← Southern Cannibal's Scary Stories
Southern Cannibal's Scary Stories
4 Hours Of UNSETTLING Scary Stories With Dark Ambience & Rain
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A lot of those past patterns of behavior molded how I handled the situation. With that out of the way, here's the story. I was in my first year of a two year college that I had started out at to save money. I was honestly really excited for this part of my life to begin. My childhood had been hell, but now I was going to step into adulthood and start achieving my own dreams. There was an adjustment period, of course, but nothing I couldn't handle compared to the shit I'd been dealing with before I got there, and I found myself thriving for the first time in my life in this college environment. I flourished, discovering what things I truly enjoyed and cared about, and I made many friends, several of which I'm still extremely close with today. In my first semester, I became especially fond of visiting the Fine Arts Building in between classes. There was a lobby area on one end of the building that was almost always empty and quiet, so I liked to chill there to take a break or catch up on classwork. That was where I first met Matthew. I had been sitting in a corner with several lounge chairs when he approached asking if he could have a seat there. I said yes, of course, and I was about to get back into whatever I'd been working on when he struck up a conversation saying that he hadn't seen me around before. I've always been friendly and social, so it was pretty easy to strike up a conversation from there where we talked about how long we'd been at school, what kind of classes we were taking, and what we were hoping to do with our educations in the future. The conversation was honestly unremarkable, just a standard get to know you kind of thing. He'd been a little awkward, but nothing creepy, and some awkwardness never even bothered me. Anyway, we're all a little weird and awkward after all. We had chatted a bit until I had to head off to my next class and he asked if I often hung out in the building. I didn't think anything at the time of saying that, yeah, I usually hang out there between my classes. I smiled at him and said maybe I'd see him around again sometime, wishing him luck in his studies before taking off. It would be far from the last time I would see him. I had classes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and I saw Matthew in the Fine Arts Building on each of those days. From there on out, about the second or third time I saw him, after telling me about some dreams he had and what he hoped to accomplish in the future, he explained that he's autistic and that he has a hard time connecting with others because of it. So he said he was glad he'd met me. I have an autistic older brother who also had his own challenges, you know, with how judgmental and impatient neurotypicals can be. So I was primed to be soft. Honestly, the first couple of weeks of knowing him were pretty normal. He was a little touchy and sometimes he didn't even seem to understand boundaries very well, but nothing was a massive red flag to me yet. Some people just don't get boundaries as well as others, or they don't expect as much personal space. No biggie, I thought. Then he began complimenting me. It had started out simple, like saying that I was pretty funny or sweet. I would thank him for the compliments, but in a very neutral manner, wanting to be sure I didn't come across as if I was leading him on. Despite this, the compliments soon became sexual in nature, increasing in how graphic or descriptive they were. As he went, he'd make specific remarks about certain parts of my body and would also comment a lot on my punk goth attire and how much my clothes really turned to mine, and how it was part of a larger fetish of his. The topics of conversation became increasingly sexual as well, always seeming to veer into a territory that I wasn't comfortable with. Even if he wasn't referring to me directly in a sexual manner, it was obvious that he was trying to initiate something. As I said before, I had no idea how to stick up for myself So I would just tell him the topics that made me uncomfortable and I'd ask him to stop. He'd apologize right away and say he wanted to respect me, but inevitably, after a little cool down, he'd start up the same inappropriate topics yet again. I started trying to spend time elsewhere, and when I was in the Fine Arts building where he'd always weirdly seemed to be, I tried to ignore him during my time there, saying things like that I was really busy or that I needed to do some schoolwork. Then one day I remember him getting really serious and saying something like, you know, I feel like you're the only one I can trust. You're so understanding. I really feel like I can tell you anything. Actually, there's been something on my mind. Can I talk to you about it? I've never told anyone before. I stupidly said yes, and I don't know what the hell I thought he was going to say, but it wasn't what ended up coming out of his mouth. Without preamble, he begins to tell me that he has a kink for strangulation. Okay, no biggie. Tons of folks I know who are into that and I don't mind a little choking myself, so no shocker. But then he goes on to say that he likes the idea of choking a woman almost to death during sex, that he wants to see them cry, that he wants them to begin to fight, that he wants them to panic and think that he's crossed the line, that ideally he can make someone pass out from choking them during the act and then keep them going so that they'd actually look like they were dead. I have no time to process that before he's telling me how he also has a fetish for cutting his sexual partner. He wants to cut someone during sex and then smear their blood around and drink it again. I can't even process before he's asking me if I'm in Satanism just because of my goth attire. Cliche and absurd. I know. He says he's a Satanist and he starts ranting on about some kind of nonsensical shit and how it all ties into his kinks. This dude was definitely never a Satanist, as I've met a couple since that time and done some reading up on it. And no Satanist I know acts like that. He was obviously just trying to be edgy, but it was still unhinged and freaky as hell. Then the conversations escalate a step further as he then admits that he doesn't just want to do these things to anyone, but that he specifically wants to do them to me. He wants to cut me. He wants to drain my blood. He wants to choke me. He wants me to scream and cry. I just feel a spiritual connection with you that I've never felt with anyone before. I know we'd be perfect for each other if you'll give me a chance, he said. I don't remember exactly what I said to him at the time, but I know that I basically made up some bullshit excuse about why I had to leave and get the fuck out of there. More massively uncomfortable than I'd been in a long time. It also didn't help that I'd given him my number some weeks ago, and I had texts pouring in from him for the rest of the day, saying things like, hey, thanks for listening to me earlier. You're seriously amazing. Are you okay? I didn't freak you out or anything, did I? I'm so sorry. Seriously, if I did anything to upset you, I'm sorry. Please say something. I'm getting really freaked out. I won't ever mention the things I did today again. I just need you to talk to me. I ignored him. After that incident, I had started distancing myself from him in every single way that I could. I'd try and stay away from the buildings that I knew he'd be in. At the times I knew he'd be there. It was miserable. It felt like I couldn't go anywhere or do anything without looking over my shoulder. It caught on quick that I wasn't in the same buildings anymore as well, especially when I wouldn't answer his obsessive texts and calls and ultimately blocked him. After a couple of weeks, he finally staked out at a central point of the campus, skipping one of his classes just to find out where I was walking. He spotted me, and just like that, he ran up to me and then spoke in this very cheerful, borderline childish voice. Hey, there you are. Where have you been? It's been impossible to catch you lately. Could this guy not take the hint? Obviously not. I remember laughing very awkwardly and making some kind of lame joke before trying to dismiss myself. Playing hard to get. That's hot. Yeah, he definitely wasn't getting it. I kept dutifully avoiding him while also trying to be with other people more often, so I wasn't stuck alone. Often I'd sit with other friends I made between classes or at lunch to avoid him. But even that wasn't working. One day, I heard him shouting my name from behind as I was heading to the cafeteria. I pretended not to hear him and increased my pace, practically run walking into the building to where my friends were and then flinging myself into the remaining seat of the table. I really thought that he wouldn't approach me since I was with so many other people, but he actually came up and tried to sit down with us. I was about to try and say something when one of my friends at the table hastily made some kind of excuse as to why he couldn't sit with us. With all the others at the table quickly joining in and insisting until he left, I was shocked. Had she noticed I was uncomfortable? After he was gone, I got the explanation as to why she and the others were so keen on getting rid of him. One of the girls, who's still one of my best friends to this day, had actually admitted to me that she actually knew who I was the day we'd met. Why, you may ask? Because months ago in the campus library, she'd been sitting in the computer lab section next to Matthew, who was a complete stranger to her at the time. At some point, he had tapped on her shoulder and pointed to his computer screen, which had my Facebook page pulled up on it. She's gorgeous, right? He said. My friend agreed. Yeah, I'm planning on making her mine. That information would have been horrid enough. But then everyone else at the table began to explain that this had happened with several people. He had essentially been going around campus and showing my photo to all kinds of people, then telling them strange things ranging from he was going to date me to we are dating, to even that we're in a deviant sexual relationship. So when everyone at the table saw him following after me, they were shocked that he was still up to his shit, and they were quick to defend me. I was disgusted by this. I mean, I knew he had a fixation on me and had been trying to follow me around, but I had no idea that he spent all this time stalking my social media as well as spreading around rumors about us all around campus. I was quick to block him on social media, too, and lock down my privacy settings to the max. After that day, though, the situation only got worse. I began to find notes on my desk in my first class of the day. He was getting there before me to leave them there. He knew exactly which classroom that I was in and what time in the exact seat that I would be in. But that wasn't all. I was finding notes on my car's windshield, sometimes just on campus, but other times I'd find notes on my car, at grocery stores, malls, restaurants, etc. Sometimes up to an hour away from the campus. The notes range from things like I love you to weird cringey poetry to things so explicit that I can't even write them here. But the point was, he was following me around, and not just on campus. I felt like there was nothing I could do. I didn't want to ask for any help. I didn't even know where to start. I didn't want to overreact. And I had a bad opinion of police based on past experiences. Then his behavior had also shifted. While he'd stopped approaching me on campus, I'd still see him all the time, always looming somewhere nearby. If you've ever seen the movie, it follows. It almost felt like something like that. A figure always lurking somewhere in the background, eyes trained on you, watching, waiting, and then slowly making their way towards you, stuck to you like a damn shadow. Even when I couldn't see him in the crowd, I knew he was there. I could feel his eyes on me. He was often around so often I couldn't even walk back to my car anymore without someone accompanying me or having someone on the phone for safety. My friends were, and still are, truly great people, and they really got fed up with the situation and in an effort to look out for me, actually ended up going to the campus police. The reception was honestly unexpected. The campus police acted annoyed that my friends had even come by to bring this up, acting as though this was a tremendous overreaction on their part, and ultimately saying that they couldn't do anything to Matthew because he hadn't done anything to me for about a year. This same pattern continued. The notes, the hovering, the feeling of being watched. I felt like he was constantly breathing down my neck. Though he'd stopped approaching me, he had no issue approaching the people I'd become friends with, especially the men. He'd rush up to them out of the blue, often with some of these friends, not even knowing who the fuck he was at the time before. He'd then start angrily shouting at them, asking who they were and why they were hanging out with me. It felt like it'd never end and I had no idea who to talk to. I thought my only option was to just keep my head down and push forward. Then he'd just eventually lose interest. All I wanted to do was keep living my life and enjoying college. I wanted to finish my two years so I could go on to the university of my choice and start the rest of my life. I'd been used to keeping my head down through abuse and mistreatment in the past. So I think that continuing to do it in the face of Matthew stalking was almost second nature. Though I realized the ways I could have handled things differently now. Then suddenly a new semester of college began and poof. He was gone. No more filling of eyes on me, no more seeing him around campus. Eventually, after some asking around my friends and I learned that he had apparently stopped attending classes there. Finally, finally I'd be free. And it really did seem that way for a while. No more weird confrontations, no more sightings of him. No more notes, no more messages or calls from random phone numbers or social media accounts. It was like he'd finally moved on. Or now that it was no longer convenient for him to stalk me, he just called it quits. Over a year of this freak stalking and suddenly it was just done. Well, good riddance I thought. Just like that, another year had passed and everything was really going great. I had graduated from my two year college, but I was taking a short break from school to work. I was also saving up some money and reconsidering what I wanted to spend my next two years working towards. It was just another average day like any other. I was chilling around my place and messing around on the computer when I logged into the online art sharing account I had, which I had been using to post poetry and short works of fiction over the years. Curiously, I had a message from someone new so I checked it out. Hey, I think I know you. It looks like we have some mutuals on here from the two year college. Sorry for the random message, but I recognized your photo and I wanted to finally reach out. I'm Matthew's cousin, Patrick. I can't tell you how happy it makes me that Matthew is engaged to such a great girl. He talks about you all the time. Anyway, sorry if this is weird, but I just wanted to give a shout and say welcome to the family. I felt my stomach vanish and my heart completely exploded. I was so nauseous and my head was spinning and my ears were full of static. No way. No fucking way. I was in disbelief. I couldn't believe that nearly three years from when I first met Matthew, he was still apparently very obsessed with me. I took a deep breath, keeping my head before messaging back. I needed more information. As politely as I could, I asked Patrick what the hell he was talking about and I then explained my side of the story. I told him that Matthew and I were not now and had never been in any kind of romantic relationship and that it had also been ages since I'd even last spoken to Matthew. Patrick was obviously shocked, but was thankfully extremely gracious. He said that he wished he could say he was surprised, but he wasn't shocked that his cousin was capable of this level of creepy behavior, but that he really wanted to believe that he'd turned a corner with me as his fiance. He then went on to pour the tea to the max. He explained that Matthew talks about me constantly to everyone, and not just in person, but online too. In his message. He sent me to one of those personal private blog spaces that used to be way more popular, and I felt sick when I saw it. The entire blog was dedicated to Matthew's life, except it wasn't really his life at all. It was just one giant fabrication. He'd essentially created an entire alternate reality where he and I were together and engaged. He had countless posts about our perfect love and how we were meant to be. He had countless made up stories from dates and trips we'd been on together to the wedding we were planning and even our sex life, which I might add. He went into extremely graphic detail, talking about how I enjoyed being cut, having drank my blood and being choked. All the shit he talked about before. There were even pictures of me on the site, which he'd obviously saved from my Facebook before I blocked him. But more disturbing were the photos that weren't even from Facebook that had obviously been taken without my knowledge. I was in a state of absolute shock, or at least I was at first. But faster than you'd expect, the shock turned into a burning anger. But even so, I still had to go to work that evening and I headed to the local pharmacy I worked at in a kind of rage I've never felt before. And it showed. My manager, who I was very close to and still am today, asked me what was going on. He was used to my cheerful nature on the job and he knew that something serious was up. So I spilled the beans on everything. His reaction had been expected. He was furious for me and he wanted to get the police involved. But as I said before, I still didn't trust the police. I didn't trust that they'd take my case seriously or take any genuine action. I was honestly embarrassed in my situation and I was afraid I'd be seen as making a big deal out of nothing. I said I'd think about it just to placate my boss, but by the time my break rolled around, my anger had come to a head. I had grown out of some of my doormat nature and was incensed. How dare he use me like this. In a moment of fury, I unblocked his number and called him, hoping that his number was the same. The second he answered his phone and I then recognized that irritating little voice of his, I went totally off. I gave him no chance to speak. I can't even remember everything I said at the time because I was seeing red. All I know is that I was practically yelling into the phone, telling him that I knew every last thing he was up to and that if he didn't end it today, I was going to make sure he paid. He was sobbing on the other end of the phone, begging me not to be angry, saying that he loved me and that he didn't mean for things to go so far. He pleaded for me to make it up to me, but I just told him that he can make it up to me by stopping all this shit and never speaking to me again before. I then hung up and then blocked him. I received several calls throughout the evening and into the night from random numbers. It was obviously him. I ignored them, blocking them one by one as they came in after. Around midnight, after we'd closed up and finished all of our closing duties, my manager recalled he still had a couple of things that he wanted to do real quick. I said okay, but I waved goodbye to him and I said I was going to head out. He started to frown then, telling me, no way. Wait a minute, I'll walk you to your car. I wasn't used to anyone trying to take care of me, and so I felt like an inconvenience. I told him he didn't need to do that. No, you're waiting for me or it's a write up. His voice was so stern I really didn't know what the hell to say. I knew there was no way he could actually justify that, but he was so damn serious about the whole thing that I agreed to wait. After another 10 minutes or so, it wrapped up and we headed out. We started walking to my car. When I see it, we both see it at the same time. A dark car with its lights off, trying to hide ever so slightly behind the building, but peeking out enough that they could see into the front lot. My eyes widened, but my manager, a real tall, built like a brick shithouse guy, had had it. His face turned bright red and instantly he began stalking up to the vehicle, booming at the top of his lungs to whoever was in the car, threatening to call the police and beat their ass faster than I'd ever seen the car's engine turned over, the lights came on and it screamed out of the parking lot. Neither one of us saw who was inside and I have no proof of who was in there, but I know it was him. We both knew it. I didn't cry, I didn't break down. I didn't get anxious. I was just so stunned. But I'm also relieved and thankful for my manager that all I could be was grateful. We stood there for a minute before my manager insisted on following me home just to make sure I arrived home safely. We made it back without incident. I thanked him up and down for that and I ended up baking him his favorite pie the following week as well as making a meal for his family as a thank you. I know it seems like there should be a big follow up to this that I saw a car sitting outside my house a few months later where I got some random phone calls or heard knocks on my windows, but no, nothing. The blog site was gone not long after and despite doing some digging, I couldn't find it under any other alternate names. That car never showed up at my work again and I moved on to my university of choice without hearing anything more from or about this guy. It was really freaky how it all seemed to die right there. I felt like I couldn't trust it for a long time given that I thought his obsession died before, only to discover that it had just been kindling in the background. It's been over 10 years since that whole nightmare first began, and I'm doing really well for myself now. I've done a ton of healing from the trauma that I endured as a child, and I've grown immensely as a person. I have a great job and I'm excelling in my field. I have an incredible support network. I'm married to the most amazing man I've ever met. I live in a lovely little house and I'm knocking off goals off my bucket list. One after another. I live life to the fullest. I don't think about it nearly as often anymore, but every now and then all that weird shit with Matthew comes right back to me. I have no idea what the hell he was planning on doing the night he pulled up outside my job, but I'm glad I never found out. I sometimes wonder where he is now. I genuinely hope that wherever he is, he's gotten the psychological help that he desperately needed and that he's living with a healthier mindset and pattern of behaviors. But most importantly, I just really hope that he hasn't gone on to hurt Anyone else? My name is Wires. Not my real name, but for the story's sake, I'll be replacing all of the names of the parties involved. I'm a 20 year old trans man, but when the story happened I was 18 and the people at my work treated me as a woman. I worked in a supermarket in the department that can both make you a sandwich or cut your meat. That was my first job and I was honestly trying way too hard to impress my managers, which I later learned wasn't worth it. But that's another story. I was on a station which consisted of refilling food food in a buffet style bar. Basically all the food just out in the middle of the store with enough plastic containers to clog the ocean for a decade. I had two co workers. One was a middle aged woman who had an adult son and she was great to work with. I really loved that lady. However, she was day shift so we only had a couple of hours working together before the other night shift worker came in. For this story, I'll call her Kate. Now Kate was in her 40s. She was also shorter than me, which is surprising considering I'm five' three now. Back then I really liked to assume the best of people. I've learned better now. But even then I was immediately unsettled when I met her. Even in all of my naivety, something about her just felt off wrong. Now I really like to follow my gut instincts and to this day it's never proved me wrong. If I don't like someone with no reason, later on something about them will surface. Her eyes scared me. I grew up under rather traumatic circumstances, so I'm not unfamiliar with a thousand yard stare. This wasn't that. This was something completely different. Her eyes were wide, far too wide, and her pupils might as well have been pin pricks. They never dilated, never moved. Now that I think about it, I can't even remember ever seeing this woman blink. Now Kate was very talkative. Very talkative. She would talk to me all day to the detriment of me doing my job. Since I was barely an adult and mentally very much still a kid, I didn't want to be rude to her. I also didn't want to get on her bad side. The way that she talked unnerved me. She talked softly and quietly, but with a voice full of anger. She would be talking about a band she liked and it would sound like she was telling me that someone kicked her dog. She was divorced and she let everyone know about it. She hated her ex with a Passion. And I will say, even though I'm not sure if her stories were true, he sounded like a bad person. Kate said that he was emotionally abusive and that's why she was so paranoid. And oh boy was she. As someone who grew up with and still suffers with PTSD and severe anxiety, I at first chalked up her strange behavior to trauma and I tried my best to be understanding. The other workers, however, quickly got annoyed at her antics as she was constantly complaining and inserting herself in conversations that had nothing to do with her. Deep down I just knew something was wrong with her, but I really didn't want to think it was the trauma. I thought I could maybe comfort her or maybe help a bit by sharing some of my own trauma at her request, showing her she wasn't alone. However, even though she would ask me strangely personal questions about my home life, such as if I was dating anyone, questions about my past and family, and when I tried to answer, she would always interrupt with her own life stories. I don't mind, but I did wish if she wanted to vent, she could have just done it without asking me to share, then cutting me off. The longer I worked with her and the more she talked, I noticed that her stories were, well, skewed in her favor. Many times her stories were her being less than kind to someone, then getting angry when they called her out. She also cussed a lot, which to a freshly out of hyper controlling religion me, was a bit much. Her behavior started to worry me. As well as talking, she would softly sing mostly hymns. She started seeming, well, sociopathic. But even more than that, she started paying a little bit too much attention to cleaning our knives. The knives we used were small but very sharp. But only after she started slacking off on the job in favor of blabbing my ear off as I worked did I start to get upset with Kate. Then it happened. Remember those plastic containers I mentioned on the bar? Well, I had to go to the back room, basically in a warehouse in the back of the store to get more. Now the back was unsettling at best. It was filthy, falling apart, and the lights in our stock room in particular were all out. The only light was the one above the door a little bit down the hall from the room. So the whole room was backlit. Creepy, right? Not