September 2024: Disturbing TRUE Story Compilation [Part 5]
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So this is something that I've kept completely to myself, save for a confused phone call to my best friend the morning after, to try and figure out if what I thought happened actually happened. Truthfully, the event that incited this incident was my fault and also rather stupid, so I think I've been too embarrassed or mad at myself to share this story. However, if me sharing keeps somebody from making the same set of mistakes, I think I need to swallow my pride.

I had only been living in New Orleans for about two-ish weeks the night that this occurred, and while I'd never been to New Orleans once in my life prior to moving there, I'm from a similarly large metro area in the American South, so I'm familiar with the dynamic of a city like this. One minute, you'll see kids playing catch in the streets, and young couples walking arm-in-arm down tropically adorned sidewalks, and the next moment, dilapidated houses, gang violence,

Young men posted up on street corners and unimaginable poverty tied to rampant drug abuse. In the end, it's just all about knowing where to go and which areas to avoid entirely. Anyway, I was driving home from running some obscure errand at night around 9:30 p.m. that caused me to drive through St. Claude. For anyone that doesn't know, this is certainly one of those neighborhoods that should be avoided if at all possible.

As I came upon a stop sign right next to a small community center/food bank, I suddenly slammed on the brakes due to driver's instinct before really even understanding why I did it. Standing there, just feet away from my front bumper, was a teeny tiny cat, its wide eyes staring back at me in terror as it became briefly blinded by my headlights. This is where my own stupidity comes into play. I didn't really know where I was and how dangerous of an area that it happened to be.

and without even thinking for a single damn moment. I stepped outside of the car to assess the situation, maybe see if I could help the little guy. I didn't even remove my keys from the ignition, as I figured I'd only be there for a moment. Didn't think to grab my phone from the charger. I figured I'd either be able to beckon over the little cat and help it, or watch it dart away before slipping back into the car and continuing my journey home. What I didn't realize when I knelt down on the pavement

was that my clumsy self was too close to the barely open car door, and when I stood up, I bumped it, and it immediately swung shut. No big deal, I thought, convincing myself that the door would be unlocked, only to feel my whole heart sink like a stone into my stomach when the door didn't budge. I didn't panic immediately, but after trying all four doors and cursing myself for a solid minute for being such an idiot, I spotted a man sitting on the steps of the community center eating, and he spotted me.

Noticing my situation, he slowly stood and came to the back of my car with his bag of Raising Cane's chicken, plopped it down on the hood, and proceeded to enjoy his dinner on the back of my Subaru. I had already been there for a good ten minutes at this point, so honestly, the company of another person was actually relieving. I didn't look as helpless to passerbys with him there, at least that's what I thought.

For context, I'm five feet tall and was wearing a tiny tank top to fend off the brutal New Orleans summer heat. After I explained my situation, he explained that he could try to jimmy rig the door open, and desperate to get back in, I agreed to this plan. It was useless, unfortunately, and I could tell that he was just fiddling around. I trotted over to a small church across the intersection, where I spotted a few people closing up for the night. Sanctuary, I thought.

Nice churchgoers have to help a woman lost and alone, right? Wrong. The man locking up looked straight through me, back at the man now clearly trying to open a locked car, shook his head, and shot me a glance that said, "Do you think I'm stupid?" and stepped right into his unlocked vehicle. It was at this point that I felt the tears welling up, but quickly told myself to suck it up as I walked dejectedly back over to my car.

By the grace of God, the random stranger let me use his phone to call a locksmith, one tastefully called "Pop-a-Lock", who told me that they'd be there anywhere between 45 minutes and 4 hours from now. Great. After about 25 minutes of chit-chatting, the man informed me that his shift was about to start, and just as quickly as he had appeared, he was gone. This is when the gravity of my situation really began to sink in, and I became acutely aware of my surroundings.

Acutely aware of the men who had been circling the block on their bicycles during our conversation. I don't know about you, but I don't know many grown men who ride around leisurely on bikes after 10pm just for the fun of it, especially not in the same big circles in the same neighborhood. I heard the distant squeak of wheels, and before I could duck for cover, they had lapped the block again, now aware that I was, in fact, utterly alone.

They continued down the block, and I realized quickly that I needed to find somewhere to be by the time that they returned. I swiftly walked towards the community center, where I'd planned on sitting on the stairs, but I quickly realized that it was entirely too illuminated, and I'd be making myself a beacon amid the darkness of the neighborhood. Plus, as I rounded the corner, I saw a tall man standing in total darkness along the side of the building, simply staring straight forward, facing the steps not even ten feet away from them. Getting desperate now,

I jogged over to the church, and hearing the wheels nearing again, I squatted down behind the big sign in front of the building. As I sat there in the dirt, I couldn't help it anymore, and cried just a little bit. The combination of fear and frustration really put me over the edge. After a while though, I didn't hear any more movement, and because my butt hurt from sitting on the ground, and the bugs were starting to come out beneath me, I decided to move spots like some stupid game of hide and seek.

I had spotted a fenced off area that appeared to belong to a restaurant that had obviously closed by this time. And after finding the gate to the outdoor section to be unlocked, I darted inside and latched it behind me, sighing with relief. At that point, I situated myself at a table where I could peer through the fence at my car to see if the locksmith pulled up and then I waited. I waited and I waited.

After about two hours, the horrifying realization dawned on me that I'd only made one singular call to the Popalog people, and I gave a vague description of the intersection where I was at. What if they couldn't find me? What if they had already driven past long ago, and not seeing me there? We're long gone by now. I didn't know if I should keep waiting or venture back out in hopes of catching them if they were circling the block looking for my car. After about 30 minutes of indecision, I decided that I would just have to go out there.

