July 2024: Compilation of Most Terrifying Reddit Horror Stories
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I wanted to share this story because it stands out so starkly to me. There's only one person I've met in my life that I'm absolutely positive was a psychopath, and it happened to be a child. The summer after I graduated college, I was living in a house in Berkeley, California with a few PhD students. It wasn't the best neighborhood, but it wasn't the worst either. There were families living in the neighborhood, including the people in the house next to us. It seemed like a reasonably nice two-story home.

But on several occasions, there were police cars and/or ambulances outside of this house. We never really questioned why, as police cars weren't a rare sight in the area, and we had only ever seen a young girl and her mom in the house, so there was nothing overtly abnormal or concerning. One afternoon, my roommates and I had just finished smoking a joint in our backyard when we hear a knock at the door. I open it, and it happens to be the mother from next door. I was a bit taken aback.

and even more so when she says, "Hi, I wanted to ask you guys something. I really don't want to have to call the police." At this point, I'm thinking she must have seen or smelled a smoking weed, and while it was Berkeley, it technically hadn't been legalized yet. So I'm thinking we need to apologize and talk our way out of some trouble. But then I notice this woman is visibly shaking. She was clearly terrified and said, "I just don't know what to do. I'm having a situation with my daughter,

and I really just need another adult to be there. My roommate Sean and I immediately agree to go with her while my other roommates look on, incredibly confused by whatever the hell is going on. This mother is asking some stone students to be adults. I figure she must truly be desperate for help. Sean and I walk over there with her, and she explains that her daughter has some issues, which are currently manifesting as her standing on the roof of their house, threatening to drop her mom's work computer off the edge,

or simply jump off herself. Wow, sh*t just got super real. Sure enough, we walk up the driveway to the house, and there's this kid standing on the roof of their two-story home, dangling a MacBook Pro over the side. She's saying in this disturbing, sing-songy voice, "Look, Mommy! No hands! No hands, Mommy! No hands!" Sean and I immediately make eye contact with each other, because we're both creeped the f*ck out. This doesn't seem to be a normal kid.

The way she's speaking reminds me of the twins from The Shining. She's not crying, and doesn't seem even remotely distressed. On the contrary, even, it appears she's enjoying this torment of her mother, like it's some kind of sick game to her. The mom starts explaining to us that her daughter has had issues like this for many years. She has a psychiatrist and a therapist, and the mother has called both of them. They recommended calling the police, but the mother has been through this quite a few times before.

and doesn't want the child to go through the ordeal of being restrained and taken into the hospital yet again. She's frightened and exhausted and doesn't know what to do. So I just start talking to the kid. I tell her about how I used to love climbing on the roof of my house, and now I'm into rock climbing, and I bet that she would love that too. Besides, it's much safer than climbing around the edge of a roof if you make sure you use the proper gear and safety precautions. And the fact that she's so unsafe right now is really scaring her mom.

I told her if she climbs down, I'd be happy to talk to her more about climbing, as well as show her the pet geckos we have that literally climb up the walls. I'm just pulling things out of my ass at this point. I have no idea what to say or how to mediate a situation like this. I'm just trying to diffuse the tension and get her to come down. She's flat out ignoring me at first, continuing to taunt her mom, but eventually, she seems to get bored or irritated with my attempts to engage her.

She turns around and climbs back towards the window where she got out onto the roof. She runs down the stairs and out to meet us, then says in the same weirdly sing-songy, fake "come play with us Danny" voice: "I dropped your computer on the roof and now it's broken. I'm sorry, mommy. Do you forgive me?" There was zero actual remorse whatsoever in her voice. It sounded so disturbing and manipulative. I was blown away that it was coming from a 10-year-old girl.

and not some demon child from a horror movie. The mother is still shaking and looks plainly overwhelmed, so I offer to go up and get her computer from the roof. She agrees and escorts me through the house up the stairs with her daughter trailing behind. It appears to be a perfectly normal and well-maintained middle-class home by the way. The little girl is clearly irritated with me spoiling her game and repeatedly orders me to leave. I ignore her, climb out the window onto the roof,

and the laptop is sitting by a gutter seemingly unscathed. I climb back through and hand it to the mother. At this point, the girl realized her bluff was called and skipped off to her room. Mom proceeds to explain to me that this whole thing was triggered by her changing the password to her laptop after the girl logged into it, stole her mother's credit card, and ordered over $2,000 worth of stuff. This girl is freaking 10 years old. Apparently, she's been pulling shit like this her entire life.

and no one understands why. They had to move the girl's younger sibling into a separate apartment with her father because they were afraid she would hurt him. The mom was crying at this point, saying they really tried their best to get her the help she needs, and they're just at their wits end. I did my best to reassure her. I gave her my phone number and told her to contact me if she needs help in the future. At this point, Sean and I noped the fuck out of there after that and went back to our own house. That mother never contacted me,

and we eventually moved out a few months later. That was the extent of my interactions with this young girl, although I think about that mother every now and again. I wonder what the next months held for them, the next years, and if they ever found a resolution to why she was acting out in such a way. My best educated guess? They never did, and that little girl, who is now an adult, has probably found her way into some much more malicious type of activities.

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I'm a 24-year-old guy who works in housing on a college campus. One other piece of information about me that will probably be important for this: I'm bisexual. One night during the school year, I started chatting with someone on a hookup app. He was talking about how he had never hooked up with a guy and wanted to try it but was a little bit nervous. I told him that I would be willing to help him out, I'd let him take the lead, but totally understood if he wasn't ready yet. His profile said that he was 4 miles away,

and was 23 years old, so it more than surprised me when he told me that he lived on campus. Against my better judgement, I agreed to still go hang out with him. The first red flag that I for some reason missed was the way he talked about what I had assumed was his room. He kept calling it "a room" instead of "his room", and he even originally stated it as he knew a place that we could hook up. I did question him about it, and he never really gave me a solid answer, although at the time I didn't think much of it.

These next parts, I really didn't think of as red flags either, only until afterwards. When I got to his room, the living room and kitchen were completely empty. There were four bedrooms in the apartment, and he led me to the third one. I had noticed the fourth bedroom had a light on, but the door was closed. Taking into account all of his actions leading up to this, I assumed that he was closeted and maybe just curious. I was surprised he was inviting me over when his roommate was clearly home. As I followed him into his room,

I noticed that it looked pretty bare, nothing on the walls, not much stuff in there. There were sheets on the bed and a few other random things around the room, but that was it. I hardly had time to process the bareness of the room when he turned around to me and said, "I don't think I can do this." I told him there that there were no worries and that if he changed his mind to hit me up. Well, about a month or so later, at the end of the semester, we did health and safety checks. In my position, we usually don't do them.

We have the RAs do them. But we were low on staff that day, so the extra help was needed. So the extra help was needed. The room where the above event happened just so happened to be one of the rooms that I had to check. The apartment at this point was completely empty. On the documentation sheet that we used, it said that the apartment was vacant, which could have just meant the occupants had moved out. But out of curiosity, and the fact that I was starting to get the creeps for some reason,

I checked our database, only to find out that there was no one assigned to the room that past semester. Meaning, no one was supposed to be living in that room at all. I have absolutely no explanations to how this guy got into the room, or what his actual intentions were, or really what the whole thing was about at all. I reckon it's something I'll never know, but it still gives me goosebumps when I think about it. Did I dodge something sketchy that night? Or did I avoid something much more sinister

What was the actual intent of having me come up to that room? And how did that guy, and whoever he may have been with, gotten in there in the first place? Trust your gut feelings, everyone. I didn't have any that night, and the red flags that I'm examining now? I'm lucky that I'm not in a position that I sorely wish I would have noticed them then. This is the story of a coworker I had a long time ago, so I can look back on it and laugh now, but at the time, it was really distressing for me. To give a little background,

Every summer, I would do some temp work for the company where my dad worked. It was an education company, so they always needed temp workers around July and August, which was the time for all the exam remarks that they had come in. It was data entry work, but it suited me fine, and it meant I could earn a little extra cash while I was at university. I did this every summer from when I was 19 right through to when I was 23.

And then I got another job at the same company for a bit after I graduated, but we'll get to that later. For now, all you need to know is that I was a reasonably familiar face there, and everyone knew that I was my dad's daughter. The main downside of working there was that I'd clock off work at 5pm, but I'd have to wait for my dad to finish work, since he was the head of an entire department, so he'd end up staying a bit later.

Every day, I'd bring a book with me and sit in this little foyer area between his department and the department where I worked, since it had the most comfortable chairs. I must have been 22 years old when this happened, because it was the penultimate summer that I worked there. I had just cut my hair short for the first time in my life, and I'd also dyed it red as well. I was sitting on these couches reading, when all of a sudden, this guy approaches me. Let's call him Leon.

He tells me that he works in my dad's department and he thought he'd come introduce himself. This was a pretty common occurrence for me, and I was aware of this guy. He was young and decent looking, so a few of the women in my department had a crush on him. I was dating someone at the time though, and I had never actually seen him in person, but I could see what they saw in him. We got to chatting, and he mentioned that I'd changed my hair, so I told him about cutting it short, and he cut me off mid-sentence. And this

It's where it started to get weird. He said, "No. First it was brown and you didn't have a fringe. Then you went through that phase of curling it. Then you got the fringe and dyed it red. After that, you dyed it purple. Now you've had it cut short and dyed it back to red." This guy that I had just met was describing over two years worth of hairstyle changes that I'd had. I felt creeped out, but he seemed like a nice enough guy and I guess I had worked at the company throughout that entire time.

So, it was reasonable to assume that he'd noticed me before. That should have been my first red flag. He asked me if I had Facebook, and I told him that I did. So he said that he would add me there. That seemed pretty much normal. But then, after he'd sent the friend request, he asked me to get my phone out, so he could watch me accept the friend request. I'm British, and it's therefore impossible for me to be impolite. So I got my phone out, and showed him that I had accepted it. I thought that might calm him down.

Bear in mind, he wasn't a bad looking guy, so I did feel a bit flattered at this point that he was so keen on me. That sense of flattery dissolved real fast. After the Facebook thing, he kept asking me if I had MSN, and I told him that I didn't. I swear, throughout this conversation, he asked me if I had MSN about four times. Then the final time he asked, he was like, can you please get MSN so we can chat after work?

It was like he had something really urgent that he wanted to tell me, but I had only just met this person. I kind of laughed and told him how I hadn't used MSN since I was a teenager, without necessarily rejecting him. Then he said something like, "Well, if you don't have MSN, then do you have Skype?" This seemed like the perfect opportunity to bring up my boyfriend, who was a foreign student and went back to his home country during the summer. He was the only person I spoke to on Skype.

I said to Leon about how I didn't have my own Skype account, but I used my dad's Skype account to talk to my boyfriend. I really thought this might ward him off. I was wrong. Without missing a beat, he said, "Can you please just get your own Skype account so we can video chat after work?" He said it like I was somehow inconveniencing him, like this was something we'd agreed to do months ago or something. I had no idea how to react, so I just sort of smiled and laughed.

Thank the heavens someone from my dad's department walked past at that very moment and was like, "Leon, aren't you meant to be at your desk?" He scurried off pretty quickly after that, but not before reminding me to get my own Skype account and to send him the details. I told my dad about this whole exchange and the car ride home, but all he said was that Leon was very friendly and that a lot of women in his department liked him. So maybe I had just misunderstood the situation. I thought he was probably right,

so I tried not to let it bother me. Later that evening though, I was on my computer doing schoolwork when a message popped up on my Facebook. It was Leon. All the message said was, we like the same movies. I don't know what it was, but something about this message freaked me out so very much. I decided not to respond and logged off Facebook, hoping that he wouldn't notice that I had been online. The next day, after work, I was sat in my usual spot when Leon comes over to me.

His face was like thunder. At first, I thought he was just having a bad day and was walking through the hallway, but my heart dropped when I realized he was walking directly towards me. "Why didn't you respond to my Facebook message?" I was stunned. How was I supposed to respond to that? Who says stuff like that in real life? Lucky for me, I didn't have an opportunity to respond, because he started off on this tirade. I kid you not.

He started listing all of the movies we had in common that he had seen on my Facebook profile: The Dark Knight, Watchmen, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Fight Club. I just sat there watching him reel off all these film titles. Once he was finished, he didn't wait for a reply. He just simply said, "It's okay. I forgive you," and then walked off back to his department. Over the next couple of weeks, he came and found me in my spot every day.

and talked at me from the moment I sat down to the moment that my dad came to get me. I don't remember many of the other exchanges, but I do remember distinctly one day pretending to pick my nose when I saw him coming to see if that would put him off, but it didn't. It got to the point where I'd get so stressed out after work that I'd go and hide in the toilets for as long as I could, but the women I worked with started to notice and think that I was weird.

Eventually, I broached the subject with my dad and he gave me his car keys after my shift so that I'd be able to go hide out in his car rather than anywhere in the building. So one day I'm camped out in the car and I'm still feeling quite a bit tense, but after about 20 minutes, I start to feel myself relax. Surely Leon won't come out looking for me, right? Wrong. I look over at the main entrance and my heart plummets. He's coming out of the door and he's scrutinizing all of the cars.

I sank down as far as possible into the seat, but I wasn't fast enough, and he saw me. He comes rushing over, starts tapping on the glass, so I open the door to ask him what's up. I didn't see you in your usual spot, but luckily the doorman told me he saw you come out here. Why are you in your dad's car? Again, what are you even supposed to say to that? I told him that I had a headache, so I came out to the car to take some Tylenol and see if I could get some sleep. At least he respected that.

because he told me to feel better and then left me alone. I breathed a heavy sigh of relief knowing that I was only going to be working there for a few more days before I had to head back to school. I told my dad about the car incident and he gave Leon a talking to the next day. Leon would still come find me in the foyer but he'd only talk to me for a few minutes in passing before leaving me alone. It was actually a big relief. On my last day of work there, I was fully expecting him to do something crazy.

but he didn't even come to chat with me that day. I left the office and thought that I would never see him again. I found out later that he was fired not long after I left the company because he kept coming into work late and then spent most of his time at work chatting with his coworkers and me, apparently. Fast forward to January of 2014. I was preparing to move to China for a position teaching English. I had graduated from school and I was working at the same company.

but this time in a semi-permanent capacity. It was my last day at work once again, so I received quite a few gifts and some fuss from my coworkers. It was about 10am when who should I see walk through the door but Leon. He had been hired as a temp to do the job that I had done for so many years. As soon as he walked through the door, he saw me and this flash of recognition crossed his face. I wanted to slide under my desk and die right there.

He came walking over to me and was all smiles, asking about how I was and what I was still doing at the company. It was at this point that one of my coworkers mentioned about how I was off to China soon. Leon seized on that and started talking about his friend who was also interested in teaching English abroad. His interests seemed genuine, so I got to talking about my qualification, who I got my credential through, what company I was going to be working for out in China.

We chatted for maybe 20 minutes, and he wrote down some details for his "friend." Then he went off to work. At the end of the day, I was packing all my stuff to leave, and a few of my coworkers were coming over to say their goodbyes. Don't get me wrong, the Leon incident aside, I had a wonderful time working at that company and I made a lot of great friends, some of whom I'm still close with today. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Leon approaching, but I think, what's the harm?

He says goodbye and wishes me luck on my new adventure. Then, as I'm literally one step out the door of the department, I hear him call out "See you in China!" For the first two weeks of my teacher training over there, I was like a hawk, keeping a constant lookout for this guy. Thankfully, he never did follow me out to China, but this, and everything around it, remains one of the creepiest encounters of my life. I've been lurking on this sub for quite a while and enjoy hearing other people's experiences.

While perusing, I recall the story from my own childhood that I had mostly forgotten. Here it is. My parents divorced when I was four, maybe five years old. During and after the divorce, my brother, who we'll call Chris, my mom and I moved into a two-bedroom apartment townhouse. Now, this was not a nice townhouse that you might be imagining. It wasn't a complete sh*thole per se, but it was older and in a rougher part of town.

something that a single mother with two kids could swing. The layout of the apartment is important to the story, so bear with me here. When you walk in the front door, the kitchen is immediately to your left, and there's a short entrance hallway right in front of you. The kitchen has an open countertop area that looks into a dining spot for a table, and a split-level living room/den area that also had glass sliding doors leading out to the backyard, where there was a rather sad and sparse playground

In the hallway entrance again, on the right is a staircase leading up to my mom's and my/my brother's rooms. One day after school, my brother and I are out playing in the backyard on the playground, doing our kid stuff, when my mom told us she wanted to go check the mail. The mailboxes for the apartments are located at the front entrance, which is on the opposite side of the complex from us. Naturally, me being 5 and Chris being 9, my mom didn't want to leave us alone.

especially since it was just about dark outside. We came inside and got ready to go check the mail together. On the way out, I remember my mom asking Chris if he had closed and locked the back sliding glass door. Chris affirmed that he had. Cut to, "We're coming back from the mail room. It's maybe been 20-30 minutes max. It's hard to recall fully, but my mom unlocks the apartment door. I'm lingering in the car for some reason or another." Chris hadn't realized that I wasn't in the apartment yet.

and on the stairs leading to the bedrooms on the right, he sees someone's feet disappear at the top of the landing, as if someone were scampering off to hide, thinking that they were my feet. He doesn't think that there's anything off about the situation. Chris heads to the kitchen, and I actually make my way inside and head upstairs directly into our bedroom so that I could get ready for my nighttime bath routine. My mom is at the table in the dining area near the split-level living area downstairs.

While I'm completely clueless getting ready for bed in the bathroom, Chris from downstairs keeps hearing someone walking around in my mom's room. Now, I had a bad habit when I was this age of going through people's stuff. Not maliciously, I was just five, so call it curiosity. So Chris, thinking that I'm being a nosy bastard going through all my mom's jewelry and other things, runs upstairs to catch me in the act, making an effort to get me in trouble.