only that, but that back room for the whole year I worked at the store just didn't feel right at all. A chill went down my spine every time I had to go back there. But anyway, I went to the back alone and I pulled out Our box off the shelf. It took me a second as the shelves were tall and I was short when I suddenly felt my heart drop. A soft, barely hearable voice was singing Jesus Loves Me from behind me. I whipped my head around to see over my shoulder and backlit in the entry to the room. Standing in the hall was Kate. I laughed nervously as I picked up the box. Oh Kate, it's you. You surprised me. Yeah, I was just getting more containers, but if you want to get them, I do have to go wipe the bar down. At this point she had really surprised me and thoroughly creeped me out. But I tried not to judge. After all, some people are just creepy. I shared this with my coworkers who seemed more alarmed than I was. I was treating it as just a funny story. As she walked into the department, she was holding the box and one of our knives, which I assumed she used to open the box. Thinking back on it, the box was still sealed and we had a box cutter. But months later I had started to get more upset with her and I could tell that she had started to genuinely dislike me. I was expressing this to a day shift co worker named Kim who was a transfer. As I talked, her face became concerned. I used to work with her at the other store. I don't know how she even got hired here. She's absolutely nuts. Like she threatened to kill everyone in the store and had to be escorted out and banned. That's what she told me. I went into a full on panic attack. I had encountered psychopaths in the past and it was honestly terrifying that I'd been so close to one for so long. I had given her every chance when I should have just followed my gut. She ended up quitting a week after that, all because our manager was just asking her to do her job. As she had started to slack off, barely doing anything around the store. I was relieved as my coworkers promised to protect me from her should she come into the store. But weeks after she was gone, even now I still find myself wondering that day in the back room, what was she planning on doing in the dark all alone with me with a knife? It really gives me the chills thinking about that. I'm 22 now and a female. The incident I'm going to be writing about happened back in 2018 when I was 17. Also, English isn't my first language, so I apologize if the story isn't well framed. It was late June and I was on summer break, straight out of high school and ready to join university in a Few months I was really focused on enjoying this time because high school and finally finals had really been stressful and hectic. In the last month of my summer break, I decided to visit my cousins. It was going to be a solo trip because my parents were both busy with work and my sister had her own stuff going on. Also, I live in the city and my cousins live in a small town. That's where my grandfather started his business in construction. My father wasn't big on the country life and had moved to the city. My uncle, though, decided to stay and assist my grandfather and eventually took over the business. He had two sons who were both around my age. One of them was in uni and the other one had graduated and helped his father run the business. So yeah, keep that in mind. I reached my uncle's place and I was then greeted with unconditional love for my aunt, whom I was very close to and hadn't seen in a while due to my studies. My younger brother Cal was home and after settling my things in my room, I proceeded to have a very long conversation with him and my aunt. My uncle and elder brother Ved were at work. They returned at around 4pm Ved and I talked for a while. That's when Cal then said, so for today, I was thinking we could go to the country fair in the evening. You'll love the rides, stalls and the food. Especially the food. Ved then interrupted and said, I think she needs to get some rest from all the traveling. We can go to the fair next week. I must admit I was tired, but I do really like fairs and food. Nothing beats the good country food. I told my brothers that I wanted to go and we could all have a fun time together like the good old days. Boy, how wrong I was. Ved took out his pickup truck and we were on our way. The fair was beautiful. I ate a lot of food from different stalls, bought great jewelry and went on some fun rides with my brothers. Later on, Cal had located some of his friends and wanted to go on the Ferris wheel. Ferris wheels make me dizzy. So I asked them to carry on without me while I look at some jewelry for my mother. Ved then got a call from one of his employees, employees from work, and he told me that it would take a minute and to stay nearby. I started looking at some bangles and bracelets, and that's when I noticed a man from a nearby food stall just looking at me. His face was expressionless, unnaturally pale, and he was just blatantly staring at me. It made me Very uncomfortable and nauseous. I tried to just ignore it and I looked away. That's when I felt my stomach hurting. I said to myself, yeah, I really shouldn't have eaten those fritters. I decided to go to the washroom. I entered one of the stalls to do my business. As I'm getting up, I hear someone walking in. No big deal, it is a washroom after all. I then hear footsteps and they stop right in front of my stall. That is when I then start freaking out because I notice that this person is wearing the men's shoes. The man from before that was staring at me. The door was locked, but I felt sick and a pit developing in my stomach. I then yelled, who is it? I need to get out and you're standing right in front of my cubicle. The man then said, oh, all the other stalls are dirty. That's why I'm standing here waiting for you to get out so I can use the toilet. His voice was rough and I could tell that he was a smoker. For some God awful reason, I believed that he genuinely wanted to use the stall. I unlocked the door and as soon as I opened it I saw him. The same man from the fair, staring daggers at me with a disgusting grin on his face. I noticed that he was doing something with one of his hands. I looked down to see that he had his thing out and he was running, rubbing it so very aggressively. At that that sight was sickening and it made me physically ill. I started running out of the stall. He then tried to grab me by my hair in my arm. He was a big man and I knew I couldn't fight him. But what I could do was bite him. I bit his hand and I bit it so hard that he screamed in pain and he let go of me. I ran and ran until I saw Ved, who was looking for me. The moment I saw him, I then stopped running and puked. I puked my guts out. My lip was bleeding from biting his arm. Ved called for Cal and they both got me some tissues and water. They both looked very worried and concerned. I told them what happened and both of my brothers were very furious. Cal had started looking for the man while Ved had called the cops and my uncle. The police and my uncle then arrived. I explained the situation to some officers and described what the man looked like. He was around 6 foot tall, heavy looking and he wore traditional beige color clothes. After the officers were done questioning us, they suggested that I should go back home. They could tell I was deeply shaken up. And I looked unwell. My uncle stayed with the cops and my brother brothers and I returned. The entire ride back home I was quiet and in shock. The memory of him rubbing it, pulling my hair and then grabbing me by the arm just replayed in my head over and over and it made my stomach totally turn. My brothers were infuriated. Cal kept on cursing about the man ved was driving and I could tell that he was smoldering inside. I had asked Cal to hush because my head was spinning. The very first thing I did when we reached home was throw up again. Then I took a long shower, trying to get a hold of what happened, trying to process everything. And then I slept for 15 hours straight. When I later woke up, my aunt had hugged me and consoled me. My uncle let me know that the man had been found and arrested. I won't end this story with a cliche like the man had done this previously or that he was a rapist or sex offender. He was actually a very ordinary man who had apparently sold groceries and fruits in the town. All I can say is that this can happen to anyone anywhere. You must always be cautious and aware of your surroundings. The rest of my trip was wonderful, but I won't lie, this experience did dampen the mood a little for at least a couple of days. My live healed in a week. I'm currently a 38 year old man, but this was back in 2009 or so. I was about 24 years old. I had recently gotten an opportunity of a lifetime to be in what at the time was a pretty notorious metal band in Chicago. While I lived across the country. I was thinking of ways that I could afford to move closer to Chicago on my tight budget, but I didn't have many options at the time. I had been playing an online game and I had a female friend on there that I talked to regularly and it just so happened that she lived near Chicago. We had joked about the idea of moving in together as we'd known each other for about half a decade at that point and we thought we'd be comfortable with it. Well, one day I got a frantic call from her. She was crying hysterically saying that her mom had kicked her out of the home because she had found her weed pipe and she said she needed to find a place to live immediately and she asked if I would be willing to be roommates to make rent affordable. This was the first red flag for those who know though at the time I was young and did it. She actually found an apartment for only 150, $25 a month, meaning about $63 a month for each of us. This seemed too good to be true, but I drove up to look at the place with her and it was actually a pretty nice and well maintained apartment. Apparently it was just the area that was cheap as hell. We agreed to lease the apartment together and we moved in together about a month later. This seemed like exactly what I was looking for to be close to my new band. Things were decent for the first week until small red flags started popping up here and there. I was out for a walk one morning only a block away from the apartment when I got pulled over by a police officer and I was then forcibly cuffed and searched. I asked what was going on and he explained the area was known for having multiple meth labs and that I looked a little out of it. I told him that I had literally just woken up 20 minutes ago and this didn't feel normal. He sent me on my way without returning my driver's license, only to show up with my landlady 30 minutes later who let him into my apartment without even knocking. I asked what the hell he thought he was doing and he brushed it off saying he was just returning my driver's license. What can you do? It's the cops. And the rumor was they were pretty much allowed by the system to run amok in that town, so I was forced to let it go. Several more incidents with the police happened, but they all went pretty similarly. Then there was my roommate. Let me start off about her and say that I didn't find her attractive at all. And looks aside, as long as I've known her, she's always been kind of one of the guys type of girl. I didn't think about her that way at all. Anyways, the red flags started popping the fuck off with her pretty quickly as well. During that time my alcoholic drink of choice were four Locos and that was back when they were good and before they neutered the recipe for them. I kept trying to find a store that sold them but nobody in that town carried them until I found one store with a limited supply. I pretty much said fuck it and I bought all three cases that they had, thinking that I'd probably never see them again otherwise. I got home and put them in the fridge. I cracked one open and then started drinking it while playing my online game for the evening. About three hours later I went to grab another only to find them missing. I was flabbergasted knowing for a fact they were just there not long ago. Soon after, my roommate knocked on my door, barely able to keep herself standing up. I then said, wait, you didn't. Did you drink all of those? She just simply said, oh yeah. I couldn't help myself, they were so good. I looked at her like she was stupid for a good two minutes of silence before she then followed up with, hey, so we're a guy and a girl living together. You want to just like, you know, get it out of the way? I pretty much instantly knew what she meant by this and I gave her a hard no. She stopped, bracing herself against the wall, almost fell over, and then turned around with her back to me doing this really awkward fake crying, then occasionally peeking over her shoulder like she was expecting me to comfort her. I was in complete disbelief and I just simply closed the door on her. I went to bed later that night, but I had trouble falling asleep. Sometime into the night, I had saw my bedroom door open and she walked in towards the edge of my bed and just stood there staring at me. I kind of just looked at her and asked if she needed something, but she just stayed quiet and stared at me for about 10 minutes before then jumping and saying, oh, you're awake. And then ran out of the room. Needless to say, I started locking my door at night and I don't feel that I need to explain why. For additional context, I had major anxiety issues and I was regularly prescribed Klonopin, which is like a stronger all day version of Xanax, but I didn't like how it made me feel, so I rarely took it. She was the same way about her painkillers, but I really liked painkillers and she really liked Klonopin, so we often traded. Well, one day during the second week, she came into my room and asked if she could get 10 Klonopins and she said she'd give 10 Percocets when she got back from the pharmacy. I told her that was fine and minutes later I heard her leave the apartment, only to return less than 10 minutes later thinking she was coming to give me what she had promised. I instead hear her run to her bedroom and then sleep, slammed the door shut. I'm a patient man, so I didn't press her for them. An hour goes by, then another, then another. Finally I go check on her and I asked her if she had gotten them, but I immediately noticed that she was shit faced and almost falling out of her desk chair. She said, oh yeah, I got them, but I took them. I paused for a moment just to process the realization of what she'd done. You took all of them? Yeah. She said, no way. You didn't take all 10 Klonopins as well, did you? Yeah, I did. She said, do I need to call you an ambulance? I said, oh no, I do this all the time. She said this was just way too much for my brain to process. So I simply noped out of her room and decided to just check on her periodically, you know, just to make sure I didn't end up with a dead body in my apartment. Sure enough, she was fine. Later, it was then that I realized the true extent of her drug problem. Or so I thought. I later found out that she was also smoking meth, finding a pipe in a bag, sitting in the living room one day with her passed out on the floor. Don't worry, I checked. She had a pulse and was breathing. Mind you, this all happened within a week and a half and I was already severely regretting my rushed decision to live with her. But then it got worse. She began hounding me for sex constantly, each time me telling her a flat out no and her doing the previous fake crying bit, most likely while she was once again high out of her mind. This went on for a week and it got to the point where she was even standing outside the bathroom door, sanctioned in mind if we did it right after I pissed, which is disgusting. She was even knocking on my now locked door, waking me up all hours of the night, literally begging me to have sex with her, saying that I was the hottest guy she'd ever seen and that we have to since we lived together, every time I told her no. Until one day when I got completely fed up with it, feeling like this was never going to end and having nowhere else to go in this new town. I told her that if she was really that desperate, I'd let her go down on me just once. But that I wouldn't look at her and I wouldn't touch her, that I wouldn't interact with her in any way, shape or form. And that afterwards I never want to hear this shit again, thinking that I put this in a way that would be an utterly degrading turn off for any woman. Nope. She lit up like a Christmas tree and then said, you know, I will. So she did. I'm really not proud of admitting this, but she did. She crawled under my desk while I played my online game and I kept my promise. I didn't look at her, I didn't touch her, I didn't interact with her in any way. She literally went at it for three hours before giving up and crossing, crying, then saying I want to stop. You're not even kissing me and you're not even hard thinking she finally got the picture, I just said okay, no problem. And I watched her leave my room once again locking my door. I thought this was the win that I wanted and that that was the end of it. But I was wrong. She continued to hound me about it, begging for another chance button. I just kept telling her no and I told you I don't ever want to hear this from you again. Which caused her to repeatedly cry hysterically about it and just continue begging. She kept pounding on my door at all hours of the night, standing in the hallway, blocking me from going anywhere during the day, attempting to corner me in the bathroom every time I had to use it. You name was non stop and at week four I thought finally had enough. Between the police, the roommate and the rampant meth problem in town causing the place to look like the land of the walking dead, the fact that there wasn't even anywhere to meet people there, and the fact that there weren't any jobs in the town that I could find, I just gave up. I ended up breaking down and calling my mom telling her what was going on and I asked her if she could please Western Union me some money to get a U haul to come back home and get away from this situation. She agreed that I needed to get out of there and she did as I asked. I wasted no time. I went straight to the U haul depot and rented one to pick up the very next day. When I got back to the apartment I had told my roommate point blank that I was leaving first thing in the morning. She completely shut down and ran crying to her room and then shut herself in. But you know what? Not my problem anymore. I went to Walmart to pick up boxes and packing supplies and then came home. I didn't see my roommate so I saw it as my golden opportunity to beelined in my room and lock the door before she could come at me with any of her bullshit. Once in my room safely, I immediately noticed that for some reason my computer is on and that all of my instant messages are open in dozens of different windows. I had a gut feeling that she'd been going through through them, which was incredibly invasive and creepy. But you know what? Not my problem anymore. I throw the bags of items that I bought at the store onto my bed and got ready to immediately start packing only to see my blankets moving and my roommate's head pop out of the covers. I then Jumped and yelled, what the fuck are you doing in my bed? She looked wasted as usual, and then she just said, it's your last night here. We have to have sex. Once again. And hopefully the final time, I told her, no, you need to get the hell out of my room. What I need to do is sleep. I have a long drive and a lot of packing to do. She wasn't taking no for an answer this time, though. She then said, I'm not leaving until you at least cuddle with me. I was at a loss as to what to do, short of calling the police, knowing full well that would probably end badly for me as well, you know, considering the track record I had with them up until that point. With no other options, I told her, fine, I'm going to lay there and that's it. I'm not gonna touch you. I'm not gonna interact with you in any way. You have five minutes and then you have to get the hell out of my room. She didn't say a word. She just gave me this creepy grin and then stretched her arms out to me. I was gonna be sick, but I laid down beside her, kept my hands at my sides and I didn't move. She immediately began dry humping me and trying to climb on top of me and I had to push her off of me each time. She then giggled and said, I thought you weren't going to interact with me. What a fucking creepy thing to view as a win for her. I told her the five minutes was up and that she had to leave. She didn't move. I then repeated, okay, you have to leave now. She didn't move. She instead clung to me and refused to leave. Just as I was about to get up and exit the situation. She then hit me with the coup de grace of the whole situation, then saying, I want a baby. My blood ran cold and I forcefully shoved her away from me, telling her, uh, not only no, but fuck no. Which caused her to burst out crying and then say, you don't even need to touch me. I just need your sperm. I learned that I had the power of flight in that very moment. Launching myself from my bed clear across the room in one bound. I lost it, yelling, this is so fucked up. You need to leave and you need to leave now. She didn't move and again I repeated. I said, you need to leave and go back to your own room. I mean it. But she still didn't move. So once again I shouted, get out of my fucking bed. She instead rolled over and started crying and I Had no choice but to admit defeat. I was sleeping on the couch that night, but about 30 seconds into it I then realized that I didn't feel safe there either. So I left the apartment completely and I decided I was sleeping in my truck and by the grace of God, hopefully she would be out of my bed by morning so I could pack and get the hell out of Dodge. Sleeping in my truck was tough, especially being so freaked out. I went back in to check if she was still there about every couple of hours and sure enough she stayed in my bed well into the a.m. until about 5 in the morning. Having barely slept, I took what opportunity I could get, locked my door and started packing. I was in such a rush that I ended up leaving a lot of my stuff there, but I got the U haul as soon as the place opened for the day, loaded everything in by myself and the only thing left was my trash can which I saved for last so I could throw the contents of into the dumpster before loading it in. I went into the apartment to grab it, thankful that I had seemingly done all the packing before she woke up and then had another chance to harass me further only to walk in and find her picking through my trash, stuffing my used tissues into her pockets before seeing me and then quickly running back into her room and locking the door. Now I'll be totally honest. I was a 24 year old man and single. Lets be real. Porn happened and once I processed what I saw I just froze. No. She couldn't be. She wouldn't. There's no way on earth she could be doing what I thought she was about to do with my dirty trash tissues. I stood there completely stunned before I could even handle the thought anymore and I immediately ran to the bathroom to puke my soul out, wasting not another millisecond getting the fuck out of there. I hopped into my truck and turned the volume to obnoxiously loud metal music all the way up and began chain smoking. I didn't even want to think about what she was doing. I didn't want to think at all. At that point I just did a whole new level of noping out and getting the fuck out of there, only stopping when I absolutely had to for gas until I got back clear across the country. Thankfully I never heard from her ever again. I don't think I'd be able to even handle one more interaction with her. I just want to forget it all ever happened. I was completely creeped out and mortified. So why am I telling this story then folks? There are a number of things to take away from this story. Don't ignore red flags. Know who you involve yourself with in a living situation before ever living with them. Know that there's always a at least one way out if things get really bad. And don't ever, ever for any reason, think that things can't get worse. I found out the hard way that the dial can be turned way past 11. Take what you will from this story and please, please be careful out there. My name is Hayley and I was searching for some sort of flat to move into right after I graduated University. I was 22 at the time and I was struggling to find something. I was living in university accommodation, but once I graduated I had to be out. I didn't want to move back to my hometown. I felt like I had unfinished business where I was and I wanted to get a job here for a while. I decided to check Facebook groups and like I said, it was really difficult to find anything. I knew I'd need to have roommates, but I didn't feel great about my options. There were lots of groups of guys wanting another roommate and as a female I just thought hell no. I ended up desperate though as graduation approached and I found an older man who was seeking a roommate. He claimed to have moved to this area after a divorce from abroad, but that he was originally from up north in England. Now for for anyone unaware, Northerners here tend to bond together, at least in my personal experience. I was living down south but I felt like him being a northerner made him feel a little more trustworthy. I know it sounds strange, but also remember I was really desperate at this point. Now I was 22 and this was literally last year. This guy stated in his post that he was 40 and that he had a spare room for someone, but that he'd prefer someone who wasn't going to trash his house partying. He stated that he wanted to meet all potential candidates and he also said that he wanted no funny business. I thought it was worth a shot because I was becoming dangerously close to having nowhere to go but back home and I thought he seemed like a chill older guy and I figured we would stay out of each other's way if I was chosen. As I write this out, I can see how sketchy that it all sounds, but it really didn't seem so bad as it was happening. Anyway, I messaged him and he seemed harmless. He said to give him a few weeks and he'd get back to me. I thought that this probably meant that he didn't want someone my age, so I just accepted defeat but said okay. However, he did end up messaging me back only a week later asking if I'd like to meet up at his house to do a tour. I said yes and we arranged a date and time. When we met, the man was standing outside the house and greeted me. I went alone because I wanted to be a grown up and not rely on others. I told people where I was and they had the address. They knew that if I didn't check in to come to the house and call the police. The man had told me that we'd both pay rent, but as we stepped inside he told me that he actually had a mortgage, but one wanted a roommate, so would actually rather the roommate just pay for their own food and such. It felt weird that he lied about things, but honestly that would work out cheaper for me. And as he explained how it would be good for me to not waste my money on rent paying someone else's bills for them, the more that I found myself agreeing with him. I mean, he definitely had a point. He then showed me the downstairs. It was a big house. Living room, downstairs bathroom, kitchen. The dining room was attached to the living room and there was a games room. I remember thinking, wow, I've hit the jackpot here. He told me there were two bedrooms. But when he went to show me the upstairs, I then suddenly didn't want to go up there. I don't know, I guess I just felt a bit vulnerable entering a bedroom with him on my own. I said this and he sort of laughed at me. He said it was fine because my room wasn't up there anyway. Well, if my bedroom