The Lets Read Podcast - 79: Episode 070 | Stalkers & Sinister Trap Stories | 22 True Scary Horror Stories
Episode Date: September 8, 2020Welcome to the seventieth episode of The Lets Read Podcast! This podcast includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying ...stories about Creepy Vans, Saving Girls & Scary Train Rides... HAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT?► www.Reddit.com/r/LetsReadOfficial FOLLOW ME ON - ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/ ► Twitter - https://twitter.com/LetsReadCreepy ►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial ♫ Background Music: Iron Cthulhu Apocalypse https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFvrqVSJE8E PATREON for EARLY ACCESS!►http://patreon.com/LetsRead Update Description
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Tread Experts.ca ever since i can remember i have always been afraid of white utility vans with blocked out
back windows.
In 6th grade I used to pick up my sister, who was in 1st grade, from school and then walk to the restaurant our mom worked at to hang out for a while and eat dinner while she was on shift.
One day as we were walking out of our apartment complex and approached the gate,
one of those creepy vans pulled up and blocked off the gate.
He was not trying to exit, he was purposely
blocking our path. We slowed down and then the driver hopped out of the car, walked around to
the passenger side, opened his back door and started coming towards us. I immediately freaked
out, grabbed my sister's hand and yelled run. We ran back to our apartment as the guy got back
into his car and followed us. I locked us in the apartment and my sister and I hid in our room and stayed really quiet.
There was a knock at the door and we both started crying.
I called my mom but since she was working she didn't answer right away.
Then I got the guts to look out the window in the living room and sure enough the white van was parked outside.
Later on I spoke to my mom and she didn't really
believe me. When she got home, there was a piece of paper stuck in the door. No writing or anything.
It was just so strange. As a background, I grew up in the suburbs of Sacramento, California, in an area that
was very middle class and a place where it always felt safe.
As a kid, I would walk home from school with the neighbors.
We would play hide and go seek, basketball on the streets, etc. and we never had any
strange encounters.
I am currently a 30 year old male and it is weird to think about this story. During the weekends when I was a teenager,
I would ride my bike for hours at a time and ride around a 10 block radius from where my house was.
In Sacramento, we typically had good weather in the spring and a lot of the days were mild
temperature with a decent amount of clear skies and sunlight. I'm a pretty introverted individual and also pretty naive the things around me.
I vividly remember one time when I was 13 years old and riding my bike in the neighborhood.
I had a speedometer on my bike and I always traveled around 12 to 16 miles per hour in the
right hand side bike lane of the street. While I was cruising on my bike,
a windowless white van pulled up next to me on my left and matched my speed. I remember glancing
over and thinking nothing of this since it is a neighborhood street and it would be weird if a van
blazed by me at 35 miles per hour. Within a few seconds of the van matching my speed, the right side door slid open and there were two guys in the back and one guy driving.
I look over and the van got uncomfortably close to me and one of the guys said quite loudly,
Get in the van!
I didn't reply but started pedaling faster and reached about 18 miles per hour, which I know isn't very fast compared to a van and isn't going
to get away from the van, but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. The van accelerated
to match my speed and I looked over at them. The van was weird on the inside. I remember seeing no
seats in the back. The two guys were not seat belted in. I remember seeing the metal flooring of the van and some rope. The guy beckoned,
maybe in more of an insisting tone, to get inside his van. He reached out, since I was within arm's
distance. At this time we were traveling straight, but literally just as he was reaching out,
the road we were on intersected with another street that I instinctively turned a hard right
onto.
They were forced to keep going straight otherwise they would have flipped the van to follow me.
I knew the area well and started weaving in between the residential streets that consisted of lots of curved roads that looped and resembled a maze. In hindsight it was scary to be in that
area because they could have easily found me as I couldn't have seen them coming up on me because of the curved roads, but luckily they didn't make another pass.
Nowadays I look back and wonder what they had intended to do.
Were they just goofing around?
Were the ropes just for belaying and rock climbing or did they actually have a malicious intent?
Did they ever do anything to anyone else who couldn't get away?
These questions still linger with me.
I went home and never told anyone about it.
To this day, only two people know about this, and now you. I'm from a country in Europe where crime is generally really, really rare.
You can imagine that people aren't that afraid to walk around alone.
However, I rarely go out by myself at night just because I'm from a small town and the surrounding woods creep me out.
When with friends, however, I do enjoy the night strolls.
So last week, me and my best friend went out on our usual walk. We know the roads really well. We walk the same path every
time and together we have a lot of fun so we never think about scary things that could happen.
The first three-fourths of our path is well lit by street lamps and there are houses around. Not a
lot of them but they are there. Then we
arrive at the tunnel from where on there are no lights and the asphalt roads turn into a rocky
pebble one. We come there and spot a white van standing in front of the tunnel to the side of
a ditch that runs there. It's not turned on and we are really creeped out by it but we just joke
about how someone's going to follow us.
When we pass by I mention that I think I see a silhouette of someone inside but
my friend gets angry at me for scaring her. After we cross the tunnel the path turns left and you
have to walk uphill. It's not a long or hard walk before you come on top of that hill and have to
go down again. From that point on you are surrounded by woods on one
side with an open hops field on the other. It's really dark but we continue having a fun conversation
for about five minutes or so before the light starts shining from behind us. It's not weird
for cars to pass there as a lot of farms are like a mile or two ahead so we move to the side and
continue walking slow to let the car pass by.
However we look back again and realize it's not a car but actually the white van from before.
We kind of freak out but hope it's going to pass. It doesn't. We keep walking slowly for another 50
to 100 meters and the van is slowly traveling behind us. When we speed up, we hear it rev up as well
and when we slow down, so does the vehicle. I bum my friend in the shoulder, look her straight in
the eyes and say, run. The field to the left. Now. We both make a run for it as fast and far away as
we can. We almost trip on the piles of soil because there's a lot of them in the hops fields.
We finally jump down and hide behind one of the bumps on the ground and just wait. The van stops,
turns on the strong headlights and two men exit. They have hoods on and they're each holding
flashlights shining in our direction, scanning the field. I think a minute or two pass by before
they enter the van,
turn it around on the spot and drive back from the direction we came.
We've never been so freaked out and we just ran home through the field. The houses start again
right by the end of it so we felt safe when we got there. I don't know who the people were
and I've never been followed like this before. I think we'll stay off that path
for quite some time from now on.
Last summer at approximately 3am I was returning home to my apartment in the sleeping district of
Vilnius, Lithuania.
Vilnius is a compact, neat town of about half a million people, and whatever nightlife there is,
it happens only in the central district called the Old Town. Large suburbs full of Soviet concrete blocks can seem abandoned at night. My home is within a walking distance from the center, so
for me it is completely normal to return home on foot, even at night.
So I was walking down the completely empty street enjoying fresh night time air, only occasionally I could see a car, almost always a taxi, and it was dead silence around.
Then this white van appeared.
I saw it quite far away, cruising at a slow speed in the first lane as if observing something.
Then it steered into smaller lateral streets and stopped between two large blocks of flats some 50 meters from me.
The van itself is old, beaten up and rusty.
Similar ones are often used by small construction and relocation companies, only this one had no markings on it.
The first door opened and out came a man in his
40s or 50s wearing non-specific clothes, jeans and some dark jacket. For several seconds he looked
around cautiously but I was too far away and in a non-illuminated area so he either didn't notice
or paid no attention to me. He ran around the van and stopped in front of a large old metal box
that was fixed to the wall of a house nearby. You can see those boxes near all Soviet area buildings
and I assume they contain distribution boards or some other electric equipment. As far as I know,
those boxes are always locked. The van was blocking the box so that you couldn't see it
from the street but I was at a lucky angle and able to observe what happened. For a second or two the man fiddled with the lock, opened the door and
took something out. Then he locked it and hastily ran back into the van, closing the rear door as
the van was already moving. It slowly picked up speed and drove away. At this moment I remembered
that it's not the first time I've seen this van.
I actually saw it a lot at night, slowly driving around sleeping districts of Vilnius.
I never paid attention to it but still remembered it because there are very few cars at night.
Strange I thought. I told this story to several buddies and we had a good laugh making up stories about secret drug distribution networks, spy messages and stuff.
I almost forgot it until last week. It was around 9.30pm. I was walking along the street separating
the old town from the new town right by the store belonging to large supermarket chains.
There was a metal box on the wall. It was open and a middle-aged man in builder uniform
belonging to some construction company
was squatting near it. When I noticed him, his hands were elbow deep in the box. A woman of
similar age wearing a uniform of the supermarket chain was standing nearby looking at the man.
There were a lot of people in the street but at the time I was the only one within listening
distance of the two. Probably they were talking
before I came near and I could overhear the last words of the conversation.
So, they are coming to take it every night? said the man.
Aga, the woman answered, it was Russian for, uh-huh. The question was in Lithuanian, but
since Vilnius has large Russian minority, bilingual conversations are somewhat commonplace.
The man closed the box and locked it with a small cheap looking lock.
Then they noticed me.
The woman glanced at me rather angrily, turned around and disappeared between the doors of the store.
The man walked away in the other direction.
There was no goodbye.
It looked as if though I disturbed them and they did not want to be seen here.
I honestly don't know what it's all about, but I had several ideas.
The most realistic one is that there is some low-level illegal stuff going on,
such as people paying local criminals for protection
by leaving money inside specific electricity distribution boards
while thugs come
and pick it up at night. But I clearly remember Builderman saying every night, which seems strange,
maybe people are stealing something, money, goods, from their own workplaces and metal boxes and
shady vans or some underground distribution and exchange network. I don't know, but any ideas would be helpful.
In 2013, I was 21 years old and studying abroad in South America with my college roommate.
I had more than one unsettling encounter while down there,
but I'm an experienced traveler and generally have good instincts,
so I can't say I have any other thrilling stories aside from narrowly dodging a few muggings.
Other than the general sense of unease that can come with being a solo female traveler,
well, pair of solo female travelers,
our four-month stay was relatively unexciting.
Relatively. At the end of our program, we decided to stay for some extra time and do some more
casual backpacking. We ended up deciding to hike the Inca Trail. Amazing for anyone considering it.
For the unfamiliar, you start in one location, which varies depending on the trek you choose, then you end in a small town near Machu Picchu called Aguas Calientes.
Your return trip is covered by your hiking company, unless you choose to stay, in which case you get a refund.
Well, we were new in town and our company left immediately after lunch, and we wanted to spend the night and get the most out of being in that part of the country. The time came and we
said farewell to 11 of our 12 hiking companions and were joined by one other of our new friends
who was planning on starting an additional hike in the morning. Our guides gave us our refund and
gave us very careful instructions on how to get back to Cusco, the city we had originally departed
from. When you're ready to leave, make your way to the train station right there.
Don't go anywhere else. It's a very official and safe train.
Once you get to the last stop, go to the official bus station and it'll bring you back to Cusco.
We understood, thanked them and parted ways.