The men were gone, and although it was a bad neighborhood, it'd just get progressively worse come the early hours of the morning, and I didn't exactly want to find that out. It's so painfully obvious in retrospect, but of course. The moment I left the safety of my little restaurant hideaway, those damn wheels began to round the corner. I literally could not have looked more out of place and vulnerable. I felt so exposed, but there was no time to go back across the intersection to the fenced off area.

and to get to the church, I'd have to run right through the bike path of the two men. As I sprinted toward my car, a black truck rolled by and began to slowly roll back in my direction. I almost resigned myself to my seemingly inevitable capture, assault, and God knows what as I watched that vehicle roll toward me. I pretended to walk away as if I were not utterly aimless, trying to give off the impression that I wasn't locked out of my still running car without any and all resources.

The men on the bikes were so close now. But then, just as if out of a scene of a movie, the pop-a-lock truck rounded the corner. I instantly began waving my arms to flag them down, and as that ominous truck drove off, my savior parked his van. Apparently, he'd been looping around the area for 20 minutes, trying to find me, and was about to give up to go help another stranded woman. If I had stayed behind the fence, he likely would have.

and I would have been left without any means of communication to call anyone else for help. The moment I got inside my beloved Subaru, I began sobbing at the heavenly sound of the lock clicks behind me. God, it was pure relief to be secured within my own lock space. Even as I'm sharing this now, I feel as if I'm being rather dramatic, almost as if I was freaking out over nothing. But in working through my own recollection, parsing through the details, it does help to validate my experience.

While I love animals, I don't anticipate being so haphazard if I come across a wayward pet again, and I certainly won't be getting out of the car without bringing my keys with me. Lesson learned. This happened back in 2015. I, a female, was about 20 years old at the time, and I'll give you some context before letting you know what actually happened. I was studying in a lovely seaside city in France, and everyone used bicycles as their main mode of transportation. Cycling to work,

school, parties, etc. It was a rather safe place, full of both tourists and students. I lived and studied in the city between 2012 and 2015. Up until the events that I'm going to mention, I never felt unsafe, nor did I hear anything of the sort from any of my friends either. In December of 2014, my boyfriend took me to his engineering school's Christmas party. We were amongst a large group of friends and mingled a lot. One of the guys from the group

one whom I didn't know personally, left the party without any notice. A month later, he was found dead in the harbor and the police never figured out what had happened to him. I went online to check if there was any news and it's still a cold case to this day. I didn't know him, but I think about this all the time. Was it because he was alone? Did he fall into the water or did someone push him? Why didn't anyone care to walk home with him that night?

Needless to say, the city started to feel a whole lot less safe afterwards. But at 20 years old, I didn't have the same understanding of such things as I do now, as a person well into my adulthood. My life just carried on. A couple of months passed, and it was the beginning of 2015. A friend of mine was assaulted badly while cycling back home after a party. He was found in critical condition, his body lying halfway on the road, half on the sidewalk.

He had serious head trauma after it appeared that someone stomped his head while on the sidewalk. His jaw was completely shattered. This guy was a big guy in every sense of the word. Not the sort of man that you could push around easily. When he was recovering in the hospital, he couldn't make sense of what had happened. He had no idea why he was attacked on his bike. And the police didn't find any suspect or suspects. Two students my age, same friend circles,

brutally assaulted for no reason at all. I still biked everywhere because I had no other choice. I lived about 8 kilometers away from my school and I didn't have any other means of transportation. This meant that I cycled approximately 16 to 20 kilometers every day, something that I'd been doing since 2012. We're now in the spring of 2015. I'm biking back home from a party with my boyfriend. I've had a few drinks, but I'm not drunk. I'm just tired.

and my boyfriend is annoying me because he's not waiting up for me. The distance between our two bikes just keeps growing when suddenly someone jumps on me. This man appears from nowhere and he kicks my bike to the ground. Now, I'm a skilled cyclist at this point. I'm used to handling my bike, so I let it fall between my legs. But I myself don't wreck into the asphalt. I resist and try to land on my feet. I don't know who this man is, but it's obvious that he doesn't have my best interests at heart. I instinctively reach for my bike

which is now lying on the ground. I'm trying to get a hold of the handlebars. This man kicks me, then my hand. He kicks again and again, but I'm already holding the handlebars. It hurts, but I'm doing my best to lift the bike. He says something that my brain can't quite make out. I don't hear it, but the sounds that he made were filled with hatred and anger. I see my boyfriend looking at me. He's a bit far off, but he stopped cycling. I figure that he's going to turn and help me, and this man will see that I'm not alone.

I'm still standing and lifting my bike. It's been maybe two or three seconds since the man initially jumped on me. That's when my boyfriend and I catch eyes, and then he turns his back on me. My heart drops as he starts pedaling away. It's the dead of night, and there's no one else around. It clicks that I'm on my own now. The man just keeps kicking. He obviously wants me to let go of the bike. My hand is black and blue, but my grip is strong. I think about the other two students. They give me strength in the situation.