wasn't up there, then where was it and why go to show me up there? This is where it gets really strange. He told me that my room was in a basement enterable from the outside. Now, in England, basements aren't very common. Most houses, I'd say, don't really have them for various reasons. He went on to explain that he had it converted to get a bed in there. This sounded odd to me. Doesn't that sort of thing take up a lot of time? This man was a divorcee just back from abroad barely six months ago. It just seemed pretty random that he would have had this done in such a short space of time. But what did I know? My degree is in politics, not architecture. Anyways, he led me outside and round to the side. I hadn't noticed it before, but there were some steps leading down to the basement. He opened the door and then gestured for me to go inside. I approached the door but I felt really uncomfortable. For some reason. I don't know why exactly, I could see it was really dark inside and it was a bit chilly feeling. I asked him if there was a light and he said, yeah, just go inside and hit the wall. That was a weird way to phrase it, I thought. I backed up a little and said it looked good to me. I tried to start walking up the stairs backwards, holding the crusty black railing, but the man then told me, you haven't even been inside yet. I kept walking backwards and then said something about not needing to look right in that I could see that it was fine. I then said that I felt too cold and that I didn't need to go right inside the room. The man watched me as I walked up the steps and then when I reached the top, he grinned at me, flashing all of his teeth. Sure, sure was all that he said in an eerily calm kind of way. It was just creepy. He closed the door and locked it and then made his way up the steps as well. I walked far away to create distance and he asked if I wanted to come into the house to talk some more. I said no and that I better get going but that I love the house and I was really looking forward to hearing from him again. He grinned at me and he held out his hand for me to shake it. I shook it nervously, scared that he'd do something, but he never did. I walked off, but just before I was out of sight something had told me to turn around and I noticed that he was watching me as I walked away. I felt chills and as soon as I got home I blocked him on Facebook. I now see just how reckless I was going to this guy's house for even considering him in the first place. But you live and you learn. I didn't move there, but I did find somewhere to go. I ended up moving in with two guys and a girl. It lasted a year and then I needed to find something else. Well, I haven't been able to, so it looks like I'm moving back to my hometown. Then I'll just have to figure out what I'm doing when I get back there. I'll just have to live with my family until I figure out what I'm doing. This episode is brought to you by. Prime Obsession is in session and this summer, Prime Originals have everything you want. Steamy romances, irresistible love stories, and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice off campus. Elle Every year after the Love Hypothesis, Sterling Point and more. Slow burns, Second chances chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime Girl. Winter is so last season and now spring's got you looking at pictures of tank tops with hungry eyes. Your algorithm is feeding you cutoffs. You're thirsty for the sun on your shoulders that perfect hang on the patio sundress. Those sandals you can wear all day and all night. And you've had enough of shopping from your couch. Done. Hoping it looks anything like the picture when you tear open that envelope. It's time for a little in person spring treat. It's time for a trip to Ross. Work your magic. At the time of this story I was 18 and I worked in a retail store nearby. I used to work mainly till 8pm which during the winter would mean walking home in the pitch black dark. On this day I had finished work as usual and I started making my way back home. When I got inside my phone had started ringing and it showed no caller id. Curiously, I had answered the phone and I could hear a muffled sound and I decided to put the phone on speaker but all I could make out was really heavy breathing. I responded back with hello, who is this? And there was a male voice on the other side. They started eerily laughing which then turned into a serious tone then saying, why did you leave me? I asked again, who is this and how did you get my number? The eerie laugh continued and just as I was about to hang up, I heard the words that then made chills run down my spine. You know that I can see you, right? I then immediately hung up and ran to close all of the blinds. I looked out the window but I couldn't see anyone. I was honestly scared being alone in a house that I was meant to feel safe. In the next few days I spent looking over my shoulder, constantly feeling paranoid. About three days later the buzzer would start going off during midnight and whenever I would answer it I would hear breathing. I eventually stopped answering it and I would just let it buzz. I eventually started losing sound sleep, constantly feeling paranoid and scared and my phone would still ring but I just completely stopped answering all the no caller IDs. Well, about a month later my tenancy was finally ending and I decided to move out into a different area. I also changed my phone number as well as my job. For anyone asking why I didn't tell anyone about this. Honestly I was just very naive and I refused to believe it was actually even happening. Plus I was in a very bad place. Call it rock bottom if you'd like. So yeah, I had a lot of other things going on at the same time which I'm not gonna add to this story. Anyways, things are much better now and I want to thank everyone for taking their time to listen to my story. Please stay safe out there everyone. And please be careful. It was the fall of 2018 and I was in tech college to earn my administrative assistant degree. I had decided to get it in order to help my father in his business. He built houses and I worked as a secretary. Every summer I took the placement test and I found that my math skills were a bit rusty to say the least. So I elected to take a course to freshen up on it in order to better help my dad balance the company checkbooks and also better evaluate the wages of the employees that we had working for us at the time. We had full time workers and two part time workers. But I digress. The story I'm about to tell you is one particular boy man that I met in tech that nearly cost me my sanity and possibly my life. There was one boy in the hall where I did my math refresher course named Jack. He was what a lot of older people would see with a picture of a gothic person, earrings all over black greasy hair and dressing and clothing that gave off the vibe of danger or don't mess with that guy. I didn't really acknowledge him past the very sparing high or helping him with a problem that he was supposedly stuck stuck on. He would always get way too close and smell my hair, then touch it or try to touch my body. I'd move away into another desk, but he would always claim he was only messing with me. I reported him to the class monitor, but Jack would always weasel his way out some way. One day on my lunch break, my best friend Ray had said, helia, Jack's eyeballing you something fierce. I'd stay away from him. He's a creeper. I laughed softly then said sarcastically, yeah, no kidding Ray Ray. Thanks for that Captain Obvious. I don't plan on going 50ft near him. But that didn't really seem like a problem for Jack as he always caught me in the hallway every time I headed back to class. Hey babe, he said. I rolled my eyes and turned, glaring at him. Okay, first of all, don't ever and I mean ever call me babe. I'm not your girlfriend, nor will I ever be. Second of all, buzz off. I have class and I don't have time to deal with your bullshit. Bad move. He grabbed me by my throat and then pinned me to the wall, leaning in close as his other hand went to my jeans and he then started to try and touch me. He then whispered, listen here, bunny, you belong to me. This little pussy is mine. I'm gonna be claiming it soon enough and you won't be able to stop me. Know that. He then let me go and he walked away, back towards the commons area, then sang over his shoulder, see you later, bunny. Jack kept trying to get to me over the next few months and I was a wreck. I told my parents what he'd done and my dad, well, he was pissed. I told him that Jack had passed me notes that said the next day I'd be his. So my dad went with me to the college and we talked with the headmaster and the counselor. And before anyone asks me, why didn't you do it the day that Jack threatened you? I did, but they blew me off, saying there was no proof. But now that my papa was there, they were taking it way more seriously. There may or may not have been words of getting the police and a lawyer involved, but soon I was heading to class with my dad and the headmaster following us out of sight. Suddenly I felt Jag grab me harshly and then pin me to the wall with his body. He held me by my throat with one hand as the other moved down to undo my pants and to try to get them down once again. He whispered into my ear, now little bunny, you will be mine. But before he could make good on his plans, however, I heard a loud deep voice, then yell, get your hands off my daughter. My dad came barreling towards us and I then saw Jack look in shock as my dad's strong left fist then clocked him in the jaw. Jack fell over my dad, then gathered me up into his arms as two security guards took Jack away. As they were, he was just looking at me and yelling, aleah. Tell them we were fooling around. I didn't even hurt you, babe. Come on, please tell them. I didn't look at him and this only made him struggle harder, then scream, you little bitch. This isn't over. I'll get you for this. I looked at my dad, scared to death at what Jack screamed would happen. He gazed back into my brown eyes with his blue ones, saying, don't worry, princess, he's not going to come anywhere near you. And if he tries, well, he'll be damn sorry he ever met me. A few days later, I finally got my degree and I kept working for my dad in the summer. I ended up getting a retail job that I worked during the time that I didn't work my summer job and Jack had finally faded out of my mind. That is, until one day I was at my retail job and my boss called me into the office. She had showed me an application and a photo of the applicant asking if she should hire him because he had listed me as a reference. I. I then paled as I saw that it was Jack. I broke down and I told my boss all about Jack and what he almost did to me. I said that I didn't feel comfortable being around him and I really feared for my safety and the safety for others. She thanked me and sent me off. And Jack never did get the job. I'm doing better now and I barely ever think of that dark page in my book of life. I'm doing well. And I've also discovered that I'm very personable and I can spot things that most people can't see. So did Jack. My psychogoth would be rapist. You really thought you had a scared little bunny, but you really messed with the tigress and lost. To start. I'm 21 years old and I used to work at Home Depot. To those unaware, Home Depot is a big chain hardware store in North America. I worked at this location for about two years and I could probably go on for hours. But I'll narrow it down to two stories that truly stand out as scary. The first experience happened to me about eight months into the job. At this point, I worked at the customer service desk doing returns, handling order pickup and also creating orders for those who couldn't do it at home. A guy came in with his wife and looked pretty disgruntled. Before I even talked to him, he was returning a riding lawnmower that blew out on him less than a month after the purchase. So his annoyance was entirely understandable. To a point. And doing the return, he demanded his refund to be in cash, since that's how he paid. Now at Home Depot, they can only give up to $1,000 back in cash. Anything higher is a check that gets mailed to you. This guy was absolutely not having it. He paid over $3,000 and he screamed at me to give it to him. I had told him twice that I couldn't and that I have to process a check to be mailed to him. This is when he slammed on the counter and then said, oh yeah, I suggest you get your fucking manager to sort this out. I ain't leaving without my money that you so eagerly took from me. I called My manager, who will call Jay for privacy. And I told him what was going on. He said he'd be up at the desk in a moment. Now, Jay was a manager that could be a hardass when he wanted to be, but he didn't tolerate anyone disrespecting his employees. He told the guy the exact same thing that I told him. I had never seen a human being get so red in the face before. And since then he began screaming about how we're crooks and that my manager shouldn't hire ignorant little bitches, all the while slamming the counter over and over again. Jay then told the guy, listen man, you can either get a check mailed to you or you can leave. Your choice, pal, but yelling and throwing a baby fit isn't an option here. The guy then grumbled that he'd take the check, but only because we won't do cash. I put in all the information necessary and I handed him the receipt. About ready to cry at this point, he snatched it out of my hand and then told me, listen, I said I wasn't leaving without my cash and I fucking meant it. And I'll do whatever I need to do to get my $3,000 back in cash. You either go get it or. Or I'll run my truck through this fucking building. I'm serious and I don't give a shit who I run over. I'm getting my money. And he then proceeded to leave out the door, shitting bricks. At this point, I try calling J back, but his phone rings. Busy. My co worker who witnessed this all go down, who we'll call ill had made an overhead page for J to call the service desk phone immediately. Jay had called on his lunch break and asked what the deal was. El had then told him about the threat. This was one of the only times where I ever saw Jay run the way he did. With 911 on the line. El told me to just take my break early so I can cool off. I took off my apron and I went outside by the garden center when I saw the sky start up his truck. He had parked in the closest space he could to the doors, right next to the service desk. I was now on the phone with my boyfriend, telling him everything. Right before he pulled out of the parking space. Two police cruisers from my town then pulled up, blocking him in. I'm not really sure what happened afterward, but I'm really glad I got to go home that night. Now here's the second story. It was right towards the end of my stay within that store. I had recently come out as a transgender man and I had started using my new name. I had also put a pin on my apron with my pronouns. He, him, now. Overall, everyone was really supportive and kind to me. Then came the transphobe customer. I was a cashier during this experience. I was wearing a mask due to a Covid outbreak in my store and a beanie since it was winter. I was wearing a chest binder and men's clothing, so I looked pretty masculine for the most part. My voice was a dead giveaway though, as I hadn't yet started medically transitioning. As I was ringing him out, he had noticed my pen and scowled at me. I ignored it. I didn't want any trouble. Then he said, oh, so you're one of those mentally ill libtards that want to shove your gay shit in my face, huh? I just kept scanning his cart full of lumber and then said, sir, please don't speak to me like that. He then just laughed and said, what's the matter, you scared? I just shook my head. He brought over his buddy and then said, look at this. It's got tits and wants to pretend it's a man. And the two started laughing at me. I was humiliated. Now, I'm not exactly small chested and certain positions made it visible that I wasn't completely flat even with a binder. So I then said to them, why are you looking at my chest to begin with? Please go to a different register. I'm not going to serve you. The guy got really mad at me for that. He then got right up in my face and pointed his finger at me. He then said the most gut wrenching thing someone's ever said to me on the basis of being trans. You know, your kind ought to be slaughtered like cattle and I'll be damn happy to do my part in getting rid of you. I called my head cashier over and she heard everything and she then told him to leave the store immediately before he walked away from my register. He then said, I'll be waiting for you to get off, bitch. He then left his card in my register and then proceeded to wait at the door. It was when he turned to his side that I saw that there was a gun on his hip. Now, I don't really have an issue with guns. For the most part. It was the fact that he threatened me with it that bothered me. My head cashier alerted our manager on duty, who we'll call R. Now, R was a big guy with the most hardcore RBF I'd ever seen, which is resting bitch face. For those who don't know, he's also really loud. R yelled at these men for threatening my life and making lewd comments about my body. He told them they needed to leave the property and never return. They didn't listen and just laughed at him. Police had showed up not long after and had to escort them away as the police were literally dragging these guys to their truck. The guys kept screaming all kinds of slurs and horrible names. I went home early that day as my shift had ended less than an hour after they arrived. In my register. That was so surreal and so painful. I cannot believe someone had so much hate in their heart that they would actually threaten my life all because I'm trans. I'm really happy and I'm okay now and I'm really thriving in my life. To anyone out there who may experience the same sort of bullshit, you're not alone. Don't let someone someone hurt you like that. And please have a safe support system. Be careful everyone. I'm a five'6 13 year old female and I have rather short, dusty brown hair and gray eyes. I've been told many times that I look much older than I am. I've been looked at by older people many times before. Now that you know this, I'll go on with my story. I'm the oldest of five kids and every week my mom will go to Walmart for groceries. Well, last week she had brought me along and our first stop was the shampoo aisle. And on the other side of the aisle was the hair dye. My mom had gave me permission to go get my color and as I was looking, I had heard someone walk on the aisle with me. I turned and saw a rather tall guy that was most likely late 20s or early 30s and he made direct eye contact with me. I looked away and he got behind me. So close in fact, that if I reached out my arm, I could have touched him. As I was figuring out which color I wanted, I saw out of the corner of my eye the man raised his phone up as if to take a photo of me. So I then panicked, grabbed the collar I wanted and I then walked very quickly back to my mom. I told her what happened and she had told me to stay near her. My mom is one of those very protective mama bear types and when I told her she was already seeing red. As we went around the store, we kept seeing him, including when I went to the bathroom. My mom had told me that he walked past the door and looked at her, then walked away. Whenever me or my mom would look at him, he would turn down a different aisle and it had really caused our anxiety to raise. We got all of this stuff on the list as fast as possible, but once we got to the register, my mom realized that I grabbed the wrong milk brand. She didn't want me to go alone, but I told her that I would stay in a place with a lot of people. My mom was just getting over bronchitis at the time, so I didn't want her to walk around any longer. She agreed to let me go and she told me to stay observant of my surroundings. I told her that I would and I grabbed the milk and walked towards the freezers. I had stayed close to a family, but they had walked to a different direction. When I got to the freezers, I had then realized that I was now completely alone. As I was switching out the milk, I then felt as if someone was behind me. I turned around but I didn't see anyone. But then out of the corner of my eye, I saw the man. The same man from before. Luckily he hadn't noticed me yet, so I took this opportunity to put an earbud in and start talking to myself as if I was on the phone with someone. The man saw me now and he started to walk towards me. I turned to the side as if I didn't see him and I had pretended to fix my earring. He saw my earbud, muttered what seemed to be oh shit and then walked away. I finally made it to my mom, told her what happened and she then hugged me as I cried. This all happened rather recently and it's really made me be much more observant than I already was. No person out there, young or old, male or female, should ever have to experience this. Stay safe everyone and thank you for listening to my story. I'm typing this now at one in the morning because I can't sleep. Let me give you a little context I guess. I live off the side of a main road in a small town in Kentucky in an even smaller community and a lot of not so friendly looking people walk up and down the road at all hours. Around me on the property is me, my fil, my brother in law and his family, My husband and his brother drive trucks for a living and they are over the road during the week so we're pretty much alone. For that reason I won't be using any names. At around 9pm I was sitting in my bedroom going over a creepypasta that I was going to tell on my live scary story show that I had started on Facebook. Little did I know I would be living out my own true scary story tonight. Out of nowhere, my little Yorkie and daughter had started freaking out saying they heard knocking outside. I assumed it was my sister in law coming to tell me that my husband's outside dog had gotten loose, which tends to happen on radio rainy nights such as this. But when I got to the door, there was no one there. It was a windy night, so I assumed the wind had blew something against the house and just made a sound that had scared them. I then returned to my room to get back to work on the story and then left my door open. Then I heard it. I was trying to convince myself that I was hearing things that were not there just to be safe. I went to have a look and no one was there. I told myself if someone was there, the security camera would have alerted my phone of any motion. I gave up on writing my story for a brief moment and then sat in the living room to see if I would hear the knocking. I did. It wasn't a light tapping like when we no one would hear if the wind was blowing or a house settling, but it was five actual knocks. I ran to the door and no one was there. I began to panic because it sounded as if it was the side of the house out of range of the camera. I figured just to be safe, I would call my dad to come take a look around. When I called my dad's phone, my mom answered. The conversation went as followed. Hey mom, I think someone's outside my house knocking on it. Honey, your daughter thinks someone's outside her house. Okay, he's putting on his shoes. He'll be there in a minute. While I waited for my dad to make the two minute drive, I had called my husband to keep me calm while I waited and tried to play it off like I wasn't in full on panic mode in front of my daughter. And I then went ahead and sent my daughter to my room and I told her to lock the door since her door didn't have a lock on it. My husband was telling me that I was overreacting, which I fully believed him, but I just wanted to make sure everything was okay. One thing about my dad is he may be little, but he can be very intimidating. And if his loved ones are in danger, you better run for your life because he can really turn into a mixture of the Hulk and the flash in no time. So my dad gets here and walks all around my house and up and down my yard. Yard and then verified that no one was here. I explained what we were hearing and he had said the same thing. My husband said that we were just scaring ourselves. Shortly after my dad leaves and I then hear gunshots outside my house. I grabbed my husband's shotgun and then ran to the door in panic and I then started turning lights off. I looked outside but I didn't see any sign of anyone. My husband then calls and he had said to grab his gun and then get our daughter into our room calmly and then lock the bedroom door. Yeah she heard the shots too so there was no calmly to it. I asked what was going on and he explained that my sister in law had called her husband complaining of the same knocking at her house. Then my husband called his father to let him know and he had complained of the same knocking at his bathroom window and he had went outside to make a point to whoever was outside messing with us and began to shoot some rounds off to nicely. I'm armed and I'm not afraid to use it. What really put it all together into reality for me was the fact that I hadn't even spoken to neither my father in law or sister in law to tell them about the knocking because I assumed it was just my imagination. So how would they have known if it didn't actually happen to them as well? I asked if I should go outside and shoot some rounds off my myself just to make a point of my own. He advised me not to do that because this person may very well have been trying to lure someone outside this whole time to do God knows what. This has triggered a flashback to years ago when we were in our old single wide on the same property when I came face to face with a man trying to open my back door when I was home alone. So yeah, now I'm awake and I'm typing the story at 1am sitting next to my husband's gun on the couch while my child is in my bed finally sleeping. I really advise everyone out there to always keep your doors and windows locked at all times and to always trust your gut feeling. If something doesn't feel right, then it probably isn't. Stay safe out there. This happened when I was 16. At the time it was October and I would often go for walks at night and listen to music just to decompress and collect my thoughts. Once in a while I would say something strange, but for the most part I never had any particularly bad Encounters with anyone. That is until this one night. It was about 12:30am and looking back at it now, it was really stupid to walk alone that late at night, especially as a young girl. But like I said, nothing bad ever really happened to me before. I remember I was walking to the park in my neighborhood to swing on the swings because that park has a very pretty view of the city. However, as I was walking there, I got a very bad instinct. Like I had this bad feeling that something bad was going to happen to me. I should have just turned around then, but I figured I was just having anxiety. I remember walking up the street across the main road to get to the park across the street when I saw this turquoise looking car sitting idly with its headlights on. Though it was a main road, it was late at night so there were no cars out. So when the car saw me, it started driving towards me. I got a bad feeling, so I started walking up the main road. The car started slowly driving behind me. The road is 30 miles per hour. So when the car didn't just drive past me, I had then suspected that they were following me. I was right. I kept walking and the car kept creeping behind me for a few blocks. I remember getting scared, so I just got my phone out and got on it. I kept looking back and trying to make it obvious that I was a weird they were following me. I tried to call my mom, but she didn't answer. So after a few minutes of being terrified and the car hadn't stopped, I called 911. I put the operator