Solved Murders - True Crime Stories - Terrifying True Encounters Stalkers, Strangers, and the Nightmares They Left Behind PART1 #69

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

#horrorstories #reddithorrorstories #ScaryStories #creepypasta #horrortales #stalkerstories #truehorrorstories #creepystrangers #nightmarefuel #realfear  “Terrifying True Encounters: Stalkers, Strangers, and the Nightmares They Left Behind PART 1” reveals chilling real-life stories of people who faced the terror of being followed, watched, or confronted by unknown figures. From unsettling run-ins with strangers to disturbing stalker encounters, these accounts capture the fear that lingers long after the moment has passed. They are haunting reminders that the scariest monsters often wear human faces.  horrorstories, reddithorrorstories, scarystories, horrorstory, creepypasta, horrortales, stalkerstories, creepyencounters, truehorrorstories, realfear, nightterror, unsettlingstories, chillingtales, strangerdanger, realnightmares, survivalhorror, scaryexperiences, darkstories, nightmarefuel, terrifyingmoments

You know how some stories stick with you like gum on your shoe. The kind that, no matter how many times you try to scrape them off, they just keep clinging. My mom's got one of those stories, and honestly, every time she tells it, I get goosebumps so bad it feels like my skin's trying to crawl away. This one happened back in the mid-1980s, when we were living in Australia. Back then, she worked as a cleaner, houses mostly, sometimes businesses, driving around suburban neighborhoods and even way out into the wine country type areas. We lived close to both, so she took whatever jobs came her way. She wasn't big on advertising, just left stacks of

little business cards at the local shops, supermarket notice boards, post offices, newsagents, and most of her clients came through word of mouth. Someone would tell their neighbor, oh, you should get her, she's good and she's honest, and boom, mom would be booked for the week. One day she gets a phone call from this woman. From the sound of her voice, Mom guessed she was maybe 60-ish. She spoke slowly, in this kind of drawn-out way, but her tone was, well, let's just say, particular. She wanted Mom to clean her old farmhouse. Fair enough, except the woman started listing these weirdly specific demands.

The kind of demands that make you pause and think, hmm, is this about cleaning or about something entirely. Normally, Mom liked to meet new clients first, just to suss them out, see what kind of job she was in for, but this woman said she didn't want to meet in person. Instead, she told Mom she'd leave the house key under the front door mat. That alone should have been a red flag, but this lady was offering to pay a lot more than the usual rate. Like, a lot. Enough for Mom to shrug off the weirdness and say yes. After all, she figured, wealth people can be a little eccentric. So Monday morning rolls around. Mons driving up this ridiculously long dirt driveway, passing acres of empty paddocks. No animals, no trees close to the road,

just big open nothingness. She said the house itself sat smack in the middle of the property like it had been dropped there from the sky, no neighbors in sight. The kind of place that would make you think twice about what you do if something went wrong, because there's no one around to hear you scream. She finds the key under the mat like the woman promised, unlocks the door, and gets to work. An hour in, she's in the kitchen scrubbing the sink when she hears it, the unmistakable sound of the back door clicking shut. Her blood runs cold instantly. The woman told her no one else would be at the house. Mom froze, sponge still in her hand, just standing there and listening. The silence after that door shut was deafening. She swears she says, she says,

stood there for at least three or four minutes, heart pounding so hard she could hear it in her ears. There was no car outside, no sign of life apart from her. She wanted to drop everything in bolt, but she only had two rooms left to clean, both bedrooms, and for some reason, she convinced herself it was nothing. Maybe a draft slammed the door, maybe something fell. So she forces herself down the hall and steps into the first bedroom. and that's when her stomach drops. The bed isn't made.

Instead, the entire mattress is covered in scattered black and white photographs. Dozens of them. At first she thinks maybe their family photos. But when she gets closer, her knees nearly give out, every single picture is of her. Some are taken at our family home, some in the yards of houses she'd cleaned for other people. A few are through windows, others over fences. None of them were taken with her knowing. These weren't happy snaps, these were the kind of photos where you can feel the intrusion in your bones.

That's when she grabbed the house phone, this was before mobile phones, and called the police. She didn't wait for them to arrive, she got in her car and drove straight to the end of that long driveway, ready to speed away at the first sign of trouble. The police came, poked around, and eventually spoke with the woman who'd hired mom. She claimed it was a break-in, said she had no idea about the photos. But Mom didn't buy it for a second. And neither did I. Eventually, the investigation fizzled out.