Chris runs up the stairs, sprints across the hall to my mom's bedroom, and throws himself stomach-first onto the bed. When he looks up, he doesn't see me. He sees a tall, slender man with a bright green, goblin latex Halloween mask on. This man is also holding a large knife that he swiped from our kitchen. My brother sits silently in shock as the man in the mask raises a single finger to his mouth, indicating Chris to be quiet. In an absolute true form of my brother,

He screamed bloody murder for our mother. Now, I've heard things going on, but I have no idea and am not aware of what's happening. I've gotten into my big oversized sleep shirt and am heading downstairs to have a glass of milk before bed. When Chris screamed, the man ran downstairs and encountered my mom, who immediately jumped into action. Our baseball gear was in the living room and my mom instinctively grabbed a bat and started fighting this man in our house while he all the while is taking swipes at her with her own knife.

I first notice what's happening when I've come downstairs to the kitchen. I pulled up a step stool to reach the counter and to pour that glass of milk. That's when I see over the bar the guy push my mom off the steps into the living room where she lands flat on her back. She starts swinging the bat wildly, trying to make any contact she can with it, and boy does she. She makes direct contact with this guy's knee, and I can still hear the aluminum thud of the bat into bone.

I'm absolutely glued to this image, frozen in place, not scared, just so young that I couldn't fully process what I was seeing. After taking the blow with the bat, it seems like this guy has lost all will to fight with my mom. He runs towards the front door, which is right by the kitchen. I'm now mid-pour of my glass of milk, still frozen, milk continuing to spill out all over the counter and floor. Before he exits, he stops and turns directly towards me.

And in that green goblin mask with the knife screams a primal, deep sound of rage paired with frustration. And as he ran out, he slammed the door so hard that it seemed like our whole place shook. I continued standing on my stool, pouring milk everywhere, frozen for I don't know how long. Could have been only a second, but it felt much longer than that. I don't remember what happened afterwards, but all of the parts I've relayed are very clear to me.

It became obvious to us that that man had made his way in through that backsliding door, the one that Chris claimed to have locked, but in actuality, most likely he didn't. The moral of this whole story is to lock your doors, and to not just assume you did. And while this story happened over 20 years ago, I have to say, man in the goblin mask, let's never meet again.

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I've lived my entire life in a very rural area in Tennessee, and this happened either the summer of 1992 or 1993. At the time, I was a preteen. I can still see this in my mind, almost as if it happened yesterday. Like I said before, a rural area in Tennessee where we used to have some serious issues with people dumping unwanted, worn out items and garbage down our beautiful hillsides and ravines.

At that time, it was common to find illegal dumping sites everywhere because there was no bulk pickup offered by our one waste disposal monopoly. In this part of the state, the economic disparity is obvious. You have some of the poorest people imagine, coupled with some folks that own multiple mansions and vacation homes. My family fell somewhere in the upper middle class. To relate it to the movie Titanic, which was one of my favorite films of all time,

we would be either the lowest rung of first class or the very top of second class. Unfortunately, the majority of our neighbors and community would be in steerage or the coal bunker. Well, it was August here in Tennessee, aka sun-scorching heat and enough humidity to make it slightly uncomfortable to even breathe. Many describe it as the swamp-ass capital of the state. Anyway, we had just had an extraordinarily rare murder in our county.

It was all that anyone was talking about, all you could hear in our churches, grocery stores, and beauty salons. The victim was largely unknown, a woman in her early 30s and nowhere near wealthy. I didn't know her, nor did it seem like anyone else in my neighborhood did. She had moved here less than a year before and kept to herself, so she hadn't even been reported missing. Then, just before our summer break came to an end, this lady was found at the base of a steep incline,

deep in one of our densely wooded areas by some folks who were out for a nature hike. There she was, found at the base of a large illegal dump on a winding dirt road that was barely wide enough for a single vehicle. If you met another car, one of you would have to pull over so far you'd be almost entirely off the road. What adds a layer of creepiness to this? The road's name was Bone Road. When she was found, this poor woman had been decapitated.

although both her upper and lower body were recovered. Her killer hadn't been caught. So, my mom was born and raised here, and was strong, yet of goofy stock. She's always been my best buddy, even when dropping the hammer on my brother and myself. She was loved by every student that she ever taught in her capacity as a teacher. Our friends adored my goofy mama, often telling me just how lucky I was to have her.

My dad was a pharmacist in our area, smarter than most, and happy to go fill a lost or forgotten prescription even late into the night. My dad isn't originally from here, but is very well known because of his job. Everyone knows my mom, because she and most of our huge family have been here since our ancestors settled here in the late 1800s. The rest of her family lived in Middle Tennessee. On that particular day in August,

we had been in a family reunion picnic at the beautiful, naturally made lake that we lived near. When suddenly, as it's known to do in the summer here, a scattered thunderstorm popped up and brought our get together to an abrupt end. It was just me and my mom on the ride home where she got the wild idea to have us go play Sherlock Holmes and Watson. She wanted to go see the crime scene. I know, brilliant idea, mom. My dad was at work and my brother was with a friend.

Like I said, this was '92 or '93, so no GPS, Alexa, Siri, Google Earth, not even MapQuest. My dad was on our school board and had been given a highly detailed map of our entire county. Since neither of us knew how to reach Bone Road, it was agreed that the map would be our guide. We went home, swooped up the map, and set out like we were Magellan. We eventually found the place and headed to the spot.

and being the ignorant rubberneckers we were, we had just planned to drive past this stupid dump site. I can't begin to explain just how creepy this place was. A murder dump in the middle of nowhere on a road that started with blacktop, transitioned to gravel, and then good ol' country dirt. It was mid-afternoon, but the sudden rain on the August ground made the area steamy. Listeners who are from the South might know what I mean.

Literal steam was emanating from the road, the fields, the woods, everywhere. And this just added to the thrill of our folly. As we approached the location, there was a blind curve making it impossible to see the place until you were right up on it. Once we rounded that corner, we saw that we weren't alone. There was a very dirty man who had his very dirty truck pulled over at the dump site, just far enough to allow us to pass. Now, sure,

Joe Dirt could have just been another looky-loo. Now sure, Joe Dirt could have just been another looky-loo, like us. But he gave off a creepy AF vibe, just standing by his truck, looking downward into the dump. It wasn't a sheriff's officer. After all, we knew all our local authorities, and they had cleared the location a day or so before. Now, anyone could access the area. I look out the window as we pass him, and we're so close that I can see his two teeth

Clear as day. Literally. A two-tooth smile in this uber-creeptastic, almost leering sort of way. Not nice. Far from friendly. We got past and thanked the lord that Mr. Two-tooth hadn't followed us. We agreed we would reach the end of Bone Road and get the hell out of there. Oh, you know there's a but. We reached the end of Bone Road, ending at a field. Bone Road was a dead end. No pun intended.

My mom said the words that I had been screaming in my head since we passed that man. "Oh f-." We had no choice. We had to do a five-point turn and go back the direction that we came from. "Oh, I bet he's gone now." That was my mom's feeble attempt to soothe us both. But guess what? He was still there. He was still smiling his huge, sporadically tooth-populated smile. Now, as an adult, I reflected on this. That man could have come after us.

knowing that we would have been cornered. And to this day, I'm wondering why he never did. We made it out unscathed, of course, and my father hit the roof when he heard the tapestry of idiocy our afternoon adventure was. It's at this point that we hit our second iteration of "but," because you always know there's a "but" coming. Days later, our newspaper heralded the good news: the murderer had been caught. This woman had been killed by a boyfriend turned stalker,

She had moved here from a town about 45 minutes away, just to get away from him. But wouldn't you know, he found her. He drove around with her body in his truck before happening upon the dump. Murder solved. Case closed. Happily ever after? Uh, not exactly. As we stared down at this guy's mugshot, he was real. Mr. Two-Tooth was our killer. We never told my dad that part.

Eventually, the killer was convicted of first-degree murder and abuse of a corpse. He will die in the state prison system, serving life without the possibility of parole. Still, Mom and I promised we would never be so dumb again. We still have weird adventures, but none to freaky, remote murder dump sites on unknown terrain and with no one knowing where we are. We really could have met our end on that dead-end road.

It's an odd thing knowing that you've been face to face with a brutal murderer, not once, but twice. I've always heard in TV and from Hollywood that the murderer will occasionally revisit the scene of the crime. I had no idea that was actually a thing though, not just dramatized for my entertainment on Law & Order or some other big budget movie that I'm watching.

When I think about driving down that desolate road that day and coming across a man who had just extinguished the life of someone that he'd cared about, I'm left wondering, what are the odds? If you're anything like me and into true crime shows or channels, you may have heard this story before, or at least the main details. I've seen it covered in several myself. Here's a little background. This event happened nearly 15 years ago. I had just turned 18 and moved to Orange County, California.

I moved into an apartment complex near the community college that I was attending, so a bunch of younger people around my age lived there. I didn't know a single person in California, so I would take any opportunity to socialize and meet new people. A big gathering place at the complex was the main pool, where people would drink and relax in the sun. Over the first few months, I would meet a bunch of people while hanging out there. I never got super close to any of them, but I would see these same people several days a week.

We would often go back to each other's apartments after the pool to drink or smoke some more. It was a really mellow and fun environment. Three people I would see all the time were Sarah, Mike, and John. One day after hanging out at the pool, Sarah, my girlfriend, and I went back to my apartment. The three of us smoked and Sarah went back home. Just a typical, regular day. The next day, we all found ourselves at the pool once more.

Although there were a few of the usual people missing, but still a solid 10 people gathering, so we didn't really notice. We go home later that night, and my girlfriend gets a call from one of our friends. My girlfriend playfully answers her phone, and the expression on her face begins to change. She's just listening, and her eyes get super wide. She blurts out, What the f***? Are you f***ing serious? Before closing her clamshell phone to hang up.

I'm super confused, so I ask her "What? What happened?" She says "Dude, the police just found Sarah dead in Mike's apartment, and Mike is nowhere to be found. This was absolutely insane." I asked her if the friend said anything else, but she told me it was really hard to understand. We eventually went to bed that night and met up with our usual crowd at the pool the next day, which included John and his fiancée. We're all talking about how unbelievable this was.

Sarah was the epitome of sweet, and Mike was easily one of the kindest people that I'd ever met. He was one of the first people that I met when I moved, and he gave my underaged ass some beer and told me some awesome stories of his life. These were both good people, and it didn't make any sense. We all kind of started speculating and just did our best to make sense of it. Nobody could get a hold of Mike. We all started to worry if he's safe. Somebody suggested that Mike probably killed Sarah, then panicked.

and took off. That was a hard pill to swallow for most of us, but it was the only thing that made any bit of sense. John shook his head and said, "Man, just awful." We all dispersed and went our separate ways. It would be the last time that I would see most of these people. Fast forward a month or two. I was hanging out in my apartment one evening when my girlfriend calls me frantically. The first thing out of her mouth is a plea to come to her friend's apartment.

The last thing she said was "You're not going to believe this sh*t. It's the most f*cked up thing I've ever heard." Needless to say, I rushed over to the apartment where my girlfriend was. She was with two of our mutual friends from the pool. One of them was crying hysterically while the other sat with him. My girlfriend motioned for me to go outside, and the other friend stayed back to keep consoling the other one. Once we were out of earshot, she told me exactly why her friend was crying so intensely. Her friend had just gotten back from being with the police.

He was asked to identify pieces of a dismembered body that were found in the sewer. He was crying because he positively identified the body parts as Mike's. How exactly did the police know they were there? They knew because John had told them. Turns out, John was and still is a broke piece of shit. This bastard was engaged and didn't have enough money for his wedding. Being an organized and well put together person, Mike had a bunch of money saved up.

John found out about it and decided to kill Mike and take his money. John was an acting student and asked Mike to help him move some heavy things in the theater. When Mike's back was turned, John shot him. He then took Mike to another location where he dismembered his body and dumped the remains into the sewer. John took Mike's keys and phone and then went back to Mike's apartment. From there, he texted Sarah on Mike's phone asking her to come over because he wanted to talk.

Being the sweet and caring person she was, Sarah went over to Mike's apartment without even questioning the situation. When she got there, John snuck up behind her and shot her as well. He left the apartment and framed Mike for Sarah's murder. John was caught because of how big of an idiot he was. He paid some kid to withdraw money from Mike's ATM account. Cops found the kid and the kid dimed out John. They quickly tracked John down at his own bachelor party.

He was taken in for questioning, where he would later admit that he murdered both Sarah and Mike. Eventually, John was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to death. After sentencing, Mike's dad spoke to John across the courtroom and said, "My only regret is that the state of California doesn't allow me to kill you myself." Turns out, John's fiancée tried to help him hide evidence, and she was sentenced to time as well. All in all, pretty dark story.

Aside from the violence, what messes me up is that this guy had literally just murdered two of our friends and he was back at the pool commiserating with us, like genuinely acting upset, sad, and confused. He's a horrible human and I hope he suffers for the rest of his life, however long that may be. My deepest and continued condolences go out to the family and friends of the two innocent people that lost their lives far too soon.

I just wanted to add a personal note here: this is a validated account of an actual double murder that occurred. While most of the details depicted are accurate in nature, OP originally changed the names of those involved. But for those of you that wish to learn more about the horrific events shared here, this is the case of Daniel Wozniak, who in the summer of 2010 took the lives of his friends Sam Herr and his girlfriend Julie Kibushi.

Wozniak was sentenced in September of 2016 and currently sits on California's death row. Back in the early 90s, what I would call my formative years, I was living in Colorado with my family. I was 15 years old at the time, a sophomore in high school, was supremely active in many social circles, and even had a fun relationship with my first boyfriend, and like you do at that age when in a relationship.

You want to spend as much of your time as possible with a person that is new, exciting, and is just as pumped to see you as you are them. So this led me to spending a lot of time in my boyfriend's house, hanging out with him, his dog, and his family. For this story, let's call my boyfriend Drew, his mom was Deb, and Deb's boyfriend is Tom. Because of the amount of time I spent in that household, I got to know Deb and Tom fairly well.

Deb was friendly, but it also seemed that by this point of parenthood, like she might be more interested in her own life than in parenting Drew. It seemed odd the kind of distant relationship they had. One where Drew knew his mom would always be home, but not necessarily willing to talk, listen, or help solve anything that he was going through. Deb much preferred spending time with Tom. They'd go out to the local bars, events around town, even weekends away.

usually just resulting in her getting trashed before coming home and passing out or being of no use to anyone else. Tom himself seemed like a pretty interesting guy. He seemed like the responsible one, the adult in the room, even on multiple occasions, taking it upon himself to drive me home in the event that I stayed at Drew's house too late into the evening and missed the last bus. I think he was in his 30s or maybe early 40s at that time. He didn't have kids of his own.

And while I always remember him having money for trips or casino stops, I can't really recall what his job was or if he even had one. Tom was always kind to me, so one night when he offered to take me home so I wouldn't have to be cold in the chilly Colorado evening, I had zero hesitation hopping into his truck. However, after that night, I never looked at Tom quite the same again. I remember being on Highway 9. I remember the car's heater being on.

Hell, I even remember this song on the radio: "Losing My Religion" by R.E.M. When Tom sort of just blurts out "It would be a shame to get lost out there" as he nods out into the dark wilderness alongside the highway. It's like the woods are beautiful and all, but in the wrong situation, plenty can go wrong. At first, I simply thought it was a weird direction for conversation. He's not wrong either. As someone that grew up camping and fishing with my own family, those words do ring true.

A lot of things can happen when removed from civilization, but it was the next thing he said that absolutely ate away at me from the inside. He said, "If anyone ever tries to take you into the woods, their intentions aren't anything good." Tom wasn't my dad, I actually barely knew him in the scheme of things, so to hear this type of life lesson unprovoked gave me chills all over. I think the ride was pretty much silent from that point on, even bordering on tense.

before he pulled into my parents' driveway and I got out. I remember being polite and saying goodbye, thanks for the ride, while also silently pledging to myself that that was the last ride I'd be accepting from him. From that point on, Drew and I spent much more time at my house. Every time he would leave, I'd see him to the door and more often than not, it was Tom coming to get him. From the driver's seat of his Ford, he'd wave and I'd wave back, but each time I did so,

It left me with that same uneasy feeling from that night, and I could never quite explain why. Well, fast forward a little bit. My relationship with Drew ended, as many first loves do, although not together. We were still friends when I began my senior year in 1995. I spent much of that year trying to figure out plans for prom, upcoming college choices, and the like. But towards the end of the year, I noticed a bit of change in Drew. He was more quiet, withdrawn.

and a touch more standoffish than I had ever seen him before. I eventually asked what was wrong one day, and that's when he spilled the entire situation. His mother Deb had been down in the dumps for a while after she and Tom had broken up. Tom had moved far away, and Deb took a lot of the frustrations of that ended relationship out on Drew. I did my best to sympathize with him, thinking that that was the brunt of what he was going through, but that wasn't it. He said that Tom was now back in the picture. My naive self thought,

Well, that'll be nice, he'll be there to take some of your mom's negative attention away from you. But Tom wasn't back because he wanted to be, he was back because Colorado authorities were extraditing him from his new home, the West Virginia Department of Corrections, back to Colorado to face charges for first-degree murder for a young woman that went missing in 1993, one whose body had just been found up Highway 40 near Empire.

Turns out, his mom's boyfriend had a penchant for committing crimes against women, going back a decade, if not longer. All of these following things I learned during the 1996 trial of Thomas Edward Luther. He had been convicted of picking up a hitchhiker in 1982, beating her with a hammer, before sexually assaulting her. He had stabbed another woman who had placed an ad to sell a car in 1993.

After moving to West Virginia in 1994, he yet again picked up another hitchhiker before raping and beating her. This was the crime that he had just been sentenced guilty for before being brought back to Colorado, where he was now being tried for the murder of 20-year-old Cher Elder. Apparently, Tom and Cher had been hanging out with a group of friends the night that she went missing. Security cameras caught sight of the two of them leaving a casino together, making Tom the last one to see her alive.

When she was found buried under a pile of rocks in a remote area, authorities determined that she had been shot two times in the back of her head from close range. She would have died immediately. Luther was eventually found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. The only thing that kept him from the death penalty was a single juror that did not believe that his attack on Cher was premeditated. So, instead of a guilty verdict on first-degree murder, they got him on second-degree murder instead.