on speakerphone and had told her the situation. I looked back and I saw that the car had slowed down about half a block. I thought the car had maybe stopped for a few seconds because the headlights were blinding so it was really hard to see what was going on. I then realized that the car was in fact still following me just at an extremely low speed that from the distance made it look like they had stopped. This had creeped me out even more because I thought the car was trying to trick me. Soon after the operator had asked my location, I then saw the car slowly make a U turn and then head back down the street. I told the operator that I didn't need them to send anyone out because the car had turned around. But I had had a feeling that the car might come back. So I quickly walked to a nearby alley that I had found and walked all the way down, looking over my shoulder every few seconds just to make sure that no one was following me. I hid for about 20 minutes behind a dumpster on the side of the alley. I made sure I was out of view from anyone Passing by the said Alley, after about 20 minutes, I had decided to get up up and leave. As I was leaving the alley, I had heard a male voice then yell out hey. I then ran out of the alley only to find that at the end, parked in the front of the alley was the same car that had been following me. The car was sitting with its lights on. I decided that it wasn't worth risking going back up the alley, so I decided to just run right past the car. I held my phone out and had fallen. Faked a phone call saying that I'd be home shortly. I was about 30 seconds away from my house, so I just booked it the whole rest of the way. I didn't even check behind me. I just ran. I got home safely, but I was left with a lot of questions. I thought that I was safe waiting in that alley. I didn't think anyone had seen me hiding. But I guess I was wrong. The whole experience had me really shaken up. I hope by submitting this story it'll really encourage more people to be more careful about walking alone at night as well as always be wary of your surroundings because I really thought I was safe by myself. But I was wrong. This happened around 2019. I'm happy to say I'm a 25 year old female, but at the time it took place place I was 19 years old. A little backstory is I live in Queens, New York in a very populated area. I always used to walk from my house to the gym and blast music on my headphones all the time. It's like a 45 minute walk and I was never scared. I always used to do it. Besides, there's so many people around that what's the worst that can really happen? Or so I thought. Now on to the the story. I was on my way back home from the gym. For some reason I had heard a voice in my head telling me to turn back and that I was in danger. Over and over I had my headphones on and I had decided to listen to completely silence my music. I then decided to look behind me and I had seen a white male with a blue T shirt and dark jeans and black and white Converse shoes. I honestly don't know how to explain explain it, but the look he had while he was staring at me from behind wasn't a perverted way, but more of a psychopath. I wouldn't know how to explain it, but it wasn't anything flirty at all. And besides, even if it was, I would have never put myself in that situation. After I noticed he was following me. Every time I stopped, he stopped. As well as every time I walked, he walked. And he had me like that for a good four blocks. That is until I then saw a fire hydrant and I decided to sit on top of it and smoke a cigarette to think and relax and just see if he would pass me. Well, turns out he didn't. And with me being so stressed out, I had never paid attention to the store in front of me that had a clear glass door. And there was a guy inside with his bike speaking to someone on the phone. Please remember him as the is really important in this story. Well, I threw half my cigarette and I decided to go in the grocery store and then get a water bottle just so the store attendant won't think I'm weird. And just standing inside the store. I went and grabbed the water bottle and paid the store attendant and as soon as he saw me, he had noticed my face, that I was in distress. And mind you, my hands were also shaking as I had handed the cash to the clerk because I mean, who knows what the this freak wanted to do to me. The store clerk then asked me what was wrong and I told him, a guy is following me. He then asked me who it was so he could check the cameras. Lo and behold, the fucking psycho was standing next door. Maybe like a minute passes by. And remember when I said the door had a clear glass door? Next thing you know, he had pressed his face right against the door with his two hands and we then made eye contact. Button. His stare wasn't normal. Never have I dreaded something so much at that time. My heart dropped into my stomach and I felt like I wanted to vomit. In all seriousness, thank God the guy never entered the store. I probably stayed in the store for about 15, 20 minutes when the store clerk then told me, he's gone now, you're safe. I was so scared to go outside though, because I had like a 15 minute walk home and who knows if he had crossed the street and was planning to hunt me that way. I'd opened the door and looked from left to right and across the street. I had one foot in the store and one foot out the store. I honestly didn't even want to leave at that point still. So remember when I said there was this guy who was on the phone and had his bike next to him? Well, he wasn't on the phone anymore. And he had also noticed my face and how I looked so scared. I was honestly shitting bricks at this point. So he had asked me what's wrong? Well, I told him that a guy was following me and that I'm really scared. He had asked me who the guy was and then he had went on to describe what the guy looked like and asked if it was him. I immediately told him yes and asked him how he knew. Well, what he said next gave me even more chills. He then said to me I saw him waiting outside the store and he had asked me if I'd seen his girlfriend, that she had went inside the store. He also said that he was standing around for a good 15 minutes. I had never felt so scared in my life. Well, if I told you before, my heart dropped into my stomach. Well, this time I almost shit it out. He had offered to walk me home safely and honestly at the time, he was my angel and a blessing all at the same time. He walked with me home the 15 minutes and honestly, I'm so thankful for him. I don't know if this is that scary to most of you, but it definitely with my head. My advice to all of you is to always trust that voice that you hear in your head and always trust your gut instincts. When I was a little girl, my family lived in a bad part of the neighborhood. Many would refer to this as the ghetto and I would agree. There are many things that I could talk about. But I'm going to talk about an incident that happened to my mom. I was about five years old and my brother was around three. My mom was feeding my baby sister when she had heard banging on the door. I later found out that he was kicking the door. It was getting close to dinner so my mom wasn't expecting anyone. The only person she knew would be home soon would be our dad. So why would our own father knock on his door? She then went over to look out the window that was next to the door. There she saw a teenager standing at her door. My mom had seen this teen living in our area with his mother. The guy kept looking back in the driveway and talking to someone. My mom knew that this looked sketchy and knowing that she had three small children, one of whom she was holding, she had waited to see what would happen. He banged once again on the door and then continued talking to someone. My mom was trying to keep us kids quiet so that the dude didn't know that we were home. When he tried to kick the door again, my mom took her fist and then banged on the door as loud as she could. It turns out out there were four to five guys that were hiding in our front yard. She also realized that when she banged on the door, she had scared the guy and he took off running with his friends coming out of their hiding places. She soon called the cops and told them what happened, but I don't really remember if they ever got arrested or not. My dad later told me that he had saw those same boys trying it again and he chased them away. I'm now 21 years old and I still thank God that he gave me a brave mother who would protect her children from harm. For anyone out there who's living in a scary area, please either get out of there or if you can't use your second amendment to keep yourself and your loved ones safe. I'm a 19 year old man who lives in a small town in Arizona. I work down in Phoenix at a mechanic shop where I do small auto repair jobs. I travel 60 miles to work every day on this one deserted highway to get there and back. I also do have a little bit of a bad habit with smoking cigars from my late grandpa who I always really looked up to and we used to smoke cigars together and it led to my addiction to smoking a cigar after work. I live with my girlfriend and her parents who are huge anti smokers. I usually leave my job and go grab a cigar from this humidifier near my job. I usually light up and smoke behind the nearby Home Depot every day before I make the long drive home. I haven't ever been bothered by anyone. Up until about a week ago I was just minding my own business, smoking a cigar behind the Home Depot and scrolling through TikTok. I looked up for half a second and I noticed this ratty old gold Nissan Versa parked across from me near the loading dock. I didn't pay attention at first to it, but then 20 minutes later I noticed the same car, but this time there's two people sitting in the car just staring at me. I didn't know if they were just waiting for someone or if they were on their break so I just paid no mind to it. Then about another 20 minutes go by. I go to put my cigar out and I still see them there. At this point I jump in my car, start the engine and start to pull out of the parking lot. As soon as I go to turn on the main road to get to the i10 to head home, I see the Versa in my rear view again. I pay no mind to it and then merge onto the main road and keep going. On my way home. I eventually get on the highway and start heading towards home, but then I go to look in my rearview mirror and I see the same car still behind me. I decided to maybe let's see if they're actually following me. And I get in the next lane over and start accelerating, thinking I'm going to lose them. For reference, I drive a 2002 Cadillac Deville DTS with a very powerful V8 engine while they have a gutless little economy car. I started accelerating and passing almost everyone. One getting in the HOV lane, going triple digits until I passed the city limits of Phoenix. And I then started slowing back down. I thought that I had lost them and just started driving normally again. But then I saw the Versa four cars back, gaining fast on me. So I started accelerating yet again, trying to put distance on us. I thought it worked and that that was my final encounter with them. I get off my exit, so sometime later. And then I stop at a Maverick gas station to top off my gas after all that hard driving. I then go inside to grab a couple of energy drinks and to go to the bathroom. As soon as I come back outside, that same fucking Versa was in the parking lot. I knew it was the same car, but there was no one in it this time. I then decided that I'm gonna take pictures of the plates to report it to the police later on. I go to the rear of the car to find no license plate. And just when I was about to walk to my car, I then see two tall skinny white guys with meth sores all over their faces and they start running towards me. I jumped in my car and locked the doors and tried starting my car so fast so I can get the fuck out of there. One of the guys runs over and actually starts banging on my passenger window and starts yelling at me. I didn't care what he had to say, so I just started pulling out of there like hell. And I didn't see the other guy get in their little Versa and attempt to box me in. I quickly go around him and almost lose control of the big boat of a car that I had due to the torque steer, but thank God I didn't. I started speeding through the desolate streets and quickly see a little side road. I then merge in there and start making random turns and head out in a random driveway with high shrubbery. I turn off my car and wait 10 minutes just to determine if I should go to the police or not. I started heading home, starting to question why they went after me. Did I provoke them in some way? There's no way they were security because that parking lot had no Security. I still don't understand why they were so desperate to follow me 50 miles to a gas station in a desolate town. If they tried to rob me, I don't think they'd get much from a broken 19 year old. I haven't told anyone this story, but my girlfriend and she told me to be careful and to stay away from that parking lot. I haven't returned to that parking lot ever since that day, and I now choose to smoke somewhere else. This is a true story that happened to me when I was 15 years old in Nottingham, England. I'm 20 now, but I still think about it often. Back in 2020, my parents had gone away for the weekend and I had the house to myself. Like most teenagers, I wasn't about to spend it alone, so I invited my best friend Kyle over for a sleepover. I'll call him Kyle for privacy reasons. Now, we had done this countless times before, but neither one of us knew then night would stick with us forever. The day started off completely normal. It was a crisp Friday afternoon, one of those gray Nottingham days where it was cold but not raining. Kyle showed up around 2pm and we decided to head into town to stock up on snacks for the night. We were planning on staying up late, eating junk food and playing video games until we passed out. You know, just a typical teenage night. We walked to the shops. I remember it clearly. We grabbed the fried chicken, a large pepperoni pizza and a couple of big bottles of Coca Cola. We even joked about getting energy drinks, but figured Coke was enough to keep us wired. After checking out, we'd started heading to the bus stop to go back to my place. That's when we first noticed him. There was a man standing across the street, just kind of loitering near a lamp post. He wasn't doing anything obvious or threatening, just standing there. But something about him caught my eye. He looked like he was in his early 40s, with a scruffy, uneven beard. He wore a black hoodie, dark jeans and scuffed trainers. His hands were in his pockets and even though he had his hood up, I could tell he was watching us. At first. I brushed it off. Nottingham has its fair share of odd people, and maybe he was just waiting for someone. Or just killing time. I didn't even mention it to Kyle, but as we walked to the bus stop, I happened to glance back and there he was again, a little closer now, still watching us. I remember saying something casual like, hey, don't look now, but that guy's been behind us for a. A bit. Kyle turned subtly and spotted him too. His expression immediately changed from relaxed to serious. We both agreed that it was probably nothing, but just to be safe, we decided to take the next bus, even if it wasn't the exact route we had planned. When the bus came, we got on quickly. I sat by the window and anxiously scanned the street. The man didn't follow us onto the bus, which was a relief. We figured maybe we were just being paranoid kids. By the time we got home, the sun had just started to set and we were back in that sleepover mood. We pushed what happened out of our minds, threw the pizza in the oven, and then fired up. Mortal Kombat Hours went by. We laughed, talked trash over matches, and devoured all the snacks we bought. Around 10pm, right when Kyle was about to finish me off at a match, we heard it. A distinct clunk outside. Like the sound of a gate swinging shut or something. Metallic shifting. I paused the game and then said, dude, did you hear that? Kyle nodded slowly. We both just sat there listening. After a moment of silence, I got up and checked the kitchen window, which had a clear view of the back garden. I didn't see anyone, but the wooden fence gate was wide open. I always closed the gate, always telling myself it was probably just the wind or maybe a stray animal. I slipped on my trainers and stepped out into the backyard. The night air was freezing and still. I didn't see anyone around, but I locked the gate just in case and came back inside. We went back to our game, although we were a bit more more on edge now. Around midnight, we finally got tired and headed up to my room to wind down. We weren't ready to sleep just yet, but we lay on our phones and talked about random stuff. School, girls, whatever 15 year olds usually talk about. I remember I was halfway through scrolling on Instagram when I noticed something. A flash of white light, almost like a camera flash, and it blinked across the window. I froze. My window overlooked the side of the house, right where the backyard fence ran along. My heart instantly dropped into my stomach. I got up slowly, peeled back the curtain, and there he was. The same man from earlier, standing dead still right next to my house, staring directly at my window. I still remember everything about him in that moment. The stubble on his chin, the way that his hoodie cast shadows over his face, and worst of all, the expression. His mouth wasn't smiling, but his eyes looked like he was enjoying this. I whispered sharply to Kyle, dude, it's him. He's outside. Kyle shot up, came up to the window and his face turned pale. Without hesitation, I grabbed my phone and dialed 999. As I explained what was was happening to the dispatcher, we just kept glancing back at the window. Midway through the call, we saw the man turn and sprint away, disappearing right behind our neighbor's fence. The police showed up about 15 minutes later. They were calm, but they did take it seriously. The two officers did a search around the property and the surrounding streets, but they didn't find anyone. The man was gone. They advised us to keep the doors locked and call again if we saw anything. When my parents got home a few days later, I told them everything. They were alarmed enough that we decided to move within the month. As of now, we relocated to a different part of Nottingham. It's been years now and I've never seen that man again. I still don't know how he managed to follow us home. But sometimes, especially at night, I still find myself checking my backyard just in case. My name is Jennifer. This story is from 2022 when I was working at GameStop. For context, I was a 21 year old woman at that point. My hair was dyed bright blue and I was short and fairly busty. I got hit on quite a few times, which I kind of expected working at GameStop. But this was different. It was a summer night and I was closing the store by myself. I had been organizing the go backs when the door opened. Hey, welcome to GameStop, I said. In front of me was the tallest, greasiest man I've ever seen. Let's call him Greg. He came up to my counter and put his arm up like he knew me or something. It was all alarmingly casual. How can I help you? I asked him. Oh, just looking to trade this in, he replied. Setting down a bag, he opened it to reveal a PlayStation 4. We had started chatting a bit, as is typical when I'm wiping down a console and want to make sure the customer hasn't changed their mind. As I'm asking him if he's brought an HDMI to go with the system, he then goes, hey, I know this is random, but can I have your number? I have to stop what I'm doing and look at him. I'm the only other person in the store and I'm not really sure what to do. But I tell him that I'm not comfortable with that. Greg keeps pushing. Okay, well how about your discord then, cutie? You've gotta have one of those. Yeah, come on. I wanna set up a time to meet up the way he said meet up has always stuck with me. Me. The way he was eyeing me, it made me feel like a piece of meat. I inform him that I have a boyfriend and that I'm not gonna give him my discord, but Greg persists it being close to the end of the night. I just want to get him out of here so I can return home and go to sleep. Stupidly though, I gave him my discord. I know that I shouldn't have, but at the time I was stupid and I felt threatened. Is the only person in the store now we have a policy where if you're trading in a system we need an ID just to make sure it isn't stolen or something. I was entering the information on his ID for the trade when he had asked me if I really did have a boyfriend. I did and still do. I informed him that yes I did and that we'd been dating for almost two years at that point. Oh I see. Is this serious? Where did you guys meet? He asked. I was starting to become more uncomfortable as time went on. What did he mean by asking if my two year relationship was serious? Yeah, it's pretty serious, I told him looking at his id. We met in a college class online. I'm still not sure why I told him that. I guess it was just to make my very real boyfriend seem more real to him. So that's where I meet boy blue haired cuties like you. Greg chuckled. It was then that I noticed his date of birth. He was 37, talking about going to hit on college girls at a class. I, being more than creeped out, handed him back his id. I'd like to think that now I'd have told him off, but at the same time I was very non confrontational. It took what felt like forever, but I got him his cash and sent him on his way to lock up the store. I sighed and started to clean up, turning on some music to calm myself down. I wasn't looking at my phone very much since there was a lot of cleaning to do, but when I checked I had 25 messages from him. Hey cutie, you want to get some drinks when you're off? It's me, Greg. I'll be waiting in the lot. Smiley face emoji. I panicked, all color draining from my face as I looked out the window to see see well Greg. He was sitting by his car. He had been waiting for an hour to see me after work. I don't doubt that he was watching me too. Freaked out, I ducked back into the back room to call my boyfriend I figured if I was on the phone with him, not only would it verify that he was real, but that Greg wouldn't bother me. I put him on speaker and then locked up the place, making sure to call him babe and baby, crap like that. But I guess Greg had gotten tired of waiting because his car wasn't in the lot when I locked up. I was a bit shaken the whole drive home, but when I got home, he had texted me again. Hey, where did you go? QT. I got us some McDonald's. Uh, what the hell? I called my boyfriend back, totally freaking out. I was practically sobbing. My boyfriend has always been so much better about standing up for himself and me. Thank God for that. He asked for Greg's information and told him to screw off. I was about to block Greg when I got another message. You bitch, stop lying to me. I don't even know why, but I responded. I'm not lying about anything. I'm going to block you. Now screw off. I received one last message from him. You're such an ugly woman. You're lucky a guy like me is even interested in you. Screw you. I hope someone assaults you. I decided then to just block him, something that I should have done the second he left the store. I had off the next day, luckily. But when I came in the next day, I was informed that a guest had a complaint about me. Apparently Greg had told me to come in on my day off and complained to the manager that I had done the trade wrong, wrong somehow and had been very rude. I then informed my manager of what had all happened and she understood. She knew me very well and she knew that I was a very chill person and very calm with customers. So she checked the trade herself just to make sure it was alright. And sure enough, it was. I'm extremely lucky that I didn't see Greg again after this. Whenever I worked the night shift, I was always so scared of seeing him. So yeah, Greg, screw you. Don't go creeping on GameStop cashiers, or anyone for that matter, and screw off. I'm so much more ready to mess you up if you try anything else. And I don't need my boyfriend to do it for me. I only got to experience this horror story through a phone call with a friend of mine. She gave me permission to share it as she can't do all that. And she had told me over the phone that night she was quite spooked. But what happened was that she made great efforts to forget about it. This happened in our hometown, which I will not disclose for Privacy reasons. We have this little shopping center near where my house was. It isn't really big enough to be a mall and it really only had maybe like six stories and an AMC theater around that area. My friend, whom I would address as V, called me around 8pm because she had something coming up so she couldn't come over after shopping at a clothing store in that little shopping center. Now, to give a layout to the outside of this building. The front of the building had a medium sized parking lot. She parked in a spot closest to the building so she didn't have to walk far in the dark. Now she she had her driver's permit and I didn't at the time, which is why I wasn't there with her at the store. I heard her open the shop's front door and she had kind of stopped in between her sentences. Very suddenly. I asked her, concerned, you okay? Why did you get silent on me? She speaks softly into the phone, there's a creepy van that's parked close to my car. I replied, okay, it might not be anything serious. Maybe you're just being paranoid. The was one person I knew that overturned things more than I even did. She then said, no, there's something off about the van. The driver's side door and back doors are open, but there's no sign of anyone in the car. It's angled just enough for me to see inside. I'll see if I can look inside from here. I said, okay, and to just keep me on the phone and be careful. Suddenly, after hearing her make a few steps and an intense five minutes of silence, I heard her gasp. I exclaim, what? What is it? She then says softly on the phone, I think I see what looks like a woman's silhouette in the back, slumped over, but she isn't moving now. Worried about her safety, I told her to get back into the the store and inform a clerk and call 911 just to be safe. She does so, putting me on hold temporarily while she goes inside and calls 911. Now this is where I wasn't on the phone with her. She explained to me this part of the story with me afterwards, after she got inside, both a clerk and her tried to get a hold of the cops. She looked out the clear glass doors in front of the building to only see one man sitting suddenly in the car on the passenger side, which she didn't see before. Another man suddenly bolts from behind the car where she couldn't see and closes the back doors, then hops into the driver's seat and starts the car. Meanwhile, the cops were just minutes away and she could hear the sirens in the distance. Well, the suspicious van zooms out of there fast and the cops arrive and suddenly both V and another person who were watching told the cops that they were just drove off, then pointing them in the direction in which they headed. One COB car stayed behind to get more information while the other sped off to try and catch the van calling for backup. Luckily, after putting me on hold, V thought it was wise to take a picture of the license plate from afar just in case she gave the officers with her the information and they gave that information to the cops chasing after the van as well as an example exact description of the color and potential year and brand of the car. The officers left and V headed home right after as she wasn't about to stay there a moment longer. She then called me and explained