No arrests, no closure. We ended up moving to a different town, but Mom's never shaken the feeling that the woman was involved. And the question that's haunted her ever since is why. Fast forward to a completely different nightmare, one that has had to have. happened not to my mom, but to me. I was 22 at the time, living in my very first apartment. I'd been there maybe a few weeks and was still figuring out how to make the place feel like mine. It was one of those apartments where the door locks automatically as soon as it shuts, which usually made me feel safer. One evening, I was chatting on the phone with my boyfriend

as I walked down to the mailbox at the front of the complex. The summer air was warm, the sun still hovering just above the horizon. I got my mail, headed back, kicked off my shoes, and flopped onto the bed. I was half paying attention to the conversation, half flipping through bills and junk mail, when I dropped my phone. It bounced once, rolled, and disappeared under the bed. I leaned over, stretched my arm out, and that's when I saw him. A man, lying completely still under my bed. His back was toward me, his knees drawn up slightly, head tucked down so I couldn't see his face. My brain short-circuited. I didn't scream, though I wanted to, my throat locked up on its own.

He hadn't seen me. In the split second that followed, I made a choice. Keeping my voice calm, I told my boyfriend, sorry, I dropped my phone. I'm just going to take a quick shower and call you back. Then I stood, walked, did not run, into the bathroom, and quietly locked the door. My apartment was on the ground floor, and the bathroom had a small window. I turned on the shower to mask the sound, slid the window open, and climbed out. Once I was outside, I sprinted across the courtyard, phone in hand, and called the police.

They told me to wait across the street and keep an eye on the building. My boyfriend rushed over, arriving just before the patrol car. The officers took my keys, went in, and within moments they were leading out a gaunt, wild-eyed man. Here's the part that still messes me up, one of the cops told me they'd found him standing right outside my locked bathroom door, holding one of my kitchen knives. If I had screamed, or if I'd walked out thinking he was gone, I probably wouldn't be here to tell this. turned out he was homeless and had managed to slip inside while I was getting the mail.

They sent him to a mental health facility, but I never found out what happened after that. My boyfriend moved in the very next day. The third story is about Amanda, my brother's girlfriend at the time. She was looking for her first place too, but she didn't want to move in with my brother just yet since they'd only been dating a few months. She decided to find a roommate through Craigslist. She came across a listing titled roommate wanted, females only. That wasn't unusual, lots of young professional women preferred that arrangement.

The ad offered a room for $225 a month, cheap enough to raise eyebrows, but not so cheap it screamed scam. The current occupant described herself as a 23-year-old student and said she wasn't comfortable living with men. Amanda emailed, and within half an hour, she got a reply inviting her to say, see the place that evening around eight. The roommate supposedly worked late and wouldn't be there, but the landlord could show her around. When Amanda arrived, there was a note on the front door, door broken, use back door. The yard was overgrown, windows dusty, but she didn't think much of it. She knocked on the back door, and an older man, maybe in his 40s, unshaven, opened it. He said he was the landlord and that the girl was still at work.

Inside, the place was dimly lit, with only the kitchen light on. And here's the weird part, there was no furniture. None. The landlord hurried her through the rooms, not letting her linger, refusing to open one locked door, claiming it was the tenant's room and he didn't want to invade her privacy. Then he said, Oh, I forgot to show you the basement. It's been renovated, makes a great wreck room. You should take a look.

The basement door was right in the narrow hall between the living room and kitchen. When he opened it, it swung outward, blocking her access to the back door. The space below was pitch black. He smiled, gestured down the stairs, and said, ladies first. That's when fate intervened, Amanda's phone buzzed with a text. She seized the moment, pretending it was a call. Loud enough for him to hear, she said, Hey, yeah, are you here? I'll come around back to let you in.

Then she stepped past him, out the back door, and once outside, bolted to her car. Later, police told her the house had been foreclosed months earlier and abandoned. The locked tenant's room was where he'd been squatting, surrounded by trash, rotten food, and walls plastered with ripped up porn magazine pages. In the basement, they found a tripwire strung across the stairs at shin height, a pile of blankets, a broom handle wrapped in leather belts and a box of assorted tapes. Needless to say, she did not rent that place. The last story starts with me taking one of my usual late-night walks in the city about five years ago.

I'd done this for years, one or two a.m., quiet streets, headphones in, just me and my thoughts. Never had a single problem. Until that night. I was cutting through a side street near a police-patrolled park when I saw him at the far. A tall, lanky man in an old suit, dancing. Not like normal dancing, more like a waltz with a strange forward lunge at the end of each step. Dance walking. Heading straight for me.

I figured he was drunk and stepped aside to give him room. But as he got closer, I saw his face, eyes wide and glassy, head tilted back slightly, mouth stretched into an unnaturally wide grin. That's when I decided to cross the street. I didn't want to pass him. But when I reached the other side and glanced back, he had stopped dancing. He was standing perfectly still, one foot in the street, body facing me, head still tilted back, smiling up at the sky.

I kept walking, trying to act normal, but every nerve in my body was screaming. After half a block, I risked another look. And that's when I saw, to be continued.