A (0:00)

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B (0:59)

I usually don't bother to post anything on Reddit, but I figured typing the situation out might make me feel better so I'm 23 years old, female and live on my own. I just moved out to the area for school and I went to my local Walmart to gather supplies for cleaning. As I walked in, I took note of an older man near the entrance that I had briefly made eye contact with and nodded at. Just kept walking. I looked at folders for a bit, then made my way towards the electronics section at the back to look for a charger. I was making my way through the aisles on the way down looking at all the fall decorations. Lots of them were geared towards kids, so I just glanced at them quickly and then turned around to leave. The same man was there and he was holding and inspecting some paper plates with childish Halloween designs on them for children. I didn't hear him walk into the aisle. I thought that was a little strange, but brushed it off thinking he had grandkids. I left and I made my way to the electronics section where they kept chargers behind locked glass doors. I'm there for maybe about seven, eight minutes and the same old man shows up and I see in the reflection of the glass that he's looking at my butt as he walks by. At this point I was pretty far from when I last saw him. I brushed it off though, because I'm used to men making quick glances like that in public and leaving it at that. His looking at the display behind me on the other side, goes to leave and then this is where it gets creepy. He stands right behind me and starts aggressively eyeing me up and down while licking his lips, paying particular attention to my backside and my legs. He's basically undressing me with his eyes. At this point he was giving off Massive creep vibes and I started shaking with adrenaline and I was afraid that he would try and grab me. I was all alone in the aisle with him. I stayed calm despite my throat feeling like it had a ball in it and waited for him to leave. He does. Then I went to a random aisle nearby electronics, but in the general part of the store there were two men behind the electronics counter and I wanted to stay near them if something went wrong and I waited a few minutes just standing there to see if he showed up. I wanted to confirm if he was following me or not. Sure enough, five minutes later he was there. I caught him quite literally speed walking down the main walkway, looking down each aisle as if frantically looking for me. He stopped dead, saw me notice him, and then promptly scurried off. I went to the electronics section and informed them that I was being followed and that I wasn't comfortable and asked if there was security. They don't have any, just theft prevention and they offered to check me out there or accompany me to finish shopping. They were very kind and I took them up on the offer to get my cleaning supplies nearby. As we turned together, the same guy was standing further away, staring. He literally just increased the radius he was using to follow and was watching from the front by the registers. Now I get my stuff, check out, and then weave through all of the clothing sections to leave from a different section than the one that I originally entered and saw him from. I didn't see him at all this whole time. I go to my car, promptly drove to my new place, but stopped halfway at a random neighborhood. I pulled over and pretended that was my house to see if anyone told me I didn't want this guy finding out where I lived. Then I drove home when I didn't see anyone. I may be overreacting, but this is a new area to me and I've never had someone be quite that creepy and persistent in following me. I've done things on my own plenty of times and have never had an issue. This all happened in the middle of the day at like 3pm too. I was wearing loose clothing and I just wanted to make a quick trip in and out. I have no idea what could have happened if I didn't notice or what his intentions might have been. I can't imagine they were good. Maybe he would have followed me to my new place, who knows? Either way, the whole encounter was scary. He had no clue. I saw his reflection and the nasty expression on his face. Just stay aware guys and watch yourselves. I, a female, was 22 years old when this happened. I worked in a grocery store which had been featured in the news. You could actually see me in the clip and it was clear where I worked. I just came back from vacation and a co worker told me that some guy had been coming around every day for a week asking for me. When I asked who or why, they told me they had no idea but that he was around my age and that he seemed a little off. A few hours passed by and my co worker came and told me that the guy was back and asking for me. Let's call him James. I can't remember his real name. In the back room we had a computer and you could see all of the camera footage from all over the store. I looked and I didn't recognize who James was, but decided to go ask what he wanted. He was clearly drunk and he said that he had seen me on TV and wanted to ask me out. I replied back with, oh, I'm sorry, but I'm in a relationship even though I was single. I then said I needed to get back to work and he asked me if he should come with me. I was confused at that and said that I'm working. He then left, but I could see him through the cameras outside of the store drinking. A few hours passed by and he was still waiting for me outside, so I had to use another exit when I left. The next day I came to work and I saw him waiting for me outside the store. He had a huge smile on his face and he walked up to me. He was really shy and he didn't say a word until I then said hey. While passing by to get into the store. He followed me inside and he said that he needed to talk. I asked him what's up? And then he said, how about we go to the movies? He was really creepy and I replied back with, I'm sorry, but I have a boyfriend. Remember I told you as I was walking away, he'd started following me and asking if he should come help me with my work. No thanks, I replied. Once again I looked at the camera footage and yet again he was waiting for me outside. At this point, I'd started asking a male co worker to escort me safely to the tram Every night when my shift ended, I started getting really scared. Once this had been going on for a good while and he clearly wouldn't leave me alone, I asked my brother if he could drive me to work on his motorcycle and hug me outside of my workplace so it looked like he was my boyfriend. And then James would Maybe leave me alone. Since I knew he was somewhere watching and waiting for me to get to work. It didn't help. I had started getting messages like, is that your boyfriend? And he doesn't need to know if we go out. I was totally confused about how he even got my number in the first place. I asked all of my co workers and a new one said that she'd given my number because he said he was a friend of mine. I was pissed at this point, I had asked all of my male coworkers to throw him out if he ever came back, which was a lot. A couple of weeks went by without any harassment and I finally thought he had left me alone. Boy, was I wrong. I came to work one day and I was in the changing room and I heard that we have a new co worker and it's his first day. Didn't think anything of it and proceeded to change my clothes. Once I got out of the changing room, my jaw dropped. Another co worker then said, hey, this is James. I looked in horror as she asked me what's wrong? I said, I know this is the creep that's been stalking me for weeks. As James then smiled, I went and searched for my boss to ask him what the hell. My boss said he had no idea that this was my stalker and he kind of just laughed it off as no big deal. I told him, either he leaves or I will. He said that I wouldn't have to work the same shift as James, but that he couldn't fire him. He lied. I had a lot of shifts with him and wherever I went, he always followed without saying a word. He just kept following me. I would often have my lunch break by the computer so I could see where he was. And every day I could see him just staring at me behind me as I ate. We had cameras there also. This went on for a while. He would text me every day, but at work he didn't say a thing, just stared. My boss finally understood what a freak James was and that he didn't do any work, just stalking and started to think of new ideas on how to fire him. One time I noticed James was clearly drunk at work and I told my boss he got fired. And this is when the stalking finally stopped. I'm not gonna add a lot of specific details here because I feel like if I do, someone will figure out I wrote this, but I'm a 17 year old female and I'm a junior in high school and my dad's friends had a small meetup sometime a while back and One of his friends was there at the beginning of the party and he was acting fairly normal and I didn't really think much of him then. He had started touching and caressing my knee whenever we sat down in a very uncomfortable way. He'd even been so bold to caress my thighs sometimes. Sometimes he'd just do this randomly, but other times he'd do this and start talking to me, getting real up close to my face with really long and uncomfortable eye contact. I felt a little concerned, especially because he kept asking me about what I'd do in my free time and whether I liked any boys and what me and my friends talk about. This alone wouldn't seem too weird to me, but it was combined with everything else that made me feel really weirded out. He kind of talked to me not like I was his friend's daughter, but like I was his friend. One time I remember getting up to get some lemonade. All of the adults were in a separate room and he'd come right behind me and caress my back and ask more about my life with again, really freaking uncomfortable closeness and eye contact. Whenever I sat down, he'd make extra sure he was near me. Another time he just sat next to me and slung his arm over my shoulders. And he kept asking me stuff, which I awkwardly but very politely responded to. And while this was happening, he said, I think I should spend more time with you. Just you and me, with a horrible smile. That smile irked me so horribly I felt like running. When we were leaving, he was the only adult who hugged me and he hugged me for a long time. He specifically put his arms around my waist and gripped it really tightly, which I've been told is an extremely intimate way to hug, but I could be overblowing it. After he hugged me several times, he asked me where I could see him next and how he really wanted to see me again. I told him I was unsure. Then out of nowhere, he had started helping my mom and dad bringing their stuff to the car, which is extremely unnecessary since we only had a few bags which we could definitely carry ourselves. But we didn't say anything. He continued getting very touchy feely with me until we made it to the car where he insisted another hug and I gave it to him, after which he said, please come here again sometime, please, really insistently. To which I said I would see if I could. To a normal person, he probably just seems like a really friendly and genuine guy, but I have a really bad gut feeling about him. The worst part is my dad witnessed most of this. But he said nothing. He just continued like normal. I thought maybe at least after the party he'd blow up or tell me to never be alone with that guy again, like ever. But he just said nothing. Which makes me feel like I might be overreacting. I don't know. I'm not sure. I really need some assurance or maybe even clarity about what exactly this is. If he really does turn out to be a creep, it's absolutely sickening. This guy had even held me when I was a baby. What the hell's wrong with him? It's just disgusting in my mind. Ok, so this post got quite a bit of attention out of nowhere, but I just wanted to clear up a few things. By the way, this was intended as a throwaway account, so if one day I suddenly go inactive, it's because I don't see a point to keeping the account any longer. Anyways, I'll be referring to my dad's friend as the creep since I can firmly establish that he's creepy now. First off, I just wanted to say thank you for all the sweet comments, concerned about my well being and wishing the best for me. It really means so much more than you guys could ever know and I wholeheartedly appreciate the care you guys put into the advice and comments that you shared. Secondly, I want to address the amount of concern for me in these comments because to a certain extent I feel like people think this event has traumatized me. And I would like to clarify, I am in absolutely no emotional or physical distress over this. I mean, of course this event disturbed me and it made me want to avoid the creep altogether. But I would never let my life be demolished over a man who's balding. Not gonna lie. Now this isn't to shame or downgrade the experiences of people who've actually been traumatized by the stuff like this or worse. Because I've seen the terrible impact it can really have and how seriously it can mess you up. I guess I should have been more careful with my wording. I was uncomfortable, yes, but I was also mostly annoyed at it. It wasn't like I was scared, I just felt awkward about wasn't much better. But I'm not in as terrible of a state as you guys think I am. I just wanted everyone to know that I am doing fine. College applications and graduation stresses me out way more and takes up more of my time and headspace than this event. So don't feel too bad for me because my life is actually pretty good at the moment. I don't see the creep that much at all. And even when I do, it's in large public areas where friends and family are around. So I don't feel suffocated or controlled or helpless around him. And I guess I should have clarified this, but I did try to make attempts to shrug him off and he did retreat back a lot of those times, only for him to do it again. Which, yeah, is crazy. I feel like people think I just let myself be a sitting duck and I guess it's my fault for that. I apologize, but I will be more vocal with my discomfort next time. Thank you guys. Thirdly, to everyone telling me to inform my parents, which is basically all of the comments. I appreciate the advice and I know where you're coming from. People in this situation should tell their parents, but telling my parents would probably do nothing. The thing with my parents is that they're very, I guess you could say emotionally unintelligent. They won't be able to understand what exactly or how exactly the creep's actions make me uncomfortable. I could try explaining, but that is a long, tedious process and it could just lead to a big fight in the end with everyone hating each other. So I've decided against it unless I see a change in them, which I highly doubt is going to happen. But you guys are right. If not my parents, I should at least tell a trusted adult. I just need to figure out who. And you guys can be rest assured I will tell a trusted adult. Fourthly, everyone calling my dad out and saying he enabled the creep to do it. I know where you guys are coming from again, and I even agree with this to a certain level about why he didn't even say a thing. Most fathers would freak the hell out. Sadly, though, my father is not most fathers. Not to say he's an awful father, he's just not the best. As I said, my parents are very emotionally unintelligent. I'm not sure how both of them are this way, but it's the cards I've been dealt with and I have to sort of deal with it. So I'm pretty sure when my dad saw this happening, he had misinterpreted the entire situation. Or maybe he just didn't understand that this was highly inappropriate. However, my dad does get mad at crap like this when he recognizes it. One time when another creep was sniffing and playing with my hair on a subway, I'm pretty sure that guy was mentally not sound. But anyways, my dad pushed him and stomped on his foot pretty aggressively. My dad's also a pretty big dude, so the guy got scared crapless, so I know he doesn't enable it and I highly doubt he'd let it slide just cause the creep's his friend. They don't even talk to each other until they meet up, which is only like once or twice a year. So I'm pretty sure of this theory of mine. I think he just didn't recognize a more subtle form of creepiness or played it off because he thinks his friend wouldn't do that. A lot of people in the comments have shared this theory as well and I highly agree with it. Knowing my dad. A second theory is coming from the fact that my dad is a very strict disciplinarian and he didn't want to cause a scene at the party or in front of me because he didn't want to be seen as emotional or aggressive. He's had a complicated past of anger issues and is trying to learn how to control it, so I'm pretty sure if he recognized what was wrong with them he would have talked about it with my mom privately. I don't want to talk about it with my dad or mom because I know they both don't know how to handle it or talk about it well, so it's better if they just figure out their own crap and just keep a secretive protection protocol or whatever whenever this happens. As for my mom saying nothing, well, she wasn't around me for most of the night. She was busy talking with her friends, so I'm pretty sure she didn't notice either. I know this may be a biased opinion from a young, naive teenage girl, but but I think it's most probably likely fifthly. I'm going to go to college next year so I'm probably gonna meet the creep like once again in the entire rest of my life and I can protect myself pretty nicely, especially when there are people around. I will try to be more vocal about him trying to touch or feel me now whenever he does it. Thank you guys for telling me that I don't want to think about this knife for the rest of my life because it was like a scar on my psyche because an honest truth regardless of the creep's weird behavior, I really had a lot of fun with my siblings and cousins that night and I don't want to take that fun with whatever that guy has going on. I'm gonna be going to college pretty soon and I want to be able to leave all this crap behind. I want to be a new, better person with new friends and new experiences but still have a little bit of the old with me as well. So I can honestly say life's got bigger plans for me than this and I'm certainly not going to let it drag me down. Over the years I've been on Reddit, I have shared a handful of stories to this sub. This is the one that I've been saving for whatever reason, and I think I'm ready to share. This is probably my last post in let's Not Meet, since it's not very often that something happens that is worthy for a let's Not Meet post. Definitely not a bad thing. I've also shared my other few experiences and I think I've saved the best for last. Everything mentioned here is 100% factual. It's gonna be long, but I believe it's worth it. I grew up in the South. Tons and tons of beautiful places to see that haven't been taken over by concrete yet. It's nice, but along with that it's also pretty boring. Being a teenager and wanting to go out and have fun led to mostly improvising with your buddies and hoping something good will come out of the night. There wasn't really a local spot to go hang out at like a club or a cool bar, and the places that were close to this were boring because you did them so many times. I'm sure if you've ever lived in a rural area you can understand that feeling completely. Something that I found a ton of enjoyment in as a teen was just cruising around super late at night, just listening to music. I would fill up my gas tank, grab something to drink, a cigarillo, and I would just take off driving around until the sun came up. It was a way for me to just clear my mind and relax. Those country back roads were always fun to drive down at 2am and were also just the right amount of spooky. Well, one night I absolutely got more than I was to bargain for. I can't remember what month it was exactly, but I know for a fact it was in the summertime because I was out of school and I also remember it being a comfortable chill night. So if I was to guess, it had to have been around July or August. I was cruising around like I always did and was completely worry free. I had music blaring and I was in my zone. I decided to head down to a park just out of boredom. This particular park is at the very end of a long stretch of desolate country road, but it's a really pretty drive because of that. When I say desolate country road. I don't mean that it's just some dirt road that goes through the woods or anything crazy like that. It's a normal paved road, but there's really nothing on it. After a certain point, the entire road takes about 20 minutes to drive down to get to the park. And after about 10 minutes into the drive, the houses start to get spread out further and further to becoming no houses and just roads leading into the park. I think a lot of the reason I like this drive at night is because of how creepy it was and I looked at it as some sort of adventure or whatever. The park isn't open for camping or anything. It's mostly just a lot of land with walking trails and biking trails set up through miles of woods. So obviously at around 3am in the morning it's pretty dead. I made it there and just did a slow, normal little loop around the park. The night before, it had stormed very badly. So badly. I remember my parents and I had to take shelter because of the threat of a tornado touchdown. There ended up being no tornado, but the storms were pretty damn rough. Because of this, I came upon a fallen tree in the road that looped around to the exit of the park. That must have happened because of the storm. It wasn't some massive tree or anything though. But I know for a fact that there was no way I could have gotten over it in my car. Obviously it was pitch black everywhere besides the front of my car because of my headlights. And because of that I immediately ruled out backing up the entire way. I just drove. When I entered the park, I knew that was super dangerous and there was no way at this spot on the road. There was flat land