricked me and trapped me and would have done something inevitably bad to me, screw you both and I hope I never see either of you again. I forgot to add this part because it's a pretty intense memory for me, but I'm pretty sure the only reason I got away is because they were on something. I hadn't even met guy 2 before, so I don't know much about him, but the one I did seemed crazed and very amped and high and out of it. And yes, I know the whole thing was really stupid of me. I was not even a full month into 21 though with very little life experience. I'm a teenager who helps his dad out on the allotment. If you don't know, an allotment is like a mini farm. You can plant veggies, have animals like chickens or rabbits to care for, etc. This happened recently and this still creeps me out. In the evening my dad says we need to go to the allotment to feed our chickens as he forgot to feed them earlier that day. It was around 8pm when I agreed and went in the car and started driving. When we got to our allotment, which is like a 15 minute drive, it was already dark outside. Not a lot, but dark. I opened the gates to the allotment, let my dad drive in and then closed them. As I was about to though, I saw a black car outside. The car belonged to a guy that used to be chill with my dad, but they both kinda fell from talking to each other. My dad said he was becoming more mentally ill as the guy had a divorce and got his kids taken away from him by the mother. The guy lives on the allotment now, even sleeping there. Remember, there's other people there too on this allotment area, around 20 other ones, but there was no one else except for me, my dad and the guy. After my dad parked the car. We got out and started getting the food for the chickens out of the trunk. While my dad was doing that, I had looked at his ex friend's allotment only to see him staring right at us. It was dark so I could only see a shadow of him, but I knew he was staring at us. I got a gut feeling but decided to ignore it. We went to the allotment, fed the chickens and were about to go home until my dad almost forgot about something. I went to the shed at the end of the allotment to fetch something and I was going to enter but had a feeling to wait out instead. As I asked my dad how much longer until he finds what he needs, I turned back to face our gate being opened. I didn't see it at first, but I saw the guy trying to enter our allotment quietly. He stared at me and then slowly closed the gate before just disappearing. I didn't react or say anything. I just stood there. I thought of telling my dad, but I didn't want to scare him or anything. In the end, this isn't a horror movie where I should scream like a girl. That was when my dad left the shed and now we could go. As we were leaving, we had heard a sound like an axe hitting wood non stop. We knew that something was wrong. We then quickly walked to our car, started it and went to the gate. I left the car creeped out of the guy being around in the allotment. I quickly opened the gate and let my dad drive through. As I was closing the gate, I saw something that terrified me on the spot. The guy was just standing there, 20 meters away from me, looking at me. I couldn't see any details but just darkness on him. He was holding something in his hand, but then he just moved and went into some bushes. My dad got out of the car to lock the gate and he looked at the bushes through the closed gate and then rushed to his car. When we left and started driving, I had asked my dad if he saw what I saw. He said that he saw him hiding in the bushes, squatting and looking at us. Dad said he saw him holding something too, like an axe or a knife or something. We left terrified, but we tried to laugh it off, knowing we were probably close to being attacked, or worse, dead. We came back to the allotment at the same time around 8pm, a few days after what happened. We saw the guy's car in the allotment and we knew we needed to be quick with feeding the chickens. As we did so Everything was going fine until we were about to leave. My dad stopped me and we hid over a blue shed. My dad then told me he's there. He's in the bushes. My heart dropped. I told my dad where he was and he said 5 second walk and we're done. We quickly ran to the car, closed it and drove off for a second. I saw him. He had an axe. He wanted to sneak up on us, harm us. He wanted to kill us. Back in 2013, I lived in Providence, Rhode island and had moved there for a new job. It was just me living there in a quaint and spacious townhouse with my then four year old daughter. We were relatively new to the area and we didn't know many people, but did become familiar with the kind older gentleman who lived next door. His name for the purpose of this story was Ben. We lived in a connected townhouse with our other two units abutting each other. Our street was lined with beautiful floral trees and was quite nice. But Providence is weird in that the conditions of the houses in little neighborhoods can vary drastically street by street. We were near a few rough neighborhoods, but I felt relatively safe in my new home. I remember a few nights prior to this specific night I saw a Facebook post with a safety tip to put your car keys next to your bedside so if anything ever happens you can press the alarm and then scare off an intruder. I've never been overly concerned about my safety and I rarely took advantage of any tips that I saw on Facebook, so I'm not sure how or why that I suddenly decided to heed this advice. I was reading a book in bed with my light on in my second floor bedroom hours after putting my daughter to sleep when I heard a loud sound outside. I peered out the window to take a look and saw nothing. I had taken some melatonin that evening, so I turned off the light and went to sleep. It was maybe half an hour or so later when I was suddenly woken up by what felt like almost an earthquake. The room shook and I heard a loud thud. Half awake, I gasped and sat up wondering if it was just my imagination or if I actually felt something and immediately ran to my daughter's room thinking she had fallen off her bed or injured herself or something. As I swung her door wide open, there she was, sleeping soundly and sweetly. I was so confused. I heard another loud bang and then this eerie feeling that something was wrong, but I couldn't figure out what. I grabbed my car key fob and took it downstairs. As I nervously expected the first floor I swore to myself if I heard one more sound, I would press the alarm just in case. But I didn't. It was silent after that. I returned to bed and took a while to fall asleep again, but soon shut my eyes. The next day went on like any other when I noticed a friend of mine had repeatedly called me. In the afternoon, I picked up my daughter from preschool and then called the friend back. Did you hear? He said. Um. Know what? I answered. News outlets were mopping your street about an hour ago, and the news trucks were even in your driveway. I sat silent, confused. Three men broke into your neighbor's place last night. They tied him up at gunpoint and stole thousands of dollars worth of items and then took off with his car. I immediately fell to my knees and began sobbing. I heard it all happen. I almost pressed the button. Almost. But I didn't. I sobbed and felt completely unsafe. I asked a friend to come over for the night to stay with us, and it wasn't until the next day that I got the chance to speak to Ben. Ben explained the whole story, and he told me the cops wanted to talk to me so I could share what I had heard and experienced. He said that the men smashed his window in his basement and entered through there. That's the sound I heard before going to bed. Apparently, the timeline suggested that they saw my light and me peering out the window and waited 30 minutes or so until my light was out to enter the premises. They didn't realize he was home, and since he had gone to bed early that night, it was suggested they inspected his place beforehand. He had been asleep when one of them was rummaging through his stuff upstairs in his bedroom, which was directly on the other side of my closets through a shared wall. The sounds and shakes that I heard and felt were apparently the intruder knocking him down to the ground. After realizing Ben was there and then cupping his mouth to tell him if he made another sound, he would kill him. This is why I never heard another sound as I was investigating thereafter. After they tied him up, he remained tied up for over 12 hours and eventually broke free before calling the police. I cried again and apologized profusely to Ben and explained what I had heard. And he simply said that as he was tied up, all he could think about was that he was glad that it didn't happen to me and my little girl. I really don't know what I would have done if my daughter and I had to experience that level of trauma firsthand. Ben seemed to be okay considering it all, but it Took me so long to feel safe again and for the guilt to subside. They never caught the guys and I ended up ordering a taser and some mace and even for the first time in my life, considered getting a gun but ultimately decided against it. I've been very fortunate to never experience anything close to that again and certainly don't want to. I'm really glad Ben was ultimately okay, but the next time I'll listen to my instincts. It's better to be safe than to be sorry. This happened like six, seven years ago now. Feel free to ask any questions. I played soccer for one year in community college after high school. I knew this guy because he worked for the athletics department. He was another student. Tuesdays and Thursdays I had a one hour gap between classes. This guy noticed me in the library and he asked what I was doing there. I told him I had an hour long gap and he had started coming regularly to hang out. I didn't mind because he seemed like a normal guy. He wasn't waiting for anything, but he just wanted to hang out. He brought me little gifts a few times, like chocolate and stuff. He was being a little too sweet for someone that I barely knew. I didn't even think about red flags with the gifts. I remember that he always downplayed it. He'd be like, they had extra KitKat bars today in the office.
- [22:37]
Witness
Do you want some?
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Narrator
He never said that he purposely bought a KitKat for me. I know a lot more about boys now than I knew back then. I think he knew that buying me gifts would be too much, but still wanted to do it without doing it. The soccer season for us ended before Thanksgiving. The only teams that kept playing after that were going to the playoffs, not us. But after Thanksgiving we had finals. In that brief period after the soccer season but before Thanksgiving, he had asked me about my classes for second semester. To be honest, I hadn't been super organized with course registration and I honestly didn't know. Also, the counselors were completely clueless. I didn't tell him that, but I remember saying that I didn't want to have another gap hour like this because it just wasted so much time. I don't think he was happy to hear that. He asked if I would play another season and I said no to that. I needed to manage my time better and playing soccer every day was not helping. I think my mistake was that I just said too much. Unfiltered. I used to do that a lot back then, saying way too much without thinking about how it can affect another Person's feelings. This was on the last Thursday before Thanksgiving. So no more hour gaps to hang out anymore. We had Thanksgiving break, we took finals, and we had winter break. Everything was great. Winter break was when the real problem started. In the mornings, this guy literally showed up outside my house while sitting in his car. The first time I didn't believe it was actually him. The second time I checked and it was. By then it was really clear that we both knew what was going on. He was stalking me. And that wasn't all I posted on my Instagram story sometimes and about the places I was at. This guy literally showed up there several times. Like girly stores at the mall where he had zero business being. He did lots of things like that. He also started pointing his phone at me like he was taking pictures. That was even weirder. I basically stopped using social media over this after winter break. Discontinued. When my parents were at work, this guy came during the afternoon too. I had to call the cops a few times. They went and tried to talk to him, but he basically told them that he wasn't going to talk and that was it. I think the cops really wanted to help, but they could never do anything about it because he was really careful to not actually break the law. Like he didn't trespass, he didn't make any threats, he didn't show any weapons or anything like that. I have no idea what he's doing now. My guess is that he finally gave up. Maybe his little obsession kind of became old and he just found other things to pay more attention to. At least I hope so. But if he still comes by, I have no idea. I think the most challenging thing is that I just couldn't tell my parents since I knew they would completely freak out. Last year I was working a shift as a library tutor. My job is to workshop people's essays and help them improve their writing. It's normally pretty rewarding and you get to know some interesting people. Until I met this guy, the most uncomfortable I'd ever been was some dude hitting on me or this really religious girl trying to convert me during our session. I can deal with that kind of stuff. This dude was next level creepy. I don't believe in psychic impressions. So when I say this dude gave off bad vibes, what I mean is that I think his men and body language must have been sending my subconscious mind a lot of massive red flags straight off the bat. Or something of the sort. Maybe he just really did emit evil psychic mojo. In any case, as soon as he sat down I was immediately uneasy in his presence. He looked totally normal, kind of even handsome. Very average. He had this kind of dead eyed look and made way too much eye contact. He sat in an off kilter position with one side facing away from me, his head not looking directly towards me. I tried to be super friendly and accommodating, thinking maybe he just seemed off to me because he was autistic or Asperger's since I have a lot of autistic friends who also struggle with body language and eye contact. The whole time we talked he had this weird little side smile like he was amused by something I didn't know about. I read through his essay and the uneasy pit in my stomach grew. It was total nonsense, like absolute psychotic nonsense. It was like reading Time Cube. The grammar was terrible, the spelling was bad, opinions would be inserted at inappropriate moments, the logic was super tangential and inconsistent. Still trying to be helpful, I asked him to go through sentence by sentence with me and talk through his ideas. We went through and painstakingly changed each sentence to attempt to thread some semblance of logic through the thing. It was only by like the third paragraph of this mess. Reading through it the second time though, that I finally figured out what this essay was actually about. It was a book report on a piece of pro Nazi fiction. He had been given a write about any book you wanted to assignment and the text he chose was this pro Nazi book about this heroic soldier being oppressed after the war for his ideals and actions. It was absolutely Nazi propaganda and this dude was high key praising it for three nonsensical pages. I was now feeling extremely uneasy. I fall into quite a few demographics that the Nazis want to exterminate and this dude had been making me feel really unsafe and uncomfortable without even doing anything so far. So I was walking on eggshells for the rest of the session. I helped him edit his Nazi essay and polish his Nazi thesis. I think if I had any foresight, I'd have intentionally sabotaged this paper on principle, but in the moment I was just way too skeeved out to think a plan like that through. I just wanted him to leave. When he did finally leave, I noticed his backpack had a lot of patches with guns and other military imagery that also creeped me out. I have friends who love big guns and they're super chill. But in context, this unsettled me even more. There had been something about his voice, the way he talked and his word choice that made me feel really uneasy as well. He spoke a little slowly, without much emotion and had a slight tilt to his speech that I recognized but couldn't place until later. I thought I'd heard his voice before, but I didn't know where. The next day I realized that his speech patterns had sounded so familiar because I listened to a true crime podcast which frequently has interrogation tapes, court tapes, and interviews with murderers. I like to research serial killers and true crime as a hobby. This dude had the same speech patterns, cadence and emotionless delivery of the convicted serial killer's recordings. I hadn't even realized that serial killers had commonalities in their speech patterns until that very moment. This dude talked just like a murderer in an interrogation room. I can't describe it. Maybe I was overreacting, but I really do believe that our brains are really good at picking up on red flags and this guy set off all of my alarms. I've never had such a strong, irrational gut reaction to somebody I've only just met before and I never have again. When he walked away, I remember thinking, I hope he doesn't shoot up the campus. He gave off the distinct impression of somebody who would do something like that. I had to take a bath when I got home just to feel like I was clean. That's how skeevy this guy was. I actually forgot all about him until today because I've been watching videos about Elliot Rodger and Andrew Blaze and both of them reminded me a lot of this guy I met in the library. I hope he dropped out and never comes back. This incident happened about five years ago. This is a story that I never really tell anymore because most people are either uncomfortable hearing it or make well meaning comments about what I should have done in this situation without really understanding how differently your mind works when you're experiencing absolute panic. So here is my story. I was living in a relatively nice apartment in downtown Memphis, working as an ophthalmic technician. I arrived home from work at my usual time around 4.30pm, unlocked my door and then went inside. I set my phone, wallet and keys on the kitchen island, hearing my heavy metal front door swing shut loudly behind me, and I then began taking care of some errands around the house. Having grown up in a small town, it was a habit for me to not lock my door during the day, especially when I knew my husband would be home soon anyway. I've never forgotten to lock my door once in the five years since this day. I walked through my bathroom and into my large walk in closet and began hanging up the laundry that I'd started earlier in the day before Work. My front door opened and I smiled with a surprise. My husband was home a little early, and I then happily called out to him, hey, love, I'm in here. I was met with silence and slowly began to feel that sinking feeling of something's wrong crawl up my spine. I tried to shake it off, thinking my husband simply hadn't heard me, and then I walked out into my living room and kitchen area. Standing on the other side of my kitchen island was a complete stranger. He was male, older than me, I would estimate 50s. But it's really hard for me to recall exact facial features or details from this moment. But he was just standing there, staring at me. No ski mask, no weapon, just watching me. I wondered if he'd maybe walked into the wrong apartment and was going to apologize and leave. But as he continued to stare, I realized that I needed to do something other than just gape at this stranger in my house. I stood taller, puffed at my chest, in an attempt to look more threatening, which is hard to do as a small female. I then used a loud, clear voice, telling him to get the hell out of my apartment, that he had no business being there. He completely ignored me, like I hadn't spoken. Then he began to pick up my things. My phone, my keys, my wallet. He picked them up methodically and then put them into his own pockets. That's when it truly hit me that this person was dangerous. I was naive enough to believe this was all a mistake until that moment. I then darted toward the only other device I had that would allow me to get help. My computer. I had to take a few steps closer to the intruder in order to reach it, but still had about 12 to 15ft between us, so I knew I could grab it and run before he could reach me. As I picked it up and turned to run, I saw him start to move after me and I sprinted back toward the bathroom because it was the only place I could go and put two locked doors between us, my bathroom door and closet door. I slammed it and locked the first door, and within seconds I could hear him messing with it, trying to open it. I ran into the closet and locked that door, too, opening my computer and getting on Facebook messenger to contact my husband. I sent message after message, pleading with him to call 911 and tell them there was an intruder in the apartment. He got the messages within minutes and then assured me that he had a dispatcher on the phone and was leaving work himself to try and get to me if he could. I waited and waited. The bathroom door opened and the intruder then came inside. He moved to the closet door and started trying to break that door down too. Here's the part where people usually start giving me advice on how I should have acted. But all I can tell you is that I was frozen. I was frozen with fear, with shock. I don't know. But I didn't scream or cry or search for a weapon in that darn closet. I didn't brace the door or try to hold it closed. I just kneeled in my closet and waited to die. Because I just knew that's what was going to happen. People liked to tell me that I lived in an apartment. Surely if I'd screamed, someone would have heard and come to help, right? Surely there was something heavy enough in my closet to use to defend myself. Hell, even the laptop I had would hurt if I swung it at someone. Why didn't I do anything? I don't really have an answer for that. But the closet door miraculously held. I heard frustrated footsteps go back out into the living area of my apartment. I heard things breaking, bottles shattering, my drawers and refrigerator and cabinets being flung open as things were torn out of them. I continued to sit in that closet, silently crying, wanting to leave, but feeling that death was inevitable. I really felt awful about my selfishness at that moment. But I messaged my mom, who lived a 15 hours drive away, and I told her what was happening. I desperately wanted comfort and to tell her how much I love her. I'm not a parent myself, but I can only imagine the fear and helplessness I put her through, knowing that her daughter was in danger and that there was nothing she could do to help. She messaged me constantly, begging me to keep replying. I told her I would as long as I could, but I also told her to tell my brothers that I loved them. The intruder started messing with the closet door again, mumbling disjointed words that I couldn't really distinguish. I remember hoping that the police would get to the apartment before my husband, that he wouldn't be the one to find me in whatever state this invader left me in. The front door opened again and it was my husband shouting for me. The intruder walked out towards the living room and kitchen area again, and I opened the door and darted from the closet to find my husband on the ground with him, pinning him in place. The man kept mumbling, at times yelling, but never really put up much resistance. This entire part is a blur for me. I remember feeling like the room was spinning, filled with fear, mostly for my husband. At this point. Eventually, the police found the apartment. It took them about 25 minutes to arrive, which still blows my mind. I know time seems to move slowly during really scary situations, so I thought it was less than that. But from the time my husband dialed 911 to the time the officers arrived, it was 25 excruciating minutes. This isn't intended to bash them in any way, by the way. It just always seemed like it was an unusually long response time for a home invasion. They got my things back from the man and took him out of my apartment. I numbly went through the process of filing a police report telling them what happened. One of the officers commented that I should really keep my door locked at all times. I remember feeling like he was being insensitive at the time or blaming me for what happened, but I later realized his words were just coming from experience. I'm sure he's seen the situation indifferently for other women. Within 30 minutes, the scariest incident of my life was over. But I've carried the fear, the violation, the anxiety of having someone intrude into my space for years. If it happened to me once, it could happen again. If you've made it this far, thanks for listening, please consider continuing because this isn't all doom and gloom. If this or something similar has happened to you and you're still struggling with the aftermath of it, the sleepless nights, the lying awake listening for sounds of forced entry, the nightmares, the constant checking and rechecking your locks, this is what eventually helped me. A year after this took place, my husband and I moved into the Midwest for his job. We selected a safe town with a nice apartment complex and chose a third floor apartment with one point of entry. I looked up every statistic on crime for the neighborhood, finding that an isolated incidence of car theft was the only thing reported in decades. I still couldn't sleep at night. It was definitely better than staying in the same apartment in Memphis, but my husband often worked night shifts now, and I simply couldn't continue being terrified to sleep at night. I realized my biggest fear wasn't that something could happen again, but that if it did, I was just as unprepared now as I was then. I hadn't really changed anything other than locking my door, and I knew I would likely freeze up again and leave my life up to being able to hide well enough or having a door hold long enough to save me. And that was unacceptable. I walked into a martial arts school with an excellent self defense program, then introduced myself and started taking classes. At first I was quiet, hiding in the back of the room and generally keeping to myself. My instructor, who is both incredibly kind and incredibly insightful, slowly built up my confidence and brought me out of my bubble of fear. After several months of training, I finally shared my reason for taking classes with him, and he's worked with me tirelessly to give me the ability to protect myself in any environment. I've been training for years now, and the difference it's made in every aspect of my life is unbelievable. The meek, quiet girl that waited to die in her closet doesn't exist anymore. I'm confident, I'm strong and I'm worthy of living and protecting myself in my own home. I am no longer ashamed of how I handled the situation I was in, but I also understand what steps I can take to ensure that I'm safe. It wasn't easy and it didn't happen overnight, but it was worth it. I recognize that this might not be a solution or option for everyone. Your experience is valid and however you decide to cope with your own story is the right choice for you. This is how I happened to do it and it's how it's worked out for me. Thank you again for listening. I'm a little afraid to share this because I'm not really sure how people will respond, but maybe doing so will help someone else that's feeling alone with this. Stay safe out there everyone. This all started years ago. I was somewhere between 1819 years old and I'm in my mid 20s now. I was at one of the numerous parties my best friend at the time, Dana, was throwing with her being the first of our friends to get her own place with her boyfriend Mike. Pretty much every weekend there was some sort of party going on at their place. And of course her being my best friend, I was always there as often as I went to her parties. There were only a handful of people that I knew personally, but I suppose that's normal with her moving to a completely different town about 45 minutes to an hour away. Depending on the traffic. I would typically work Mondays through Thursdays and head to her place on Fridays, party Saturday, then come home on Sunday. It wasn't out of the ordinary for Dana and her boyfriend to try and set me up with random people. To be honest, I was used to meeting a new guy pretty much every weekend. It was always the same line, he's perfect for you, you're gonna love him. And nine out of ten times I really wasn't interested. So this one particular party I was having a grand old time doing shots in the kitchen with my tiny group of friends, then wandering out to the living room to socialize with all the new faces. I'm an extremely friendly and bubbly person, which is probably why my friends never worried about whether or not I would be uncomfortable on my own around the party. To this day, I've never met a person I didn't like at one of Dana's parties except for Keith. I remember I had just finished playing beer pong with a group of new friends and after losing by an embarrassing amount, I needed to cool it on the drinks and decided to plop down on the couch. I then heard a very friendly well hello there and I turned to see a guy no older than maybe 24 sitting next to me. There was nothing creepy looking about him. In fact, he wasn't bad looking at all. Light brown hair with honey colored eyes and a friendly smile. I don't believe we've met, he said with a friendly nod and turned his body to face me. I don't believe we've met either. I smiled and held out my hand then introducing myself. We shook hands and he told me that his name was Keith. I was about to ask him if he was a friend of Mike's since he was around Dana's boyfriend's age and while I can't remember who it was, one of my friends at that moment had come over to drag me off somewhere. I honestly have no idea where we went or anything seeing as I was drunk and this was years ago, but I remember quickly telling Keith that it was nice meeting him and I was sure I'd be seeing him again around that night before prancing off with my friend. I didn't see him for the rest of the night though, but didn't think anything of it. I was even crashing on their couch that night and didn't recall seeing him leave. But like I said, I didn't think anything of it. Flash forward a couple of days later and my phone popped up with a text from a number that I didn't recognize.