everything that happened. She said that the officer she spoke to was kind enough to update her about the incident when she called about it. From the sounds of it, they never caught the van that night, but they traced the license plate to a residence there. They made an arrest of the owner of the house. He didn't disclose too much else to V. Even now though, me and V wonder what the woman was doing in that car. Was there foul play? Did she live? We never really found out for sure. I also get weirded out about the why of the people leaving the car doors open. Clearly they were hiding, maybe even trying to kidnap another person. Maybe by using the woman in the car to lure another person to come and check in on her. What if V and I weren't on the phone call? Would things have gone down differently? I'm honestly just glad she's safe and that her and no one else were harmed. Now if we know that either one of us are going to be out late at night, we always text each other our locations or we call to keep tabs just in case. It's a really scary world out there and stuff like this can sadly happen even in your hometown where you thought you would feel safe. Please be safe out there everyone and be aware of your surroundings. If something or someone seems really out of place or character, do not be scared to maybe bring attention to it. This started in the summer of 2024. My friend was visiting her mother and came to my city from another one. We hang out occasionally so I went to see her. We spent the day together. It was really nice. Like usual, we both are stoners so we also smoked some weed. The encounter started when we were waiting for her bus to come so she could go to her mother's house. We were smoking cigarettes when another bus arrived and left. A man came from the bus and walked up to us. He asked if we had a spare cigarette and my friend gave him one. We thought he would leave, but no. He stayed and started talking to us a little bit about me and my friend. We both were 17 year old teenage girls at the time. As I said, we had smoked weed. He asked us things like how old we were, where do we live, where do we study, etc. My friend and I tried to answer in vague ways, saying something but not too much. He told us that he's 25 years old, from Bangladesh and came to study in our northern European country on a student visa. He told us where he's studying, which happened to be very close to my school as well as the same school where my older sister studies. My friend's bus came and she had to leave. We said our goodbyes and she left. I tried to tell the man that I had to go home, but he stopped me. He asked if he could get my number, which I tried to politely decline. He insisted and I was high and already feeling weird about him. I decided to take his number and promised to text him later. After that he asked if I wanted to go to McDonald's near us, but I declined as I didn't have any money. He offered to pay for me, but I again reminded him I had to leave. The man then finally left me alone. At the time I had an 8pm curfew but it was about 7pm so I didn't feel like leaving yet. I stayed close to my bus stop for a while when the same man came up to me and started talking to me yet again. He asked why I hadn't messaged him yet and I told him that I hadn't had the time yet. He got very insistent on me messaging him right away so he would get my number. But I tried to tell him that I would when I got home. He didn't listen and then he begged me to give him my number. At this moment I really want to remind you of this situation. A 25 year old man is trying to get a 17 year old teenage girl to give him her number when she's all alone and under the influence. I started feeling bad so I had messaged him on my phone and when he got the message, my bus luckily arrived and I left. From then on he had started messaging me daily asking how I am when we could see each other. Asking about my life and things like that. At one point I told him about about how I was annoyed because my allowance was only 20 bucks a week, which is not a lot these days. He asked me if I knew what an escort is. I was quite shocked because why would a grown man ask a teenager that? Still, I answered and I told him that of course I know what it is. He offered me €50 to stay the night with his friend if I had sex with him. I told him no, I don't do that. And even if I did, not for €50. He started begging me, saying his friend is also a student and doesn't have a lot of money to spare. I still told him no. After that. He suggested that he could be my pimp and find me customers, men that I can screw for money, and that for that he would get 50% off my services. As you can imagine, I was feeling really uncomfortable, so I just stopped answering. He continued messaging me at first daily, but it changed to a couple of times a week because I never answered. He would try to call, but I ignored those as well. After it had been over a month of this, I just blocked his number. I felt relieved and free. I sometimes would see him in the city center, but would just quickly turn around or hide so he wouldn't see me. I thought it was over until I saw a message from an unknown number that had a Bangladesh area code. I right away knew how it was him. He asked me why I blocked him and again he was texting almost daily and calling started. I was really pissed off and decided to send a message. I told him he was a creep and disgusting. I told him to leave me alone and threatened to make a police report if he ever contacted me again. And I blocked him. After that he left me alone and I was finally able to just continue on with my life. But if it was just that, I wouldn't have written this out for you all to hear yesterday. Over seven months after I sent him the last message, I saw him again. I'm currently living in a different part of the city than before. I also turned 18 recently and I live on my own. I decided to go to my friends who live on the other side of the part of the city where we live. I walked to the store and picked up a couple of things for myself and the friend. After that I went walked to the bus stop. I had about 25 minutes until the next bus came. So I just stood there with my headphones on listening to none other than Southern Cannibal while smoking my Cigarette? I'm a very paranoid person, so I pay attention to my surroundings. I had been waiting for about five minutes when I saw a car driving with the passenger window down very slowly towards me. The car stopped in front of me and there he was, the man from Summer. He started talking to me like nothing had happened, asking how I am, do I remember him, where am I going? And finally, why did I block him? I told him the truth, that his messages had made me really uncomfortable and that I felt better blocking him than staying in contact. He apologized and asked if I needed a ride. I declined and told him I was waiting for my bus. Basically, what happened was that he again and again again ignored me, saying that I didn't need a ride. I probably told him that about five times in two minutes. He then asked if I could unblock him and I told him that maybe when I'm at my destination. He again offered to give me a ride and to help me unblock him. I declined. He asked where my friend lived and I just told him at the end of a random street. He asked for the address, but I told him that I don't remember the address. I only know how to get there from my memory. I started getting really uncomfortable and feeling anxious as he wasn't listening to me. Luckily, suddenly he just made me promise that I would unblock him when I'm at my friend's house. And I promised him I would after he left. The moment I couldn't see him anymore, I just broke down. I didn't even realize how scared I was until I was able to show it. I quickly sent my friend a message telling what happened and she helped me calm down. In the end, I got to my friend's house safely without the creep following me. I also sent a message to the friend who was with me the day we met. The creep telling her what happened. What I've learned from this, and what all people should learn is that no is a complete sentence. You don't owe an explanation to people that make you feel uncomfortable. You do not have to give anyone your number if you don't want to. Blocking is free and acceptable if you don't feel safe or comfortable. I learned a lesson from this. I was wondering if I should just unblock him for a moment to tell him to leave me alone and keep driving if he ever sees me and then just block him again. But my friend told me not to. If any of you have a similar experience like this, please just stop it before it gets out of hand. It's okay to Tell someone. No. This was back in 2014. I was a 20 year old community college student living with my parents in Southern California. I had a tight knit group of stoner friends. There were five of us, myself included. We're all still best friends today. Like all bored suburban kids, our days hanging out usually consisted of loitering in the parking lots, getting stoned and going to parties when we could. We had a few smoke spots around town we would go to and get high at. Our main spot was a place we called the Sewer Lair. It was a giant storm tunnel at the end of the trail in this canyon area behind one of the local neighborhoods. It was secluded and we could be as loud as we wanted since there were no houses nearby. The tunnel was maybe 20ft in diameter. A small stream of water ran down the center of it. There was this offshoot drop directly to the right just past the entrance that led to another smaller tunnel system. This is where we would hang out. We would come here almost every night. So one night we were at the Sewer Lair. It was maybe around 1am we would usually hang out pretty late and wait for our parents to go to sleep so we don't come home and have to see them smelling like weed and cigarettes. Me and the boys were smoking, talking and listening to music. The usual. Except this night water was draining from one of the tunnel systems further down. It was pretty loud. It sounded like a small waterfall. We don't get much rain in California so it made sense that this would only happen once in a while. A few hours in, one of the guys kept looking over at the main tunnel. Says he thinks he's hearing voices. We tell him it's just the music and our voices echoing, but we turned off the music and listened silently to prove that he's just stoned and being paranoid. We listened closely and we could hear these faint voices. It was difficult to hear because of the waterfall, but it sounded like a group of people chanting. We froze and traded glances. We sat in silence and listened for a few minutes. One of the bros finally snapped and insisted we go check it out. A A few of the bros were scared and didn't want to do it. But after some bickering we decided to go see what was happening. There were five of us. What could go wrong? So we used the flashlights on our phones and make our way down the main tunnel. We walked for about 15 minutes and the chanting got louder but still sounded very far away. We still couldn't make out what they were saying because the waterfall was so loud. But it was definitely a group of people speaking in unison. We walked for a little while longer. At this point, we made it so far that there wasn't even graffiti on the walls or trash on the ground anymore. As we continued walking, we noticed that the tunnel was getting warmer. It was always really cold here, so it was strange that the temperature was gradually rising the further we went. We kept moving. The chanting was getting loud so we knew we were close. It was loud enough to realize that the chanting was in a different language and that it had to be at least four or five people. We kept moving and noticed the graffiti on the wall started to show up again. It was different than before though. It was all just very eerie. I immediately brushed it off as just edgy kids trying to scare people. But the further we walked, the more unsettling the markings on the wall became. It was a lot of weird occult type crap. There were melted black candles scattered on the ground with these weird trinkets around them. The trinkets looked handmade and were made of animal bones, string and cloth. We were all quietly inspecting the area when one of the guys pointed down the tunnel and told us to cut the lights. We turned off our flashlights and look. We could see a faint flickering orange light far down the tunnel. It was barely visible because it was so far, but we could tell that the light was coming from either candles or torches. By the way it was flickering. It wasn't a direct light either, so it had to be coming from one of the offshoots in the tunnel. Our phones were all low on battery, so we started speed walking toward the orange light. The chanting continued. Then out of nowhere, a blood curdling scream bellowed from the tunnel up ahead. We all froze and put our lights down. It was the most horrifying scream I've ever heard in my life. I couldn't even tell if it was a human or an animal. The chanting continued. Then another horrifying scream echoed down the tunnel. The guys were all ready to get the hell out of there, but I insisted that we checked it out. I led the way. As we slowly walked toward the light, the chanting and screaming just continued. We made it about 30ft from the offshoot that the light and voices were coming from. The tunnel was very hot at this point and it smelled awful. The air was thick and it was difficult to breathe. We were sweating and it felt like we were suffocating. We inched our way toward the offshoot as the chanting continued, flinching every time There was another awful scream. The screams had become increasingly More violent and non human sounding. We were all lined up with our backs against the wall of the main tunnel in front of the offshoot. The chanting and screams were coming from right around the corner. The boys gestured at me to take a peek. I took some deep breaths. My heart was pounding. I quickly peeked in for a second and then pulled back. This offshoot was exactly like the one at the entrance we would hang out at. At the center was a naked man on his knees and his hands on the ground and his body back to me. He was covered in dirt and sweat. He was in front of what looked like some kind of handcrafted altar. The walls were covered in writing. The whole area had crowds of black candles lining the walls and they were all lit. There had to be at least 50 or 60 of them. The man was also sitting at the center of some kind of candle formation. My face went numb. I looked at the guys and couldn't even speak. The chanting and screams continued as I just gave them a blank stare. I couldn't comprehend what was happening. The chanting and screaming sounded like it had to be a total of at least five people. But there was only one guy in there. I decided to take another peek mid chant. This time my whole body went numb. All of the chanting and screaming was just coming from this one man. It was like he had five voices at once. I gestured to one of the bros next to me to take a look. He stepped forward and his foot brushed against the ground making a loud scraping sound that echoed. We all froze. Then the chanting just completely stopped. My heart dropped into my stomach. It was dead silence. We all looked at each other. Then out of nowhere, we made a sprint for the entrance. All at once. None of us even said a word. We just ran as fast as we could. It felt like we were running forever. We all hauled ass for about 10 minutes before finally getting out of the storm tunnel. We just stood in the field in front of the sewer lair and caught our breaths. A couple of the guys were throwing up from the sprint. After we caught our breaths, I told them everything I saw. They were all just speechless, trying to comprehend what had just happened. We started hearing screams from the tunnel. This time they were long and drawn out, almost like a howling wolf. We ran up the trail in the neighborhood and then got the hell out of there. We vowed to never come back again. This was six years ago and it still haunts me and my bros to this day. I have no explanation for what happened. I don't know very much about satanism, occult type crap. But if anyone does, feel free to give me your thoughts on what you think was happening that night. I would really appreciate it. Thanks for listening. I hope everyone had a good Labor Day weekend. I'm a 24 year old female and I decided to spend my day fly fishing on the river with some of my friends. What started as a pretty common day of fishing ended up being a very uncomfortable one. My friends and I hit the river a little bit before noon. We have a specific spot that we usually go to that isn't frequented very often, but due to the weekend they did have more people than normal. Not as much in comparison to other areas, but still more than usual. There were four of us in total, but we scattered around the riverbank for the most part. I had eyes on everyone though. Right next to where I had my stuff set up, a gentleman decided to lay his stuff down and even set up a folding chair near mine. I was fishing so I didn't really care, but after I caught one I put it on ice and that's when this guy initiated conversation. He introduced himself and I gave him my name, but didn't offer much more. He started making small talk which I'm not really a fan of. I never knew what to say. I grabbed a beer from one of our ice chests and he asked if he could at bum wine. I feel that that was a bit of a rude question, but I gave him one as a good gesture because it was a holiday weekend. We always usually end up making friends with somebody and offering a beer or two is usually one of our customs as a group. So this wasn't extremely off. But people do generally wait until we offer is the point that I'm getting at. I got back in the river and cast out my line. He stood about four, five feet away from me and just kept talking. I listened to him. Not that I had much choice though. But gradually it started moving away from him. He kept following me, which is a big no go for me. He started making some very inappropriate comments and asked some very inappropriate questions. Some are as follows. Do you have a boyfriend? I'll probably be lesbian after this. Are you wearing a push up bra? No, I'm wearing waders. So how the hell can you possibly get that inaccurate information? When was the last time you know, did the dirty? Well, probably more recently than you did. I thought to myself, what's the biggest you've ever had in this river? About a ten pound largemouth. Duh. I know what you mean and I'm not biting. You want to go and have Some fun? No, I was having plenty of fun before he showed up. I got tired of the questions and him not taking the hint. So I moved downstream where one of my guy friends was. I told him the guy was bugging me and I needed to find a new spot. My friend started waddling out of the river to go talk to him, but he had moved away by that time. With the guy gone, we were able to continue fishing in peace. Now after a couple more hours on the river, we could collected our belongings and headed back to the parking lot of the fly shop we're parked at. Moving all of our gear back and forth took about an hour by itself and in that time I noticed that the creep was still around. I told my friend about him again, but I stopped him and my other friend was going over to him. Didn't seem worth the trouble. Plus the guy stood at about six four to six five based on my observations. And I just didn't want anyone getting getting hurt on my behalf. After about another hour we all parted ways for the time being. But we were going to meet up later to cook our catch. I went into the fly shop to grab a Coke which left me as the only remaining one from our group. This is where the story gets scarier in my opinion. I was at my truck and removed my waders and then threw them in the back. Then I grabbed a T shirt from my bag to change into. Lo and behold, look who walks up here. My dumbass is alone in the parking lot and not close enough to the shop to go for help. And then this creep then says fire titties. You got there. And he refers to my shorts as coochie cutters. He was getting dangerously close to me so I told him to get away. When he continued, I officially felt threatened. Thankfully your girl packs heat. And I grabbed my pistol from my truck and gave him 4:45 reasons that he would be making a mistake. He immediately turned around and said he was joking. Nathan proceeded to speedwalk back towards the tree line. So yeah, there I was. Boobs, shorts and a sports bra. Pointing a.45 at the ground and threatening a creep. Wouldn't my dad be proud of his daughter? I drove away feeling surprisingly normal, but pulled over at one point and started crying. I hate crying. It's such a girl thing to do. Kidding, of course. I pulled into a gas station on my way home when I saw a wildlife and fisheries agent where I explained the encounter and filed a report. He told me that he would contact the sheriff's office who did reach back out to me this morning where I filed a separate report. Unfortunately, I know how police reports go and I know this guy won't even be investigated. But I do think I dodged a bullet. And so did he. From now on, I'll be sure to keep company with me until I'm ready to leave. A few nights ago, I woke up to start my day. I wander out to the living room and see that the front door is unlocked. I love my fiance, but he can be a bit forgetful. I lock the door and head into the kitchen to start a pot of coffee and make myself something to eat. My night continues uneventfully. A few hours later. It's 1:30am I'm in my office, the farthest room from the front door. My door is closed, my headphones are on, and I'm streaming a video game on Twitch with friends. I'm oblivious to the world. Suddenly, my office door opens up and my fiance has a really confused, confused look on his face. He asks if I've heard knocking. I responded no. And I'm unsure how he could hear any knocking as our bedroom door is basically surrounded by other rooms. I ask if he wants to go check and he seems befuddled. I grab my phone and start looking through our security camera and I see that there is indeed a person recognized on our camera. That being said, we live on the edge of town with very little foot traffic and this appears to be a woman without a vehicle walking up our very snowy driveway. And I mean like feet of snow. By far one of the worst driveways to walk up in our neighborhood. My fiance and I approach the door and our exchange goes as hello? An older woman then replies, hi, is this Jennifer? I'm sorry ma', am, Jennifer doesn't live here. No, this is Jennifer street, right? Oh yeah, this is Jennifer Street. Do you need assistance? Should I call the police for you? She responds, only if you think you need to. I'm just kind of lost. Do you know of someone with a primer grey truck that lives on this street? At this point I'm kind of just like uh, it's a bit of a dirt back street on the end of town. There's probably a few primer grade vehicles here. I began to direct her towards the more clandestine end of the street, at which point she asks if she can get a glass of water. My fiance, who had been completely silent up until this point, then responded firmly, no, I'm sorry ma'. Am. At which point I excused myself because I needed to use the restroom. I have a nervous bladder. It can't be helped. I open the bathroom door and he tells me the dark he asked her to leave and she sounded like she was sobbing before she left. I asked him if he wanted me to call the police dispatch and he said that he already did. I let the woman on dispatch know all of the details I knew, including the clothing she had on, and she let me know that they would get right on it. A little while later I had checked the security camera and I saw that the police had come down the street the opposite way she needed to go, meaning that she had him in safety seen by them. I felt terribly guilty about not giving her a glass of water, but that late at night seemed suspect. I really hope she got to where she was going. The poor thing seemed like a bit of a lost soul that could use some help, but I also have a tendency to be really naive. I have a story of something that happened to me a long while ago, but in hindsight it was really dumb of me and I feel terribly dumb now. So I've always been hesitant to tell a lot of people I know about it, except for my psychiatrist of course. And I always apologize for long posts so it's hard not to hear. There were some other conversations with this man named John, but I left some of them out for length's sake. This was a few years years ago. It was pretty late, past 1:30 or 2:00am I was living with this boy who was pretty abusive and he'd gotten jealous at a party we were at earlier that night. Not even an hour after we got home, he had tossed me out onto our front porch and locked the door behind me. I was knocking and pleading for him to please let me back inside. I was still wearing what I had worn to the party and it was freezing outside. I wasn't sure what to do. They had my phone, purse and wallet in the house with them, so I just sat on the porch crying. When he turned off the lights inside and outside the house, I knew that he wasn't going to let me back in. I felt so helpless and cold. I thought about knocking on a neighbor's door, but I had anxiety about waking any of them up and causing trouble for my boyfriend. So instead I decided that I would try to walk walked at this gas station and motel, which was a little less than a mile away. I did this so I could use their phone to try and call a girlfriend of mine to see if I could sleep over with her. Ironically enough, the road I was walking on was Donner Pass Road so the freezing cold was fitting. But anyway, a little bit into the walk, this tall white pickup truck was approaching on the opposite side of the road that I was on. I tried to not make eye contact for obvious reasons, but then I heard the truck stopping and beginning to make a U turn and my heart just started pounding. I just about froze up, but forced myself to speed walk at the very least. The truck pulled up to me and this guy rolled down his window and asked what I was doing out this late. I told him how I was going to meet my friend at the gas station and that she was expecting me. He sort of smiled and offered me a ride. I said no thank you, citing that I shouldn't hitchhike. He then told me, well good, I don't pick up hitchhikers or anyone. You don't look like a hitchhiker though. You just look like you need some help. He came driving next to me and told me that I shouldn't think he was a creep. He pulled out what looked like a police badge and told me that he had just gotten off duty, which is why he was in civilian clothes, close and out so lake. He said that he wouldn't mind driving next to me just to make sure I got to where I was heading safely. I was naive and a bit too trusting of his kindness and credentials, and when he offered me a ride again, I said that it would be nice because the gas station wasn't that far anyway. He popped the door open for me and I hopped in. The radio was low, it was a little messy, the ashtray was full of cigarettes and there were a lot of newspapers on the passenger floor. As I was moving my feet, some of the paper shifted, showing a pair of handcuffs, some coffee cups, empty water bottles, rags, a highlighter colored bandana, and some other things. He apologized, saying it was the truck that he took hunting, but it was super warm so I was happy and I didn't mind at all. He told me that his name was John and he asked why I was scantily dressed without a jacket. I started to tell him about the party and the fight that I had been in with my boyfriend. He was super charming and attentive. He even laughed, saying he could go back and arrest him. I asked about him and he told me about his family. He was a young