on each side of me. I figured that it would make the most sense to just back up in the grass beside me just a little and then drive back the way I came. It was a one way loop around the park, but I wasn't really worried about going out the wrong way since it was so late. So I had started to back up off the road so I could get my car turned around. All was good until I went to pull back up on the road. I totally didn't take into account how wet the grass was and the amount of mud. My car went absolutely nowhere. My bagged tires were completely stuck and were spinning in place as I was trying to ford the gas pedal. I'd started to become pretty scared at this point. Not the most ideal situation to be in. I immediately took my cell phone out of my pocket and saw that I had service super huge feeling of relief. I called my parents and told them what happened and where I was. They were pretty pissed at me, but they said they will pay for a tow truck to come get me out. My parents Both drove small four door sedans and they would have been zero help in this situation. I was about 45 minutes away from my house and the rest of most human civilization, so I realized that I would be stuck out there for at least an hour before someone was able to come get to me. Freaky feeling, but I tried getting out of my head and just continued to listen to music and be on my phone in the car while I waited. Not really much more I could do. After I kind of calmed down from the initial anger I had, I had started to check out my surroundings. I didn't even notice at first because of everything going on, but in front of my car's placement was a field that was full of the most amount of deer I think I've ever seen at once. There legitimately must have been like 40 deer in this field just walking around and eating the grass. The field wasn't directly in front of my car, but if I was to get out and throw a rock in that direction, I would have easily been able to hit one of them. So if I was to guess they were about 30 yards out, this didn't really help. With the creepy level going on. Looking out in front of your car and seeing 80 eye reflections staring right back at you is a bit of an alarming feeling overall, but I was relieved it was just a field of deer. I watched them for a little bit, but I was quickly over it and started to just browse through my social media apps while waiting. They seemed to have been over it quicker than I was because they all went back to walking around and eating once they figured out I wasn't going to attack them or anything. After browsing my phone for about 15 minutes, I finally get a call back from my parents letting me know that the tow truck guy is on the way and about an hour and a half from my location. Still to this day, I remember hearing that and having the thought, you've got to be kidding me. I understood that I and I alone was the reason I was in this situation, so I couldn't really be mad at anyone else. But that was very obviously not what I wanted to hear. I decided that the smartest thing for me to do was to make sure that all my doors were locked, lay back in my seat and take a nap to pass time quickly. So that's What I did. Okay, here we go. So I woke up 45 minutes later to the feeling of being watched. I'm not really sure if anyone has ever experienced that feeling before because I don't know how common it is, but there was a sixth sense alarm going off in my head telling me that I needed to wake up. Waking up to that feeling in the situation I was in and in the surroundings I was in is probably the worst case scenario. I sit up and immediately check my surroundings and see nothing. I looked through my car very quickly for any sort of weapon and I found a pocket knife. A freaking pocket knife. I was very scared to say the least. Even though I saw and heard absolutely nothing. That feeling is terrifying. I was shocked to see that the field of the deer in front of me was still full of deer. I don't know anything about the animals, but I guess I always just assume they don't hang out in the same place for long. Not sure why I thought that, but I was surprised to see them nonetheless. I had called my parents back to see if they had heard any kind of update from the tow truck dude. I decided to not mention the feeling I was having because I didn't want them to worry more. And I also knew that it was literally nothing more than a feeling I had. And I had nothing to back up why I was feeling that way other than just being spooked out in general. No update from the tow truck guy, so we all assumed that everything was still the same on his end. The call had lasted just a few minutes because I felt like such a dick. They both had to wake up for work in just a few hours and now they have to spend a random hundred dollars plus. And on top of all that, they were worried about me. I could tell they were annoyed at the situation, but also worried. I told them I'll make sure to tell them when the guy arrives and I'm sorry. We hung up and I looked up from the phone and immediately it went from 0 to 100 in panic mode. Let me remind you that There are around 40 deer in this field. Every single one of them were stopped dead in their tracks, standing completely still looking at something. I put on my high beams and stared, waiting for absolutely anything to happen at all. Nothing. I tapped my horn real quick. They didn't even budge or look my way. They were all still completely glued to what was by them. The way the tree line was. I couldn't see that far over in the field. I know they were looking into the woods by them, but where I was at. I was only able to see them. I could hear my own heartbeat. I grabbed that stupid pocket knife and just waited for something to happen. I would say it was about a minute after I honked and every single one of them, in unison had started running the opposite way. They were running in full speed, and within 20 seconds, the field was completely empty. I was petrified in fear. I knew that staying in my car is what would be the safest thing to do. But it's the worst feeling in the world when you feel like a sitting duck. My head was on a swivel. I was freaking out in every way possible. I assumed that it was a bear or something, but it could have been absolutely anything. I was convinced at that point that it was the devil himself. I didn't know what to do. I knew that the tow truck was close by, but I had no idea where he was. I began to shake because of nerves and I just looked around to make sure nothing was by me and focused on the field in front of me. I did this for what felt like an actual eternity. Sitting in complete silence and darkness in the middle of nowhere, waiting for something to jump out and attack you. 15 of the longest minutes of my life go by and I start to see lights break through the tree line on the road. As it gets closer, I see it is the tow truck guy. The lights on his truck felt like it was Jesus coming from heaven to rescue me. He gets up to me and I jump out of my car. And I immediately ask him if he has a gun on him. I tell him very quickly what just happened to me and that something is definitely out here nearby. He let me know that he had a shotgun in the truck and he assured me that it was most likely a bear or a bobcat. He gave me the whole, they're more scared of you than you are of them. Bullcrap. The tree was small enough for him to sort of bulldoze it out of the way with his truck. And then he attached my car to his and pulled me out of the spot that I was stuck in. He was very nonchalant about what I had just experienced, but I was pretty badly shaken up from it. The whole time he was doing his thing, I still had my eyes glued out in that field, just waiting for something. He was completely done with everything in about 15 minutes and he told me to follow his truck out of there onto the main road again. I got in my car and was ready more than anything to get the hell out of this park. We had started to drive away from the spot I was in. And I still had my head on a swivel, completely shook up. As we were driving away, I looked up in my rearview mirror. We were down the park just a tiny bit, but I could still see the spot I was stuck in, partially lit up from the vehicle's lights in the moon. I watched in my rearview mirror a man come out of the treeline behind where my car was and then walk into the middle of the road and watch us drive away. My heart stopped beating legitimately. I lost my breath and my eyes started to get full of tears because of how absolutely scared I was at that moment. I couldn't see any sort of details like what he looked like or even necessarily what he was wearing. And to be honest, I don't really care. The feeling that I felt driving away from that spot, knowing he was right there the whole time, watching me, watching me as I was freaking out, looking around, watching me as I was completely alone for such a long time. Maybe even coming up right up to my window and watching me as I slept. That's a feeling that is something I can't necessarily put into words all these years later, and it still messes me up quite a bit. The entire time we were driving off, as long as I could see him, he didn't move, Just watched us on the road. A million things went through my mind. I was scared there may have been multiple people up the road waiting for us. I was trying to figure out if I should start beating on my horn like crazy to get the tow truck guy to stop or not. I decided that all I wanted to do was get out of there more than anything. The second that we finally got out of the park and was able to be on a two lane road again, I flew past the tow truck driver and I did nothing below 70 mph the entire way home. I flew through stop signs and stoplights. I absolutely did not care. The only thing on my mind was making it home. I got home, ran inside very quickly, acknowledged my parents and said sorry and thank you and then went to my room. I didn't get a single second of sleep the rest of the night. I was searching for any sort of records of things happening in that area. Escaped convicts, similar stories, etc. I eventually came to the conclusion that the man was some sort of squatter or homeless. I read many things online about how it's common for homeless in rural areas to build shelter in the woods, which does make sense to me entirely on why they would do that. But Obviously the unknown is the scariest part of it all. What if he wasn't homeless? What if he was just going to hurt me? What if? What if? What if? There's so many possibilities of what could have happened, but the outcome that did happen is what I'm most grateful for. I never told my parents the story until many years after it happened and I was already an adult and moved out. It freaked them the hell out too when I told them I never went back to that park. Ever. Even though I no longer live there, I still have no desire at all to ever go back there. I don't think I could, even in broad daylight with a ton of people around. I also made the decision to stop doing those late night cruises. I did a few after that time with other people, but even then I felt very uncomfortable and on edge. I'm 24. This happened two years ago on Memorial Day weekend. After a solid weekend of partying in Las Vegas, two of my friends and I had to endure the horrific drive from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. We're all dudes of the same age by the way. If you haven't done this drive before, it's typically a five hour stint through the desert, but on a busy weekend it can be extended to 79 hours. And hungover from a three day binge, it is always painful. Our other friends that were flying out talked us into staying for the better part of the day to wait out the traffic. We had a buffet and lazed around the pool a bit more hoping to recover. We decided to leave at 3pm Perfect. We'll be home by 8. Wrong. Two accidents and a billion people on the road hindered our progress greatly. It took us six hours to get to Barstow, typically two hours. We filled up, got gas and coffee and hit the road again. The stop took an hour due to the mass amount of people passing through the area. Back on the road at 10, more traffic and a wrong turn. It's now 2:30 and we're passing through Santa Clarita about 45 minutes from our destination. This is important. It sounded like a piece of steel ripping like paper and then exploding, but I managed to pull the car off the freeway and onto a side street. I called AAA and they said it should be about 30 minutes. Crappy situation, but 30 minutes isn't too bad. The neighborhood we were in was alright. Multiple gated communities, but the road we were on was desolate and a bit of an artery between communities. We all napped and maybe about 15 minutes later I was awoken by A car driving by in the opposite direction. It was some piece of crap SUV with like four people in it, maybe a Toyota 4Runner. I couldn't tell what they looked like, but they were all looking at us. A few minutes after that, I got a call from aaa. Apparently when I called, they thought that I said Santa Clara, which is six hours north in the San Francisco area. It would be another hour before they could reroute someone to us. We go back to sleep and roughly 30 minutes later, that same SUV drives by our side on the road, going much faster this time. And as they pass, they flash a light into my car. A 2001 Nissan Xterra. I'm not sure if it was to scare us or just to see if there was anyone inside. Windows were fogged, by the way, but my red flags went up. For safety reasons, I always kept a bowie knife and a miniature bat under my seat. I know, I know it's childish, but it makes me feel safe. So I took the knife and handed my buddy in the passenger seat the bat. He was asleep and he didn't understand what was going on. So I briefed him, but he passed it off and was out again. 15ish minutes later, the SUV pulls up about 300ft behind my car, brights on, and I officially begin to freak the hell out. I wake up my two friends without moving their heads so the creepers in the SUV can't see. We begin forming strategies, but we're genuinely scared since we're stranded and outnumbered. The SUV turns off the lights and I can see them passionately talking about something. So we sit there freaking the hell out and looking at them, just waiting for something horrible about to happen. By now we were swapping ideas of their intent. I decided to call AAA again and they gave me an ETA of 15 minutes. Home stretch. The passenger and driver's door both open and two linebacker sized men get out, hoods up, all in black. The driver leans against the grill of the car and smokes a cigarette, staring at us. The passenger pisses on the sidewalk. It felt like they were playing mind games. Maybe they saw the light from my cell phone. It felt like the passenger was pissing forever. The three of us are just sitting there, stewing in our own fear. The passenger zips up and talks with the driver. The other two doors open, revealing one small person with a beanie pulled low and another large hooded man walking out. The four begin to talk and walk casually towards my car. I pull my knife ready. My buddy has his bat and my other friend pops his fist like a fighting Irishman. They get close and then stop. About halfway in the distance were the lights of the tow truck. I looked back and saw them get in the SUV as the tow operator gets out. We get out and then he starts his business. The SUV speeds off fairly quickly. We didn't get home until 5am I'm not entirely sure what they were planning. I'm assuming they thought the car was abandoned and wanted to take it. That or something more sinister if they knew we were in there. My friend in the backseat has long hair, so maybe they thought he was a girl. I'll never know. But it was an intense night. Moral of the story Never leave Vegas late if you're driving and maybe buy a shotgun. Thanks for listening. I stupidly made the decision to go get gas at 11pm one night because I didn't make time before work work to go. So as I'm pulling up to the gas station, there were a couple of cars at the pumps, which I sort of felt relieved about and more safe going in. So I went inside to pay the clerk since I'm using cash and as I'm going to the pump to put the gas in, most of the cars are leaving except for this one truck parked two pumps behind me. I get in the car to wait for my gas to be filled and I'm on my phone and all of a sudden I see this guy walking around the front of my car very suspiciously. I sort of glanced up to see what he was doing, but at that point I had made eye contact with him. Crap. He then proceeds to ask if I have any change for gas and I just nod. No, sorry. He says, ok, that's cool, no problem. Hey, do you want me to remove your gas pump for you? I just say no thanks, I'm good. At this point my gas is filled up and he knows and he's kind of fidgety as well and he walks away behind my car. I'm trying not to glance back and be subtle about looking where he is because I don't want to alarm him with how terrified I am. In my head I'm thinking how can I leave my car with him still around my car? He's out of sight and at this point no one is in the lot and I'm waiting until another car pulls up. Five minutes later, nothing. So my flight or fight response is really kicking my ass on what I should do next. It's really cold out, I haven't turned on my car because the pump is still in my car. I Don't know where this man is at this point. Then finally I see him walk towards his truck, but not entering it, just around it. Biden Ascent. As his back is toward me, I I go for it. I take off the pump and he notices and quickly approaches me, then says, oh hey, you know you're really beautiful. He's still walking toward me and I nod. I then quickly but subtly put my gas cap back on and then he says, I don't look like a serial killer to you, do I? And he has this really crazed look in his eyes like yeah dude, you actually do. But at this point I just bolted in my car and drove off quickly. So ladies, please avoid the gas stations at night or carry some sort of protection because I sure as hell will from now on. And I definitely learned my lesson. It wasn't as bad as it sounds, but it definitely could have taken a different turn of events had I done things differently. My family has houses both in Mexico and Texas, so I alternate between the USA and Mexico very frequently. On normal weeks I just cross the border from Mexico to Texas to go to school and then I come back to Mexico. I spend most of my time in Mexico, so naturally I'm quite used to cartel presence. I'm used to calling off nights out with friends due to cartel related shootings, things like that. It just really no longer surprises me. It wasn't until recently that I had an actual face to face encounter with the cartel. My ex girlfriend lives in Mexico in a gated neighborhood on the wealthier side of the city. Naturally I used to frequent her house when we were still together. One night her parents left her and her little brother alone until the next day. So she invited me over and we got pretty hammered. Around 2am we went out for a walk because we wanted to smoke some weed. The weed was from Texas by the way. We sat at the bleachers of a basketball court within our neighborhood, which was behind a very beautiful house with expensive cars parked outside. I asked her what do they do? To which she replied, to which she told me in Spanish it was the cartel. I thought she was joking until she told me how the Mexican army had their whole neighborhood on lockdown because of them back in 2014. My smile faded so quickly I got kind of mad and worried and asked her what the hell are we doing behind a cartel safe house at 2am smoking foreign weed? This all happened quickly and after 5 minutes of being there, a tall white pickup truck parked in front of the court. I immediately knew this wasn't good News and kept telling her we should leave. She told me to calm down and that it was probably just some kids making out in the truck. That seemed reasonable to me, but I had started panicking after. The truck just stayed there for like five minutes without turning off the engine. As soon as we got up to leave, it took off. As we made our way to the other street, the huge weight that was lifted from my shoulders fell right back, now twice as heavy. When the truck intercepted us at the very corner of the street, she ran into a house that was still under construction. She tried to pull me in with her, but I didn't budge. Because something that I've learned from my dad being a cop is that you never run if you have nothing to hide. She had the weed. I didn't. So I kind of just stood there for a bit until the window of the driver's side went down, and then a man signaled me to get closer, so I did. As I walked up, the first thing I saw was that both of the men in there were armed, and this made my stomach drop. The passenger looked completely out of his mind. He genuinely looked unhinged. His pupils were freaking huge, and he was clearly tripping on something. On the other hand, the driver looked like a pretty normal guy. I dare say that he was so normal it was comforting. He asked me what we were doing in Spanish. I just replied back with smoking. Then he asked what we were smoking. I just said, normal cigarettes. He turned to look back at his partner and then back at me, and there was a long pause before I said, I don't know who you're looking for, but it's definitely not us. I'm not even from here. He asked me if I was American, to which I nodded. Then he said, show me. Fortunately, I always carry my passport with me since I cross the border so often. He asked me about my girlfriend. I said that she was American, too. She's not, but they didn't need to know that, and he told me to go get her. I then told him I'd rather not because if they found the weed on her that wasn't there, she would be messed up. Fortunately, the guy didn't insist. After going through my phone, he told me that he didn't want to see us out this late behind that house ever again. They took off and I turned back to her, who was now peeking from behind a pile of cement bags. I signaled that we were leaving, and we ran back to her house. When we got to our front yard, I had asked her to give me the weed