- [44:37]
Witness
Hey, it's Keith from the other night.
- [44:39]
Narrator
I'm really bummed we didn't get to.
- [44:41]
Witness
Spend more time together.
- [44:42]
Narrator
Sad face. I read it and it took me a few minutes before I could even remember who the hell Keith was. It wasn't out of the blue for me to get texts from people that I'd meet at parties, being the social butterfly that I am. However, whenever I do give out my number, I'll always do an exchange at that moment so I can write down who it is. So after a little bit of small talk, him asking how gnarly my hangover was the next day and me asking how his current day was going, I had asked him how he got my number. He said he had asked my friend for it when he was getting ready to leave and couldn't find me to ask me himself. Assuming it was either Dana or Mike, I dropped the subject and started asking him more about him and he about me. While I didn't necessarily see Keith as anything more than a friend, we began to talk regularly. He had the same sense of humor as I do, and he was a night owl like I was. He had quickly become one of my favorite people to talk to. A couple of weeks later, I was at another party at Mike and Dana's. I remember it was Mike's birthday and he wanted to do an 80s theme. So we all got dressed up and let the alcohol flow and it was honestly a blast. At the peak of my drunkenness, I had yelled over the music to Dana, who was right next to me, if Keith was coming at all. Who? She yelled back as we danced by hopping around and tossing our extremely teased hair. You know Keith. I yelled again and she gave me a weird look. She kept saying she had no idea who that was. And when I tried to describe him, she yelled that she didn't know a Keith. And that really confused the hell out of me. When she noticed my energy shift, she quickly said that it was very likely that he could have come with our friend Rianne. Since she was always bringing 1s or 2s. Immediately agreeing with her, I continued to dance the night away and down drinks that I would be regretting the next morning. Rianne had actually stayed over that night since she was in no shape to drive. So she took the couch while I made a little nest on the floor. When I had woken up early that morning to get some water, Ran was getting ready to leave. Since she had to be somewhere semi early that day. And she had a lot of hairspray to come out of her hair and a lot of blue eyeshadow to take off. I had quickly downed my glass of water and remembered what Dana had said about Keith. I asked her if she was the one who brought Keith the other week and she just laughed and said, yeah, I have no idea who the hell Keith is. I gave her a brief rundown of who he was and how we had been talking, and she apologized and told me again that she didn't know a Keith. While that should have been at least a teeny bit of a red flag. I still didn't think anything of it since I legitimately really enjoyed talking to him the first few months. He was super cool. I had opened up to him about personal things that I had gone through, particularly my rocky relationship with my dad and my past messy, ugly romantic relationships. Keith was one of the only people I had really opened up to about one relationship in particular where I was being abused and didn't even fully realize it until he pointed it out to me. I genuinely felt Keith cared for me and wanted the best for me. It was comforting. Not long after then, he started to become more flirtatious with me. While I naturally have a somewhat flirty personality, even his advances were a bit much for me. I told him that I didn't want to give him the wrong idea because I wasn't looking to date anyone at that time and I'd really just saw him as a good friend. He was clearly upset by the tone in his voice when I had told him, but he said he understood and that he was really glad we were friends. His texts and calls became a little more frequent after that, and while we already talked just about every single day, it was like the more I tried to explain that I didn't see him that way, the more he pushed it on me. I started to pull back on talking to him because as forward as I was about my feelings, I was still worried that I may have been leading him on during this time of me pulling away. Keith had found my MySpace, which I hadn't used all that much by that point. It was when everyone was just beginning to switch over to Facebook. He would ask me questions about my family and say things like, in this.
- [49:06]
Witness
Picture, is that your friend?
- [49:09]
Narrator
The majority of the questions he asked I knew I had previously told him about those friends or family members, but there were a couple that I knew for a fact I hadn't mentioned, and somehow he knew who they were and my relationship to them. Particularly a picture of my nephew, who at the time was still just a tiny baby. He said something along the lines of my nephew looking cute, but but Keith knew his name. It struck me as somewhat creepy, but I tried to brush it off around this time, an old, very dear friend had recently come back into my life. His name was Max and we were best friends when we were about 15. I had always had a crush on him, but I was just too shy to say anything. And after he moved, we lost contact. I randomly found him on Facebook and while I was positive it was him, I sent him a message anyway. Calling him my old nickname that I had for him with a ton of question marks and exclamation points. He was just as excited to hear from me as I was to find him. And things had instantly picked up right where we had left off. We spent all night messaging back and forth and eventually texting. And then the all night phone call started up again. As crappy as it was of me me, I had unintentionally stopped answering Keith's texts and calls when Max came back into my life. The way I saw it was I had already lost him once and I wasn't about to let that happen again. One late night while I was away at my uncle's for Thanksgiving, I was on the phone with Max and I told him that I always had the fattest crush on him when we were younger, but that I was just too terrified to say anything because I was really positive that he didn't see me the same way and that I didn't want to lose his friendship. He started laughing and he told me that he felt literally the exact same way. And that's why he would always tell me that my friend Shannon was cute to not blow his cover. Feeling extremely bold in that moment of exhaustion, I told him I still felt that way and that when we had lost contact, I had thought of him and wondered what he was up to. And he said he felt the same. I was totally overwhelmed with happiness and he said that there wasn't anyone else that he had ever connected with quite like the connection that we had right at that moment. We decided to officially be a couple and started to figure out when I would be able to fly out to visit him. Things with Max were better than I could have ever imagined. Waking up to his good morning phone calls and texting all day and every day until it was time to talk on the phone until we fell asleep. I was over the moon and completely forgotten all about Keith. Christmas comes around and I call Max to wish him a merry Christmas. He even passed the phone around so I could talk to his family, who I had also completely fallen in love with. We decided at the end of February I was going to fly out to spend a week with them. Late one night in the beginning of February, I got a call from Max's aunt. The moment my phone rang, I knew something wasn't right. We said hello and when I asked if everything was. She burst into tears, absolutely hysterical then telling me that Max had been in a car accident. I could feel my heart drop into my stomach and I began to shake. I Was so terrified to ask if he was okay because I already knew the answer. I still remember every single detail about that day and night. I remember feeling something was off. I hadn't heard from Max in a few hours other than a post on my Facebook saying I love you. I still remember what I was wearing. I remember exactly where I was sitting and the position I was sitting in when I got the news. I remember dropping to the floor and having to use all of my energy to pull myself up and crawl into my mom's bed and tell her what happened. I just couldn't believe he was gone. I had lost my Max all over again. I didn't reach out to any of my friends for a long time, other than my closest friends who got the news and rushed to be by my side every second that they could. It really took me a while to come around again, but eventually I had started taking the steps that I needed to heal. I started going on outings with my friends. I started to eat more. Something in my mind had clicked. That Max would never want me to waste my life like that. He always told me that we needed to make the best of our lives and that we had so many adventures awaiting us that day. I decided to live my life to the fullest. Not just for me, but for maximum. Which eventually led to me reaching out to Keith and apologizing for basically ghosting on him. And that I really hoped there were no hard feelings. He forgave me, and while I knew better than to reach out too much, we were on a good note here and there. I would still get texts from him sometimes just to say hello, but mostly they were I saw this and it.
- [53:58]
Witness
Reminded me of you.
- [54:00]
Narrator
Texts like that, whether it be something I liked or something related to one of our old inside jokes, nothing creepy at that point. A few months later, I had gone over to a friend's for dinner, and while she and I were doing dishes afterwards, my phone began to ring. I saw it was Keith, so I picked up and gave a friendly hello. But instead of a hello back, he was breathing heavily and moaning and even muttered a few weird sexual things that he wanted to do to me. I remember that I shrieked and laughed before screaming to stop because I thought he endowed me by accident instead of whoever he was boinking at the time. I figured he would have been mortified and given me one of those oh my God, I'm so sorry type of apologies and then we can go straight to laughing about it. But the breathing and moaning just continued and I then froze in confusion and shock. When he came, he yelled out my name and let out a small chuckle, then tried to spark a conversation as if nothing had happened. What the hell was that? I yelled and he was really surprised that I didn't enjoy it. At that moment, I was pissed. I told him knock that crap off before hanging up and going back to the dishes. After my friend let me vent about it, I felt a little bit better and decided that I would no longer reach out to Keith. On my way home, he had sent me a text apologizing saying that he didn't know what came over him and that it was just drunken stupidity, blah blah blah. I told him that if he ever tried anything like that again, we were gonna have a major problem. He apologized again and I thought that would be the end of it. That's when the dick pics started rolling in along with more phone calls, and he even sent me a couple of videos. At that point, I really should have told somebody about it or gone to the police or at the very least change my number, but I was an idiot and I didn't. It was the only cell number I had ever had at that point, and I didn't want to go through the hassle of giving out my new number and all that junk to the tons and tons of people who I enjoyed talking to just because of one choed bag of a dude. The more I ignored Keith, the more aggressive he got, though. He would randomly send me pages of texts explaining in great detail why I was a bitch, a whore, and every other awful name in the book that he called me. He said it was real disgusting of me to lead him on like that and my family should be ashamed to be related to such an ugly whore. It was very hurtful, but I brushed it off. I have pretty thick skin and I usually don't take things like that too seriously. When that approach didn't work, he got desperate. He sent me a text saying he was sorry and that he was really afraid because he didn't know what he was doing or what had come over him. I told him he needed to get some professional help. When he then said he wanted to die, I started to panic. I then called him and asked what was going on. I have always been a person to help out others in need, no matter how bad our relationship is. After losing Max, I promised myself that I never wanted anyone to feel that sense of lonesomeness that I felt. Keith was crying, saying that he was ready to die right then and there, that he had bottles of pills and a handle of Boo sitting right in front of him and it was taking everything in him to not down it all and be done with everything. I had never been so freaked out in my entire life. I had sat on the phone with him for hours and listed off reason after reason for him to stay alive. He eventually calmed down and thanked me before then apologizing again. I told him again that he needed to get some help and that it was okay to ask for it. He said I was right and that was the last I heard from him for the rest of that week. I went back to my normal life and I thought things were a okay in my life again. But of course, since this is Reddit, Keith came around again. He went back and forth between aggression and desperation. One day it would be I don't want to live anymore and then the next it would be, you selfish bitch, I hate you. I was getting afraid and I told a few friends about it and none of us had ever dealt with anyone this unstable before. We were all equally freaked out and we decided the next time he said anything, I was changing my number and telling someone who could do something about it. The very next morning, I woke up to an essay of a text message from Keith telling me that everything I had ever said to him was a lie and I disgusted him. Nothing new there. But then I kept reading and I totally broke down. He went on to tell me that Max got what he deserved and that he had never been so happy to hear that someone died and that I should have been in that car with him. I should have survived so I could have been the one to pull his body from the wreckage and have that horrible memory burned into my brain forever. Now look, insult me all you want, but the very second you start to talk crap about my dead boyfriend, you are done. You're dead to me. While my dad and I don't have the best relationship, he was the first person that I thought to call. He answered immediately and when he heard me sobbing, he went into complete protector mode asking what happened. I told him the whole story and that I didn't know what to do. He told me to give him Keith's number and he would take care of it. The second we hung up, I sent him his number and within half an hour my dad texted me saying, this is your new number and your brothers and I are taking care of the rest of the problem. I'm the youngest girl in my family and all of my brothers are over six foot, two of them heavily tattooed, and the other one used to be in the Navy and is now a cop. I honestly have no idea what they said or did to Keith, but after that I never heard from him ever again. A couple of weeks after I talked to my dad, I had looked up Keith on Facebook to block him and make sure that he could never contact me on there as well. It's been years now and I'm happy to say that my life is as back to normal as it could be. I still have no idea to this day who gave him my number or if he had possibly had it already. It's possible that he was in fact a friend of a friend, but I feel it's not likely. Dana and Mike have split since then, so I never got a chance to ask Mike about it, but I'm more than happy to move on from it. I don't really know if his intentions were to just scare me or if he would have done something much worse had it continued ok, so this is a situation that happened in the Dubai airport. Although I wasn't the main victim in this story, I was trying to get to the terminal in order to catch a flight out of Dubai when I realized the taxi driver took me to the wrong terminal. Disappointed at the fact that I was at the wrong place, I let out a damnit out of frustration at myself and decided to try and figure out where to go next. A few minutes later two police officers came and detained me and then went off on me for swearing at an Arab woman whom I assume was somewhere around me and a whole host of insults that would only be really offensive in Arab and Asian culture, including threats of violence until they saw I had a passport from a western country and then suddenly became polite. I don't look like I'm from the west though. However, the worst part of that hour long ordeal was the fact that there was a Hungarian girl that came in with her dad and complained about being assaulted, only to get yelled at by the police and told to get lost. Is this a common experience in authoritarian countries? What would a woman do if she was really attacked like this? Anyway, I'm really glad that I wasn't that girl at the time and to the Dubai police, hopefully I don't have to see any of you again. It's hard to pinpoint when this occurred because every time I think that it's finally over, I'm reminded that it's not. Tate was my first ever boyfriend. The story is supposed to focus on the things he did after we broke up, so I'll quickly gloss over what happened during our relationship and Yeah, I was really stupid back then, so brace yourselves for cringe. This is gonna be a long and angry one. We started dating shortly before my 15th birthday. The whole relationship was a mess. He convinced me to steal money from my grandmother and run away with him. He cheated on me multiple times, got me pregnant, which birth control failed, and then dumped me for another girl, only to come crawling back after he coerced me into having an abortion. He also lied a lot. Like a lot. But of course I forgave him over and over again. This whole ordeal lasted 21 months before I'd finally had it and ended it once and for all. He frequently called me, sometimes in the middle of the night. He would also often pass by my house sending me messages like, I see your mom still drives the same car. One time he refused to leave until I came down and told him that I was done with him. I threatened to call the cops, which made him pissed off. I eventually just blocked him everywhere that I possibly could. I started dating again three months after our breakup. Her name was Emma. Tate somehow found out who I was dating and had sent her fake screenshots of text messages that implied that I still loved him and want wanted him back. All in an attempt to sabotage my new relationship. Lucky for me, Emma had a brain and quickly caught onto the fact that he was bullcrapping her. Since I had blocked him everywhere, he ended up messaging a friend of mine. One year into my relationship with Emma, he said that he'd been stalking me and was threatening to kill her. I called the cops, but they just told me that they couldn't really do much as long as it was nothing but messages on the Internet. Emma is still alive and well, so it was all empty threats, but it was certainly enough for me to be terrified to leave the house for a few months. Well, Emma and I eventually broke up. Once again, Tate somehow found out about that and decided to use the opportunity of me being single. Mind you, Emma and I had dated for over two years, so Tate and I's breakup had been more than two and a half years ago. I also later found out that he had a girlfriend and a son. He turned up on my doorstep at 5 o'clock in the morning. He messaged me from a new profile and demanded that I come downstairs to say goodbye. Because he was moving to la. I'm from Europe, so not only would he have needed a visa, which requires a lot of money and can take several years to be approved, his English skills were also practically non existent. He stood in front of My door, looking up at my window, smiling and waving. I told him to piss off where I was, calling the cops. After which he went on a long rant about what a whore I was and how no one trusts him and really a whole lot of nonsense. I blocked the new profile and when I dared to take another look out the window, 30 minutes later, he was gone. I really don't want to know what would have happened if I had gone outside that day. That was three years ago and I honestly thought that would be it. After all, our breakup happened almost six years ago now. A few months ago though, well, I fell in love with someone online. He lived in America. We got married and I moved to America. I needed to clean up my block list on Facebook. It had been such a long time, I didn't think much of it when I unblocked it. After all, I was now married and lived halfway across the planet. Now, not one month after I unblocked him, he messaged me in the dead of night, which would have been sometime in the morning for him. Hey, I was just about to stop by when I remembered that you live 5,000 miles away now. How's it going? I have straight up no idea how he knows that I moved to America. My profile on Facebook is set to private. I had a mild anxiety attack even though I knew that he literally couldn't touch me. I don't want to talk to you was my response. Are you sure? I'd like to know how it's going with your husband and how it is in America. Yes, I'm sure. I don't want to tell you about me or my husband or my life in America. I'm done with you. I've been done with you. Just leave me alone, I told him. His response was a minute long voice message. I didn't even listen to it because I didn't want to hear his voice. Instead, I just forwarded it to a friend who listened to it for me. According to her, there was a lot of rambling. He apologized for the voice message saying his cab driver had punched him, which leads me to believe that he was either drunk and or high. Again, he was saying how he still liked me and that he'd love to stay in contact. If I wanted someone to talk to, he'd be there. The rest was unintelligible as there were sirens in the background. I never replied. Instead, I just blocked him again. Every time something like this happens, I think it's the last time. But at this point, it really feels like I'll never Fully get rid of him. My fiance, a 27 year old male and I, a 23 year old female, are soon to be married and are remodeling an old family home. We started working on the house about two or three months ago. My fiance bought a bunch of tools to use on the house to renovate. The house has been sitting with nobody in it for over a year. Keep in mind the house is located in a fairly rural area. A few houses and trailers here and there, but not too much traffic. We have a rodent problem and have been setting up traps to catch them. About three weeks ago, my fiance went to check the traps and we had a rat that was alive. Long story short, he didn't want to take care of it so he left. I got off work at 9pm and went over to the house to take care of the rat. It was raining and my mom and brother came with me. I went to the back door and it was wide open and water was blowing into the house. I was pissed. I thought that my fiance had left the door open. I shut it and finished my business there. I asked my fiance why he left the door open and he claimed he didn't. I called bullshit and just left it at that. It didn't occur to me that somebody had possibly made a quick getaway. Fast forward to today. My fiance and I went to our house to throw a whole bunch of trash and stuff into the dumpster we rented. When we went inside, we immediately noticed that some of our things were missing. Drills, Sanders, etc. We realized they had been stolen. We then call my mother in law and tell her about it. She says to make a police report. What really scares me so much about this is that everything began to click with the rat trap incident. Somebody has been scoping us out. I would go to our house by myself on many occasions and always had the creeps and felt watched. My little brother even remarked that he felt watched there and he asked if we were sure that nobody was in there while we were gone. I noticed today when I was there alone that my dog was acting very nervous and suspicious. She wasn't running and playing like she usually does and she didn't want me to go to the backyard or the wooded area. I'm glad I trusted her in my gut feeling. I don't know if the thieves were there, but I'm glad that I didn't find out. We're currently in the process of installing cameras. This had to have been somebody that lives near us and can monitor how often we're there. So we did catch a car pulling in like it was scoping the place out. The people inside never got out, but they left. We asked a few of my fiance's family members about it and that was to our detriment. One of them went and spread the word that we have cameras and that somebody in the neighborhood who owned the vehicle that we caught on camera slipped up and said that they already knew things had been stolen, which to me is basically a confession because we hadn't told anybody about the robbery until the incident with the car that we caught on camera. So now more people than necessary know and we probably won't catch the person who did it. We still turned the footage into the police though, and maybe they can dig up some background information. I guess time will tell. While this may not be super eventful, it was scary. I worked at the Walmart pharmacy and this happened two days ago. As most people who work retail know, the associates have to park at the end of the parking lot. So it's a pretty far walk to the store for us. I'm a 23 year old female. I was walking in the parking lot on my way to the store to clock in. I'm walking in front of a row of cars when I see a large truck up ahead. There was a blonde woman in the driver's side and a man in the passenger side. I suddenly got this urge to walk a little further away from the row of cars, particularly that truck. So I walked further out in front of it. As I'm passing by, the man quickly opened his door and then leaned about halfway out. He has a yellow card in his hand with something written in Sharpie. He then says, ma'am, I need to give you something. He didn't get out of the truck, though. He was partially inside with the door propped open, leaning as far out as he could. He then said, come get this card from me. I honestly have never felt fear overcome me like that. I looked at the woman and she was gripping the steering wheel and just watching me. The car was running.