That night we went out drinking with the remaining member of our hiking party.
He didn't drink because of his grueling hike the next day but we had a blast and felt safer for having a male with us.
Overall we made sure to keep our wits about us and it turns out to be a very fun night without incident.
We make our way back to the hostel, wish him well on his travels and go to bed, ready to explore town the next day before catching the train home.
We have our fun and make
our way to the train station. It's a very nice train, not unlike the ones I take in the US
occasionally, maybe even nicer. It definitely felt very safe. The train pulls into the final station
and we begin trying to locate the bus station. We ask a gentleman who clearly works at the stop
and he points and tells us to walk about a half mile that direction and we shouldn't be able to miss it.
We thank him and continue.
I want to pause here to emphasize all of these conversations and the one that follow are entirely in Spanish.
This isn't important but it's good for you to understand that I was speaking a language I was extremely proficient in but not fluent.
It's not too difficult for
native speakers to talk quickly and avoid being understood. We walk for what actually does not
seem like enough time, less than half a mile for sure, before coming across a bus station.
I'm shocked to say the least. I'm also reminding myself that I come from a much nicer part of the
world and I need to put aside my preconceived notions. It has a sign clearly labeling it the bus station and it says to Cusco
right on the sign. To be clear, it's not a fake sign. It's similar to a sign marking a gas station
from a freeway. Big thick pole and the actual sign was probably 50 feet in the air. It could
not have been a temporary trick, otherwise I would
have been much more suspicious. Aside from that sign though, well, it was something alright.
The buses were all the classic bad news white vans. You know the ones. Again, I check myself,
how many people could possibly travel to Cusco in a day here? It wouldn't make sense to have a giant
20 plus seater bus doing the trek every day. There's a tiny wooden building, presumably an office
underneath the big sign, but we didn't need to go there as there are two gentlemen standing
outside near the vans. We ask them if they are the buses to Cusco, though we can clearly read
on the sign that they are, and the men confirm. We ask how much the tickets cost and when they
plan on departing. They give us the price in say five to ten minutes and then direct us to a van
to sit and wait. We both sit down and I'll admit I was uneasy. Again I'm an experienced traveler and
do know not to expect modern luxuries in the less developed parts of the world and there's nothing
outwardly sinister about this bus stop but it just wasn't what I was expecting even for the area.
My roommate does not seem to be sharing any of my trepidation however. She's a bit more sheltered
and generally trusting so that's fairly in character for her. I'm also an over worrier so
between us we were probably both on the more extreme side of
the appropriate emotion, me silently freaking out and her a little too relaxed. We wait for over 10
minutes in this van, which we've left the door open due to the heat. We were just talking and
swatting flies which are buzzing in and out of the open door. I'm unsurprised we're not on schedule
as I know they are trying to
avoid wasting a tank of gas on two passengers and are trying to wait for more people. But we have an
hour's drive ahead of us and I want to get going so I decide to go ask. They tell us five more
minutes. Sure. More time passes and I can't shake the feeling we aren't at the right bus stop.
Though nobody made mention of
there being more than one in a tiny town so I kept telling myself I was being irrational.
I decided to go see if anybody is in the office and just get more information. I open the door
and walk in without much hesitation given its positioning under the giant sign. Well I walk
into what is clearly a residence and like 15 sweaty Peruvians cooking
beans and looking as shocked to see me as I to see them. I stammer out, uh, is this the bus station?
They look confused and go, oh the bus, yes the bus, go outside, talk to the men, bus to Cusco. I back out and apologize for intruding.
I go back to the van to report the experience to my roommate,
right as another girl walks up and says,
Bus to Cusco?
She is clearly a native Spanish speaker and not a foreign tourist.
The men immediately say yes and place her in a different van,
which makes no sense if they are trying to fill one
van to take us to the same place. This skews me out more than anything else that's happened yet.
I pop my head in the van and tell my roommate to keep hanging tight. I walk over to the girl in
the other van where she is also waiting alone and ask her if she's going to Cusco. She confirms this
to be the case and I explain we are going there as well and I'm not
sure why we would be in separate vans. She says she doesn't know but looks generally unconcerned.
I go back to our van and sit down. I go back and sit in the van which my roommate has not left and
we've been there for probably near 30 to 40 minutes at this point. I start expressing my
concerns to her but she's being somewhat dismissive which I can't blame her
for as I'm a generally anxious person and she's more used to that than anyone. We get pretty quiet
and resign ourselves to waiting still swatting flies and dabbing our brows with our shirts.
I'm now sitting quietly with my mind going wild with possibilities and extremely suspicious
something is wrong but also conceding there's
nothing too concrete justifying my level of concern. At this point I'm now picturing some
ploy to abduct foreigners or being generally murdered. It's not a good feeling. The flies
are driving me absolutely mad at this point and now I've decided they were probably hovering
around this car because somebody was murdered in there and the blood wasn't cleaned well enough to fool the flies. At this point I'm just torturing myself.
The train of thought continues and I look up. Hundreds of flies are swarmed and crawling on
the roof of the van. I realize we hadn't noticed because only a few would be flying around at a
time and the van was rather spacious and my roommate and
I were close to the front while the mass grouping of them were closer to the back. I'm frozen in
fear at this point. Unsure if this is confirming my theory that somebody was murdered in the car
or if I'm really letting my imagination run wild and there are less remarkable things than flies
in a South American van. I'm basically hyperventilating.
I wish I could emphasize how many flies were in there. I gesture upwards to my roommate who looks
up then appears shocked. At this point I can assume I'm shaking my head and muttering. Right
as this happens the other van with the native girl begins to pull away. I make a snap second
decision. I launch myself out of our van and start
sprinting and slam my hand on her van to bring it to a stop. She opens the door in shock and I grab
the door to hold it open and say more forcefully than I thought I had in me, we're coming with you.
I look back at my roommate who is just staring and I yell, grab our bags and run, now. She knew better than to mess with me when I'm
in crisis mode and comes sprinting out of the other van with both backpacks in hand while I keep my
hand on the door. The two men come running after saying, don't go, we leave now, we leave for Cusco
now. As I shove my friend into the car and scream, Sorry, we're riding with our friend here.
And slam the door closed.
The native girl, looking unsettled, just tells the driver we are friends and to drive.
At this point, I don't know that this driver isn't in on whatever I was afraid of.
Or if he was, but they didn't plan on messing with a local.
Either way, I just saw her as our best bet.
We pull out onto the road and drive for a few minutes when I see, you guessed it, the bus station.
A very official, legitimate looking bus station with actual buses, which was probably about half a mile from the train.
I have no doubt that this is where we were supposed to go and feel the blood drain from my face. I thought about jumping out of the van and running, but in a split second,
I questioned if it wasn't for official tour groups
or anything else I may not be considering,
and my worst fear is ending up back at the first place
without our new local friend.
As we drive, I'm looking for street signs, landmarks,
or anything to indicate we're actually headed to Cusco.
All I see is wide
open desert plains and nothing else. I sat the rest of the drive frozen in fear, collecting a
pile of makeshift weapons from what I could find in the back of the van. This included a sharp piece
of car, likely from some previous collision, and a smallish fire extinguisher. I told myself if
anybody tried to hurt us, I would kill them first and then
figure out how to avoid a Peruvian prison second. I spent the entire car ride telling myself that
I had it in me to kill a person if they tried to harm me. I grip my weapons until my knuckles turn
white, when suddenly the van comes to a stop, very much in the middle of nowhere. The driver accepts
a phone call, which I can't understand.
He then gets off the phone and slowly tells us he just remembered he can't take us all the way to
Cusco. The native girl looks concerned which makes me even more paranoid and he proceeds to point to
a large but desolate building and tells us to go in there to find a ride the rest of the way.
Looking back I'm not sure how I avoided throwing
up from anxiety and fear. The three of us journey in there, my weapons abandoned as I couldn't sneak
them out of the van and people just keep pointing us further and further back until we come to a
back opening leading us outside. I wanted to run to somehow undo this entire journey, but we really had no other choice than to stick with the native girl.
We had no alternative methods of transportation, there's no civilization in sight, and honestly, I'm not even sure what part of the country we are in.
All I know is that we are 60 to 90 minutes away from wherever the train stopped, hopefully in the direction of Cusco. We get to another van,
this time with the opposite problem. They are insisting we fit 10 plus people into a 7 seater
van, then try to take my backpack, saying needs to go on the roof. That backpack had my passport
and every resource I would most certainly want in an emergency. I'm thinking they can take it over
my dead body, which might very well be happening, right as I see my roommate happily passing hers
to the lady. I grab her arm tightly and ready to ask what on earth is wrong with her survival
instincts, but my face must have said it all because she backs up and uncertainly tells the
lady, never mind, she will be keeping her bag with her. The lady looks
aggravated and says they won't fit in the car with all the people. I tell her we are happy to hold
them as I climb in and demonstrate in a way that will require her to force either me or the bag
out. She relents and my roommate crawls in. We sit in the back with our backpacks towering on our
laps in front of us, my roommate
looking somewhat inconvenienced I've made her do this. Honestly maybe I was overreacting but
better than underreacting. We drove a long while and finally we enter the city borders of Cusco.
On the one hand I'm relieved because I now know exactly where we are. On the other hand the
surrounding areas outside of the main square are extremely dangerous shanty exactly where we are. On the other hand, the surrounding areas outside of the
main square are extremely dangerous shanty towns and we are the only foreigners with giant backpacks
on the bus. No sooner am I thinking, well, at least we are close, when the bus driver turns and says
he doesn't want to drive any further and we can figure our own way from there. Even the native
girl immediately goes on red alert
and offers to pay more if he will take us to the city square.
He declines, kicks us out of the van, and drives away.
We are looking at all the people staring openly at us,
and she asks in a scared voice if we will split a cab with her.
We agree immediately.
Problem is, in this part of the world,
a cab is often the first car to drive up
and assures you they will take you where you are going. Not very official. This is exactly what
happens. A Corolla from I'm sure 1993 pulls up and tells us to hop in. Our friend looks wary but
decides it's better than winging it out in the open. He drops us in the town square without
incident and, at this this point the native girl
looks like she's aged five years since we first crossed paths with her hours ago. I'm sure I
looked even worse. She meekly says well I'm glad we got here safely. I can barely talk I'm so
exhausted and respond me too thanks. We part ways. I had a few incidents on this trip that made me a believer
that no matter where you are, one traumatic experience makes wherever the last place you
slept feel like home. Let me tell you, the hostel bed felt amazing. This happened to me when I was in high school.
My family was going through some tough times and my mom and I would get into fights about money and social life.
I felt I was doing more than enough for my age at that time.
16, going to school, working, giving her my paycheck for bills,
and I was upset I wasn't allowed to go
out on whatever little time off I did have. On her side she felt that me going out would distract me
from school, work and I would pick up vices. One night I got home from work and after a particularly
heated argument I couldn't take it anymore and just left the house. I didn't have a plan as to
what I was going to do.