so I could get rid of it. And she told me that she hid it under the floorboards of the house. So we ran back to get it because if they found it there, we would be so screwed. The two minutes that it took us to run back to our house were easily the scariest moments of my life. What still makes my stomach turn to this day is the look that the other guy had on his face. I'm telling you, he looked absolutely unhinged. He didn't say a single thing, but he was staring me down the whole time with his hand around the grip of the rifle. I felt like he was just itching for me to say the wrong thing so it could blow my brains out right then and there. I am a 21 year old female and this happened five years ago when I was 15. My great aunt's health at the time was failing and she could no longer take care of herself. So my family decided that she was better off in a nursing home due to her being an extreme hoarder. Her house sat abandoned. I want to mention that I don't want to crap on my family in any way, but this is important for the story. My father and I were the only ones who checked up on the house from time to time. It started off small when we had noticed minor stuff being moved around or drawers being looked through around that time. We didn't think much of it since another person close to my great aunt also had a key to the house and we thought maybe he wanted to get some of his stuff since he used to live with her for some time. After a while, probably a month later, things got stranger. We used to roam the house more to rescue some things and just look through everything. Maybe after a week of doing so and feeling watched every time we were there, more stuff was moved around in place so we wouldn't notice it immediately. Like stuffed animals that used to sit on a shelf now neatly sitting above one another on the staircase. Step by step. There were dirty footprints, more drawers ripped open, and the stuff inside spilled everywhere. We got very suspicious of the situation and we investigated more. We had late night drives passing the house just to check if we ever caught a flashlight or any sight of someone being in the house every night. At the time I had started telling my friends about the situation and as the stupid kids we were back then, we thought it would be a good adventure for us to just stay there for a night and play security with the mission to finally catch this person who seemed almost like a ghost to us. Another important Piece of information is there was actually no way inside the house. No window open, all doors locked, and we and this other guy were the only ones with the key. Anyways, back to the day we stayed there. Me and my free friends just settled into the kitchen, not really noticing anything out of the ordinary yet, except for the normal stuff that had been going on. So we assumed that they weren't around yet. We ordered a pizza and just talked for a while, waiting for something to happen. After a while, we decided that we would go for a walk with my two dogs that I had with me. I made sure to definitely close and lock the door behind me. When we returned. After 15 minutes, a single lamp in the last corner of the living room was turned on. Keep in mind, the whole living room was filled with trash, so they had to literally climb over everything just to turn on this lamp. That's when we knew the person had to be in the house. Now we decided to go into the kitchen and keep a low profile, just to see what would happen. After a while, one of my friends, let's call her Jane, chickened out and wanted to go home, so we let her. Just five minutes after Jane closed the front door behind her, we heard someone walking down the wooden stairs, obviously thinking we had all left the house. We were so caught up listening to the creaking of the steps that that we only realized what was actually happening when one of my dogs had started barking and the footsteps immediately stopped. There was only one wall separating us from whoever just came walking down the stairs. And when we finally realized that, we all got so scared and ran out of the house as fast as possible. There was a door separating the staircase from the hallway that we luckily locked as soon as we came back from the walk. So we probably locked them up there. When we finally all sat outside the house, we just decided that it was probably best if we called the police and let them handle the situation. As we waited, basically all holding our breaths and processing the aftershock of the situation, we suddenly heard someone talking quietly, probably on the phone. It was a male voice. That's when we noticed that a window was slightly open on a second story of the house. He must have opened it at one point because like I said, no windows were ever open. We couldn't really make out what was being said, only something along the lines of been caught. After 30 long minutes of sitting there, the police finally arrived and went inside. They looked through everything, but found nothing. He for sure had enough time to simply hide somewhere. There was a room completely filled with cardboard boxes that reached under the roof. That's when things got extreme. It was like he was playing mind games with us. He left notes everywhere in the house for us to find, with weird drawings of smiley faces and flowers saying, catch me. Placing an alarm thing under the front door that would go off anytime someone entered, Letting him know that someone was there. Trashing the bedroom so it was beyond recognition. Destroying furniture, crapping in the toilet, and placing a flower on top of the crap. All this without ever being caught even once. Our checkups became more frequent, Turning from once a day to every hour, but nothing. We eventually decided to just let things cool down a little and ignored the problem for a while. I mean, at some point, he would eventually leave an unlivable house drowning in cat pee and trash, right? Nope. Wrong. Probably about four months after, we didn't put much interest into him or the house. One of my friends said that he saw some figures standing at the window behind the curtain, just staring outside. We were just like, great, here we go again. And suddenly the interest was back. One day, we all decided to turn up at the house. There were seven of us, and we were just ready to search that dang house from head to toe, Just finding the place where the guy was hiding and leaving. Still, everything was locked. When we first got back inside, there was leftover and rotten food in the kitchen and a surprise for us in the living room where he crapped in a cardboard box just like some freaking dog. We decided to separate. Four of us went inside the living area, and one of my friends stayed outside. And then a friend who we'll call Carl, and I went into the stable area of the house because that part had a hole in the wall that connected the place where the hay was kept to the attic. But we were never able to figure out where exactly that hole in the attic was. Carl was throwing little stones at the hole that seemed to be covered with something like cardboard from the other side, Just so that our friends would be able to hear the sound from inside to find the entrance. All of a sudden, it knocked back. We actually saw the cardboard bending from someone hitting it. And I yelled down to my friend outside if they were finally able to find the damn entrance. All I got back from her was, no, everyone's downstairs. Just kind of shocked. Carl and I quickly made our way out of the stable into the others, saying, if we go to the attic now, we've got him. Since there's no way he would be able to escape that quickly, and he would have had to pass us on the stairs. We all ran upstairs, but again, nothing. Just nothing at all. After this we just decided that we would give up and not go there again. We also realized that it might be too dangerous. He never seriously did anything to us except for creeping us out while we were wondering what he would do if we seriously caught him and stood in front of him. Our parents were also not really happy with us doing any of this. So again, months passed without anything, only sometimes driving by and seeing a faint light inside until the house was finally put on the market to be sold. Today it's been completely emptied out and it's currently being renovated. I am aware this happened ages ago, but I'm now recollecting bits and pieces from that event and am thankful to be sane and safe. I'm honestly just airing it out so I can get some input and opinions because I really don't know what to make of it. I I'll preface this by saying that this happened a while ago, back in 2019 when I was 16 years old. Hence I was very naive and gullible. I'm aware that it might not be a human trafficking case, but it does seem suspicious regardless, for context, this happened in a relatively large North American city. It was late December, just a few days before Christmas. I had just finished hanging out with my friends and was using public transit to get back home. The subway to be more specific. My friends lived in a different area so I had to travel back alone in that direction. The subway wagons were mostly empty. It was already dark out. I recall it being around 8 9pm maybe. I was sitting on an individual seat where the setup was structured in a way that had another seat perpendicular to my current one, which was empty. This one guy, who looked to be relatively young, plopped down on the adjacent seat and he greeted me with a smile instantly. I didn't think too much of it at the time since in all honesty I really thought he was cute physically. He had a middle part, chestnut hair, was relatively tall and very slim, and had nice facial features too. I don't remember his face in a very detailed manner, but I remember thinking that he was really cute. He was dressed in a sweater and jeans. He didn't look disheveled or overly casual either. Upon sitting down, he greeted me smiling, presented himself and he shared his name. We then started making small talk and he brought up the fact that he had finished university, which made me ask for his age. He claimed to be 24, which seemed to match his appearance. What really creeps me out is that in response. I told him I was 16 years old and he didn't seem even slightly phased by that. Matter of fact, he was smirking and had formed a small visible grin, talking about how he missed being this young, and advising me to stay in school. He then proceeded with asking me about what I was doing alone in the metro, my plans before that, and if I had any plans coming up in the next few hours, to which I stupidly answered no. He then started expressing how him and his friends had come up with the supposed dare where he had to bring a random girl over a complete stranger to their party by accosting them randomly, such as this very occasion. I remember finding it hard to believe, so I insisted on going home about a handful of times to which he started pleading with me, claiming it would be fun and if I were uncomfortable he would bring me right back to the subway station. I kept insisting that my mom would get mad and asked him if there was another day we could do that, but he just answered that it was a one time thing, that it's a very uncommon gathering, and that he hasn't seen these friends in a long time, and that he wouldn't see them after the event, most likely because of a full schedule. He also kept pushing the fact that he wouldn't keep me up for too long. I eventually gave in. I know. Super stupid. I still can't believe it to this day. We had gone through a few subway stations and got off in a pretty desolate area which was known for its drug use, prostitution and poverty, but to be frank, I didn't know that at the time, although it was pretty obvious that specific neighborhood still has a pretty tarnished reputation to this day. The guy, let's call him Ben, then revealed his real name to be different from the one that he initially had given me and was seemingly Slavic. The name he revealed most likely was also fake too. He then started asking me pretty intrusive questions such as what are your darkest secrets? What's your home life like? What's stressing you out right now? Why did you decide to come along? He claimed to just like getting to know people beyond the surface level, hence why he was being this intrusive. I, in all honesty, was a straight A student, so I simply told him that my studies were my main concern as of now. To which he then answered back with oh come on, there's gotta be more than that. We had to be about 15 minutes in at this point when a car slowed down next to us and rolled its windows down. A man let out A hey. But was immediately shooed away by Ben. Ben then told me that the man was a supposed john, which I didn't know that meant the driver was essentially a client in that sense. I started to get weary, but still made it to the hangout a few minutes later, which was located in a regular townhouse. It wasn't worn down or anything. I was greeted by maybe five, six guys who were seemingly well over 25. Two of them looked above 30 as well. They all stared at me and immediately asked me how old I was and I told them I was 16. One of the guys seemed sort of phased out and let out a oh come on man, that's my sister's age. They might even be in the same high school. They all kinda just laughed it off and moved on. They never spoke about it again and barely even asked me any questions except for how did you guys meet? Also, it was obvious that someone's dad owned the place. As an old man was dozing off on the couch, we were all gathered around a table. The host served me some food along with the other guests, but I refused to eat as I was honestly starting to feel a bit queasy about the situation. Everyone except for me had finished eating. Then we all went upstairs. Ben started playing the guitar and another man joined in by playing some keys on a piano. Then they asked me to film them using Ben's phone, so I did. When that was going on, I honestly had started getting terrible vibes and really felt the need to leave. So I put down the phone and slowly made my way through the frame of the door. One of the older guys was standing near it and he asked me what's up and if I was enjoying their company. We had started to talk for a minute and he claimed to be an accountant. He then started leaning in and tried to slightly hover over me against the door frame. However, I stepped back into the staircase and made it to the front door, opened it and went out to the driveway. Luckily, the door wasn't locked. Ben followed and asked me if I wanted to leave. I immediately said yeah, and this time he didn't insist on bringing me back in. I should also add that right before leaving, I had told Ben that my mom was relentlessly calling me and was worried, to which he obliged. On our way back, he proceeded to ask me if I was genuinely 16 and not below that. He told me that if he were my dad, he would never let me out of sight again because of what I just did going to the party in the first place, which was the dumbest thing he'd ever seen any girl do, especially since I had no reason to do that. According to him, once he accompanied me back to the subway station, I had asked him for a Snapchat. Yeah, I was a complete moron. I also asked for any other social media he had. He told me that he doesn't use his phone like that and that it was fully off the grid. I went back home and I never heard from him again. Although I didn't get conventionally harassed and and it's a pretty outdated happening, I'm honestly scared I could have been a potential victim for human trafficking. I'm wondering if there's any way I can leave an anonymous tip to the city or something. I was searching through public records, but I couldn't find anything at the time I'm writing this. I am 18 years old, almost 19, and the events of the situation still haunt me to this day. At the time of this event, I was about 15 or 16. I thoroughly enjoyed being around friends. It brought me a sense of happiness and a feeling of not being alone. With that said, this is the main event that still sends shivers down my spine and it makes me stay very aware of my surroundings. So on the night this occurred, it was a late Friday night. Me and a buddy of mine that I had met in school and had known for three years at that point had come over to sleep after school. We started off the night just watching movies and eating some ramen before deciding to go for a run down my road and then back at around 2 or 3 in the morning. Now, for context, I've always been a taller guy and at the time I was around 616 2. I'm currently 6'6 and Toby was around 5'7, 5'9, but he was a heavier guy. We had run down the road late at night before without any fear because there were the two of us and we were bigger people. My road is three and a half miles long in the countryside, with each house having five to nine square acres each. My house was a half mile into the road and we planned on running to a small bridge which was just a mile from my house, then running back. So that's what we did. We both put on headphones and jogged to the bridge. I made it there first just because I wanted it to feel like a competition. Once he made it, we both started walking back to my house without our headphones in, just talking about things. Little did we know our whole night was about to be ruined. I'd say about five or six houses down from mine. We had noticed a car driving the direction we were walking. We don't really pay it any mind since it was just people driving at night. That's not exactly a weird occurrence. As the car was passing, though, we both looked to watch it pass. Mind you, we're still walking, with Toby maybe 10ft in front of me. The car was an older, dark green four door of some kind with I'd say around 10% tint on the windows. Enough to see that there was a driver, passenger and someone in the backseat. But it was just dark enough with the tint to not make out any of their faces or tell what they're looking at. Then the car passes. We both see the brake lights of the car light up. I say Toby's name in a panic and he says, mine. Then the thing that haunts me to this day is seeing the car come to a complete stop. Then the reverse lights almost immediately after. We both, without hesitation, decide to run up a driveway in an attempt to run away. Because the situation seemed terrifying and just not right. I try to jump the ditch while Toby, who is in front of me, takes the driveway. I absolutely eat crap and bang my knee trying to jump the ditch, but I clear it enough to immediately get back up and run full speed down the driveway. At this time, I look over my shoulder to see the headlights of the car now coming into the driveway. My heart is beating out of my chest at this point with nothing but adrenaline giving me the will to run. We then decide to run around the back of this house and hide behind their small shed. It's probably a good time to mention that the homeowner's cars were already there, so we knew it wasn't them. We also didn't look at the car to see the people because we didn't want to be seen by ourselves. Looking back on it, I think if I would have seen them, I would have started crying out of pure fear. We stay there for maybe 10 seconds, and then Toby says, you see that propane tank in the neighbor's backyard? That's where we gotta go hide next. I'm speechless at this point and I'm just trying to breathe. Then, without a count or anything, Toby starts to run. So I follow him and we actually make it there unseen. We sit there for maybe about 20 seconds. These seconds felt like minutes, though. And in these seconds, we decided to look back in the neighbor's yard. Mind you, there's now probably 1112 acres between us and the car. But in the car, we can see three men. They were getting back in the car when we glanced. We then decided to just run the rest of the way to my house. As we're running though, we can see the car driving down the road at a fast speed. Luckily it was in the middle of the night and they most likely couldn't see us running on the back of the property lines. We make it to my backyard and jump the fence and then run to my carport. We both looked at each other and Toby almost had a slight grin on his face. While I'm pretty sure I was pale as a ghost in that moment, I actually vomited in the grass out of pure fear and anxiety as he then went inside me. Not wanting to be alone, I follow him. I get inside and continue throwing up in the bathroom just inside. Toby is also in there with me telling me it's okay dude, we escaped, we're safe now. And just general things along those lines. We talked more about it and we came to the conclusion that we were almost kidnapped or robbed. I didn't tell my parents, nor did he tell his when he got home the next day and I don't really know why. I guess it's because we were so shaken up about it and we didn't want to bring it up after the fact. Neither one of us slept that night out of pure fear that we would see the car's headlights pull down my driveway. To this day, we still talk on a normal basis and sometimes we bring up the event, both saying it was the scariest thing to ever happen to either one of us. But I never saw that car on my road again and still to this day I get creeped out looking back on it, being reminded just how eerie people can be. The story happened just a few years back when I was visiting an old friend in Cologne, Germany, while at the same time taking advantage of him as a free stay for a meeting with my LARP group. For those who don't know what LARP is, it's basically like real life roleplaying. Imagine a Dungeons and Dragons game, but instead of people sitting around a table with dice, you have people actually dressed up as their characters, actually roleplaying in real life. LARPing was my hobby since I was 14 and after I got a job that paid pretty well, I had started to go a bit more all out when it came to stuff for my hobby. One of the things I had spent a solid amount of money on was my character's armor. Important for this story. The chainmail I wear under my outer armor after the meeting of my group, I mostly got out of my LARP outfit because I didn't really want to walk through Cologne Malay, which is one of the