- [72:17]
Witness
It's a business card for pressure washing. Just walk over here and get it. I thought you might be interested.
- [72:23]
Narrator
I then looked at him and politely declined. He seemed frustrated and I just quickly walked off. I had the worst gut feeling something was telling me to get away as quickly as I could. I turned and watched the trunk pull off and drive away quickly. Thankfully, nothing happened, but it was still very scary. A few hours later, I was told that a sex trafficker had been arrested at another nearby Walmart. Just A day before. The boards on the walls with missing women, men and children in Walmart are no joke. So many people have gone missing at large stores like Walmart. Always listen to your gut. So this happened a few years ago, but it stuck with me because of how weird and scary it was. So every year for the past few years my parents have been going on a week long anniversary trip leaving me home alone. I was 20, so it was more than an appropriate age. Well, this time around some weird crap happened the first day that they were gone and then this happened the night before they were supposed to come home the first day they were gone. A guy came to the door to drop something off in the morning, but I didn't want to answer it as it was a stranger and I thought he'd just leave it at the door like usual. Well, he stayed for about five minutes and then got in his car and started to drive off to which I then went outside because I thought he had finally left it. This man got out of his car, leaving it in the middle of the road just to give me my package that I didn't have to sign for at all. No signature needed or anything. Wasn't dressed like a delivery person, was in a beat up car, very weird and uncomfy. Skipping to the end of the week, I was just chilling out in my living room and all of a sudden at 11 at night, I see this rather large figure approach my front door. The glass is dimpled so you can't see the features but just a silhouette. The figure starts banging on my door and then did so for like a minute straight. He just stands there and doesn't leave for probably 10 minutes and in that time beats on the door a few times over. Luckily my sister and her family live not even a mile away from me so I called them and then her husband came to get me. By this time I'm in full panic mode and I realize that my dogs are in the backyard, my back door is 90% glass and I was horrified that this person was going to come through the back gate to try and come into my house as my dogs were barking up a storm. Anyways, I got my dogs inside the house and my brother in law finally showed up and whoever was there was gone. He takes me to my sister's house and we checked the front door cameras to see who was there. The cameras had been turned off the whole time this person was there and for an hour before that he had started banging on my door. The cameras had been on before that time period. And during the time we were looking at the cameras, they were somehow shut off for about an hour and a half, which was odd because they're not the type that needs to be charged. And they had never glitched before then, but were actually very sensitive. To this day, I don't know who it was that showed up at the house. I checked the local news and everything, but nothing ever came of it. I don't know if they were trying to rob my house or if they had other plans or if it was potentially the delivery guy from earlier that week. But it still freaks me out to think about. And I hate being home alone at night because of it. I'm not proud of any of this. I have a big family and we're super close. When I was in high school, my aunt was dating this guy who seemed really wealthy, but no one really knew what he did. I think anyone could have guessed though. I asked my aunt to introduce me to her boyfriend and we talked about how I could work for him. Without going into too much detail. He let me work for him. I sold to some people I knew. I went to high school in an area where there was a lot of drugs. I knew a few boys who claimed they were already using this stuff. I offered to sell it to them and surprisingly they had really big orders for me. I didn't ask any questions, I just went along with it. I was making about $3,000 a month from this. Not enough to retire or anything, but definitely more than most 17 year olds made. I never made a point to flaunt my money or anything. I think I kept it well hidden. At least I thought I did. What bothers me is that there's no way of knowing. One Saturday morning, I walked over to my friend's house for a birthday party. Not a wild one or anything, just a cute little breakfast. On my way home, this guy that I'd never seen before pulled over and got out of the car. He was well dressed and a bit older. When he got out of his car, I thought he was a cop. He was acting like a cop. I was ready to surrender because I didn't think I could make an escape. But then he pulled out a switchblade and said to give him my purse. He then said something like, don't act dumb, girl.
- [77:40]
Witness
I know you have money. It's okay. We can make this easy if you.
- [77:43]
Narrator
Just give me your purse. Again, I can't really explain this, but that just felt like such a cop like thing to say. I don't know if you've ever been in that kind of situation. I really hope you haven't, but you kind of just freeze when someone surprises you like that. It's not really fear. Your body just doesn't know how to react. I almost think my body didn't let me get too scared, because if it did, then I'd have a heart attack. First, I think I felt relieved that he wasn't actually a cop. Thank goodness for that. Second, when he said it was okay and that we could make it easy, it actually calmed me down a bit. So I just managed to say, okay. Can I just give you my cash? My purse has my phone and pictures and other stuff. He said okay to that. I opened my purse and took out all the cash I had, about $200. He watched me closely as I did it. He took the money, said something like.
- [78:39]
Witness
If you tell anyone, I'll find out.
- [78:41]
Narrator
And then he left. I felt really calm the rest of the walk home. The next morning, it hit me that I had been mugged. That's when the panic set in. I had started shaking and crying. Even as I'm writing the story now, it still gives me chills. I had never seen that guy before.
- [79:00]
Witness
When he said, I know you have.
- [79:02]
Narrator
Money, I don't know if he meant he knew about my dealing or if he was just trying to scare me. Honestly, I'm really glad that this all happened because it made me get out of that business at the right time. Things were only going to get even more dangerous from there. It's still scary thinking about it, but that guy saved me. Without even realizing it, I told my aunt's boyfriend what happened and that I was just too scared to keep doing this trade anymore. He told me to send all of my customers to him instead. I did, and that was the end of it for me. It's been almost 10 years now and I haven't looked back since. One night I had gone to the Walgreens by my house to pick up some cigarettes and random snacks. The line was longer than usual because it was a Saturday night and people were buying alcohol. It was about three people back from the register and out of the corner of my eye I saw a gigantic figure. Out of curiosity, I looked back and I saw a guy with bright orange and red hair who is at least 7ft tall. I didn't want the guy to think I was just gawking at his height, so I just mumbled cool Nirvana shirt and then didn't look back for the rest of my weight. After I checked out at the register, I went to my car. I lit a cigarette and then sent a couple of texts just to keep from texting and driving. I probably sat in my car for around 35 minutes. Not too long to get back to my house. I always drive the quick way, but it's not on any main streets. It mainly consists of driving behind stores and through store parking lots, all of which were closed by that hour. I pulled up to my house, put my car in park and gathered my thanks. As I was reaching for my handle, I saw a dark colored jeep pull up beside me. I rolled down my window and asked the driver if they needed something because they were just staring at me. The guy just blurted out, you're hot. And then just looked at me with a blank stare. I then replied, how would he know what I looked like before he stopped in my car? It turns out the tall guy had followed me home. This couldn't be by accident because of the weird, convoluted way that I drove home. He asked me out and I responded no thanks, I live with somebody. Not going to tell him it's my dog, not a partner. He said that he did too and I firmly told him no yet again, making sure not to smile or laugh or give him any encouragement. Finally, he drove away. I waited a while to make sure that he was really gone and then went inside, thoroughly creeped out. The next morning I went out to my car to get something out of the trunk. Written in the dust on top of the trunk and giant scroll was a phone number. He'd come back after I went inside to do that, even after I showed zero interest. Quick backstory. I've had a stalker for about four years. He was never aggressive or sent me any proper threats, so as stubborn as I am, I did my best to ignore him and not give him the satisfaction of showing him him any fear. To be honest, after a while I also wasn't scared anymore since he almost never came close to me. I know being stalked can affect people severely, even in a case like mine, and that's totally valid, but I guess I just got lucky and was never really psychologically affected by it. His stalking behavior mostly just consisted of sending me letters and gifts, such as photos of my own apartment building from the outside, things that he dug out of my trash can, and so on. I called the police many times, but they weren't able to catch or identify him. About three weeks ago I discovered the German version of Ask me anything on Reddit and I thought people might want to know what it's like to have a stalker. Since I barely use any social media aside from Reddit and have no personally identifying information here, I didn't think he'd ever stalk see it. One person even asked does he know you're putting him on blast on Reddit? And I answered maybe. Maybe it would make him angry, maybe he'd be turned on. Don't know, don't care. Well, I know the real answer to that now. He did see it and he did not like it. Like I said, he was never aggressive and never came close to me. The closest I know of was that he sent me a picture of myself unlocking my apartment door, taken from the corner of the steps above. Sorry if that makes no sense. I don't know how else to explain it, but I consider myself a pretty vigilant person and I'm thinking that he might have hid a camera there instead of being there to take the photo himself. I think I would have noticed him if he did. I don't know how he got wind of the ama, but he did. The next week was quiet. No letters and I didn't see him anywhere. Then he left me letters with printed out questions and my answers from the ama. He also left me a long hateful letter towards my boyfriend. His letters were never hateful like that before, though he never seemed happy with my boyfriend. He wrote about how I should share the spotlight with him since I got so much attention thanks to him. A few days later I got a gift, but this time he didn't leave it in my mailbox or at my car like he usually did. No, this time he left it inside the apartment building right in front of my door. I didn't take it inside my apartment, but opened it outside. It was a pretty big box, which was also unusual, and it was taped shut. As I'm typing it out. I realized that wasn't a good idea at all and could have ended badly for me, but luckily he didn't send me a bomb or anything. He did however, send me several zip ties, a roll of tape, a TV remote with most buttons, picked off a pack of band Aids with a few used ones. Not actually used, just made to look that way though, according to the police. And then a framed picture of me. I could tell the picture was taken a few days ago and my boyfriend was next to me but cut out of the photo. The frame was shattered and the package was full of glass shards, clearly more than just what could have fallen out of the frame. And they were also intentionally put inside the crumpled newspaper that was stuffed in there to keep it all in place, I called the police right away and gave it to them. They were more concerned this time and they told me they'd send patrol cars more frequently. He didn't show up or leave me any letters or gifts for about another week and a half. But eight days ago it started again. I found letters in my mailbox where he wrote about how he wasted his time on me, how I haven't been appreciating his effort, how he was wrong about me being special. Five days ago, I left my apartment in the morning and I heard a crunch sound as I stepped on my doormat. He had put a broken glass under it. At night I went off to work because I was in a hurry and I was just going to make my boyfriend call the police. But then I found my car had also been vandalized. The sides were scratched, lights smashed, and the windshield had a phrase painted on it.
- [86:27]
Witness
It's about time, Miss.