In my mind, I just wanted to get away from my responsibilities.
So I just started walking with no specific destination.
I ended up walking for two hours.
Despite walking for so long though, I was only about 15 minutes from home because I was going in circles.
By that time, it was 1am and I was walking on a sidewalk when a van pulled up in front of me and stopped on the side of the road. Now this was on a populated area on a three lane road just near
the expressway and there was mild traffic so I didn't give it much thought. As I got closer to
the van though I see that the driver rolls down the passenger side window and is looking at me
through the side mirror. Still I didn't think anything of it. Maybe somebody was lost trying to get directions.
Now I'm right by the passenger door and the man calls me over. He said he was lost and was trying
to get directions to the expressway. This is when I started feeling this wasn't right. The signs for
the expressway were all around and the expressway was literally two blocks away.
My mind started racing.
I literally pointed at the expressway which was within sight and started to walk away when he started following me and asked me where I was going and if I needed a ride.
At this point, I'm regretting not having gone home already.
I turn towards the man and tell him that I don't need a ride but thanks for offering and start walking away faster.
The man doesn't say anything and starts driving away but as he passes me I can see that he was looking at me through the side mirror again.
Seeing him drive away I started feeling relieved but then instead of him going straight towards the expressway he takes a right turn and goes down the street. Now I'm freaking out. I start thinking
that I might go all the way around the block just to get back on the main road and come engage me
again. So as soon as I see his van go out of sight I book it to the building that was to my right and
hide behind some bushes. The building had a bunch of offices and I could see there was a lawyer's
office, dentist's office and other small businesses.
I'd lay down on the ground and just waited.
A couple of minutes passed and through a small gap in the bushes I see his van rolling up towards the main road.
The man had done as I thought.
He went around the block just to get back on the main road.
I saw him driving slowly as he was looking for me and then I saw him take that right turn again.
I knew for sure he was looking for me again. Now after a few minutes his van shows up again but
it is driving slower and comes to a stop in front of the office building.
After a few tense seconds in which I thought he would get out of the vehicle to check the area
he started to drive away. The whole time I was hiding behind
the bushes I was freaking out knowing a stranger was actively searching for me. I waited about five
minutes after I saw his vehicle drive off and I took off running home. To this day I don't know
what his intentions might have been but I believe in intuition and mine told me that his motives
were sinister.
So let's rewind back to maybe 2006 or 2007.
I was about 9 or 10 years old.
My friend and I had just gotten done swimming at my grandfather's house,
which was only a few blocks from my friend's house. We live in a small community and lots of
my family and friends live very close by. We were walking down the street heading back to my friend's
house when a big brown van comes up beside us at a stop sign. He rolls his window down and he had
dark eyes, long hair and a beard. If I ever saw this dude again
I'd know who he was for sure. So he stops and asks us for directions to a local store and I start
going on about it and he's just staring at me. Mind you we're both in bathing suits and wrapped
in towels. After I give him the directions he tries to talk to us more and I start to feel
uncomfortable by the way he was talking. I was the older one of the both of us, so I grab my friend by the hand and say goodbye
and start walking away. So this is when he turns and goes the complete opposite direction of the
store, and straight for us, at full speed. The most terrifying part of this was how fast he was
driving. It wasn't a city area, it was a small suburb where
the speed limit is 20 miles per hour. He was probably going at least 45 or 50 miles per hour
just to catch up to us. It wasn't subtle at all. We start running, taking shortcuts in back alleys
to get to her house, roads he can't drive down. We come to this dead end road and he's still behind
us. A lady who had just returned home from
a jog stops us and grabs both of us by the shoulders and kisses our foreheads. We were
seriously confused because we didn't really know her but she just says, girls I'm so glad you're
home let's get dinner or something like that. She was way too young to be our mother or anything but the van stops, backs out of the street
and speeds off. Once he's gone the lady looks at us and says, he tried to pick me up a couple of
days ago. Stay away from that van and let me walk you home. So she walked us home and for some reason
neither of us ever said anything to our parents about it or at least I don't remember saying anything. I never saw that
van again and I never saw him again and mind you it is a small town so you see the same people all
the time. I'd even seen the lady who rescued us before but she had never spoken to us before that
day and I'm so glad she did. I still live in the same town, in my house with my roommate and I still think about that freak
every time I go down the road he stopped us at. I don't want to have to be the jogger saving two
girls one summer. Maybe this is a good reason to start jogging, be the local neighborhood watch.
I've tried to look him up and all to see if someone with that van was arrested in my area
around that time. It would be nice to know if
they ever caught that creep. The story happened in the UK. While the town itself wasn't big,
it had disproportionately large crime rates, to the point where people from
surrounding towns will automatically assume you're hard and treat you like a gangster.
Not to say that I dislike the town, but it's a pretty rough place, even when we lived in one
of the nicer neighborhoods. I was around 11 at the time. Since I was in year 6, I was finally
allowed to leave school without a parent to collect me, so I would take my six-year-old brother with me.
The walk home was short, so there wasn't much variation in routine.
The final part of it was between two estates,
the druggie estate and the safest estate,
which were separated by a neglected wooded area.
This, of course, attracted more creeps the deeper you went,
but that's a whole other story.
To get home, we had to go up a hefty
incline next to these woods. Our path was on a minor road and the other side was lined with houses
and a few dead streets before we got to the top of the hill to finally cross the road and turn
onto our dead end street. The only excuse I have for why we walked on the wood side was because
there was lots of blackberry bushes and dog walkers so
we got to eat before dinner and pet a lot of dogs. This time there were no dogs. The second we got
onto the path next to the woods my sixth sense went haywire. It's strange how you can just tell
something is watching you. I was too scared to turn around and look thinking that I was just
being weird but the feeling persisted.
When I looked back, there it was. The vehicle of legends. An unmarked white van. Honestly,
I wouldn't have paid much mind to it if it hadn't been acting so strangely. It's not like the hill
had a 90 degree angle of steepness, but it was still steep, lasted a long distance and sure, it's normal to be careful on the road.
But this van took it to the extreme. It drove so, so slowly, inching up the road in a way that only
confused me. But hey, I'm just a kid, what do I know about cars and driving? So we kept walking
but I looked at it every so often, subtly as I could.
The real alarm bells came when it stopped just as we were nearing our turn.
I now realized that it could probably tell we were going to cross there by the way we changed sides of the sidewalk and wanted to see which street we would go down, since there were three in the vicinity.
I am only thankful that this happened when my brother didn't have problems with authority yet. I gave him a little talk that he needs to listen to what I say and be prepared
for anything I tell him, while trying to keep the mood light and promise to tell him everything
afterwards. Of course, the van followed us, closing in. Now our street is a dead end that
branches out in two directions, with a little hill lined by houses in between the two branches.
One of these houses was ours and if these idiots saw where we lived I was scared that we would be hounded.
I still had a clear memory of when our car was set on fire before and of almost being kidnapped when I was eight so I didn't want to be responsible for any misfortune.
Behind the hill houses were garages so I dragged't want to be responsible for any misfortune. Behind the hill houses were
garages so I dragged my brother and we ran. I heard the roar of an engine behind us. A metal
fence ran in the middle of the garage section so the van couldn't follow us. Before I could see if
they got out and decided to give chase we ran down out of sight and around the bend through a little
alleyway. We wandered around a little bit once we found an area with people before heading home.
The van wasn't there anymore, but my paranoia was.
My girlfriend and I go camping in the Scottish Highlands.
It's super chilled, people still hitchhike without fearing for their safety,
locals will offer you a ride, everyone talks to everyone.
We frequent a particular campsite in the middle of a beautiful mountain range that's very safe and friendly.
We were there one April night, so the campsite was really quiet due to the fact that it
was about four degrees. We got set up and lit a campfire. We were fairly near the toilet block
since the site was empty. So before long two guys walked past and said hello. On the way back they
stopped for a while longer. They said they were staying in a van and did we want to join them for
a drink inside since it was so cold out.
My girlfriend, ever the social butterfly, said sure and started to get up.
The guys were giving me serious creep vibes but I tend to err on the side of hating everyone
so I figured I didn't want to be a party pooper and went along to their van.
It was a large white transit van and actually really nice inside.
There was plenty of room for all of us to sit inside but I kind of hovered in the doorway.
The van belonged to the older guy of the two, maybe mid-forties, who seemed pretty genuine.
He told us he lived in the van most of the time but brought his friend from work to the Highlands for the weekend because he'd never been before.
His friend was a younger guy, maybe mid-twenties, chatty to the point of being
irritating because he was drunk. Before long, the conversation turned to one that will be familiar
to any woman in a same-sex relationship. Are you guys sisters? No, we're together.
Dang, don't you miss, uh, love of a man, you know? Can I watch? Et I watch etc etc at this point we'd been there maybe half an hour
and it was really pitch black outside so we decided to call it a night it was all very pleasant when
we left although the younger guy had got pretty quiet when we said we were leaving about 50
minutes after we got into our tiny pop-up tent, we hear a younger guy saying, Girls, let me in.
My girl says, No, go away, in a very assertive voice.
She's from Glasgow and doesn't mess around.
We thought he'd gone until a few minutes later we hear someone fumbling around with a zip on our tent.
I was terrified and froze, but my girlfriend grabbed grabbed the zip which was right above our heads
she stopped him from pulling it up any further he whispered we showed you a good time now it's for
you to show me a good time my girlfriend told him to f off and loudly shouted some extra insults at
him in case anyone could hear but I'm not sure there was anyone but us and the van men for miles. He kept fumbling around with the zip for another few minutes and then went away.
We were terrified for the rest of the night and my girlfriend kept her hand on the zip just in case.
We packed up and ran at first light.
We left the car unlocked because it's usually such a safe campsite
and we're always in and out of the car for supplies.
I brought an extra hoodie just in case and I put it on as we left.
A few hours later I put my hand in the pocket and found a used condom.
A creepy retrobate had used a condom on herself and tucked it into my pocket for me to find later.
The thought of him sitting in our car filling that condom gives me the heave.
A few years later at the same campsite we bumped into the older guy.
He smiled at us apologetically and walked away without any of us saying a word.
This occurred about seven years ago when I was 19.
My best friend at the time and I, after a lot of saving, went on a trip to London and Paris by ourselves.
The trip was overall amazing, except for one night.
We decided to go to a nightclub on Piccadilly Circus.
We took a bus down by this area and chose our destination.
While in the club,
some men took interest in us and invited us back to their place. I got weird vibes from them. I
also had a boyfriend at the time, so I decided I didn't want to go. My friend, however, was very
stubborn on going, so after pleading with her for a bit, I gave up and decided to go back to the
hotel by myself. I tried to take a bus, but didn't work out and not knowing how to find a taxi by myself,
I decided to walk back.
It was 2-3am in the morning but after having a few drinks I felt courageous enough to find my way.
I had a map on me but no phone.