I think about my boyfriend. The sight of him cycling away fills me with pure rage. I'll use this rage. The man is holding some sort of glass bottle in his hand. I grab it with my free hand and smash it into his face. I'm furious. I'm not sure what was in the bottle, but that's not important because when it broke upon impact, it surely splintered into his eyes. Now I have a split second to launch myself and begin pedaling away. He can't reach my hand anymore.

so he opts to kick my bike one more time, but I stand strong on the pedals. He tries to give chase, but I'm much faster, especially now that he doesn't have the element of surprise on his side. I pedal and pedal until I can no longer breathe. I pedal until I feel numb and finally reach my residence. That night, I know that I escaped something terrible. Due to the stress, I couldn't even describe the man. I'll never know for sure if my experience was linked to the other attacks. However, it's important to note

We were all walking and cycling on the same exact route. Ten years later, I can still recall the look on my ex-boyfriend's face when he turned his back on me. I can honestly say I hope to never meet either of these two men again.

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That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash mischief to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash mischief and don't get left out in the cold this season. I work at a retail store and I absolutely detest my job with every ounce of my heart. And because I was dumb upon hire, doing my best to play team player, I said that I was always available. So they routinely stick me with night shifts.

But I whine and bitch and moan and digress. I guess I'm okay working nights since I get to see my boyfriend when he picks me up afterwards. My boyfriend usually gets off of his job at 10.30, but oftentimes doesn't leave work until 11. So on those nights, I'd end up waiting for him for a good 40 to 45 minutes after I got off of work. He'd call me to tell me that he was coming and also to make sure that I was still alive. Well, one random night, an Uber driver pulled up and asked me if I was someone named Lenore.

I told him no, but his reply was, "Am I sure?" Bro, how am I not going to be sure of my own name? Fortunately, right at that instant, my boyfriend pulled in and gave me the honk, causing creepy Uber driver to speed away. I'm a paranoid penny, so this made me wonder if maybe that driver had been watching me and knew my boyfriend always came late. That was something that I pondered for a moment and then tried to put to the back of my head. But fast forward three days later,

And I'm standing there after work, in the parking lot of the shopping plaza where I work, listening to some music, waiting for boyfriend to come pick me up or give me a call with his ETA. He finally does call me and he begins cracking a joke about how he's glad that creepy Uber driver didn't answer my phone. As we start shooting the shit and joking, that's when this woman of Indian descent walks up. I don't see her at first. In fact, I don't hear her either as I was wearing noise-canceling headphones at the time.

She gets closer and keeps calling to me when finally she yells, "Hey!" I look over at her and smile before going back to talking to my boyfriend. She does it again. That's when I excuse myself. "Hi, can I help you?" "Do you need a ride?" she asks. She looks nice enough but something just didn't settle with me. Her car was parked at the stop sign and there was clearly someone else in it. "Oh, no, my friend is coming for me, but thank you."

I notice there's a man in the driver's seat of her car and that she isn't wearing a uniform from either of the two shops that are near us. She begins to ask again, "Are you sure? I can give you a ride. Do you need a ride? Get in." I begin to feel a little uncomfortable at this and my preschool "don't get in a stranger's car" training kicks right in, so I politely decline and go back to speaking to my boyfriend. "So, are you close?" He tells me that he just pulled out of his job, that he'll get there soon,

and then I should just stay on the line with him. The last thing that he asked me is, is that woman gone yet? No, no, she wasn't gone. In fact, she was standing a mere six feet away, watching me, and she looked annoyed now. I told him in code that, no, she's still there, leaning on the car, just watching me. She's looking angrier and angrier with each passing second. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the man tell her something, and that's when she begins to interrogate me. Your friend's not here,

"Do you need that ride? Where's your friend? He probably forgot about you. That's okay, we'll give you a ride. It's cold, you should just get in. Tell us where you live, we can drop you off." At this point, she begins to inch closer to me. I try my best to avoid her by moving to the farther end of the plaza strip. "Honey, yeah, so about my sister. Well, she's gotten closer, but I'm pretty scared she's too far away from home. Something might happen."

"Hurry!" So I can tell you. That's the code that I relay to my boyfriend as this woman's car drives up. Now she looks pissed. "Get in the car now! We'll give you a ride." At this point she opens the car door and begins trying to get me inside, pulling me, yanking on my jacket. She's a taller and bigger woman so at this point she tries to pick me up. My bowels threaten to release and I'm screaming, kicking and wiggling.

Meanwhile, I can hear my boyfriend yelling at me that he's coming and that he's calling the police. Now my mind is running a thousand miles an hour and I'm panicking, thinking I'm going to be assaulted or be some weird present for this woman's husband since he looks rather content with her effort to kidnap me. Get in and shut up. You need a ride. Be quiet. You want to see our house? Very nice. I start crying as she manages to get my torso in the car.

My right hand is locked on my phone and she begins trying to take it from me. I can hear my boyfriend's panic through the phone telling me that the police are sending an officer. This woman shoves my face into her leather seat. Now my airway is obstructed and she's not letting me go. Like I said, she's bigger than me, stronger than me, and she knows it. Her entire weight is right on top of me. I try not to panic so I don't black out from lack of oxygen and all of a sudden, I start getting mad as sh*t.

Her husband says something in Punjabi as she lifts one hand up and leans down trying to get something from the front seat. I immediately take this opportunity to push myself off the seat and jab her in her stomach with my elbow. She recoils, letting go of me just a little bit and I use this chance to headbutt her, tossing my big melon back as I scream, fear-stricken and adrenaline-hazed. "That's my purse! I don't know you!"