- [86:29]
Narrator
I went back inside and called the cops myself. They found the same phrase on the note under the doormat. This time they really, really took me seriously, which might have been because I was just pissed at this point, which I made very clear. If for some reason you're like me and you're just too stubborn to be afraid of a stalker like mine, then all of this, the letters, gifts, photos, even the damn glass under my doormat are just really annoying and inconsistent. Convenient. But my car was useless to me now, and the threat scared me even more. I did, however, have a dash cam in my car and it caught everything. The police took the footage as evidence, even though the dash cam footage wasn't of high quality. And I'd given them photos of him that were just as good before, but they said that it's not enough. They told me they'll look into it further and promised to send me more patrol cars again. Then it was quiet for two more days until two days ago when someone rang my doorbell at just after 4am My boyfriend got up, but we were both hesitant, but I saw blue lights outside and just as I got up, I heard them shouting, this is the police. Please open the door. They told us they were called by one of our downstairs neighbors who came home from his night shift about an hour earlier. He had heard someone else enter the building after them before the door fell shut. My neighbors know of my situation and I've asked them to make sure that they don't let strangers into the building. The neighbor then went into his own apartment and looked through the peephole. We have motion activated lights in the stairway so he waited to see if they turned back on. They did. Then he saw a middle aged man walk upstairs. Above his neighbor are only me and my boyfriend as well as a single mom with three kids who probably won't be getting any visitors at 3am so he called the police. They came and found my stalker 1/2 floor above me on the stairs. He should have been able to see the COB car since there's a little window up there and that they had their lights on, but he either missed them or wanted to get caught. They found a pocket knife on him and he confessed to being my stalker right away. He's finally caught. They got him. It took four years, a provocative Reddit post, and one very vigilant and caring neighbor, but he's finally done for now at least. He's facing several charges and I've collected every single piece of evidence over the past four years. I don't know what kind of outcome I can expect, but for now I finally got some Peace today at 9:30pm for the first time in over a year, I took out the trash all by myself in the dark. My boyfriend always did it just to be safe, but today I had nothing to worry about. I'm a 20 year old female for context. I started an OnlyFans account over the summer to support myself through school and things were great until I posted my Amazon wish list. Amazon doesn't release your address to people who gift you items, but third party sellers can. And that's where I went wrong by the way. I'm not trying to promote it here. This is a very frightening story and I felt like it should be shared. In late July, I got a puppy one night around 2am I took him outside to go to the bathroom. While he was doing his business, I had noticed a car parked outside my family home. I saw a figure in the car and I could tell they were looking at me, but I couldn't make out their face because it was pitch black outside. Feeling a bit uneasy, I picked up my puppy to take him back inside and when I started to move the car parked in my driveway, I sprinted back inside and locked the door, but they never approached my house. The next morning I went to check the mail. There was an envelope addressed to my OnlyFans name with $20 in it, but no note. I was currently still at home with my parents who had no idea about my OnlyFans account so I didn't mention it to them. A week later I moved back to my college town to get ready to start school at this time, I had stopped posting for the time being until I could figure out how they got my address. I've watched enough crime shows to know there's a possibility I could be in danger. I live in a duplex with a gated parking lot for reference. One morning I was planning on vlogging my trip to Target because I was planning on starting a YouTube channel in the near future since OnlyFans felt unsafe. When I got to my car, it had been ransacked and my vlogging camera was missing. I know it's my fault for leaving it in my car, but I was using it the night before and since I live in a gated area, I didn't think I would be unsafe. It wasn't in plain sight either. I had hidden it in my glove box. I used that camera to film my content and the SD card that was in there had all of my unreleased photos and videos. I know they stole it just for the SD card. Anyways, this is where the story gets weird. There are cameras outside in the parking lot, so we were able to watch this person break into my car and find the camera. And they didn't touch any of the seven other cars on the lot. They knew which car was mine, which suggests that they had been watching me for a bit. After they got the camera, they walked around the duplex until stopping near my window. My bedroom faces an outside street and my blinds are broken so it's very easy to see in. I have a curtain, but it doesn't cover my window all the way. This person watched me sleep for an hour or so. I have no idea why they didn't try to break in, but thank God they didn't. I believe the police are trying to track them down, but I've broken my lease and moved to a new place so hopefully that'll keep me safe. In the summer of 2017, I was working at a pharmacy. I had been there for four years. A new staff pharmacist around my age, 28 at the time, was hired. He same died but it was nice to meet him because everyone else was rude to him immediately and I felt bad for him. He asked me way too many questions. Some I answered and others crossed boundaries. Questions about my ex boyfriends. Fast forward a month and he said he was moving. He lived on the east side of my city and he said that he was moving to the west side where I live. He said that he actually found a house near the same intersection of where I live. I asked him what street and he wouldn't tell me. He also said that the owner will live there for a few more months. So I forgot all about it. Fast forward a few months later and my mom and stepdad told me that they met our new neighbor. Our house is one house away from the intersecting street. This house is on the intersecting street. So we're one house away, but the backyards connect. My mom said that he seemed like a really nice young man. The next time I worked with him, I asked if that was him, but he said no. I let it go for a little bit. Then another time he had started asking me questions, describing my backyard and asking if my street name started with the letter that it did. So he admitted it was him. I asked him how he knew it was my house and he said that he saw me in the backyard. He decided not to say anything to me. The next few months were weird. I was still friendly with him as a coworker, but he had really crossed some boundaries. He knew that my birthday was coming up as my birthday and address are in the pharmacy database. And my brother was asking for ideas for what to get me. I wanted a certain phone case, so I was browsing on my phone to send my brother links to the ones I wanted. He would always look over my shoulder whenever I was on my phone. He saw the type of phone case, got me the phone case as well as 150 preloaded Visa gift card. I told him in a very professional manner that I felt the gift was inappropriate and probably against company policy. I walked over to his mailbox while he was at work to return it. He kept putting it back in my mailbox with messages of me begging to accept it because I'd make him so happy. I ended up just giving it away. Not much longer after that, I had took another co worker of mine to the zoo. I had some of our trip on my Snapchat story. He kept messaging me on Snapchat asking me questions about it and it was bothering me. So I blocked him. After that he had actually called my mother. He had got her number from when they first met. He told her that he needed to come over and talk to her. So she invited him in and they talked. I was very alarmed by this, but she thought it was endearing. I told him once again at work that he had crossed boundaries and he said that he does everything that he does because he cares about me. He didn't understand where I was coming from at all. Those were the most standout things he's done. Also a lot of pestering about tell me who your boyfriend is and trying to look at pictures on my phone to figure it out, going through coworkers phones and reading their conversations with me, even impersonating them while I was not at work to get info. One time he even quartered me at work and he wouldn't let me leave until I told him what characteristics I look for in a guy. He was also mad at me when I got a birth control prescription filled even though it was being used to correct hormonal problems from another birth control. I started being mean to him at work because I just couldn't take it anymore. He then told me that I was only treating him that way because he was a nice guy who cares about me, that I'm just looking for an jerk. It became a very hostile work environment and I left about two months ago. This is a side note. Other coworkers and neighbors hate him because he likes to start confrontations. He also likes to play, he said, she said, with people just for entertainment. The neighbors have called the police on him and they think he's crazy. I haven't heard from him at all since leaving, but I saw my former coworker last week at a get together. She said that he's trying to get her to tell him where I work now. He told her that he sees me getting into my car every morning so he knows that I have a new job. I told my mom this and she didn't take it very seriously. She never believed that I was in any danger. I would just really like to get an outside perspective. When I come home late, I always run to the door if no one's home. I'll wait to take a shower. I'm still really scared. So it's been a few years. Last night I looked out the window and there were multiple police cars and an ambulance. I found out later that my neighbor married a young girl from the same country as him. She doesn't speak much English and doesn't have any family here. She has been here for a few months. My other neighbors managed to catch her outdoors once or twice and managed to get her phone number. She said that he has cameras all over the house and outside. Last night he was beating on her and accusing her of cheating and the cops were called. After that, he shut off her phone service. Last night he attacked her with a knife and my neighbors heard her screaming and they called the cops for her. She says he was trying to kill her. She was taken away by an ambulance and he was arrested. Multiple guns and knives were found in the house When I was a freshman in high school, I was dealing with a lot of things and it ultimately caused me poor life decisions. So I started high school when I was young, barely 13 years old. I'm a female now and a junior. I didn't think anything about this guy since I wasn't really focused on people. I didn't really care about anyone else except just two friends that I had in the classes that I had with him. He was 17 at the time and yes, in those classes the grade levels were mixed. Nothing ever struck me as odd about him since I rarely even paid attention to him. That is, until one day in biology, I looked up for my paper and saw him taking pictures of me. I was creeped out, but I didn't say anything in case I was wrong. Then days later, he found my Instagram and kept texting me, which I obviously never responded to and if I had to, I would be very dry and just leave him on read. Then one day in the middle of class, I got a text from a random number saying hey. With various emojis like heart wants. And I immediately knew it was him since earlier he was asking for my number, which I declined to give to him. I immediately went to the two friends in that class to yell at them for telling him to which they then replied what? We never gave it to him. They even showed me their phones and let me go through them and their messages with him and no number of mine was ever mentioned despite his numerous texts asking them for it. I never answered him and just desperately tried to avoid him until one day on Instagram I got a text from him saying you're so pretty. To which I replied that I wasn't pretty. And then he spammed me with pictures that he had taken of me. That wasn't even the creepiest part. There were like 50 pictures of me ranching from classes around the school campus and even outside of school, like near the bus stop or waiting for a friend of the quad to go somewhere. There were even some of me playing soccer with friends on the football field. It's used for soccer too, since the soccer fields get flooded easily and constantly are getting fixed to look pretty obviously. I left him on scene, blocked him and then avoided him even more to the point that I had started skipping classes and when I didn't go, I told the teacher what happened while I was shaking and she let me go to the dean of the school where I showed them everything and even gave them the number that I got the message from. It's been two years. I'm a junior now. I stayed in this school since they have connections to a hospital that I want to volunteer in and because I have great friends there. He's made new accounts on Instagram, Snapchat and probably even got a new number and he's been trying to follow me and message me for weeks now. I keep blocking him, but new accounts are just created. I'm honestly glad for quarantine since I would probably be nervous to go to class or even school. It's also worth mentioning that it's still not known how he got my number as the only two people who had it never even gave it to him. I'm 100% sure that he was following me around school even after I told the Dean. So I'm now 16. I turned 16 a few days ago and recently I've been playing games on Roblox with my best friend like Murder Mystery 2, Arsenal, etc. And one of the games I play on my own is Adopt me because I like all the pets they have. I am writing this minutes after it happened. I was playing Adopt me after my classes since we have short periods for school on Mondays So it was 11:52 ish and now it's 12:07. There was this player who had a variation of my stalker's name with random numbers after and I stupidly thought nothing of it. Instead I thought oh that's a pretty common name, which it is, but I couldn't shake off this feeling and then the person kept following me and again I was stupid and just thought they probably just want a trade since I have an ultra rare pet. So I stopped driving but that trade invitation never came. So me being me, I left and went to the campsite since my pet wanted to go there. Everything was fine until I was going back to my home in the game until that user then put hey along with my name and I didn't think anything was wrong until I did a double take and I realized my name isn't on my Roblox account. And on my Roblox account I only have three friends and all three of them either call me by my alias that I made for my books and future podcast or by my Roblox name whenever we play it. I didn't respond to the message and instead just acted like I didn't see it all while the other players were asking the user who's that with my name? The player then kept on following me around until I left the game and they even sent me a friend request which I denied and immediately blocked. That wasn't the only thing he's done since my last update on the story. He found out about this guy that I'm talking to somehow the guy isn't from California and he told one of his friends. I say friends with the quotations because he's yelled at that friend for talking to me or even for being near me before and that friend happens to be a very close friend of mine and that friend told me what happened and how he freaked out but couldn't do anything due to the guy not being in California and saying that my stalker freaked him out. The guy is a huge softie, so it kinda made me laugh knowing that after I was told that he had somehow been stalking my followers and followings, I had blocked people that would know him and also possibly let him use their account to look at mine. I updated my brother who's my legal guardian, as well as my friends that knew about him, all so that they would know and even told the guy in case my stalker had the idea to message him and tell him a complete lie as previously the stalker had messaged a close friend of mine and told him we were dating, all in an attempt to get my friend to stop talking to me. He even told the same friend that he was going to marry me and that we were going to have two kids, which is a huge lie because one I don't want any kids and if I ever do I'll adopt and two if I ever get married it will most likely be to the guy I'm talking to right now. Luckily no one ended up believing him except his friends who were saying that it would happen one day and to just keep trying to be with me. I overheard this once and was disgusted and I told two of my friends all about it, which they got mad and refused to let him near me whenever he tried to talk to me. Even now we're not in those classes. We're still close though, and they always tell me whenever they overhear my stalker's friends giving him ideas. In my last update I left out a piece of information due to me not having the full story going back to freshman year on Valentine's Day I had found a huge stuffed bear in my math class and it was on my seat so I thought someone had left it there and when the teacher came into class I told him that someone left a huge stuffed bear behind, to which my teacher responded that wasn't there in my previous class. Someone probably left it there for you. Maybe a secret admirer. We ended up looking into the packaging because our own curiosity got the best of us. And it had a letter. I still vibrantly remember it because it creeped me out so damn much. It read, Dear Sarah, it's Valentine's Day and I wanted to give you something for today. I like everything about you. Your smile, your eyes and your body. You're perfect. I love you. I stayed in for a bit during lunch and gave my math teacher the note, which got him creeped out too. We ended up throwing away the note and I took the beer, but met up with a friend for the rest of lunch. She asked who gave me the stuffed beer and then said it was nice. I ended up telling her what happened with the note and how I found it and then gave the stuffed bear to her so she could keep it. You all might ask, why did you give her the bear? Well, I have three reasons for that. One, she has panic attacks and snuggling up to something when she has them helps her go through them, so I gave her the giant stuffed bear for that. Two, I don't like over the top things and three, I already have a lot of stuffed animals due to my brother getting me them since I was a baby. My friend still has the bear to this day and it's helped her a lot so I don't regret giving it away. That or even receiving it from my stalker because it helps someone out with the problem. Fast forward to when I found out the stuffed bear was from my stalker. My friend, who we'll call B, had messaged me to tell me about my stalker finding out about the guy I'm talking to and before we ended our conversation he had asked if he could call me, which I said yes to. During the call, he told me how he's in this group chat for this class on Instagram and how they're all friends in that class and that they're sharing things about their previous boyfriends or girlfriends for some reason which my friend B and my other friend were not part of. Instead, they just looked at the messages. My stalker claimed that I had dated him and then he said that I didn't want anyone to know, but that we did date. We never did and we never will. My stalker then continued on to say in the group chat that the giant stuffed beer that was on my seat in algebra was from him and that he got so mad at me for giving it to a friend that he broke up with me. I wasn't even shocked that he had made up a story of us dating and when I told my best friend. We just laughed for a bit, then decided to contact a lawyer and see if a restraining order could be put in place and if the police can be involved. Sadly, I got the news that since he had not been near me since I switched classes and I'm no longer in classes with him, that I can't get a restraining order since online harassment and stalking isn't bad enough yet since there's only been friend requests which meant that I couldn't even go to the police due to it being online and not really dangerous. If anyone out there is going through this or something similar, tell someone. Because at first I didn't say anything because I thought it was just going to get bad and it did and it's still getting worse even now. This happened to me about five years ago and even now I get chills just thinking about it. I was renting a small house in a quiet neighborhood at the time. It wasn't anything fancy, but it was cozy, affordable and it had a lot of character. The only thing I didn't love was the crawl space underneath the house. The access door to it was in the laundry room, a square wooden hatch flush with the floor. It was locked from the outside and I never had any reason to open it. I figured it was just pipes, cobwebs and the usual creepy crawl space stuff. One evening I came home late from work. It had been a stressful day and all I wanted was to just shower and then collapse onto my bed. As I stepped inside I I noticed something strange. My laundry room light was on. I was sure I had turned it off that morning, but I chalked it up to being absent minded in my rush and turned it off again. That night I woke up at around 2am to a faint noise. At first I thought it was just the wind, but as I lay there I realized it was coming from the laundry room. A soft, rhythmic thumping sound. My heart started to race. I debated whether to get up and check or just stay in bed and hope it stopped. Curiosity got the better of me, so I grabbed my phone for light and tiptoed to the laundry room. When I opened the door, everything was quiet. But then I saw it. The hatch to the crawl space was slightly ajar. My stomach dropped. I distinctly remembered it being locked and there was no way I could have accidentally opened it. Trying to stay calm, I convinced myself that it might just be an animal that had somehow gotten in. I shut the hatch tightly and placed a heavy box of detergent on top of it before going back to bed. The next day, I called the landlord to ask if there were any pest issues that I should know about. He seemed surprised and he said that no one had reported anything like that before. Still, he promised to send someone over to check it out. That night I double checked the hatch and even put a chair on top of it for good measure. I didn't hear any noises and I had started to feel a little silly for being so freaked out. But around 3am I woke up to the sound of my bedroom door creaking open. I froze. My bedroom door doesn't creak unless you push it slowly, and I knew that I had closed it before bed. I stayed as still as I could, barely breathing as I heard soft footsteps shuffle into the room. My phone was on the nightstand, just out of reach. The footsteps stopped right next to my bed. I could feel someone's presence, their quiet breathing in the dark summoning every ounce of courage I had. I grabbed my phone, turned on the flashlight and swung it toward the intruder. There was a man crouched on the floor. Floor. His face pale and gaunt, his eyes wide and unblinking. He looked just as startled as I was. I screamed and bolted out of the room, running outside to the neighbor's house. I banged on their door until they let me in and they called the police. When the officers arrived, they found the man still in my house, hiding in the crawlspace. He had a small mattress, some wrappers, and a collection of random items that he must have taken from my house. The log on the hatch had been tampered with, and from the looks of it, he had been living under my house for at least a few days, maybe even longer. The scariest part? The police said they found a notebook with detailed notes all about me. He had written down my daily routine when I left for work, when I came home, even what I wore. There was also a list of plans, though they wouldn't tell me what was on it. I moved out the next week and stayed with friends until I found a new place. To this day, I have no idea how he got in or how long he had been watching me before I noticed something was wrong. To the strange man in the crawl space of my former house. Hopefully I don't encounter you again. Seriously? This happened shortly before weed was legalized in Germany. In Berlin, regulation was already quite loose. As long as you didn't explicitly bother anyone, you usually wouldn't get arrested for smoking in public. I've been smoking daily for years. I know it's not great, but that's besides the point. I Can function pretty well while stoned. However, I almost never smoke in public, partly to avoid trouble, but mostly because I enjoyed the comfort of my own home. One late night around 3am, I was chilling online with friends, ready to call it a day. I wanted to relax with a joint in one of my favorite shows, but unfortunately, I had no snacks left. Determined to end the night with a proper munchie session, I decided to hit up a nearby store, a small convenience store, very similar to 7 11. At that hour, only the sketchiest ones are still open, often operating illegally. I grabbed my coat and keys, but stopped short before leaving. Why not add a little joy to this cold walk? I thought, rolling up a small joint. I lit it as I stepped outside, braving the freezing breeze. The area I live in is pretty rough, mostly foreign residents, many from Arabic countries. Poor integration has led to crime and violence being all too common. Even so, I was in good spirits as I strolled toward the flickering neon sign of the store. Just one more intersection to go. A group of men stood at the corner. They looked Middle Eastern, a bit older than me, and watched me as I walked by. It felt normal. Nothing to worry about, I thought. Already a little high, I crossed the street without giving them much thought.
- [115:04]
Witness
Then I heard a voice call out, routine ID check. Please show me your identification.
- [115:11]
Narrator
My heart sank. Of course, this has to happen the one time I smoke in public, I thought, turning to face the police. I say police with quotations only. They weren't the police. It was the group from the intersection now slowly approaching me.
- [115:30]
Witness
Routine ID check. Please show me your id.
- [115:34]
Narrator
We're undercover cops, one of them said with a smug grin. I froze. The fact that they weren't cops became clear when, despite their demand, none of them reached out for any identification.
- [115:47]
Witness
You know smoking weed is illegal, don't you?
- [115:50]
Narrator
The man continued. His pupils were enormous, like saucers. It was obvious these guys had no authority whatsoever. They began circling me. Show us what's in your pockets, the leader demanded. So it's a robbery, I thought. As long as I don't resist, maybe I'll only lose my phone and just the few bills that I brought for snacks. Then a wave of dread hit me. My weekly tips, about €300 in cash, were also in my pocket. I had forgotten to deposit it earlier. Losing that money would totally crush my tight budget for the whole month. What now? As I slowly reached into my pocket, the leader pressed me.
- [116:34]
Witness
Hey, what's taking so long?
- [116:37]
Narrator
I pulled out an old pack of gum and some broken headphones, hoping to satisfy them.
- [116:42]
Witness
Where's your wallet?
- [116:44]
Narrator
I need your id, he insisted, still fumbling. Too stubborn and stupid to hand over my tips, I inadvertently revealed something that shocked even me. The glint of a Glock tucked into his belt. Knives and metal rods are typical weapons here, but a gun? That was insane even by local standards. German gun laws are incredibly strict. My adrenaline spiked. Very slowly, I pulled out the five euro bill I'd planned to use for snacks, trying to keep my expression neutral. Hey, you've got no wallet, he growled, his face darkening. My brain screamed at me to do something, anything, before this escalated even further. Then a desperate thought flashed through my mind. The Arabs in this area had a well known fear of Russia. Russians with frequent clashes between the two groups. Maybe, just maybe, I could use this. In a heavy Russian accent, I stammered, my friends have my wallet. They're coming soon. We meet here. To my surprise, their poor English comprehension worked in my favor. They exchanged glances, muttering in German, and decided to wait. I forced myself to look confused, maintaining the bluff.
- [118:04]
Witness
It worked.
- [118:05]
Narrator
Their effort to translate or figure me out must have seemed like too much trouble. The leader finally pointed at my five dollar bill.
- [118:13]
Witness
Alright then, you get us something to drink.
- [118:17]
Narrator
Reluctantly, I followed them into the store. They grabbed a six pack of coke and I paid, heart pounding. I was certain this wasn't over, that they'd either search me themselves or retaliate when my non existent friends didn't show up. But then, just like that, they left. No violence, no further questions, Nothing. I stood there in shock, unable to process what had just happened. Looking back, I can't believe I bluffed in such a dangerous situation. It could have been my last day on earth. All over €300. I've definitely learned my lesson. These days I really avoid walking around late at night whenever the streets are empty. And those guys from that night, well, hopefully I just don't see them again. About two nights ago I went to go see the new Wicked movie with my family who was in town for Thanksgiving. I arrived back at my house around midnight. I live alone in a shared but divided house with two other tenants living inside. One is upstairs and one splits the downstairs with me, so there's three apartments in total. My place is in the back of the house and has a back porch you can enter through after walking up the whole driveway. When I got home, I sat in my bedroom and did about 20, 30 minutes of work on my computer. During this time the house was very quiet and I kept hearing a man's voice continuously talking. Now keep in mind the tenant above Me is a man, and I know his bedroom is right above mine because I previously lived up there. It sounded like he was talking on the phone just because of how long and continuous the talking went on. I tried to listen and figure out where the voice was coming from, and I couldn't exactly pinpoint it, but it was either coming from either the ceiling or on the other side of my room. Now, it must be noted that my bedroom connects to the porch with a door that I have blocked with my dresser. There's a main door inside the porch that you can use to get into the house, but there's also this strange door connecting to my room. I couldn't make out the words, but because of how firm and continuous the voice was going on, I figured it just had to be coming from my housemaid upstairs. It's the only thing that made logical sense. I just kept on thinking, though, I had never heard a single voice come through that ceiling before. It's not that thin. Whatever I'm worrying about Nothing. After about 20, 30 minutes of computer work, I got up to go brush my teeth, feed my fish, get ready for bed, etc. I come back into my room, turn off the lights, and get in bed. Keep in mind, it's been about 45, 60 minutes since I first heard the voice and I could still hear it. Damn, I thought, my housemate is really chatting up a storm on the phone up there. Oh, how wrong I was. After about three minutes of laying in bed, I all of the sudden heard my porch door creaking along with the talking man's voice. It has a very distinct sound that I knew immediately was my porch door. I crept across my room and put my ear to the dresser and door that connects to the porch. Sure enough, the talking was coming from inside my porch and I could hear the door moving and shuffling inside my porch along with it. My heart absolutely dropped. All the lights were off in my house at this point, so I had a sort of sneaky advantage to creep around my house and get a good view of what was going on. I crept down my hallway and peered into the kitchen, which the porch leads into. Across the kitchen through the door and in a streak of moonlight, I just see a man with long scraggly hair sitting curled up in the center of my porch. Turned around with his back to me, he's muttering out loud to himself and rocking back and forth. My fight or flight kicked in and I immediately ripped open the door and started screaming at him to get out and try intimidating him. Looking back, I probably shouldn't have made myself so vulnerable without a weapon handy, but like I said, I was just in fight or flight. I can't explain my actions in this very moment other than reacting out of fear and determination to scare him out. Anyways, this dude didn't even react to me whipping open the door and screaming at him. Not even a flinch. He simply turned his head to the side very slowly and then just said.
