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- [00:00]
Advertiser
You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites with Indeed sponsored jobs. Your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates so you can reach the people you want faster. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed have 45% more applications than non sponsored jobs. Don't wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility@ Indeed.com Arts. Just go to Indeed.com Arts right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. Stop struggling to get your job post seen on other job sites with Indeed sponsored jobs. Your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates so you can reach the people you want faster. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed have 45% more applications than non sponsored jobs. Don't wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility@ Indeed.com Arts. Just go to Indeed.com Arts right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need.
- [01:54]
Storyteller
I recently took a long distance 12 hour plus train ride. One of those peaceful trips where you could lean back, close your eyes and relax. But what began as an opportunity for quiet reflection and escape quickly turned into an uncomfortable and unrelenting experience. I opted for the train over flying due to the recent uptick in airline incidents, and I'm somewhat of a nervous flier. The train seemed like a safer, more relaxed choice, but when I boarded the train and settled into my seat, things took an unexpected turn. A young woman about my age, but perhaps a bit younger took the seat next to me. I'm a 30 year old male by the way. She seemed friendly enough at first, but before long it became clear she was in the mood to talk. I didn't mind at first, thinking maybe it would just be a brief conversation to pass the time, but it quickly escalated into something else entirely. I had tried to nod off, hoping to get some rest, but she kept tapping me on the shoulder, waking me up each time. It felt like she was determined to keep me engaged, and even though I told her I was exhausted and just wanted to sleep. The conversation kept going and going, uninterrupted. She began asking personal questions, probing into my life. I felt it was strange, but I didn't want to be rude, so I answered as best I could, always polite, but I was starting to get really uncomfortable. Then she had started to reveal some deeply personal details about her own life. Her stories were heavy, and she didn't seem to care much about the fact that we were strangers. She spoke about drifting for months at a time, how she had spent over four years in and out of mental hospitals with over 40 admissions in total. She shared the trauma of her mother being a narcissist and how a family friend had abused her. The stories kept coming, each one more painful than the last. I'm not gonna go into further details, but they were some pretty traumatizing things that she was saying that she had experienced. I felt bad for her, so I tried to weather it and listen, but I was stuck, unable to get a word in or extricate myself from the situation. I tried to steer the conversation in a direction that might actually help me escape, mentioning that I was happily married in the hopes that it would signal that I wasn't interested in case that was part of it, or that she might think my wife wouldn't really appreciate me having a conversation like this with another woman. But instead of backing off, it seemed to kind of upset her. I could see the change in her expression, as though my words had somehow hurt her. Yet she didn't stop. She pushed on, continuing to share more about her troubled life. Even though I began offering little more than one word answers, or in some cases, complete silence. It felt like I was a captive audience. At some point, I had reached a breaking point. I finally told her as kindly as I could, that I felt uncomfortable and that I didn't really want to talk anymore. But that didn't deter her either. She seemed unfazed and just kept going, as if my discomfort didn't even register. That's when I told her that I needed to go to the bathroom, hoping it would offer me a break, even just for a moment. I moved to another car, trying to put some distance between us. But half an hour later, she showed up saying she had been looking for me, and she sat next to me again. I couldn't take it any longer. I came up with a plan to build the next stop. Even if it was nighttime in the middle of nowhere, anything was better than this situation. I told her I would go to the bathroom again. And she had started insisting that she would go with me this time. I realized this wasn't going to work out this time and I had to think of something else fast. Running out of options, I decided to time it just right. I waited until we reached the stop, I let the doors open and I waited for the conductor's last announcement that the doors would close. I waited an extra few seconds and then sprinted just before the doors closed. Luckily, I finally managed to get an Uber and stay in a crappy hotel for the night. The next morning I checked my phone and read a text message. Where did you go? I never gave her my number, but I think that I did actually leave my phone behind when I went to use the restroom the first time. Meaning that she used my phone to text her number and that's how she got my number. I blocked the number immediately and I'm really hoping that I don't see her hear from her again. I'm a 23 year old female who lives in a small country in Eastern Europe. Since the story