dad, he had a wife, a daughter, a son and a dog. I told him it was like he had the perfect little family and he laughed, saying that he certainly did. Then it sort of clicked for me to ask him if I could use his phone, but he said no because he had to save his battery. We were approaching the gas station and he drove right past it. I politely said, oh, I think that's the one, but he didn't answer me. I felt sick to my stomach. My heart started pounding and I started getting choked up. My eyes started tearing up as I was looking out the windows and was watching the lights behind us getting further and further away. It was hard for me to even speak, but somehow I murmured asking if he could please turn around and he ignored me. Whenever I would look at him he just looked empty eyed and emotionless, totally dead and glazed. I looked out of the back window and down at the road to see if maybe we were going slow enough that I could make a leap out of the car without seriously injuring myself. I remember always hearing never go to the second location, but I thought about the possibility of jumping out and breaking an ankle and how it would be a lot harder to get away with one foot as opposed to two. I debated with myself that there was snow on the ground, but then again snow is hard to get around in, especially when you're not fully clothed. I feel so dumb now too, because I wasn't even tied up or anything. I was just so scared though. Like there was nothing but trees, an empty road and us. I was crying pretty badly at this point and asked if I could please borrow his phone again. I don't know why I even asked and he told me to stop talking. Then he had started talking under his breath saying girls shouldn't be out so late, you shouldn't have been alone this late. Look what you're doing to me dressed like a slut and other derogatory things. As he kept saying these terrible things. I wasn't even responding. I was just crying and trying to think past the fear that I was feeling. I remembered the pair of handcuffs that I had seen under the papers beneath my feet, so I used that little, I don't know how to describe it, like scoopy motion. I managed to use my feet to scoop the handcuffs and use my heels and toes to push them under the bottom of my seat as far as I could. I was thinking of different things I could do to try to help myself. Like if we were close enough to some upcoming lights or structures, I could just grab the wheel and cause us to crash into them. Or maybe if I got lucky enough for a cop to pass us, I could grab the wheel and swerve so he would appear to be a drunk driver and we'd get pulled Over. I guiltily thought about the possibility that this man was just having a weird night and how if I didn't hear anything it would hurt him. But I told myself that that sort of thinking is what got me into this mess. He pulled off the road where there were still woods on both sides of us. On his side the wooded trees were closer to the road. On mine there was a small gap fully covered in thick snow before trees thickly piled up maybe 10, 16 yards away. He turned off the car and coldly said that there was something wrong with the car and to get out with him. As he grabbed the keys and was stepping out of the car, I grabbed onto the center console and cried and pleaded, not wanting to get out with him because it was too cold. He turned around to face me, his door still open, and he shouted at me to get out of the car because we had to go check out the trunk bed hatch. I dug my fingernails deeper into the console, thinking that my cries and head shaking would cause him to come around to my side of the car and drag me out himself. I was crying and said, please John, I'm so cold and scared. I was thinking of everything I ever heard. Humanize yourself, use first names. He stared at me in this way I can't even describe it in this day I don't even know how to start. He got back in the car and I sling toward my window, scared that he would drag me over the console. He turned off the headlights and everything just looked dark blue. He stared at the steering wheel for what felt like years before lighting a cigarette and looking out his window back at me and then back out his window. He heard me shuffle my feet on the newspapers. I was just adjusting my legs. But while still staring out his window he told me that if I thought about running he had a quick way to get me where he wanted me. And oddly enough I was sort of thinking of running minutes before that, but reasoned that if he wanted me out of the car then I should definitely stay in. Otherwise he would chase me or shoot me. I'm glad I was right. I think at that point I had sort of hit some sort of bottom of my reserve and instead of panic there was just numbness and exhaustion. There was still an occasional hot tear or two, but I just remember remember being numb. I talked to a psychiatrist about this sort of thing and he thinks it just came from my ex boyfriend's giving me ptsd. It was dead quiet, but I finally just barely audibly told him that my friend was still waiting for me and Then asked about his wife and children. He then flatly said that he didn't have a wife or children and that his house was empty. I asked him what he was thinking about and he said I'm thinking of what to do with you. He didn't say it angrily, he just said it flatly and coldly, which sort of scared me more. I did start getting worked back up to a cry at that point and he told me not to cry and turned the car on, offering me some heat. I just cried and said I wanted to go home. Eventually he had started driving and he kept driving until we were approaching a gas station. I was gauging the right time to reach for the wheel, but before I could he started slowing down while pulling up. He told me not to tell anyone or he would find me. Then he told me all he was doing was teaching me a lesson not to hitchhike with strangers. He was almost coming to a complete stop when he told me to get out before he changed his mind. Before he could even get another look at me to assess my understanding, I was already down out of the truck and sprinting toward the gas station. The panic was overwhelming me, but then I stopped and remembered to try and see his license plate. I turned around but only caught the blur of the last three numbers as he was driving off. I ran inside and I asked the clerk behind the counter to please call the police. I waited until the officer got there and I'll be honest, I was a little scared it would be John. My fears melted away when the new faced policeman got there. I gave him the description of John. His appearance, the vehicle, color and type, the parts of license plate that I had caught, the fact that he said that he was an off duty cop, just basically anything I could. I asked him if he could look at the camera and the officers disappeared in the back for a little bit. Then came back saying that there was nothing on them. I asked if I would be able to look and the officer said no and asked me if I didn't trust him. I told him of course I did. The officer gave me a ride to my friends, lecturing me for hitchhiking consisting of him repeatedly asking if I knew who Ted Bundy was. Of course I knew. I was just naive to think that it could never happen to me and I was desperate for some warmth. I never heard anything back about the report that was made, so I tried to follow up and each time I did, they never got back to me. Aside from this one time I was told my case number didn't even exist, but that didn't stop me from trying to follow up. Throughout the months and years. I asked my friend if she ever heard of any weirdness or anything since that incident had happened, whether to her or anyone up there. As she always says no. So I sort of let it go and just tried to tell myself that maybe he actually was just trying to teach me a lesson or something. I mean, I definitely never hitchhiked again. So it was a lesson. It certainly worked. I never heard anything back having to do with the case. I never heard of any other odd experiences up there. Maybe it was just one man trying to teach me something, but honestly, sometimes I think to tell myself that to help me sleep better at night, it all felt really real. Even if it wasn't real, I'm really glad that I didn't get out of the car in the woods that night. The story begins with my mom, dad, and myself traveling to America for the first time. I'm Mexican, so I didn't know much of the language at the time. I was also only four years old. We had went to Walmart to buy some things and my mom told me to go with my my dad. While I was walking to where my dad was, a woman approached me. She was about 30 years old. By that point I was already lost. She said something to me about helping find my parents. The thing is, I didn't understand much English at the time, so I didn't really understand what was happening. She took me to her car and we just drove away. Meanwhile, my dad had started searching for me in the Hot Wheel section, but I wasn't there. They panicked. The woman kept me at her house and about two days passed. Surprisingly, she was really kind to me during that time. After 48 hours, an Amber Alert was issued and she was being searched for all across South Texas. About a week later, they had already traced her car's license plate, pulled her over and arrested her. It turned out that she had mental health issues and she was released. This happened around 2014, so I don't know all of the details of the case, but one thing that I do know is that she had tragically committed suicide later that year. I still remember her face to this day. People tend to have the stereotype that kidnappers are always wearing ski masks and lock you in a basement or something, but in my case, it wasn't like that at all. It was New Year's Eve 2020 and I had just finished my shift as a server at a sports bar and restaurant in downtown. If was 26 years old and I'd been working there for about two and a half years. I headed over to a nearby bar that lots of fellow servers in the area frequented. While I was there drinking, I noticed a man there who was a regular at the place I worked at. I saw him all the time, multiple times a week, but since he always sat at the bar rather than at the tables, I'd never actually spoken to him. This man was middle aged, quiet, and he always dressed nicely in business attire. As I passed by him, I greeted him in a friendly way just oh, hey, I see you at my workplace all the time. Just meaning it as a casual hello. Not intending for it to be anything more than that, this man who was double my age proceeded to tell me, I've been watching you for the past three years. He started telling me about how he would always watch me working while I sat at the bar. He also worked across the street, so he was watch me walk the lunch shifts from his office window. I don't remember everything that he said to me, but he really emphasized how long he had been watching me and he's been waiting to talk to me for three years. It had actually been less time than that as I had only worked there for two and a half years. Then he said that he was planning to ask me to marry him for his 53rd birthday. The hell. You've never even spoken to to me before and yet you are planning to propose to me? I remember him asking where I lived, to which I just gave a vague answer. At some point I said that I was thinking about not working there for too much longer and his response was chilling. Well, don't go anywhere. I won't be able to find you at my next shift. I had told all of this to the manager on duty who went to go ask the bar manager about this regular. The bar manager's response is harmless. Frankly, that dismissal kinda pissed me off. I feel like regulars can say anything they want to. Staff and management will just let them get away with being 2020. All the restaurants in my city shut down in March, so I didn't have to work there much longer anyway. I'll probably never run into that guy again. I know this story is less creepy than many of the other stories you probably hear, and trust me, I've had tons of other creepy things said to me while working in the service industry. But still, it was really eye opening to me to realize somebody that I had never spoken to had been watching me and fantasizing about me for years. He just looked like a Polite man minding his own business. On Super Bowl Sunday 2004, my mom and dad went to a bar to go watch the game and they got a family friend to babysit me. She was 16 at the time. She was told under no circumstances that she was to leave the house, what time they'd be home and all that good stuff. Of course, being 16, she didn't listen and she took me to her friend's house to go watch the gang. I'm not sure how far away he lived from us, but it couldn't have been that far. As we walked, I was in my stroller. We left pretty soon after the game because my parents wouldn't be too far behind us. But my babysitter forgot to buckle me in as she was in such a hurry. However, on our way home, we were walking and strolling down the street when a car had started getting slower and pulling up towards us. The passenger door flew open and a man grabbed me. My babysitter, obviously freaking the hell out, thought so quickly and remembered she was an incredibly skilled boxer and beat the crap out of him. I guess he then realized that I wasn't worth getting beaten up by a 16 year old girl. So they took their losses and the car sped away. When I tell you that we sprinted home. We did. My parents obviously were incredibly angry at her for taking me me out and she never got to babysit me again. We did call the police, but they never found out who did it. So yeah, there's a grown man roaming the streets of Chicago who got beat up by a 16 year old girl. When I was about 4. This was in 1997 by the way. My mom, brothers and I went to a water park on a weekend during the summer. Summer. The park was set up so that you walk through the entrance and run directly into a food court with a little information and map station. To the left was an inside arcade area with a little roller coaster directly outside of it. And behind the arcade building was an enormous wave pool. To the right of the entrance was the kiddie park. And then behind the kiddie park was a lazy river and all the water slides. Since my brothers were older and wanted to ride the big slides, my mom and I split from them to head to the kiddie park. I remember playing for a little while while making friends with the other kids. When this one little boy asked me if I wanted to go to the wave pool. Since I was little, my mom told me I was not allowed to go to the wave pool without an adult. So I told him I couldn't. He then said, it's not a problem. My dad's already waiting for us and he's already told my mom he's going to watch us. Well, being a dumb kid and marveling at the wave pool. Since we got there, I was pretty much sold and I followed him over there. My mom probably didn't notice at the time because the lawn chair she was sitting in around the kiddie pool was being blocked by little kid slides and a billion other little children that were there. We headed to the wave pool and met the kid's dad. He immediately took my hand and guided me into the wave pool. I remember only being in there for like two minutes tops, until he picked me up and carried me back out of the wave pool. I don't think I even asked where we were going, but I assumed the food court because that's where we were headed. I then remember reaching the entrance gates and a lifeguard approached us and asked me about my name. I said yes, and it started crying because I thought I was in trouble. The lifeguard then grabs me from the dude and I see my mom running up sobbing. Years later, we're revisiting the story and she tells me that she noticed I was missing pretty quickly. And then she told a lifeguard to close off the entrance to the park. I was wearing a yellow bathing suit with pink flowers on it and two yellow ribbons in my hair, so the description gave me away instantly when the man was carrying me out. I asked my mom about the kid and she had no idea who I was talking about. She said it was just a singular man and he had ran to his car in the parking lot as soon as the lifeguard took me out of his arms. There was no kid that was with him. So this happened a few years back in the Netherlands. I was there on a training exercise with the German army and our commander had decided to extend the the trip to include another weekend for us to celebrate and do some sightseeing in the Netherlands. On Friday evening, myself and a group of about five others decided to hit the town. From what I could tell, the town had a lot of younger people, but not so many tourists. All of the bars were relatively packed and our group kind of split up between two places, a club and a bar. A friend and I were standing at the bar when they had had a game, which I'll call Alligator Tooth on the counter. Basically, it's a plastic alligator head and you just take turns pressing the teeth in its open mouth. At some point, the mouth snaps shut and then the person loses in the bar. That meant the loser had to buy a round for the winner. Anyway, we probably played four rounds and drank our shots. When my friend wanted to go for a smoke, I needed to go use the bathroom. So we decided to meet back at the Alligator game. When I came back from the toilet, my friend was still gone and I also noticed the rest of the group had apparently all gone to the club. Nevertheless, I waited for my friend to finish a smoke as promised and just looked at my phone for a bit. Seconds later, I hear an excuse me and a younger guy is trying to get my attention. He looked like an average student, early 20s, white, well dressed and relatively short. He asks me where I'm from. He tells me he's a student here and that it's always really interesting for him to meet new people. After some friendly small talk, he invited me to play a round of Alligator's tooth with him. Being in a bar and still waiting for a friend, I agree. We play and he instantly loses. First round, second round and third round. The fourth round I lose and then he loses the fifth and sixth. At this point, I'm getting a little annoyed that my friend has obviously stood me up and left the bar in order to go to the club. I tell my new friend that I'm leaving and he suddenly gets a bit anxious. He tells me that he wants to show me something and he takes out his phone. He's on Google Maps and enters a location, some random street nearby. He explains to me that he's in trouble. Some guys are having beef with his brother and are making all kinds of threats towards him and his brother. He's really scared that they'll do something to his brother, so now he has to pay them a lot of money to leave them alone. At this point, I'm almost certain that I've understood his schtick and he's gonna ask me for some money or a loan or something. However, when I start to tell him that I have no money, he stops me and he tells me that he already has the money he needs with him. He then asked me to come with them when he gives them the money in order to protect him. He said that he would also give me any of the money they won't take. At this point, I'm obviously thinking that this is rather sketchy. I tell him that I won't join him, but if he really feels so threatened that he should go to the police. As soon as I tell him this, he almost instantly turns around and leaves. Before I left the bar to go join the rest of the group. I had told the bartender what had just happened. She simply just brushed it off and didn't even really give me an answer when I asked what she thought about it. Anyway, I was really only weirded out at this point and I was getting pretty drunk. I then left the bar and went to the club across the road. We spent another couple of hours in the club and in the early morning hours our group had left to get a taxi. Just as we left the club I I could see the guy from the bar standing just across the road together with two other guys, which I really couldn't make out that well. I stopped and stared over towards the trio. He spotted us and then he quickly turned and walked away with the other two guys. Until today, I'm not really sure what his deal was. Maybe he was legit, maybe the other two guys would have jumped and robbed me and maybe something else entirely, but I'm quite happy that I never found out. My name is Kylie and I'm a 22 year old female in Northern California. I research and create true crime videos and while researching one day I had stumbled upon a very scary human trafficking and or robbery scheme where people would scout you out in a store like Walmart and be in communication with someone on the outside who has a car waiting. I've been trying to find the videos about that since then but I can't anyways to set the scene. This took place around a month ago February of 2025. I don't like to go to Walmart but my grandma does. I've been taking her for the past three years since she can no longer drive due to her vision but now she has cancer and because of that she appears weaker than she did even a few months ago. I've offered to go to Walmart for her to get her groceries myself but she genuinely loves outing and is very specific about her produce. I picked her up with my 3 year old daughter in the backseat and I drove us to Walmart at around 3 in the afternoon. Everything seemed normal at first and she was looking at the bananas for a while. She told me that I could go and get milk and a book that I've been dying to read before coming back to meet her at the bananas or in the bread section. I took my daughter and got those items within 45 minutes. My grandma doesn't have a cell phone so it always has made me anxious to leave her alone in a store even for a moment. When I got to the banana display and didn't see her. I panicked momentarily before then remembering that you. She said she was heading to get bread next. However, when I got to the aisle, my heart dropped. No grandma. There are about 14 aisles between the produce where the bananas were and the milk where I had just been. I walked quickly around those 14 aisles three times and looked down every single aisle. No Grandma. I finally found an employee and showed them a picture of her. He said that he hadn't seen seen her but would walk the 14 aisles. He started on the perimeter that had the meat and dairy, while I had started along the perimeter that bordered the baby section in toilet paper. Both of us looked down every aisle and there was no sight of my grandma. That was it. I started going to the front of the store to ask a clerk to please say my grandma's name over the loudspeaker yet. And as I approached the front, I saw my grandma sitting on a bench in front of the checker and she had already paid for her groceries. I asked her where she had gone and she told me that she had gone to look for bread, but that two women had started following her in the store. She initially thought that she was just being slow and that she was in their way. So she then confronted them and asked if they needed something to which they shook their heads. They didn't take anything from the bread aisle. My grandma still wasn't immediately concerned, but decided to go to to an entirely different section of the store which had the soaps. They were right behind her and she had heard them whispering into a walkie talkie. After that, my grandma decided it was best to check out and just wait for me at the front. I was of course alarmed by this, so I got my milk and book and took it to the cashier that was right in front of the bench where my grandma was sitting. Yeah, and as I was checking out, I had noticed an odd man who was standing there between my grandma and I. I didn't think he was odd at first, but then I noticed that he didn't have any groceries or items. He also wasn't clearly waiting for someone and I'm assuming that he wasn't waiting for the Clare store that was next to the benches. That really wouldn't make any sense. He was wearing a darn blue baseball cap and he kept darting his eyes between me and my grandma. If you think I'm just being judgmental, I promise I'm not. The thing that set my alarm bells off was the fact that he was holding his phone upside down and he was talking into it like a walkie talkie in a very hushed tone. He was looking at us. He wasn't doing the normal thing that people do whenever they're on the phone and accidentally space off while staring at you. No, this was deliberate. I grabbed my bag and gripped the card tighter. My 3 year old was understandably oblivious to my panic and so was my grandma. I told my grandma that it was time to go and she got up off the bench to follow me. However, as she got up and started following me, the man had started following us too. My grandma didn't notice him, but she's hard of hearing and I couldn't tell her privately that I thought he was following us. She is also the type to go into a state of peace, panic and anxiety and in her current physical state, I didn't want that for her. Thankfully, and I mean thankfully, there was a guy who was standing by the double doors checking the receipts. I whispered to him in a hushed tone about the man in the blue cap who was following us and what my grandma had experienced with the two women. He looked at the guy and then looked at me and then called the security guard over. She was a very intimidating woman. I say this in the best way possible and she escorted us out the door. The man in the blue cap had stopped following us, but he raised his phone again to say something else. When I finally got my grandma and daughter in the car and locked the doors, I then told my grandma what had happened with the man in the blue cap. Please be aware of your surroundings and if you're a woman especially bring pepper spray and do not be afraid to ask for help. If I just had my grandma with me I would have been a lot calmer since I can handle my own but I'm not capable of protecting my grandma and daughter at the same time. I'm still not sure what the exact intention of those people was, but I surely do not want to know. As the Crispy chicken sandwich from 711 people always call me loud and I'm like yeah I know I'm crispy. Did you expect me to whisper? If you want quiet, go eat some soup and reflect. Like I know I'm a handful, I'm bold, I'm juicy, throw some pickles and barbecue sauce on me and baby I'm a whole meal and with seven rewards I'm just $4. Quiet no crispy, saucy and $4 very only at 7 Eleven Valley 362326 participating stores only while supplies lastly app for full. I'm a 26 year old female if I remember correctly. This happened to me somewhere between the age of 20 and 21 to give a little background context. I'm from Chicago, Illinois and always have been. When you live in Chicago or in the surrounding suburbs and need to get downtown, taking the CTA train is often a very convenient option for anyone who isn't familiar. Chicago isn't just the big beautiful skyline that you see on tv. There's tons of different neighborhoods within it that are mostly just residential. These neighborhoods are still geographically inside of Chicago, so the different CTA buses and trains will take you all over to different parts of Chicago, not just downtown. Driving is of course an option, but parking your car often costs money and you're not even guaranteed to find a spot within walking distance of your destination anyway. Besides, driving downtown can be a nightmare. So naturally a lot of people use public transportation, including myself. At least I used to. This story is actually why I never use public transportation again and am still afraid to even consider doing it in the future. So here's the story. My two co workers, who were sisters, we'll call them Hailey and Helena, had asked me if I wanted to come with them to one of the beaches in downtown Chicago. I had been to these beaches many times before with no problems. I typically always enjoyed myself until mid afternoon when troublemakers would