The walk wasn't so bad except along the way a man tried to invite me into the basement of a building he was
caring for. I promptly booked it down the street. It wasn't until it was 5 a.m. as it took me two or
three hours to find my way back that I ran into real trouble. It was starting to get bright out
thankfully but I noticed a van following closely near behind me. He eventually yelled out asking if I needed a ride and I said
no thanks I'm good. He was very persistent that I get in so I took off running around a corner
and hid behind a large bush. I was able to peep my head out and saw the van slowly going down the
street looking for me. Of course he was blocking the way I needed to go back to the hotel I was only a two minute run away
So I waited about 15 minutes
Took a peek and noticed he was gone
I gathered my courage
And ran like the dickens back to the hotel
In the end my friend was okay
She spent the night at the guy's house
And we both felt foolish for our choices
And cried at the reunion
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So this happened when I was 19 or 20.
I'm 31 now.
Rarely drink or go out anymore.
But last weekend a friend of mine who I hadn't seen in a couple of years asked me out.
And we ended up going to a club on the same street where this story takes place and reminded me of it. Legal drinking age in Brazil is 18 so people here start partying pretty early and let's face it no one really knows their limits
when they start drinking. My friends and I had gone to this club, I honestly can't remember the
name right now but I know it closed down a couple of
years back. We had a great time and the sun was coming up as we were leaving. Most clubs here
give you a credit card when you walk in where you either put in the money you plan on spending
or they work as a personal digital tab where bartenders add up what you're drinking and you
pay for it on the way out. I pay for my stuff
and sit outside to wait for my friends who were taking a long time to get out, probably due to
being drunk out of their minds. As I'm sitting there, I notice a car across the street. Two dudes
in the front seats, one out of the car trying to make this clearly drunk out of her mind girl get
inside as well. She's mumbling,
stumbling, struggling to keep her eyes open and she says, no, I don't want to go. Over and over,
shaking her head, clinging onto the car door as the guy keeps telling her to let go and get inside,
that they're just going to a friend's apartment to drink some more, it'll be fun, come on.
I watch wondering if I
should do something if no one else is seeing this happening. I look at the club's security guard.
He looks at me and shrugs like it's not his responsibility. I look back at the girl and
I'm really uncomfortable but also scared. My friends are still nowhere to be seen. I'm alone.
The security guard is clearly not doing anything and there's three of the guys. What if they decide to try and get me too?
The girl says one more time that she doesn't want to go with them and before I realize what I'm doing, I'm getting on my feet and shouting hey.
The guy stops trying to push the girl into the car for a moment and looks at me.
She said she doesn't want to go, dude.
I say, starting to make my way across the street, even though my hands are shaking and my voice is probably not the most convincing.
She's our friend. She's just drunk and being cranky. It's all good. We're just just gonna take her home. He says he seems a bit nervous and not exactly angry
which makes me feel a bit better or less scared. Do you know them? I asked her and she just shakes
her head no using the door as support to keep herself on her feet. Creep number one the one
who was trying to push her into the car looks at me, then to his friend who seems frustrated but starts saying,
Come on man, let's go, just leave it.
Creep number one, now looking a bit angry, grabs the girl and pushes her towards me before getting into the car and they all leave.
The girl nearly falls on her face but I grab her and we walk back to the front of the club, my heart slowly going back
to its normal rate. Only then I realize my friends had come out and were watching everything from
across the street with confused faces. We all meet random people at clubs, at the door, walking down
the street so they probably thought I'd met someone. I start asking her what happened, if
she's alone,
wears all her stuff and she's an incoherent mess, mumbling about losing track of her friends,
her purse, she doesn't even know how she paid her tab to leave. I ask for some help to the security guard, he says he can't leave his spot, he can't do anything. I explain what happened to
my friends and they talk to the hostess about it who begrudgingly goes and checks the lost and found.
Her purse is thankfully there, minus the money she had in her wallet, and we manage to call her parents.
I talk to her mom because the girl can't explain anything and I promise to stay there until the mom comes to get her.
Thirty minutes later the mom arrives and I've never seen someone look so relieved and terrified
at the same time. She thanks me and my friends profusely and offers us a ride home but as we
live in the next town over she just drives us to the subway station. In the middle of all the
craziness I forgot to exchange numbers with any of them so I never heard of that girl or mom again
but I hope she learned to be
more careful with how much she drinks or who she talks to in clubs. Also shame on her friends for
not looking out for her or trying to find her when they realized she was missing. Though maybe they
were all just as drunk as she was, who knows. I know what I did was probably a bit reckless
but I wouldn't be able to just watch that car drive away and live with myself.
Please be safe when going out people.
And creeps at the nightclubs who try to take advantage of intoxicated people.
Watch, you're back.
I'm a female and it was 15 at the time.
It was my sophomore year in high school.
I grew up in a small farming town.
Population at the time was about 1,400 in Washington State, United States.
I met Ricky, a guy in my shop class, where we flirted daily.
I was the only girl in the class and assumed that was why he was flirting with me.
I also assumed he was 16 since he was in my grade but had his license.
He was actually 19.
In school I was popular in that I was friends with everyone.
But Ricky was very handsome and very popular for actually being cool.
So I was super excited that he paid attention to me and even flirted with me.
Even though like I said I figured it was because I was the only girl in the class.
I'll admit I let him on in a big way.
I figured nothing would ever happen between he and I since he was really good looking and popular.
And had beautiful girls throwing themselves at him in the hallways in other classes. So the flirting had become more and more overt with us talking about actually being intimate with one another even though I had no intention and thought it was never going to happen
anyway. Shop class had a regular classroom in the high school where we took attendance and tests
and then the shop itself was located about 100 yards away from the
main building. The high school parking lot was on the opposite side of the high school building from
the shop class. Our school had an open campus meaning that students could leave campus during
lunch if they had the signed form filed with the office. In late spring of that year 1997 Ricky and
I were flirting one day when he suggested we go through with it.
He suggested we leave right after that class during lunch and head to his house.
I don't know why I agreed other than realizing I had talked and talked for weeks about it and couldn't admit that I had been lying the whole time.
After class he and I left the shop and walked around the back of the school to the parking lot.
We got in his nice truck and drove away from the school.
I was freaking out internally because 1.
My friends were expecting me to leave campus with them and were waiting by my locker and 2.
Was I really about to do it for the first time?
With one of the hottest guys in school I thought.
We drove through town and went to his house about
a half mile from campus. We went inside and as soon as the door closed he started kissing me.
To this day this first kiss is one of the best I've ever had. I couldn't completely appreciate
it at the time because I was still freaking out. We made our way to his bed and continued kissing
for 45 minutes while he kept trying to get me to go further. He had stripped way to his bed and continued kissing for 45 minutes while he kept trying to
get me to go further. He had stripped down to his boxers but I still had everything on including
shoes and jacket. Thankfully he wasn't pushy, just trying to go through with what we had discussed
for weeks. After 45 minutes I said I wanted to go back to the school. He sighed, put his clothes
back on and we left. We drove to the school in silence. When we back to the school. He sighed, put his clothes back on and we left.
We drove to the school in silence. When we got to the parking lot he asked if I was okay.
I said yes and got out and walked quickly inside. Out of my peripheral vision I saw his truck
leaving the parking lot. Lunch was still going on so I went to my locker, grabbed my books for
my next class and went in the classroom to
read until class started. Shortly before class started two of my friends that I was supposed
to meet for lunch came in. They asked if I was okay and where I'd gone. I said I was fine and
didn't want to talk about it. One of the girls then left to go to her class but the other girl,
Allie, was in the class with me so she stayed.
About halfway through the class I decided to tell Allie what had happened and made her promise not to tell anyone. She was concerned and made sure that I realized that I had put myself in sort of
a dangerous situation. No one knew where I was or with whom. I hadn't even thought of that until
she pointed it out. The next few days Ricky went to
school but skipped shop class. I was fine with it since I didn't want to see him mostly because I
was embarrassed. Ricky started coming to class again and tried talking to me but I was quite rude.
For about a week shop class consisted of him trying to talk to me, me ignoring him, him sighing and walking away. After that I was more
civil but never went back to flirting with him. He started approaching me between classes and
during lunch just being friendly and lightly flirty. I never returned the flirting again.
Random groups of girls started approaching me and asking what was going on between Ricky and I,
why did he like me, why was he now ignoring them,
etc. I didn't have answers. The second to last week of school Ricky hung around me often but
was really quiet. Then he told me that I was the first girl to ever turn him down.
During the last week of school he went back to hanging out with his friends and flirting with
pretty girls. I was relieved mostly because I felt guilty for
leading them on and guilty for putting myself in that situation. About midway through the summer
holiday I ran into Allie and she asked me if I had heard about Ricky. No, I hadn't. She said
Ricky was on the run from the police for the attempted murder of two men. She said she heard it was a drug deal gone bad. I was shocked
and I let my imagination go wild with thoughts of what if. I assumed that if he was willing to end
the life of two men what would have stopped him from doing worse things and possibly the same to
me. A year later one of the men died from complications of his wounds so
the charges were changed to one charge of attempted murder and one charge of murder in the first
degree. I later found out that it wasn't a drug deal gone bad but was actually a failed cartel
hit. I have more info on that and why I don't believe Ricky would have ever harmed me or anyone
if it hadn't
been for his dad's employer but this story is quite long enough. I don't know whatever happened
to Ricky. I heard he fled to California and then possibly to Mexico. He was never caught by the police. I work at a church as an office admin.
I'm not a member, or even a believer, but it's a good job.
This often means that if the minister is out ministering, I am completely alone in a very large building.
Usually I like being able to work with nobody bothering me and I relish the days
when nobody drops in or calls. It was one of those quiet days and I needed to take a stack of
materials into the chapel. We never have lights on unless we're using a space and I usually don't
bother turning them on for the chapel. There are stained glass windows so there's enough light to
see by and it's pretty with just the window light coming in.
The area where I'm dropping off some printed materials is up a few steps on the raised
area where the choir and organ and pulpit are.
Drop the stuff, turn around and I'm just about to walk back when I notice something.
Now this is an old church with pretty massive wooden pews so if you're walking straight down the aisle you only see the backs of them sticking up.
You don't really see the seats or the ground between the pews.
But from up on the platform area there's enough of an area that I can see a coat lying on the floor between two rows of pews.
I'm not surprised. We have a lot of people forget stuff on Sundays.
Someone once forgot their teeth. that was fun to look for.
So I'm heading down the aisle, looking down each row of pews to find the one the jacket was lying under when I realize...
It wasn't a jacket.
There's a man, lying on the floor.
Now it's important to note that there are three aisles in the church.
The main center one and two side ones.
I always use the side one closest to the office out of habit.
It's dumb but I just feel silly walking down the wide center aisle of a church.
The aisles are carpeted.
I wear black dressy sneakers to work and tend to walk quietly.
The man on the floor is facing the center aisle.
I freeze and stare at him expecting him to sit up and say something but I realize he hasn't noticed me yet.