involves trains, I'll set up how they work for you. Metro trains are not widely used, so the type of train I'm going to be talking about is the long distance between city types. They're old and slow and usually trips take anywhere from two to five hours or more. For comparison, a trip by car to the same place would probably take anywhere from 40 minutes to an hour and a half, three hours at most. Now that I've set up the basics, I'll begin with the story. It was the middle of February 2023. My cousin and I got up at 5 in the morning to catch a bus to the town over so we could catch the train for the capital. The first trip by bus takes about 40 minutes and then the trip with the train to the capital takes about three and a half hours. Everything in the bus was fine. We reached the station and got our tickets along with a little breakfast. We sat down in the front of the station to wait for the train to arrive so we could aboard. I think about 30 minutes had passed when the train came to a stop. We boarded and found a fairly empty cabin and sat down. Both of us took the seats that were next to the window facing each other. On my cousin's side there were two old grandmas. They had put their bags in the empty seat next to her ct. On my side there was an old man with a head injury leaning on the inside window and his wife sitting next to him. But there was one more open seat right next to me. The train started moving, and if we exclude the guy that wasn't feeling well, everything was going Both my cousin and I had our headphones on, just listening to music. For the first five stops or so. Absolutely nothing of interest happened. But on the next stop, a guy had boarded the train. He was really wobbly and carrying a big plastic open bottle of beer. He came right next to our cabin door and opened it. Didn't even care to ask if the seats were free. Pretty much tripped over the sick guy's feet and almost completely fell on top of me. He laughed sheepishly and abruptly sat down next to me. My cousin and I exchanged confused looks. We tried pretending nothing was going on, but there was just no way. The guy had decided he would take his jacket off, but in the process he had dropped the beer and spilt it all over the floor of the train and coincidentally, almost directly onto my feet. I quickly pulled my legs on top of the radiator and put my back in between us so he wouldn't come any closer. He sat back down, picked his beer up, and then put it in his lap. He took out his phone and started trying to take pictures of everyone in the cabin, but I guess he was so out of it that he had dropped both the beer and phone on the ground while kind of falling in and out of consciousness. The phone screen cracked everywhere and almost all of the beer was spilled on the floor and was starting to smell horrifyingly bad because of the radiator blasting heat. He would come in and out of consciousness, picking his phone up and dropping it as well as the beer, again and again, but as more time passed, the more annoying and irritable he would get. He was trying to lay down on the sick guy's wife. He tried to sit down on me. He was screaming incoherent things at the lady sitting next to my cousin, yet they would just laugh and mock him. He rolled up his sleeves, which revealed thousands of little holes, most of them still fresh and bleeding, I assume due to inserting some type of heavy drug in the needle. Now he was trying to vigorously stuff his face in front of mine and talk to me, and of course I was trying my best to look out of the window and ignore him, so I didn't agitate him any more than he already was. His pupils were huge, though. It scared the life out of me. The lady conductor came by now and asked him for his ticket. He gave her one, which turned out to be old, and she shouted at him to get off the train. At the next stop. If you're wondering how I heard that, I had lowered the volume of my music almost to zero at some point. Well, anyway, the conductor shouting at him made him really angry and he started to shout right back at her. He got up on his feet, barely being able to hold balance, and almost tried to hit her but failed because he fell back into his seat. At this point, everyone in the cabin was starting to freak out. It seemed like he would just hit just about anyone to take out his anger. He was flailing his bloody hands. Then he got another bout of going in and out of consciousness and maybe fell asleep. Problem is, he fell asleep right on the old lady next to us and she didn't know where to go or what to do. The conductor lady passed again and she told us that he was getting off on the next stop whether he wanted to or not. So we all just waited in silence, doing our best to not wake him up. His phone rang though. Yes, the same one that he broke the screen of to the consistency of salt. He jolted up, answered the phone and seemed really excited. He also scratched his face with the broken glass. Turns out one of his friends would be waiting for him at the station. He gingerly got up, almost falling over and hitting the ladies at the front. He got dressed real fast and then ran out the door. Before closing the door though, he turned around and looked at us with the most creepiest face I've ever seen. It's burned into my mind forever. Face pale as a dead man. Eyes wide and bloodshot, no pupils to be seen. Smile wide from one ear to the other, drooling a little. All he said was I hope you all enjoy the rest of your ride. And he wobbled off the train. That was the worst two hours on a train. Seriously. I really hope it doesn't happen to anyone else.