more dangerous places in the city as a medieval knight. But since I couldn't fit it all in my backpack, I kept my chainmail on as well as my tunic and pants. On my bus ride home, I noticed some guys seemed to have an eye on me, but I guess it was because I still looked very out of place. When he got off on the same station as me, I didn't really pay him much attention. I was almost at my friend's place and decided to call him asking if we should meet and get some dinner, which he agreed to before I even ended my question. I arrived at our meeting spot first and waited. Then I noticed that same guy from the bus again who now was walking straight towards me. I got closer to the wall to make space, but he didn't pass me. He stopped before me and pulled a knife on me, demanding my bag, wallet and phone. I was willing to give him my wallet, but I had tried to explain that the bag only had some armor and foam weapons in it. But it seems that even just talking was enough to set this guy off. And suddenly I felt two fast stinging punches in my stomach. It hurt like hell and I dropped down and the guy grabbed my bag. Honestly, the next things were not really in my mind. I was barely able to notice anything other than the voice in my head just screaming, you just got stabbed. So the next thing I noticed was my friend shaking me. My bag was open and my stuff was all over the place and he was holding my helmet with blood on it. And he then said that he saw the guy throwing my stuff around after the bag was most likely too heavy and big for him. So my friends seeing me on the ground, managed to grab the first thing he could, which was the helmet, and even bashed the guy with it until he ran away. We later checked my stomach and even though I had two giant deep blue bruises which hurt like hell, I only had small cuts since the chainmail had stopped the knife. To this day, I get sick in my stomach whenever I think back on that day and I remember that if I had not worn a piece of my LARP clothing that day, I would be dead, literally killed over a bag full of costumes, €150 in my wallet and a 10 year old phone. The world is really messed up. I was 18, living in college dorms, several hours from home and working as a waitress at an upscale bar. And restaurant. I'm short, barely 5 foot, so I'm used to people being creepy and trying to intimidate me now. But as an 18 year old whose father had tried to protect her from the world and had been raised in a tiny, friendly town, it never occurred to me to be scared of the people who lurk in the dark. We had plenty of regulars, several of whom I became close with during my years of working there, and a few of the frequent diners, and learned by name and general facts about me, since I'm generally pretty open about who I am. One such man was tall and lanky and several decades older, appearing to be in his mid-50s. His name was Joe. Joe was kind, a good man with a generous nature who had owned a local shoe shop. The second time I was his waitress, he had gifted me a pair of slightly worn work shoes and insisted that I accept them. Because of his kindness and the way that he carried himself, People of all types flocked to him, and one of them became the first man outside of my family that I truly feared. Joe came in with his younger brother, about the same height, slightly bulkier build, and not attractive at all, as I recall. But his eyes really unsettled me. In high school, I had fancied myself a bit of a writer, but nothing in my vocabulary then or now could help me describe how unsettling his gaze was. It seemed dead, lifeless, but I assumed I was just simply nervous. Joe was a good man. His brother was probably just less carefree, more intense. The two dined together a few times in the coming weeks, but while Joe would normally request me as a server, he asked our host to assign one of the other servers to his table after the first time. Then one night, Joe's brother came in alone and actually requested me by my name, and I was happy to oblige. For the first time, he seemed relaxed, energetic, charismatic. He was interesting, with a quick wit and a story for every topic that I could throw at him. By the end of my shift, I assumed that he just had a hard time relaxing with his brother, and that may have been true, but through the laughter and charisma, his eyes never once seemed kind. They remained, through it all, lifeless. Eventually, it was time for me to leave, but he was still there, still expecting service. My manager offered to take over the table. He'd make sure I got the tip. But it was common knowledge that I had an early morning class and likely had to do my homework. I jumped at the chance, but I went to finish some closing duties and also asked the man, my last table. If he needed anything else. He seemed off. As soon as I said I was heading home, he seemed to harden. His voice was clipped and he reminded me of my controlling ex stepdad, which immediately put me on edge. I had heard that same tone often enough as a little girl right before being hit. I left immediately. I called my best friend and had offered to buy him dinner if he'd meet me at the diner between the dorms and my work. I don't know why I did, I just felt that I needed someone to meet me sooner rather than later. Joe's brother hadn't in any way seemed dangerous outside of the terseness in his voice before I left, but I knew that for most of my walk, which would have been poorly lit, I would be safer with a companion. We met at the diner and we ate and laughed, then headed back to the Dorms. A good 25 minute walk, but only about 15 minutes in or so. The hairs on the back of my neck seemed to burn. Something was terrifying me and I didn't know why. I told my friend who had brushed it off until he looked behind me and yelled. I turned and saw him, Joe's brother, only a few yards behind us, holding a metal bar. I don't know what they're called, but you see them at construction sites, usually for reinforcement when pouring concrete, and he was holding it hard enough that his knuckles were wide. It terrified me to my core and I screamed. My friend grabbed my arm and we ran and even though my heart was in my throat and I couldn't hear anything past the blood roaring in my ears, I swear I could hear his footsteps behind us. We ran to the dorms and I told security who had us wait in the office while he looked at cameras in the lot and called the police. Cops showed up, but didn't really do anything since all he really did was scare us. After they left, the security man had asked a few more questions and made a comment about a man standing at the entrance door for a bit before eventually walking away. It was assumed he was homeless, but my blood ran cold. I had actually called in for a few days and when I went back to work, Joe was in. I told him what happened and he just nodded. He didn't even seem to question the validity of what I said. His brother, it turned out, had done some time for stalking and also sometimes attacking young women, and he had even been sent to trial for assaulting one and hospitalizing her. Somehow he had managed to avoid jail time for the assault, but Joe said it was only a matter of time before he killed someone. I didn't see Joe often after that, and I never saw his brother after that either. The owner of the restaurant was really angry for a long time, accusing me of running off a regular who had spent a lot of money when he came in. Believe it or not, it actually took a few more scary encounters to make me a little more cynical. This was about five years ago when I was 11. I remember I was on my way home from school. It was a little late because my train had gotten delayed about two times, but honestly, it didn't bother me. It was Friday and I had nothing to do. As I got home, I had received a text from my angry mother. I had no clue why she was mad, but she was texting me some crazy nonsense and somehow put the blame on me and proceeded to end the text with I'm not cooking, I left $70 on your desk. Go buy something to eat and drink. So that's exactly what I did. By the time I got home, I changed my clothes, went outside and walked to a gas station which was only about half a mile away from me. I've always walked at this gas station either by myself, with my older brother or with another guardian. So honestly I thought it would be no big deal to go by myself because I was always so hypervigilant about my surroundings. Since I was diagnosed with PTSD at a very young age, it it made me extremely hyper aware. As I got to the store I saw this man inside the walk in fridge where there was just a crap ton of beer and as I was walking around the store to get some snacks I noticed him staring at me a couple of times. It felt like I needed to be more aware but I brushed it off just thinking he was making sure I wasn't doing anything dumb. But I was wrong as I was paying for the stuff at the counter. After being there for like 30 minutes I the same man was just standing next to me. It was at this point where I got scared. The man stood tall, he looked a bit muscular and his eyes were visibly dark. It was terrifying as my stuff was getting put in the back and as the pizza was done. I had picked up my pizza and left. But then the man decides to have a conversation with me. He greets me with a hello, I greet him with a very clear and shaky hi and he started to ask me questions like how old are you? I replied back with my age stating that I'm only 11. I had tried walking some other way around but he keeps stopping me in my tracks and I was just thinking of all the terrible possibilities if I screamed, ran or let alone hit him with my bare hands for him to leave me alone. As I stated my age, I had noticed his eyes widened even more and he proceeded to look me up and down where he then asked what kind of alcohol do you like? I stayed quiet and I told him I don't drink unless it's a special occasion and he started asking me even more alarming questions like did you know that you can live without a kidney? At this point I had to play dumb for a bit and I just replied back with no, but that's nice. Actually, it got to a point where he'd started asking me if he can give me a ride home and I declined his offer more than 20 times. He eventually gave up, left me alone, all agitated and I speedwalked home. It wasn't until the following year I saw him again at the mall and I nearly pissed myself. I refuse to go to that mall now because I don't ever want to bump into him again. This is a completely true story and it just happened an hour ago. For context, My wife and I are on vacation in Mexico. We both honestly are loving it here and the situation doesn't change that, but I am re evaluating security. My wife and I went out to dinner and walked back to our hotel. We get inside our room, we're setting things down, etc. A few minutes go by and there's a knock at the door. A man quietly says something in Spanish in an inflection that's trying to get our attention. Thank room service or something. My wife looks at me wondering who would be at the door. At this point I should clarify that we did have the do not disturb tag on the door. A few seconds go by and there's another knock at the door. My wife signals for me to go to the door and so I go over. At this point we've made no sounds for probably a minute before enduring the knocks. Just as I reached the door, the keycard unlocked the door and it opened. A dirty looking man had just opened the door and was about 2ft away from my face. I put my hand on the door to prevent it from opening any further. I think he was just as surprised as I was. He started speaking Spanish and I hear the word wifi somewhere in there. I then say no hablo spanol in broken English. He tries to ask if the wifi is down. My wife says it's not. I'm kind of Just shell shocked by what just happened and I keep my hand on the door as he talks and eventually leaves. I shut the door and engage the physical lock this time. I usually do this, but we had just walked in and wanted to set stuff down. I talk with my wife and we try to gather our thoughts about what just happened. Essentially a man knocked, got no reply and then he let himself in and asked about the WI fi. No, this was a clear burglary attempt and he had a master keycard and thought we weren't home. A minute or two later after this went down and we've collected ourselves and then understood what just occurred. I pass this information to the front desk just in case this guy attempts the other doors as well. They seem to take it seriously. No updates beyond that. The fact that this just happened has my mind kind of blown and I don't know if I fully processed it yet. Like what if we were back 30 minutes later? Probably would have lost some stuff. 5 minutes later we walk in on a guy in our hotel room. What if we went to bed earlier tonight? Could have been asleep, the AC is loud and I don't know if I would have heard the door knocking through my sleep if it was going to go down. Surely the way it did was optimal, but those ifs are crazy. I'll definitely be storing our valuables in the safe now. Should have done this too, but we just recently got here. Lesson learned. In the future, stuff is going to immediately be in the safe and the lock is getting immediately engaged. Hey guys. So a creepy situation happened to me a while ago. Just for context, I live in Germany and I'm 23 now, but I was 20 years old at the time. Now to the story. I was on my way home from a party in the city. Since I had been drinking, I took the tram. Unfortunately, I had to get off at a stop because the tram only went that far. About three stops from my actual destination. Since it was dark around 1 or 2am and I didn't feel like walking through a forest, I decided to wait 45 minutes for the next tram. There were a few houses nearby, a swimming pool in the forest. At the tram stop, no one was around. Then a woman approached me, around 50 years old with a backpack. She seemed quite confused, but not threatening. She was wearing slightly ripped jeans and shoes. She randomly asked me what my name was. I told her it was Tom, a fake name. She asked if I was also taking the tram and I said yes. Then out of nowhere, she sat down on the ground and had started Telling me this story, warning me to be careful. She said that she'd had problems with some Bulgarians involved in pimping, etc. It was so random, I couldn't really process it. She seemed drunk, and she also gave off the vibe that she might have a mental illness. Still, I felt like she needed someone to talk to, and people like that can be unpredictable. So I listened, even though it didn't feel right. She kept talking about her daughter and her son, and then later claimed she didn't even have a son, even though I had asked her how old he was. She kept circling back to the Bulgarians like it was some kind of obsession or tickets. She mentioned her daughter was a prostitute and that she didn't want that for her, and she repeated that a lot. She asked if I had a girlfriend, but before I could answer, she immediately switched back to talking about her daughter again. This went on for about 25 to 30 minutes, until she asked me if I had a cigarette. I said no, and she said that maybe she still had some. She started shaking out her backpack and tissues and chains came out. And then suddenly a knife fell right out of the bag. It was kind of like a small dagger. I was shocked and froze a bit. She kept looking for the cigarettes, all while I was thinking, crap, this is getting way too creepy. The fact that she seemed mentally unstable didn't help at all. She didn't find any cigarettes, just sat back down on the ground and just said, well, I guess we're not smoking then. The knife was laying on the ground the whole time, and I tried my best to ignore it. My instinct was to run, but I didn't think that would be a good idea. I didn't know what might happen if I tried, so I stayed calm and kept the conversation going, asking her random questions. She didn't really answer directly, just kept rambling. Eventually, she gathered her stuff and picked up the knife. She asked me if I thought it was cool or something. I just said, yeah, it's cool, I guess, or something like that. I had no idea what else to say. Then she said a sentence I'll never forget. I only used it for the Bulgarian, no one touches my daughter. She said it in a serious tone, and then she laughed and said it was a joke. I kind of forced a fake laugh, but by then I was just way too creeped out. Thank God. The tram arrived shortly after. My goal was to sit at the very front near the drive road, just in case anything happened. But out of nowhere, she decided to not get on the tram. No idea why. She stood up, said goodbye to me, and just told me to stay the way I am. When the tram doors opened and I quickly got in, she waved at me and then she disappeared behind a hedge. When I got home, I thought about it a few more times. She definitely had some sort of mental illness, but at the same time she was kind to me. Kind of like she had two personalities. Sometimes serious, sometimes nice. I still don't know what the deal with the Bulgarian was. Maybe he didn't even exist. Maybe she lost her daughter and made this whole story up as a way of coping. Or maybe her daughter really was trapped in prostitution and she was planning something. I never saw that woman again and that's probably for the best. I'm going to abstain from giving too much information because this stalker scares the crap out of me. Thankfully he doesn't read English, so I hope he'll never find this post Years ago I moved to follow my boyfriend and to do a PhD in his country. I won't name the place, but it's an across the ocean type of deal. At first I was very excited. It was a wonderful adventure. Until it wasn't. It's hard to describe the complexity of what I felt. I felt alone, misunderstood, far from my family and friends, and even though my boyfriend is wonderful, I really felt the weight of not finding any human connection. This could explain why I acted so weird and disconnected from reality in the following story. Story I'm also a very naive woman and I like to see the best in the people around me. This has been problematic more than a few times, but this story is maybe the worst example where this candid attitude got me. My boyfriend and I are into bdsm. We do it alone, on our own, and we do not participate in events or anything. I do have an account on a known BDSM website. I I go there to find new ideas for our sessions and I sometimes but rarely post pictures. No face, no tattoos, and I often wear wigs. I get contacted by interested doms every once in a while, even though I clearly state that I'm not free. Usually they send copy paste messages so I just ignore them. Once in a while though, I'd get a more personal message and make an effort to answer that I'm not interested and that I'm in a relationship. This is how my discussion with Nick started. He didn't approach me with a will you be my sub? But with curiosity about how I got into bdsm, stating that he was quite new to the domain and he was really interested in understanding the way of life, so I gladly explained. Explanations turned into discussions. He told me that he was in the police and that he was investigating drug cartels. He also told me that he was married and that he had kids. Interestingly, we had a lot of hobbies in common. A lot. I won't go into the details about those hobbies, but they're kind of specific. Feeling very lonely. Combined with the fact that I felt I could trust him because he was married and had kids. I accepted his invitation to start texting on WhatsApp. I want to be clear here. My boyfriend knew about this from day one. Plus we had been talking on this website for almost three months before switching over to WhatsApp. He was very friendly and very interested by my day to day life. He'd share pictures of his kids and of investigations he was working on. This went on for another three months. Then one day he told me that he had to interview a suspect close to the town where I lived and he asked if we could meet for coffee. I agreed and we met for the first time. Before anyone panics, my boyfriend was hiking with a few friends for a few weeks. I texted him, but he didn't have signal. Plus, we have a very trusting relationship. He has a lot of girlfriends. And back in my country, I also hung out with a lot of boys. This isn't weird for us. Back to the first encounter, it felt as if we had known each other for years. We had a great time from the beginning and I was so happy I'd found a friend far from my country. He knew that I loved reading thrillers and enjoyed murder investigation videos. So he showed me his gear, handcuffs, sampling kits for small investigations, other restraints, etc. It didn't really feel weird at the moment, but afterwards I kind of understood. This could have been a way for him to show off what he could do. However, as the night went on, after grabbing drinks from a nearby bar, he forced me against a wall and kissed me. I was shocked really and barely managed to push him off me. I told him that it was inappropriate and that he was married and I was in a relationship. He was really sorry and felt ashamed. He told me that he felt there was something between us and I was like, yeah, it's called friendship, buddy. I was disappointed and we parted ways. Days later, after he apologized over and over again, he called me to meet up. He wanted to take me for a ride in his hometown. It's a pretty place, he's got a bike and he wants me to Enjoy the scenery in this country that I barely know. I agree. It's his hometown. He works there. He lives there with his wife and kids. Surely I'll be safe. In short, I wasn't. Again, he kissed me, tried to push for more, right in the middle of a park. A park where he brought his children to play on weekends. So I told him to bring me back to the bus station so I could leave. He did. And then he proceeded to tell me a story about how he had recently got a drug seller out of hiding by modifying text messages sent by his girlfriend. He basically made him believe that she was cheating on him to get him to confront her. And then he arrested him. I don't actually know if it's true. I don't know if it's possible