He will reside within a Colorado State Penitentiary until his heart no longer beats. I'm in my 40s now, far removed from that teenager that sat in a passenger seat across from Thomas Edward Luther, a passenger seat that had been occupied by many other young women, many of whom faced the monster within him, some of whom didn't survive that encounter. It's not lost on me just how lucky I was to be dropped off alive and safe each of those nights back in the 90s,

because I know that wasn't the case for several other people. Part of me still wonders about what he said to me that night. Was he contemplating taking me into the woods? Did he say those things aloud so that, subconsciously or otherwise, I'd know just how lucky I was to be going home? How things could have played out so much differently for me had he not stayed on the highway and taken me into the woods, knowing full and well that his intentions were anything but good.

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I'm 23 and female if that matters. I wanted to share with you the account of something that is ongoing and something that I find quite unnerving. I live in a rental house with two of my best friends. It's in sort of a college part of town, but where we live, one side of us is all people around our age, and on the other side, it's a much older crowd. Starting about two weeks ago, I started getting cards in the mail from my father.

most of which are accompanied by roses. The cards are pretty vague, saying things like "Miss you" or "Why don't you call anymore?" and probably the weirdest was "Don't you love me anymore?" The flowers aren't real, they're always plastic, and so far all of the letters have been handwritten or were written in sharpie marker upon a hallmark card.

Two days ago, I actually received a pack of guitar picks with a gift card to a local guitar shop. The reason that I know that it came from the same sender was because of the plastic flowers that accompanied the card. While on the surface, I'm sure you're wondering what's so creepy about getting cards from your dad. Well, that's actually it. The man that I refer to as my dad isn't my birth father. I was adopted at 13 by my mom's husband, who's been in my life since I was around the age of three.

My birth father was an evil man that took his own life when I was only a few months old. All of the cards are signed with his name. Someone has apparently gone through the trouble of finding this information out and is sending me letters for whatever god knows reason. I can't possibly know what the purpose is. Is this a threat? A means of attention? Just some sick individual playing sick individual games? I really don't have a clue.

I just know that it unsettles me every time I step outside my door and make a trip to my mailbox. I also don't know what to do, so any thoughts on the matter would be greatly appreciated. This story is actually two stories rolled up into one. The main story happened last night. I was out doing some late night fishing at a small but deep fishing hole on the side of a state road nearby my house. Every time I fish here at night by myself,

I worry about what would happen or what I would do if someone were to pull over next to me, but it had never happened until now. Quick detour for the second story. I wasn't always like this. I used to fish by myself in the middle of the night all the time and without a single care in the world. But there was one night about 10 years ago, which perhaps merits its own post, but I'll slide it in here and include it into this story. Anyway,

Where I was fishing that night was off a seawall next to a bridge when a car pulls over next to me. Two young men, but older than I was at the time, got out of the car. They walked up to me casually and asked me if I was catching anything. I told them no, not really. Nothing about them made me suspicious at all at that point. I thought they were going to fish and just thought that they would ask if I was having any luck before pulling out their gear. The bridge was a popular fishing spot.

I was sitting on the cement seawall with my feet dangling over the edge, when one of the men suddenly shoves me off the seawall and into the water. In one motion, they grab my fishing gear and take off back in their car. Now, the fall from the seawall was only about 7 feet or so, but it was enough that I couldn't lift myself out of the water and back up onto it. I had to swim my way around to where the water was more shallow so that I could climb up on the wall there.

My mom had dropped me off that night, and I was supposed to call her to come pick me up later in the evening. My cellphone had gotten wet, and without having any rice on me, it wasn't going to work. To make matters even worse, I was a smoker at the time, and my cigarettes had also gotten wet. As you can imagine, I really needed a cigarette. I didn't know what to do except to just sit there until eventually my mom drove up randomly. She was furious until I explained what had happened.

Now, this is something that I shudder when I think about it: how I, or anybody else that they did this to, could have died. These people had no idea whether or not I knew how to swim, and apparently they didn't care. If they had seen on the news the next day that I drowned under their bridge, would they even put two and two together? Would they even care? Even if you assume everybody's a strong swimmer, the person could hit their head, as there were many rocks under that particular seawall, and an unconscious body

has no chance. All for what? $50 worth of cheap fishing gear? It seemed as if the juice were only minimally worth the squeeze. So obviously, ever since this night 10 years ago, I've been much more cautious when I'm alone at night, but especially when I'm out fishing alone at night. Well, back to what actually happened last night, which is the whole reason I was triggered to share this in the first place. I had luckily just finished up and loaded my car back up with all of my gear.

I was sitting in my car and making an Instagram post showing the fish that I had caught, a couple of yellow bullhead catfish, and some bluegill. I was trying to quickly write the post, and then head on home, so I was deep into the world of my phone, and not really paying attention to the outside world or anything else. Something causes me to look up and out of my driver's side window, and that's when I notice that there's a pickup truck sitting there that I hadn't noticed or even heard pull up.

It has one of those big steel frame structures around the bed of the truck. I don't know what they're called, but I associate them with hunters or trappers. I have no idea whatsoever if that is an accurate association or not, but that's the feeling I get. I do feel like I've seen them or something similar holding kennels with hunting dogs, so maybe that's where I got the idea from. Beyond the cage,

The second thing that I notice is this very stereotypical, chubby, redneck mullet type of guy looking in my window directly at me, his face filled ear to ear with a creepy smile. He was the passenger in the truck, and I did not, nor could not see past him to see the driver. I have no idea how long they were sitting there, how long they were next to me without me even noticing. Their cabin light is on, and that's when I see the man go from smiling

to bringing his finger up by his face and rolling it around in a circle, what I equate to be the universal signal for "roll your window down." And for the shortest of moments, I debated winding my window down to ask what they wanted, but instead, my better instincts prevailed, and I settled on putting my car into drive, driving around their truck and down the street to a different location. I was so freaked out by this that I didn't immediately go home,

I went somewhere, pulled over, looked around to see if that truck were anywhere to be seen, and then I actually went back to the fishing spot to see if they were still sitting there or not. I didn't pull over, just drove by, and definitely took note of the fact that they were not there any longer. I think it's going to drive me crazy for a while wondering why they had pulled over, why they popped up next to me. Did they have something bad planned? Were they just curious? Did they want help? And even more prevailing,

Will I have to worry about seeing them around town after driving off on them like that? I realize that my reaction may not be completely fair. They could have been pulling over to fish, although you've got to realize how small this fishing hole is. It is the definition of a hole on the side of the road. It's probably about the size of a dining room, just to give you a point of reference. They could have been pulling over to see if I was the one that needed help. Who knows?

All I can tell you is that I was thinking that if I wound my window down to find out what they wanted, I could very easily end up with a gun in my face. And then once again, who knows where it goes from there. Likely, I wouldn't have a chance to drive off. So I simply drove off without acknowledging them in any way. That way I didn't miss my chance. Even now, I worry about the fact that my car has some slightly identifying marks. Nothing crazy noticeable, but some small stickers in the window.

if I piss them off by driving away like that and they happen to live around here? Well, what if my wife meets up with them sometime? What if she has my daughter with her? Am I being paranoid? I think you can tell I'm still more than just a little bit freaked out about this. I'm originally from California and a couple of years ago I was laid off from my job and decided my best option would be to use my savings to buy a house in a mid-sized town in the Midwest. I found a new job that paid enough to cover a mortgage,

and I decided to go for it. Before moving, I wanted to travel a bit, so one night, while overseas, I found myself searching Zillow. I still had about a month left on my lease in California, but I found the perfect house. It was one town over from where my sister, her husband, and my young nephew lived. And just as importantly, it was within my budget. Being impatient, I asked my sister to go over and look at the house for me. She did.

She even FaceTimed me while she was there and showed me all around. I absolutely loved it. I made an offer that honestly was significantly under asking price, just to see if they would counter and I could perhaps get a better deal. I was shocked when my offer was almost immediately accepted. Unbelievable joy was what I was experiencing in my hotel room that night. I was so excited to move, so pumped to start a new adventure. I finished out my lease in California and moved across country.

headed to my new home. The first night I was there, I had very little with me. I had ordered a few pieces of furniture that my sister had assisted with being delivered. So I had a couch, a couple of side tables, but other than that, nothing had been built. I slept on a mattress on the floor since I hadn't assembled my bed frame yet. And after a long day of everything that goes into a big move, I was completely exhausted. I found myself on the brink of sleep when I heard what I can only characterize

as a banging noise coming from upstairs. I found that incredibly strange because it's a one-story house. Snapping out of my near dream state, I quickly remembered that houses in the Midwest have attics and sometimes basements. I wasn't used to this coming from a small apartment in California. I thought about going to check out the noise, but thinking that it may have been a small animal that I wasn't ready to deal with, I decided to just let it be for the night and look into it in the morning.

but shortly thereafter, I heard another bang, this time much louder than before. The thought that it could have been an animal was now draining from my body. After a few moments of silently listening, the banging changed into a scuttling sound. It actually almost sounded like a set of muffled footsteps. Fear had absolutely taken hold of me at this point. I grabbed my phone and flipped on the flashlight. I went to the part of the hallway where there was access to the attic and saw that my attic door

The thing I'd have to pull down to get the ladder to drop wasn't completely closed. I knew then that I wasn't going to explore any more of my new house by myself. So I went straight back to my room, locked the door, and kept the lights on. Now, part of me knew that I should have just left then, but another part of me thought that I was being ridiculous. Whatever was up there, it wasn't what my mind was telling me it was.

There had to be some logical explanation aside from there being some hidden person in my attic. After all, my sister had looked at the house, and when I was on video with her, she had gone into the attic. We both saw that it was absolutely empty, and since then, the house had been closed and locked up tight. I told myself that I was safe if I just stayed in my room with the light on and stayed awake. I did, for a while at least, and didn't hear any further noises.

I guess I fell asleep at some point because I woke up with a start a few hours later, just as dawn was beginning to crack outside. However, what had woken me up was a noise, something loud, something heavy, and it came from my living room. Instinctively, which it had to have been because I was still half asleep, I ran to the main room of the house and saw that one of my end tables was now halfway across the room in addition to my front door being wide open.

I stepped just to the edge of the door and peered out, seeing a dark figure, now probably about half a block away, running in the opposite direction of my home. Whoever that was, they were in my house only a moment before, and from the looks of it, they had kicked my table on their way out. That was the sound that I heard. I yanked the door shut, grabbed my phone once more, this time calling the police.

When they arrived, an officer went up into the attic and found food wrappers, an ice chest, a pile of dirty blankets, and a bucket filled with human waste. Someone had been living there for what looked like quite a while. That officer and his partner informed me that this wasn't the first time that they had been to my house. The previous owners had a daughter who was not well and had gotten in trouble with the law quite often.

The family had moved because the neighbors kept calling the police on them for screaming, fighting, and other odd things happening in the house involving the daughter. The cops said that they believed she was either bipolar or was schizophrenic and had been known to be violent. This next bit, it took them a while to actually say, which put me even more on edge. They told me that they thought it might have been the daughter in the attic. This wasn't exactly something they could prove on the spot.

They didn't find any identifying evidence in the house. No journals, no old photos, nothing like that. But what they were saying made a bit of sense. They alluded to the fact that she may not have wanted to move when her parents decided to sell the house. And being someone that grew up in the home, maybe she knew a way to get in without breaking a window. Or perhaps she even still had a key from before the locks were changed. To this day, if it was her, I don't know how she got in.

how long she was there before me, and how this whole thing would have played out had she not decided to just leave. I remember thinking back and finding it curious that the sellers accepted an offer way under asking price, but it makes much more sense if they were motivated to sell and getting out as quickly as possible was their main motive. It just seems like they were the ones ready to leave, likely much more than their daughter. I still live in the house today, but there are times where I get creeped out at night

Sometimes I'll hear sounds, usually something benign, wind whipping my plants against the window, or the foundation of my house creaking. I'll quickly calm myself and catch my bearings, but for a moment, a short, fleeting blip, I'll remember that someone had been living in my attic when I moved in, and I'll find myself wondering, are they back?

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babbel.com/spotifypodcast, spelled B-A-B-B-E-L.com/spotifypodcast. Rules and restrictions may apply. I came on here to share a story that my dad recently told me, one that he hasn't told anybody about up until now. Quick backstory here. My dad is a retired park ranger, if that's what you even call it. He worked for the National Park Service up until about three years ago. His usual tasks involved taking people on tours along the Appalachian Trail, maintaining the forestry,

and the wildlife habitats of the animals that live there. This story goes back to the summer of 2003, when my dad and a colleague, we'll call him John, were sent out to try and locate an adult elk, a particular male named Billy, who was usually very tame and was often found close to houses. But Billy hadn't been seen for over a week, and apparently this was very unusual for him. So my dad was dropped off along the trail, whilst John took the truck and drove further down,

in order to try and locate Billy. They had been searching all day for him, and this was the last stop of the trek as there were only a few hours of daylight left. So, as the story goes, my dad had been walking along the trail for a little over an hour when he heard a disturbance in the distance off to his left. He could hear the snapping of tree branches, and he decided to follow where the noises were coming from, all in the hopes that it could be Billy the Elk. As he got closer, he said he began to smell a foul odor

and instinctively knew that it was some sort of dead animal. He was right. As he emerged through the bush, laying on the ground in a small opening of trees was the carcass of a large elk. He could see by the tag on one of the ears that it was Billy. However, he was nearly immediately shocked by the condition that the animal was in. Billy had been severely mutilated, his eyes and tongue were now gone, his throat torn out, and his stomach had been ripped open.

so that the intestines were now protruding onto the forest floor. He also noticed that little chunks of flesh had been bitten from the torso. In addition, the entire right front leg was missing. My dad reasoned that the animal had been attacked by either a black bear or a large pack of coyotes, as nothing else would tackle a fully grown adult elk. However, even this seems strange because elk were usually too big for even apex predators to try to take down, what disturbed him even further.

was the way in which the animal had been mutilated after death. This is something that my dad even made a point of saying that he had never witnessed anything like this before. That in nature, it would be very unusual for predators to mutilate a corpse in such a way. Feeling unnerved by this discovery, my dad radioed John and told him that he had located Billy. Before giving him his approximate location, John had told him that he had wandered off the beaten track

and that it would likely take him around an hour to get back to where the truck was parked and drive back to my dad's location. So to that, my dad was told to wait where he was until John got back to him. It was nearly dark at this point, and my dad remembered beginning to feel very unsettled. He had a flashlight with him and bear spray, but noted that he still felt vulnerable while out there alone in the forest. After around 15 minutes or so, he heard the same noises that he had heard earlier. Much closer now,

as he was off the trail. He would hear footsteps and the occasional growl of something hidden within the thick bushes straight ahead of him. He said that every so often he could hear slow, heavy breathing and the snapping of branches as whatever it was paced around the forest. He began to get the feeling that he was being watched and worried that the coyotes or perhaps even a bear was now stalking him. He said that every so often he would wave his flashlight in the direction of the disturbance and yell out

doing what he could to try and scare off whatever it was that was watching him. But the noises still persisted, and this seemed to aggravate the creature. Luckily, the animal never came any closer or revealed itself to him, simply pacing around in the darkness and letting out the occasional growl. Just over an hour later, the truck pulled up along the trail and my dad could see to his relief that John was now following the flashlight to where my dad now stood. The arrival of another person must have spooked the harasser.

as my dad noticed that he still heard the crunching of leaves and the breaking of branches, but they were now moving quickly away from them. My dad told John what had happened, and the man reasoned that it may have been a bear and that they probably shouldn't hang around. Together, they wrapped the corpse in a cloth and quickly managed to haul it back to the truck. My dad said that just as they were getting ready to leave, curiosity overcame him, and he decided to walk over to where the sounds had been coming from just moments before. John got out as well,

and the two of them scoured the area. Behind a fallen log, they found the half-chewed leg of the dead elk, along with a number of discarded candy and chocolate bar wrappers, along with a small length of rope. Further back into the treeline, they found a pair of latex gloves covered in blood, as well as human shoe prints leading away from them. Near to the shoe prints, they discovered the remnants of a small fire, and even a comic book. This flat out terrified my father.

The realization that it had been a person that had mutilated the elk, that had been watching him from the bushes and growling. So much so, that he and John had agreed to never mention the encounter to anyone. My dad has told me that not a day goes by that he doesn't think about what he saw that day, and he still struggles to comprehend what the person was doing out there in the wilderness, in the middle of nowhere, how they had managed to kill the elk, and what their intentions were towards my dad. We relocated from the area in 2005,

and now reside near Richmond, Virginia. My dad hasn't been back and has said that he will never walk the Appalachian Trail again. I can't blame him to be honest because I've never been out there and thanks to my dad's story, I won't be stepping a foot out there anytime soon. This is a story that I'd like to share because it's something that I can't seem to shake from my mind. My hope is that someone here can offer me some ideas of what happened so that I feel secure in the fact that I'm not losing my mind.

I'm a 31 year old female who happens to live alone. I'd been a bit lonely and depressed of late so when a girlfriend of mine asked me to go to the opening of a new local bar with her, I jumped at the opportunity. I needed to get out, to be social, and to just enjoy a night. So it's Friday evening, she picks me up at my place, and off we went to this downtown bar that was probably no more than about 10 minutes from my front door.

We landed, had a few drinks, and now that we were nice and loose, decided to get up and dance. As we were leaving our table, a group of guys asked if they could take the table over, since the place itself was pretty crowded and there were no others open. We gladly gave them the table and hit the dance floor. A few songs in, I did the patented pocket pat-down, only to realize that I didn't have my phone with me, thinking that I had left it on the high top we had just left.

I went back to the table and was surprised that it was nowhere to be found. The guys who were now stationed there also said that they hadn't seen any phone when they set their drinks down, so that was a bust. The only other place that I had been while inside of the bar was the bathroom, so my friend and I checked there. Still no luck. I asked my friend if I could use her phone to call mine. She of course let me. I input my number and hit the green dial button.

hoping with every bit of me that I would hear my ringtone bouncing off the linoleum tiles of the ladies room, when, after two rings, someone answered. I heard the click of the other line, but nothing was said. I, out of habit, said, "Hello?" But all I heard on the other end was a single heavy breath before the call disconnected. I must have phoned myself 50 more times over the next 20 minutes or so, but whoever had my phone never answered again.