- [12:24]
Advertiser
You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites with Indeed's sponsored jobs. Your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates so you can reach the people you want faster. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed have 45% more applications than non sponsored jobs. Don't wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit. To get your jobs more visibility@ Indeed.com Arts, just go to Indeed.com Arts right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast Terms and Conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites with Indeed sponsored jobs. Your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates so you can reach the people you want faster. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed have 45% more applications than non sponsored jobs. Don't wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility@ Indeed.com Arts. Just go to Indeed.com Arts right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need.
- [14:15]
Storyteller
While this was now almost 16 years ago, I still remember every single detail about this encounter quite vividly. It was so random and so distinctly bizarre that I'll never forget just what happened. I'm sorry. It's long background. I'm 20 years old at the time and after visiting friends in college for the weekend, I found myself traveling home alone, taking a late train from Boston out to the suburbs where my car is parked. I'm running late and very concerned that I'm going to miss the last subway out of Boston, but gratefully the train I needed pulled up quickly. I remember being annoyed at myself for creating stress with such an unnecessarily close call, as I was definitely on either the very last or next to last train out of Boston and while I have friends I could stay with if I miss the last train, I have to work in the morning and my phone is completely dead. The ride is long and slow and there's hardly a soul on the train after we leave the immediate Boston area. Which isn't odd, seeing how it's Sunday and after midnight. Halfway through the 45 minute ride, I doze off and jerk awake at hearing the blaring brain tree announcement, which is my stop. In my foggy state, I grab my bag and jump off the train and the moment I realize I'm at the wrong stop, the doors close. Turns out they were just announcing the train destination, not the train stop. As you can imagine, I'm feeling pretty lousy about this, watching the train plod off in the direction that I needed to be going. I'm the only person to get off the train and the station is unfamiliar and utterly deserted. Quickly I realize I'm in Quincy, three long stops away from my destination, and I'm Feeling screwed, I really really need there to be another train. I look around and I realize that I'm close to the end of a desolated and strikingly dark outdoor train platform. While the chances for there being another train so late is extremely slim, it's my only hope and I begin to feel panicked, stupid and now vulnerable. After a minute or two of standing there dumbfounded and triple checking that my phone was dead, I suddenly spot a man standing alone under a light a distance down the long and thin platform. A little ways further beyond him appears to be the only entrance and exit, unless there are some stairs going down into the terminal. Halfway down that I can't see. While the man makes me a little nervous, he's clearly facing the tracks with which gives me hope that the one last train is on the way. Thinking maybe he just missed the one that I got off, I decided to just quietly sit on the bench close by and choose to stay unnoticed and in the dark while I wait. The bench is partially enclosed and when I sit down on it I'm basically obscured from the shoulders down by deep shadows and can still see in every direction but directly behind me. A quick glance around it though confirms that I'm definitely alone down here. So on the dark bench I sit and wait and feel completely obscured. With my wearing dark clothes and it being so dark on my end of the station, I have the opportunity to rather blatantly watch the man at the end of the platform. The well lit man is tall, thin, not old, like 30s, lies slightly shaggy hair and dressed casually preppy. He's strange though, standing abnormally still, looking straight ahead. In a weird way, something's off, but he's minding his business and probably doesn't even know I'm here. And while I feel really uneasy, I do find some slight comfort in being certain that no one is down here with me and can openly watch the only other person from my dark hidden bench. After watching for a few minutes, the man begins to rock a little, placing weight on one foot and then another. He then takes a few slow steps towards the edge of the platform and I notice that he's using a white and red walking cane for the visually impaired and tapping and feeling his way as he walks forward. Suddenly I'm very relieved as this may explain his unusual posture. Just as I'm feeling more relaxed, the feeling vanishes. He's still walking towards the platform edge and quickly I stiffen and sit straight up, looking intently. He makes it to the bright yellow raised metal warning