Finally, my boyfriend pulls into the lot, able to see the last efforts of me trying to free myself from this woman. I leave her in a heap on the ground, obviously nursing her now busted nose. I bolt to his car, slam the door as I throw myself into the front seat, and he speeds off towards his house. Once we get there, I break down, babbling about how scared and terrifying this entire experience was. How, if I hadn't seized that opportunity, she might have gotten me in that car.

only to do God knows what. After this incident, the police officer that had been dispatched got to the parking lot about 20 minutes after and of course, didn't find a single person. Although he did report finding a pool of blood where this encounter began. My boyfriend ultimately talked to his boss and was granted the ability to leave early on my behalf. I'm still weirded out by cars stalling in the plaza. I also don't know whether to be upset or proud of myself that my war cry

was a line from King of the Hill. While I don't anticipate running into this Indian couple ever again, for anybody out there that might, if a woman with an Indian accent and a clearly disfigured nose ever approaches you and asks you if you'd like a ride, don't get in the car. Hi, my name is Tom, and I live in the sunny state of Arizona, a place that I've called home for pretty much my entire life. I wanted to share a story, a story that happened to me that nearly screwed up my life forever.

When I was 21 years old, I broke up with my first ever serious girlfriend, who I had been together with for 8 months. Needless to say, I was devastated by this. I fell into a deep depression and I began abusing painkillers and Xanax really, really heavily. I also began looking for any chick that I could find to rebound with. At that point, I ended up looking on the personal section of Craigslist and I found an ad for a girl named Stephanie. I began talking to her.

And one night, I arranged for her to come pick me up and hook up. That night, we had fun and we mutually decided to make it a regular thing. She was a bit older than me. I'd say 35. She was a bigger girl, but she had her own apartment and enough money to keep me loaded on as many drugs and as much alcohol as I wanted. To be honest, I sort of used this lady as a sugar mama, for lack of a better term. After a while, she grew really, really attached to me.

and started to want more of a serious style relationship. Eventually, she started dropping hints about wanting to get married. She said she wanted to do this to help me out so that she could get me onto her insurance and get me help for my drug and alcohol problem, which I promptly refused to consider. One day, we got into a big argument and she told the police that I had been abusing her and she filed a temporary restraining order on me. A week after she did this, she called my phone crying her eyes out saying to please forgive her

that she loved me and all this other stuff. She said that she wanted to come pick me up, get me some dope, some alcohol, and pick me up something to eat. Of course, being the addict that I am, I accepted. From the moment that she picked me up, I noticed that she was acting kind of odd. This woman was usually really talkative and was always on my ass, wanting to talk to me about this and about that. But this particular day, she was oddly quiet. When we got back to her apartment, the moment after I walked in,

She pushed me onto the couch, pulled my pants down, and began to have her way with me before she climbed on top of me, began riding me, and ultimately getting incredibly angry when I didn't finish the way that she wanted me to. I had been getting bad vibes from her the entire time that we were together that night, so after all of this happened, I immediately asked her for a ride back home, which she quickly agreed to. After I got dropped off at the house, I went inside and sat down with my younger sister to watch some Spongebob with her.

Well, after about 10 minutes of quiet, I get a call on the phone from a number that I don't recognize. I picked it up, and to my surprise, the lady on the other end of the line said that she was with the county police department and that they were going to need me to come outside to talk to them. I immediately ran downstairs, hid my weed and my pills, and then walked outside to figure out what the hell was going on. The moment that I walked outside, there were seven different cops on my porch, and they were all pointing tasers and guns at me.

One of them hit me in the back of my leg with a nightstick and put me on the ground before handcuffing me. The cops then talked to my mom, got permission to go inside the house where they took a drug dog and began doing a thorough search of my room and the basement area. None of the cops on the scene would tell me what was going on. Whenever I would ask a question about why they were there, they just told me that I'd have to talk to the detective down at the station. Once I got to the police department, I had a bombshell dropped on me.

Apparently, this lady Stephanie had accused me of kidnapping her and SA-ing her. She told the police that she had come by my house to return some of my stuff because we had just recently broken up, and that I had come out, held a knife to her throat, forced my way into her vehicle before taking her back to her apartment and viciously assaulting her repeatedly. Thankfully, I remembered that we had made a few stops on the way back to her apartment. She had gone inside a gas station to get a couple packs of cigarettes with me,

So there was no way that I could have kidnapped her. The police still swabbed my junk for DNA. They also took my clothes for evidence. And I was forced to spend the night in the county jail, wearing nothing but hospital scrubs. I was released the next morning, but my ordeal was far from over. This lady began constantly stalking me. She would call me every night at odd hours from blocked numbers, either crying into the phone or begging me to talk to her.

I also began seeing her vehicle quite a lot in the neighborhood, even though she lives nowhere close to me. I called the police about this a couple of times, but they didn't really seem to care, telling me that I'd have to go get a restraining order on her in order to make this stop. I wanted nothing to do with the court system though, due to my own criminal record. I just decided to ignore her and hope that the problem would go away on its own. After a few months, she did stop bothering me as much. However, even now...

I get calls at 2 or 3 in the morning from blocked numbers randomly. And every new girlfriend that I get, Stephanie messages them on Facebook, being sure to tell them how I had assaulted her. The moral of my story is to be careful who you meet online. Whether you're a guy or a girl, all it takes is one crazy person to completely ruin your life. I just moved into a new house over the weekend, just paid my first month's rent and security deposit. I signed a year lease. The house itself is pretty okay.

considering it was built nearly a hundred years ago. Lots of work to be done on it. Weird layout. Unfinished porch. Okay. Okay. It's actually kind of a shitty house. But I had to take what I could get. When I saw the house posted on Craigslist, I immediately called the number listed and asked if I could view it that day or another day during the week. Right off the bat, the dude gives me a bad vibe. Not exactly creepy yet, but definitely annoying.