due to what had just happened. What I heard was, I can make your boyfriend believe you're cheating on him. And my boyfriend was still on his hike by that time. We did talk once every few days, and I told him everything from the moment he had some cell signal. Meanwhile, I was confronting Nick all about that his behavior was really strange. As he went from I'm sorry, I think I'm in love with you to if you tell the cops, who do you think they'll believe? Their colleague or an immigrant? I got really scared and had tried to cool things down with them. I just felt that he could go crazy at any moment. He clearly wasn't used to girls refusing him. At that point, I thought it would be safer for me and my boyfriend to maintain contact with Nick, albeit with less enthusiasm than before. But after understanding how obsessed he was, I blocked him from all platforms where he knew I had an account. But he found me. He sent me my address, asking if I loved living in that particular part of town. I never gave him my address. I guess he could pull some strings at the station to get my info. He even came to visit me at my job. I was so scared, I just played it off as if everything was okay. I told him that my boyfriend wanted me to cut ties with him because he was angry about what had happened, which was true. But I also wanted him out of my life. I didn't know how he would react if I told him. However, Nick insisted that I loved him, that I could be his mistress, that my boyfriend didn't even have to know he was obsessed with me, and he didn't even hide it anymore. He told me how he wanted to have sex with me, how we'd be a great couple, how we'd father our kids he went from I'll be great husband material to serial rapist in a matter of seconds. I refused him again and again, blocking him, changing my accounts, etc. I got pretty scared when I got calls from unknown numbers. I was terrified when I saw anyone slowing down on a motorcycle close to my apartment. I was wary of going outside and going to my job. The quarantine was welcomed for me, really, and I didn't get any news from him for months. And then I broke my cell phone. I knew that I could transfer all my numbers from one phone to the other, but I didn't know it would unblock previously blocked numbers. Days later, I got a message from him. He told me that he had divorced his wife, that he still loved me, and that he wanted to marry me. He apologized for making me believe that I was only mistress material and that I was worth so much more than that. He said my boyfriend didn't love me, that I deserved better, and that he was waiting for me. When he saw that I saw his message, he said finally, I thought you'd never unblock me. Does this mean that he had been sending this message over and over again in hopes that I'd finally see it? That narcissistic man used all the manipulation tactics that he knew. He had told me before we met in person, how he had learned those skills to toy with criminals, to have them tell the truth and admit to crimes. Fortunately for me, I had dated manipulative men before and I knew the signs. Basically, he wasn't used to not getting what he wanted. He was attractive, rich and interesting, and he knew that. I blocked him again and we moved a few months later. I just hope he doesn't get his hand on this information. I believe Nick's last move was trying to hack into my Instagram as I got a notification that someone from his hometown had tried to connect to my account. So, obsessed cop who chased after me for over a year. I hope I never hear from you again. When I was 18, I was living in a small town. I was friends with the ratty skaters around and they helped connect with this dude who sold weed. He was 29, I think at the time, and he gave me pretty good deals and lived nearby. I wasn't driving at the time, so this was convenient for me. His name was Max. Max has always struck me as a weird dude, but I honestly quite liked his weirdness. Not in a romantic way or anything, but I like weird people. I guess. We had normal weed buying interactions that never lasted more than like 10 minutes. Buy some weed, maybe smoke a bowl, and that's it. He'd often tell me that he could drop it off at my house, but I never let him because, as I said before, he was weird. I wasn't afraid of him, but was definitely aware that he and his offers to deliver were weird. One day in May 2018, I was invited to a bonfire by the same ratty skaters that introduced me to this guy. I had no idea he'd be there, nor was it important to me at all. I brought the guy that I was dating at the time too. I said hey to everyone, including Max. We stayed for a couple of hours and some of them played some music on their guitars. Nearing the time I was leaving the bonfire, around 11pm, Max was getting upset about something and then he threw his guitar in the bonfire. I didn't know what he was angry or upset about and paid no mind to it. This happened as I was leaving with the guy I was dating. I went to bed and woke up to loads of paragraphs of crazy text from max ranging from 1am all the way to 5am Like a constant stream of texts stating things such as, you know how much I loved you. You're a cruel bitch. He would go back and forth between saying, I would give you the world if you let me. And you really do deserve him though. He said really scary things like, you're a predator and you should be snubbed out. Just wait with a smiley face, you are stuck. I will either love you or hate you to the fullest extent my powers. Behold. Right now, I pray the worst death on you and that little bitch that you're dating. To top it all off, he then said, losing you is like losing a mother to me. And he told me to tell him that I never loved him and that I wouldn't hear from him again if I did. So that's what I did. I said, yeah, I never loved you. Do not message me again. And I left it at that. I didn't get a response, nor did I care to get one. Max had never expressed any romantic interest, asked me out or anything. This was all out of nowhere and he was 11 years older than me. I was barely 18. That night he cut his long hair off and had posted photos naked on Facebook, curled up in a fetal position, talking about being a statue of shame. It's as if he had a breakdown, but I had no intention of causing that and didn't think I would even offend anyone by bringing the guy I was seeing. Everyone else seemed to like the guy. Who I brought about a week later. Megs had texted me pretty late at night, and he asked if I had seen the flowers that he spread along my sidewalk, saying that he stole every flower in the vicinity of my neighborhood that night. I asked how he knew where I lived and said that I hadn't seen the flowers, so he must have had the wrong house. I also told him that he shouldn't do that, as I never felt anything for him and so on. He told me that he had heard I lived on the same block as another one of the skater guys that we were both friends with, and he wasn't wrong. The skater guy that I lived near was on the other side of the block, and I never walked that way, so I never saw the flowers. I blocked his number and didn't hear from him again for weeks. Weeks later, I woke up after a rough night and there were loads of flowers on the sidewalk right outside of my house, along with a little bouquet at the top of my walkway. I was pissed. I wasn't scared yet. And stupidly, I unblocked his number and texted him, asking him why the hell there were flowers outside of my house. This confirmed that this indeed was where I lived. I still to this day feel so stupid for texting him and making it known that after weeks he had found my house. He responded back saying, hmm, sounds nice. Twas me. I bitched him out basically, and blocked his number again. About a week later, I was out of town and my roommate texted me a photo of a harp with a peace sign inside of it and my name written under it drawn in chalk outside of our house. When I got back into town, I went to the courthouse and began the process of getting a stocking order murder against him. When I left the courthouse, I went to Max's work and told him that he really needed to stop this behavior and that he was stalking me. He looked me in the eyes with no facial expression and said, if you don't leave, I'm calling the cops. I got angry and said loudly, go ahead, call the cops. I was just talking to them about you. And then left his work in a rage. Soon after this, I began driving again. I once drove by him and he noticed it was me. The next day, I woke up with my car covered in flowers. I presented my case to the judge and she put the stalking order in place. He was served with it by police officers, and I thought that was that and that he wouldn't be bothering me again. I was wrong. After the stalking order was served, he had made Several other chalk messages on my sidewalk left random gifts for me like chalk and he beheaded my little pony heads on beer bottles. I always brought these things to the police station, but they said that I needed to catch him doing it, take a photo or get a security camera. So I got a security camera and really hoped I would catch him. It turned out my security camera was stupid and I couldn't just watch the videos it took, but had to skim through second by second by hand. It was an impossible task. I was absolutely terrified of leaving my house at night. At this point, I never had my curtains open anymore and I was so frustrated that my livelihood was being taken away from me. Ultimately, I unblocked his number in hopes that he would text me directly, violating the stalking order. And after a few days, it worked. He sent me a weird text saying something like, forgive me, we are charming. This is harming. Let us try again. By now it's September 2018 and he finally goes to jail. He's facing up to a year in jail and he has to stay there until our court date. I finally started calming down. I'm able to go outside at night now, even if just to get in my car. I also have my curtains open sometimes. I'm starting to feel alive again. Right when I started feeling secure in my small town life again, someone posted bail and he was released after only three months in jail and I went right back to living in fear. We still had court dates coming up and I was optimistic that he would serve more time for ruining my life for so long. His lawyer kept pushing the court date back to gather evidence and after about six months of pushing it back, the state decided that he wouldn't do anything more and basically closed the case. I had moved out of town three hours away at this point, so he didn't actually have an option to continue this behavior. Living in this new place, I really feel safe. I can walk at night and I don't have to have my curtains closed all the time now. It's been over a year since they decided to close the case. About a month ago, he began responding to my friend's Instagram stories. Friends that live here in this new town, telling them how fond he is of me, etc. I have always had him blocked, but my Instagram isn't private so he must have found them that way. I have since changed my account to private and he hasn't messaged any more friends of mine since. I refuse to be fearful now of the way I was then. He will never find where I live or where I work now. However, my life is forever changed after this experience. I will always be more aware of people and their weird energy. I will always close my curtains early in the evening and make sure that all of the windows and doors are locked. I will always live a little bit in fear. Maybe not of him, but of it happening again. He ruined my life for a year and I truly wish he had gotten that time in jail. He deserves it. So I've been watching a couple of spooky camping trips on YouTube and it made me think of one of the most bizarre events happening to me. One night around 12.30am, I decided to walk up to my local pond. They call it a pond, but it's about as large as a small lake, I'd assume completely surrounded by forestry on one side and a footpath on another. On the side with the footpath every 50, 100 meters you have large downhill muddy dips that lead to a wooden bank where people can relax or fish on the water. So on this evening I go down there to get out of the house for some peace of mind after a couple of drinks. As I approach the park area, there's a huge narrow corridor of trees and bushes that arch over which is where the street lights stop as you go on. Now it was pitch black, so I turned on my phone flashlight and I used it to walk the rest of the way to the spot on the banks. After about 20 seconds of walking, I hear footsteps behind me. I turn and see this hooded figure with what looked to be a dark morph suit completely cloaking his appearance. He was walking pretty quickly, so I picked up my pace, really alarmed at this person coming from nowhere, and after 30 or so seconds of walking without looking back, I turned around and they were gone. So I go and sit on the bank, leave my brother some voice notes telling him what had happened and he just finds it amusing but says to be careful. I sit there trying to relax and do so for about 15 minutes before giving up. As I make my way back again, scanning the road to see where I'm going, the same figure comes out from the darkness and walks straight toward me. At this point I'm ready to fight, so I walk right toward them and stare at them. As I thought, full dark morph suit or mask with completely black attire and hood. They just walk right past me. Why were they there in that suit? Why did they leave at exactly the same time I did? Why were they walking at pace behind me and following me as I entered the dark? Does anyone out There have a similar experience. Who the hell walks around in the pitch black wearing an all black bodysuit? This happened about a year or so ago, but I just read something fairly similar and it reminds me how it still gives me the chills. I have three kids who are around 9, 7 and 2 at the time and also living with my husband. We live fairly rural in the uk, just on the outside of a small village. Every night I always check the door is locked and sometimes even put the chain across as well. This night we were woken up very abruptly by a very harsh banging on the front door. At first I thought it was just someone drunk thinking it was their house or something, but they had started trying to turn the handle. My husband wasn't near the door and I stood on the stairs with my phone in case I needed to call someone. My husband told the man that he had kids in here that was sleeping and to go away right now. The man had started rambling and slightly slurring. It wasn't extreme slurring, but his voice wasn't quite right. Seemed pretty clear he was either on something or mentally unwell. He kept asking for a certain woman's name and my husband told him that there was no woman with that name here and to go away right now. The man kept saying we were hiding her and he was coming in. During this period there were a lot of very strange sounds coming from behind the door. Thumping, scratching and another sound that I couldn't quite place. My husband then told him that I'd called the police. He did a few more frantic thumps, then he left because we heard nothing else after that. We heard nothing else like him attempting this with the neighbors either. For a few hours I waited in case he came back. I had a tennis racket that I'd used if I had to, but luckily it didn't come to that. In the morning, as it was a weekend day, I decided to check outside and honestly I did feel a little ill. There was a massive dent in the door, which I thought surely a fist alone wouldn't have cost. Then on the door and the panels near the door were fingernail marks and blood. It wasn't a massive amount, but enough that it needed to be washed off. Took pictures first though. Between the door and where the bins were was a smashed ashtray, also with blood on it and lots of pieces. One of the outdoor plants had also been tipped out, so planted soil all over the floor. My best guess is he tried to smash with the ashtray and cut himself, but that's Merely speculation. My blood ran cold how clearly aggressive this man was. And we have absolutely no reason to be targeted. We told our neighbors, who were also absolutely horrified. They said that they thought they heard something, but thought it was just a drunk. When we mentioned the woman's name, the neighbor then said, oh, gosh, that's who used to live where y' all do now. She used to be into drugs and a few shady people, and the neighbor reckons that maybe one of her old drug taking companions was searching for her. Even now, there have been a few incidents in her house where police have been called, but I'm not sure what for. We now have a video doorbell system and alarms fitted, so at least now a button goes straight to a security system that if you don't answer, will send the authorities. It didn't end in any danger, but it so easily could have, and that's scary as hell. This past Monday, my coworkers and I returned to our hotel from a day out of work in the field. Rebecca and I walked to our rooms, and as we stood outside of our rooms, I opened mine and saw someone in the bathroom. I said, hello. Nobody answered. My first instinct was that it was a cleaning lady in there for some reason. And then I saw my bag with my clothes in her hands. I said to my coworker, there's a woman in my room. Then I asked the woman, what are you doing with my stuff? It gets a little fuzzy here because I can't remember everything I said and what she said. But she kept mumbling about how her key had still worked, how it still worked, and that's how she got in. I was in shock and she was obviously very flustered, having been caught mid robbery. She dropped my bags and fumbled around with her purse and a white plastic bag. By this time, my co worker was behind me watching all of the insanity unfold. This woman was scrambling and was walking towards the door. And I then said, what's in the bag? Thinking, it's probably my stuff. So she said, no, no, it's just my things. I'll show you. And so she did. I looked and I didn't see anything of mine. And so since I'm obviously in shock at this time, I let her leave. I went into my room and it was ransacked. I did a quick look around to see if anything had been taken. All of my electronics were still there. Then I went into the bathroom and saw my underwear, my bikini, and my clothes shoved into my own bags randomly. Even my passport was shoved in there. Then I Looked on the counter, and I saw that she got into my medication. I'm not sure what was going through my head at that moment other than I wanted it back. So I ran out the door to go find her. I ran into the laundry room downstairs and out to the sides of the hotel, and I didn't see her. I realized I was never going to find her. So my co worker and I went down to the lobby to tell them what happened. And then we called the police. We went back to my room to wait, and I noticed that there's a metal bat on my bed. A little larger than one of those novelty wooden bats you can get at a baseball game, but there's also a flashlight on the end of it. She must have left it behind in her hurry. She also left behind a necklace that must have fallen out of her body bag when she was scrambling with mine. I was mostly freaking out at this point because I thought she had gotten away with my medication, which I really need. The police got there and took our statements and looked around the room as well. One thing that I noticed was that there were bits of drywall in the sink. And I pointed that out to the cops, but none of us really knew where it came from. We started looking at the door in the windows to see if she had pried her way in somehow, but there was nothing. So we kind of just went with the idea that she had a spare key or something. Even though the hotel front desk was adamant that there was no way that could be possible. The officer that came brought two more officers as backup because they thought the woman might still be in the vicinity. But after our statements were taken, there was really nothing else they could really do. So they left. I sat down to finally make some calls to tell people, and as I'm on the phone, I'm thinking about the drywall in the sink. And it still didn't make any sense to me. So I'm on the phone and I'm looking at the drywall and the mirror on the wall right above it. And then it hit me. I got my co worker and I asked her to help me pull this mirror right off the wall. We then took the mirror down, and there's a hole just big enough for a desperate junkie to squeeze right through. I asked Brian and Ra Rebecca if I should call the cops again to let them know that I found this. And my boss said, there's two cop cars still in the parking lot. So I went down to tell them, and no joke, the female cop kinda rolled her Eyes. But the young guy said, I'll come check it out. They both came back up, looked in the hole and they found a pillow, blankets, cigarettes, clothes and toothbrushes. The woman had been living in the wall behind my mirror for God knows how long. She had full access to me and my room at all times. I know it might be hard to picture. There was a crawl space about 2ft wide in between the two rows of rooms. One of the officers actually called the original officer to come back and take pictures of this. She explained to them what's going on and all I hear over the radio is, holy crap, no way. Okay, I'm on my way back. I'll be there in a second. He comes back, takes pictures, and is just as mind blown as the rest of us. Obviously we packed up and left immediately. What's even crazier is she's probably been there for a long time. The last time we stayed at this hotel, I would smell cigarette smoke and I just assumed someone was smoking in their bathroom and was traveling through the vents. But nope, it was just a junkie that was smoking on the other side of my mirror. She had access to other rooms too. The holes in the walls were from a renovation and the hotel just hadn't properly patched it and just covered up with mirrors. She could have been hanging out in people's rooms whenever they were gone. Anyway, this was really insane and I'm taking a little time off. I'm a 25 year old female and this happened maybe