- [122:55]
Witness
My name is Evan.
- [122:57]
Narrator
This freaked me out so much for some reason, especially because he still hadn't turned around or showed his face. I said I don't care and kept cursing at him to leave and he slowly rose up with his hands up.
- [123:10]
Witness
And then said I know, I know, I'm hiding.
- [123:15]
Narrator
He wasn't saying it in a pleading way though. He said it with this almost childlike playful tone that freaked me the absolute hell out. I hated this. The fact that he kept trying to reason with me and act so mysterious while still not even turning around to show his face just really pissed me off. Honestly, who do you think you are bro? I ran him out of the porch and was just threatening him. Now I assume it was really just a homeless man who was under the influence of something as I do live in an inner city area and it's common to see homeless people near my street. But I don't know man, the sight of seeing him in my porch and knowing he was there for at least an hour beforehand while I was sitting right there just really freaked me out. I was in full blown defense mode by the time I opened that door and I wasn't willing to waste any time to do a character dive on the guy. No imaginable situation would permit anyone to be on my porch like that at that hour. Needless to say, I'll be double checking my porch lock every night from now on. It's kind of funny because having my room connected to the porch, I always had this horrific, intrusive thought that I'd hear someone in there one night. Looks like it came true. I'm a 35 year old male. A few years ago I had a terrifying experience that still haunts me today. I was living in a busy city at the time and I'd just finished a late night shift at work. It was around 10pm and I was walking home through the quieter side streets of my neighborhood. I'm someone who's always been somewhat cautious, so I was alert, keeping an eye out for any unusual activity. As I walked down the street I had noticed a guy about 20ft behind me. Now at First, I didn't think much of it. He seemed just like another person person walking the same route. But something about his movements caught my attention. He wasn't walking in a normal manner. He was clearly trying to keep his distance, but his pace matched mine, no matter how fast or slow I went. After a few blocks, I decided to take a detour. I turned onto a street that was a little less populated, hoping he wouldn't follow. I checked over my shoulder and sure enough, he was still there. It's hard to describe, but I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. My instincts told me that something wasn't right. I crossed the street, hoping that would throw him off. But he crossed too, without hesitation. I thought to myself, okay, this is weird. Now I had to make a decision. I wasn't that far from home, but something about this guy's persistence really made me uncomfortable. I decided to stop at a nearby 247 convenience store to try and lose him. The store was empty, save for the cashier, who barely even looked up from their phone. I quickly grabbed a drink and stood by the door, hoping to see if the guy would pass by. He didn't. He stopped right outside the store. At this point, I could see his face clearly through the glass. He was staring directly at me. I panicked and ran back to the aisles, trying to calm down. I could hear his footsteps growing louder as he approached the door. I couldn't stay here any longer. I tried to pay, but I was so rattled I couldn't focus on anything. The cashier just stared at me, probably wondering why I looked so frantic. I threw the drink on the counter, paid quickly, and bolted out the door. I ran down another street, not wanting to look back, but knowing I had to. I didn't see him for a while, and my heart slowly started to calm down. But as I turned the corner to my street, I saw him again, standing at the far end of the block. It was like he had been waiting there the whole time. I really wasn't sure what to do next. I considered calling the police, but he hadn't really done anything illegal, just followed me for a while. I didn't want to overreact, but I also couldn't shake the feeling that this wasn't just a coincidence. He was still standing there, watching me, and now he was closer. I took a deep breath, checked both ways, and then made a beeline for my apartment building, not daring to look back until I was inside. When I got to my apartment, I locked the door and stayed there, staring out the window for what felt like hours. I didn't see him again after that night, but the whole experience left me unsettled for weeks. I never felt comfortable walking home alone late at night again after that. Even though I've lived in the city my entire life, I still wonder if I was just being paranoid. But there was something off about the way he followed me. It felt intentional, and it left me with a gut feeling that I couldn't shake. This week has been hectic. My three kids have the flu. The oldest was first, then my younger two caught it after a visit to the clinic. I was heading to the CVS down the street from our house for their prescriptions. I decided at the last minute to drop my kids off at home with their dads so they could rest and I could just go inside the store to pick up some Pedialyte. I consider our neighborhood to be safe. I've taken walks after dark before and never felt afraid. Most of our neighbors are older folks, have lived there for over a decade. When I pulled up to the cvs, I parked on the side parallel to our street. It's darker on that side, but the entrance is right around the corner and well lit. There was a man standing outside. He walked in front of my car and I could hear him talking, but my music was kind of loud and I figured he was on his phone or something. No real red flags yet. My husband called me as the man walked back towards the corner adjacent to the entrance. I got out of my car, still on the phone, telling my husband, yeah, the kiddos have the flu. I'm picking up medicine at the cvs, and in a very pleasant voice, the man says to me, hey, I got.
- [129:32]
Witness
A question for you. Do you know where Main street is?
- [129:36]
Narrator
I assuming he's asking for directions or the location of something, tell him I do. I'm still holding my phone to my ear. It's in a bright pink case, so I'm sure he could see it. Now this man is standing directly in front of me. There's a pillar and a trash can behind him. Right around the corner is a propane cage and also a red box against the store's wall. Getting past him would put me in arm's reach. Next, he asks for a ride there to a homeless shelter. It's very cold outside and he doesn't want to freeze. I empathized with him, but said I couldn't. I offered to buy him gloves and or a blanket and to ask if an employee in the store could assist in finding him a ride. Sweet Baby Jesus. This guy's face instantly changed into pure rage and then he went right back to Pleasant.
- [130:27]
Witness
Well, you know what happens to homeless people stuck outside. You're going to help me. It's right down the street.
- [130:35]
Narrator
I'm just standing there, unsure of what to do. My husband is on the phone asking what's going on. I gently tell the man that I don't feel comfortable doing that and that I have the flu and that my husband is on the phone with me.
- [130:48]
Witness
I don't care about the flu.
- [130:50]
Narrator
Now he's getting even more angry and not moving away from my route into the store. I didn't want to turn my back on him to go back to my car, which was several feet away. In the dark, while the sky is glaring at me, I decide to quickly walk past him. I had my mask from the clinic in my jacket pocket, so I pulled that out and held it in front of me while I moved towards the trash can. He looked disgusted, but kept telling me that I needed to give him a ride.
- [131:17]
Witness
Come on, it's right down the street.
- [131:20]
Narrator
He insisted, but I know where the street is and it's not as close as he says. He tried to guilt me and his words felt threatening, but he didn't actually threaten me verbally. Once I was around the corner, I rushed into the store, straight to the pharmacy. My husband said he's calling the police. He heard the way the man was talking to me and said to stay in the store. My knees were shaking. At this point, I'm usually not the type to be so afraid when confronted. When I got to the pharmacy, I interrupted the pharmacist and a customer apologizing, then told them what happened. The pharmacist sent the store manager out. Tall guy with a long beard. Looked like he doesn't take crap from anyone. The police had already arrived. The man was told to leave, which he did. Momentarily. He came back inside the store yelling obscenities and something about me. Now the store manager has told him to get the hell out and he's trespassing on the property. The cop came back to talk to me and told me that she's arrested him many times. He's loud and likes to yell at people, but he isn't violent. The pharmacist had me hiding behind the screen where they give vaccines and left the half door to the pharmacy cracked open just in case I needed to get out of there. The cop also told me this guy's first and last name, as did the store manager. The prescriptions are finally filled and I leave the store. The police park next to my car to keep an eye on me. Oh, and the man actually refused a ride from the cob to the shelter. Later on, I looked him up. His name is unique, so he was easy to find online. Surprise, surprise. He has a long record spanning three states and several counties. Tons of public intoxication charges, dwi, urinating in public, assault and battery, and indecent exposure. I also looked up the homeless shelter. Yeah, just as I thought. There isn't even one where he wanted me to take him, but that area is super sketchy. Earlier today, I went to the corner store across from the CVS and told my friend, the overnight shift employee, what happened. She kicks him out of the store and calls the police every time she sees him because he yells and threatens customers, but he always takes off before the police arrive. I know that I could have handled that better. I was blindsided by his instant shift from pleasant to filled with rage. Big thank you to the pharmacy team who kept me safe and the store manager for confronting the creep. They really didn't have to do all that. I'm also very thankful that my husband recognized I was in an unsafe situation over the phone. This man is still out there somewhere in my area. This was 1992. My mother was going through a bad batch in her marriage and chemotherapy for breast cancer. We lived in a very quiet town where residential areas only had small markets. For everything else, including pharmacy and public calls, we had to go to the main market, which was almost 3.5 miles from our house, 1.5 miles from our apartment blocks to the main road, and then two miles to the main market, either by walk or by public transportation. My mother was having some really hard times given my father's complete disconnect with us. She used to call her brother, my uncle, for advice and catharsis who lived in another city. For those calls, she had to go to the public call office, which was run by two weird men. The same market had the pharmacy where my mother would buy her medicine. I was 11 and my older sister was 17. One evening, my mother, along with my sister, went to the public hall office to talk to my uncle. I don't remember why, but I thanked. My father had asked her to leave the house and she wanted to discuss her options. She was in distress and she didn't realize it was already late. When she finished the call, the market was closed. So was the public transport. My mom and sis paid the bill and started their walk home on the path next to the main road. The two public call office owners closed the office and started following them. One on foot, right behind them trying to offer a ride and then the other on bicycle next to them on the deserted main road. My mother strictly refused to held my sister's hand tightly and started walking as fast as she could when a white van appeared on the service road and started driving slowly next to them. Apparently the public call office guys had already arranged a ride with some really bad intentions and didn't seem to go away. They were probably waiting for them to get off the main road to strike on the next turn. Two men came from the opposite side of the footpath and to my mother's relief, it was the pharmacist and his friend who were returning to pick up his car from the shop's parking lot. After a walk, they saw the men and van and immediately realized what was going on. They stopped, said hello and asked if she needed help. They agreed to walk them home. The public call office men fled upon seeing the guys. That kind pharmacist saw my mother and sister to the safety of our house. My mother never went to that public call office again. The story is about a roommate that my boyfriend and I had many years ago when we first started college. His name was Bob. We'd been friends with this guy for about a year. He was a character with a lot of interesting quirks, but nothing that seemed really dangerous at first. First of all, he was amazingly creative. He was a great artist and could also pick up a musical instrument that he had never played and figured it out within a couple of hours, which was very impressive. He also had an amazing ability to focus. One crazy thing he could do was pick flies straight out of the air. He'd get this intense look on his face as he watched the fly. Then he'd slowly approach it and bam. Pinch it out of the thin air in mid flight. He also liked to burn things. Often we'd be kicking back and suddenly there'd be the smell of burning hair or something. There he would be, sitting over the ashtray, burning something he'd found with that same intense look of concentration on his face. One time someone brought over this big stand up cardboard Easter bunny. We didn't even have it for an hour before we noticed smoke coming from the front yard. There he was, watching the bunny burn. In retrospect, there were some things that indicated that something was wrong with him beyond his quirky behavior. A couple of times he accidentally hurt my dog, shut his leg in the door, or carelessly grazed him with A lit cigarette. Once he was cat sitting for a girlfriend and the cat mysteriously disappeared. A girl that I knew claimed that he tried to bury her puppies under a shed. They liked to crawl under there to sleep and he filled in the entrance. So one day some friends of ours came by the house while we weren't home. They caught him picking up and throwing one of our dogs herding her for fun. I confronted him over this as I was naturally pretty upset. He then told me in a completely matter of fact way that he had decided to conduct an experiment that he'd been working on for a while. He wanted to see if he gave my dogs only bad attention and pain, whether they would learn to enjoy it. He acted like this was a totally rational explanation. What the hell? I told him this was crazy and I asked him where he'd come up with such a horrible excuse for torturing my dogs. After some argument, he admitted that while he was doing an experiment, he really did enjoy seeing the look of fear in their eyes when he hurt them. He also admitted that he had similar desires to do the same to women, even though he hadn't acted on them. Again, with these confessions, he didn't seem at all remorseful. He said it all in the same tone that you'd typically tell someone you decided to take some painting classes or something mundane like that. Needless to say, we made Bob move out and stopped hanging out with them. I don't know what Ollie did to our dogs when we weren't home for the six months he lived with us. I did hear from a mutual friend that when he found out our dog had puppies, that he was surprised that she could get pregnant after what he did to her. Pretty disgusting. I wouldn't be surprised to see his name in the papers as being a serial killer or something. Some. About two years ago, I moved into a new apartment. The walls were very thin and because of the fire safety laws in my city, my bedroom had one window which actually led into the living room and none with outside access. The window will be important for later. It was three bedrooms, one for me, one for the master tenant, and one spare, which at the time was rented out by a pretty friendly guy. Well, the friendly guy had issues with his work visa and he had to move back to Canada last minute, leaving us about two weeks to find another roommate. Our quickest and easiest option was Craigslist. Due to my work schedule, I had no part in the selection process, but was content when the new roommate moved in a little later. He seemed a bit off but friendly. He was a very tall, large guy, but pretty quiet and not someone I wanted to go out of my way to hang out with, but was okay to be around and be cordial with. About two weeks into his move in, the master tenant left for Hawaii, leaving him and I alone in the home for the month long duration of his stay. For the first few days, things were normal all of a sudden. About four days into the trip, I'm awoken at about 8am to a frantic knocking at my door. We'll call the roommate Kyle and he's standing there when I open up looking frazzled. He looks me dead in the eye and says so do you want to tell me what went on last night? To which I just looked shocked and confused because I had come home from work at about 9pm and immediately showered and went to bed. I explained this to him and he tells me that he heard me screaming and arguing with someone in my room, that he saw me in the side alley out the window arguing with our landlord, whom I'd never even seen at that point by the way, and that he heard people coming in and out of our house. I tell him no way that none of that ever happened. After staring at me for a little longer, he leaves and doesn't bring it up again. The next morning I woke up to the same thing. This time he says he saw me arguing with my boyfriend. I was single at the time, by the way, but he said that he had seen me talking with our other roommate who's in Hawaii, and asking for the badge number of the officer I'd spoken to since he had apparently seen me talking to a bunch of police as well. This time I get angry and more or less tell him to cut this crap out because I'm not doing anything and I don't know what he's talking about. He gets a weird look on his face and then he says I think I had a seizure in my sleep. The next time it happens, call an ambulance. Then he leaves for a bit, only to start knocking again about an hour later. And when I open up, Kyle repeats the exact same story verbatim. This happens once more before I tell him to leave me the hell alone and then leave for work. I go to work as normal and I'm very reluctant to return that night, but I'm too tired to switch to an alternate location. Big mistake. About 1am I woke up to slamming doors. Kyle is pacing back and forth between his bedroom, the living room and out the front door, walking in and out of each room, turning the lights on and off, mumbling angrily and slamming the doors. I can see his figure pacing back and forth through the frosted window in my room that leads to the living room. Since my room is dark, he can't see inside. Suddenly he screams, I can't live like this. Why are you doing this to me? I think he's on the phone with someone and I don't respond. A few moments later, he screams my name repeatedly and I realize he's directing it towards me. I knew right at that moment that I had to get the hell out of there. So I very quietly creep out of my bed and start getting dressed and packing a bag of clothes for work in the morning. I'm almost done when he then screams, um, I can hear you. And then charges over to my room, slapping the wall next to my door but not touching the door itself. I look towards my window and I see a shadow lean all the way forward, pressing his ear against the glass. I was absolutely terrified and I just sat completely still, unmoving. He eventually screams my name again and moves away from the window. I and I hear him start pacing between rooms again. Now my shoes are kept on a rack outside my door and not actually inside my room, so I know that when I leave I'm going to need a moment to put them on. I decided to wait until his pacing took him out of the front door again, at which time I plan to grab my shoes and then put them on and run. As I'm formulating this plan, the pacing stops. He then screams, do you really want to fight about this? Come out right now and we'll fight. I swear to God. I'm a very small five foot girl and the sky is easily three times my size, so I'm definitely not looking to fight. Thanks. After a few minutes, he turns off all the lights and I hear the door to his room open and close, followed by silence. I wait for a moment just to be sure I can't hear any movement and then decided to take my chance. I took a breath and pulled my door open quickly. I step out and grab my shoes before I look up. Just a second later and I see him standing shirtless with just a pair of boxers and socks on in the dark of the hallway, his arms hanging slightly outward in an awkward position. He says in a low, calm voice, ma'am, we need to talk. That was a hard no for me, so I grab my shoes and run out of the door with them in hand. I run about half a block barefoot before I stop to put them on When I look back, he's standing in the porch light of our front door, watching me run but not moving. Luckily I had a friend who lived two blocks away and I had their spare key, so I let myself in and then just crashed there for the night. And that's also where I stayed for the next week or so while we worked things out with the master tenant and Kyle actually agreed to move out within the week. He says that he doesn't remember anything that happened or he wasn't sure if it was real or not, but if I said that's what went down, then it must be real. The day Kyle left, he sent me a photo of the house keys sitting on the table and then says he's out. Nothing else. I took a friend over there with me to scout it out and just to ensure that he actually left. When we get there, however, we discovered that not only had he left a ton of food and furniture, but he had ripped all of the fire alarms out of the ceilings. He had unscrewed and removed the deadbolt to the front door and left them lined up neatly on the front table. We then realized that my front door can only lock by using a key from the outside and it had been locked when we arrived, meaning Kyle still had a key. We called a locksmith immediately. Even after changing the locks, I was still terrified to stay there alone afterwards, and I never went to sleep at night without barricading the doors with chairs and other furniture. Even to this day, I still fear for his own safety. He was obviously psychologically unstable, but I also wonder what could have happened to me if I hadn't been as lucky as I was. These all took place outside my home at the time, which was on the literal last block of a major city right across the street from the beach. The building was framed on four sides by the beach, the woods, a construction site, and a few other sleepy houses, as well as a muni line thank the subway. But above ground it's the very last stop on the Mooney, so unless you catch at the right time of the day or at the height of tourist season, the area is basically empty. On the sidewalk, the house itself has an initial patio door and then an entry area with a staircase leading up to a second locked door that leads to the apartment. Experience one I get home from work one day at around 9pm and immediately get into a small spat with my roommates. After about 30 minutes I decided to leave the house to cool off. I had planned on sitting on the porch outside, but as I Looked across the street at the ocean, I decided that it would be more peaceful there. I had never been to the beach at night for safety reasons, but as I looked at the well lit parking lot and no one in sight, I decided it would be alright. In the one block span from the beach to my home, there was a little wooded path that started on my street and dumped you out at the crosswalk for the beach. It also intersected with another pathway that took you down the coast. I sat for a bit, everything was fine and after a while I started the 1 minute walk back on the little path. All of a sudden I look up and see a man walking briskly on the intersecting path looking right at me. I speed up a bit and try to ignore him and as we hit the section where the two paths intersect, I end up being about a foot away from him. He calls out to me, hey, I.