I eventually gave up the search and, while disappointed that I'd need to drop nearly a whole paycheck on another phone, I decided to cut my losses and head home. My friend dropped me back at my house. I slid my keys into the front door lock, pushed open my door, and headed straight for my room. I was ready to get out of my club clothes, ready to wind down and put this night behind me when, out of the corner of my eye, I see my phone, still plugged into the charger on the nightstand next to my bed.

I then remembered that that's indeed where I left it. My friend had texted me that she was outside of my house to pick me up earlier in the night. I had texted her back saying that I was coming out, and I guess that I never slipped my phone into my purse. So that answer is where my phone had been all night. But what it didn't answer was who had answered my phone when I first called. I stood there in a stupor for a few moments before my brain came up with all these different explanations. Maybe I had dialed the wrong number, but that couldn't have been. I know my number by heart.

And if I had repeatedly called some stranger, they likely would have told me that I had the wrong number. Perhaps the lines were crossed. But then I realized that I don't even know what that means. It's only something that I heard said in old TV shows and movies. And that's when I came to it. Someone had been in my house. This sent a shiver down my spine that felt like a thousand ice cubes rolling down me. I looked around my room, seeing that nothing was out of place. Nothing was missing.

I grabbed the softball bat out of my closet and began to walk around my house, purposefully making my presence known with loud clomps and letting the bat trail behind me. I figured that if someone were still there, I might be able to scare them off by sounding like I meant business. I called out a few times, heard nothing, and went from my room to the kitchen to the bathroom to the back hallway. Every step of the way, peeking around corners, making sure things were locked.

and that's when I get to the door at the very rear of my house. This particular door has two locks, one on the handle and the other above the handle that acts as a bolt. The handle lock can be engaged while the door is open, allowing you to lock the door and close it behind yourself as you walk out. The bolt though, can only be engaged with a key from the outside. I make it a habit to lock both of these religiously, so when I saw that only the handle lock was in place, it confirmed that someone else had been in my house.

It was my phone that they answered. After this realization, I continued my sweep. Nobody was there anymore. But now I'm still left wondering why someone would break in and not take anything. No laptop, no cash, no personal items. Why come in? Why walk around? And for God's sake, why answer the phone? In my late teen years, I worked the night shift at a campground one summer. My shift was from 12 a.m. to 8 a.m.

Basically, because everyone was sleeping for a majority of my shift, my job was mainly to be present in the event that there was ever an emergency. It was a pretty easy job, so most of the time I could scroll away on my phone or play video games to keep myself awake. My very first night on the job, I was paired up with a guy who had just put in his two weeks notice. One of his final official duties was to train me. He gave me the lay of the land, told me where security cameras were located, the main responsibilities of the position,

and who to call, if there were ever a reason to call anybody. Towards the end of his whole speech, and almost offhandedly, he told me about the payphone nearby on the property. This was in 2016, so the idea of a payphone already seemed ancient to me, as I could only ever recall seeing a handful of them in my life. I had all but tuned him out until he said that this phone rang every night at 2.17am, and it had for as long as he worked there.

He said that it kind of unnerved him the first few nights he heard it, but after a while, it began to be something that was easy to just pass off as background noise. Funny enough, there was no story as to why it rang, just that it did, which piqued my curiosity more than just a little bit. My training came and went, this guy's final two weeks went as well, and the next thing I know, it's my time up in the show.

I was the main guy on site until about 6:00 a.m. when non-overnight camp workers began to file in. Nights themselves were pretty boring if I'm being honest. Most of the time, I'd simply sit at my post doing monotonous things, doing my best to will my eyes to stay open. But I'd be damned if at every night at exactly 2:17 a.m. that damn phone would ring. Even tucked away in the camp office during the silence of the night,

I could hear it ringing out near the parking lot. The first few times, it jolted me awake, but after a while, it became expected. Most nights, I just let it ring and tried my best to ignore it. Easy enough, because whoever was on the other end only called one time, so it would fire off about eight rings total, and that was it for the night. I'm now about a month into working there. It was smack dab in the middle of summer, and even in the dead of night, it was still excruciatingly hot out.

So I began to make a habit of opening one of the office windows to get cool air into the building. But because the window was now open, the payphone was much louder than it usually was, almost annoyingly so. I think that may have been what pushed me over the edge. I decided then that I was going to answer it. I set an alarm for 2:15 AM so I could walk out a couple of minutes before it was set to go off and I could answer on the first or second ring. To this day, I'm not really sure what I was expecting.

Part of me just wanted whoever was on the other line, someone who hadn't gotten a response before, to be surprised when they heard me say "Hello?" like clockwork. The phone rang right at the stroke of 2:17. I answered it, and before saying anything, I listened. There was no sound, just dead air, like there was someone on the other line, but they weren't saying anything either. I eventually said "Hello" as I had planned to do.

I even said it three or four times when I didn't get a response, before finally hanging up. For all the buildup that I had mentally placed on this moment, it was a resounding bust. I decided to do this every night for a week, but always got the same result. Eventually, I stopped thinking anything of it, and left it alone after that for about a month, resigning myself to the notion that maybe it was a glitch in the phone company's system that made it ring, or some sort of timer within the payphone.

I didn't really have a clue though. About a month later, I'm getting close to the end of my contract at the camp. I still hear that phone ring every night, and I'm still a bit curious as to why. I set another alarm, and when the time came, the phone rang and I answered it once again. I repeatedly said hello into the phone, starting friendly at first, then ending up a bit forceful with my inflection. I figured it was just like before, but right when I moved to hang up the receiver,

I heard what sounded like someone laughing, not so much like something was funny, but more of something between a chuckle and a scoff. When out of nowhere, the low voice on the other end of the phone started repeating my full name back to me, over and over again, gradually getting faster and faster with each pass. This not only shocked me, but absolutely scared me out of my shorts. I slammed the phone so hard, it made a residual ringing sound in the nighttime air.

I couldn't move at first. My heart was beating like I had just run a mile, and that's when the phone rang again. At this point, I was even more freaked because the phone had never rung twice in a single night. I picked the phone up and hung it up as fast as I could just to get the ringing to stop. I waited near the phone just to see if it would ring again, but it didn't. After a few moments of calming myself, I reflected on what limited knowledge I had about payphones. I knew you had to insert change to make a call.

Duh. I had also remembered hearing my parents say that there was some code that you could input to phones that would allow you to redial a number that had just called you. But what was the code again? After pondering it for a moment, I remembered. *69. I had some change on me, so, fueled by curiosity and perhaps against my better judgement, I dropped a quarter in and hit those three keys. After I dialed,

There were a few clicking sounds that I heard as the phone tried to connect me, but I was then met by an automated voice. I continued working at this job till the end of summer, and that phone kept ringing every night at the same time, but never again did I have the nerve to answer it. Almost 10 years later, I still wonder about this. Why every night at 2.17? How did that person know my entire name?

And most pressingly, who was that person on the other end of that phone?

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My family lived in Washington State. Our house had this huge backyard that was surrounded by woods on all sides.

It was just over two acres and had enough open grass to play any sports we kids wanted to. I had my friends over pretty often since I had the best backyard for us to play in. It was a Friday in the summer when I was in maybe the sixth or seventh grade. My friends and I wanted to have a camp out sleepover in my backyard. I was a boy scout, so I had just learned how to put up a tent on my own and wanted to show off my skills.

We had a couple of tents at the house, so Andrew, Mike, and Nick came over at around 5pm after getting permission from their parents to spend the night. I remember the time because we wanted enough daylight where we still had hours to play in the yard before building a fire and heading off to sleep. My parents ordered pizza for us after we had played for a few hours, and then we built a fire in our fire pit. The sun was starting to go down, and so it was time to set up the tents before it got too dark out.

We got the tents up fairly quickly, because my friends kind of helped, but I remember doing most of the work. By the time the task was done, it was pretty dark out in the backyard, but our outdoor lights were giving off a nice glow, which made it perfect for our purposes. It was now dark enough for us to play our favorite game, Manhunt. I know this is a game that maybe other people haven't heard of, so think of it as hide and seek, but done in pairs or teams.

There were tons of spots to hide in the backyard, so we played in duos. It was Mike and myself hiding first, and Andrew and Nick would be the ones hunting us. Mike and I split up. Our goal was to be able to get back to home base without getting found out by our friends. Home base was the blue tent. You actually had to hide away from home base. No camping nearby would be allowed. We had this trampoline that was in the far corner of our yard, just before the edge of the woods.

so I crawled under that to hide. When the hunters would start looking, they had to blow a whistle to let the hiders know that they were beginning. Once I heard the whistle, I stayed under the trampoline, waiting it out, watching the two of them off in the distance, looking around. I was waiting for a good moment to start my creep back towards the blue tent. I had my sights on the fire pit, which was pretty close to the base. If I could make it over to the fire pit unseen, I could beeline it for the tent,

So when both Andrew and Nick had their backs to me, looking in different areas of the backyard, I sprinted towards the fire pit, and just as I landed behind it, I heard one of the trash bins alongside of our house almost topple over. I noticed our motion detecting light on the side of the house turn on as well, but I hadn't seen anyone come out of the house to trigger that light. I went to peek around the corner to the side yard,

And that's when I saw a tall man, dressed in dark clothes, speedwalking away in the direction of the woods. Just as I was thinking about investigating further, my dad came out and called us all in for ice cream. We suspended the game of manhunt, put out the fire, and headed into the house through the back door for some sweet refreshment. Once we got inside, I told my dad about the side light being triggered. My dad went out into the yard and looked into the woods, but didn't see anything on that side of the house.

He went around to the front yard to check for people on our property, weird cars, or anything of the sort, but he didn't see anything there either. My friends and I enjoyed the ice cream, then we went upstairs to play Playstation for a bit. My dad eventually came into my room and told us that it might be a good idea to sleep inside tonight after the side light went off and I saw that man walking around. We were bummed, since we had already put up the tents and had planned to sleep outside.

My friends and I talked about just going back outside and sleeping in the tent since they were already set up anyway. And plus, what were the odds that whoever that was was still out there hours later? Once my folks were asleep for the night, we quietly crept outside doing our best to not wake them. We weren't exactly hiding the fact that we were going back out there, but we didn't want to advertise it either. We each had a sleeping bag. Mike and I shared a tent while Andrew and Nick shared the other.

After a while of joking around and yelling things between tents, we started to quiet down and eventually tried to go to sleep. I wasn't asleep yet, but as I think back, it seems like Mike was. I started hearing walking sounds in the grass approaching the tent, and then the zipper to the tent was unzipped. I looked up and saw my dad in the darkness peering inside the tent. He said, "What are you guys doing out here?" I replied to him something like, "They wanted to sleep out here." So we came back out.

But as my eyes adjusted, I took a closer look at the face looking down at me before realizing that it wasn't my dad at all. It was some complete stranger. He looked like he was leaning down to come in when I screamed bloody murder and woke each one of my friends up, as well as probably half the block. Mike began to scream as well. The man grabbed both of our ankles and uttered to be quiet, but as our porch light shot on and the back door swung open, he gave up.

When he realized he was about to be exposed, he backed away from the tent in a hurry and rushed off into the woods. We all bolted up to run inside the house, just as my dad was making his way out the back door in response to our screams. I told him that I didn't know which way the guy went, but that the man from earlier was back. My dad ran around the yard screaming and taunting the creep to come back, but we didn't see him again. We all went inside and called the police. Once the police got there, they didn't really do much of anything.

other than take a report and advise us that we shouldn't sleep outside anymore. We all got a stern talking to by my parents about how they had told us to stay inside, that we were lucky, and we were probably done camping out for a while. They were right, because after my parents spoke to Mike, Nick, and Andrew's parents about what had happened, even sleeping over inside was off the table for a while. It was dumb of us to go against what my parents had said.

But I'm pretty sure we all remember times when we thought we knew better than our adults, or were just trying to be sneaky and didn't care. This was the night that that mindset almost resulted in me or one of my friends paying dearly for thinking that we knew better. I sometimes wonder what that guy was up to, but that thought gives me shivers and then I do my best to put it out of my head. I'm a grown adult now, two kids of my own, and we still live in Washington.

Given this experience, I'm hesitant to even let my kids play in our backyard alone sometimes, so I don't think we'll be having any backyard camping sessions until they're much older. Fall 2017. I was freshly 18 years old and starting my freshman year at a huge university 8 hours away from my home. Quite a lot was going on in my life, as this was the first time ever moving cities

and my first time as a young woman living parent-free after 18 years of living with limited independence and a very strict household. I was going through all the wacky culture shock and mental/emotional changes most college freshmen go through within the first few days of moving onto campus. This was my very first day of classes, after my final class of the day, which wrapped up around 6pm. I stopped by one of the food courts on campus to pick up something to eat. I was too hungry to wait to get back to my dorm,

So I sat alone on a bench in a courtyard between two buildings and began to eat. Yeah, I know walking and eating alone was probably a really stupid idea, but I was naive as hell and figured that at a huge college campus, I would only be surrounded by other lost, confused students like myself. I also had no friends since I moved to this city and school. Not knowing a single person and my raging social anxiety made me hesitant to try to meet new people.

Anyway, I was alone on a bench eating my food when an odd looking couple approached me. A tall, muscular, bald man and a petite Latina or maybe Asian looking woman with glasses and a bob style haircut who was holding a few books herself. The man was completely silent, but the woman enthusiastically approached me, introducing herself as Carmen in an ambiguous accent. She didn't even attempt to introduce the man, and he just stood there silently.

She started asking me stuff, my name, year, where I was from, what I was majoring in, before telling me that she was from a Bible study group here in the city that "a lot of college students find interest in." She opened up a Bible and started reading me some random passage before explaining it, and continuing to talk more and more about this group. She asked if I'd be interested, and I quickly shot her down by explaining that I had no time in my schedule with all my classes. I took my phone out of my pocket to check the time,

At this point, she had already been lecturing me for about 20 minutes, and I made up some weird, ridiculous lie about how I had to leave immediately. That's when she snatched my phone from my hand and was like, wait, before you leave, I'm going to give you my contact information so you can let me know later if you're still interested. She then proceeded to put her number into my contacts. As I said, I was deep in culture shock of the whole brand new college freshman experience.

I was terribly shy, and I didn't have the confidence to be assertive in this kind of situation. I just let her do her thing. She gave me my phone back, and I headed off to my dorm. I approached the communal hall and realized I didn't have my keys or wallet, even though I swore that I was holding them at the time that that couple had approached me. I frantically ran back to the bench area and searched it thoroughly. Went through my backpack. Went through the nearby trash can. Nothing. I couldn't get into my dorm without my keys or ID.

So I crumbled to the ground crying and calling my dad in a straight panic. This was my first time ever losing my keys or wallet in public, days after moving to a new city. And for an insecure 18-year-old, it felt like my life was over. My dad could only do so much to calm me from 8 hours away, so he instructed me to call the campus police. I did, and an officer arrived and asked me for details of where I was, what my things looked like, etc.

I didn't mention the odd Bible study couple to him at all because I found myself still in such a panic. I didn't think to consider they might have had any involvement or even any way of taking my things from my backpack. I still feel very, incredibly stupid for not providing this detail. The officer gave me temporary dorm access and instructed me to contact the PD daily to check if any missing items had turned up.

I was overcome with relief when I received an email two or maybe three days later from an RA in a dorm halfway across campus saying that my keys and wallet were turned into their lost and found. I never did see that couple around campus again. I avoided going places alone other than class. A few months later, I was scrolling through social media to see multiple posts about an ongoing sex trafficking ring in the area where the instigators would introduce themselves as Bible study groups.

While I feel like OP in this story highlights the experience pretty well, I found that one comment paints the situation in as stark of a light as it commands.

Scary. So the plan was for her to put her number into your phone while the guy pickpocketed your belongings, as Carmen continued to distract you with the hopes that you'd call them to see if they found anything on the bench after you left, and then arrange a meetup where they would have an advantage? That's so creepy and schemey, and I'm afraid to say, I think I would have walked right into it. Honestly, I think it's a blessing that in all your panic, you didn't remember this encounter. Probably saved your life.

If you had, you would have called Carmen and been desperately willing to meet up, simply being so thankful that they had found your property. This is a story that's really been bothering me lately.

for absolutely no reason whatsoever. A few months back, I had this dream that brought back this memory that I had tried to suppress growing up, but as of recently, it's been weighing on me more and more. Growing up in or around 2005, on the edge of the suburbs, there was a large grove of trees and hills by some railroad tracks that led to a big forest about half a mile down from my house. When I was 9 years old,

Me and my neighborhood friends would ride our bikes to the railroad tracks and walk to the forest to go explore the random pieces of furniture and junk that were left in this particular area. We'd play card games, do homework, and hang with friends out there for about an hour or two, but never stayed for too long. There were small abandoned houses here and there in the forest that we did our best to stay away from, as one neighborhood friend, Michael, told me that there was a homeless man who lived in one of them, and if you saw him,

you'd be best suited to run. So right off the bat, after hearing this, going near this house in the woods would be scary as hell. One chilly November afternoon after school, I came home and dropped my backpack off at my house before immediately heading to the woods. My bike was broken, so I walked. Michael had told me at school that day to meet him in this open area of the forest to play Pokemon with him. This was something we'd frequently do growing up, just to pass the time until our parents got home around 5 p.m.