He's kind of wiggling his feet.
Not a lot, just kind of rocking his shoes on the floor so I'm pretty sure he's awake or at least alive.
I have no idea what to do. I've got severe anxiety and CPTSD and I've long known
my fight or flight response is to freeze like an idiot. I'm just staring at this guy on the floor
trying to think of something to say. Still not sure what I should have said. Hello sir, wouldn't
you rather have a seat or something like that? When the main doors to the church open. I'd totally forgotten that Paul, one of the members of the congregation, was coming in
to do some painting work today. He spots me frozen in the chapel and comes in. He pokes his head in
and hollers, hey, uh, I'm just gonna start working the front, all right? As soon as Paul started
talking, the guy on the floor started craning his head around to see what
was going on or to see who Paul was talking to, I'm assuming. But of course this man has now spotted
me and my brain still has my jaw wired shut and my feet glued to the floor. The man on the floor
starts screaming. I've honestly never heard a grown man full out scream
like that in real life. It didn't sound scared or angry to me. He wasn't trying to make words at all.
It was just noise. He scrambles to his feet and starts running down the aisle to the door and
slams into it. He charges right out of the building, right past Paul, who just kind of stands aside and watches the man run off.
We just look at each other for a long minute before Paul comes over and asks me if I'm okay and what that was all about.
I have no idea.
I look down and the man on the floor is left behind a backpack.
Me and Paul lock the outside doors and take it to the office. I call the cops. They say they'll send to collect the bag and look around the neighborhood, but they don't sound really bothered.
Paul decides to look in the backpack and I try telling him not to, but I'm frankly curious as well.
Inside the backpack is a bible, several disposable plastic spoons covered in foil, an empty bag of hand sanitizer, a roll of plastic
wrap, one sock, and a pack of crayons. The Bible? It's one of ours, and he's colored it. Not like a
child or how you'd think a crazy person would. It's not all scribbles all over. And he didn't
draw pictures or write in it or circle things. He's literally colored the words
like going along one sentence at a time coloring words or parts of words different colors.
It kind of looks like highlighting in different colors but with crayons and with sections of
different colors changing randomly. There's no blank gap so all the pages he's gone through
look like a series of rainbow stripes. It's really neatly
done. He's gone through the Old Testament up to the book of Esther which is about one third of
the way through the whole thing which means he's been coloring for a long time. This is what
concerns me. How long had he been in there to color that far? Or did he come in before and
take a bible with him and then come back? And of course what was he
doing lying on the floor and why did he run out screaming? What were those other items in his bag?
This happened months ago and the good news is I haven't seen him since
but I am uncomfortably aware of how vulnerable I am at work. This happened about three summers ago. It was the
summer before I went off to uni. It was technically the morning of that huge solar eclipse. You
remember the one. My buddy had parties at his house every weekend because his
parents would go up to their cottage. The parties were basically a bunch of our guy friends smoking,
playing pong, and video games with me and my two girlfriends. I live in the same neighborhood as
my friend just a couple of blocks away. Usually one or two of the guys would walk us back to my
house at the end of the night since they lived around me and didn't want us to walk alone in the dark. But this particular night we chose to Uber because we
were too intoxicated to walk home. We were really cross-faded so my recollection of the story isn't
crystal clear regarding all that was said. So our Uber pulls up to my friend's house at around 3am
and me and my two girlfriends walk up to the
car to get in. It was a minivan. We were still holding our coolers in our hands as we were too
gone to realize. I opened the door to the back seat and the driver immediately gave off really
weird vibes. He looked at me and had this look on his face. An almost Kubrick stare-esque look but sort of smiling too. He had long black
hair and a ponytail, a beard and was wearing a neon yellow tracksuit. He also had some type of
European accent but I couldn't tell what kind. I'm Slavic so I know I had to maybe be Portuguese or
Italian or something because it didn't sound familiar to me. He looked at me and did the elevator with his
eyes saying, I like your shirt and winked. For starters, I was 17 and this man seemed around
late 20s, early 30s. Second of all, I barely had much of a shirt on. I remember I was wearing a
low-cut crop top so my breasts were obviously out. Again, I was really cross so I just brushed it off
and laughed. Me and my friend sat down in our seats and the driver turned back and said to us,
if we get arrested, you guys are going to jail. Gesturing at our open drinks. Again, we were
really gone and didn't really care so we just laughed it off and my friend Sarah said something along
lines of don't worry we'll be low-key or whatever. So we drove off and I noticed that at the stop
sign where I would usually turn left to go home he turned right. He had a GPS with him but was
clearly ignoring it. I thought he was maybe just cutting through the neighborhood in a different
way so I just went with it.
I know the area really good, there's like five alternate routes back to my place.
Suddenly, we end up on the main road the complete opposite direction of my house.
As we headed under an underpass, I turned to my friends and said,
Guys, he's going the wrong way.
I looked at my friend Grace, who ordered the Uber, thinking she might have put the wrong address or even her own instead of mine by accident and she flashed me her screen.
She had my address as the drop off point.
I guess the Uber driver caught on to us and turned around and said to us,
Do you guys want to go back to school?
We all looked at each other confused. Um, no, we want to go home,
said Sarah. But all the kids I drive want to go to the school, you know, the big parking lot.
That's where I take them, the man said with a creepy look on his face. We knew what school
he was talking about. It was our high school just up the road. It's conveniently
located in the middle of a huge field by the way. I take all the kids there, he emphasized.
I remember the looks of horror on my friend's faces. No, just drop us off now, Sarah demanded
even though we were still driving down the main road. There was a 24-hour grocery store coming up, so I panicked and yelled,
Just drop us off at the grocery store right now!
He glared at me in the rearview mirror and turned into the plaza.
He dropped us off at the grocery store, and we didn't even think of looking back to see him drive off.
We just ran inside to safety, or so we thought.
Minutes later, as we were pacing down an aisle trying to
order another Uber, we live in the suburbs so finding Uber at 3am isn't always easy or quick,
we see the Uber driver walk past our aisle. I don't think he saw us, but we immediately made
a run for it. He then saw us and began to follow us from afar. Soon enough, he made his way closer and closer and closer.
We pretty much sped through almost every aisle trying to get away from him.
Grace got a notification that a driver was on his way to pick us up and he was like two or three minutes away.
We decided to go wait at the front of the store still inside by the exit doors.
Roughly thirty seconds later the
man comes up to us. With a bewildered look on his face he says, do you girls want me to drive you
home? We all went pale. No don't worry about it we have a ride said Grace. It's okay I can drive
you guys home he insisted. No I said we have a ride, it's on the way.
That seemed to anger him. What? You ordered another Uber? What about me? He said. He was
standing very close to us too. I don't remember his face completely as I was so high my eyes were
barely open, but I remember the smile he had in his face the entire time he was with us.
That eerie, nasty smile. We have a driver, Sarah snapped. The man walked away. The Uber was one
minute away but it seemed to be stuck at the red light at the intersection to get into the plaza
we were in. We were watching the map on the Uber app on my friend's phone in complete fear
and this felt like the longest couple of minutes of my life. We turned around to map on the Uber app on my friend's phone in complete fear, and this felt like the longest couple of minutes of my life.
We turned around to see if the Uber driver left the store, but there he was, about 15 feet behind us, standing very close to one of the cashiers who was standing by a display.
The poor kid looked super uncomfortable, but we saw that driver kept constant eye contact with us as he was talking to
the cashier pointing at us several times. Suddenly we saw the Uber driver pull up in front of the
store. We sprinted out of the store not looking back and hopped in the car and I just yelled
drive drive drive and locking all the doors. The new Uber driver gassed it and we were on the way home
safely to mine. He asked us if we were alright since we were clearly being frantic. We explained
the story and he told us to report it as soon as we got home and he would file a report or a witness
statement or whatever himself too. He even said that he would stay in front of the house until
we get inside to make sure we're safe.
We thanked the man.
We were super scared that the previous Uber driver would follow us,
as he had my address from when he was driving us earlier.
I made sure we locked all the doors, windows, everything once we got inside.
I pulled the security alarm and we reported the incident to Uber via mail.
The next morning we woke up to five missed calls from Uber and an email apologizing, refunding our trips from that night, and a statement saying
that the driver will be pulled off the road for Uber as they investigate. We even had an hour
long phone call that afternoon with Uber recounting the entire situation in detail.
We never heard back from Uber after that regarding the creepy driver but I hope to never see him again. What's really creepy is that a few months ago a younger girl
I work with, she was 16 at the time, told me a creepy guy kept hitting on her and making her
uncomfortable one night when she was closing a loan at the smoothie bar we work at. She describes
him as early 30s and wearing a neon yellow tracksuit. I felt my
stomach drop. I immediately said, black hair, beard, accent, was he wearing a long ponytail?
And she shuddered and said yes. I still get chills thinking about this man.
All events in this story are real, except my two friends' names, just to protect anonymity.
Lo, June, and I were in middle school when Lo lived across the street from two neighboring elementary schools where we would go hang out at the playground on boring summer nights, typically until 10-11pm.
The schools were separated by an alley and fences and the playgrounds at least 100 yards apart.
We always hung at the school closest to Lo's house.
On this night in particular, we were spread out sitting on different levels of a jungle gym.
I was up high and must have been more visible as my friends were down low, kind of hidden to anyone walking by.
We were talking, joking around as usual, watching the stars when I have a sudden urge, a sinking feeling in my gut as I do a scan of our surroundings, I see across the alley by the other school lot what appears to be a male figure
with a large bag moving in and out of the shadows
as if he's coming toward our direction.
I try not to freak out at first.
It wasn't uncommon for people to be out at night time
doing a stroll during the summer,
plus there was a security guard
who occasionally drives through the lots.
But it was the big bag and
feeling he was lurking that sets off all the red flags. Something just wasn't right.
Within a few seconds of seeing this, I tell my friends it's time to head on back to Lowe's and
point in the direction I saw the guys so that they could see for themselves,
but it was as if he was trying to hide when I pointed that way. They both sort of
shrugged it off as if it's the security guard or someone taking a late night walk and they
continued to pick back up our conversation, but I couldn't ignore all the alarm bells going off in
my head. So I hopped down and slipped on my shoes letting them know we really gotta go,
as I swear the guy is getting closer and unfortunately I was right.
They look over and spot him at an alarmingly close distance. They both jump down and we see
him drop his big bag as if he were surprised that there is three of us not sure how he couldn't hear
all of us. At this point he was just across the alley about 40 yards and looked like he was picking up pace towards us.
I just remembered screaming and yelling at my friends to run.
We sprinted to Lowe's house on the complete opposite side of the school about a half a block away and we can all hear him legitimately running right after us.
I don't know how but we did keep somewhat of a lead and as we make it to the locked front door of Lo's house, she fumbles her keys.
We all see he's at the end of the driveway and creepily slowed down to a walking pace as we pile into her entryway and lock the door behind us.
We see he's on her front step through the privacy glass window of the front door.