We arranged to meet that Saturday so he could show me the inside of the house. He texted me every day leading up to it, multiple times, to quote, "...make sure you're absolutely certain you want to view the house, because I don't want my time wasted. I assure him several times that I literally live five minutes away, and I'll be there on Saturday, no doubt about it. I should mention, I found the house for me and my elderly father, who's in a wheelchair."

When I got to the house Saturday, the landlord was out in the yard waiting with a huge smile on his face. I waved hello and then went around to my passenger side door to help my father out of the car and into his chair. The landlord's face rapidly devolves into a scowl. As we approach him, my dad holds out his hand for a handshake when the landlord looks at me and says, "I thought it was just you." While completely ignoring my father, I awkwardly try to explain that I didn't think to mention it since he didn't ask.

so he goes ahead and shows us the house. It's livable, so we give him the deposit then and there. All seems well. We moved in over the weekend, paid the rent on the subsequent Tuesday. The landlord told me that he would need access to the house today to do some plumbing work. I say, "No worries, but I'll be at work, so I'll leave the key above the door." I typically get off at around 12:30, and I told him as such.

When at around 10, he texted me again wanting me to confirm that I was absolutely not going to be there before 1230 because of a safety hazard. I say yes, I'll be there a bit after 1230. Well, I actually ended up getting off work fairly early this day. I was headed home at around 11 and figured that I'd just pop my head in and tell the landlord I was here, but I would stay outside. Now, remember when I said that the layout of the house was weird?

It's because the front door leads directly into a bedroom. This is my bedroom. There's another door to the left, and that's the living room, which leads into the kitchen and a back room slash bathroom. So I turn the doorknob, and it's unlocked. When I walked in, all I see is my landlord hightailing it out of my room. Through the living room, kitchen, back room, and out the back door. I then see his car race out of my driveway. Absolutely sketched out, I walk back into my bedroom,

only to find my underwear drawer open and the contents strewn about. My nightstand was open too. I don't know what to do at this point because I'm kind of stuck here. It's hard to find housing with my credit and even harder finding a place that is wheelchair accessible for my father. I'm so lost at what I should do that I'm opening this up to all the internet strangers out there. Advice, recommendations, please share it all. Update. I want to start this out by thanking those of you that have reached out to me.

Your support and guidance truly helped at a time where I was absolutely lost. Without going into too much detail, due to the fact that this situation is now pending litigation and potential criminal charges, I will confirm that my landlord was not in my room handling any plumbing. Rather, he was likely planting, adjusting, or collecting surveillance cameras. These trinkets were likely planted just a day before we moved in.

and I happened upon them due to the fact that he fled from my room the way that he did when I had returned home from work. Going on advice that I received here, I picked up a few cameras of my own for documentation purposes and personal safety. We attached these outside of the front door, back door, and the street-facing windows on the property. It didn't take long for me to be glad that we took that step. Within 48 hours of putting them up, the cameras caught something that would have given me a heart attack in a movie.

let alone happening in my own real life. At 2am one night, the camera right outside of the main door caught the landlord showing up to the property, walking right up to my bedroom window and attempting to peer in. It wasn't a momentary glance either. He stood pressed up against the window for a solid 10 minutes, looking about, around, and from multiple angles. Luckily, we weren't home at that time. I don't know what I would have done if I got that motion alert

and someone was a mere inches and a pane of glass from my head. I've since retained a lawyer, turned over my footage, and we now await our next steps. With this footage in hand, my lawyer has pretty much assured me that things will go in my favor. I'm working on getting my father approved for disability, and several kind internet folks in my area have even offered us temporary and permanent housing. I cannot express enough to you guys just how thankful I am for all your help, even the people commenting negative things.

You all helped light a fire under my ass to be proactive. This is likely the only update that you're going to get of this story. Thank you for listening, and thank you even more if you were one of those that helped. The final selection for this episode is a Miss Connection post from the St. Louis, Missouri area dating back to 2018. I don't have much context beyond what's shared within the posting, and while I'm not sure whether this falls strictly in the creepy category, I feel like it was worth sharing. I'll let you be the judge, though.

and be sure to let me know what you think down in the comments below. Male for female St. Louis I'm looking for a woman that I met at our local Schnucks market. I first noticed you walking down the produce aisle. Beautiful blonde hair, light blue cardigan pulled tight, a yellow floral dress cut above the knee. Not asking for attention, but wouldn't shy away from it if presented. I could work with that. You purposely brushed my arm as you reached for a head of lettuce.

I could immediately feel the connection between us, like a spark that had been there for 100,000 years. You responded, "'Oh, pardon me. No need to be coy, dear. I know you just wanted to feel your skin against mine. I could hear the want in your voice. I should have just taken your hints and initiated conversation right then and there, but I decided to play it safe. I looked into your angelic blue eyes and murmured the only thing I could muster, "'No worries.'

and there will never be any worries when we're together. As you pulled away to continue your shopping, you flipped your hair and I caught a smell of lavender. I never knew how much that smell enticed me until this day. It became my favorite smell in the entire world. I paced you through the rest of your shopping trip, far enough not to be noticed, trying to decide if I should capitalize on your advances and introduce myself. But before I could build up the courage, you were in the checkout line. I cut my own shopping short

so I could get in the lane next to you. I just needed to be close to you, not blow my chance that you've set up for me and try to get close enough to smell you once again. The checkout guy was making small talk, being vaguely flirty. I couldn't believe the fucking nerve of this guy. Flirting with you, my love, my life, right in front of me. It took everything I had not to tear his goddamn voice box out right there in aisle 6. But I kept my cool, and the encounter was quickly fleeting. We walked out of the market at the same time,

You acting like you didn't notice me, playing hard to get. So cute. You parked your blue PT Cruiser, three cars down from mine. What a coincidence. Maybe you knew it was my car and wanted me to notice. Maybe it was fate. I followed you the entire 7.8 miles to your neighborhood. You live in a modest little bi-level, the last house on a dead-end road. I simply had to talk to you. I couldn't let this opportunity pass. I built up the nerve to ring the doorbell.