tread that is at the very edge of the platform, only a foot wide and directly before an eight foot drop onto the electrified train tracks. He stops there, banging his cane against the edge, toes literally at the furthest point. I stand up and walk a few paces closer as he starts to sway again, but more dramatically now my mind begins to race. What's going on? Is this a suicide situation? He's in a lot of danger. I want to take action and try to quickly figure out the best way because this poor man needs help of some kind. I'm trying to figure out how to approach him because I really didn't want to startle him with him being so very close to the edge. In fact, he's the furthest you can go. And his swaying has evolved into some kind of dance. Suddenly, after what seems like ages, but is probably just a minute or two, he stops and begins to take slow steps backwards until finally he turns to standing still and staring straight ahead, back under the spotlight. With my heart racing and my mind spinning, I return to my dark bench, sit back down quietly and try to process what's suddenly happening. I want to help this man, but I'm being overwhelmed by alarms in my brain. I keep watching and being as silent as possible. He stands calmly for a few minutes under the light, facing the tracks and safely several paces away from the edge. I decided to get help. I mean, he just did something crazy, really unnerving and really dangerous and I don't know what his intentions are. I'm still sitting on my dark bench, fighting off conflicting feelings and secretly watching him when he suddenly turns his whole body to directly face me. Straight on facing me, exactly the angle to where I'm sitting. And he's smiling. He's far away, but so well lit. I can tell that he's absolutely smiling and looking suddenly right at me. I'm just completely startled at this point and my jaw drops. My mind is now racing like crazy. He must know I'm here. But if he knows I'm here, why is he facing me? He knows exactly where I'm sitting. What is he actually blind? But I'm sitting in the dark and not making a sound. He's smiling. I freeze solid. What happens next is so sudden that I remain basically frozen like a statue sitting on the dark bench the entire time, not even making the slightest sound. Suddenly, still smiling, he turns and faces the train tracks and again using his cane, walks right over to the very edge and begins his side to side swaying. Except now it's even more dance. Like he even changes position, putting One foot right on the edge and then one foot behind him. Then he starts this exaggerated lunging motion, nearly jumping off the platform, but catching himself right before he does. He does this repeatedly. All the while I'm just watching from a distance, basically in, well, horror and confusion. Suddenly he stops doing all of this and turns. This time he doesn't face me, but faces in my general direction, my end of the tracks, smiling still, from what I can see, he slowly begins to walk down the platform towards me. He's walking right on the edge, directly on the warning track. The whole time I can hear the clack of the cane going side to side. He's so close to the edge that the cane is going to be in the darkness. It gets closer and closer and I can do absolutely nothing but just stare. How could he be walking so close to the edge? Why is he coming down here? Closer and closer he gets, and I can now see him better still, the big gaping grin on his face, empty and farcical, like a game show host. And his eyes, they're slammed shut. They aren't gently closed, they're aggressively and exaggeratedly closed, very tightly. I know though, that it's possible to peer a little bit while making this face. My mind is exploding and I remain frozen solid. He's now so close, about 20ft away. I'm thinking that if I hang on just one more minute, maybe he'll walk right by me. And with him out of the way of the entrance, I can run and go get help. And maybe, just maybe, him facing me smiling was just a coincidence. Maybe this whole time he has no idea I'm even here. Maybe he really is blind. But greatly to my dismay, only about 15ft before he reaches me, he stops and he turns and faces me, eyes still slam shut, gaping smile. He's just now standing there on the edge of the platform, facing me. His eyes are tightly shut and he's facing right at me. This can't be possible. And I feel like I'm in a surreal nightmare. And then suddenly, it gets much worse. He starts making this weird high pitched, whimpering, moaning, feminine, soft laugh. He reaches for the zipper on his pants and he unzips them. While holding his cane. He pulls down his pants and underwear, exposing himself, and then, while still facing me, starts jumping up and down, all the while continuing to do that soft, coy laugh. He then changes position and starts doing that jumping from foot to foot lunging motion like he's about to jump into the path of a train. Except now his movement is compromised by his pulled down pants. He continues this smiling eye shut act with this thing flopping around this way and that and making that simpering laugh. All the while I'm sitting there in some kind of mesmerized horror state. Suddenly I hear