He's just standing there. We crawled across the ground trying not to make a
sound to her living room windows that have a view of her front porch and can see him under the porch
light where he's just eerily lingering. He was rough looking, with tattered clothes and a short
untamed red beard, but his eyes were the scariest and I will remember them as long as I live.
They were so dark and menacing. I can't express how
long it felt like he was just standing at her door, glancing the screen window right beside it,
and then he proceeds to ring the doorbell. I don't know why we didn't call the cops or go get her
parents immediately. Maybe it's because we were all just petrified and full of adrenaline. But
with the doorbell ringing, Lo's parents get up out of bed,
walking into the living room by the front entryway
noticing that we're all clearly freaking out, asking us what's going on.
Her dad pauses at the front door asking who's there
and the guy starts slowly knocking.
Her dad continues to refuse opening the door
and instead cranked open the screen
window beside it to see what he wanted. The dude's response still gives me chills as he replied very
calmly, I just wanted to make sure those three females made it home safely. With that, Lo's dad
sternly tells him to get off the property as his wife had already called the police.
Her dad was bluffing
and obviously creeped out. The man quickly and almost angrily apologized then glanced over as
he saw us all crouching down by the window watching him and he smirks in almost a sinister way while
slowly turning around to leave. When he gets down to the end of the driveway he faces the house and
lights up a cigarette as we all just sit there in silence
watching him. Lo's mom really did start to move for the phone to call 911 to file a report and
half officers come scan the neighborhood. Then after about one to two minutes he turned around
and walks off down the street. The cops never found him and nothing ever really came of it
but still to this day I can't imagine what would have happened if I had ignored my gut, or if he would have caught up to one of us or gotten into the house that night, but I can guarantee it would have been bad.
Always trust your gut, and don't be afraid to ring the alarm.
My best friend and I, both 22-year-old females,
recently spent three months backpacking Europe.
We had lots of strange encounters, but this one takes the cake.
We had checked out of our hostel and decided to make our way to the international train station to wait for our night train.
We had to take one or two trains to get to the big train station from where we had been staying.
It was in a relatively isolated area with just highways and a gas station nearby.
We prefer to get to the train station or airports early to get our tickets and make sure we don't miss it.
Also, we don't like walking around
with our bags for hours. We had a five hour wait for the train so we were both sitting on a bench
just passing time on our phones. Around an hour after we arrived at the train station a police
officer comes up to us and asks what we were doing. I politely explain that we're waiting to
board the night train. He asked to see our tickets and I
said that we don't have tickets just our rail passes. He looked at our passes and told us we
still need to buy tickets. I thought he meant reservations as some trains require pass holders
to pay a reservation fee though I had researched the train we were catching and it didn't require
any reservation. He told us to come with him so we gathered our bags and followed him to the ticket
office. He told the clerk that we wanted to purchase two tickets to Bucharest. I explained
that we didn't need tickets and that our final destination was Budapest. He wouldn't listen and
kept insisting we purchase tickets. Finally the lady in the ticket office looked at our passes
and printed us something like a seat assignment and This seemed to satisfy him. The officer told us that we needed to wait in a different area since
we were catching the night train so he took us to a closed off room with some chairs and told us to
stay there. He left and we both breathed a sigh of relief thinking the interaction was over.
It's really scary being in a foreign country and having a police officer yell at you.
We thought we might get stuck in Turkey.
We started watching a movie on my laptop to pass the time.
About an hour after we went to the new waiting room, the same officer comes in and tells us we have to move again.
He says to follow him, so we do.
He starts asking questions like, What are you doing in Turkey?
And how do you know each other? Etc.
Questions any border control would ask.
He escorts us back to the outside bench we had been sitting on originally.
He asks to see our passports and tickets for the second time and we show them to him.
He points out which terminal our train will leave from.
He stands by us asking questions for a few minutes and then leaves. This happens two or three more times. He comes and tells us we have to move and ask the same questions and looks at our passports. At this point we're terrified that we're going to
be detained and not make our train. It's nearly time to board our train so we decide to head back
over to the terminal. On our way over there he
intercepts us as we are about to get to the escalator. He grabs my arm hard and I look at
my friend horrified. He looks at my friend and tells her you go on and points at the escalator.
She gets on the escalator. What else could she do when an officer with a gun gives an order?
He waits until she gets a bit away, all the while gripping my arm.
Then he looks at me and says,
Are you on Instagram?
I'm stunned.
I say yes and give him my Instagram username.
He asks me to type it into his phone so I do.
He lets go of my arm and says have a good trip.
I reconnect with my friend and we run to get on the train and find our seats.
I'm in tears at this point. The whole day had been so scary. I thought we were being flagged as suspicious for getting to the train so early when all the while was just some creep trying to
chat me up or something. He followed me on Insta and sent a message request along the lines of,
What's up, remember me?
I blocked him.
My friend asked why I gave him my Instagram at all,
and I told her I just wanted the interaction to be over,
and for him to let me on the train. It was near the beginning of my 7th grade year, the first week of October. My school put
7th and 8th grade kids in with the 9th and 12th graders in the same school, so I was brand new to
high school. At my bus stop, there were a bunch of older kids from around the
neighborhood and especially from the apartment complex down the street. I had met a new friend,
Ben, who moved to our town from the neighboring town that summer. He would ask about everyone
and I was his guide in getting him the scoop when it came to anything or who anyone was.
He had met everyone by this point except two people, Max and James.
James was in the grade above us and Max was in our grade. Both of these kids had always been not the
cleanest, friendliest, or smartest kids in the school, but I never got into anything with them
where I would personally dislike them, but I wasn't friends with them either. I finally told Ben about
them when he
asked who they were after we saw them go into the bushes with a bottle of black spray paint
and paint their heads for the school day. If this shows you what type of people they were.
When we got onto the bus that was filled with the aroma of spray paint fumes Ben asked me about them
and I told them they weren't very smart and clean. This had gone on for a couple of more weeks, at least until the beginning of November.
They would eventually gravitate towards other colors of spray paint like red, green, and blue,
all most likely provided by their non-concerning parents.
If you don't know, it is illegal to buy spray paint if you're under 18,
and since they were both 13 to 14 they definitely got
it from their garage or something. We all got used to the smell of paint on the bus and the initial
laugh my group of friends and I had when we saw that the paint on James' head had dripped down
his shirt and stained it had gone away since it had been going on for over a month. This is where
the story gets interesting. One day Max and James were at their usual spot in
the bushes near the bus stop. This is located on the side of my neighbor's house by the road
as our bus stop is on the intersection of two neighborhood roads. James got the smart idea to
go to the back side of my neighbor's house with a black spray paint can. He knelt down and covered
his mouth and nose as Max watched him and
egged him on. At this point, I see trespassing and destruction of personal property, so I yell,
Hey, would you just cut that out, James? To this, James and Max were pretty surprised as they thought
they were being sneaky and no one would catch them. This is right when the bus came so we all got on. They throw the
can in the bushes like they did every day and get on the bus. So I was talking with friends that day
telling them what had happened and when I got home I told my mom and dad and they told me to go inform
the neighbor before we left for dinner that night. So I walk up to this neighbor's house and knock on
the door and tell them what I saw and he reassured me that he found a black streak of paint on his back wall. I tell him their names and where they lived if
they wanted to go talk to them and he said he'd be out next morning to see what they have to say.
The next morning the neighbor was on their front porch talking with James and Max and
in short told them to come clean and repaint the wall that evening or he would press charges on both of them.
From what I know, James and Max got their butts handed to them from their parents
and they were the ones providing the paint and had absolutely no idea
that two bratty teenagers would try to vandalize someone's property with spray paint.
However, they did clean up the streak and I thought that was it.
I thought they had learned their lesson.
The next day it was raining, so my dad took me up to my bus stop in his truck to wait.
During this time we saw Max swiping something with his right hand at James,
but not knowing what it was, we thought he was just playing around.
No, it was a knife.
And according to Max, he brought it to the bus stop to stab James
for getting him in trouble. It didn't stop there however. As I was later informed the neighbor told
them who told him they did it and they got me thinking that he would have tried to stab me as
well. The day goes on with an odd bus ride as my friend tells me that Max told him he had a knife.
So my friend goes and tells the teacher on bus duty that makes sure everyone gets to school safely that Max had a knife. So second period I was called down to the office and was met with
the chief of police, a deputy, the superintendent, the principal and the vice principal. I told them
all what happened and they ended up calling Ben
down as well as my friend who told on Max and James. James got off free as he didn't bring a
knife but Max got sent to juvie for a multitude of different reasons. About a year later we were
having our school pep rally, a large assembly for the homecoming football game. That morning I saw
cops at James' house and didn't see him at the bus stop.
I figured his parents got into trouble with drugs or something as they weren't the best people around.
However, I found out that James had a hit list for that day as well as a plan
and told a classmate who would tell the police.
On the hit list were many people, but no names were given to who he specifically wanted to go after
however he planned on going into school late with a gun in his backpack we had no security then we
do now because of this and wait until the entire student body was in the gym for the pep rally and
he would open fire this definitely scared the life out of me and made me think of all my surroundings a lot more
as well as becoming anxious around large crowds James ended up getting sent to juvie as well
I have not seen them since seventh grade and I'm in 10th grade now scary to see what people can
plan and do to all the school victims out there I sorry. And I couldn't imagine how you felt and are feeling.
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The story happened when I was around 11 or 12 years old and I was finally on summer break.
Me and my best friend whom I met on the internet made plans for me to stay at her place for a week.
She lived in a city about two and a half hours away from me but I've met her before in real life
so everything was fine. On that day I took the train by myself which was not a new experience
for me since my mom let me have a lot of freedom and experience. I texted my I took the train by myself which was not a new experience for me since my mom let
me have a lot of freedom and experience. I texted my friend the time and place I'd arrive but that
city was huge so I got the name of the station mixed up which led to her going somewhere else
instead of where I was. But at the time I obviously didn't know so when I arrived I just took my
suitcase and went to a quiet corner to wait for her while
watching all the busy people running from A to B. My friend texted me asking me where I was and
after some more texts we figured out that it was my fault for telling her the wrong station
but she was on the way to pick me up. After waiting for a few minutes a man in his 30s
accidentally bumped into me even though I was just standing still,
and apologized a thousand times.
I assured him it was fine and nothing happened,
but he insisted on making it up to me and wanted to buy me a hot chocolate or something to eat.
I refused, but I was also a pretty shy girl back then and wasn't taken seriously many times.
He seemed pretty frustrated at this point and decided to just grab my hand and try to drag me with him and only then I realized what his intentions were
and felt super scared. No one else around me seemed to notice what was going on but like a
miracle my friend just arrived on time and came straight to me. I was calling her name which made
the guy realize I wasn't alone anymore so he took off
as fast as he could without saying anything. I have no idea where I would be if my friend didn't
show up that day and I hope I never meet the man who tried to kidnap me at a train station. This happened around 6 years ago.