eight, nine years ago. I was 16, 17 years old then. I'm from a small village and I went to school in the nearest big city, which was about 40 kilometers away, about 25 miles. Because public transportation was so bad, I had no way to get home unless they came for me or I had to walk 4km. I lived in a dormitory during the week in the city where I studied. I stayed in the city during the week and went home on Fridays, then back again on Sundays. I always get off the bus at the main station when I arrive in the city around 2pm My boyfriend, who came from another town, also studied in the city. He came by train every Sunday. I waited for him at the station for about an hour and a half and then went to the dormitory together. That day was no different. I was waiting for him sitting upstairs at the station in a spot where I could see the entire ground floor from above. I had my headphones in and on my phone just sitting there, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a homeless woman wandering Around. She sometimes stood still and looked around, but I didn't pay much attention. There are a lot of homeless people in that area. Time passed. I was still sitting, headphones on, phone in hand. Then I saw the homeless woman start walking in my direction. I still didn't think too much of it. When she was about a few feet away from me, I noticed she was talking to other people who were sitting nearby, probably asking for money. A few moments later, she had started walking toward me again. I saw her, but I didn't lift my head. Then she stopped in front of me. That's when I looked up. She just stared at me. Her eyes looked like she was high on something and she was slightly swaying. She was dirty, honestly disgusting to look at. Some green liquid was dripping from the corner of her mouth and her face was dirty. She wore a thick coat, gray pants, black boots even though it was spring, and had a black backpack. She had brown hair, brown eyes. Looked around 40 years old, though she could have been younger. I saw her lips moving. She was talking to me. I took out my headphones and gave her my attention. I'm not a rude person and I always try to speak kindly to people. But when I removed my headphones, she just went silent, Just stared at me. What? Could you say that again? I asked her. Then she spoke again, but I didn't understand a single word. Just mumbling. She stared at me with those glassy eyes. I just shook my head. Sorry, I can't understand what you're saying. I told her and looked at her. At this point, I felt my heart beat faster. I got scared. I didn't know what she wanted and something about her made me feel really uncomfortable. She started mumbling again, and while she mumbled, she began searching for something in her coat pocket with her right hand. I looked down at her hand to see what she was doing or what she wanted from me. At this point, I thought maybe she needed help with something. I looked back up into her eyes and waited to see what was going to happen. Then I saw her pull her hand out of her coat and look down at her hand again. She was still mumbling. I then saw a piece of glass in her hand. She slowly slid it up under her coat to her forearm, holding the sharp end in her palm. It was pretty big and sharp, probably about 6 inches. That's when I realized something was very wrong. My eyes widened. I was scared. I asked her one last time, a bit more irritated now. What do you want from me? I knew that there were people around. It was a train station in broad daylight. So I didn't think she would actually do anything. Well, very suddenly, she stepped toward me and pushed the glass toward me, right toward my neck. I reacted immediately. I jumped up in time, pushed her away and yelled at her. What the hell are you doing? She started mumbling more angrily. I had no idea what she was saying. My whole body was just shaking and I was terrified. I grabbed my travel bag quickly, all while keeping my eyes on her. She was still mumbling angrily, holding the glass shard in front of her, staring at me. Leave me alone. Go to hell. I shouted at her again. And as I rushed off, I saw that everyone at the station was now watching us. I ran outside the station and saw some police officers nearby. I felt relieved. I walked toward them, but I didn't say anything. I knew that if I told them, they'd probably just tell her to leave and that would be it. So I just stayed close to them. A few moments later, I saw the woman come outside too. She was walking in my direction, angrily looking at me. I didn't see the glass in her hand anymore. I grabbed my bag and walked to a different part of the station courtyard where she couldn't see me. I was trembling, scared and in shock. I never saw her again. A little bit later, my boyfriend arrived and I told him what happened. He was surprised and worried too. He told me to never wait for him at the station again, and I didn't. From that point on, I always waited for him at the dormitory. Even now, every time I go to that station, which is rare, I always get anxious and stay alert. I still live in that city now, even after finishing school, and I'm still with my boyfriend. We live together. Just knowing what could have happened there if I hadn't reacted in time, or if I had just ignored her. It still scares me. This may sound bad to some, it might sound harmless to others, but I was never found out about these things. It wasn't illegal as far as I can tell. But I am not sure what I am about to say counts as I just really want to talk about it though. If my post is removed, I will understand. This all happened when I was 15 17. I was in middle school. To start off, I had very few friends and my family life was not that great either. I didn't feel alone, nor did I want any friends. I just wanted to get the school day over with and be alone in my room. I had no bad thoughts before these years. I was going to second period math when I saw him, a guy around My age, tall, with blond hair. He was very quiet, but he had many friends. When I saw him at lunchtime, I had never paid him any mind before. But something about him made me feel weird. Like I wanted to get to know him, to speak to him and to be near him. I must confess, before this, I had never felt romantically inclined, nor sexually to anyone or really anything. So these feelings didn't feel like love to me. But maybe it was just delusion that pushed my next move. I would always watch him. When I had lunch, I got in line, just like normal. But I always knew where he would sit. He never changed spots, and I stood behind him, still and unmoving. It really felt amazing to be near this person for no good reason. Over time, it was more than just staring at him. I followed him in the halls of our school, and I knew his entire schedule. I knew his full name, age, birthday, his house, and his family. I didn't think it was weird. I just wanted to know more about him and to be with him in a way that I couldn't really describe. I told myself it wasn't love because why would I love a person I've never spoken to or really even know? It got to the point that I always thought about him. When I got home, I'd go through the pictures I took of him from school that day. I was almost excited. What if he caught me? Would he tell me to never speak to him again or go near him? Would he think it was nice and speak to me how I want? What would happen? I didn't even care what happened. It wouldn't change how I felt. Nothing did. I got bold. One day he had to walk home, so I followed him through the nearby wooded area. He was a pretty thick guy, so he was quicker than I was. And I did get tired of walking so far. But I was determined to follow. I didn't want to follow him home, since I already knew where he lived and I wasn't going to go that far. He almost saw me many times, as the path he was taking was normal for him, but not for me. It was rocky, with dead leaves all over. I tried to be quiet, to not let him notice me. Eventually, I left, satisfied with new pictures of him walking. To add to my delusion and to my growing collection. I regret every bit of this. I didn't study for school like I normally would, so I'd sometimes talk to the teachers and they would tell me how I needed to get higher grades to pass the class. So. So I tried to get back into the flow of doing work more often. When I was moved to a different biology class, I saw him there in the back. I was sitting right next to him with a reasonable gap between us. I felt so happy that I would finally get the chance to speak to him without worry or anxiety or people listening in. During that class, he would sometimes look my way at me. But I didn't think too much of it at first. Maybe he was just doing it to look near me at someone else. But it kept happening, so I would do the same. We would stare at each other. It felt so. I don't even know how to describe it. Eventually, I tried to talk to him and ask for help with some notes. I never really spoke to anyone, so this was new to me. I only spoke to teachers and sometimes if I had to, other students. He was nice and he would speak to me in a tone that I was unfamiliar with. It was pleasant. It didn't last too long as I realized that he had found a poem that I'd written to him that I was not going to give him. He took the paper from my desk and I just stood there next to him, honestly more worried than I thought I'd be. He didn't say anything. He just sat down and we didn't speak. During that period, I left and went online to find his socials. I apologized to him and I said I understood if he didn't want to speak to me. He said that he knew that I liked him, which shocked me. But to be honest, it was obvious to everyone but myself. He never knew that I followed him or took pictures of him. At least I don't think so. I later found out that he was not supportive of me liking him, as he was a straight male and I was not his usual romantic interest. Over time, I did stop following him and I never spoke to him after that. But he would still stare at me very often. I don't know why I had done this with one other person. The same game of following and taking pictures. But this other guy was cut short as I moved away. I honestly don't know what compelled me to do these things. I hope I don't do them again. I now live happier than when I was in these situations, so I hope things can sort themselves out for me mentally. The story may not sound so bad, but. But I left out details on purpose due to them being private and somewhat disturbing. This might not be one of the freakiest stories of all time, but it's a great reminder that you should never fully relax in a Taxi in the place where I live, the taxi service is pretty well developed. We have a global app where you have an ID as a passenger and the driver has one too. There's a rating system so you know what to expect and people get punished for doing bad things. You feel pretty safe with that system. It's not like the old days of completely random taxis. I've never had any serious trouble with drivers until yesterday. I needed to travel from one small town to another, passing through a big city. Everything felt off from the very start. The taxi was showing up weirdly on the app's map, but I thought, oh well, that happens. The Internet and GPS can be glitchy sometimes. Eventually the driver arrived and we started the trip right away. Something just felt wrong. The driver didn't mark that the drive had started in the app. I didn't even see the awaiting status which drivers sometimes use to get extra cash for waiting. I usually tolerate that, but this was just strange. We were also taking an unusual route, not the one I'm used to. I even had a weird what if he starts heading in the wrong direction? Not toward the city center, but out to the suburban area instead? And damn he did. He had been pretty silent since the beginning of the trip and it became very clear that this was not an accident. He still hadn't started the ride in the app, and we were literally driving in the opposite direction, one that had no chance of leading to my destination. At that moment, I genuinely felt scared. It's a horrible feeling when something like this happens and you're alone. I'm a 27 year old female by the way, and I'm in a car with a stranger. I gathered myself and asked, hey, excuse me, what path did you choose? I don't need to go that way. Immediately he changed direction toward the correct route, started the trip in the app, and looked absolutely furious. And keep in mind, the trip was about an hour long. He continued driving, but still not exactly as the navigator suggested. He stayed on the correct general route, but kept making odd choices, especially as we got closer to the end of the trip. At that point, I had called a friend and casually said that I was almost there just in case so someone would know I was expected and on my way. He remained silent the entire time. When I finally got out of the car, I was literally shaking. I understand that it's likely that he wasn't planning the worst case scenario we're all thinking of, but his actions were absolutely not okay. What if I didn't have the app working? What if I hadn't checked the road. What if I didn't know the route at all? The most chill explanation is that he wanted to take the longest route possible. To get more money, maybe an extra hour of driving. But that's ridiculous and even then, not acceptable. I wrote to customer support and reported the situation. Hopefully I just don't get him as a driver again. So my story happened a few years ago, when I was 10 or 11. At that time, my mom and dad had just divorced and my mom moved into a small apartment. The building had two apartments per floor, right across from each other. In the first few months, we never really saw the neighbor who lived in front of us. But suddenly we started seeing him more often. I remember the first time I saw him. It was behind the building, in the small garden. He was there with his dogs. And I don't know if I felt scared. Not just scared in a usual way, but this feeling like something was wrong. It was like he was staring at me, but not in a normal way. I couldn't explain it, but it made me feel uneasy. There was just something about him, his presence, that felt strange. Even though I couldn't pinpoint what exactly it was. It just felt wrong. A few days later, he came to our apartment and he asked my mom if he could buy me toys and even underwear. My mom was naturally scared. I don't know what happened next, but I just know that she kicked him out of our apartment right away. Then, about two weeks later, it was around midnight. My room was right next to the front door, and I suddenly started hearing knocking. But it wasn't just regular knocking. It was like someone was trying to force the door open by jiggling the handle. It started slow at first, but then it got faster and faster. I could hear it and my heart started racing. I was frozen in fear. I tried to get up to wake my mom or even look through the peephole, but I couldn't move. I was so scared that my body just wouldn't cooperate. I know that it wasn't a dream or anything. I knew it was real. I could feel the panic in my chest. After that, my mom and I moved out quickly and we never saw him again. But since then, I've really developed this weird paranoia that never really goes away. It feels like my brain keeps playing tricks on me. I hear a little noise, and suddenly I'm convinced someone's in the house. I keep imagining things that aren't there. Like someone hiding in the hallway, watching me from the dark. I know it sounds irrational, but it doesn't feel that way at the moment. It's like my body freezes, my heart races and I can't move. Just like that night. And it comes in waves. Some days I'm totally fine, and others, it all comes back stronger than ever. I start thinking someone might come back, that someone might already be inside. Even when I lock the doors, double check everything, I can't fully shake that feeling. It's exhausting. And I hate that it still has this power over me. It's honestly really not fun. I feel ridiculous sometimes, but. But it happens out of nowhere and I just can't stop the fear. It's completely irrational, but it's there. And sometimes it feels like I just can't escape it. And a few years later, someone actually broke into our house. It was a guy who was drunk or high, and I don't think he even had bad intentions. He was just lost. But that didn't make it any less scary. The paranoia is still there, even though I try to remind myself that it's just my brain playing tricks on me. Anyway, that's my story. I know it's not the scariest one and it probably won't be as interesting to others, and it's my first one, but I just needed to share it. I don't know how to get over it. If anyone has had similar experiences or feelings, I'd be happy to talk about it. Thanks. This little story is from 2012. I live in Canberra, Australia. We're an incredibly boring place. 99% of the time not much happens, but when it does, everyone hears about it. I just started year 11 at a new school. The last two years of high school are done at a separate school which we call College to Year 7 10. Everyone's about 1618 at this campus. I was a bit of an overachiever when it came to English, so I was placed in a class of six or seven other overachievers in an experimental English class taught by the deputy principal in charge of my grade. Basically, rather than physical books and assignments, the school wanted to trial a totally digital format, which I hated by the way. We worked almost exclusively on our personal iPads that we had to bring to each lesson. Even though the class was small, I don't remember much about most of the kids. They weren't particularly interesting. I guess. I kept to myself after the collapse of my high school friendship group and sat next to the other quiet kid in this particular class. I'll call him Jimbo. Jimbo was even quieter than me. I got myself in trouble a couple of times for challenging the teacher's views, but I honestly do not remember this guy ever saying a word. One lesson, for some reason that escapes me, where we were discussing our pets. Jane talked about her cat, Bob, about his dogs, whatever. It was one of the few times I contributed without challenging the teacher. Even Jimbo still said nothing, just flicking idly through his iPad and leaning back on his chair, as he very often did. A couple of weeks into the year, I finally found a few new friends to hang out with on breaks. Jimbo is absent from class. And then the next and the next. This kid just disappeared. And after another couple of weeks, I asked the deputy where he was. This dude hated me, so he literally rolled his eyes, shoved past, and said nothing. I shrugged it off because I knew the teacher was a dickhead, but I was still curious. I brought it up to my new mates because it's not common around here for a kid to just stop showing up to school. We're a small city. Someone always knows something. If he'd moved school, someone would have heard. There had to be some kind of explanation for the sudden extended absence. One of my new buddies took me aside. I'll call him Jerry. Jerry was a good, goofy guy. He was the type to always joke around. So when he pulled me aside all serious, I knew that something was off. Jerry and Jimbo had been friends back at their old high school. At some stage over the summer holidays, when Jerry had visited him, Jimbo had spilled a glass of milk in his kitchen. Jerry laughed about it, but Jimbo demanded he clean it up, even though Jerry obviously wasn't the one who made the mess. Jerry turned his back, and the next thing he knew, Jimbo had a knife to his throat and made him clean up the spill at knifepoint. But it gets worse. So, so much worse. He tells me that Jimbo's iPad was absolutely packed with videos. Videos of him doing the most disgusting, subhuman things to animals. Primarily dogs. I physically can't bring myself to write the specifics of what he did to those poor souls. Thank the BTK killer. But without the people. He'd been stealing them from backyards and luring strays. There was even a teacher at the school who had come to find out why his dogs were going crazy so late. And then he saw Jimbo scamper off into the night. There was a vast paddock not far from the school that I used to go smoke weed in, because the grass was tall enough to keep us relatively well hidden from the rest of the World absolutely huge. A good kilometer square, if not more. That specific paddock in question, I learned, had been his killing fields. I was just getting high in the opposite corner, closer to the houses that lined one side. If we decided to venture diagonally across for what, whatever reason, we very possibly could have come across something he'd done. The iPad that he'd recorded it all on had been less than a foot away from me. For weeks he'd flicked through the images of what he'd done so casually in that little classroom of six or seven students. Hell, he knew that each one of us had pets. He also had a bucket list found on the iPad, the top item of which was graduating to killing humans. From. From what I know, Jimbo was convicted for animal cruelty and nobody's heard of him since. I sold the socks off my feet for $10. Someone bought the socks off my feet at the grocery store. Alright, so for some context, I'm a 30 year old female and live in the Midwest United States. About a week ago, I was shocked. Shopping at my local grocery store for a few things that I needed, I noticed a man near me in the dairy section, looking at me intently a little bit. So I smiled. As I walked away, I go through the checkout line and bag up my groceries and head out to my car. As I'm loading my items into the back of my car, the same guy I saw in the store pulls up behind my vehicle and says, hey, I have a question for you. And I just said, sure, what's up? Can I buy your socks? At this point I'm thinking that I must have heard him wrong. So I ask him to repeat the question and he proceeds to ask the same question. Can I buy your socks? I'll pay you $10 for the socks on your feet. I said, um, why? Then he said, you know, it's kind of my thing. I replied, um, like a foot fetish sort of thing. To which he then said, yeah, something like that. Now, mind