the train rattling loudly and approaching fast in frozen horror. I'm both groveling in thanks to God and terrified that at the end of all this true insanity, I'm about to see someone commit suicide right in front of me. That or accidentally get hit by the train. Right as the train reached the platform and started slowing down, he returns to simply swaying again and then takes a step back. Being the very last train of the night, every car seems to have some people on it. I knew immediately I was probably safe. The train stops and I sprint like hell down the platform a few cars distance down and jump on. I don't know if he gets on the train too or just stands there, but I definitely don't hear anyone yelling or anything, so I assume that he pulled up his pants either way. And so once on the train, I sink into the seat, my mind thoroughly blown. My mind explodes in every single variation of the feeling that can basically be eloquently summed up as one giant what the hell. Gratefully, at the end of all that, I really do feel immediately safe and I'm not further subjected to worrying about him following me off the train because there's always other people getting off at Braintree. It was all just quite simply so odd and bizarre that I feel like after all these years I wanted to share it. It's easily the closest thing to a nightmare I've ever experienced. It was so weird, scary and surreal and it happened so quickly that it was almost like I coasted cleanly by being scared and just settled into some kind of hypnosis and un move. I'm not trying to be dramatic about it, I just don't know how else to describe it. Honestly, when I got on that train I was just sitting there a bit tweaked, wide eyed and really honestly laughing in my head at just the sheer shock of it all. The immense feeling of relief I felt when I boarded the train quickly changed any feelings of horror to that of shocked disbelief and gratitude. This happened when I was 18 and had just moved to Tokyo for college and I was living in a dorm that was unfortunately about an hour away from my school in the center of Tokyo. Now Japan is one of the safest countries in the world. People leave their bikes unlocked for hours on the street in the middle of the city and nobody will lay a hand on them. The only real crime problem they have is pervs on the subway with wandering hands. But since I'm very obviously American and won't put up with that crap, I guess no guy has ever been brave enough to try anything with me. That was until one night when I ended up going out to dinner with a friend and I had to take a late train back to my door. If you've ever been on the Japanese subway, you'll know how crowded the express trains can get at night and early in the morning too. They literally have men standing outside the train who push passengers in when a bunch of sardines. Well, I was pretty tired and not in the mood to stand for an hour between a bunch of sweaty drunk businessmen. So I opted to take the local train back to my dorm, even though it would take about 15 minutes longer than express. So I'm sitting on the train and nothing is out of the ordinary. As the train goes along, more and more people start getting off the train until it's only me and one other man in our car. He's just your typical middle aged Japanese businessman. A little on the greasy side though. After a few stops, no one else gets on and the man doesn't get off. But I can feel him watching me from the other side of the car. I'm not too worried about it. I get a lot of stares being a young American girl in the middle of Tokyo. But when the guy starts inching his way across the car closer to where I'm sitting still, I think, no big deal. Maybe he's just trying to get closer to a map on the wall. I can still feel his eyes on me though, and just to be safe, I move to the other end of the car. It's more comfortable in the reserve seats anyway. Then it gets weird. The guy gets up and moves to the exact seat I had just been sitting in. I was kind of grossed out. What was he trying to do? Feel my warmth from having just been sitting there? Now I was kind of getting uneasy. Luckily, the train stops at its next stop and the guy gets off the train. I was relieved until he came back on the train through the door in front of me and sits directly next to me, looking straight at me and open mouth breathing on me. I didn't make any eye contact and just kind of sat frozen for a few seconds until I finally realized what was going on. I looked at him like, oh, don't even try anything on me. And then stood to get up. Luckily, someone else got on the train at the same time, and he literally bolted off the train before the door shut and we left. I don't know what he was planning on doing that he'd risk missing a stopover, but thank God someone else got on the train when they did. Needless to say, I'll just put up with standing for an hour and I take the express train now. When I was 15, my mom and I took a trip to Germany and Switzerland to visit some relatives. We're Canadian, and we had also stopped in Italy. For about two days, we kept our Italy plans loose. We decided at the station to hop on a train to Milan. We arrived and we had felt a little lost