My ex and I were visiting England and we ended up getting lost in a not so savory part of town and it was getting late.
This was before Uber and we couldn't even find a taxi cab.
We decided to wait for the next train and ended up finding out from a nice homeless guy which train to take.
However, we had a good 30 minute wait for the next train and ended up finding out from a nice homeless guy which train to take. However, we had a good 30 minute wait for the train. My ex decided he had to use the restroom so I stood outside while he used it. The station was completely deserted, save one person.
At first I couldn't decipher if it was a woman or a man. However, upon closer inspection it became
clear it was a woman, probably in her mid to late 40s, except she had
that hard look about her. She was wearing men's combat boots, jeans that were tied with what
looked like rope, and a man's flannel shirt. She was skinny, greasy hair under a knit cap,
and she was twitchy. My ex and I were used to seeing junkies as we both had grown up in California
and our home city had its fair share of tweakers and junkies. Anyway, she sat there occasionally mumbling to herself but we
didn't pay her any mind. Mostly we passed the time by playing with the deck of cards I had in my
purse. The train pulls up so we get on. It's pretty empty and we have our choice of seats.
Of course she sits right in front of us even though there were rows of seats.
We settle into our seats as we have 12 stops before we can get off. Meanwhile she turns to us and starts cackling. She barely had any teeth and the combination between that and her heavy
cockney accent made it pretty hard to understand. She starts telling my ex that she would give him
a proper jobby if he'd give her some money.
Now at the time, we weren't on British slang and both of us were like,
you'll give him a job? And my ex is telling her he doesn't need a job.
She's getting worked up and the conductor tells her she better be quiet or he will toss her off again. So she mutters that he can screw right off under her breath and starts mumbling.
It was hard to catch but she called me
a slag and some not so nice names. Thankfully we were back in the city proper and our stop was
coming up. We signaled to the conductor we wanted off and when the train pulled up to the stop we
get out and so does our friend. My ex tells me that we will go grab dinner as we were both starving
and we head for a pub not too far from our hotel we had seen the night before.
Meanwhile she is behind us.
She starts taunting us and I get a little worried as obviously this sister is off her
rocker.
We make a run for it and get lost in a crowd.
We think that's the end of it and go to eat in the pub.
We come out of the pub about an hour later and head up the block to our hotel when we
hear, that's them! We turn and our friend along with two other rough looking characters are coming
up the sidewalk and we book it for our hotel, which after a rich pub meal isn't easy and luckily
once we get inside the doorman shoos them away. Thankfully, we didn't see them again.
I'm a very small, weak woman, 5'6 and 118 pounds. I'm a university student who lives with my mom.
I take my city's subway system to and from school and
I've never had any problems with it before. On Mondays and Wednesdays I have a class that ends
at 7.15. I've never been concerned about it because the route from my classroom to the train station
goes through a segment of downtown that is filled with high class hotels. So it's very well lit and
there's always police around, not to mention that a lot of my
classmates also ride the train and take the same route. But yesterday, I had to go to the bathroom
after class, so by the time I got to the train station, all of my classmates had already left
on their own trains. Part of me thinks if I had just held it, my night would have gone so much
better. I got to the train station and sat down on the
bench to wait. I have these huge over-ear bluetooth headphones, the kind that are also an accessory.
Yesterday I was just using them as earmuffs, I didn't have any music playing. But these are
quality headphones so outside sound is still pretty muffled even with them off. So I was sitting
there with my headphones on playing Pokemon on my
3DS with a bald man at the other end of the bench. Some guy walks up and wants to sit between us so
I scoot over without being asked because that's just what you do. New guy starts talking to bald
guy. I can't hear what they're saying because of the headphones. Then new guy turns and gives me
this friendly pat on the back and says something to me I pulled my headphones off one ear because I thought he wanted something
This guy just kind of babbles at me
I couldn't really understand what he was saying because I don't hear very well in the first place
Not enough to need aids but enough that I talk loudly in a normal speaking voice sounds quiet to me
My standard thing for when this happens is to ask them to repeat themselves or just kind of smile and nod which is what I did. Then he finally speaks up more and
asks my name, holds out his hand to shake. I say my name and go to shake his hand. Instead of shaking
it he pulls it up and kisses the back. That was when I knew that things weren't right. He starts
asking me about myself.
First how old I am, then if I drink alcohol,
then about my game and the progress Nintendo has made since putting it out.
Old game.
He goes on about alcohol for a while,
asking how much I drink and talking about how much he drinks.
The whole time he's sitting so close and leaning over me,
speaking very fast and in something between a mumble and a normal speaking voice.
I was really uncomfortable and over this guy's head I was giving panic looks at bald guy.
I know he saw those looks, he would meet my eyes and then look away.
Creepy guy asks me more stuff about what train stop I go to and where I live, which I avoid answering. He mentions that he needs to get off one stop after Uptown Station, which is the station I need to get off at. For info,
we're at Downtown Station. I live along the train line and you can see my condo from Uptown Station,
like literally, it's at the end of the road that Uptown Station is on in a T formation.
Between Downtown Station and Uptown Station, there are five other formation. Between downtown station and uptown station there are
five other stations. My train comes and I quickly go, well this is my train, bye sir, and get away
from him and onto the train. I remember fervently hoping he wouldn't follow me. He didn't follow at
first so I didn't think he would be getting on the train. So I sat down in a completely empty seat
and put my bag on the seat next to me. The train has benches with two seats on each bench. If I had known that he would
be getting on the train, I would have sat down next to one of the women on there and pretended
that I knew her. Creepy guy got on right before the train left. Before he did, bald guy who had
sat down in front of me smiled at me and said don't worry he's a weirdo but he's
harmless. I cannot tell you how angry I was about this idiot. Creepy guy may have been harmless to
him but I was terrified and looked to him for help multiple times throughout the train ride
and this bald-headed idiot would look me in the eye, acknowledge my fear, then look away and make
conversation with
other men on the train. Screw this guy, I hope he trips over and falls face first into a cactus.
Now this next part, I don't really have an explanation for. I know that this was dumb,
but it's like I froze up and my southern bred manners kicked in. The guy came into the train
and started looking around for me. I froze and thought,
oh crap. He spotted me, walked up and said, hey, can I sit next to you? I wanted to say no so badly
but I couldn't speak and my body just went into autopilot and moved my bag off the seat and onto
my lap. I was trapped between him and the wall of the train. His entire body was just pressed up against
me. There wasn't an inch of him that wasn't pressed against my side. I was just kind of frozen,
facing straight forward and staring at my game. When he talked, he did it with our cheeks only
an inch apart. He started mumbling and chattering at me again. I could barely understand him.
He asked me about my game again, then got into weirder topics.
He asked me if I listened to rap music, then congratulated me for saying no. I asked if I
dated black guys, if I had a boyfriend, if I had a girlfriend. He asked if I lived alone, where I
lived. I lied, obviously. As we got closer and closer to my stop, I got more and more afraid.
I was so scared he was going to follow me home.
It's a straight shot from the station of my condo.
You literally can't miss it.
I was giving panic eyes to everyone in there.
Men, women, out the window, anyone who would look at me.
They all looked away.
And creepy guy saw me give the looks multiple times.
It's just kind of confirmation to me that he had bad intentions.
If a normal albeit weird guy who was trying to make conversation with a girl saw her making
panic eyes to people they would realize something was up and that they were being creepy. But this
guy just didn't care. I don't know how I can properly express how terrified I was. It all
looks so clinical and factual written down but
this felt like life and death to me. He pulled dozens of folded up papers out of his pocket
and started sorting through them. He picked one and started writing on it all the while mumble
chattering about racist Chinese ladies and racist bald guy. Meanwhile my stop was coming up and I
was still panicking. My stop comes and I stand up. He had his legs up
so I couldn't get out. I very forcefully say, sir, this is my stop, I need to go. And he scrambles
up out of the way. A billion more papers, a folded up notebook and an unopened condom packet fell out
of his pockets. I get to the door. The train comes to a stop and my fears have proven
true. He gathers up all of his stuff and follows me out. Remember that he said the stop he needed
was the one after the stop I get off at. I manage to text one handed in my pocket and send help,
man follow, uptown station to my mom. She doesn't reply. I manage to turn on my headphones and connect them to my phone,
again one-handed in my pocket, and call her. She doesn't reply. I'm nearly hyperventilating.
I try to move fast enough to lose this guy since he's dropping the collection of stuff everywhere,
but he gets himself organized and catches up to me before I reach the escalators.
I've been continually calling my mom this whole time.
Creepy guy follows me up the escalator and out of the gates. At this point I stop. There is literally
no way I was going to go home and show this guy where I lived. He asked me which way I was going
next. I sort of lied and said that I was waiting for my mom to come pick me up. He said that they
would wait with me. I tried to convince him that it would be okay for
him to leave and he insisted on staying. At this point I pulled my phone out and was calling my
mom publicly. He leans in super close again and goes, oh Penny, I know her. Good looking lady.
Good looking lady. And starts going on about how he knows my mom and how pretty and nice she is,
which is complete nonsense.
My mom is a high-class accountant who works for a massive scholarly organization,
and this guy is certainly not the type of person she comes in contact with.
I give up on calling my mom.
He gives me the paper he had been writing on.
It had, assuming it was real, his full name, email address, and two phone numbers.
He kept saying to call him if I wanted a job.
I was like, okay, yeah, sure.
Then he pulls out another paper and pen and hands it to me.
He asked for my full name, email, and phone number.
I gave him a fake number and handed it back to him.
He said, no, your full name too.
I told him, oh no, I'm sorry sir, my mama wouldn't be happy if I gave that out.
He started trying to convince me that it would be okay.
At this point I panic and shove the paper with a fake number at him and say,
I'm sorry, I have to go.
And just literally run away, down the stairs to the street.
My mom finally calls me back.
Her phone had been on silent.
I was terrified and kept looking behind me to see if he was following me because he started to when I started to run. Mom leaves the condo and runs towards the station and we met in the middle.
I'd never been so relieved to see my mom. She brought me home and kept an eye out over our
shoulders for the guy. I still have the paper with his supposed
full name and contact info. I just feel like I needed to share this story because I'm still
scared. I had to go back to both those stations today and I was terrified he would be there.
I was in fight or flight mode the whole walk to the station. I felt terrible about this but
anytime I saw a guy that looked like him I nearly jumped out of my skin.
Thank God that wore off over time when I got to my class.
But I'm still scared I'm going to encounter him again.
I'm still on campus.
I'm going to have to go back to those stations again today.
And I'm so anxious that he'll be there.
I just felt like I needed to talk about it so I wouldn't be scared anymore.
I was around 9 or 10 years old. I was with my best friend and our parents.
We were on our way to the nearest shopping town. We lived in the rural-ish area with not many shops
and would
probably be finished looking around in 10 minutes. So we traveled by train to our nearest large town
city. It was easier, probably cheaper and definitely quicker. So when the train arrived,
me and my friend quickly ran to secure the first table seats, those ones with four seats and a
table in the middle. The train was pretty empty and with us being kids
we wanted our own table seats and decided to take up the ones on the opposite side of the aisle
and left our parents across from us.