So, it wasn't an unusual request. As I crossed the railroad tracks into the forest, I instantly felt this weird sensation, one that I hadn't felt at any time before. The feeling that you feel when someone is watching you. I looked all around, but couldn't see his soul. So, I thought that maybe I was just spooked, as the rather overcast day was the perfect setting for eeriness anyway. Trekking through the autumn leaves scattered across the large wooded area,

I came upon the big open area where I was supposed to meet Michael. Near to the area where we normally met was his notebook, open to a specific page. On that page was written: "Hey, I had to go back home and grab some batteries for my Game Boy. Wait for me here. I'll be back soon. Mike." I waited, but being alone, especially feeling like someone was watching me, made this particular moment very uncomfortable for me. However, I convinced myself that I was just being a wuss.

and decided to wait for Michael. I sat down, pulled out my Game Boy, and began playing. It wasn't too long until that sensation of being watched grew into utter paranoia. I kept frantically looking up from my Game Boy, checking my watch to see how long I'd been waiting. I'd been sitting there for 30 minutes at this point, and now it was beginning to get dark. That's when I heard some leaves crunch behind me. I look in the direction of the sound and briefly saw a dark hooded figure peeking from behind a few trees. Before dipping back behind them,

almost as if they were hiding. My skin crawled, and I immediately jumped up from where I was sitting just to freeze in my tracks. Staring, I screamed, hello, to see if anyone was out there. I was quickly reminded that I wasn't alone when I saw this tall, dirty-looking hooded man peek back from around the trees. He nonchalantly called back, hey buddy. That's about all I needed to hear. I picked up Michael's notebook and ran for my life.

I ran so fast that I barely had time to look back. However, I heard leaves crunching not too far behind me. It was the man, and he was now running after me. As he ran, he was screaming for me to come back, and that he just wanted to talk to me. I began crying as I was running, thinking that this was exactly how those missing kids disappear. I ran and ran and ran, until I literally tripped over the railroad tracks and cut up my knees. At the point where I fell,

Michael was just getting to the railroad tracks. He saw me, dirty, bloody, and crying hysterically. I screamed at him to run. Without question, we ran all the way home. As we finally turned around, the hooded man was nowhere to be seen once we left those railroad tracks. I last saw him standing in the woods, defeated, that he couldn't catch me, or something. I told Michael everything, and from that point on, we never went back out to the woods again.

Years later, around 2016, they bulldozed those woods, built a neighborhood there. We later found out from fellow neighborhood friends who were in the area that the same thing had happened to them growing up. To this day, as I recount both childhood and adult life, this is probably one of the scariest stories that I've ever encountered. To set the tone, I'm going to start with a little backstory. I was a somewhat sheltered kid who didn't have a ton of real-world experience.

I had my first boyfriend when I was 16. We dated for several months, had a difficult breakup, and I pretty much rebounded to another relationship with a guy who was mentally and physically abusive. He and I dated for over a year before eventually I finally got up the courage to dump him. However, by that time, I had burned some bridges with my family and friends and moved into an apartment with my equally rebellious cousin. I can't begin to describe how messed up I was emotionally at this point.

Looking back on it, it honestly seems like somebody else's life. Like I was just a bystander. I made terrible decisions that I would regret and still regret for years to come. Many of those decisions centered around men who I was basically using to make me feel something other than pain and frustration. One of those guys, I'll refer to him as Jay, ended up being much more than what I had bargained for. By the time he came around, I was starting to come to my senses.

By that, I mean I was starting to realize that I was never going to fill that void with these guys. But I was a shy person who had trouble saying no. So when Jay asked if he could spend the night one time, I let him. The next morning, not only was I extremely embarrassed, but also extremely late for work. I had to kick Jay out and take off to my job. All day, I found myself angry at the decisions that I made and also what I'd become. I made the decision to not only cut ties with Jay,

but all guys for the time being. However, that didn't change the depression that I was still battling with. Jay continuously tried to call me and text me, and I ignored him because I was honestly afraid that I wouldn't have the willpower to say no. I kept hoping that he would get the hint, when finally, after three or four days of non-stop notifications, I stopped hearing from him. I was having a particularly rough day the following week, when at around 9pm, I decided to go for a walk.

I posted a status to Facebook, which were song lyrics that I can't exactly remember, but they said something about saving me. As I was walking, I received several calls from Jay in a row. As I had been doing, I kept ignoring them. Then I received a call from my cousin roommate. She was frantic, saying that Jay was outside of our apartment, yelling loudly for me to get outside. Our landlord, who lived in the lower apartment, called up to my roommate complaining.

I honestly don't remember how I managed to get back into my apartment without Jay noticing me. I remember that I was standing on our balcony porch and he was yelling at me as my cousin threatened to call the police. He made all kinds of threats. He threatened to mess with my car. He threatened to set the apartment on fire. He came up to the main entrance of the apartment, banging on the doors, while we stayed on the porch begging for him to leave. As the threats got worse, we locked ourselves inside.

I honestly have no idea why we didn't call the police, given that it was now late and we assumed ourselves to be safe on the third floor. We must have fallen asleep at some point, and when I ultimately woke up at 5 in the morning for work, Jay was gone. I checked my car, my cousin's car, everything was fine. I blocked Jay's number on my phone, I blocked him on Facebook, leaving my cousin with specific instructions to call the police if he ever came back. I left and headed off to work.

I've never heard from Jay again. It's terrifying to think of how that night could have ended differently. It was eye-opening for me, and honestly, it was the final straw in me getting my life back together. For that, even remembering how scared I was in the moment, I'm thankful. And P.S. To my roommate/cousin, if by some random, crazy coincidence you someday hear this, you will likely know that it's me. And if that happens,

Please know that I'm sorry for every single crappy thing that I put you through at that point. You are an amazing person, and I miss you every day. Backstory. I was 13 years old in the late 90s. I lived in Mesa, Arizona. And this story happened while walking home from school one day. I remember it being a typically warm Arizona day. I was wearing shorts, a tank top, and flip flops. No backpack, just carrying my binder.

only about a mile and a half from the school to my grandma's house, which was a walk that I had done tons of times without any incident. I'm just passing the midway point, passing a park, and I see a truck is parked there. A rusty, once gray in a previous life, POS truck. As I walk by, I hear a man ask if I'd like a ride. I don't even look up. I just say no thanks, keeping my eyes trained in front of me before crossing the street. I clutch my binder to my chest,

and I pick up my pace. I think I make it about a block up. Then, I hear that rusty clunking truck. It's creeping up next to me on my left. This is when my gut tells me to run. Freaking run. But I don't. I kind of turn a blind eye to my gut. I turn to the truck that has now stopped. Window rolled down. I see a balding, liver spots on his head, 80-something, normal-looking grandpa. I say normal-looking because as soon as I saw him,

That gut feeling that I had to run all but went away. He seemed nice, genuine. He could have been anyone's grandpa. He was so plain and far from menacing looking. He asked again if I'd like a ride. It's really hot and he's going my way. My head says, "What could this old man possibly do? I could take him." I realize now just how wrong that train of thought was. I get in. I sit as close to the door as I can, just in case.

And then we start to move. But almost instantly, I regret my choice. I regret climbing into this truck. Everything in me says this is bad. Really bad. No one knows I'm here. My gut is twisting and churning, sending every red flag that it can. I get nauseous. My head is spinning. Just because he's old doesn't mean he won't do unspeakable things to me. I knew then I had to get out. I tell him that's my house up ahead.

We haven't even made it a block, but I ask him to pull over. To this request, he doesn't even slow down. He doesn't look at me. All he does is begin to laugh. He had been talking the whole time, but I can't tell you what he was saying, as I swear that I was on the brink of having a panic attack. What the hell was I thinking? Mikkel Biggs, an 11-year-old girl from my hometown, had just disappeared weeks earlier, and all I could think was how dumb I was and how I was going to go out.

This man was surely going to kill me, but probably not before doing some other horrific things to me. Every bad thought that could be a possibility flashed through my head. He was now passing my fake house. I needed to get out of this truck before we got on the main road. I knew I just had to. That's when I opened the truck door and dove out, leaving my binder behind and scrubbing up my whole body in the process. He was probably only going 10-15 miles per hour.

So my scrubs and scuffs weren't too bad, although I didn't have the coordination to run it out. But once I dove out and hit the road, he just kept on driving, never even slowed down, hit his brakes, or turned his head to see what had happened. I busted my ribs and my whole right side up, but I was gone. I ran back to my fake house and hid. No one home, so it made it easy to hide alongside the building. After I was sure the man was gone, I ran the rest of the way home,

And I think it's safe to say that I had never run so fast in my life. I never told my family. I was too embarrassed about the decision that I made that led to this. When my mom asked me about all the scrapes and bruises, I said I missed the hurdles during track. And that was also the last time I ever walked home again. I was so dumb. Why did I even get in? I know it could have been so much worse. I know I could have ended up kidnapped. I know that I could have ended up in a ditch somewhere. I could have ended up like that other little girl.

Mikel, who, even 25 years later, has never been seen again. A few years back, I moved into a new apartment complex. It was nicer, newer, and in a better area than where I had been staying. After moving in and getting settled in my new spot, I realized there was something odd about one of my neighbors, specifically the old lady next door. I almost never saw her during the day,

But she seemed to stay up all night long blasting Christian TV or radio programs. You know, the ones with people preaching about the return of the Savior, redeeming your soul before the cataclysm. All mixed in with various conspiracy theories, to put it nicely. It got to the point where I couldn't sleep at night because of all the noise. One evening, feeling like I was at my wits end, I went next door and knocked to ask her to keep it down. When she opened the door,

The first thing I saw were a bunch of crosses all over the walls, some small, some large, all either splashed or completely covered in red paint. One thing that made the decor stand out even further was that the windows were all painted black. The only source of light coming from her apartment was a black light off in one corner of the living area. Now, I'm only really familiar with black lights when it comes to being in a nightclub, or in a more G-rated sense.

when you go bowling on Saturday nights. But it didn't look like this woman was into clubbing or rolling strikes. On top of the strange look of her apartment, the smell emanating from her home was simply atrocious. It smelled of dog sh*t, and I know I saw things scurrying around on the floor, although I didn't see a dog anywhere, so I was pretty confused about the smell. Back to my mission, though. I asked her if she could please keep it down. She looked at me blankly, turned her head to the side,

and then slowly closed the door in my face. I waited by the door to hear if she was going to turn off the radio show, but instead, she only turned it up louder. I eventually went back home and decided to invest in some noise-cancelling headphones the next day. Well, that following evening, after buying some headphones and a couple pairs of earplugs, I had my girlfriend over. We had dinner, watched a few shows, but as expected, neighbor lady started up her nightly sermons and that signaled the end of the night for us.

We retreated to my room, which was a little bit further from her unit, so it helped to dissipate the noise just a little bit more. But I still needed to use earplugs if I wanted to get some shut-eye. Here's where things get ratcheted up a notch. I woke up in the middle of the night, feeling uneasy. Even before I opened my eyes, I had this strange feeling in the pit of my stomach. I rolled over and tried to settle myself, but that's when I see a shadow of a person standing in my doorway. I let out a, what the f***, as I pulled the earplugs out.

For a split moment, I think that maybe I'm just seeing things in the dark. It happens to all of us sometimes. But that's when the shadow starts speaking. It's the neighbor lady, standing in my apartment at 3am. She had obviously broken in, and I have no idea how long she's been standing there for. She's holding something with both hands in front of her, when she says, almost casually, "You really should lock your doors at night." Before she turns her head and strolls slowly out of my house, I hear the door shut,

and I run out and lock it. The thing is, is that I know that door was locked before I went to bed. I remember locking it behind my girlfriend when she came in, and we didn't leave the apartment again. I don't go back to sleep that night. I'm sitting in my living room, waiting for the sun to come up so I can call the property manager to have them intervene on this lady. The nightly religious programming, the awful smell, and now breaking into my house.

Some of you might say that I should have called the cops, and I can certainly agree on some level, but I have a soft spot for older women. I was raised predominantly by my grandmother, and in her later years, she battled with Alzheimer's. I saw the effect that it can have, and I didn't feel right phoning the authorities. If this woman turned out to be sick, as I'm counting down minutes to pick up the phone, I hear strange noises outside my front window. It's my neighbor once again. She's standing in the complex garden.

speaking in what I can only equate as tongues, holding a garbage bag in her hands. As I open my window in an attempt to hear what she's actually saying, I feel like I'm hit with an odor that I can't even begin to explain. It was pungent, rank, and if I had to describe it, the word death comes to mind. At that point, I close my window up and go to my front door, my thought being that if I'm not facing the action so head on,

I might be able to hear what's being said before I completely gag from the smell. When I poke my head out the door, I see my neighbor across the way doing the same thing. I quietly ask her if she knows what's going on. That's when she says that the old lady neighbor does things like this on occasion, it isn't something new, and that she's even tried to make her way into the neighbor that I'm speaking with's apartment before. She happened to do this late one night, standing at the door, fiddling with a handle.

So, when my neighbor looked out the peephole to see what was going on, that's when she saw the old woman holding an axe. That's when it clicks for me that when the old lady made her way into my apartment the night before, she was probably holding that same axe in her hand. This is the point where my compassion fully dissolves. I know that I can't do anything with this. I go back inside my apartment to call the cops, and they say they know all about her, that they've been called out to the apartment several times before.

but they can't really do anything to contain her because she owns her apartment. They can, however, do something when she goes outside. I tell them that she's outside right now, but as I look back outside, she's nowhere to be found. I can only assume that she's retreated to her home yet again. I figure that I can just wait for her to come outside again, do something weird, and have the cops on speed dial. It takes almost 36 hours, but around midnight the next evening, I hear her door open and close. Boom.

I got action. Looking at my peephole with my phone in hand, I see her beelining from my other neighbor's front door. No axe in her hand this time, just a regular old butcher's knife. I call the cops. They're there within a few minutes, with about three squad cars. They pick her up and presumably take her to a mental hospital, but I don't know for sure. In the coming days, a few people, I'm guessing her adult children, come by.

A man and a woman, both around the age of 40 if I had to guess. I think that they were there picking up some of her belongings as they made their way in and out of her unit several times. I happened to be leaving the house one day that they were there. We're about to pass each other on the stairs when I instinctively greet them with a friendly hello. This pleasantry wasn't extended back my way. The guy of the duo simply says, "Are you the one that called the police?" Before I really had a chance to examine the question, I blurted out,

Well, yeah, to which nothing else was said, but the stares that were shot at me as I proceeded down the steps left me almost as unsettled as hearing about my condemned soul on a nightly basis. I never did see that woman again. I lived in my apartment up until about six months ago when I moved again. During the years that I was there, nobody else moved into that lady's unit. The smells dissipated, and there were no more evening sermons coursing through the walls.

But I'd be lying if I said that there weren't a few times where I'd wake up in the middle of the night fully anticipating to see that old lady in the corner of my room holding her prized axe. I don't know where she is today, but I hope that she got all of the help that she needed. I'm sharing this on a throwaway account because, well, I don't know, it just feels better I guess. I'm 23 years old, female, and while I do have to dodge the occasional creep,

It's moments like this that make me question whether or not humanity has any hope, and debate if anyone can actually be trusted. So for context of this story, I'm just a shade under 5 feet tall. I miss the tall gene that my family has. I'm petite. But trust me, all the height that I have translates well into fury. I go running at the track that's not far off from where I live, not even really for the intent of exercising. It's more like my decompression stop to daydream.

and run off the day's worth of frustrations. I did about a mile, and had a seat on a bench to catch my breath. I was idly looking on Spotify for another playlist, while also debating if I was going to do any further running. That's when a man came up, had a seat almost next to me. He was an extremely large guy, both in stature and body weight, somewhere in the ballpark of 6'4". He could have easily squished me like a bug. I didn't pay him much mind, or at least I tried not to.

It was especially hard given the ample amount of park benches around the track that were left unoccupied, and yet he chose to sit right by me. He said something, but I could barely hear him with my airpods in. I took them out and asked him to repeat himself. He said, "I said, they don't make them the way they were when I was your age." I was confused by this, not really knowing what he was alluding to, but it was all made clear very shortly after, when he went on to say things like "bodies are changing,

And, if I had a girlfriend like you, after continuing to not say anything to him, he asked if my parents were okay with me being in the park alone, and asked what time my curfew was. He then started rambling off about my boobs and butt, implying that I was extremely advanced for my age. Dude, I'm small, and yes I have tits, but I'm old enough to drink at a bar, I vote, pay rent, I'm financing a car, but no matter how old I am,

These comments were absolutely creepy. I got up to leave, and he stood up after me. He asked if he could take me out for food, but I ignored him and just kept walking. I went near the bathroom, where they have a set of wall lockers, and got my things. I also made a pit stop in the restroom, for obvious reasons. When I left, I started making my way to the car, but he was on the sidewalk not far from my vehicle. I ended up making the long loop around so that I wouldn't have to pass near him.

As I'm getting in my car, he calls out to me and says, "Oh, so you can drive?" I'm not sure if that was disappointment to figure out that I was older than he thought, or what. I didn't stop to figure it out. I got in the car and started making my way to the exit. He made a motion for me to stop as I passed him, but I didn't. At this point, I also had my hand on my revolver. Now, I don't think it was that extreme of a case, but screw it. I'd rather ask for forgiveness later.

The reason I'm sharing this narrative in the first place is because shortly after this encounter, I got a card in the mail, and surprise, there's a registered sex offender in my neighborhood that committed crude acts towards a minor. And guess whose black and white picture was in the corner of this card? I filed a police report this afternoon. I told them that this guy was at a public park and possibly thought I was a minor. They said they'd look into it, but judging by how they took my report, I hold out little hope.

Be careful out there, I don't care what age you are, some people are just plain dangerous. I'm sure this isn't as creepy as most stories, but it is something that I think about from time to time. A little background: I grew up in a very emotionally and physically abusive home. I never had anything but negativity spoken to me, and as a child, I believed it all. My self-esteem was at rock bottom, and I believed that I was no good and that everyone hated me, as I was being told.

I became a very shy, withdrawn person who really made little effort with friendships. I held everyone at arm's length, but was desperate for any small scraps of positive attention. I found this positivity in a wonderful young couple who came into our church to be youth leaders. I was bullied terribly by the kids at my church and hated going until this couple came there. They were young, sweet, and kind, and went out of their way to be especially nice to me.