always seem to show up. Yeah, if you stay at a Chicago beach long enough on a hot day, you can usually anticipate a fight happening. So I was more than glad to come with as long as we didn't stay too long. I asked my boyfriend at the time to come with us. We'll call him Nathan. Nathan said yes and seemed too excited to come with for a fun day outdoors. The day came and we hopped on the train and got up from the stop that was closest to the beach. We headed down there and at some point my coworker showed up. All was well and we were having a nice time. I was glad I was finally able to able to introduce Nathan to Hayley and Helena as they were two of my favorite co workers to spend time with. Despite having introduced Nathan to the girls, not much conversation was exchanged. This isn't an unexpected response when people meet each other for the first time. Not everyone will hit it off with stuff to talk about right away upon meeting one another and that's okay. But Nathan had a tendency to get very angry when friends of mine didn't understand immediately have things to talk about with them. I'm sure it was just some social anxiety mixed with the awkward environment of being around someone you aren't comfortable with yet. Nathan and I headed over to a different section of the beach because he wanted to be away from the girls. Things were okay for a short while until he wanted to get angry with me about Hayley and Helena's alleged lack of effort to engage socially with them. This was nothing new. As I said earlier, he got very frustrated when this happen. This was unfortunate timing for an argument because I had been having a really nice time at the beach. He demanded that we leave as his reaction to the situation made me feel partially guilty. So I put my short and shirts over my swimsuit and we had started heading back to the train station. I don't remember if I said goodbye to Haley or Helena or not, but I do remember being upset and frustrated at the situation. But because I wanted to stay longer with the intention of leaving to the train station with everyone. After a heated argument followed by awkward silence, we made it back to the train station that we had originally gotten off at. This was at the Red Line. For those who don't know, Chicago CTA train routes are organized by different colors and each have their own designated stops. This one was called the Red Line, and it was a subway station. We headed up the escalator to go wait for our train, too irritated at each other to be next to one another. I was a few steps ahead of Nathan on the left side of the escalator, and he was a few steps behind me on the right. As we were waiting to finish going up the escalator, out of my peripheral vision, I had noticed a man with a backpack standing behind me, bent over. I turned my head over my shoulder to see what was happening, and I saw that he was tying his shoe. He then looked up at me for a moment and smiled. He apologized, presumably for being a little too close. I turned my head back to face forward. The escalator was almost all the way up now. As I approached the top, I had started to walk. And then out of nowhere, Nathan started sprinting up the escalator and ran up to that same man who was tying his shoe. Nathan. Nathan grabbed him from behind by the part of his backpack that was against his neck. Nathan then shouted at him, if you ever do that again, I'll throw you on the damn tracks. Nathan then shoved the guy away. The guy just casually walked away with a smile and he flipped Nathan off as he was walking. I was baffled. I was speechless. I had literally no clue what was going on. Nathan then ran up to me and said, said that guy had his face just an inch away from your butt and he was blatantly sniffing it while trying to pretend that he was tying his shoes. I was in shock. I almost didn't believe Nathan at first. All I could think was, are you sure? That's until some other guys ran up to me and then frantically asked me if I was okay and that they saw what the guy did to me. At this moment, I was disgusted. I couldn't believe I hadn't noticed. I couldn't believe someone was walking around doing this to women in the open public. I could only imagine what sort of things he might do if he was alone with the woman. Our train showed up, we got on, and I just couldn't do anything but cry. I was so beyond freaked out and I never went on a train again. I'm 23 years old now. When I was 14, I was naive and dumb and my need for attention all converged. I was abused alone and hardly had any friends because I wasn't allowed to hang out with my friends except for in school. I discovered Omegle, as most teens did in the mid 2010s, I met a guy from Missouri and he claimed to be 20, his name, Noble. We talked and my mother found out and kept taking steps to keep me from talking to him. But I was stubborn and I thought he loved me. So our relationship goes on as I'm taken from my home and put in a safe house to protect me from being exploited. The thing is, I still had access to a cell phone, wifi, and anything on the Internet. So Noble and I keep talking and I find out that he's not in fact 20, but he's 31. I was pretty much delusional, emotional, and was just like, oh, that's fine, because again, I believed he loved me and that he only loved me. Lots of in and out of youth homeless shelters and programs. And I was then placed back with my birth mom for a short amount of time, but was taken again and then given to my bio father. He then proceeds to find out about this man and try to prevent me from talking to him. It worked for a while as I was in therapy and on meds. After we moved, I was taken off my meds and out of therapy and I started acting up and reaching out to him again. Well, I was removed from my bio father's home due to his and my behaviors and I was placed in a group home. I'm now 15. My third week there, I ran away and I told Noble to come pick me up. He drove 16 hours as I stayed hidden in some random lady's house that I met at a gas station. He arrives and we start heading back to Missouri. While we're in Pennsylvania driving from Southern Tier New York, I'm playing on his phone and I see he got repeated messages from a few girls accounts on Snapchat. I ask about it and he comes clean that he had been doing the same thing with other girls that he had done with me. Nudes, calls, you get the point. I started crying and telling him to either bring me back or drop me off the side of the road and I'll just find my own way back. He tells me no and proceeds to pull over and choke me until I'm unconscious. I'm 5 foot 6, 111 pounds and was anorexic at the time and he's 200 something pounds and 5 foot 10 ish. I don't know how long I was out, but it was long enough for him to find a hotel, check us in and get me in the room without someone noticing. I woke up to him on top of me doing you know what. The rest of the trip was kind of a blur. Bob. We end up finally reaching his apartment and I'd ask to see his phone so I could play a game. This idiot actually gave me the phone and I texted my grandmother and my birth mother on messenger saying that I love them and that if they didn't hear from me. I was in Missouri after being assaulted multiple times, forced to take pictures for other disgusting individuals and forced to act like I was happy so I could live like the meme, minus the yelling FBI. The FBI and the Missouri State Police bust down the door and handcuffed him. They then took me to a car and then took him to another one. They took away all his computers, hard drives, etc. And I was brought to the juvie, then transferred to the mental ward for weeks, then back to juvie. Instead of being treated like a kid who was groomed and assaulted and kidnapped, I was treated like a criminal. I was in Missouri for a month before I was put on a plane and sent back to New York where I was quickly put into residential. He was sentenced to 30 years for what he did to me as well as other girls my age. I tell this story now because he randomly found my Instagram and started trying to reach out to me again from prison. I told him that he was disgusting, that I wasn't a naive kid anymore, and that he needs to leave me alone. He got the memo the first time thank God. But he should have never been able to reach out to me to begin with. I keep my eye on where he goes, but it seems he's either working his years off or he's been getting less time somehow because his years drop from 30 to 26 that he needs to serve. So noble. If you're on your little prison tablet and somehow find this subreddit, I just really hope that I don't ever hear from you again. Please. For privacy reasons, I won't be giving my age or name. For a bit of context, this happened about two years ago, a few weeks after my little brother was born. Ever since we moved into this house, there's been this small room in the basement that's always locked to show you how little anyone can uses it. I don't even know what's in there, but I've always assumed it's just the utility stuff, like meters or something. The room is really tiny, barely big enough to lie down in. Now let's get into it. My parents went away for a weekend together, leaving me, my older sister and my baby brother, who was just a few weeks old at the time. At home, my parents trusted us to take care of ourselves, since they've done this before. Anyway, that night, my sister went out with friends and wasn't planning to come back until like 4 or 5 in the morning. I watched a good movie and since it was already getting late, decided to put my little brother to bed in his room upstairs. I did that and came back down to watch another movie, but I ended up falling asleep about two or three hours later. Right around midnight, I woke up to these strange noises coming from upstairs. At first I thought it was just the neighbors, since they can be pretty loud and the walls are thin. But then I looked at the time and I realized that it was way too late for them to still be awake, let alone making that kind of noise. So I got closer to the stairs to investigate, and just as I was about to go up the first step, I heard the sound of something metal falling on the ground. Guess what it was? The key to the small room in the basement. I immediately grabbed my phone and instead of calling the police, I texted my friends to tell them what was happening. One of my friends had the brilliant idea of calling the police for me. Suddenly, I had heard the bathroom door then slam shut. I knew it was that door because it makes a very specific creaking noise when it closes. I remembered my brother was sleeping upstairs, so I carefully went up to check if he was okay. Thankfully, he was fine, still not fully grasping how much danger I was in. I went to the bathroom door. Since it opens inward. I decided to violently push it open and I heard a man scream. I immediately shut the door and held it closed to keep him from getting out. He broke the window and outside the bathroom there's this sort of balcony. Not a proper one, but you get the idea. It connects to the balconies of the neighboring houses, which are all really close together. He used that to escape. I grabbed my brother in arms, ran to the kitchen and noticed that one of the knives was missing from the knife block. I picked up another knife and crouched in the corner of the living room, crying like never before. The police arrived and I opened the door for them. When they searched the house, they confirmed that the bathroom window was broken and I had hit the guy so hard that there was actually blood on the floor. But the most shocking and traumatizing part was what they had found in the small basement room. There were blankets and cans of food. They concluded that he had been living there for several days. That's it. I hesitated a lot before posting this because it really affected me and I'm sorry if the story isn't super clear. Some of the details are still jumbled in my head. Anyway, I hope you all found it interesting. This is my mom's story. She finally felt like she wanted to share it with the world, even though she's always tried to forget it. I hope you all like it. This happened to me in the early 80s when I was about 14 or 15 years old. I lived on a quiet street in the suburbs of my city, in a small place you wouldn't call the countryside, but close in a Spanish island of the Atlantic Ocean. It was known locally back then that little girls started disappearing more often, but it wasn't yet a topic of conversation between the towns and neighborhoods. Most of my friends lived in the city, so I would often take the bus to go meet them. That day, at around 5 or 6pm I I decided to start walking to the bus stop since I was going to meet my friend that evening. The bus stop wasn't actually that far from my house, maybe half a mile in distance. It was located on a quiet street with a few cars or people around and lined with old street lamps that flickered even in the daylight. I had taken this route so many times that I really didn't think anything of it. When I got there, the street was dead and had no cars or nobody to be seen seen around. So I just stood up for a Few minutes waiting for my bus. A while later, a white van slowly approached my direction and started slowing down right next to the bus stop. I didn't think much of it, like maybe they were just parking or looking for something. But then two men got out and started walking towards me. One of them looked normal enough, but the other man caught my attention because his face was kind of deformed with one hollow eye socket where his left eye should have been. His other eye locked onto mine and the intensity of his gaze made me freeze on the spot. Before I could even process what was happening, they had a hold of me. One grabbed my arm with a grip so tight it felt like my bones were going to snap, and the other wrapped his arm around my waist, dragging me towards the van. Neither one of them said a word, although to be honest, their silence was worse than any anything they could have said. I started screaming and kicking as hard as I could, but there was literally nobody I could see around. I remember that I even started yelling fire, Fire. Since my mom had told me it was like code for people who were getting abducted. It was really a horrible feeling seeing myself getting pulled closer to the van, knowing I couldn't do anything to avoid it. They shoved me into the van and as I landed on the floor, floor, I saw a third man with a bandana covering his face as well as a Doberman that was staring at me with a disgusting, creepy face that still haunts me to this day. It was at that moment that I started to think that no one would help me or even hear me at all. I started struggling and fighting back and I kind of managed to get them off me for a second, but they kept grabbing me and pulling me back in. I remember this distinctive metallic smell inside the van, like rust or maybe even blood. I felt like probably the luckiest person on earth when out of nowhere, my older brother showed up. He didn't live with us at the time, so coincidentally, he was probably just visiting us that day. I don't really remember why he was there. He started yelling and throwing punches at the men. In the struggle, they let go of me and I managed to pull myself free and back away. The men saw seemed to be caught off guard. After a few seconds of fighting, they ran back to their van, slammed the doors and sped off. Right after that moment, we ran home and I started crying in desperation. The walk home was hard since my legs were shaking non stop. I felt overwhelmed and I couldn't really process what had just happened to me. People who have experienced something similar to this. Know how shocked and paranoid that you start feeling after this? We reported it to the police later that night, but they didn't really do much. Things like this just weren't taken very seriously back then. This happened to me over 10 years ago, but I still think about how close I came to dying. I was already with my future husband when I met his cousin. We had a lot in common. We both struggled with addiction and anorexia. We'd talk on the phone and meet up to eat and see a movie. But he kissed me in his car, so I decided it was best if we stopped talking. I told my future husband about the kiss, and he was understanding. I didn't tell him that his cousin got extremely upset over me turning him down. Some time had passed and we had started meeting up as friends. Since we were both starving around ourselves, we always went to the same place. But after a couple of times, I felt like it wasn't healthy for either of us to meet up. He asked me to meet up one last time, and I stupidly said yes. We went to our place, and during dinner he was talking about his apartment and job, how happy he could make me. I got uncomfortable and I had asked him to drive me home. It was really late, and instead of driving me home, he drove me to the forest preserve. It was pitch black because all the lights were off. I immediately felt uneasy. We were alone in the parking lot and I had a horrible feeling at this point that something was going to happen. He parked and turned off his car. Then looked at me and said we were meant for each other. I didn't want to upset him, so I just said that he knew I was engaged and that we were just friends. He also had a history of violence, so I was terrified. He started getting really upset and almost crying. He said that he loved me. Then he put his arm around my neck and held his arm down really hard on the right side of my neck. His arm was around my neck and I'd been looking straight ahead when suddenly I woke up to a police officer at his window. He was asking if I was okay. I was really scared and confused. Confused. I had some vomit on my shirt and I'd wet my pants. He'd pressed down on my carotid artery for long enough that it knocked me out. He was also a wrestler in high school. He was telling the officer that we were fine and that I was just drunk. He got a ticket, but I was too afraid to say anything because if he was arrested, my now husband's family wouldn't have blamed me, but that's what I thought at the time. I said I was fine, but that's why I wanted to go home now. I thought if I said it in front of the officer he would drive me home because he took our names and he wouldn't risk trying something else. So he drove me home and didn't say anything. I don't know if he was trying to kill me or just got so upset that he went overboard. Regardless, he did almost kill me and it really messed me up. A person doesn't vomit and wet themselves after a neck compression unless they almost died. I told my now husband, but not right away because I felt like it was partly my own fault for meeting up with them. I only saw him a couple more times during the holidays and then eventually he stopped coming, but he didn't dare speak to me after what he did. If that officer hadn't shown up, I don't know if I'd still be here. Surprisingly, this is one of those stories I forgot all about until a few days ago when I was talking to a school friend on a call and got reminded of this. She was pretty freaked out when I told her and so I did think about it again. This happened when I was roughly maybe 7 or 8 years old, so some of the details are fuzzy, but I remember him pretty vividly. My family had just moved to America and were renting the Tom Port portion of your regular suburban house in a pretty safe cul de sac. I had friends, they were triplets, about three or four houses down, not far at all. Every day I'd hang out with them and around nine or ten in the night my older brother would make the two minute walk and come get me and then walk me home. Since I was pretty young, I want to say that he was around 11 or 12. One night he came to get me. As usual, the sun wasn't fully down, but it was getting pretty dark. We started down the walk as normal when he had started casting glances over his shoulder. I didn't really notice until he shoved me hard away from the sidewalk and between two houses. Each house had a huge fence that separated their backyard and he made me crouch behind the fence. I remember being really scared, but more so confused since I had no damn idea what the hell was going on. More specifically, he was a pretty big prankster so I didn't really believe him when he then turned and said walk behind the houses. I think someone's following us bro. Looking back, he was probably trying to keep me calm. However, whatever calm was Left in my tiny 8 year old body was gone the moment I turned around and looked. This man had followed us behind the houses. And he was just by the edge of a few houses down, near a very different fence line. He had a black hoodie on, black sweatpants and white sneakers, and he had the hood up. I have pretty bad eyesight now due to some health problems, but back then it was crystal clear and I could see with horrifying clarity that his jaw was hung open. Like he was just standing there with his jaw hung open. It was horrifying. I think now that I'm older, maybe he just had some kind of medical condition. Condition that affected his jaw or maybe he did crack, I don't know. But back then I could have sworn on God I was seeing some kind of demon. Anyway, my brother, when he saw me looking and getting ready to freak out, told me to just run as fast as I can to our house. We booked it. Neither one of us looked back, but we were scared out of our minds. Like I said, we only rented the top portion of the house, so the bottom part belonged to some other tenant. I don't even remember if she was home or not, but I remember tugging that thing open and locking it as fast as I could. And when I looked up, he was there in the yard, a little way away from the door, just staring at us. My brother and I told my sister and mother immediately, but nothing ever came of it. Also, my father was away on a work trip at this time. The day after we went to go meet my dad at his warehouse which had a small live in portion above it, where we lazed around until he was ready to come home with us. Around dusk he came up and told us that we might have to wait since the police were here. He walked us around to the back window of the small area to show us the police all around the backyard area of the warehouses to a white van parked on the grass by the edge of the woods. Like I said, I was pretty young, so I don't remember many details of what actually happened. But I do remember my dad telling us that they had found a man and woman in the van. The man, he said, had his mouth hung wide open. He seemed really disturbed telling me about the whole thing and wouldn't answer any more questions about the woman. Maybe she was dead. I've got zero ideas. I do know though, that they were arrested on trespassing charges. I don't know anything else and I haven't asked about it. And I doubt he'd remember it's been over a decade and he's pushing 70 but it freaks me out. To this day I still can't believe it happened and I don't have any answers for it. I talked to my brother briefly about it in hopes that he remembered more than I did but all I really got was a long tirade about whatever medical condition that the guy probably had for his mouth to be. Be like that. He's an annoying medical student now Sometimes I think maybe he didn't mean any harm and was just drugged out of his mind. But this was like the world's safest neighborhood and it doesn't explain why or how he showed up at my dad's workplace. I asked around a little for more information. I wasn't able to find a lot, but I did find out why my father moved away from that warehouse. The police found a dead body in a car near us. I'm not sure if this is the same van or not or when that happened, but take that as you will. This one is actually fairly recent. I'm a late 20s male, around 6 foot 4 and around 180 pounds. I'm sometimes too nice to my friends. I tend to do favors for my friends even if they seem pretty ridiculous as long as it's not terribly out of my way. Most of the time it's just help, I'm drunk and I need a ride home, that kind of thing. Well, one night at around 1:30am I get the call from a very drunk friend of mine named Claire. She's begging me to come pick her up and give her a ride home soon. The bar is closing soon and she's too drunk to drive home. The bar she's at isn't too far away from my house, just about a 10:15 minute drive. But the issue is that she lives like 35, 45 minutes on the other side of town. Claire has been extremely nice to me in the past and I did owe her a solid. So at about 102 I grab my keys and my concealed carry and then leave the house. I get to the bar at around five past two and she's sitting outside on a bench by the doorman. I pulled into the parking lot which was pretty empty since the bar was closed and I assumed the cars remaining were just the workers who had yet to leave. I get out of the car and start walking to Claire who's kinda slumped over. I was hoping she wasn't passed out drunk and when I got to her the doorman asked me if I was alright. I told him yes, showed my ID for proof and what he said next to me was of some concern. He kind of pulls me in and says hey, I was supposed to leave when we closed, but I have a strong feeling your friend was roofied. She's been on the porch drinking all night and some guy kept hovering around her. I assumed it was a boyfriend or whatever, but she never turned to talk to the guy. She was either drinking or chatting with other girls around her. Well, anyway, she chugged her last drink, came up to me and told me you would be be coming to pick her up and she asked if she could sit by me. She told me that she felt very dizzy and sick. I told her sure, hoping she just drank too much and she passed out right after she sat down. After that I couldn't see that guy anymore, but I didn't want to take any chances. So visibly concerned, I thanked the guy profusely. He even helped me carry clear to my car midway to carry her. She's kind of coming too. Like someone just waking up after a surgery that really groggy, not knowing where they are, talking nonsense kind of talking. I don't remember exactly what she was talking about, but I'm sure if I wasn't on high alert about her possibly being drugged, it was some really funny stuff. So we buckled her in. I thanked the guy again and he just says that he hopes she gets home safe. So now, hoping my friend is only stupid drunk and not drugged, I start driving to her house. The whole time I'm just trying to keep an eye on her while also keeping an eye on the road. She's now snoring asleep, which puts me a bit at ease. But about halfway to her house, my fuel light comes on. Cursing the fuel economy of a sports car, I pull into the gas station. It's one of those small gas stations that doesn't have a 24 hour store. So I'm on extra high alert while I start to pump gas. The gas station is about a block away from the freeway and right at the corner of the intersection. The street itself is pretty dark with lonely lampposts shining very pitiful lights at large intervals. I get that really dead feeling like this place is just abandoned. To give an idea of positioning, the gas station is at the corner of the intersection. The storefront would be facing south and we were right in front of it where the pumps were. The east would be where the air pumps for tires and parking spaces and the north would be a diesel fuel pump right behind the store, accessible from the street behind the gas station. I drive a Corvette so the filler is on the rear end of the car and I'm leaning against the rear just looking around. To my left I hear this weird metallic scraping sound so I turn to see this guy about 15, 20ft from me come around the corner corner dragging a long metal pipe on the ground. I immediately sense that I'm in possibly a dangerous situation. Now the guy looks almost possessed, but he's not looking at me, rather like he's trying to look into my car. I'm on the defensive but I hope I can get him to leave. So I just call out hey man, everything