you, as he's asking me this, he has my car blocked in and he's reaching into his inner jacket pocket. Now, as a woman, I'm always aware of my surroundings and such. So at this point my brain is thinking about the worst case scenarios. I'm thinking this man is about to pull out a gun and kill me if I don't give him my socks. So I just said, hold on, let me put this cart back. So I walk back to my car after returning the shopping cart and he's now exited his car and is right next to My driver side door. Now I'm panicking and I'm scared for life. It's fight, flight or freeze. And I'm frozen solid, honey. So I sit in my driver's seat with this door left open and I proceed to take my socks off my feet and hand them to this guy. He just says, thank you, you're beautiful and your feet are so pretty. He then hands me the $10 and walks back to his vehicle and drives away. Now this is by far the creepiest and scariest thing that has ever happened to me. And at this point I'm no longer wearing socks out in public. It's kind of funny. Tell me what you all think about this and what you would have done in this situation. This happened about one hour ago, so my memory is still fresh. First off, I am living very rural in a small village with maybe 10, 15 houses, but close to the highway. You can drive there within maybe five minutes and also about 10 minutes away from the town. If you cross the street, it just takes you about a 10 minute walk to reach the forest. First Christmas day in the afternoon, my partner and I decided to go for a little digestive walk as we were really stuffed from all the food. It was about 5pm and already dark when we left and we had a big and bright LED flashlight with us. I also took my camera and my flash as I love taking pictures of nature at night. We decided to walk on a little country road towards the forest and then turn right following a small graveled cycle track close to the forest border which connects our village and the next. It's maybe about 15, 20 minutes of walking between villages. In the middle part of the track you have to walk through a small bit of forest. It's rather dark and the trees are very high and quite dense. When we entered, I saw our flashlight reflecting on something and I recognized a car being parked there on the side of the track close to the trees. This struck me as odd as cars are not allowed to drive there and the path is very narrow and hidden, so I was a bit cautious. My partner pointed to the light inside of the car and it seemed to be empty. I also noticed the windows were frozen so it must have been parked there for a while a bit. In the front of the car I spotted a tree with an intriguing structure and I asked my partner to point the flashlight towards it so that I could focus better and photograph it with my flash. After I took a few images, my partner told me, um, there's someone standing behind us in the middle of the Road is looking at us. Nobody was following us the whole way. I kept looking around and behind us occasionally, because at this time in the evening and close to the border of the forest, there are boars sometimes. Also, it's mating season, so they're more aggressive than usual. Indeed, there was a man standing behind us, staying out of the flashlight's reach. He wasn't saying anything, just standing there and facing us. At first I thought he might be startled, as it may seem a bit weird if someone is just taking photos around your car. It was not even legal to drive on that path with the car. I decided to get up and confront him from a distance, explaining to him that I was just taking photos of the tree. He didn't react and still just stood there. I then went on to ask him if he needed some light, and he replied that this wasn't necessary. It was odd, but I was still calm, sure about there being a normal explanation for his behavior. Nonetheless, my partner and I both just decided to get the hell out of there and followed the path leading to the next village. It was maybe 5, 7 minutes until we reached it. I remembered the letters on his license plate, not the numbers though, unfortunately, and googled it. And it turned out that he was from a city about six hours away from our village. Mind you, the country I live in is in a very strict lockdown right now, so you're only allowed to travel even by car if you have very urgent reasons. After we reached the first lantern of the next village, we looked back and observed the car driving a bit out of the forest, turning around and going back inside. I was able to see that he parked there again and turned the lights off. He didn't leave the forest. We went home on a much longer way than initially intended, as I didn't want to go back there for obvious reasons. Our flashlight battery died on the way, and my phone battery was low, so I didn't want to call the police back then, but I called them as soon as I arrived home and gave them all of the details. Big regret that I didn't memorize the whole license plate, but it was just so surprising that I seriously didn't think about it. Also, it only occurred to me as really strange when I thought about the frozen windows and that he could have impossibly walked behind us. Plus him having no light and not responding. He did seem to be sneaking up on us when I sat down to take the photo. I think I was very lucky to have my partner, the camera in the bright light with me. I don't want to imagine what could have happened if I was alone. I forgot to mention this when I told my housemate. She theorized that he may have been spying on the houses very close to the forest border. As you can easily look into their backyards without being seen, you have to walk a bit up the hill and further, about five minutes. I think this is likely. I had the thought of photographing the driver when I entered the forest part of the path, but somehow I felt unwell about it and decided not to do it despite it being an interesting scene. In hindsight, I believe this saved me as he must have hidden behind the trees close to the car and forest entrance. If he was really planning a burglary or worse, dumping a body. I think it's not unlikely he may have attacked me if he realized I had a potential photo of his car with a recognizable license plate update 2 we went back and found a tape marking on one of the trees, a very small hideout, more to store things than to sit in, as well as some cut off part of a backpack. I have no idea what the guy was doing, but I honestly don't even want to know. I went grocery shopping today just for a few items and I was in and out of the store in about 15 minutes. Towards the end I just walked past a couple in the aisle when I heard there she is and saw someone point their finger at me out of the corner of my eye. This caught my attention so I turned around to see two people scowling at me, one of whom had their phone out in front of them, either recording me or taking a photo of me. There's no one else in front of them in the aisle but me. I got freaked out and quickly walked into a couple of other aisles to grab more items, hoping that I was somehow misinterpreting the situation and tried to shrug it off. However, this couple proceeds to follow me all throughout the store at a distance with their phones out. They thankfully don't continue following me while checking out or on my way home. They said nothing more to me. I live in Boston and true to the stereotype, I have no desire to interact with anyone on the street. I didn't recognize them and I can't remember any negative encounters with strangers for me to make any sense of this. I don't even have a car, so this wasn't road rage or someone pissed off over a parking spot. I'm figuring I simply look like someone else, but this event still has me in fight or flight mode. One year ago I 17 years old befriended a young man who was 18 on Discord. We matched each other's humor and we had quite a few few things in common. He was pretty secretive about himself, so it was always a surprise when he opened up, which kept me deeply invested in getting to know him. We got along very well and spent lots of evenings chatting and discussing different things. I got introduced to two more of his friends, well, more like classmates, let's call them Steve and Luke. Their little trio had a strange dynamic. Steve and the young man that I much later got to know as Tom after he finally revealed his name, were quite close and tended to treat Luke as their little plaything. This made me feel rather empathetic towards Luke and I tended to take his side more in arguments leading to them, often joking that he'd show up to my house with flowers if I kept defending him. There was a slight rivalry between everyone and the former trio. My arrival only made things more tense as all of them started to badmouth each other to me in private. Eventually, Tom and Steve began to avoid Luke and prevent him from joining our conversations. This continued for a while until Tom suddenly became strange towards me. He started to fully delete all the messages he sent to me and unadded me everywhere. This happened a few times before I was fed up with all of them. I broke ties and honestly I should have never picked them up again. Hey, remember me? We used to talk. Who is this? I said. It's me, Steve. Tom and I made a Minecraft server mind joining. I eagerly agreed and got invited into the corresponding Discord server. There were a few others in there as well who are not really relevant to the story. I got along with most of the people there, but especially with Steve. Even out of the Minecraft server and public group voice chats we spend time together. We went down Internet rabbit holes about islaming pixie fairies with pride flags will save the universe and such. Our mutual interest in these rabbit holes filled much of the conversation topics when we talked. This changed after March 17, 2024 when at 8pm I received a missed call from Stephen with the text Pick up. You'll never forget this. Wait, give me a moment. I said. No, pick up. When do I ever call you randomly? It's important, Steve said. The call lasted about a minute. Steve turned on his camera and asked me a short question that genuinely still makes me feel nauseous. This is your house, right? I remained silent for a good second and I tried to deny it was my house. Then another voice spoke up belonging to Tom. It was surprisingly easy tracking you down from your mother's Facebook backyard View Pictures When I tell you I felt sick to the bone. I remember quickly putting on a sweater and grabbing my phone. At the time, my mind worked on autopilot and I just wanted to get them away asap. My mother asked me why I was going out in the middle of March at 9pm during a rainy night. At the time I just lied to her that friends were there. No way you were actually real was the first thing Tom said when I opened the wooden gate in our garden. Both men stood with their backs to the streetlights and I didn't have the balls to shine my phone flashlight onto them. I remained close to the door as Steven offered me a puff of their cigarette. I declined politely and stood there in awkward silence as the two males just stared at me. The convo was very dry and not deep. Every minute I stayed longer made my stomach twist more and more. It felt so off. I stayed there for about 30 minutes before they offered me the following Want to go with us to our car? I immediately declined and turned around to close the wooden gate to the garden again Before I could. Tom quickly added that it was just a joke and insisted on drinking a cup of coffee inside with my parents. I declined and desperately tried to get them to leave. It was now 9:30 at this point. Thanks man. I really feel unsafe in my own home now. Just kidding, I told him. Sorry. Hope it didn't scare you too badly, tom said. I brushed the weird event off and just went on with my life. Though I did find myself checking more often if there were people outside waiting for me. April 29, 2024 Are you home? Tom asked. No, I replied. Are you sure the lights in your room are on? I'm not home. Go away, I told him. But I can see you. Lol. Look at your window on your left, he says. There I went again to see them, this time in daylight. They had once again shown up to my doorstep together. This was my first time seeing their faces. Steve waved and nervously smiled. I nodded. What is it this time? Wanna go to so and so's house together with us? No I don't. Please don't waste your gas anymore to drive all the way over here, I told them. Yeah. They didn't stop. Steve begged me to allow him to go inside to fill up his water bottle and so Tom could piss. I declined both and pointed for Tom to piss somewhere in the field. Eventually I gave in and I took Steve's water bottle inside myself to fill it up. When I came back. They suddenly were satisfied and happy to go back to their car and leave. Of course not before a weird request May I give you a handshake when I tell you it was awkward? Humans have this sensor that tells you how long it's okay to shake someone's hand before it becomes weird. He did not. A solid four seconds. He held my hand only to make the joke to never wash his hands again afterwards. May 6, 2024 hey, we need to talk. I really want to tell you something, steve said. After a long conversation, it finally came through what the intentions were. Steve told me he liked me. I quietly listened as he told me everything. The worst part of it all was that he knew that I had a boyfriend as well. I politely declined his confession and decided it was enough. I was going to cut all ties with these people. Following that decision, multiple alt accounts sent me messages apologizing, but I never responded to them. June 15, 2024 my birthday. A card dropped on the doormat for all the tears and pain Grief also gives you. Emotional gain was printed on the front of the card and inside of it you could find the short text Happy Birthday. Have fun. Look in your cabinets. It was a funeral grievance card. After this there was just complete silence. Yeah, I don't think I'm gonna get on discord for a while. This just recently happened to me at my local Walmart. I'm a 19 year old female so I was by myself getting a few things at Walmart. Late in the afternoon I grabbed a cart and headed to the home and pharmacy section to find something. I stop in the aisle with the protein bars to look for something specific as I had set my cart to the side. It wasn't crowded at Walmart and no one was in the aisle at the moment. But then a man approached me from the side and asked me something. I didn't see him before and I didn't see him come in the store. He didn't have a cart or really anything in his hands and he was much taller than me, so I kept my distance, always on guard, especially since I was alone. He asked me something but I couldn't really hear him so I just said huh. He repeats himself and he had asked me if I was from a town that's like 45 minutes from where I was. My flight or fight instincts kick in and I say no and try to just walk away. When he then says, you're very pretty, I awkwardly smile and just walk away again, clearly not wanting to talk and extremely uncomfortable with the this whole encounter and he then asked me if I was single. I say I'm not interested, very abruptly and walk away as fast as I could. I knew something was suspicious and I was worried if I ran into him again he might try to continue talking to me. He did impose a threat however. The context of me being alone and him saying that I looked familiar even though he approached me from the side was really suspicious. After that, I went to the checkout checking to see if he was nearby, but I saw him walking in the opposite direction, which was a sign of relief. I then quickly got in my car making sure I didn't see anyone. He could have very well been harmless, but my instincts and his body language hit a red flag for me. So an old man man showed up inside our apartment door asking about citizenship status, proclaiming he's moving into our apartment building. What the hell. So for context, we live in a three family home. My husband and I live on the second floor apartment and you wouldn't know where the door is unless you know where the door is, if that makes any sense. Our stairs are inside a covered porch area and they're kind of hidden. So an older man with white hair showed up at our door yesterday and knocked on the door. My husband answered. He started telling us he was moving into the vacant apartment in the back of the house and that our landlord said that he could wait and move in May. Now mind you, we know our landlord will and there's no way she would let the apartment stay vacant until May. He said that he had put down a deposit and she was holding it for him. He then started asking us all about our utility bills, landlord's last name and demeanor, to which my husband answered because he thought initially he was our new neighbor. He then noted my husband's accent and asked are you a citizen in this country? My husband responded with yes. The convo continued. Kind of weird. After that we ended up texting our landlord and asked if she even knew this guy as well as who was renting the back apartment. And she told us I don't even know him. A young mom is renting that apartment. It's safe to say that we're super creeped out and fast forward. He showed up again today. We bought a door camera and now have him on video. We just don't understand who this man is or what his intentions are. Is he a confused old man or someone with bad intentions? So I started texting someone I met on a dating app. They made the conversation Super 18. Like as soon as we moved to text. I wasn't playing into it as I was currently at a family Christmas party at like 2pm he would get upset and ask me if his magic wand wasn't good enough. He would send me more and more photos trying to get me to reply, but since I was at a family event that he also knew I was at, I didn't find it the best time or place to look at any texts from him. Before I stopped opening his messages, he actually felt the need to ask if his photos made me wet. When I told him that I wasn't even thinking or looking at them because I was with my family and currently holding my five month old nephew, he replied with um, so you can still be wet. I'm sorry, but what When I got home I decided to take a bath because the day I had was just really rough. He's now blowing up my phone wondering where I went and if I was finally home yet. Mind you, I told him I was busy and may not even reply till later in the night. I've known this man for five hours at this point. He asked me what I was thinking about after I got home. It was around 9pm and I just told him sleep. To be honest, he didn't like the reply I gave him and he asked me why I wasn't thinking about the photos he sent me and how I couldn't go back and look at them. This dude was nothing but provocative with me and I turned it down many times telling him I was upset due to a recent breakup and that I'm not looking for hookups. He wouldn't take no for an answer. He kept spamming my phone and calling me even when I told him that I was heading to bed. I was drinking the same night to unwind from the long day that I'd spent with family. He woke me up questioning me as to why I wasn't talking to him because he really wanted to talk to me so I should be there to talk to him. I told him that I was sleeping and that I didn't want to talk. This man then asked me well aren't you drunk? Shouldn't you be in the mood? Like really? I ended up hanging up on him and ignoring any messages from him until in the morning. I didn't reply until later in the afternoon and by this time another gentleman that I had met a few weeks before had asked me on a date. I of course said yes and had a really great time. Said date and I drank at his place and played some lol. It got late and we were pretty tipsy from the shots so I just stayed at his place for the night as I didn't want to drive. This dude ended up calling me at 3am while I'm laying next to my date. I pick up the phone in a half asleep daze and say hello. He called me to tell me that he was at my apartment complex and he wanted me to let him in so we can congregate. His words being confused as to how he knew where I lived. I woke up very quickly. I asked him how he knew where my place was and he proceeded to tell me Facebook and some of my family's pages that I was tagged in. I assumed that he saw my mom's post when I moved in two years ago which had the apartment sign in the background of the photo. I never once told this man my last name. Freaking out, I woke up my date and let him know what was going on. He takes me back to my house but we don't go to my door. We looked around and I ended up asking him what he was driving. We find the car he's in and drive by slowly and I take down the plates. I call the local sheriff's office to let them know what's going on so that they can send an officer out here to ask this person to leave the property Once he's gone. My date waited with me inside for an hour just to be sure that he wasn't coming back. We then headed back to my date's house and proceeded to sleep for the remainder of the night. Sadly, it didn't end there. I woke up to a few more texts from a new number that I didn't have saved as his was blocked. Well, it was him asking me why I didn't give him a chance. Telling me that I was perfect but that I had let my emotions get in the way of what we could have had. Telling me how I better not lose my chance at being with someone like him. He thought that his nine inch magic wand was God's gift to the earth and that if I didn't take this opportunity now I'll live the rest of my life wondering what real magic feels like. I had no words for this person. I was stunned. How did someone I didn't even know 24 hours before this turn into what it did? I was really creeped out. I told him more than once to leave me alone and that I was with someone. He asked me why I picked a stranger over him as if he wasn't also a stranger just the day before. Not even a full day. This dude would say sorry after I snapped on him around 10:30pm a bit before he showed up in my apartment building. He would say sorry and tell me that it was wrong of him to act that way, but then proceeded to act the same