in the train station and were dragging large heavy luggage. So my mom left me with the bags in a seating area off to the side while she went to find someone to help us with accommodations for the night. The Milan train station is huge and busy. There wasn't anyone else sitting in the strip of seats. So it was strange when a man decided to sit two spots away from me, probably only a minute or two, right after my mom had left. He smelled like the floor of a filthy bathroom that's littered with cigarette butts. I felt slightly uncomfortable, but I didn't look at him and just continued to wait. But soon I could feel his eyes on me. I gave him a warning glance, like, hey, I know you're staring, so stop. I did this a few times. He didn't stop staring. I then realized that he was staring at my crotch. I felt really uncomfortable at this point, but I had these big heavy bags and I didn't want to move in case my mom couldn't find me. But then he had started touching himself, rubbing over his jeans. A man then passed by and the creep stopped rubbing himself. I was frozen, but then he continued when the other man was gone. Up until this point in my life, I had never experienced such objectification and violation. My horror and unpreparedness allowed him to continue. Finally, I hopped up and pushed all of the luggage as fast as possible around the corner, filling his eyes until I was out of sight. But he was still close by. Now what? Well, then I spotted my mom coming down the escalator and burst out crying. My mom and I decided to leave Milan in favor of Como. That night, on a connecting platform, I swear I saw him again, following what looked like a school group. I'm not sure if it was really him, but I know that's what I perceived.
- [31:38]
Advertiser
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- [33:31]
Storyteller
I've been meaning to post this story for a while now. It occurred some years ago in 2012 when I was 18. I was interrailing through Europe with my then boyfriend and we were on a train between Rome and a port town in Italy where we would be getting a boat to Greece the following day. We hadn't pre booked any accommodation as we found it really easy to get a hostel either in en route or on arrival at our previous destination. And as we'd be arriving in the town at nearly midnight, we decided to have a look for hostels whilst on the train. Unfortunately we found that there really wasn't as much accommodation where we were heading as there had been in the other major cities we had visited prior and the places we could find were mainly just hotels and way out of our price range. We were discussing this amongst ourselves when the guy sitting next to me on the train randomly struck up a conversation. He was really enthusiastic and chatty and he spoke pretty good English, asking about our trip so far, where we were from and just sort of general chit chat about ourselves. He said that he had overheard our accommodation problem and that he knew a perfect hostel for us, very close to the station and run by a friend of his. Initially this just came across as a useful bit of information, but alarm bells started ringing for me as he became very insistent that we must stay there and that if we mentioned his name and that he had sent us that we could stay there virtually for free. He wrote down an address and his name on a piece of paper and virtually had me promise that we would go there. After I'd given my word to stay there, he'd stopped talking to me entirely, which I found quite odd. He had been so warm and talkative and then just totally shut off. He also made three phone calls, none of which I could understand other than the word in a rail a few times. The rest of the journey passed in slightly uncomfortable silence and when I got up to get off the train he just said remember, then sang the address. We arrived in town and it was late and pretty deserted, nothing like the big touristy cities we had been used to, and I made up my mind then and there that we definitely wouldn't be staying in that hostel. My boyfriend was slightly annoyed, as I admittedly am a very paranoid person, but something just felt really off to me. We ended up checking into an annoyingly expensive hotel, literally a stone's throw away from the station, as I was just so creeped out that I didn't want to go wandering off the empty streets at night. Whilst at the hotel, I decided to look up the address he gave us. The first thing to say is that if you googled it, there was no mention at all of it being a hostel or guest house or really anything. It just came up as a street address. And secondly, if you put it on Google Maps, it wasn't anywhere near the station. It just looked like a normal building in a residential area way out of the city center. I know that all of this may have a perfectly innocent explanation behind it, and it may have just been that the guy ran a hostel from his house and the train guy was just overly eager to promote the business for his mate, but the whole encounter felt very off to me and I was relieved to leave the town the following day. I can't help but wonder whether or not we were being sent into some sort of trap. Even to this day, I wonder about it.
