Unnamed Female Narrator (18:06)
So my story happened a few years ago when I was 10 or 11. At that time, my mom and dad had just divorced and my mom moved into a small apartment. The building had two apartments per floor right across from each other. In the first few months, we never really saw the neighbor who lived in front of us, but suddenly we started seeing him more often. I remember the first time I saw him. It was behind the building in the small garden. He was there with his dogs and I don't know if I felt scared. Not just scared in a usual way, but this feeling like something was wrong. It was like he was staring at me, but not in a normal way. I couldn't explain it, but it made me feel uneasy. There was just something about him, his presence that felt strange even though I couldn't pinpoint what exactly it was. It just felt wrong. A few days later he came to our apartment and he asked my mom if he could buy me toys and even underwear My mom was naturally scared. I don't know what happened next, but I just know that she kicked him out of our apartment right away. Then about two weeks later, it was around midnight. My room was right next to the front door, and I suddenly started hearing knocking. But it wasn't just regular knocking. It was like someone was trying to force the door open by jiggling the handle. It started slow at first, but then it got faster and faster. I could hear it and my heart started racing. I was frozen in fear. I tried to get up to wake my mom or even look through the peephole, but I couldn't move. I was so scared that my body just wouldn't cooperate. I know that it wasn't a dream or anything. I knew it was real. I could feel the panic in my chest. After that, my mom and I moved out quickly and we never saw him again. But since then, I've really developed this weird paranoia that never really goes away. It feels like my brain keeps playing tricks on me. I hear a little noise and suddenly I'm convinced someone's in the house. I keep imagining things that aren't there. Like someone hiding in the hallway, watching me from the dark. I know it sounds irrational, but it doesn't feel that way at the moment. It's like my body freezes, my heart races and I can't move. Just like that night. And it comes in waves. Some days I'm totally fine, and others, it all comes back stronger than ever. I start thinking someone might come back. That someone might already be inside. Even when I lock the doors, double check everything, I can't fully shake that feeling. It's exhausting. And I hate that it still has this power over me. It's honestly really not fun. I feel ridiculous sometimes, but it happens out of nowhere. And I just can't stop the fear. It's completely irrational, but it's there. And sometimes it feels like I just can't escape it. And a few years later, someone actually broke into our house. It was a guy who was drunk or high, and I don't think he even had bad intentions. He was just lost. But that didn't make it any less scary. The paranoia is still there. Even though I try to remind myself that it's just my brain playing tricks on me. Anyway, that's my story. I know it's not the scariest one, and it probably won't be as interesting to others. And it's my first one, but I just needed to share it. I don't know how to get over it. If anyone has had similar experiences or feelings, I'd be happy to talk about it. Thanks. Warning the following story mentions animal cruelty. You may want to skip this one. This little story is from 2012. I live in Canberra, Australia. We're an incredibly boring place. 99% of the time. Not much happens, but when it does, everyone hears about it. I just started year 11 at a new school. The last two years of high school are done at a separate school, which we call College to Year 7 10. Everyone's about 1618 at this campus. I was a bit of an overachiever when it came to English, so I was placed in a class of six or seven other overachievers in an experimental English class taught by the deputy principal in charge of my grade. Basically, rather than physical books and assignments, the school wanted to trial a totally digital format, which I hated by the way. We worked almost exclusively on our personal iPads that we had to bring to each lesson. Even though the class was small, I don't remember much about most of the kids. They weren't particularly interesting. I guess I kept to myself after the collapse of my high school friendship group and sat next to the other quiet kid in this particular class. I'll call him Jimbo. Jimbo was even quieter than me. I got myself in trouble a couple of times for challenging the teacher's views, but I honestly do not remember this guy ever saying a word. One lesson, for some reason that escapes me, were we discussing our pets? Jane talked about her cat, Bob, about his dogs. Whatever. It was one of the few times I contributed without challenging the teacher. Even Jimbo still said nothing, just flicking idly through his iPad and leaning back on his chair, as he very often did. A couple of weeks into the year, I finally found a few new friends to hang out with on breaks. Jimbo is absent from class, and then the next and the next. This kid just disappeared. And after another couple of weeks, I asked the deputy where he was. This dude hated me, so he literally rolled his eyes, shoved past, and said nothing. I shrugged it off because I knew the teacher was a dickhead, but I was still curious. I brought it up to my new mates because it's not common around here for a kid to just stop showing up to school. We're