- [149:13]
Witness
Want to talk to you.
- [149:14]
Narrator
I ignore him and after a few more steps he reaches out his hand and grabs part of my hair saying hey, come here. I immediately yank my hair out of his hand and book at the last block, sprinting to my house and I can hear him running behind me. I turn the corner sharply and am briefly out of his sight. Luckily, the initial entryway to the patio had been left open by accident and I ran in through the door and then slammed it shut. I hear his footsteps stop outside, followed by silence. As I go upstairs and look through our front window, I can actually see him walking away into the construction site. That's it for story number one. Now experience two. I had a friend that lived a couple of blocks from where I was along the same stretch of beach. Well, after hanging out one day, I decided to head back home right around sunset. I've walked this route many times and it's just barely light outside, still only a five minute walk, so I figure I'll be home before dark. As I cross the intersection from their house, I notice a white van parked on the corner that is not usually there. I can just barely make out two people in the front seat. I think to myself, odd, but okay, whatever and pull out my pepper spray. I cross the street passing the van and now have my back to it. As soon as my foot hits the pavement on the other side of the street, I can hear the van start up. I turn my head just slightly and I see them illegally turning under the street where I'm now walking. They creep the van beside me very slowly, just behind me but still within my peripheral vision. I decide to stop and let them pass. I then pause and pretend to be looking at my phone and I see them stop driving immediately. This was a nope for me and I broke into a run, the van following me to a small vintage motel about one building away that I know has an open entrance courtyard and so as I approach it to turn quickly into the yard and run up to an archway entry for a unit, I stop at the first few steps, catching my breath. I then open my phone front camera to use as a sort of mirror to see what the van is doing. They had backed up to the entry of the motel and sat there for a few minutes. Then the one on the passenger side opened the door and started walking towards the motel, his phone flashlight on and I immediately pulled my own phone back, listening for his footsteps and readying myself to start banging on the motel door, hoping someone's inside. I wait in the silence for a long time, long enough for it to get dark. I finally look out again and both the man and van are now gone. I call an Uber to take me the last two blocks and never saw them again. Experience 3 I have a friend over and we want to dab a form of smoking weed for those who don't know. It's about 10pm My roommates don't like dabbing in the house because of the smell, so he and I go to his car parked out in front. We're in there having a good time when I notice a person walking down the block pulling on the car door handles. I notify him and we watch as that same person comes up to his car and then yanks on his back door. He honks his horn and they back up for a minute then walk up to his driver window and knock on the window making a motion to roll it down. Just as I'm about to tell him don't do it, he rolls down the window just a tad. The person is clean and normally clothed and they ask what day it is and then what time it is, to which my friend answers. They then just stand there and stare at us as he tries to usher them away, even offering them money without saying anything. They walk away down the block and once they reach the intersection between the construction site and woods, they roll their head back up to the sky and just start screaming at the top of their lungs as they then back away out of sight. I take this opportunity to dart back inside my house as my friend watches, making sure to close the patio door. A few hours later one of my roommates comes home very drunk and as we figured later they had failed to make sure the patio door shut all the way Morning time comes and I wake up to an empty apartment. I open my phone and have a singular message from my roommate from three hours ago stating that when they left for work this morning there was a person they didn't know sleeping inside the patio area. They thought it was a drunk person who lived in the neighborhood and entered the wrong house by mistake and evidently didn't find enough of a reason to call me or wake me up. I immediately go to the entry of our apartment, pulling the door open very fast. To my surprise, the person who had been talking to us in the car the night before is laying casually across my staircase fiddling with something. I then scream hey. Very loudly and they immediately hop up and then run out my patio door. I run down the stairs after them and open the door. They're standing across the street just smiling at me and giggling. They then give me a little wave and run off. I close the door hard and go back up the steps to see what items they had left. Sitting on the steps was a few coins, some weird wire type objects, as well as a lighter and a pocket knife. Never saw them again. Unrelated to my stories, but shortly after I moved from that area 1. A teenage girl was abducted from that same corner where I saw the van. Two After a car chase, police found a severed head in the freezer of a house right along my block as well. I've also had situations that were severe enough that I did need to call the police and they didn't help me. So that is not really a thought that goes through my head when dealing with these situations. And I've learned how to take care of myself or utilize community resources for other situations. All of these stories happened years ago and it's pretty wild to look back on as well as remember just how terrified I felt in these times. So yeah, these are my stories and I hope you all enjoyed them. This entire scenario happened a few years ago when I used to take walks alone occasionally at night, which is something that I thought very little of since I lived in a heavily residential, wealthy area. In other words, on the trail I'd frequent, houses were always within sight. On one such night, shortly into my walk, I saw a figure walking a few hundred feet behind me, something I knew immediately was odd considering it was around 10 at night at the time. At first I discounted this though, since it was a public trail and they could have very well been doing the exact same thing as me just going for a walk. I continued on for roughly 5, 10 minutes or so before looking behind me once more, only to find the same person still trailing me. Keep in mind, at this point, I'd gone through a few turns by now on the trail, meaning it was becoming more and more unlikely that this person just so happened to be going to the same location as me. I decided to take odd paths and directions, turning off into gravel and weirder, more roundabout side areas, and they still followed me. By the time I was reaching the apex of my journey, passing by the local park, they were maybe less than 60ft behind me, a distance they could have easily covered in seconds. It's then that I decided to call my family. I had researched for this. I knew what to do and believe it or not, the call didn't go through. As it turns out, my phone was a recent gift and its service had been set up improperly, meaning that no matter how many times I frantically called at that moment, nothing would happen and a decision I called back to as one of my best. To this day, I acted as if the call had gone through and I was on the phone with my mom, miming out and talking inaudibly about my location and the person behind me, beginning to briefly describe them. Even in the act, I wasn't able to really do so, as I could never get a proper view of their face, as if it was somehow shrouded in something. But I did my best with what I had. Sure enough, when I turned around again, they were nowhere to be seen. Not that they had turned off and walked into another direction, but that they weren't there to begin with. Weeks later, my mom told me that a police officer had come into our work and warned about abductions that had been happening in our area, specifically for child trafficking and organ trade. I count myself as very lucky and whenever I leave the house now, I'm very aware only doing so during the day, all while taking a large knife with me. There was a point later on in that neighborhood that a car clearly followed me, turning around into a cul de sac where there was no logical reason for them to be except for me. But this was the most obvious example of an attempted kidnapping. Hey everyone. So I'm a guy from the uk. I live in a town in Wales, albeit not the little villages most people imagine. My town is a popular holiday destination along the coast of Wales. It started when I was 15 years old. So about eight years ago I was dating a girl from about two towns over. I would usually get the train to hers and back. However, this one night her family weren't supposed to be home and we were kind of being watched by her brother who was about 1920 and he was a pretty chill guy. The plan was to stay the night. We were up late playing on the Wii but her parents unexpectedly came home. I never got along with her mother and the whole thing got kind of heated and I was kicked out of the house and told that I couldn't stay over. It was about 2am and I didn't want to call my own parents and worry of waking them up. So I began the long trudge home. It was roughly about an hour and a quarter worth of walking so I was expecting to be home by around half four. So I walked along the weird concrete bed just above the beach, not sure what it's called and I stopped after about half an hour of walking as there's a public toilet seat which is kind of run down but also open 24 hours and I was desperate. I was expecting it to be empty or just have a homeless dude sleeping on it, but I was wrong. There was a guy using the urinal. This guy looked to be in his mid to late 50s, maybe a little on the overweight side but not extremely. He had gray messyish hair but other than that he looked pretty normal. He definitely didn't look homeless. I remember that he made a quick joke about something but I don't remember what. I politely laughed, did my business and left after about 15 minutes of walking. The weather had gotten pretty bad, it started to rain heavily and the wind was really picking up. I seem to remember this was around November time so it was pretty cold. Anyways, saw him walking and a car drives by, beeps and then pulls over just in front of me. I assumed it was someone I knew but I couldn't think of whom. Got to the car and the dude from the toilet was inside. He asked me where I was headed and I told him. He said that it was a long walk and that I couldn't be expected to walk all that way in this weather. And then he offered me a lift. In hindsight I probably should have refused, but the weather was bad and at the time he wasn't giving off any weird vibes. The drive took about 15 minutes, I think maybe even 20. The more I was in the car with him the more I started to get the vibes that there was something off about this guy. He was telling me that his best friend was a 14 year old lad who stays over at his place a lot and that they drink together and if I ever wanted to join I was welcome too. He was asking me some really invasive questions as well. I don't fully remember what they were. I just remember that it's not the kind of questions that you want to ask to someone that you're just giving a simple lift home to too. Anyways, we got to the street around the corner from my place and I asked him to just drop me off there. I told him that my house wasn't accessible by the road and that I would just walk the rest of the way. He gave me his number and he told me to ring him when I got to my house safely as he wanted to make sure I got home okay. I asked him what his name was and he just said Pete. Ivan said, um, Pete what? My phone wants a surname. He wouldn't tell me. He just kept saying, call me Pete. Anyway, I got into my house and texted him just to let him know that I was home safe. Probably a bad decision, but back then I was really full of bad decisions, to be honest. The next day came and I was expecting everything to just go back to normal. It didn't because I stupidly gave Pete my number when I texted him. I started to get texts from him every morning, basically just saying good morning to me and wishing me well. I replied to the first few and then just started ignoring them. But then he started trying to call me like every single evening. I would ignore most of his calls, but he would often repeatedly ring until I answered. He was sending me these texts inviting me over to his house for some drinks. He kept telling me that he had gotten himself a pool table and he wanted me to come and play it with him. He was telling me a story of a friend who he was playing pool with the 14 year old that he mentioned previously and then he accidentally let it slip that the guy called him John. I asked him about this and said I thought your name was Pete. To which he then replied, oh no.
- [163:35]
Witness
My friend's name is John.
- [163:37]
Narrator
To which I then replied back with, you just said your friend called you John and you told me that your friend was called Tom. To which he then told me, well.
- [163:47]
Witness
Oh well, some people call me John. It's like a nickname, but his name is John 2.
- [163:54]
Narrator
He hesitated saying this and I kind of clicked that he was just telling me a whole bunch of lies. I kept refusing, but he just kept asking. After a while my mom wanted to know who this dude who kept texting me and ringing my phone was. I told her and she called him herself from her own phone. She told him that if he Carried on texting and calling me. She would be calling the police. I didn't get any more texts from him after that. But it didn't end there. I had a routine, you see, and he knew it. I always walked my dog at half four every afternoon, and I also played with her about 40 minutes on the field at the end of my street, just near where he dropped me off. I started to notice his car pulling up there within five minutes of me getting there with my dog. It had tinted windows, but I would always notice the car lights were always left on and the engine was always running. Also, I recognized his car. I would occasionally notice the car door open in a large flash from that direction, as if someone was taking pictures. I had started changing the time I walked my dog, but he would eventually figure it out and start showing up either earlier or late to coincide with when I was walking her. This went on for months and I never mentioned it to anyone. But one day it just stopped. He stopped pulling up at that side of the field. I never saw his car anymore. No text messages or phone calls from him either. It all just stopped. I ended up getting a new phone after about a year and had that for another two years. I dug out my old phone when I was around 18, 19, after the aforementioned dog died. I had some old pictures and videos of her on that phone, and I wanted to transfer them over to my PC so that I always had them. I turned on the phone, which had been turned off for several years now and still had the old SIM card in it. That's when I got my final message from Pete. It was an odd one, and it was about 14 months old. It said something along the lines of hi.
- [166:01]
Witness
I know we haven't spoken in a while, but I just thought you should know that over the new year I was diagnosed with an illness and I've recently been told that I don't have long left to live. You were a good friend to me in that short time we knew each other. I live at this address and I would really appreciate it if you could just come around just so I can have one last chat with you. I've got some beers in and if it gets too late, you can stay the night. Just drop me a phone call when you want to come around so that I can get everything ready for you. See you soon.
- [166:34]
Narrator
I have no idea if Pete or John or whoever was genuinely ill or just trying to lure me to his house. I've never been to the address he sent me, and I never responded to him or heard from him since I didn't reply to him at all and that was the last I ever heard from the guy. So yeah, that's the story. Not tremendously exciting, but kind of had a big impact on me during those years. Hope you all enjoyed it. Ok, so I've had a few issues with my next door neighbors since I moved in, but nothing creepy until just recently. There's a man, a woman, and at least one boy living there and I mostly just avoid them. The man seems okay but a bit weird and the boy just keeps to himself. The woman is quite a bit off. Not long after we moved in she had left a note in my mailbox. Our mailboxes are right beside each other between our houses. Anyway, I stood at the mailbox reading the note. She thought that my dog was pooping in her yard. It was possible, as our fence had some holes in it that our dog had gotten out then, but those holes had been fixed a long time ago. Still no big deal. Except I noticed her standing in her driveway just staring at me and the note was very long. I kept reading it. The more I read, the crazier it got and the weirder her behavior in my peripheral vision became. Apparently I was entitled. She seemed to think I was somehow instructing my dog to poop in their yard. Her note went on a tangent about how awful dogs are. She was also 100% convinced it was my dog, even though there are always tons of loose dogs, cats and wildlife wandering around and no doubt traveling through her unfenced backyard. In my peripheral vision, she got into her suv, backed out of her driveway, and then parked it along the street directly behind me and just idled there staring. The note then went on a weird long tirade about the previous family to live in my house, saying I was another Deb, as if I have any idea at all what that's even supposed to mean, then concluded in some odd insults and some implied not quite threatening. This was the closest thing we'd ever had to a conversation. At this point. I can understand not wanting a dog pooping in her yard, but this was a bit of an extreme reaction as this was literally the first time I'd even heard of there being a problem. A simple note would have done, but this note was insane. She was still staring behind me. I decided to try to ignore her and just go to my house. That's when she shouted out her window, are you playing a game? That reaction made no sense. Are you nuts? I replied as I officially ran out of patience. She shouted more nonsense and insults at me while blocking my driveway, all while I repeatedly told her to leave before I called the cops. This went back and forth like that for a while, but she eventually sped off when I pulled my cell phone out. Later, my boyfriend, who had not been home at the time that this happened, which is important, had a chat with the neighbors. He said that they seemed agreeable and reasonable and basically dismissed me of just being dramatic. The woman told a very different version of events. Of course I was annoyed that my boyfriend wasn't taking me seriously but let it go. I think he just wanted to keep getting along with the man next door as they sometimes borrowed towards they speak to him a lot differently than how they speak to me and they don't do anything rude to me while he's around. In fact, they don't speak to me when he's around at all. They always wait for him to be away anyway. I mostly just avoid them. Sometimes the woman stares at me but I just ignore her. Until recently, I've been mostly successful. I don't sleep well at night when I'm home alone and I'm always home alone now because my boyfriend is out of the country on business for months at a time. I often feel like there's someone just outside my house or at my door. Sometimes my dogs act up at odd hours, but I never see anyone. I keep my house alarm armed and a pistol in my nightstand. The other night was one such night. I didn't sleep well and kept having a sinking feeling that something was wrong. Anyway, I got out of bed at about 2am because I thought I was scheduled to work at 3am I had mostly given up on getting a restful sleep then. Anyway, as I left my house I heard something to my left the direction of my neighbor's house, but I didn't see anything. I was always nervous in my driveway because the motion sensor light was broken. There was always a lot of darkness between my door and my truck, so I always moved quickly in my driveway. I got in my truck and then went to work. Well, it turned out that I had misread my schedule and that I didn't work at 3am that morning after all. Annoyed at the mistake but grateful that I'd get to go home and sleep a little bit more before the actual start of my shift. At 7, I went home. I pulled into my driveway and didn't see anything in the beam of my truck's headlights. I always look around my truck before getting out. I turned the headlights off and got out. I took a few steps ahead of my truck. Then all of a sudden a large man called out to me from the shadows at the corner of my house. He scared the living crap out of me so bad that I screamed, then reached for my pepper spray and fell down. He apologized in a tone that didn't sound that sorry at all. It was my neighbor and that wasn't much of a relief. It took me a few minutes hunched over the ground to collect myself enough to find out what the fuck he wanted. I was seriously freaking out and kind of having a mini panic attack. My heart was racing and I was shaking. I was obviously visibly upset throughout all that follows. Apparently it was my fault that he occasionally found trash in his yard in Windy, Colorado. Complaining about this seemed to be a lot more of an important issue than scaring the hell out of a woman alone at night. It showed no real concern or realization that was even wrong at all. Again, I have no problem with neighbors bringing issues to my attention. But seriously, hey, can you make sure trash from your bins isn't blowing into my yard? K thanks. Bye is not a statement that takes 10 freaking minutes, nor is it one that needs to be addressed at 3 on the freaking morning. I nod in agreement to keep the peace, but I know that the trash isn't mine. We live in a windy area. I mean, trash gets blown around in people's yards all the time. No big deal. But they just wouldn't stop going on about it. He kept needlessly repeating himself and made some not quite but kinda thread about getting along. I think it was along the lines of it would be a real shame if something were to happen. One of those kind of threats. He was keeping me busy that I didn't even notice his wife flanking me. Before I even knew she was there, she appeared from the shadows by a tree. She wanted to yell at me about some eggs. A few weeks ago I found a bunch of eggs smashed on the road near our shared mailbox as the carton was right next to them. I thought the carton had previously just been dropped. Not that someone was trying to egg anything. I just assumed my neighbor had dropped the eggs on her way to get the meal and just left them. She denies this, but I still think that's the most likely explanation because no one else has any reason to be out at our mailbox with eggs. But I didn't care enough to say anything to her about it at the time, so I had just forgotten about it. Now she was accusing me of leaving eggs around again. Inexplicably expressing the grievance at 3am it's really weird that she hadn't brought it up weeks ago when it happened, but I know why she didn't. My boyfriend was still here then. I also want to mention that I get my eggs delivered along with my milk. They're delivered to a box by my door, but not my mailbox, so they really couldn't have been mine. My boyfriend has been away on business for several weeks now, long enough for them to have noticed his absence. They were also probably aware that my motion sensor light was out. They sure seemed to know how to avoid my headlight beams. Sure, it could be a coincidence, but did I mention that this was all at 3am, not some other dark yet reasonable for a person to be outside hour? Being surprisingly patient, I explained that I knew nothing about the eggs. I mentioned that I later found a lot of the shells in my yard and I figured a squirrel must have carried them there. She proudly informed me that she tossed them onto my yard herself. Apparently she thought that was okay, but someone dropping them in the first place wasn't. Anyway, this is where I started to get over my shock a bit and started getting pissed. Initially I had been somewhat relieved that the man in the shadows had been my neighbor, not just some random crazy person. But now I was pissed. I had been outside with them for something like 20 minutes while they had coasted me about stupid crap, while I tried to be polite and agreeable even though I had nothing to do with it. But now everything wrong with the situation had kicked in. I eventually remembered that I don't actually have to put up with any of this and I cut her off mid rant and then said it's 3am I'm going home, good night, and turned on my heel. I had heard her say something in an unkind tone as I left, but I