alright? Without looking at me he just answers back, you took my girlfriend from me and I'm here to take her back. Now he turns to look at me and he's got blood in his eyes. Before he begins to take a step though, I start yelling, hoping it'll get him to back off. I'm a little over 6ft tall and not exactly skinny but not exactly bulky either. But I have a really deep voice. Back the hell off man. Turn around and leave. No one has to get hurt. He takes a step towards me, clearly unimpressed, so almost automatically I pull my handgun from my inside the waistband holster and draw a bead on him. Back the hell off. You don't have to die. I start yelling louder. I'm pretty sure my voice cracked because a I'm scared. No amount of self defense classes and time at the range prepares you emotionally for this kind of situation. Even though I carry, I'm really against violence and killing someone is really not something that I want to do and see. Did I mention I'm freaking scared? Anyway, in a panic the guy throws the damn pipe at me. It whizzes by, thankfully not towards my car but to my right and I dive behind my car for cover. I have no idea if he has a gun himself or what, but I was going to put some kind of COVID between me and the guy and by the time I nail up and aim over the rear of my car, he's now booked it. I hear a car door slam and tire screech and he launches off the curb on the east side of the lot and is tearing down the road, swaying all over the place. In my own panicked hurry I pull the pump out of the car, screw the cap on and then tear the hell out of there myself. Clara however, is still passed out in my car and I'm now afraid because I'm convinced she'd been drugged and that we were followed by that guy. Me being concerned about her earlier and keeping on the road, I must have not noticed being followed the whole way back to her house. I'm wary of any car that's behind me. I'm also driving very aggressively. Well, when I get to Claire's neighborhood, I circle a separate block that's not hers four times just to make sure that no one followed me. When I was satisfied thinking that I wasn't being followed anymore, I pulled up to her house and tried to shake her away. She's doing that groggy waking up stuff from before but now she's able to get up, I'm able to walk her and I got her keys from her bag. I manage to walk her inside and at this point she's kind of coming around asking what's going on and where she is, etc. I tell her she's home and get her to lie down. She's completely lost looking and her eyes start welling up. She clings to me and starts sobbing. She's still very out of it, but I'm guessing that she realized something bad was going on or attempted on her. I was able to get her to lie down and get her to sleep. I wrote a note for her which pretty much said hey, I'll be in the next room. We're going to go to the hospital in the morning to get you checked out. Fast forward to the morning and she's sick as a dog and after she expelled some demons from her stomach, I drove her to the hospital where she got tested and to tried treated. I still shudder to think what might have happened had I not had my CCW with me. I do know martial arts, but that's not something I want to take against a crazy person with a pipe. Claire still doesn't remember much from the night except calling me and wanting to sit next to the doorman. My advice for anyone out there, either be with your friends you trust when you go out or at least be vigilant if you're by yourself. That night could have really ended badly in a thousand different ways, but thankfully even luckily everyone made it out safe for anyone interested. They did a urine test and they found traces of roofies in the days after we went to the bar and let them know what happened. I gave as good a description of the guy I could. Claire decided against filing a police report and I respectfully went with her wishes. This happened in January or February of 2002. I, a female, had just turned 21 and was living with my father in Ohio for Context I was extremely naive and living a pretty directionless life. I had grown up in an affluent area of Seattle, went to private school, got onto college and I dropped out. I was dealing with major depression, partying a lot, hanging with the wrong crowd, hooking up with random strangers, you name it. My mom didn't know what to do with me so she sent me to live with my dad across the country in Columbus. Now I'd been living in Ohio with my dad and pretty much lived like an entitled teenager. I did have a job in retail, but other than that that I just sat around and didn't really do that much. My dad is an alcoholic and didn't help much either. At some point seeing him passed out in the living room one morning and working a dead end job kind of got me wanting to return home to Seattle. My mom was unwilling to let me live with her again though. I called my best friend at the time. Her mom was like my family. They didn't have a lot of money, but they bought me a bus and train ticket back home. They said I could stay with them until I got back on my feet. I was relieved. My dad was sad to see me go, but he agreed to drop me off at the bus station downtown. The thing is, he had to take me before his work shift. My bus didn't leave until later in the afternoon, so I'd basically have to wait from 9am until we boarded. My dad was very nervous about leaving me there. He warned me that this station was in a rough part of Columbus and that I needed to be careful. First of all, Columbus is all rough. I just wanted to mention that. Anyways, I'm thinking, yeah, okay, whatever. Totally oblivious, dad drove me to the Greyhound station. It was surrounded by people waiting for their buses, A few stragglers outside the entrance. It was cold outside that day. Inside the bus terminal it was pretty empty. Dad helped me bring my luggage inside. Two large suitcases containing all of my possessions. If I didn't want to be dragging them around with me all day long, I had to pay to store them in a locker by the desk. I can't remember exactly how much, but I was broke and I couldn't spare money for that. I looked wearily at the clock. My dad looked at me with sadness. I could tell that he was worried about me traveling by myself. I hugged him and tried to look as confident as possible. We said our goodbyes and he left. I've traveled numerous times, made several trips by plane by myself and traveled to various countries with groups. I was not averse to adventure. What I was not good at doing was reading people. I genuinely saw the good in everyone and I had never had a negative experience. Even at 4am in downtown Seattle. If you know anything about Seattle, it has a robust public transportation system and I was no stranger to weirdos, drunk people and hostile exchange between people. On the bus. I'd usually just ignore people or just continue walking. In this situation, I felt like I was totally in my element as I'd taken public transportation many times alone back to the Greyhound station, I decided to go outside and have a cigarette. The conundrum was that I had to keep an eye on my two suitcases. I positioned them near the front desk in such a way that I could see them clearly from the front entrance. I then head outside to get my nicotine fix and I stand off to the right of the front door. I'm smoking and trying to shuffle through my purse which contained my passport. As I'm shuffling around, a man with a large knitted head. Dad had asked me for a cigarette. I glance at him. Sure thing. I hand him one and a light. We chat briefly and I study his face. He's not unattractive, not scary looking, maybe a little disheveled, but I couldn't tell if he was homeless. No immediate red flags yet I felt safe as the outside of the terminal was literally littered with people. Some smoking just like me, others walking briskly to their destinations. Notably, an older gentleman is standing opposite of me on the left side of the entrance. As I'm talking to the man in the hat, this older gentleman seems to be staring at me intently. You'll understand why soon. The man in the hat asked where I'm from, am I catching a bus? And comments on the cold. In passing, I casually lament that I'm running low on cigarettes. He looks at me and says, oh well, you know there's a gas station just right around the corner. You can get some over there. I think this through for a moment. My bus wouldn't come for hours. I could easily grab a pack and then be back in time. Something stops me, however, as I remember my luggage sitting unattended. I said that I'll think about it and then turn to get back inside. Hours passed and every once in a while I would go back outside to smoke. Man in the hat seems to be there every time. At one point he mentions the gas station again. It's just right there. I can take you again. I decline, and it's not because I'm scared. It's because I'm worried about my luggage. I go back inside. The last time I go outside, the street is eerily quiet. No one there. I grab another cigarette and place my purse on the ground by my feet. I look up. Man in the hat is there. He asks for money. This is where my gut finally turns and I feel uneasy. I say that I don't have much and that I can't help him. I hurriedly finish my cigarette as I'm suddenly very aware that my purse is lying next to my feet exposed. I lean over quickly to pick it up and mumble something about going back inside. As I raise up, the man in the hat reaches out and grabs grabs my purse, then says, let me help you with that. My body seems to drain itself and I immediately grab my purse closer to me. I'm good, I say. Man in the hat suddenly switches from a harmless random dude into a nasty thief. Give me the purse, lady. He hisses. He says it through clenched teeth like he's trying to be quiet. I'm struggling against him now. Desperate as I realize there's no one there to help me. I start screaming for help. Man in the hat is shoving me with his hip and pushes me against a wall. Shut the hell up. I'm desperate now. This guy could easily pull out a knife and shake me or punch me. I cling to my purse and hope to God that the cheap handles hold together. His hands are on top of mine and he shoves me again, calling me a bad name. I scream louder from my left. I then suddenly hear, are you okay? Remember the older gentleman from earlier? He seemingly just steps out of nowhere and then loudly asks, what's going on? I shove the man in the hat very hard with my left thigh and I think he realized in that moment that if he did anything to me, he could be identified. He lets go of my purse and runs off. I'm shaking and I run tearfully inside, leaving the older gentleman outside. I was too frightened to say thank you. I spent the rest of that day hovering by the front desk. I was terrified. I even thought of the three day trip ahead of me and shook with dread. I held my purse in my hands with a vise grip. When my time finally came to board the bus to the train station, I glanced in terror over the other passengers. No way I was sitting next to anyone. Every person became a potential criminal in my eyes. I slumped into a seat and cowered by the window. I then heard a voice behind me. I was going to warn you, said the voice. I whipped my head around there was the older gentleman from before, casually sitting behind me. My eyes were probably as large as dinner plates. I knew he was targeting you. You need to be more careful, he said. I tearfully thanked him. He just stared out the window and nodded. We didn't speak again. That moment changed my life. My struggle with the man in the Hat must have only taken 30 seconds, but the repercussions last. Even 20 years later, I think back to how adamant the man in the Hat was about me going around the corner to the gas station. My hair still stands on end when I think about it. Would he really have robbed me over the few measly dollars in my purse? Murdered me? Who knows? It chills my blood to think about it. I spent the next three days paranoid and unwilling to leave my luggage unattended. I clung to my purse and used it as a pillow on the train when lying down. When I used the restroom, I rolled my luggage into the tiny bathroom with me. I didn't sleep. I didn't eat. In chilling contrast, the train trip was quiet and uneventful. Staring out the window as we entered Washington State, the snowfall and evergreen trees weighed down by heavy snow, I was no longer the naive and reckless young woman at the Greyhound station. I was a changed person. I was going through an old diary of mine and found an entry that I made 10 years ago to the day in which I'd written about the time I got thoroughly creeped on at the train station. So on this creepy anniversary, let me recount the tale for you. First, a bit about myself. I'm a woman and I had recently turned 18 when this story took place. Though I looked a fair bit younger, People frequently assumed that I was 16, partly because of baby face genetics, but also also because I had stupid low self esteem at the time and I looked like a high school sophomore who didn't know how to dress themself. I was tall and fat and not into makeup, and my idea of doing my hair was pulling an unbrushed mass into a ponytail. Fashion was T shirt with pop culture reference on it and jeans that I hadn't washed in a month. I was hardly the prize pig at the fair. This dunking on myself will become relevant later, I promise. Anyway, I was coming home from university and I needed to switch trains at the South Yara station. My next train station wasn't due to arrive for another 15 minutes, so I was hanging around the station cafe wondering if I really needed a potato cake. I was deep in thought about this when I felt someone sidle up Right behind me. I could feel their presence over my shoulder. So I stepped to the side, thinking they were trying to get past me. But they didn't move around. They shuffled closer so that we were less than a foot apart and muttered something to me. Sorry, I didn't hear you. What was that? I asked. Turning around, I said, do you want to go get a coffee? The voice said, oh. The forwardness of the question kinda stumped me, so I just stood there for a second looking at this guy who'd approached me out of the blue. He was pretty normal looking, to be honest. Clean shaven, casually dressed, medium length hair, and he looked to be in his mid to early 30s. He was kinda weedy and a little taller than I was, making him quite tall because I'm 6 foot myself. And he had a nervous demeanor about him, like he couldn't seem to look me in the eye. Aside from his abruptness, nothing about him seemed out of the ordinary. He glanced at me, waiting for an answer to his question. My creep alarms weren't ringing, but I still wasn't in the habit of going out for drinks with strangers. Coffee? Uh, now that's not a great time for me. I said with an apologetic shrug. I've gotta catch a train. Oh. He looked down again. Do you have to? That's weird. But I insisted that I did indeed have to, but because I was on my way to an appointment. A bare faced lie, but whatever got me out of this conversation quicker. Then the question started. So what kind? He asked. Um, what? Yeah, what kind of appointment? I'm the dentist. Right, right. What train are you getting? Uh, the one descending up. Oh, I'm going to Alamein. Opposite direction. Yeah. Anyway, my train's leaving in a few minutes, so I should really be heading off. I told him. Well, what about tomorrow? He asked. Uh, what? Yeah, we can go get coffee tomorrow at 10. Oh, I don't know. I've got school tomorrow. You can skip it. Right. Well, it's the first week, so I kinda have to go. Okay. Well, what about after? I think I'm meeting some friends after that actually. Oh, but you can cancel with them, right? They'll understand. I. I guess so, I say at this point. The guy chuckled and shook his head. He nudged my arm with his elbow. I'm hitting on you, you know. Remember what I said about not being the prize pig? I was a depressed, insecure teenager who had never been hit on before in her life. And when he said those words, something in my brain shifted. I spent years believing I was fundamentally Unlovable. I stayed in toxic friendships because I didn't think I deserved any better and that I should be grateful for any attention I got. It was like an orphan in a Dickens novel and I had to cling to any crust of affection bread thrown my way because I didn't know where my next meal was coming from. Those feelings surged up and the whole encounter with this dude for flipped. He was no longer a stranger pestering me for coffee. No, suddenly he was someone to whom I owed a debt. He was benevolent enough to find someone like me attractive. Therefore I owed him. I smiled nervously. Sorry, this is just the first time something like this has happened to me. So. Well, he said there's a first time for everything. He keeps asking me to meet him for coffee out at Hurstbridge, which is a train station 30km out of the Melbourne CBD for all you non Melbinians out there. It's also over an hour trip by train. But like I said, I felt like I owed him, so I agreed. I told this guy I'd see what I can do and he asked me like five times to promise him that I'd be there. Then he said something I didn't quite catch. It sounded like he said, I've already had some partners. Is that okay? And I assumed that meant that he had been with people before, so he wasn't a complete novice, as opposed to me, who had just admitted this was the first time they'd been hit on. I said that it was totally fine, but what he'd actually said was, I already have some partners. And when I said it was fine, he smirked to himself. Ooh, that's fine, eh? You like that too? He nodded. Nice. Nice. Finally, I'm promiscuous. I didn't even know what to say to that. Did he mean polyamorous? No clue. My train had just started pulling in, so I took a step towards the ramp down to the station, giving him a hasty goodbye. He was standing in my way and didn't move when I indicated that I wanted to get past. You'll meet me tomorrow at hurstbridge, right? At 12? You promise? You promise? I said. Yes, sure, fine, whatever. But he didn't move. He stuck his hand out for me to shake. I'm James, by the way. I'm Meg, I say, giving him the nickname of one of my fantasy roleplay ocs. As I reached out to shake his hand, he pulled me into a hug. I don't even like being hugged by my own family members, so this caught me completely off guard and I could do nothing but stand there as his hands rubbed up and down my back, lingering on where he felt my bra strapped through my shirt. He continued the hug even after my arms dropped down to my sides and I stood frozen, watching my train leave the station. Oh no, he said, finally ending the embrace. Did you miss your train? It's okay. The next one's in 15 minutes. I'll wait with you. And I didn't know what to do because I did not want to be around him anymore. But I still felt like I owed him something. Politeness, at least. There was another train leaving the station in just a few minutes and it wasn't on my line, but I just wanted to be out of there. I told James that I could catch that train instead and take a bus to my appointment so that he didn't need to wait with me, but he insisted. He reached down and held my hand as we walked towards the train station. Oh cool, he said when he saw where the train was going. I'm going to Frankston too. We can go together. He told me earlier he was going to Alamein. Completely different line. My hand went limp in his grasp. He didn't let go. My brain was now buzzing with plans on how to get out of this situation. I wanted to tell him to screw off, but part of me didn't see that he had done anything wrong. He was socially awkward and overly friendly and he'd asked me out for coffee. Those weren't bad things. If anything, I was the bad guy for not giving him a chance. It's not why guys were beating down a path to my door. I mean, I should be lucky someone was interested in me at all. Like I could go up to the train station staff and see. Say what? Help. This man asked me out for coffee and gave me a goodbye hug. Get a grip. I was thinking too hard to pay attention to what James was saying, but I eventually tuned in and realized he was talking to me about school. He asked if it was a casual day at school or did my school not have uniforms or was I just skipping today? He said with a fond chuckle that he used to go home at lunch and skip school all the time. Good God, did he think I was still in high school? I clarified and told him that I'm actually at uni. He then just said oh and dropped the subject. The train arrived and since it was peak hour, it was packed. Part of me was hoping that in the rush of people James and I would get separated, but no such luck. He pulled me on board and we ended up squished together, me with my back against the doors and him blocking me into a corner. The doors on my side weren't opening for a while. If I wanted to rush out another stop, I'd have to elbow my way through the crowded carriage. But even if I told James I needed to get off the train, he could block my exit again and then pull me into another hug until the doors closed. He didn't tell me what stop he was getting off at either, so he could just say he needed to get off at my stop too, and then follow me wherever I happened to go. James essentially had me trapped. At this point. I was barely even paying attention to anything he was saying, too busy focusing on potential escape plans. So far the best idea I had was to spontaneously throw up on him and then make my escape in the disgusted confusion. But unfortunately I was blessed with an iron stomach and I haven't vomited in 11 years, so maybe not the best idea. I thought about faking a phone call, but he was close enough to see my phone screen and he knew no one was on the line. In retrospect, I could have pretended a text or something, but in hindsight, you know. James leaned in a little closer and then patted me on the arm. You excited about tomorrow? Tomorrow? I said. Our date. Coffee. You promised, right? Oh yeah, right, I said. You did promise, he said, and he looked me in the eye. He hadn't done much of that through our entire conversation, so it startled me. You promised, he said again. I nodded, unsure of what else to do. I've been hurt before, you know, he said, looking back down at the ground again. It's not nice. Maybe he was just really socially awkward and had a hard time getting dates. Maybe this was him trying his best as a fellow socially awkward person. Surely I could understand the struggle, right? Surely I could give him a chance. James glanced me up and down. So what are you gonna wear to our coffee date? Will I recognize you? I shrugged. I'll probably just wear this, I guess. It was quite hot that day and I was wearing lace up sandals that I'd borrowed from my mom. Might class it up with some socks. Shoes. Maybe a hat, I said. Hey, you know what? I like those really long socks. You know what I mean? Oh, thigh highs. I think I have a pair of those, I told him. Yeah, I like thigh highs. I have a fetish for them, he said, along with some laughter. Yep, he's just really awkward. Just gotta be polite and give him a chance, I tell myself. James nodded to himself. The thigh highs and those uniforms with the short skirts. Yeah, I really like those. Yeah, he's just trying his best. Benefit of the doubt and all. I owe him that much. Hey, james said, chuckling and leaning in closer. I've told you two of my fetishes. You tell me two of yours. I looked at him like he just asked me to hand over two of my teeth. I stammered something like, oh, well, I don't know about that, but he chided me and gently bumped me on the shoulder. Come on, he wheedled. It's fine. I won't judge, even if it's nasty. I've only told you two of my tamer ones. I can get really kinky, you know. So. Yeah. Do you want me to guess what yours are? I think I said something about how he can't guess because I don't have any, and he must have picked up on the curtness of my tone because he started hushing and reassuring me that it was fine. He's done a lot of that stuff before, and that a lot of girls don't think they're into it at first, but if it's done right, then they change their minds, he says. Yeah, I bet, I said, then resumed looking out the window. The train whistled as we pulled into a station. The next stop I knew faced my side of the carriage, so the doors would open and I'd finally have a way out. I didn't want James to think I was mad at him or wanted to leave in case he tried to stop me, so when he started making small talk again, I participated earnestly. He didn't talk about fetishes, but he did keep touching me, brushing my arm, patting the back of my hand, resting his hand on my hip, and didn't seem to care that I didn't reciprocate his touch and in some cases visibly pulled away. We arrived at the next stop and the doors opened behind me. The carriage was less crowded than it had been when we first got on, and a few more people thawed out. I stretched and moved in the newfound space and James leaned back a fraction to a avoid getting hit in the face with my arms. I told him to back up just a smidge more because I needed to tighten the laces of my sandals. He obliged and I bent over, turning to the right a little so that I was parallel to the door. I tugged aimlessly at the string, waiting until the door started beeping that they were about to close, and then I lunged out, my hip bang against the door as they slid shut. So I kinda stagger, stumbled out of the carriage, but I was out of there before James registered what just happened. I turned and watched him approach the closed doors, repeatedly pressing the button to open them. In retrospect, I could have stopped, but I had no plan of what to do next if the doors opened and let him out. Fortunately, he'd waited just a second too long because the train had already started to move. We locked eyes. He stared at me, his face cold and expressionless. The train pulled away. I wanted to get on a train going back the way I'd succumb, but it wasn't coming for another 10 minutes, which would be more than enough time for James to get off at the next stop and then board the same train coming back this way. I could walk around the block a few times and wait for a few trains to go past. But what if he came back here and started looking for me? Or if I did manage to void him at the station, who's to say he wouldn't try and find me at South Era, where we'd first met? Fortunately, there was a tram line close by, so I decided to say screw that train crap and get out of Dodge on the light rail. As it turned out, that tram ended up going past a stop on the train line that I wanted to get on in the first place, so I was able to make it home without too much hassle, albeit an hour later. For the longest time, I thought I was overreacting and that he was just an awkward guy with a odd approach to picking up women. It was my own fault it got as far as it did because I was only giving him soft nos, like making excuses to leave and pulling away from his touch. I was equally in the wrong because my no wasn't explicit, even though my brain was screaming at me to be polite and that I owed him niceness for daring to take an interest in me. It wasn't until years later did I realize how warped that line of thinking really was. And also, it really took a while for me to piece together the fact that he asked me out on a date while assuming I was still in high school and then later told me about his schoolgirl uniform fetish, which is not a great look. Also, regardless if I was 18 or 28, he still prevented me from catching my train in the first place. He pulled me into a hug without asking. He continued to hug me even when I stopped, reciprocating and only let go when he heard the train leave. He knew that I needed to go and he wouldn't let me and that's really messed up. I never did see James again. But I was always paranoid about swapping trains at Southiera Station for the longest time.