a small city. Someone always knows something. If he'd moved school, someone would have heard. There had to be some kind of explanation for the sudden extended absence. One of my new buddies took me aside. I'll call him Jerry. Jerry was a good, goofy guy. He was the type to Always joke around. So when he pulled me aside all serious, I knew that something was off. Jerry and Jimbo had been friends back at their old high school. At some stage over the summer holidays, when Jerry had visited him, Jimbo had spilled a glass of milk in his kitchen. Jerry laughed about it, but Jimbo demanded he clean it up, even though Jerry obviously wasn't the one who made the mess. Jerry turned his back and the next thing he knew, Jimbo had a knife to his throat and made him clean up the spill at knifepoint. But it gets worse. So, so much worse. He tells me that Jimbo's iPad was absolutely packed with videos. Videos of him doing the most disgusting subhuman things to animals, primarily dogs. I physically can't bring myself to write the specifics of what he did to those poor souls. Thank the BTK killer. But without the people, he'd been stealing them from backyards and luring strays. There was even a teacher at the school who had come to find out why his dogs were going crazy so late. And then he saw Jimbo scamper off into the night. There was a vast paddock not far from the school that I used to go smoke weed in, because the grass was tall enough to keep us relatively well hidden from the rest of the world. Absolutely huge. A good kilometer square, if not more. That specific paddock in question, I learned, had been his killing fields. I was just getting high in the opposite corner, closer to the houses that lined one side. If we decided to venture diagonally across for whatever reason, we very possibly could have come across something he'd done. The iPad that he'd recorded it all on had been less than a foot away from me. For weeks he'd flicked through the images of what he'd done so casually in that little classroom of six or seven students. Hell, he knew that each one of us had pets. He also had a bucket list found on the iPad, the top item of which was graduating to killing humans. From what I know, Jimbo was convicted for animal cruelty and nobody's heard of him since. I sold the socks off my feet for $10. Someone bought the socks off my feet at the grocery store. Alright, so for some context, I'm a 30 year old female and live in the Midwest United States. About a week ago, I was shopping at my local grocery store for a few things that I needed. I noticed a man near me in the dairy section, looking at me intently a little bit. So I smiled as I walked away. I go through the checkout line and bag up my groceries and head out to my car. As I'm loading my items into the back of my car, the same guy I saw in the store pulls up behind my vehicle and says, hey, I have a question for you. And I just said, sure, what's up? Can I buy your socks? At this point I'm thinking that I must have heard him wrong. So I ask him to repeat the question and he proceeds to ask the same question. Can I buy your socks? I'll pay you $10 for the socks on your feet. I said, umm, why? Then he said, you know, it's kind of my thing. I replied, um, like a foot fetish sort of thing. To which he then said, yeah, something like that. Now mind you, as he's asking me this, he has my car blocked in and he's reaching into his inner jacket pocket. Now as a woman, I'm always aware of my surroundings and such. So at this point my brain is thinking about the worst case scenarios. I'm thinking this man is about to pull out a gun and kill me if I don't give him my socks. So I just said, hold on, let me put this cart back. So I walk back to my car after returning the shopping cart and he's now exited his car and is right next to my driver side door. Now I'm panicking and I'm scared for life. It's fight, flight or freeze. And I'm frozen solid, honey. So I sit in my driver's seat with this door left open and I proceed to take my socks off my feet and hand them to this guy. He just says thank you, you're beautiful and your feet are so pretty. He then hands me the $10 and walks back to his vehicle and drives away. Now this is by far the creepiest and scariest thing that has ever happened to me. And at this point I'm no longer wearing socks out in public. It's kind of funny. Tell me what you all think about this and what you would have done in this situation. This happened about one hour ago, so my memory is still fresh. First off, I am living very rural in a small village with maybe 10, 15 houses but close to the highway. You can drive there within maybe five minutes and also about 10 minutes away from the town. If you cross the street, it just takes you about a 10 minute walk to reach the forest. First Christmas day in the afternoon, my partner and I decided to go for a little digestive walk as we were really stuffed from all the food. It was about 5pm and already dark when we left and we Had a big and bright LED flashlight with us. I also took my camera and my flash, as I love taking pictures of nature at night. We decided to walk on a little country road towards the forest and then turn right, following a small graveled cycle track close to the forest border, which connects our village and the next. It's maybe about 15, 20 minutes of walking between villages. In the middle part of the track, you have to walk through a small bit of forest. It's rather dark and the trees are very high and quite dense. When we entered, I saw our flashlight reflecting