didn't catch what it was. They had staked out my house, waited for my boyfriend to leave, and long enough just to be sure he was gone, all to complain about some inane crap long after it supposedly even happened. If they have concerns, surely there are better times to address them than at 3am what the hell were they doing out at 3am anyway? And that man had totally purposely hidden a shadow at the corner of my house where he could avoid my headlights and didn't reveal himself until I was out of my truck and exposed? And shouldn't the woman have walked up beside her husband, not gone around while I was distracted? They keep doing odd behavior. Never enough that they're doing anything illegal or anything to report to the police. But none of this is normal behavior. Honestly, I think these complaints are just excuses and they're really just taking the opportunity to intimidate me. I think they're messing with me on purpose. Then again, I could be wrong. They could just be weird and incredibly socially inept, but otherwise harmless. Either way, I'll be installing a motion sensor light soon. I was so shaken up and had my adrenaline so high from someone scaring me from a blind spot by my house because seriously, that could have been someone else and a lot worse. Worse that I didn't really get any sleep before work for anyone who doesn't feel like reading it. Basically, my neighbors and husband and a wife have been sort of harassing me for some time, but not in a way I could really do much about. Leaving rude notes in my mailbox, blocking my driveway with their vehicle as soon as I get home, and then shouting abuse. That sort of thing. And the encounter I wrote about. The pair were waiting for me at 3am which lurking in the darkness, my motion security light was broken and they basically ambushed me when I got home to complain about some inane shit I had nothing to do with. Well, since then they've really ramped up the aggression. Right out of the Harassing Neighbors handbook, they started wasting police time, calling in fake noise complaints and reporting my dogs as unlicensed and unvaccinated. Which wasn't true. And how would they even know that anyway? To be fair, I had been puppysitting a friend's dog who would occasionally yap at a squirrel, upon which I'd immediately let him in. But that dog has been gone for some time now. Once, while letting the dog in at the first bark, the man stuck his head out the window to scream at me to bring the dog inside, something I was obviously already doing. And then he just kept screaming and screaming. Hilariously. As he was screaming, he called 7am an ungodly hour. 7am is past city noise ordinance hours. If his goal was quiet, well, he failed. But I suspect his goal wasn't quiet. He just wanted an excuse. I simply asked him so is this how adults behave? And then went inside. This was the last time I ever said a word to either of them. I can prove it, but I'm pretty sure he watches me from my window whenever I I'm outside, just looking for any excuse to scream and hurl insults. Recently, I've been outside with my dogs whenever they're outside. I know for a fact that they haven't made a single Peep. And yet I still get aggression from them. It's only me, the 4 foot 11 female, that they bother. They never say a word to my 6 foot 3 muscle bound boyfriend, nor anything to me when he's around. Once, while I was getting male, the woman saw me out her window, left her house and started stomping towards me. I then braced myself for some abuse. Then she noticed my boyfriend was waiting in the car next to me, stopped dead in her tracks and pretended to be getting mail herself. My boyfriend leaves the country now and then for work and it seems my neighbors are watching. They usually wait a few days just to be sure he's gone. What makes me right today is that they've stopped even bothering to make up excuses. They've apparently learned my schedule and now wait for me at night quite regularly. More than once I've caught them lurking in the dark. Sometimes I'll be putting trash out at night only to see the woman stalking towards me out of the darkness. When I see her coming towards me, I abandon my task and go back inside and then wait for her to leave. Last night when I arrived home, the man was waiting for me in the dark. I never saw him, but I heard him as soon as I got out of my car. He shouted like he was talking to someone else. And then what followed was a string of insults that continued until I got into my house. I don't know where he was in the darkness or if there was actually someone with him. There's enough lights outside that he would have to be deliberately avoiding them to be unseen. You know that thing the little kids do when someone they don't like is around? When they suddenly turn to their friend and start trash talking that person as if that's what they've been doing all along. And then the unliked kid isn't even there. But you still do it loudly enough to be heard. It's like that I only heard his voice. I'm not really sure if there was a second person in the dark with him or if he was alone or just pretending to talk to someone else. I'm not sure which is creepier. When I went inside, I grabbed my pepper spray and then stepped back outside with my phone ready to record. But it seemed he was gone at that point. To me, this means that he really was just lurking outside just to wait for me. I should say that I've not spoken a single word to these people since the last time I rode here. I have no idea what their problem is. Seriously. The last time I had anything to do with either of them at all was earlier this week when I heard a car stuck in the snow on the then unplowed road in front of my house and then stepped outside to push the stranger's car free. Free. The neighbor woman happened to come outside during this. I never said a word to her as we pushed the car free. They don't even seem to be looking for excuses or making up things to complain about anymore. Now it's just lurking around outside in the dark to just harass me. I'm documenting all of this and I plan to get a restraining order or something as soon as I get some proof. I'm definitely getting a security camera as soon as I can afford one. Last week the front tire in my truck on the side their house is on got flat right before a big blizzard hit. I ended up having to replace the two front tires. Now these tires were needing replaced anyway and I couldn't see any obvious puncture in the flat one. But a part of me wonders if it was really just a coincidence. It would be an easy target for neighbors lurking in the dark between houses. I've started sleeping with my pistol on my nightstand again. The police came and talked to me. They seemed sympathetic and they said they'd file a report but didn't seem to write much down. Maybe they didn't really need to, or maybe I just prattled on a bit and gave more information than was actually needed for them. I feel like I was such a baby explaining what happened. Even just talking about it raises my anxiety sky high. I'm pretty sure I was shaking. I don't think they just take one side of the story as gospel, but I do think they can see that I feel very unsafe in my own home now because of this. Unfortunately, as it's so late, we had to agree that it was best that they not go talk to the neighbors tonight as they would surely complain about the late visit and possibly want to retaliate even more. The police told me the documentation is helpful, so it was a good thing I called them as now we have ongoing records being collected, but not much else can be done as far as charges go until I get something recorded. They told me what I'd need for harassment charges and what I'd need for a restraining order. Also, they advised me that I should stall in security cameras and record on my phone whenever I can. They even told me that I can legally use my phone to record record them on their own property if they're presently harassing. Obviously I can't just Record them whenever, or point my security cameras permanently spying on them. Thank you to everyone here for your support. Hopefully I won't have to post a third installment, but we'll see, I guess. After a short period of calm, my neighbors have gone back to lurking in the dark whenever I get home and screaming abuse sent me. Last time the cops couldn't do anything, but this time I actually got it on video. The man even repeated my name after he noticed I was recording. The police came quickly and they're talking to them now. I'll add updates within the hour. Okay, here's the story. Apparently the lady next door, whose episodes I've written about before, has somehow become convinced that her husband is cheating with me. Apparently there are certain people out there who just love slinging around random accusations. Seriously, I don't even know this guy's name and I struggle to even describe him to the police. And this man's way of disproving the accusations, waiting for me to come home and shouting insults about me while alternating between loudly worshipping his wife's beauty but also calling her a bitch. Anyway, I got home a little after 11pm and I was taking out my trash when the wife shouted at me, you're playing a game with me. Which she has done before when she wanted to cause trouble. That's when I started recording. From that point on, it was mostly just the man yelling. They've done this a few times since my last update and were even bold enough to do it during the day. But they didn't say my name then and the audio quality was poor, so I didn't do anything with it. And things had calmed down recently, so I thought they were done. And then tonight they started up again. When I pulled out my phone, the wife was taunting me, something like, yeah, go ahead, start recording, bitch. Which I'm not sure if I got that on video or not. The wife also told me that I need to move out of my house. As for the man, it was mostly just a string of insults. How I'm an ugly psycho cunt and so on. I did not say one single word to them. Not one. They went inside after I put my phone to my ear. Suddenly they were not so bold anymore when they realized I was on the phone with the police. So the police came, watched my videos, and then talked to them. When the police returned, they said the couple was still being belligerent when they went there and that the couple was shocked they could actually be arrested for this behavior. The neighbors actually tried to turn it into a complaint about my dogs, but the police weren't having it. Before the police arrived, they read the report of the previous officers that came out, so they knew these people only acted up when my boyfriend wasn't around. So they claimed my dogs acted differently when my boyfriend is around somehow. Anyway, it didn't work. Small I talked to the people at my work. I told them that if I ever don't show up for a shift and can't be reached by phone, that the police are to be called to my house immediately. Both my supervisor and manager now want me to check in with them by text. On my days off, my supervisor will be escorting me home and would like to show up at my house periodically just to let the neighbors know someone is around. Okay, so a few new things have happened, but none were really worth an update all on their own. But I feel like I have enough now. My co workers have been following me home from work most days. My neighbors, I'm pretty sure, have been waiting for me as I don't get home until late and their lights are always on in one room in their house, the room that overlooks my driveway. But with a witness escorting me, the neighbors have stayed quiet for the last few weeks. The woman occasionally comes outside when she notices me out front, but I'm not out there much, so she usually doesn't come out in time. Once, while I was in my garage doing some minor work on my car, I had heard some rustling just to the side of my garage door. I knew the woman was out there so I just closed the garage door. Another time she came out while I was moving some bins. She muttered something and I knew she was talking to me as we were the only ones out there. But I didn't hear what she said and I didn't really much care. I just ignored her. I can't always get escorted home at night. After a few nights of having no escort, I think they caught on to the pattern. I came home one night and they had their garage door open, which they do when they're wanting to harass me. Unfortunately for them, I was delayed and I didn't get home until midnight and they weren't out anymore. Anyway, I figured that I should probably know what these people's names are and what they look like, so I did a public record search on their address. The woman came up with three last names, so it seems she's been married and divorced before. I went looking for these people on Facebook just so I could verify that I was getting the correct people. The man didn't seem to have an account, but the woman did, and when I checked her page, this is what I found. I'll post the photo on the screen for you all to look at. These are comments below a picture that she posted of a Chucky doll and the bride of Chucky doll. I guess that's what she is. So when she says the one on the left, that's what she means. I don't know why she's convinced I'm the psycho one. Seriously, I don't say or do anything to these people. I'm not the one lurking in the dark, screaming insults or posting crazy all over online, making vague threats about how things were done back in the day. Notice the date. She's not only writing about me being somehow nosy, but also seems paranoid that I was stalking her on Facebook, even though I never even looked her up until just a few weeks ago. She seems way too convinced that people are actually interested in their lives. I wouldn't even care that they existed if they weren't causing me problems. And remember, I didn't even bother to learn their names before. So now I'm watching her Facebook page, but I don't want to. I really don't care about this person. But now I have to check it periodically just in case she posts something else about me so that maybe I can get an early warning if she's planning an attack or something, and I have to be ready to screencap anything incriminating before it gets taken down. This annoys me almost as much as their harassment. I don't want to waste my time having to keep tabs on the social media of someone I'd rather just pretend doesn't even exist. I really hate that she's making me waste my time and attention on her. I'll send no friend requests to her or anyone she knows. I'll send no messages to her or anyone she knows, and I'll make no tagging of her or anyone she knows and I'll have no contact. But as long as it's public, I'm going to keep an eye on it and just wish I didn't have to. Anyway, the reason I'm writing today is because they're adjusting their tactics. After some silence after their last lecture from the police, they've decided they just want to stay off camera. Today, which was daytime, I stepped out of my house and went to my mailbox. I heard some noise from inside their house but didn't much care. I figured they were bickering amongst themselves. Then I heard the woman Loudly say something to the effect of she's right out there. Do it. Followed immediately by the man shouting out his window, hey fucking cunt, Fuck off already. Which was obviously directed at me. Why even do that? I hadn't done anything. I'd ask what their problem is, but I really don't care. Unfortunately, as they weren't outside, I wasn't recording. For the first time in a long time, I responded. I said simply, how badly do you guys want a restraining order? Funny enough, I didn't get a response. Then I got in my car and left for work, where I am now. I'm sick of calling the police. I'm going to the station tomorrow and filing a formal complaint. Oh, and I forgot to mention I spoke to the woman who actually lives on the other side of the harassing neighbors. She was really nice. She said that the people next door creep her out and used to shout at her too. But then a high white wall, not a fence, but a big metal wall, was seriously built outside between their properties, so the harassing neighbors couldn't see her anymore. At first I thought the cool neighbor built it, but it turns out the harassing neighbors put it up themselves. Shortly after my last update, my boyfriend came home from Afghanistan and what do you know? My neighbor shut the fuck up. A few times I found the woman lurking outside very near the property line, just. Just staring at me as she always does. I see her doing this as I pull into my driveway. I'd get out and she'd stare. But then my boyfriend got out of the car too, and she turned right around and walked away. But now he's gone again. It took the neighbors a few weeks, but they did notice. March 6, 2016. Sometime after 11pm and I just got home from work. I was driving my boyfriend's car that night and I pulled it straight into the garage and immediately shut the garage door behind me. I didn't see them outside when I pulled into my property, but as soon as I got out of my car, I heard him. He was screaming his random insults again. I can't be 100% sure, but I thought he sounded like he was standing in my driveway just on the other side of my garage door. I didn't say anything. I just went in the door that connects my garage to my house. A little while later I went outside. The guy only comes out for me and he probably figured I was in for the night. So I reckoned the coast was clear enough for me to get my meal and take out my trash. Nope, the man and woman Both come out hooting and hollering the usual insults, telling me that I'm somehow the psycho one and telling me to move. I tell them that I have more than enough evidence to press charges. The man says he doesn't care, but quickly retreats inside when I demand to know if he was on my property. He wouldn't answer that on camera. Anyone who remembers previously remembers that these people just scream insults and they don't seem to even have any particular complaint. Well, apparently the comms told them off for it, so now they think they can get away with their crazy harassment if somewhere in there they throw in a complaint, if only to have it on video, regardless of how untrue it is. Recently, they now accused me of revving my engine. Obviously I wasn't March 24th it was 1am and I was asleep. The doorbell rang. My dogs went nuts. Now we had just had a bad snowstorm, so I thought maybe it was someone who got their car stuck on the street out front and needed some help. It has happened before, although not at that hour. Still, I wasn't dumb enough to just open the door. Instead, I opened my second story window and it's a good thing I did. The man was out there ranting and raving away. He started his nonsense by claiming he didn't want to go to jail even though he was doing the exact thing he was warned would land him in jail and now on my property doing it. He called me a psycho and ugly and so on, blah blah. And since he was being recorded a bullshit complaint. Apparently I'm revving my engine despite being asleep in bed. He never knew that I had a pistol in my hand. It was out of sight. I wasn't threatening him with it, pointing it at him or showing it to him, but I hadn't. I was hoping he wouldn't try to break in, but I was ready if he did. Luckily he left when ordered too. I went down to the courthouse for a restraining order this morning. They told me to come back tomorrow. Oh, I forgot to mention that I had finally added security cameras. I got them set up today. I'm going to have to redo them as I'm not entirely happy with their placement, but it'll do for now. Well, $300 later, I now have a temporary restraining order against both of them. We all three have to appear in court for the permanent restraining order in two weeks. I saw the woman getting served with the papers today just as I was leaving for work. Not sure what to expect when I get home. I Have all of my evidence put together to show the judge. I wonder what the neighbors will say in their defense. Ok, it's been a while since I last updated. Since the last incident I wrote about in the previous update back in March, I've installed security cameras around my home. So it's April 5, 2016, and I got approved for a temporary restraining order against both neighbors. The county does not make it easy. I had to be at the courthouse early and fill out paperwork. I had to do separate paperwork for both of them. I couldn't just write both of their names on the same form. And it all has to be complete and filed by 9am or you won't be seen. And as for filing, it's not free. And I had to pay for both. Eventually, everyone petitioning for a restraining order that day all went into the same courtroom and we were called before the judge one at a time. Some people got their restraining orders approved, while others didn't. It was heartbreaking to see an elderly blind woman be denied. It's hard for someone who can't see to provide evidence. Not that evidence was being presented at the time, mind you. Thankfully, the judge approved me for a restraining order against both of them. I was really worried that I would get the restraining order against the male but not the female, and she would retaliate. Then I had to pay again to have these restraining orders served. In all, it cost me $300. Now, this was just a temporary restraining order. It's only good for two weeks and two weeks from when it's filed. The case for a permanent restraining order is held to which the defendants must attend or they'll automatically lose. April 6, 2016. Just as I was leaving for work, I saw the woman being served. She looked irate, but I wasn't getting into that. I thanked the serving officer as he left. I received proof of service the next day. April 11, 2016. When I got home from work a bit after 11pm, their garage door was open and the woman was sitting on a chair in her driveway, apparently waiting for me. When I parked and got out of my truck, she went into the garage. They weren't leaving me alone, though. They were doing it so they'd be out of sight and not on video. The mail from inside his garage started in with his usual harassment, insults and obscene as I've recorded before, and just to make it perfectly clear, he said my address. I recorded it on my phone, but the quality was poor, even though I can hear them clear as day, hooting and hollering. My phone doesn't pick it up or play it back so well. So the police, who I called over, didn't have enough to go on to bring them in on a restraining order violation. April 19, 2016. This was today. I arrived at court early in the morning. I just barely made it on time due to weather and traffic. Quite a few people were late. My neighbors were late. I had been hoping they just wouldn't show. So what happens when they go for a restraining order? Is everyone filing for a restraining order that day and every defendant is all in the same courtroom? Cases get called one at a time. First the judge just goes over who is who, clarifies a few things, decides whether or not she will even allow there to be a case for a restraining order, then ask the defendant if they'd like to contest the case. If the defendant contests it, there will be a hearing. This is where both parties present their facts and evidence. If the defendant does not contest it, there is no hearing and the restraining order is simply granted. In my case, both of my neighbors declined to contest and the restraining order was granted. But don't let that make you think these people were being rational and sane. Oh no. When they asked if they had any questions, they asked the judge if they could counter the restraining order, that is have a restraining order against me. I managed not to laugh. I was already never on their property and never contacting them. They were just doing it out of spite. The male did try to say that I was a danger because I had a gun around his wife. Odd, since for that to be true, his wife would have had to be trespassing on my property at the same time he was. If you remember my previous update, you already know what this is about. The male was at my house at 1am and my door hooting and hollering and being all hostile, telling me to die. And I was armed as I was expecting him to break in. He didn't know that, though I didn't show my weapon, mention it, or allude to it in any way. The only way he knows about it is because the fact that I possess it was wrong. Written by me on my formal complaint. This weapon, by the way, is perfectly legal for me to own. The judge pretty much blew him off. She said if he wants a restraining order, he can go through the application process just like I did. If he does, he'll be wasting his money. Oh, and at one point, while talking to the judge, the woman referred to me as it Lovely people. We've speculated a bit here about drugs and alcohol being involved. But just looking at how they behaved in court while presumably sober makes me believe this is really just who these people are. As people, substances or not, I was 10,000% ready to go. I had copies of all my police reports and I had the videos on my laptop and I bought speakers to play it all nice and loud. There was no way they could have really defended their actions, so they declined to contest the charges and I got the restraining order against the both of them. Basically, they