But much to my surprise, a young girl of about 10 answered the door. I knew she had to be yours. She was a spitting image of you. She's going to grow into a beautiful woman someday. I'm certain of this. I ask if her mother's home, and as she turns to go fetch you, I sprint down the street as to not be seen. I chickened out yet again. The idea of you having a daughter has brought up so many questions, love. Are you married? Do you love someone else aside from me that's supposed to be our daughter?

Our house. How could you let some other man be that intimate with you behind my fucking back? The thoughts dissipate as I see you come to the front porch and look around. You act as if you don't see me, but I know you do. The way you hike up your skirt, just an inch, as you climb the stairs, lets me know you know what I want. I couldn't get the nerve to go back to the door, so I return the next morning. As I sit in my car with the sun rising behind me, I see the porch light flip on.

And out you come, to start your car, wearing nothing but a bathrobe. Is this for me? Did you know I was going to be there? An apology for relationships that should have been mine? It was just a few seconds, but seeing what you decided to show me, I couldn't help but relieve myself to you, right there in my car. I'm sure that this is what you wanted. I'm catching on to your little game, so I'm going to add a stipulation of my own. As I'm not sure you read Craigslist, I'll throw out another way of getting into contact with me.

I know the sexual chemistry is there. I know the want is there. If you want me as much as I want you, wear that blue cardigan. I'll take that as my sign, as my green light, and I'll rush you back into your house and do all the things that you've been begging me to do to you through all of your little nuances. The blue cardigan. I'll be watching. XOXO. This all happened when I was about 8 or 9 years old. My parents, little brother and I,

lived in a small house on a pretty busy road. Our landlord and his wife lived next door, and the neighbors on the other side of us were pretty good family friends. We all kind of noticed that our landlord, Ray, had a thing for my mom, although it was something we never really paid too much attention to. This was the same year that my parents got divorced. All three bedrooms in our house were on the main floor with an extra room in the basement. When my dad moved out, my mom moved her room to the basement.

and created a toy room for my brother and myself in the room that was once theirs. On the weekends, my brother and I would sleep in the toy room as there was a TV in there where we would play our video games and watch movies. My dad had maybe been gone a month at this point and my brother and I were having a normal Friday night in our toy room. We were watching a movie when all of a sudden, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed what looked like a bright light grazing our window. I was laying closest to the window

So all I had to do was sit up and I'd be able to see into our backyard. It wasn't a lit up backyard and it backed up to the yard of the people who lived behind us. Being a curious child, I decided to look out the window to see if maybe I could figure out where the light came from. My brother asked me what I was doing before sitting up to join me when no sooner did he get to the window, the light shone right in our eyes. We now knew that it was a flashlight. We were frozen in fear.

and while we sat there paralyzed for what felt like minutes on end, it was likely no more than 10 seconds before we backed up and tried to pretend that what had just happened didn't just happen. The next day, we told our mom what we remembered, and she called our other neighbor, Jerry, and he came over to see if maybe he could investigate. He came right over and told my mom that he had been outside smoking a cigarette at that time and noticed someone lurking around in our yard. He discreetly made his way over to the fence,

and when he saw the flashlight shining into our window, it was then that he could see that it was Ray. Jerry chased Ray off and waited to make sure that he wasn't coming back. This is something that we were all shaken by, but decided not to address it until something further happened. Some time went by and nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but unfortunately, it didn't stop there. One day, while my mom was in the shower, I was in my toy room playing with my brother.

I had to use the bathroom, so I decided to use the one in the basement, when as soon as I walked out of my room, I saw Ray standing outside of the main bathroom door, as if he was just waiting for my mom. We locked eyes in the hallway. I froze and stared at him. He just smiled this creepy smile at me, before saying, I just came to ask your mom a question, but I'll just wait until later, before walking back down the hallway and leaving our house. Now this kind of thing continued for about a month.

We would come home from school, and Ray would be sitting on our porch. He'd walk into our house at random times during the day, often without even knocking. He'd use his key, since our door was pretty much always locked, you know, not inviting someone to come in. One night, I even caught him peering through our big bay window into our living room. Apparently, we weren't the only ones that noticed. My mom said that when she would go to the store, or go out to eat, or head to the mall,

that Ray would mysteriously be there. She had had enough at that point, and decided that now was the time to move. She broke the lease and discreetly moved to a quiet, family-oriented neighborhood, one with lots of other children. We thought we were safe there when, a couple of months after moving and living in peace, we were all outside in the front yard one day, talking and playing with neighbors, when a familiar gray van slowly drove past our house. We all recognized it. It was Ray's.

He must have followed us at some point to figure out our new location. He would drive by every day, sometimes, even multiple times. My mom finally called the police. I'm not sure what they did about it, but all of this stopped shortly after that, and we never saw Ray again. As far as the flashlight incident goes, I firmly believe that he knew that the toy room was once my parents' room, although he was unaware that my mom had relocated to the basement. He was undoubtedly looking for her,

And with the bathroom incident, who knows what would have happened if I hadn't come out of my room when I did, or if my brother and I hadn't been in the house at all.