- [36:57]
Advertiser
You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday? How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use indeed. Stop struggling to get your job posts seen on other job sites with indeed sponsored jobs. Your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates so you can reach the people you want faster. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed have 45% more applications than non sponsored jobs. Don't wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit. To get your jobs more visibility at indeed.com just go to indeed.comarts right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. Stop struggling to get your job post seen on other job sites with Indeed sponsored jobs. Your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates so you can reach the people you want faster. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed have 45% more applications than non sponsored jobs. Don't wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit. To get your jobs more visibility at indeed.com just go to indeed.comarts right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need.
- [38:48]
Storyteller
I'm a 22 year old girl from Spain. I'm very used to using public transport to basically everywhere and it's not unusual to have some weird or creepy interactions with people, mostly men who randomly start to tell you about their lives and how sad they are. I usually just nod and politely smile until I go the other way. And I try to be very nice and polite because I'm just terrified of offending a crazy dude in case they do something. It had worked every time. However, this encounter in particular left me pretty shaken. I was on the main train coming back home and it was like a 40 minute ride. I usually just wear my headphones, but that day I had decided that I would just spend some time reading some random novel on my phone. It wasn't even dark out, so I was fairly calm. The wagon was mostly empty except for a guy and a couple behind me, but I didn't pay much attention to any of them because I would get really focused when I enjoy my novel. The first five or ten minutes were uneventful until I saw that guy from before get up and then change his seat to one that was oriented towards me, not immediately in front of me but maybe like two seats ahead looking in my direction. Again, I didn't pay much Attention. And I just kept doing my thing. Then I hear the guy mutter some words. At first I thought he was talking on the phone or something. But when I looked up, he was looking straight at me and he didn't take his gaze away when I made eye contact. It was only then when I realized what he was saying. He was insulting and cursing me repeatedly and non stop in a very low voice, but low enough for me to understand. The insults ranged from bitch, whore, stupid to much more colorful Spanish insults that I don't even think have a translation. I got paralyzed. Why was this guy cursing at me like this? I hadn't done anything to him. I had barely even looked at him. I thought that maybe I had pulled a face or something in the beginning, but I had my mask on so I couldn't have. I began to panic a bit as I didn't know what to do. It only got worse when the other couple that were on the wagon got off. So now it was only me and him. I thought about getting off the train too, but we were positioned in a way that made it impossible for me to move anywhere without walking right beside him. And I didn't want to get that close. I decided to ignore him, pretend I wasn't hearing him and seeing if he would get tired and stop. But no, he just kept going. It was the creepiest thing because he was barely stopping to breathe between insults. He just kept going, repeating the same things over and over again in a menacing and threatening tone, with pure hatred in his words and in his eyes, always looking right at me, even though I tried my best not to look back. Then things just got worse. He started mixing physical threats among his insults. I'm going to kill you. I'm going to bash your brains in. And stuff like that. That's when I really started to freak out. Insults were one thing, but I felt like this was really escalating. I had started messaging my friends and my boyfriend, telling them the situation. My boyfriend tried to call the train security phone, but there wasn't much they could do. I didn't dare call them myself because I didn't want the guy to know that I was calling for help. I also wanted to cry so badly, but I didn't let myself because I didn't want to encourage him by letting him see that he had an effect on me. For some reason, he moved. He changed seats to the one that was behind me. I got out of the train on the next station even though it wasn't my stop because I didn't want him to know which one was my stop. I kept looking behind me, fearing he would follow me and act on his threats, but I didn't see him anymore. One of my friends picked me up in his car and he took me home. The whole ride I was shaking and crying, kind of like laughing hysterically because I couldn't understand what had happened nor why. I got paranoid for a bit thinking he would somehow follow, but I haven't seen him again since then. The worst part is that I was really scared of using the public transport for a couple of days after that. I was so frustrated that a freaking weirdo could have that effect on me and that he had done that to someone he didn't even know. I kept thinking what would have happened if I had been wearing my headphones and hadn't realized what he was doing. I would have gotten off on my stop like normal. Would he have followed me? The train station where I usually stopped was in a pretty shady area and I still get creeped out when I think about what could have happened if we had been there alone. I'm even shaking a bit just by thinking about it. I just still can't believe that this stranger did this. What a psycho.
- [43:49]
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