They arranged a picnic and hike at a close-by state park for one Saturday. I was around 11 years old at this point, and ordinarily, I wouldn't participate in these types of outings. But since they'd both be there, I was excited to go. We met at the church and all got on the bus. I heard a few whispered comments about "Why is she here?" and about my clothes, my hair, and pretty much anything else that kids would normally tease another kid about. I did my best to ignore them all.

and sat by myself in the back of the bus. We got to the park and I mostly hung out with a couple who I'll call S for the hubby and C for the wife. We had a big cookout near the lake and afterwards all went for a hike. There were quite a few kids there so S and C had their hands full on the hike keeping everyone on the trail. I of course was in the rear of the line. The kids I was behind started making fun of me and telling me I was too lazy to make the hike

and no one wanted me there anyway. Then they ran ahead laughing. I slowed down till they got out of sight. Then I sat on a rock, crying. In a minute or two, I heard someone speak to me. I looked up, wiping my eyes, and there was a man standing right by me. I hadn't heard anyone walk up the trail. I stood and he asked if I was okay. I nodded yes. Then he told me that I looked sad and asked me if I'd like to talk to him. I opened up a little bit.

told him why I was there, and that the other kids didn't like me or want me there. He asked my name, where I was from, how old I was, and me being a dumb 11 year old kid, told him all of the above. He was probably in his mid-twenties, with blonde hair, and was actually rather cute. I was thrilled that he was being nice to me. He gave me a hug, and said that he and I could hang out, and he'd take me back to my group once they came back down off the hike.

He took my hand and told me we'd go hiking a trail that he knew. I agreed. All of a sudden, I hear S yell my name and tell me to stop and to get away from that man. He came running up and got in between me and the guy before he starts asking the guy what he thinks he's doing. The guy just shrugged and started walking away through the trees, not on the trail. S asked me if I was okay, if that guy hurt me.

I could tell S was very angry, so I teared up yet again because I thought I was in trouble. S squatted down in front of me and told me that I wasn't in trouble, that I'd done nothing wrong. I told him that we'd just talked a little, and he was going to show me another trail to hike. S nodded and told me we'd just catch up with the others. He pulled C to the side once we caught up, and they spoke quietly. Then she motioned for me to come over to her. She put her arm around me, and we sat on a rock.

talked, and laughed. She had me walk beside her on the way back down and sit with her on the bus. The two of them made the rest of the day nice for me. It took me years to realize what could have happened to me that day and why S was so angry. Obviously, once S and C got to the stopping point on the trail, which was a stream with a sliding rock, they realized that I was missing, and S came back down the trail looking for me. If he'd been even a few seconds later, I would have been gone with that man.

And God only knows what his plan was once he got me out of sight. I know just how blessed I am that my guardian angel was working overtime that day. Due to my home life, I never told my family about what had nearly happened that day. I was always made to feel like I was the one responsible for what other people did or how they acted. I was terrified that I'd get the blame for this. So it was just easier in my mind as a child and beyond to not bring this to the people that wouldn't support me anyway.

I have no clue if S and C reported this encounter to the Rangers or not. I certainly hope they did though, because if it was so easy for that man to almost walk off with me, who knows how many other young girls he did that to. Admittedly, I've been a lurker around these parts for several years now. I've tried to share this story numerous times, but I always struggle to wade through the pieces as they've gotten more and more jumbled and foggy with time. I can't say that I was traumatized by what happened. I'm not sure if that makes me a messed up person,

But I typically tell this story at parties to manipulate drunk acquaintances into thinking I've survived something cool. Okay, let's get into it. In 2015, I was 19 years old and working for the summer at a bible camp for inner city kids. I'm going to leave out the city name, but just know that obviously crime occurs frequently in big cities, and this one was no different. I had been assured that this neighborhood, however, was in the process of being gentrified.

and they had even just opened up a hipster coffee shop slash dog park right down the street, just to give you a really clear visual. This neighborhood had dilapidated houses with trash out in the front, right next to houses with immaculate yards and square modern architecture. The Bible camp where I was working was essentially just a huge two-story house with a large fenced-in yard. Again, we were assured that we were safe,

because we had bars on the windows and the outer doors locked automatically once they shut. The camp was conducted downstairs and the summer counselors, all four of us, lived in the small upstairs area that was off-limits during the day to the kids. Our camp ran five days a week, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., and then time was ours to explore the city or rest or whatever we wanted. That's likely enough to get into the story now, although I love a good setting.

and it could be important for later. One weekend evening in July, we were all just hanging out in the house making a spaghetti dinner. We each got our own stipend for food, so we divided it accordingly for meals, then bought our own snacks. We were also in charge of preparing lunch and snacks for the kids on camp days, so we had two fridges and two pantries. As you can likely guess, we labeled them "Camp Fridge Pantry" and one labeled as "Staff Fridge Pantry."

We also were super petty and wrote our names all over our snacks in the fridge. My best friend worked at the camp with me, we'll call her Chris, and it was our turn to cook that night, so I went into the staff fridge to grab the ground beef. I immediately notice that my case of Go-Gurts is gone. They were my go-to snack, and I bought like three cases a week. I had just opened my last box like an hour before to have one, and left it in front of the ground beef.

It sounds crazy, but I knew I did. I closed the fridge door and headed out to the dining room, Chris closely behind me, where I yelled at everyone else, "Who stole my Go-Gurts?" That night, in addition to Chris and myself, there were two other summer counselors, two permanent counselors that lived in the area, and then the cousin of one of the permanent counselors. Everyone in the room looked at me wide-eyed and blankly. I figured that it might have been the cousin because I had never met her before.

So I just sucked it up and said, "Whatever. Just if it has a name on it, please don't eat it." Then I pull Chris back into the kitchen to finish up the spaghetti. We all eat dinner, and then the two permanent counselors volunteer to do the dishes because we let them eat with us. The rest of us head back upstairs to get comfy in the sitting room, on the couches, and turn on Family Guy. We're only like two minutes in when the cousin says, "Wait.

I can't find my phone or my wallet. I pause the show and roll my eyes, still annoyed about the Go-Gurts. Chris says, "Well, where did you last have them?" Sarah says she left them on the couch before we went downstairs to dinner. Naturally, we all start looking around the small room, turning over couch cushions, looking behind the couches, under blankets, really wherever. Finally, we're like, "Are you sure you didn't leave them downstairs?" She agreed to head downstairs to look with the other two.

and Chris and I go into our room, which is connected to the sitting room. We flop down on the bottom of our bunk bed, and I proceed to talk shit about Sarah, who I feel is like ruining our chill night. Our door is open, and I'm shocked when I see a hand kind of sneak into view, like it's about to grab the doorframe. I say, "Hey, did you find them?" thinking that Sarah or the other two have somehow made it back upstairs without me hearing them, and have heard me talk shit for the past five minutes.

But that's when the hand immediately disappears from the doorframe, and there's no audible response. I look at Chris like "what the f*ck" and she's looking right back at me, confused, because she never saw the hand. I quickly explain what happened, and then we both jump up and head to the top of the stairs. We yell down for the others, and they yell back that they haven't found them yet. By this point, I'm freaked the f*ck out, because who is up here with us?

Of course, we're those people though, and we start looking around upstairs in our bedroom, the other bedroom, and in the sitting room. We find nothing, and no body. We decide not to say anything yet because I might sound insane. And also, how could someone have gotten downstairs so fast without us hearing them? Eventually, when we head downstairs, Sarah is super upset and crying. Her cousin says, "Come on guys, did someone take her stuff?"

but Chris and I both know we didn't, and we say so. Sarah screams that obviously someone took them, and we should just be honest, and that's when things get heated. I finally decide then to tell them about the hand because I feel like it will maybe reduce the tension between all of us. It does, but then it causes a panic. We run around the house like maniacs, looking in every closet or spot that we deem a hiding place. We end up calling our camp director to come over because the situation has just devolved into chaos.

When he gets there, we're all huddled in the foyer, freaked out, and we explain all we can. He doesn't seem convinced that someone was in the house, and threatens to call the cops if one of us doesn't give Sarah back her things. Well, none of us fess up, so he makes good on his promise, calls the cops, and they come over to search the property and take our statements. It seems so dumb as we repeat our stories, but we didn't have much to go off of, just a feeling.

They write a report for stolen property, and that at least makes Sarah feel a little bit better. With the house secure, everyone leaves except for us four summer counselors who live there. We spend the night in the same room, with the door barricaded, reassuring ourselves that we're being stupid, and that the phone and wallet will actually turn up somewhere random, and we'll all have a good laugh about it. Fast forward a few days, we've relaxed a bit. We haven't found Sarah's things like we expected, but nothing else weird has happened.

and we've been occupied with the kids and the job in general. The kids have all gone home at this point, and it's just the four of us again at the house. We finish cleaning up the outside, lock the gate, and head through the dining room door. We're all hungry and want our snacks. Chris gets to the kitchen first and says, someone left the kitchen door open again. I mean, it's kind of weird, but kids go in and out that door all day. So of all the doors to be open, this one is the least weird. She shuts it,

And then I notice that the staff fridge door is also cracked open. Then who knows what possessed me, but I go, "Oh no, y'all. He's back." We all laugh because we think it's ridiculous, at least on the surface. Chris grabs a broom, holds it as a weapon, and says, "Let's get him, girls." She starts to throw open the pantry door, screaming, "Where the f*ck are you, mother f*cker?" And, "We know you're in here. Show yourself."

I'm following behind her laughing, but I start to inexplicably feel uneasy and nervous. She continues her charade into the next room, throwing open two more closet doors. Then she moves into the front room and opens that closet door. She starts another confident "we know you're" when she stops mid-sentence and screams so loudly the skin on my neck prickles. Then she throws the broom into the closet and sprints out the front door, leaving it open. My heart is pounding out of my chest at this point.

but I think she's messing with us. So I turn around and go the other way into the foyer and out the front door. I see her booking it down the street, and I'm like, okay, what is she doing? But as soon as I turn back around to find the others, he's just there. An older man, looks really dirty, has hardly any teeth, but he's grinning at me. He has his hands up and says, I didn't mean no harm.

while slowly backing away down the front steps in the opposite direction of the way that Chris ran off. It's so creepy because even though he says this, it's like he doesn't mean it. It's like his tone and the grin are meant to mock me. I'm frozen for a second. I sputter out, where are you going? It's not like you can leave now. That's when he just says again with that goddamn grin, I didn't mean no harm, before turning off and running.

I fumble around in my pocket for my phone and dial 911. Then I go to follow him, but as soon as I reach the edge of the house, he's gone. The next events are kind of a blur. It sounds wild, but we all really thought we just freaked ourselves out. No way in hell did we actually think someone was in the house. The cops took our statements and reminded us that we needed to keep the door shut at all times no matter what. Our director apologized profusely for not initially believing us.

My parents wanted me to come back home for the remainder of summer, but I was like, "Eh, what else could happen?" Chris was the one who had it the worst. She was terrified to stay in that house. She told me later that the first thing she saw when she opened that door was that man's toothless grin, like he was just waiting for her to finally find him. She said that she'll never forget his face. We're still best friends at almost 30 years old, and I can't bring up that summer to her if she hasn't been drinking.

I think what kept me up at night afterwards were just unanswered questions, like how long had he been in the house? Why did he randomly decide to take the phone and wallet of the one person who didn't work there? Had he listened to our private conversations? Watched us get dressed and shower? How much food had he stolen that we didn't notice? Where the f*ck had he gone when we were looking for him on spaghetti night? What hiding places did we miss? Was he under my bed at night? Or at any point during my stay?

I don't have any of these answers, and I know that I'll never get them, but I'm thankful that our interaction wasn't worse, I guess. I'm feeling particularly scared right now and could use a little advice. A few months ago, this guy started showing up at my favorite coffee shop. At first, he seemed nice enough. We had a few casual conversations, but it ended up being clear that he was interested in much more than just being friends.

He asked me out a couple of times, and each time I politely declined. I even mentioned that I had a girlfriend, hoping that he'd get the hint. My girlfriend and I have been together for three years, and we're really happy together. I thought the guy would respect that, but instead, things took a turn for the worse. After I rejected him for the third time, I started noticing him everywhere. At first, I thought it was just a coincidence. Maybe we just like the same places. But then it got weird.

He'd be at the grocery store when I was shopping, at the park when my girlfriend and I were taking a walk, and even outside of my apartment building. I did my best to just brush it off as paranoia. But a few weeks ago, my girlfriend and I were at the park. It was a beautiful day out, and we were enjoying each other's company and the sunshine, when I saw the same guy off in the distance. My heart immediately sank. I tried to ignore him, and ultimately he didn't approach us, so I felt like that was a win. But that night,

I got a message on Instagram from an obviously fake account. It was a video of us at the park with a creepy message attached that read, "Cute couple. Shame that one of you is with the wrong person." Both me and my girlfriend were freaked out by this. I reported the account and blocked it, but videos kept coming. Different accounts, different angles. Since then, I've stopped going out as much, and when I do, I can't shake the feeling that I'm being watched. My girlfriend tries to be strong for the both of us,

But I can tell she's scared too. We've talked about moving or calling the police, but we're both unsure about what the next step should be. Has anyone else dealt with something like this? How did you handle it? Any advice on what we should do next? I just, I just want to feel safe again. One commenter shared, save screenshots every time he sends you messages. You need evidence of him constantly contacting you and the harassment. Tell people at your job, just in case he figures out where you work.

get cameras, and a ring doorbell in case he finds out exactly where you live. That way you have evidence of that too. The fact that he's found your Instagram without you giving it to him is very worrying and shows he's willing to put in a lot of effort to get to you. Look up stalking laws where you live as well. Some places have different rules they abide by when handling cases like these. Good luck. The year was 2007 and I was 13 at the time.

The new Smackdown vs. Raw WWE game had just come out, and I walked into my small town on a Sunday morning to purchase it. After getting the game, I was in awe of the cover and the synopsis on the back of the game, so I sat on a bench to read it and revel in the excitement of buying a new game. I lived in a very small market town in England, so Sundays were often quite quiet. While sitting on the bench, I looked over to the nearest bus stop across the road and noticed a strange scraggly man walking towards me.

I was a bit nervous seeing this because although I was a teenager, I looked as if I was about 11. I was quite small. On his approach, the man called out to me and asked what it was that I was holding. I explained that it was my new game. He, seeming enamored by my response, reached out and asked to see the game. Instinctively, I recoiled more than just a bit. I stood up from the bench and said, "I need to go. My brother is waiting for me at the mall." And although he wasn't,

I felt like I needed to say this. As I walked off, the man began to follow me, asking me questions, like my name and my age. I replied with a fake name and told him my age. On entering the mall, I started walking quicker and quicker, trying to put some distance between me and this man, but I didn't want to flat out run, as for some reason, I wanted to save face. He kept asking me questions, like if I had a girlfriend, and as he got closer at times,

I noticed he had a giant scar on his face, along with lots of jewelry on. To his question, I responded yes, as I thought that it may put him off if he knew that I had a girlfriend. I then scampered into a shop and started flicking through the magazines, but this man persisted. He found which aisle I was in and continued with the questions. At this point, I got up the courage to just run, run as fast as I could. As I made it out of the mall, I saw that this man was in pursuit.

Given how scraggly and worn down he looked, against my fresh legs, he had no chance of catching me. Once I got home, I didn't tell my parents what I had just gone through. I went upstairs, played my game. But later that day, I did tell my mom, and she contacted the police immediately. I then had to go to the police station, tell them what had happened, and try to pick this man out of a number of photos that the police had on a laptop. I didn't have to scroll for very long. On the second or third page of People, I saw that man.

easily identifiable with the scar and all. Apparently, he was well known by the police in our town and the major city down the road. This man had a long history with the law and, more strikingly, had a penchant for snatching up young boys. Not long after my encounter with him, he was found and arrested on the suspicion of multiple crimes. These included kidnapping, endangering a minor, and several accounts of assault. All told, he got eight years.

My account of what had happened was not enough to have all these charges levied against him. It took a few of his previous victims to come forward and give their own accounts of what horrible things had happened to them. They all more or less mirrored my encounter. The man had approached them when they were out, alone, and distracted. More often than not, it was brute force that he employed, not charm or cunning. I'm grown now, but I still think back

and it breaks my heart to know what those other young men had to endure at this guy's hands. There are days where I feel both guilty and lucky that I got away and made it home to play video games that day. In my mind, eight years locked up is hardly suitable for what that man did, but that's what he got, and I only pray that every day he spent behind bars were miserable and filled with the same type of pain that he inflicted on many young children. In the summer of 2019,

My girlfriend and I, both in our early 20s, decided to take a road trip to Vancouver, Canada and then stay at Golden Ears Provincial Park. We liked camping, had spring break, and wanted to do something different just to make the most out of our vacation. Neither my girlfriend nor I had been out of the US and it seemed like a crazy, fun, new experience. It was a six-day trip with Airbnbs in each state and the grand finale was a reserved campsite at Golden Ears.

and it was going to be near the water, Alouette Lake. We packed terribly, had a giant tent, brought a bunch of fruit and veggies to eat healthily, stored them in a cooler that was too small, and brought a cutting board and knife to break up the snacks while driving. We started our trek in California, switched off driving our bright red Ford Fiesta. We drove through Oregon and Washington and made it to Vancouver. We spent a day or two in each state, drank just a little too much, and stayed out way too late.

Canada was the best part, and Alouette Lake felt like walking in a painting. We walked barefoot on the rocks with our toes in the freezing cold waters. We hiked around, saw a beautiful waterfall where we saw a couple taking pics of each other for almost an hour, and we started modeling the same poses from far away. Everything was just about perfect, and the campsite was empty, except for one single other couple. We went to bed early that night. It was quiet.

until I woke up to crackling outside the tent. My girlfriend was still asleep and snoring away. While I heard noises, I tried not to panic. It was night time out and likely just an animal running through our camp. But the crackling continued closer to the tent. That's when I sat up and grabbed my phone. As I picked it up, the blast of my screen on full brightness overtook the tent. I did my best to turn it off quickly, but I almost blinded myself with the light. In those two seconds though,

I could make out the silhouette of a person right outside of our tent. I sat up and froze. They weren't moving anymore, and they were close enough to unzip the tent. I started poking my girlfriend because I had no idea what to do. She woke up, and I said that there was someone outside of our tent. That's when I hear the footsteps. Quiet footsteps, walking away from our campsite now. My girlfriend starts loudly saying, "What?" repeatedly in a sleepy haze.