way he did before. His last text to me was no wonder you're still single. Yeah man, no wonder I'm still single. I work for a university in a resident assistant position. On weekends we usually work in teams of three with two people walking through a building and one person at the front desk checking people in. While me and my coworker were walking on the ninth floor, engaging with students and enforcing the rules of the residence hall, my coworker suddenly received a call on our work phone, surprisingly from our on campus police. She picks up the phone to a woman frantically crying for help. Before she can respond though, the phone is hung up. This was especially a scary moment for us because of the authenticity of the woman's crying. Unless it was an audio recording of a movie, I have no doubt that this was a real person in extreme distress and not a prank. The worst part of the whole situation is that we had received the same call a few months before. With the same people working at the same time on the same floor. With our team of 60 people, it's extremely unlikely to work with the same three coworkers twice. When we started our shift I actually made a joke that we would get the same phone call and we did. After getting the phone call twice, we both agreed that they were probably accidentally redirected 911 calls, especially since the number that was listed was literally the police phone number. We called the non emergency number and talked to the dispatcher who was not helpful at all. I don't really blame him because it is such a random event. He took our names and said he would report it. However, the thing that creeps me out even more is that he mentioned that they hadn't received any calls at all that night and therefore nothing could have been accidentally redirected. This is when my mind suddenly clicked earlier near the start of the school year that I'd received a call from the same campus police number and it was just my boss who was asking me to come to her office and help a law student. As I got the call, I remember panicking as it was a campus police caller id. This was before either of the calls of the woman crying. I told her about her caller ID being wrong and she agreed that it was weird but retired literally weeks after that talk. At the time I Didn't find this weird, but now I look back at it and I think the call begging for help might have come from her office, which is now empty. My co worker and I walked to the office hallway which is connected to our building and tried getting into her office, but it was locked. It's important to mention we got the call both times at around 10:40 and it's now completely dark out with no one around, especially in the staff area. All the offices are completely inaccessible to the public but one room that me and my coworker had the key for. We opened the door and found one of the old phones in the office and used it to call our work phone. You guessed it, it rang the campus police. Now we're scared. We cleared the rest of the building for anyone in distress, but we didn't really find anything. After finding nothing, we went our separate way and ended our shift an hour after midnight. Now I'm just sitting here trying to figure out what the hell that poor woman was calling us for. Why did she hang up? Why did this happen twice with the same exact unlikely circumstances? Why was the caller ID from the police? This is getting long now, but I'll make some important notes. Our third coworker is a man with a thick accent. He couldn't have prank called us from the boss's phone and pretended to be a woman. The first call back in October was of a woman crying and saying please help. The second call I didn't hear as well as my co worker received it. She said it felt different, but was definitely a woman crying and begging. I am in an area with a lot of human trafficking and feel a strange sadness and fear that this may be what I heard. I've worked here for two years and I'm good friends with most of our team. No one has experienced this except for us. I only have two possible theories. The call was a redirect from the police and the dispatcher chose to hide his mistake. Or someone snuck into my boss's office and called us begging for help. I'm writing this story partially because I'm too scared to sleep and partially to know if anyone can think of a better reason for the calls. Hi, I'm a 21 year old female with a whole bunch of baggage. I've struggled with my mental health my entire life and last year I was admitted to an acute psychiatric hospital. I've only recently been discharged. Without blogging about my life, I went through some tough, dark times. Luckily I managed to get out and after seven admissions, I'm Ready to re enter the world. Anyways, my final admission was to a ward that I'd been to a couple of times before. I knew the staff and many of the patients. Sure it was difficult and tumultuous at times, but but most people strive to make it as bearable as possible. The daily routine, at least in the UK psych wards, is usually the wake up, take meds, eat food, watch tv, take meds, eat food again, take a nap, eat food, take meds, go to sleep. You get the gist. I also want to mention that the taking a nap part was optional. It sports boring as hell to say the least. So one day I came back to my room just after breakfast to see Karen, the usual ward cleaner. She was standing in my room staring out of my window and looking fairly startled. Now, when you work as a cleaner on a psych ward, you really see some crap. Often literally. So I knew that something was up. Hey Karen, what's going on? She explained that while she was cleaning my room, she had seen a thin middle aged man wearing sunglasses and carrying a backpack walk past the room a couple of times. She said that something seemed off about him. I sort of shrugged it off because he may well have just been a lost patient as they usually all look off. So I went about my day as usual. Then at around midday, I went to grab something from my window shelf and was suddenly face to face with this middle aged man wearing sunglasses and yeah, a backpack. He didn't look especially freaky, just a normal lanky looking guy. Still, I freaked the hell out and ran out of the room. The windows were tinted so I'm fairly sure he couldn't have seen me, but it still gave me quite a fright. During the next few days, a number of patients and staff members saw him star past numerous windows, which was especially strange because the ward was fenced off so that your average bystander wouldn't and couldn't find themselves near the unit. We all wondered whether he was just a curious adventurer or if it was something a bit more sinister. Three days after the initial encounter, I'd kind of forgotten about the whole thing and I just went to bed with my window slightly cracked. It wouldn't open the whole way and the ward was often boiling. I'm aware that I might have imagined this, but I swear at around 1am I woke up and heard something tapping on my window. I tried looking through the window but it was dark so all I could really see was my own reflection. But I freaked the hell out, shut the window and told the night staff. What was up that morning? Numerous patients were complaining of weird noises during the night, including tapping and sometimes even heavy breathing. Breathing. One girl even swore that she heard him or someone try to open her window further. But this wasn't a psych ward, so I took it with a pinch of salt. Anyway, security was upped for the next few days and we never saw him again. This story is years old and I don't go on this website anymore even though I still create art. Art. There are many reasons why I left that site, but this has to be the worst possible reason. In 2012, I was 12 years old. I got my first account on DeviantArt before I knew how to really draw. The only thing I knew how to do when it came to art was just crappy pencil drawings with colored pencil etched into it. My first post was of Hatsune Miku, which I'm sure everybody knows or heard of this anime girl with the blue pigtails. So I drew a crappy rendition of this character, blissfully unaware that her skirts seemed to be too short in the drawing. Looking back, I was still at an immature age, so I didn't really think much about it at the time. Looking at the drawing now, it wasn't really that decent, but I didn't know because I had drawn this. I saw a message on my submission where I uploaded it. In the comments on my drawing, there was someone who messaged me simply saying, hey, nice drawing with the smiley face of Modicon from the website. I was so excited because it was my first ever comment on one of my art pieces. I then looked at my profile and realized that he had watched me as well. Then I was very excited and also happy that I also had my first watcher on my account. His username had Glutton in the title. I don't remember the exact details of his name. He favorited my drawing and I replied to his comment by saying a simple thanks with a smiley face. Here's where things got a bit weird for me. He replied with you're welcome like common courtesy on the site, but then followed the comment up with I really like how short you made the girl's skirt. Keep in mind, I was only 12 and I had no idea what he completed completely meant in that context, so I replied with it's a statement for anime girls to have short skirts or something along those lines. He then replied with oh, of course yours is my favorite though. Okay, a bit of a strange reply. Before replying to him back, I dug a bit deeper into his profile, wondering if I should be nice to favorite him back as profound false stated that he was 21 years old. Yes, the site lets you display your exact age on the top front page and it was the same for me. I legitimately put that I was 12. Did he realize how young I actually was for him to not be saying that? But like any oblivious 12 year old kid, your brain doesn't quite piece things together and you go along with whatever may cross your mind. So I friended this creepy man back. I don't remember the conversation after that other than we kept it friendly and moved on. I would occasionally post more pictures but he would comment only on a few of them and usually he was nice. But then there was always some weird comment like I wonder how long she could sit like that if I ever had the character in a certain pose or hey can I taste her please with the XD face. And again, I would pay no mind to these comments because my watchers were building up to see my work and I rarely replied to the man again. I did however go on his profile again after he commented something and found pictures of this elephant cartoon that I forgot the name of. He seemed to love this elephant cartoon that he was obsessed with and everywhere on his profile I saw this cartoon and fanart of it. Then I looked a bit more into to his gallery and there were a lot of these gray pieces with a minus sign on them indicating that it was NSFW18 artwork. I didn't know about this at the time either so I tried pressing on it wondering why it was grayed out. Then there was a message that said mature artwork must be 18 or older to view it. I remember frowning at this thinking that it wasn't fair for me not to see it. I wish I could tell you that I never saw it to this day and didn't let my curiosity get the better of me, but I'd be very wrong. I made a second account claiming that I was 18 just to see what type of art this guy drew because my mind was just really curious enough to see it. Oh how I regretted that he had fan art drawings related to her hinting at child porn. There were really disturbing ones relating to the cartoon he liked with the little girl elephant character being strangled and horrible things done to her by her dad. You guys can figure it out on your own. There were also pictures of anime girls looking 10 years old or possibly younger in sexual positions and again very bad things being done to them. There were even some gore fest pictures among the elephant ones I saw and More really bad art pieces depicting children along with gore themes as well, impalement, cutting out body parts with a knife, torture involving blood, hypnotism and much more. It was very dark and disturbing. Suffice to say I unfriended the guy immediately on my main account and was extremely disturbed at this. A week later he had still messaged me on my main account and said why did you unfriend me? Sad face. I felt no sympathy for him and said something along the lines of you are so disgusting and you draw really disgusting things. He said something to the effect of well so are you. Let people have their own opinion sweetheart. Along with a smiley face. I then found out how to block a user on the site, so I blocked him. That gave me internal peace, but it didn't last for long. A year after the entire incident I was using the 18 year old account as a backup account and for different art mediums. Nobody knew this account was linked to my other one. Somehow my old friend Glutton manages to find me without telling me anything about how the two accounts are related to each other and exactly one year later in the summer, he PMs me on my other account. The message said, hey, did you miss me sweetie? I missed you since the unfriend. Sad face. That's okay. My eyes widened in horror and I kept thinking to myself how? How did this pervert find me? He must have been really experienced in computer tech or hacking because I have no idea how that possibly could have happened, let alone A year later I replied to him saying I unfriended you because you draw illegal things and you should be banned from this website. What followed next was him trying to creepily get under my skin by role playing with me. At this point he was now 22 and I'm 13, still very much disturbed by him. But he only made things worse by talking to me in roleplay terms, using asterisks in everything he said. He literally said that he was grabbing my bum gently in asterisks among other lewd comments to me, some asterisks and some without. I'm just sitting there like oh boy, here we go again. Obviously disgusted. So I block him on the backup account as well. Considering the types of things he drew, I think he definitely liked flirting with preteens on purpose and probably got a kick out of it for the most part. Being on DeviantArt was okay for me after that, but people like him who draw lewd things like that plague the site. He's the major reason that I left it. So I know this entire encounter was online and a lot of these experiences happen in real life for many others. But you never know who you could end up meeting in real life from the Internet. I really hope Glutton got some help and he's not still so disturbed like he was back then. But I definitely don't want to meet him in real life. I also hope that he stopped flirting with 12 year olds. It's really disgusting. When I was a junior in high school, I was quite an odd kid. I liked having colorful hair, piercings and all that kind of stuff. And the school I went to was near Atlanta, so there weren't many people like me. I tried to find friends that liked the same kind of music and other interests and I could normally kind of brush off any weird energy that people put off. Ignore it. I just wanted friends. Anyway, I was in the gym one day hanging out with a group of weirdos and there was a guy that I hadn't seen before. He was wearing a Guns N Roses T shirt and jeans that were like a size too small. His name was Ernest. We immediately clicked with each other in a platonic way because we laughed at a lot of the same things. We started hanging out in gym together every day. People watching and making fun of people play basketball. It wasn't too long until he'd started to make fun of my appearance and making me feel absolutely terrible about myself. I had acne super bad in high school and he joked saying that I had meth skin. First strike me being me though. I kept hanging out with him and eventually it led to hanging out after school. He would invite me over to his house and we only stayed in his room. He refused to let me meet his family. His parents didn't really speak English, but I still wanted to meet them. I always thought it was weird that Ernest didn't know any Spanish, but his siblings did. And when he could speak words that sounded Russian, he pretty much only played It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia on tv and also rambled about superheroes and would always come up with these strange scenarios where he was an evil villain and how much power he would have. Fast forward and I got a job at a pizza place. Ernest gets the same job at the same pizza place. So inevitably we were always together. Always. He pretty much never let me out of his grasp. It got to a point where he took me to school every day in his PT Cruiser, which I still get chills every time I see one of those damn shoe shaped cars. We started skipping school Like, a lot. I mean, we pretty much went to school about two or three times a week. This is where it starts to suck pretty bad. He started pressuring me to do sexual things with him. I don't really want to get into the details because it's pretty disturbing, but he manipulated the situation in such a way that I felt like we were in a relationship because I thought that I needed him. He really convinced me that we were a couple. But I was also so repulsed by him that I could never fully accept that he started telling our other friends that he had sex with me and that we were in a relationship. I denied it all. To this day, I deny it. I've lied to therapists. I've lied to my friends. But right now, I'm admitting to all of that. At one point, he ended up living with me and my family in the same room as me. He had convinced my entire family that he was gay so that he could live with me. He literally dressed up in pink and put a scarf around his neck and pranced around my aunt trying to win her over with his fake personality. I was so used to living in chaos that this was barely a problem for me during all of this. He was a rude piece of crap to me. I remember asking him for a ride one day, and he actually said no for no good reason. I started getting really pissed off because he couldn't actually give me a reason. He just kept smirking at me. He did this type of thing frequently. We were sitting in the living room, and he silently got up and drove off somewhere. Then he came back, walked to the living room doorway, and stared at me for 15 seconds and walked into my room. I heard a bunch of rustling. So I storm in there thinking, he's up to something sketchy. He's gotten completely dressed into his sleep pants with his hand in his pocket, and he just wouldn't take his hand out of his pocket. At this point, I'm scared. I force my hand into his pocket and pull out a knife. I don't remember how the night or days continued after that. Fast forward again. I'm at my best friend Kayla's birthday party, and everyone's camping in the backyard. Ernest hated Kayla because she was a way out for me. And his perspective. She got in the way of us. I'm sweating typing this out because this is probably one of the scariest things that's ever happened to me. The sequence of events is a little bit blurry, but I remember it. I had made it clear to Ernest that at this point in time that we were not a thing and that he needed to let go of that fantasy. I had a crush on this boy named John and we slept in the same tent together. Morning comes and I hear Ernest outside asking people if they knew where I was. Someone said, she's in the tent with John. I was scared immediately. I knew that something bad was about to happen. The tent rips open and I don't have a shirt on. He begins screaming as loud as he can, cussing us all out and just pitching an absolute fist fit. And he storms off. He goes to his car and he calls me, telling me to get in the car. Now everyone there was freaked out and Kayla advised me not to go to the car because she knew how scary Ernest was just as a person. I didn't want anyone to be uncomfortable. So I figured that if I went to the car, it would ease everyone just a little bit that he wasn't there. I went as soon as the car door closed. We sped off fast, really fast. I look over at him wide eyed and he's scream crying with absolutely no expression in his face. Tears, screaming, but emotionless. He says, you were supposed to love me over and over again. He started speeding faster and then said, if I can't love you, no one else can. I'm actively having a stray panic attack in the passenger seat. I can't hear because my ears are ringing and I can't see anything. Meanwhile, Kayla has already called my mom and somehow my mom left the house fast enough to track us down in that PT Cruiser. He then parks at a church and my mom is watching us. Ernest has a box cutter at his side. I got a call from my mom. I can't really remember what she said, but I know it was something along the lines of, I'm gonna slit your throat. To Ernest. He starts coming to his senses, if you can even call it that, and he drops me back off at Kayla's and tells me that he's going to kill himself. After he drops me off, Kayla and I were frantically trying to call his parents about a possible imminent suicide. However, they couldn't speak English. He called the police on himself because he thought he was going to harm himself or someone else. He was gone for a couple of weeks and when he came back, he had parked outside my school waiting for me to come out. He runs up to me. I noticed that he had a plaid button up shirt and it was tucked into his pants, which was just extremely odd to me. And I knew immediately that this was a fake personality. He was speaking differently as well, proper, almost like a few weeks had turned him into a saint. It wasn't long after that that I admitted myself into a mental institution because I just kept breaking down. Everyone in the groups told me to get rid of him and I had not realized just how serious this was until I saw everyone's reactions to the stories. There are so many stories of this psycho, but I can't even type it all out. I did get rid of him. I found new friends and without them I don't know how this would have gone. I haven't seen or spoken to him in about three years, so good riddance.