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When I was in my early 20s and living in Chicago, I wasn't making much money. When I found this apartment, it felt like it was too good to be true. The top floor of a duplex with six rooms for $775 a month. The agent who showed me the apartment stressed to me that the landlords were a very religious couple. I didn't have a problem with that, even if the agent made it sound a little ominous. The landlords were an elderly couple that lived downstairs.

They seemed okay at first. When I saw them in the yard, they would smile at me. I did my best to take good care of the house. Then when they saw I was having my boyfriend over, things started to get really weird. One day, I was in my office writing. That's when I hear a knock at the door. I open it, and it's the old lady from downstairs. Before I can even say hello, she says, "Have you ever gotten an abortion?" I shut the door in her face immediately. "No thanks." Although, I'd only learn later.

that this was a colossal mistake. The house was laid out kind of weird. There was a door at the bottom of a flight of stairs that I thought led to a communal laundry room, but after accidentally opening it, I discovered it led directly into my landlord's living room. I unfortunately learned this the hard way. I was in my kitchen cooking, my boyfriend was at work, and I was by myself when I heard what sounded like the click of a door. "Okay?" I say out loud. What the fuck was that? I didn't really make the connection,

that it could have been the door that led into their living room. I walk into the hallway and look around. I don't see anyone at the end of the hallway. I poke my head into all the rooms. Nobody there. Then I look down the staircase leading to their house and the neighbor lady is standing right there just staring me down. I instinctively screamed. She flinched at the sound, stepping back into her apartment and swinging the door shut. After that,

Every time I left the house, and keep in mind, I spent every possible moment out of the house after that incident, I would come back and something would have been moved in my apartment. A window would be shut. Once, the shower was dripping and my towel was damp. I couldn't lock the door because, since it was technically a door to their house, they were the only ones with the key. The knocking at my door got so frequent, maybe three or four times a day, that I couldn't

that me and my boyfriend propped up an old mattress so that we wouldn't have to hear it while we slept. The second to last straw was when I opened the door for work and the stairs were gone. I physically couldn't leave my house because there were no stairs. They had been dismantled and were sitting on the porch. I called the landlords repeatedly, but they didn't answer once. Finally, their son came out of the house and explained that they were doing some remodeling of the porch.

He told me I had to cut through their apartment downstairs if I wanted to leave. I descended the stairs and opened the door, only to find the old couple both sitting there at their filthy kitchen table, just staring blankly at me. The house phone was in its cradle. They must have heard it ring, but they just kept staring at me with this absent look on their face. I crossed their kitchen and left out their back door, returning their stare as I did.

A few days later, I came home from my job and noticed that the bathroom floor was almost completely flooded, as if someone left a faucet on or even the shower on. The old woman, seeing that I had come home, immediately came upstairs and knocked, screaming at me that I had flooded the bathroom and that her son had to come fix it. I was so run down at this point that I just told her it was fine. Her son comes by a few hours later, absolutely sh*t-faced,

I open the door and tell him that I need an hour or so before he comes in, and that's when he picks something up and swings it directly at me. It was a massive wrench. I somehow duck out of the way and he stumbles over, likely because he's drunk. I book it down the newly repaired stairs as quickly as possible and call the police from the safety of down the block. They come by and take down a complaint, but claim that since there was no physical contact, that they couldn't do anything. I learn later that the old couple...

has a daughter on the force. In the middle of the night, me, my boyfriend, and several of his friends packed up all of our stuff into a Chevy Astro. We lived in hotels in the van for a month until we found another house. I'm guessing that that's what it took for that old couple to take the hint, seeing as, after we left, they never attempted to reach out to us ever again. I knew it from the moment that he opened the door. I saw it in his eyes plain as day.

He was considerate and polite, but I saw a sort of mechanical touch to it. One part as if he was used to this. One part as if he was really trying hard to hide his true self and to be sociable. His mouth told me one thing, but I was interested in what his eyes told me. And they told me that he was lying. Then I saw it in the way his house smelled, foul and musty, like a window hadn't been opened in a long time. I could sense more than a hint of mold.

There was a carefully arranged stack of papers right by the entryway, but everything else was in shambles. I just told myself that nobody had done a proper cleaning in a very long time, and I was right. There were spiders in some corners of the residence, but others were completely tidy, something that I found strange. The room that I rented in the house was no bigger than a cupboard, but I had to take it. I was new to the country, staying at a local inn and trying to find a place to rent.

This was the only place available on such short notice, so I took my chances. I like to think that I'm a fairly good judge of character, so I knew within the first few minutes that this guy had issues. But I also knew that he was intelligent. I could see it. His eyes were sparking, and in most people who have a spark in their eyes, it's either one of intelligence or madness. The fact that he was shifting between the two absolutely sent shivers down my spine.

The first day, he told me that he had to attend a conference in another country, so he'd be gone for about two weeks. Apparently, there was another tenant, a lady in her 50s, and she wasn't around very much. Great, I thought. I can have the house pretty much to myself, get the chance to have my girlfriend over without anybody bothering us, and also be able to settle in and explore the surroundings. Just what I liked. Peace and quiet. That morning brought on the first major red flag.