When we fell asleep that night, there was no one near our camping site. The other couple that I alluded to were more than a mile away. But now, I hear the sounds of a car engine start up, what sounds like it's merely feet away from our camp. I hear the sounds of it starting to drive off, and I can't help but notice that they didn't turn their lights on until they turned a corner and were nearly out of our view. With that said, even now that I was outside of the tent, I couldn't make out much, but it did look like a truck.

Now at this point, I'm shaking, and my girl can't put together what's happening. I want to leave, but Golden Ears locks the gate until 6 or 7 am, and it's only 2 am at this point, so whether we want to or not, we're going to be here. I make us move into the Ford Fiesta and sleep in the tightly packed car. "Couldn't it have been a park ranger?" she posed, but it seemed too weird of some behaviors for a park ranger. I sit there wide awake in the driver's seat for about two hours.

The car's locked, and I want to sleep, but I know I can't. I look over at my co-pilot, and she's fast asleep in the passenger seat. It's nearly 3am at this point. I'm sitting here, half awake, when I hear a car slowly driving up the road. Lights off as it rounds the corner nearest to us. It had to be the same truck, and I was scared, but my adrenaline was also pumping. It slowly rounds the corner and pulls up directly in front of our campsite once again. I feel like I'm going to puke,

I had no weapon but the single kitchen knife that we brought for fruits and vegetables. So I grabbed it and tried to make myself look angry, crazy, and big. I sit straight up in the seat, holding the kitchen knife at eye level. I keep it straight and stare deadpan out at this truck in the pitch black, just like the father in the American Gothic painting. The truck stops and shuts off. A light shines directly onto my face coming from inside the truck. I stare back.

And as mad dog as I'm trying to be, I'm terrified, and I'm sure that it shows, while I'm sitting in my bright red Ford, holding up a large knife, not blinking. The truck starts back up, turns on its lights, and they stay on, blinding me as the truck pulls out and turns back around towards where it came. My heart is still pounding. That's when I wake my girl up and say that we need to get the hell out of here. We do a rush pack job by just throwing things into our car and sit there awake until 6am.

We drive all the way home, I don't even think we made a stop. We just kept rehashing and trying to make sense of the situation. But after that went round and round with ultimately no conclusion, it was pretty evident that we just needed some sleep. I think back on that night quite often, the first time the truck drove through, I didn't get a good look at it. But when they came back, even in the dark, it was obvious that it wasn't a park ranger, it wasn't authorities of any nature. Whoever it was,

This story is from way back, the summer of 1987. I remember that I was nearly 5 years old at this time.

I remember it like it happened yesterday, to borrow an old cliche. I used to live in a small town in Indiana back in '87. The schools were shut for summer break. Me and my cousin, who'd frequently visit us from another city almost 100 miles away, went out to play for hours during those scorching summer afternoons. We had found this massive pile of construction sand at a nearby site, where we'd spend most of our time making sandcastles and such. Right next to this massive tower of sand

was a large water tank built with poured concrete and filled to the brim with water. Me and my cousin, when we'd be bored with the sand, would sometimes sit by this large tank and look at the tadpoles, which my older cousin convinced me were small fishes. Neither of us could swim, and being cautious, even at that age, we never ventured too close to the tank. That day, for some reason that I don't recall, my cousin had to head home rather abruptly, cutting his stay with us short.

I, being the only child in my family, feeling lonely, and with nothing else to do on this boring summer day without my cousin, decided to head back to the construction sandpile. That's where I saw this other kid, a bit older than I was, one who I'd never seen there before. He was sitting by the water tank and chucking a piece of rope with a stick tied to one end into the water before pulling it back, almost like a juvenile form of a fishing pole. I simply loved this toy that he'd fashioned out of rope plus a stick.

and asked him if I could join in on the fun. "Sure," he said. He quickly made up the rules for a new game right there on the spot. He told me, "You sit at the other end of the tank. I'll chuck the stick end of the rope at you, holding the rope end. If you manage to catch it, then you win your turn. If it hits the water, you'll lose a point. Deal? Who could say no to this?" So yeah, we started the game. I think I caught it a few times. Some other times, the stick landed in the water.

As I remember it, the other kid was losing, and in turn, he kept shortening the throws so that I'd have to keep on reaching further and further to catch the stick. With one fateful throw, I reached, lost my balance, and landed in the water. It was too sudden, I didn't realize what was happening, but I was now inside the tank, struggling to get out, trying my best to hold my breath, and flailing my arms.

Luckily, I managed to get hold of a rung on one of the corners of the tank before finally being able to hoist myself onto the edge and climb out. As I caught my bearings and my breath, the other kid was nowhere to be found. I looked around the tank, looked down in the sand pile, no sign of him. I linger around the tank for another 10 minutes maybe, just trying to catch my breath and wrap my head around what had happened. That's when he comes back. "Oh, you managed to get out?" When I heard those words,

I all but lost it. While five-year-olds may not have a firm grasp on all the emotions they are experiencing, I knew at that point that what I was feeling was rage. I said, "Where did you go? Did you get lost?" angrily. He said, "Oh, I just went to pee," rather nonchalantly. "I never thought you'd make it out, though. That water is deep." As composed as I could, but ultimately near tears, I ask, "Did you try to go find a grown-up? Tell him that I was drowning?"

He just shrugged before plopping down into the sandpile and continuing about whatever things he was doing. I remember storming home at that point, still angry, unsure why that kid did that, but also feeling incredibly lucky that I was able to make it out of that tank. For a long time, I remembered this incident in every excruciating detail, down to what I wore that day. But later on, something else came to light, rather unexpectedly years later, while I was discussing this with my dad.

I told him everything I could, playing in the sand, the fishing pole game, falling into the tank, and feeling like that would be the last thing that I'd ever get to do. When I get to the end of the story, he says, "Yeah, I can imagine how that would have bothered you so much, feeling so betrayed by your own cousin when you needed him the most." Yeah, it wasn't until years later that I realized I had processed every bit of that incident and changed one crucial aspect in my head.

There was no strange kid that day. It was my own cousin, my partner in crime, every summer break, that for some reason, only known to him, decided that he would just let me drown or fend for myself. Throughout the rest of my childhood, I'd still see him at my family barbecues or our grandparents' anniversaries, and I don't recall feeling fear, worry, or hatred at any point towards him, but it lines up time-wise where I can remember our relationship shifting. He'd still come and visit for summers,

Although we'd hang out less and less. When finally around the age of 13 or 14, I pretty much made a decision, either conscious or not, to not associate with my cousin even while he stayed in our home. I thought that we had just grown apart, or perhaps interested in different things. But I think it came from a much deeper depth than just that. Our last reunion, which came back in 2019, I saw my cousin for the first time in years. During one of the times where there was little going on, and not many other family members around,

I asked him if he remembered the water tank that summer. With little hesitation, he acknowledged that he did. He remembered the game that we played, but he also, plain as day, stated: "I remember you diving into the tank for some reason and pretending to flap around like you were drowning. That ruined the game for me." So I left. In his mind, I decided to go into the tank. I pretended to breathe in water, all in order to bring our game to an end. I vehemently told him that that's not how it went.

that he had caused me to fall in, didn't offer any help, but agreed that he left. He gave me the same shrug in 2019 that he gave me in 1987. I'll admit that the human memory is a strange thing. We misremember things all the time, and it doesn't work like a recording device. Playing back what actually occurred, while I'll go to my eventual grave thinking that my cousin almost caused my early demise, the fact that he doesn't remember it so makes me wonder if he actually believes that.

or if he's simply trying to put distance between himself and something dark that lies within. I doubt that I'll ever know for sure. This is an incident that occurred when I was around 9 years old. Even today, I still find myself thinking about what could have been. As a child, both my parents worked full time, and sometimes they couldn't afford or find a babysitter for when I was off of school. Think winter, spring, summer breaks.

So, oftentimes, I would be home alone until one of them returned from work. There were two main rules: 1. Never answer the door. 2. Don't play too close to the windows, just in case someone is watching. Well, I was 100% guilty of hanging out near the window. I liked the lighting, and I was a bored kid when I was home alone. Come on, no one had ever knocked on the door before while I was alone, so I expected that pattern to always persist.

One day, my father leaves for work and he goes over the rules once again, things that I've heard a hundred times before. Well, after a few hours of playing near the window, someone knocks on the door. I freeze, all but hit the deck, and I don't answer. But shortly thereafter, they knock again, and at this point in my little mind, I'm thinking that it has to be someone I know. That's the reason they're knocking twice. So I walk my little self over to the door, unlock it, and answer.

I open the door to an intimidating woman standing there. She's about my parents' age, tall like my dad, broad-shouldered, wearing a hat with an American flag on it and holding a clipboard. She looked very official to a child. Before even greeting me, she asks how old I am. I lie and say that I'm 12. She says that she's from some institution that I can't remember. And she tells me, "You're a liar. You're home alone. And it's illegal. You're going to have to come with me now."

"Let's go!" before grabbing me by my arm and yanking me from my doorway. I immediately start crying loudly because I'm scared to get my parents in trouble, and after all, this woman is an adult, she must be right, right? I almost went with her. I have to be about 5 steps out into the hallway of our apartment when I start crying even louder. I'm not sure what it was, but at this point, we both hear a noise coming from one of my neighbors down the hall.

This sends a jolt through the lady. She lets go of my sleeve and says, never mind, it's okay, you don't have to come with me. Before she gave me a light shove back towards my house and walked off down the hall towards the stairs. The stairs in my apartment were set up like this. Six stairs going down, a landing where you'd have to spin a 180 degree turn to get to the next six steps. The last that I ever saw of this woman was when she was making that 180,

She sent a final cold glare right through me. It felt like her eyebeams knocked me firmly back into my apartment. I slammed the door shut, locked it, and found myself cowering behind our couch. At this time, my parents weren't doing well financially, so we didn't have a landline at home. Cell phones? Not in 1996. I couldn't call my family. Couldn't call 911. I waited the entire day for my dad to come back home. Looking back,

I can only assume that that woman knew that I was alone because she had been watching me. Whether it was just from a few hours that day or whether she had been scoping me out for a longer period of time, I don't think I'll ever know. I never really spoke on the incident because I felt like it was my fault for breaking the rules. And I often find myself thinking about just how lucky I am that she didn't get me down the stairs and force me to leave with her. Moral of the story, and I know that times have changed,

But all of us 90's kids out here can certainly attest to this: Respect rule number one: Never, ever answer the door. My mom was a single mother of three back in the early 2000's when she eventually started going on dates when I was around the age of six. I can still remember the first time that I met him. He made me feel uncomfortable, but my mom shrugged it off because I was a rather shy kid. She had done her due diligence, googled this man's name,

coming across a single court case of him vs the state. It listed him as a convicted felon for murder from back in the early 1980s. I don't know how, but he convinced her that it was all a mistake, I guess because he had a very generic name. She ended up believing him. We were raised by this man, and ended up calling him dad, even at one point asking him to adopt us. The adoption never happened, thank goodness. He was a good dad to us,

At least, at first. Things started to get weird when I turned 12. Suddenly, I wasn't allowed to have sleepovers, wasn't allowed to choose my own haircuts, certainly wasn't allowed to watch TV. This eventually escalated to padlocks on the fridge and pantry, having to ask for permission to drink water, and never being allowed in the kitchen past 8pm. This man was a master manipulator, so at the time we all thought it sucked, but it was normal punishment.

Despite us not having done a single thing to deserve it, I lost the door to my bedroom for weeks on end for stupid stuff, like forgetting to do the dishes after dinner. Once when I was 16, I wanted to not go to my brother's soccer game so that I could study, and he went into a blind rage. I think that was the first time that I ever was truly afraid of him. He was a large guy, probably four times my weight at the time. I think that was the first time his mask fully slipped off in front of me.

He started acting weird, being creepy towards me. Once I turned 18, one night as I was sleeping, he came into my room and laid in my bed, telling me just how much he loved me. I was so tired that I didn't have time to think of how creepy it was until much later on. I pushed him out of my room that night and went back to sleep. The next day, while me and my family were gone, he had stayed behind. He trashed my sister's room for no apparent reason. She was only 11 at the time,

and was particularly upset by this act. He gave her the middle finger, and that's when my mom finally lost it, telling him to pack his stuff up that night. That must have set him off as well because he brandished a gun in our faces, waving it directly at us before taking off in his car. We called the cops, and after they located him on the road and having a tense standoff with him, he was arrested. We found out for fact that he was a murderer when his bond was set,

at nearly a quarter of a million dollars. He tried once again to lie to my mom, but she must have learned because it didn't work this time. I looked up the specifics of his case and it was way worse than just a murder. He had beaten someone to death with a metal pipe late at night in a highly populated park. While he had lived in our house for over 12 years at this point, I realized that I didn't know this man, not truly, and neither had my mom. How could she have?

if she let him stay with us like that. He eventually got out on bond, I have no idea who paid for it, and he tried to come back to the house. I was the only one home at the time, and I had no idea my siblings had not locked the door when they left that day. I was cooking pasta for myself before heading into work when I heard the front door open and shut. I poked my head out of the kitchen towards the front door, and my blood ran cold as he was just standing there. He said something to me, but there is no way I can remember now what it was.

I ran to the bathroom, locked the door behind me, not even bothering to turn the stove off. I pressed my full body weight up against the bathroom door and called my mom as he banged and kicked the outside of the door. An even more chilling element of this is while he's trying to break the door down, he's screaming, asking me why I don't love him anymore. I was so afraid I nearly sent myself into an asthma attack. My mom had a family friend come by and pick me up. When they entered the house, he wasn't there anymore.

That was the last time I ever saw him, back in 2017. He'd helped raise me and my siblings for 13 years. He was the closest thing I ever had to a normal dad, which, given everything, is kind of sad when I think about it too much. I can't help but worry that I'll fall back into the same toxic and manipulative relationship as an adult. It's all I knew growing up. Maybe that's why I keep people at a distance now.

The reason that I thought about this recently is because some true crime TikToker actually covered the story on the man he murdered all those years back, and I happened to stumble across it. One of the victim's daughters even commented on the post, giving more details about what it was like not being able to grow up with their father, not because he was absentee or had run off with another family, but because he was taken from this earth.

It was odd, thinking that so many of my peers and friends would be able to put two and two together if they had seen the TikTok. I know that I'm a victim in all of this, but I couldn't help but feel shame that I was connected to this man and to the atrocity that he committed. I could end this post with a typical "let's never meet again," but I know we won't, because the man that I'm alluding to is no longer here. I didn't go to his funeral. Almost nobody did. From what my mom told me,

Not even his parents were there. The last thing that I want to say is to anybody hearing this, to please not give my mom any hate. She was manipulated into believing he was a good man, and we've made peace with her on this particular subject. A lot of things I mentioned happening in my childhood were things she didn't know about until he was already dead. And one more thing, since this is such a popular subreddit, if you think you know who I am based on this story, please keep it to yourself.

This story takes place nearly 15 years ago when I was on summer break. 15 years old. I grew up in a very run-of-the-mill, middle-class neighborhood in San Antonio, Texas. Our house sat on a corner, and the fence around the backyard had horizontal wood beams that almost made an X, as opposed to a vertical fence post that I'm more familiar with. Because of this, there were larger gaps between the beams, and seeing through was fairly easy.

Another detail worth noting: our back gate on the side of the house, the one that dumped out onto our street, had been found wide open many mornings that summer, and because of this, my dad had looped some wire through the latch and twisted it like a bread tie in order to keep it engaged and closed, although there were several more times that we would still find it open.

In our backyard, there was a large deck and an above-ground pool that the deck was built up to on one end. There was a huge, beautiful oak tree that shaded the deck and the part of the pool closest to our house, so my sister and I would anchor our feet at the farthest edge, closest to the back corner of the fence, and sunbathe in our pool on our floats. This story happened to occur on a Sunday. My grandfather was visiting from out of town, and he and my parents were inside napping.

My older sister was gone with her friends, off at somebody else's house, some other pool, and I decided to go float in our backyard. My mom closes the blinds to the back and habitually locks the back door before lying down on the couch to snooze. I'm in the pool for maybe 20 minutes and I can see that someone is standing on the other side of the fence looking in, although the sun is shining in my face so I can't see who it is very well, and while I find it weird, I don't say a thing.

I see whoever it is walk off, and I think that's the end of that. Minutes pass, and I decide to swim around a bit, just in order to cool off, before getting back on my float, this time on my stomach, with my face looking up at the house instead of off towards the fence. It feels like only a minute has passed, and that's when I hear the sound of wood creaking. I turn around, and that's when I see a man, halfway over my backyard fence, maybe only 20 feet away from me once he hits the ground.

Part of me is in absolute shock, and I know that I froze for a moment before sheer terror and panic took over. I realize this isn't a dream, it's really happening, and I need to get inside of my house now. I felt as though the pool became Olympic-sized, and I couldn't maneuver myself to the edge and climb out fast enough. By the time I make it out of the pool and start running towards my back door, the man has already made his way around the pool and is walking his way up the deck as well.

He was maybe in his late twenties, early thirties at most, gaunt thin and around my height, around 5'9" for context. Once he hopped over the fence, he never broke stride, walking slowly and steadily. His gait would give Michael Myers a run for his money, and he never uttered a word. I get to my back door and just my luck, my mom has locked it. I begin screaming and hitting the window pane, "Let me in! Let me in!"

At least my mom was right there to unlock it, but at that point 10 seconds felt like 10 minutes. By the time my mom opened the door, the man was standing right behind me, equipped with this blank look emanating from his eyes. I'm in tears already. My grandfather is freaking out. All the while, the man is just standing there, looking inside our home. That's when my dad makes it downstairs, and he goes crazy screaming at the man. He pushed him off our deck and told him to get lost.