on something and I recognized a car being parked there on the side of the track, close to the trees. This struck me as odd as cars are not allowed to drive there and the path is very narrow and hidden, so I was a bit cautious. My partner pointed to the light inside of the car and it seemed to be empty. I also noticed the windows were frozen, so it must have been parked there for a while A bit. In the front of the car, I spotted a tree with an intriguing structure and I asked my partner to point the flashlight towards it so that I could focus better and photograph it with my flash. After I took a few images, my partner told um, there's someone standing behind us in the middle of the road is looking at us. Nobody was following us the whole way. I kept looking around and behind us occasionally, because at this time in the evening and close to the border of the forest, there are boars sometimes. Also, it's mating season, so they're more aggressive than usual. Indeed, there was a man standing behind us, staying out of the flashlight's reach. He wasn't saying anything, just standing there and facing us. At first I thought he might be startled, as it may seem a bit weird if someone is just taking photos around your car. It was not even legal to drive on that path with the car. I decided to get up and confront him from a distance, explaining to him that I was just taking photos of the tree. He didn't react and still just stood there. I then went on to ask him if he needed some light, and he replied that this wasn't necessary. It was odd, but I was still calm, sure about there being a normal explanation for his behavior. Nonetheless, my partner and I both just decided to get the hell out of there and followed the path leading to the next village. It was maybe five, seven minutes until we reached it. I remembered the letters on his license plate, not the numbers though, unfortunately, and googled it. And it turned out that he was from a city about six hours away from Our village. Mind you, the country I live in is in a very strict lockdown right now, so you're only allowed to travel even by car if you have very urgent reasons. After we reached the first lantern of the next village, we looked back and observed the car driving a bit out of the forest, turning around and going back inside. I was able to see that he parked there again and turned the lights off. He didn't leave the forest. We went home on a much longer way than initially intended, as I didn't want to go back there for obvious reasons. Our flashlight battery died on the way and my phone battery was low, so I didn't want to call the police back then, but I called them as soon as I arrived home and gave them all of the details. Big regret that I didn't memorize the whole license plate, but it was just so surprising that I seriously didn't think about it. Also, it only occurred to me as really strange when I thought about the frozen windows and that he could have impossibly walked behind us, plus him having no light and not responding. He did seem to be sneaking up on us when I sat down to take the photo. I think I was very lucky to have my partner, the camera in the bright light with me. I don't want to imagine what could have happened if I was alone. I forgot to mention this when I told my housemate. She theorized that he may have been spying on the houses very close to the forest border. As you can easily look into their backyards without being seen. You have to walk a bit up the hill and further, about five minutes. I think this is likely. I had the thought of photographing the driver when I entered the forest part of the path, but somehow I felt unwell about it and decided not to do it despite it being an interesting scene. In hindsight, I believe this saved me as he must have hidden behind the trees close to the car and forest entrance. If he was really planning a burglary or worse, dumping a body. I think it's not unlikely he may have attacked me if he realized I had a potential photo of his car with a recognizable license plate. We went back and found a tape marking on one of the trees. A very small hideout, more to store things than to sit in as well as some cut off part of a backpack. I have no idea what the guy was doing, but I honestly don't even want to know. I went grocery shopping today just for a few items and I was in and out of the store in about 15 minutes. Towards the end, I just walked past a couple in an aisle when I heard there she is and saw someone point their finger at me out of the corner of my eye. This caught my attention, so I turned around to see two people scowling at me, one of whom had their phone out in front of them, either recording me or taking a photo of me. There's no one else in front of them in the aisle but me. I got freaked out and quickly walked into a couple of other aisles to grab more items, hoping that I was somehow misinterpreting the situation and tried to shrug it off. However, this couple proceeds to follow me all throughout the store at a distance with their phones out. They thankfully don't continue following me while checking out or on my way home. They said nothing more to me. I live in Boston and true to the stereotype, I have no desire to interact with anyone on the street. I didn't recognize them and I can't remember any negative encounters with strangers for me to make any sense of this, I don't even have a car, so this wasn't road rage or someone pissed off over a parking spot. I'm figuring I simply look like someone else, but this event still has me in fight or flight mode.