He asked me to read the water, electricity, and gas meters every night, and to write the numbers on a piece of paper, because apparently, he liked to keep an eye on things. I said fine, the guy is into this, I don't care. Perhaps, it was my mistake that I dismissed it so easily. Well into these first two weeks, the other lady finally came around, Cindy. She was rather lovely, she just radiated an optimistic and positive aura.

and I liked chatting with her and exchanging a few pleasantries whenever we passed. She raised the second red flag for me when she told me that our landlord told her that she couldn't ever take a bath, only showers. The two weeks that he was gone came and went. It was the beginning of October, but the weather was already quite chilly. As soon as he returned, he began asking me whether I had turned the heating on. I told him that I did, because I was cold. No, no, no. We don't do that. We can't turn the heating on now.

What will we do when it's truly cold? I get that, but my room is the coldest in the house, and I'm actually freezing. Well, you can't expect to live in a sauna. I don't want to live in a sauna. I just want to feel warm. I wake up with a chill running through my bones every morning. Well, there are other ways of getting warm, and you can't expect to be warm when you're sleeping naked. Okay, hold up. How did he know how I slept? At this point, it was clear to me that I underestimated the craziness of this man.

so there was no point in continuing. Instead, I asked him for a thermometer to see how cold it really was in my room. Turns out, it was between 15 and 16 degrees Celsius. For my friends in the States, that's roughly 60 degrees Fahrenheit, and that was at the beginning or maybe the middle of October. After I showed him the thermometer, he finally caved in and gave me a shitty heater, but I was glad because I was finally able to keep warm again.

Although, I was told to only turn it on between 6pm and midnight. By this point, I realized this little shit was nothing more than a money-grabbing tick who'd eat his own feces if it brought him money. But something told me that there was more. I knew that there was more by the way that he told me how to do things differently, just the way that he wanted them to be done. If I washed a dish one way, it wasn't good. I had to follow his precise instructions.

I couldn't dry a pair of jeans and a t-shirt I need for work on the heater in the living room because it created humidity. I couldn't just throw things away that I wanted. I had to do them in a very particular manner. Some of the stuff that he demanded, I just chalked up to OCD. Some to the fact that he was just a major freaking weirdo. I tried doing what he said. I tried reasoning with him, begging, pleading, even arguing, but nothing worked. These kind of situations just persisted.

The more that he tried to put effort and passion into making his arguments for everything he did, and explaining everything like he was delivering the greatest speech in the history of mankind, the less I cared about everything he said. That's what got to him. And that's when things took a turn for the worse. I started noticing things being moved in my room. Small stuff. Not easily noticeable, but I noticed them. He then became increasingly distant, to the point that we barely spoke.

You could cut the tension with a knife when we were in a room together. Cindy eventually moved out. She said that she was tired of this guy's shit, and she found a better looking and cheaper place. I was happy for her, and she gave me a halogen heater to use. Just like that. Really sweet of her. And that heater helped me a lot in the colder months. After Cindy came Patricia, a really nice girl from Canada. She didn't know of his behavior yet. It didn't take long for her to learn though.

Like I said, I only got to use the heater between 6 and midnight only. I did this, sometimes cheating a bit, just to warm myself up in the morning. But he would watch my door like a hawk and wait for midnight to strike before knocking and telling me to turn the heater off. Other times, he would just barge in like it was nothing, apparently content to use a lame excuse like asking if I wanted some lights for my bike because he planned on ordering some. That's when I noticed another major red flag.

the webcam in the dining room. I like studying my environments, so I noticed a thing that wasn't supposed to be there, up on the wall. It looked as if it had been painted in order to blend in with the rest of the wall, but I knew it had no business being there and it stood out like a sore thumb. It's at that point that I decided that I needed to find another place soon. So we continued our dance of not really saying much to the other. I tried diffusing the tension by being happy

optimistic, and just good natured towards him. I tried talking about the stuff that he liked, tried making conversation, but nothing seemed to work. The final major red flag dropped tonight. I got home from work, a pretty beat. I had dinner, cracked open a beer, and then moved to my bed with my laptop to chat with my girlfriend and read it around. That's when I heard sounds coming from downstairs. The guy had come home, apparently completely smashed, and started throwing things, breaking things,

slamming doors, cursing, all because the heater was on. He started saying things along the lines of showing no f***ing respect and are you hot now? Even though everything I did was trying to go by his absurd and obsessive rules. That's when the shouting and swearing continued and I genuinely began to be afraid of what this guy could do. I know by now he's capable of just about anything. He tried provoking me by knocking on my door and yelling.

"Are you heating yourself up now?" I didn't respond though, even though I'm a good foot taller and probably twice his weight. I'm in a new country where my people are not truly viewed very kindly, so in this situation, I think I would rather be the victim than the aggressor. But I eventually did call the police. They came by and told me that they wouldn't be able to do much, but strongly advised me to move out and find someplace else to live. That seemed to quiet him down, and I think he's sleeping now.

But I'm still a bit on edge, because I don't know what he's capable of. Now I'm faced with a dilemma. I want to move out tomorrow if possible, but I'm afraid he won't give me my deposit back if I do. I also have to work from 2pm on, and I'm afraid to leave my stuff here because he might do something to it. Break it. Set it on fire. Dealer's choice. I'm expecting just about everything from this guy. I don't know exactly how to proceed, and in all honesty...

I just want to be as far away from this guy as possible. I spoke to him this morning. He was surprised that I called the police, and he denied being drunk. He also denied saying anything to me and accused me of making stuff up, saying, you don't even know if you're crazy or not. But all the while, he was trembling and being erratic. He did, however, say that I'd get my deposit back when I moved out. I don't know whether or not to trust this, but I'm moving out tomorrow anyway. I haven't figured out where I'm going just yet, but I know deep down,

Any place is better than this.