are not to contact me or be on my property. They must maintain a certain distance from me, except when at their house because they live there and the judge wasn't going to make them move given how they behaved in court. Still irrational and unrepentant, I believe it was only a matter of time before they violated the permanent restraining order. Who wants to start a poll? Anyway, that's it for now. After I left the courtroom, I went to a nearby bench to organize my backpack and get out my phone. While I was doing that, the neighbors left the courtroom. They were muttering something in an unkind tone, but I didn't catch it. I waited for them to go down the elevators before I even tried to use them myself as I wanted distance. As I was going down, I met up with a nice lawyer. He had to drop off a paper downstairs real quick, but agreed to walk me to my car in a nearby parking garage afterwards. Nice man. It's good to know that there are still some decent people out there. Afterwards, I went to a copy shop and got copies of my restraining order made. Then I went to the mall. It wasn't shopping. I just wanted to pace around, talk to my mom on the phone, and blow off steam. Even though it all went my way, it's still a very stressful experience to deal with. Even if these people didn't know where I worked before, they do now, as it's on the paperwork that they got. So I dropped off a copy of the restraining orders with my boss on the way home. He was able to get photos of them off their Facebook. So my boss is going to put together BOLO flyers for the security guards to watch out for them. These people. I need a nap. I want to think this is the end, but I doubt that it really is. I think it's only a matter of time before they start testing the limits of the restraining order, looking for loopholes and eventually escalating. I've got my guard up. If it ever gets to the point where I have to defend myself, at least I can say I did everything legal and peaceful to prevent it from ever getting that far. The rest is up to them now. This may just be my last update. Ok, so it hasn't been quite a month since I got the restraining order. They've been pushing it. One morning while I was leaving for work, the woman came out. She was out with her dog. As an apparent excuse, she was staring at me the whole time, body facing me. She started walking towards the property line, towards my car when I got in it. Then as I backed out. Oh, suddenly she needed to be at the mailbox, right where my car now was. I drove away. She was trying to see how close she could get. The whole time she was in nothing but her underwear. The next day, I didn't work. I went outside to put my bins out while still wearing my pajamas. She came out and made an obviously fake and loud laugh. Restraining order doesn't block laughing. She was trying to provoke me into saying something. Anyway, I found it amusing that she would fake laugh at me for being in my pajamas when she couldn't be bothered to put on pants. Just the day before May 11, I let my dogs out around 9am as soon as they started barking, I open the door to let them in. Now my back door is a sliding door, so I could not be seen. And yet as soon as I opened the door, the neighbor guy was screaming his head off at me. I wonder if he thinks I can hear him from inside my house with my door closed. I can't imagine the point of yelling at someone to let their dogs in when that's clearly what they're already doing. But he's not very bright. My dog's barking may have been the reason for his yelling, or his yelling may have been the reason for the barking. I would not be surprised if he intentionally provoked my dogs just to have an excuse to yell. That's a violation of the restraining order. But I didn't let him see me. As far as he knows, I never heard him. I decided to keep it that way anyway. While I'm sure what he said had something to do with insults directed at me and my dogs, I for some reason decided that instead it sounded an awful like, hey, now would be a great time to mow your lawn. So I did. I'm sure that he loved that. I'm sure that he also loved that I did so with my headphones on and never once looked towards their house. Yeah, I'll admit I enjoyed some petty revenge. By then. It was about 10am, well past when any reasonable person would expect quiet. But These aren't reasonable people, and as satisfying as it was to run my mower and completely ignore their impotent rage while having all walls on my side, I did worry somewhat about retaliation. So I remained armed the whole time. Later on, after I finished mowing, I attended to some other yard work out front. Once I rounded the corner of my house, just as their van was pulling out of their driveway, they honked. Another test of the restraining order. I'm sure that they yelled too, but I had my headphones on. I kept an eye on them in my peripheral vision, but I never looked in their direction or responded at all. As far as they know, I never even noticed them. I'm not stupid though, and I rounded back around my house and out of sight. Now, I could report restraining order violations, but this. These being relatively minor, I don't imagine much would come of it. But there is something incredibly satisfying about just knowing that they're raging over me. Not just responding to them, but not even acknowledging them either. May 12. The next day, I saw the For Sale sign in front of their house. I'm so happy. However, I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to just pull something just as they were leaving. Kind of like disgruntled employees do on their last day. So I'm not letting my guard down and I'm keeping those security cameras rolling. If anything else does happen, I'll be riding here again. But apart from that, it looks like this is finally ending. Unless they do something else before the move, this will probably be my last post on the topic. It's not a very climactic end, but I'm really happy that peace and quiet are finally within sight. I'm considering whether or not I should check public records after they move and pass along my contact information to their next neighbors just in case they ever have problems and need help from someone who's dealt with these people before. But I'm not really sure if that could get me in trouble. I want to thank everyone who's been reading this and giving me advice. Your support and advice has helped me a lot. I might not have ever even gone to the police if it wasn't for this sub. Thank you. Wow. Okay. This actually happened like a week ago, but I've just been too busy to post. June 4, 2016 so these people have been pushing the limits of their restraining order and occasionally outright violating it pretty much since they got it. But since they're moving, I've mostly ignored it. But one day I pulled it in my garage after 11pm and of course they're out there screaming their usual shit. The exact thing that got them into trouble in the first place. They stalk me, learn my schedule, and wait, lurking in the dark for me to get home. They shout their abuse, insults, threats and so on, as they've been warned time and time again would land them in jail. And I have had it. I asked them, do you want to go to jail? There was a stunned silence. That was not a rhetorical question. I'm asking anyway. They keep up with their insults, but I just keep cutting them off. I tell them that they're violating the restraining order. I tell them that the only reason they weren't in jail already is because I'm so nice to them, which they don't seem to get. I could have gone far further than a restraining order. I could press criminal charges, I could sue them. And even if they move out of state, I could drag them all the way back to Colorado court. I tell them that I don't have to be so nice and I don't have to keep giving them chances. I tell them that if they want to avoid jail, they need to shut up and go inside and preferably seek counseling and rehab. They stammer a bit and tell me to mind my own business. Really? They harass me but tell me to mind my own business? Yeah, that's a laugh. Yes, I know I broke my own rule, but I was just beyond pissed. And I figured I had all the power, legally anyway. I considered calling the cops that night, but it was late and I had to be back at work in eight hours, so I just went to bed. About an hour later, the doorbell rang. Rings at first I thought it was them since the guy has pulled that shit at 1am before. When I saw it was the cops, I put the gun away. They called the cops. I shit you not. They called the cops themselves. It's not even possible for me to be nice to them. They'll screw themselves over so they get in trouble for violating the restraining order and the woman got arrested. I don't really know why only the woman was arrested, even though they were both doing that shit, but whatever. I know that she was held overnight because the cops called me to let me know the next day. As for me, I got in no trouble whatsoever, of course, because I did nothing wrong. I don't even think they know what they were calling the cops for. I seriously can't stop laughing. That they did this shit to themselves. That's what gets me. I didn't even call the cops all the neighbors had to do was nothing and they would have been fine. But if these people had any sense about them at all, this situation wouldn't exist in the first place. So that was pretty funny. Oh, and for anyone wondering, yes, I did stay up and watch her get put in the squad car from my window, and yes, it was satisfying. Considering their escalation since the restraining order, I think they would have done more eventually if left unchecked. Maybe the arrest would be the rolled up newspaper the snail needed to get them back in line long enough to move June 14, 2016 animal control showed up at my door about a barking complaint this morning. Guess who called. Even on the warning, it says my dog was outside for a grand total of 10 minutes. I always bring my dog in when she barks. The animal control officer seemed apologetic. He knows what's up. He says he gets called out for bogus complaints all the time. I told him all about the restraining order, the arrest last week, and I pointed to my security cameras and explained the incidents that led to them. He still had to give me a warning, but said it basically doesn't even mean anything. The neighbors would have to prove nuisance barking for anything to actually come of it. He actually laughed when he explained that within 72 hours of a warning, no further action could even be taken. So if I wanted, I can leave my dogs out and let them bark all day. I think he's sick of people using animal control as a way to harass as well. I'm not going to do that, but it's tempting. The woman was outside, I think, when animal control was at the door. I think she was looking forward to seeing me in trouble. She went inside real quick when it was clear that the animal control officer and I were getting along fine and that I was in no trouble whatsoever. Salt. Funny how shouting harassment in the middle of the night is perfectly okay in their book, but a dog barking once or twice in the middle of the day? Oh no, we can't have that now can we? I also forgot to mention this earlier, but my boyfriend is coming home today, so I should have at least a month of relative peace. I have another update. Out with the old and in with the new. The old neighbors are gone and the new ones are in and it's a welcome change. I haven't met them all yet, but I have met the men and I see that he has his own dogs, which he actually lets in his backyard. He seems friendly. I saw him the other night playing Pokemon Go walking down the sidewalk carrying his phone and a nice drink. He stopped to talk a bit. Apparently he heard about how horrible the previous neighbors were from elsewhere. He seemed sympathetic. Hopefully we'll continue to get along. I had never had a problem with a neighbor before in my life before those people, and I know that they must be rare. But still, I can't help but feel a bit guarded. Well, I guess this is the end now. Thank you all for listening and stay safe out there. So, a little backstory. This isn't directly my story. Instead, my professor's I took a specialized class in sex crimes while in my junior year of college and university. One reason was because I had to have an elective. The other was because I was genuinely curious about the psychology behind these crimes. My professor was in her mid-40s and had worked with convicted offenders for years leading up to her becoming a professor. She never delved into what exactly her job was, but we all knew that she worked closely with them on the conviction and rehabilitation side. I'll never forget the day she told us this story. It was a really cold morning in late October. Her class was my 9am that Tuesday, and a class of maybe about 15. We had got done going over a chapter we were on, leaving us with about an hour left in class. The chapter we were on was about the psychology of offenders when and after they offend. Instead of releasing us early, my professor tells us that she has a story for us. Naturally, our ears perk up. She starts telling us that years ago her and her work partner went to a group meeting of offenders for their rehabilitation and probation requirements. They weren't there to do anything, just sit, listen and take notes. A while into their meeting, the organizer asked the men in their group how their lives were going. A lot of the men said that therapy was truly helping. They got a new job, moved, etc. Then came one man, let's call him Jay for simplicity. Jay started describing that he had moved into a new apartment with a pool. It had a gray kitchen, but there was a girl that he was unsure about. The organizer questioned him about what he meant. Jay responded that he didn't know if it was okay to date. Of course. The other men in the group then said of course, and that he needs to explain his situation. Jay relaxed a bit. This sentiment's making him feel better. He then began describing his newfound crush. Blond hair, big green eyes. She loves to sing, but that she was incredibly touchy and that her mother, who she still lived with, was very controlling of her. Jay said he didn't know how to handle her forwardness and that she was a little younger. Naturally, the organizer told him that it's okay to date and asked how old she was. That's when he said that she was nine. Nine years old. My professor then said she had never seen other offenders get so close to trying to kill another person in her life. Her partner immediately removed him from the group and then got into contact with his probation officer. She said that Jay acted like he didn't know what the big deal was and that it was just a crush, Completely oblivious to the severity of what he just said, scoffing at the partner when he ridiculed him. This man was registered, and when you're registered, you cannot live at certain places, like an apartment with a pool. She never found out how he pulled it off. We all just sat there, stunned. One girl silently cried, as did I. All of the men got visibly angry at the story she just told us. She then told us that he's walking around free. My name is Molly. I'm 22 and I think that I might have avoided dating a murderer. This started about a month ago. I found out my now ex boyfriend was cheating on me and I dumped him after finding out There were also other things that led up to this, but this was the final nail in the coffin for this relationship. His excuse for cheating on me was that he wasn't over the death of his first wife, which doesn't make sense at all. And I'm going to get into her death. While my ex and I were dating, he told me that his first wife passed away due to depression two years prior. You can all gather what that means. And of course this really pulled in my heartstrings and I felt for him. He then told me that his best friend did the same exact thing two months later. Weird, right? At the time I thought it was strange, but didn't lean more into it out of respect for my ex and the trauma it caused. Having my own struggles with that, I didn't want to question it further. But after breaking up with him, things aren't making any sense. Firstly, he told me two completely different stories as to the methods and how they both offed themselves. The way he told me how his wife did it the first time he told me is physically impossible. If you all know Kurt Cobain's story put two and two together minus the drugs. In the back of my mind, I knew it'd be impossible, especially since it happened in a car as well. I decided to ask him about it one day and he was a wraith that I would even question it. He also told me that he never said it was a.22, that it was a pistol instead. Now, I'll admit I'm forgetful, but details like that you just don't forget. I asked him why he'd tell me it was a.22 and not a pistol and he said that he misspoke and did not bring it up again. That's an alarm bells off for me. Why? Because he was an avid gun guy. He's someone that can take apart a gun that he's never touched or fired and put it back together again. So why would he simply say it was one type when it was a completely different gun entirely? Now on to his best friend. He told me that the autopsy revealed that there were ligature marks around the neck with a toxcreen of the charts but internal bruising if you've seen my post before, you'll know that I'm a mortician's kid with a degree in criminal justice in hopes of working in crime scenes, so I'm not ignorant to suspicious things like this. I again tell him that it's odd and again he gets pissed telling me that I'm stupid and that I don't know what I'm talking about and to not bring it up again. I don't know if I'm overthinking or something else, but I don't have a good feeling about any of this. I've started looking into all of this further and I'm going to talk to some of my old professors who are in law enforcement about what they think. This story is still ongoing. Hey everyone, I'd like to start this post out by saying that this story happened to me back in 2020 during the pandemic. So some details are a bit fuzzy and lost in time, but the story itself will remain the same. I grew up in a small town in the midwest where there wasn't much to do during the pandemic. A majority of our usual hangout places were closed down or headed heavily mandated. With that being said, my friends and I really had no place to go see. We decided to quarantine together during the summer since we were so close knit and the first two months had really affected our mental health and left us feeling isolated. I was considered the mom friend as I was the oldest and the only one with a car and license. Therefore it was usually up to me to plan what adventures we would go on. This specific experience happened in late August after our town had been hit by a devastating storm that destroyed a majority of the surrounding area. I decided on this day that we would drive out to a small lake about 40 minutes away from our town to see if any damage had occurred out there. Yeah, there was some, but not as bad. The lake had a parking lot out in the back that led to a walking trail around the perimeter of the water. But before that, you had to cut through the surrounding woods and walk past a heavily overgrown spillway. The group consisted of me, my cousin Ethan and our close friend Rose. I was the only one who had been in the area before, so I took the initiative. We set out on the trail and stopped a few times to ogle at the amount of frogs that littered the small stream running off the spillway. When I say there were a lot of frogs, I'm not exaggerating. There were at least 50 in our line of sight. And since we were in the woods, that line of sight wasn't a lot. I remember at one point I had noticed and pointed out a really strong smell coming from the water. It reminded me of burnt sugar with a mix of roadkill and my friends had agreed that it was funky. We decided to walk away from the stream to get back on the trail, chalking up the smell to just a dead animal in the woods. Now we get to the weird part. The next bit is kind of weird to describe as the layout is a bit odd. So once you get on this path and closer to the spillway, you'd have to walk uphill. But since it's so steep, they had built wooden stairs leading to the top. The stairs were accompanied by a wooden railing as the spillway is directly next to it and is about a 15 foot drop straight, straight down. At the top of the stairs there is a wooden landing before the trail continues. We had gotten to the landing and were chatting and goofing around like normal teenagers would do when we all got this strong sense of dread. At the same time, it was almost suffocating how creepy the atmosphere had become. It felt as if we were being watched. And that nasty smell I noticed had become almost overwhelming. Ethan had turned away and looked down over the railing before turning back to us. Guys, I think someone is here. His already pale face was somehow whiter than usual and he looked like he had just seen a ghost. Rose and I looked down to where he was talking about and directly below us in the spillway was a giant pile of brush and sticks. On top of the pile lay a purple flannel, a a pair of brand new shoes and a piece of cloth that we couldn't make out. It was at that point that we all knew what was going on and my stupid true crime obsessed self wanted to investigate. My friends were on board so we made our way back to the steps, Ethan grabbing a large stick for protection on the way down. The only way for us to get to that part of the spillway was to either jump the 15ft into the green wall water and potentially fall into the pile, or go back around on the other side of the stream where it was flat and cross through. When we reached the crossing point, we realized that in order to get to that spot we would have to get our feet wet. Thankfully we all wore sandals, so wading through the ankle deep water wasn't so bad. I will point out here that there were frogs everywhere as well as bugs. When we had gotten to the pile, Ethan took the stick and lifted the mystery cloth to our directions so we could make out what it was. It was a pair of white panties that were stained with something brown. It wasn't menstrual blood or feces as it had soaked the entire thing and we could barely tell it was originally white. We could however, tell that it was dried blood. Ethan flicked the cloth off the stick and me and Rose were walking away from the pile, not wanting to be here any longer. To our shock and horror, when we turn around to see if Ethan was following, we had seen him chuck the stick straight into the pile with such a force that it cut through the brush and echoed through the woods. Almost immediately as he does this, a swarm of insects and frogs come billowing out of the pile from every direction and the smell sucker punched us in the face, becoming even stronger. Safe to say we hauled ass out of there to my car. We washed off using an old water spout and a beach towel that I had left in my car and then went back to my house. We had discussed what happened with the rest of our friend group while smoking later that evening and we all agreed that there was definitely a dead body underneath those sticks. Here's where we fucked up. Instead of calling the cops like we should have, we gathered up a bunch of safety gear to go check it out the next day. I know. What the fuck. We got there at about noon at this time and we had two more people joining us. Two of us went up the stairs and the others went around the flat side and made our way to the spillway. Me and my friend had gone up the stairs and I pointed out to her how the smell had completely disappeared as it was so strong in this spot not even a day ago. We ended up reaching the top before the others made it on the other side. I looked over the railing in horror as the pile and the clothes were gone. It was almost like they had never been there at all. The only thing that remained was a white sock that wasn't there the day before and a bunch of frogs. Ethan and the others came running on the flat side. As soon as I realized the scene was missing. We all just stood there in silence, equally confused and scared. I don't think any of us said anything at all, but somehow we all knew at the same time that we needed to get the fuck out of there. I've been out there a few times since then and there's still no trace of what we saw that day. There's plenty of questions I have that will never get answered, but we've all come to the consensus that yes, there was definitely a body out there and whoever did it was most likely still in the area and probably watched the whole thing. I did call the cops, but there wasn't much they could do and the clothes we found hadn't matched the description of any missing women in the area. This is a great time for me to point out that our area has a lot of missing and murdered indigenous women as our tribe is located about 20 minutes away from the lake. I'm not sure if this is one of those cases or not, but I urge anyone listening to be informed about this topic and please be aware of the reality that so many women face. So to the potential murderer at the spillway, I really hope that I never encounter you.
- [231:48]
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