At this point, my mom is on the phone with the police, and the next moment makes this whole thing ten times creepier. The man gets up from where he lands on our lawn, walks around the house, over to our back gate, the one that had the wire in the latch. He untwisted it and pushed through, looking as if he'd done this many times before, leaving the gate wide open as he walks back across the street and into our neighbor's home. The police arrive a few minutes later, and after being pointed to our neighbor's house,

They head inside and retrieve the guy that had just been on our property. Turns out the man had been staying with his sister for the past 8 weeks, and was on parole, and was recently released from jail on theft and assault charges. He had also broken into several different neighbors homes and stolen some china and a few of their family photos. He went back to jail and we never found our back gate open again. I still get chills thinking about this because my sister and I both had our bedrooms downstairs

with our windows facing the backyard, and there's no doubt in my mind that he was coming into our yard and watching us at night. My parents moved out of this home a few years later when I went off to college, but I slept upstairs on a pull-out couch for months after this, and pledged to myself that I will never live on a ground floor again so long as I can help it. I went to a wedding of my friend Courtney this last weekend, and I had something happen that I don't think I'll ever shake from my mind.

For background, I grew up in a very religious household and went to church every Sunday. Courtney is probably the only person from my old church that I still keep in contact with. While my Sunday prayer habits have changed in adulthood, I'd say that Courtney and I are close. I've met and hung out with her husband, their friends and family, and would even consider her a dear friend. But after what I'm about to share, I'm not sure if this friendship is meant to continue. The situation started at the reception.

Courtney was super excited to see me, and was definitely the only person who felt that way, judging from all the stares from the people at my old church. I sat down at my table, started playing something on my phone, when some guy sat next to me. He said that the seating arrangement said that he was supposed to sit at my table, and he introduced himself as the groom's friend Anthony. He was pretty cute, so I spent a lot of time talking to him, and we really hit it off. He didn't seem to judge me for being an atheist, while also giving me the impression

that he was genuinely interested in me. When the dancing started, they began by playing "Brown Eyed Girl" and he asked me to join him on the dance floor. We danced together for most of the night, until at one point, he excused himself to go to the bathroom. During that time, I found myself alone at our table once more, but eventually, I felt the need to hit the powder room myself. More than just my urge to pee, I felt a little hot and tired, not sure if it was the open bar or the heavy meal that they fed us.

but I wasn't quite 100% at this point. When I came out of the bathroom, I searched for my purse, where I swear I left it, on the back of my chair at the table, but it was nowhere to be found. Given my malaise, I thought that maybe I had just left it in my car, so I venture out to the parking lot and into my car to look for it. I quickly find it on the center console, which again is weird because I really thought I had brought it inside, but whatever. I found it, it's with me now, all good.

head back inside, dance some more, before noticing that Anthony never came back. I asked the groom where his friend had gone, and he said Anthony headed home because he wasn't feeling well. I was a little bummed because I was having a good time hanging out, but I couldn't really blame him after all. My hotness was beginning to shift to a level of discomfort, and now I found myself a bit nauseous as well. I felt pretty solid that it was time to call it a night. I said bye to Courtney, her now hubby,

and again went off to my car. I hit the unlock button as I got close to my 2021 Honda CR-V, what we call a crossover SUV here. I plopped down into the driver's seat, pushed the button to start my car, and glanced up into my rearview mirror, just to scope out if I look as under the weather as I'm beginning to feel. But that's when something caught my attention. It looked like something in my trunk had just ducked down as I glanced back, not sure what I had seen, if anything at all. I turned to look back,

No longer looking in the mirror, that's when I could clearly see the outline of a body, of a man, crouched behind my seats. It was Anthony. Instantly, I scream bloody murder and hop out of the car. I start to run back towards the reception, and because I can hear gravel crunching behind me, I can only assume that I'm now being chased. I made it inside, and in a panic, I tell Courtney. She looks absolutely stunned.

She gets her husband and another member of his family to walk me back to my car. As we're walking out, he says that he doesn't see Anthony's car anywhere in the lot, so he probably left. Now, had he stopped there, I think I could have been alright, but it was when he asked me, "Are you sure there was someone in your car?" Like, "Yeah man, I'm sure. It was your friend." I left the event, and I still feel sick to my stomach thinking about it, although it's gone even further in my head.

Was I feeling awful not because of a few glasses of champagne and overeating? Could Anthony have done something to me? Had I made it home without noticing him? What was the plan then? Where would it have gone? And what was the potential outcome, knowing that my life would have been in his hands, had I not looked back? Courtney said that she feels terrible that she invited him, and that she had no idea that he would do that. Her husband has said that he's never been accused of something like this before. Neither of them have spoken to him since, though.

I've made a report with the police, but who knows where that will go. This stuff easily crosses the boundary from physical threat to something psychological, because I haven't really left the house since this occurred. The thought that he knows where I'm at, where I live, or will just be waiting for me somewhere, like he was in the back of my car, absolutely persists. I don't know, man. It's really just terrifying to me. I've wanted to share this for quite a long time now.

Escaping harrowing situations with creeps, sociopaths, and other ne'er-do-wells is something that I've had to do many times in my life. This, however, is only the second story that I've ever shared in a public forum, so please go easy on me. This took place during the late summer of 1993. I was living in Montana at the time, but had a boyfriend in British Columbia, so I often traveled between the two places.

We were broke and carless, so we hitchhiked when we needed to get somewhere further than biking distance. I had spent the month of August with him in BC, and eventually it was time to get back to school. I, of course, not having worked much at all that summer, had no money. My bum-ass boyfriend hadn't come through with any money for a bus ticket either. My parents were mad at me, so they weren't going to cough up any cash. And all my friends were broke as well, but we didn't have a phone to call them anyway.

At this point, the decision was made. I was already two days late for school, and I didn't feel like panhandling for a bus ticket. I had to get back, and I couldn't wait for the boyfriend's money to materialize. This would be my first time hitchhiking alone. I put my backpack's worth of stuff together, making sure I had my ID because one time we hitched to the border, left Canada, and tried to get back into the US.

before I realized that I had left my identification in Canada. Meaning, I had no ID to enter the US, but also no ID to get back into Canada. But that's a story for another day. After checking all my boxes, I hit the road. Things went surprisingly smoothly for the majority of the trip. An elderly couple picked me up as soon as I got off the mountain and into town. And they took me all the way to Creston, right near the border crossing.

I walked across and was picked up almost immediately by a guy who at first gave me the mild creeps, but all he did was lecture me about how dangerous it was to hitchhike alone and how much I reminded him of his daughter. He took me all the way to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, which was damn near half the trip. I was actually having phenomenal luck. I walked to just outside the city limits and stuck my thumb out. An hour went by, then two.

You're often walking really slowly when you're trying to catch a ride, and eventually, I came across a small flap of cardboard. I picked it up, thinking I could walk off at the next exit, borrow a marker at a gas station, and make a sign. I thought this move might help me to nab a ride, so I'm walking along just a little bit faster now, and suddenly I see something moving in my peripheral vision. I tense up, look, and see that it's a two-foot, thin, dark snake.

trying to get over the cement guardrail to the shoulder. He was never going to make it. He was kind of trying to throw himself over it sideways. I happen to kind of like snakes, and he looked pretty harmless. So I used my sign as a shovel and pitched him up over the wall. In hindsight, however, I should have realized that the snake was a bad omen before I could reach the next exit. A car slowed to a stop. It's always creepy when a car stops and you're walking up to it, trying your best to judge if it's Ted Bundy

or just an eccentric like you. My heart always sank a little when it would be a single man, but I soon realized that this guy wasn't alone. There was a kid in the front seat who looked to be between 10 and 13 years old. The guy was a little too friendly, but what was he going to do? Murder me in front of the kid? I'll admit right now, I was young and very dumb. I decided to get in. The man himself was pretty chatty, introducing the kid as his nephew,

He said they were driving back to where they lived in St. Louis from visiting his brother in Seattle so the kid could visit his grandma. The whole time I was in the car, the kid hardly said a word. If I remember right, and it's been a very long time, it's about three hours to where I live from Coeur d'Alene. He was taking Highway 90 right past the city that I lived in. So I was relieved I wouldn't have to get out of the car and thumb it again. The first hour goes by and it's all friendly chitchat.

Lots of family anecdotes and general small talk. The switchblade my boyfriend gave me was cradled in the bottom of my palm the whole time, up my sleeve and out of view. But after a while, I began to relax a little. The man kept up the friendly chatter, but eventually the questions he was asking took a raunchier turn. Like, did I have a boyfriend? What was he like? What did we like to do? What was our favorite position? Uh, what? I silently panicked.

Turns out, this guy was a creep after all. My instinct was to play along with his conversation while I tried to figure out what to do. I was pretty sure the drink he had in the console and a convenience store cup had more than pop in it because you could see him physically getting looser as the drive went on. He kept up with the gross questions and I was so embarrassed for his nephew, although I still played along. I just tried to breathe deeply to keep from having an anxiety attack and concentrated on extricating myself from his car.

Eventually, he made it clear that he expected me to have sex with him in exchange for the ride. Door-to-door service, he said. But then, it only got worse. And find one of your girlfriends for my nephew, he said, with this hyper-cheerful, yet also menacing smile that made my stomach drop. Yeah, this only served to confirm that I needed to get away from this guy ASAP. At this point, we were about 20 minutes out from the town that I lived in,

I was like, "Sure, sure." And started making stuff up about a phantom, hot, slutty friend that I had. Then, it finally hit me what I could do to get away. I put on my best come-hither smile and said to him, "You know what? I bet she's home now. Let's go straight over to her place when we get into town and get this date started." So I had him get off at my exit and asked if we could get some beer first for our date. I'm not so sure about in other states, but in Montana?

"You can buy beer at gas stations." So I had him stop at a place a few blocks from where I lived, when he somewhat reluctantly went inside to buy the beer, which I knew would be at the back of the store. I opened my door and sprinted down the alley about a block and dove into a huge clump of bushes, folded myself up as tight as I could, prayed, and waited. I still had my knife, but now it was out of my sleeve. I was shaking and my heart was pounding so hard I was afraid it would explode.

I tucked my head in between my knees and continued to wait, listening for his car to come roaring down the alley. When we pulled into the gas station, it was about 4pm in September, so there was still plenty of light. I stayed in those damn bushes until night fell, and then I finally got up the courage to sprint home. The guy's car never came down the alley, although I could hear him yelling for me, and he sounded pissed. I got in my front door, locked the deadbolt, and collapsed.

dirt and little leaves still all over me. My roommate walked in and was like, "What the f*ck happened to you?" I gave her the abbreviated version and she said, "Why didn't you call me? I would have picked you up at the border." Great information to have now, I suppose. When I was younger, each summer and almost every new year, my family would pack the car up and go on a road trip to visit family in Mexico. We never had any problems on the road until one particular trip

when I was 8 years old. Like every road trip before, we left our home in North Texas at around 6pm in order to reach our destination the next morning. So at around 2am, we crossed into Mexico. And that's when things began to get weird. When you're on the only stretch of freeway in the middle of the desert, you don't tend to freak out about having the same car behind you for miles. It was practically pitch black outside our car windows.

the only visible shapes being the dotted stars and the eerie silhouettes of the cacti. We'd been in Mexico for about an hour and a half and still had a few more hours to drive. And I remember sleeping but still being semi-conscious of what was going on around me because I didn't really have the skill to fall deeply asleep in the car. So when my mother suddenly spoke my dad's name, I heard her loud and clear. "Miguel, that car behind us, it's been on us since we left Laredo." My dad peeked at the car

shrugged off my mother's tension. A lot of cars use this road. He's probably going to Reynosa or another city before leaving it at that. Despite his sureness, my mom kept a wary eye on the car behind us. By this time, my siblings and I were hyper aware of the car and entertained ourselves with watching the car through the gaps in the luggage that blocked the rear window. Although, we got tired of this pretty quickly. After a little while longer on this road, I hear my mom again, only more in a hushed whisper.

"He's getting closer," in response to my mother's note. All of his kids turned to watch as the car inched closer and closer to ours. "He's too close, Miguel," and she was right. By this time, that car was practically pressed against the rear of ours, and on a lonely stretch of highway in the middle of nowhere, with another few hours until daylight. This was downright scary. We couldn't do much. My dad didn't slow down, didn't stop, and he didn't speed away either.

He just drove, and the car followed. The next thirty minutes were the most tense that we had ever experienced as a family. The car would ease off sometimes, only to press its blinding headlights against our rear once more. Like, whoever the driver was knew that he was freaking us out, and rather enjoying it. It was during one of the periods that the car had pulled away that my mom spotted a police car up ahead, parked on the side of the road, and she didn't miss a beat. Pull over, right in front of the police.

"Pull over right now, Miguel!" And he did, and the car that had been following us kept driving. I wondered just how confused the policeman must have been as he watched my dad park our car right in front of him. The cop came over and asked what was wrong, and that's when my mother urgently told him everything: the car, the way it followed us, and the way it taunted us. The policeman took her claim seriously and told us of how people were victimized and had their car stolen on these empty highways.

by both thugs and criminals. Then he offered to drive behind us for a while in order to ward off any unwanted attention and make us feel safe. We drove off with the police cruiser right behind us, relieved, until about ten minutes later when we saw something that confirmed the policeman's words and my mother's worst fears. We saw that same car that had been following us pulled over on the side of the road

Only its front end was exposed from behind some sort of desert plant. I'm not a betting man, but I'd wager my last dollar that they were waiting for us. I also don't doubt that that police escort saved us from something terrible. Although what that was, I'll never know. And I'm just fine with that. I originally hail from Portland, Oregon and got a great opportunity to take a scholarship at a school in Washington, DC. My family doesn't come for money.

and to ship my car and fly out with all of my stuff would have cost several thousand dollars. Plus, at the time, I was so afraid the airline would break my cello, the instrument that I got my scholarship for and was still making payments on, so that wasn't the move. I decided to pack my 1991 Toyota Previa full of all my stuff and hit the road.

I mapped it out that it would take 4 days if I hustled, and cost me around $500 total, with gas, eating off the dollar menu, and sleeping in my car. Good stuff. Fast forward one whole day, and I'm like, "f*ck every single bit of this." I was at a pace of 16 hours a day driving, just starting my second day. There was nowhere good to sleep in my car out in the middle of nowhere that runs around I-90.

The only marginally okay place I found was the parking lot of a small hospital somewhere in Missoula, Montana, I think. And it felt so sketchy to be sleeping in my car. Like, I couldn't exactly put my finger on what made me feel some type of way. But the further I got from Oregon, the location that the tags on my car showed that I was from, the more I felt like I drew attention of people. I was just running off of adrenaline, covering nearly 800 miles a day.

calling my parents at every rest stop, and leaving voicemails on the machine letting them know where I was. Cell phones were just beginning to be popular, although they were expensive as hell, and I didn't have one. It was physically and emotionally exhausting, and I was so, so ready to just be at my dorm and sleep in an actual bed again. My car wasn't super old, but it was a flood salvage, and not the most reliable thing.

It permanently had some random dash light stuck in the on position, and I was so afraid that it was going to break down and leave me stranded in the badlands or on a barren stretch of f*cking nothing. If you've never made this trip, at least at this point in time, you needed to pack cans of gas in your trunk because even with a full tank, it may be several hundred miles before you find your next service stop. I remember driving all day through nothing but literal tumbleweeds.

sleeping on the side of the road, waking up, and not seeing civilization again for a total of 12 hours worth of driving. Fast forward to Wyoming. I don't remember where, but I think that I was near the South Dakota-Nebraska border. I was running low on cash due to a rock hitting my side mirror and breaking the glass, and I needed to buckle down to have enough for gas. I saw a sign at some tiny church saying, free community spaghetti dinner, listed for that evening, and I was like,

Oh yeah, let's do this. It was a few hours until it started, but I figured I could stop by and introduce myself, help set up, enjoy that sweet, sweet spaghetti, and maybe they would let me take a plate to go too. Long story short, it was great. Met some really nice folks and ate some really good spaghetti. Everyone seemed so amazed at my journey. The pastor ended up asking me if I wanted to sleep there for the night. A lady chimes in that they would absolutely find some place for me.

A third person chimed in, that they had some cots down in the preschool in the basement that I could use. Yeah. So the time rolls around, we finish cleaning up, everyone leaves the church. I get shown to my cot. The inherent creepiness of sleeping on a cot in a dark preschool aside, there were no red flags at all. That cot was absolute magic compared to my car. I put a few of them together, made a nest out of pillows, and I was able to stretch out mostly comfortably.

I woke up at some point in the night to hearing footsteps. It seemed like they were just kind of wandering around. I sat frozen, holding my breath like, holy what? And then it hit me. I forgot to call my dad and tell him where I was. I was sleeping on a cot in the basement of a church. I actually just realized that I didn't even know the name of, didn't know what town I was in. Nobody knew where I was. And there's some stranger wandering around this dark church.

I decided then and there that it was time to leave. I quietly put my shoes on and tried to tiptoe opposite where I thought I heard someone. I felt such anxiety heading into the dark stairwell. I knew that there was probably an emergency exit at the end of the hall on the stairwell, and I decided I would just start running. All of a sudden, I hear someone shout, "Hey!" and grab the back of my shirt. I felt their cold hand on the exposed skin of my back, and they ripped the spaghetti strap of my shirt.

in some Houdini move that I'm still not sure how I managed. I slid out of the open button down without them being able to grab me again, and I just kept on running. It was too dark to see them or where they came from. I didn't turn around, and I sure didn't look back. Once I made my way outside, I kept running up the hill in the dark. I lost one of my shoes, and I cut my foot on something in the grass, but at that point, I didn't care. I kept running with a single shoe on until I reached my car.

Burnt rubber through that entire empty parking lot. I drove until my gas light came on and didn't even get out to refill the tank until the sun was high up in the sky. I don't know who was in the church with me that night. The voice didn't match any of the people that I had met only hours ago. The hand that I felt on my back was rough, calloused, and it seemed to have the strength of many decades packed into each one of its digits. I just know that if they had gotten a grip on me, I wouldn't have made it out so easily.

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