I noticed a guy a couple of rows down in the normal seats
on his phone in a really strange position.
It looked like he was taking photos of me.
This was back in the day where selfies didn't really exist
so it was more than
likely that he was either taking a photo or was using his phone ridiculously weird. So I pulled
the collar of my coat over my face and looked the other way as I shrunk into my seat. I didn't
mention anything because to be honest I thought I was being outrageous. A couple of minutes later
a lady who I remember being tall slim and blonde with a wavy bob and glasses went over to my mom.
She crouched down next to her and spoke very quietly and softly.
I couldn't really hear her well enough to know what she was saying but my mom's face told the whole story.
Mom asked me to come sit with her and my friend's mom and the lady went to the conductor of the train.
When we got to the
next station there were a group of police officers and security waiting on the platform. The train
pulled up and the weird guy was taken away. We heard that he did in fact take photos of me and
they found hundreds of photos of other children on his phone and computer. They didn't go into
details but I didn't ride a train for a very, very long time after that.
This happened about a year ago when I was visiting my family back home in the city from a college during winter break.
My old high school friends decided to all
get together at the bowling alley to catch up but because I was the only one without a car,
my best friend offered to pick me up from the nearest rail train station. That station also
happens to double as a bus transfer station so a variety of people, homeless, drunk, sober, etc.
passed through. I had just gotten off the train and it wasn't too dark
out yet and I called my friend and told him to pick me up by the pickup and drop-off area which
was just between the transportation hub and the parking structure and he told me it was going to
be a 20-minute wait so I stood waiting on the sidewalk. For some reason there wasn't a lot of
traffic coming into the pickup and drop-off area but there were two cars in the area most likely waiting to pick up a relative or friend just sitting in their cars on their phones.
After a few minutes pass I see two European men, late 20s maybe, stumbling around drunk towards the area.
I didn't really think anything of it because I reasoned that they were most likely headed towards their car in the parking structure but they kept getting closer to me. One of the guys started to catcall me and slurred words saying
baby and beautiful and the other soberer one was sneering at me. Eventually I realized that they
were not just catcalling me from afar but walking to me and after they got within three feet of me
I sped walk a few paces to the side. At this point the more drunk guy starts cussing at me and after they got within three feet of me I sped walk a few paces to the side. At this point
the more drunk guy starts cussing at me and laughing and I just brush off the encounter
when they stumble away. About 10 minutes pass and it starts to get dark and one of the two cars that
was waiting had driven away so now there's only one car with an Asian guy waiting in the pickup
drop-off area with me, nobody else
around. Then I hear a car screech and rapidly pull up to the drop-off area and the other car and I
get startled and we see this banged up car roll the windows down. That's when I see that it was
the same two guys from before and realize they were purposely harassing me because the parking
lot does not require them to go through the pickup or drop-off area. The car then pulls right up to where I was standing and I see the car door open.
The one that was more drunk jumps out at me with both of his hands to grab but I kind of dodge and
he just narrowly misses touching me. At this point I ran the 40 or so feet to where the Asian guy's
car was and I'm sort of screaming because I am genuinely
afraid I am going to be kidnapped. I guess the Asian guy had watched the whole thing because
he looked just as freaked out as I was. I stood by his car and as the drunk guy stumbled on the
sidewalk and looked at us, the Asian guy turned on the headlights and then turned on his high beams.
The drunk guy stares at us for a minute disoriented by the lights mumbling in
some European language, probably more cuss words. It sounded almost Turkish or Russian and then
eventually gets back in the car and drives away. I stayed by this guy's car until my friend pulls
up and I get into my friend's car and start crying. I tell my mom later I think I almost
got kidnapped but she tells me that they were probably just
drunk jerks trying to scare a little girl.
But I don't think so.
I think they were up to something more sinister.
I'm a cosplayer.
I'm not famous but I'm well known enough in my city to be recognized once
in a while. I wrote a while back about three men on a train who tried to attack me.
I rarely take the train unaccompanied now but sometimes I have to. I prefer to be able to drive
everywhere but parking in my city is one of the most expensive in Canada and I'm a freelance
photographer by profession and can't always afford to pay
$30 for a couple hours downtown so I take the train.
My boyfriend had to stay at a friend's the night before and would be meeting me on the
other side of town to take me to the photo shoot.
I was dressed as Misa but I was wearing a coat over my outfit and regular shoes so besides
my big false lashes and the hem of my pleather shirt there was nothing to indicate
I was cosplaying. It was 5 30 a.m. We were driving to the next town over for the shoot so we had to
get started early. It was a Saturday morning so most of the people in the train were those heading
home from an overnight shift. I actually really like the early hours because usually no one gives
me a hard time or even speaks to me but every once in a while. I had arrived from the second last stop in the northwest all the way to
a station in the southwest so the train crosses half the city. A man got on downtown six stops
until I got off. My light had texted me to say he was there already. Though there were many empty
seats the man sat directly across from me.
Hey, he said. I hadn't had any coffee and wasn't up for conversation so I didn't respond.
I pretended not to hear him and kept scrolling through Facebook.
Hey, he said louder. I glanced up at him. You're really pretty, he said. I didn't respond verbally,
I just nodded slightly to acknowledge I'd heard him.
To be honest I am pretty. I'm not skinny or even super fit though I'm also not overly heavy anymore but I do have some attractive features. I'm used to people telling me I'm pretty especially when
I've done my makeup for a photo shoot. Did you hear me? I said you're pretty. You look really hot. His voice was
irritated. I heard you. Yeah, I am pretty. I responded. I was feeling irritable before he
started talking to me. Lack of coffee and all and I didn't really feel like him stating something
that was true needed to be thanked. You're not that pretty. He practically snarled this. Vain chicks like you
should be taught a lesson. I've gotten this reaction before from men, usually online or
from cat callers. There's an idea that some people have that you're only what they say you are.
They don't want women to know they're beautiful unless a man says they are.
I rolled my eyes and went back to looking
at my phone. Four stops left. I knew that after the next stop there would be a long portion through
a tunnel. The lights were on in the train so I wasn't worried about him doing anything scary.
I should cut that pretty face, he said. A few other passengers had looked up at this point.
The guy was speaking loudly and I was a little nervous now. Three stops left. A few other passengers had looked up at this point. The guy was speaking loudly and I was a little nervous now.
Three stops left.
A few people got onto the train, the last stop downtown.
The guy leaned towards me across the train.
I'm going to mess you up if you get off this train, he said.
After my last horrifying experience on the train this made me really nervous. The guy cosplaying as Light didn't have a car so we'd be walking to the mall 10 minutes away to wait for my boyfriend.
Light's not a big guy, he's an inch shorter than me actually.
Fight me, I said quietly.
I don't know why but I have a tendency to act stupid and tough when I'm afraid.
This guy was bigger than me and could probably kill me with little difficulty but it was now 5.45am and I was grouchy and hadn't had coffee.
I'm going to break your little neck, he said loudly. We were passing through the tunnel.
The train is always very loud in the tunnels and I don't think any other passengers could hear him.
We get out of the tunnel and approach the next stop.
This is the last one before I have to get off.
At this stop most of the people get off.
Besides me and the guy threatening me there are only two other people in the train.
A big guy with headphones and a little older lady.
Back off man.
My boyfriend is waiting for me at the station.
I lie.
I wish I had chosen to sit near a door.
I'm scared that if I try to get up to get to the emergency call button, he'll attack me.
No one want a fat chick like you.
But don't worry.
I like them fat.
He said this loudly.
I'm 150 pounds and 5 foot 6.
I'm slightly overweight, but I work out and have healthy eating habits so my doctor isn't worried.
Thistle.
I heard someone say loudly.
It was the big guy with the headphones.
Thistle's the name I use when I'm cosplaying.
I thought that was you.
What are you doing up so early?
He walked over to where I was sitting and sat down next to me. I don't recognize him
but I realize he heard what the guy had said to me and is coming to defend me. Just meeting some
friends. I try to keep my voice cheerful and careful to avoid looking at the guy across from
us. Nice. I'm just getting off of work. Where are you getting off? He asked me. Next stop, I reply.
No kidding, me too.
The guy across from us had leaned back in his seat, though he's still glaring at us.
When we get to the next stop, the big guy gets off the train with me.
We meet up with my friend and he walks us to the mall.
The creepy guy followed us for a few blocks and then disappeared.
I was still afraid, so the guy waited with us until my boyfriend arrived we wound up giving him a lift home
because his stop was actually about five further down the line i don't know if the
creep on the train would have actually hurt me but i'm glad i didn't have to find out.
This occurred back in 2012 when I was 18.
I was interrailing through Europe with my then boyfriend and we were on a train between Rome and a port town in Italy where we would be getting a boat to Greece the following day. We hadn't pre-booked any
accommodation as we'd found it really easy to get a hostel either en route or on arrival at our
previous destinations and as we'd be arriving in the town at nearly midnight we decided to have a
look for hostels whilst on the train. Unfortunately we found that there really wasn't as much
accommodation where we were heading as there had been in the other major cities we had visited and that the places we could find were mainly hotels and way out of
our price range. We were discussing this quandary amongst ourselves, my ex suggesting we slept at
the station when the guy sitting next to me on the train randomly struck up a conversation.
He was really enthusiastic and chatty and spoke pretty good English, asking about our trip so far, where we were from and just sort of general chit chat about ourselves.
He also said that he overheard our accommodation problem and that he knew a perfect hostel for us, very close to the station and run by his friend.
Initially, this just came across as useful bit of information but alarm bells started ringing for me as he had become very insistent that
we must stay there and that if we mentioned his name and that he had sent us that we could stay
there for virtually free. He wrote down an address and his name on a piece of paper and virtually had
me promise that we would go there. After I'd given my word that we'd stay there he stopped talking to
me entirely which I found quite odd. He'd been so
warm and talkative and then just totally shut off. He also made three phone calls none of which I
could understand other than he said the word interrail a few times. The rest of the journey
passed in slightly uncomfortable silence and when I got up to get off the train he just said
remember referring to the address. We arrived in the town
it was late and pretty deserted nothing like the big touristy cities we had been used to
and I made up my mind then and there we definitely wouldn't be staying in that hostel. My boyfriend
was slightly annoyed as I admittedly am a very paranoid person but something felt really off to me. We ended up
checking into an annoyingly expensive hotel literally a stone's throw from the station
as I was so creeped out I didn't want to go wandering off through the empty streets at night.
Whilst at the hotel I decided to look up the address he gave us. First thing to say is that
if you googled it there was no mention at all of it being a hostel or a guest house or anything.
It just came up as a street address.
And secondly, if you put it in Google Maps, it wasn't anywhere near the station that the guy ran a hostel from his house and train guy was just overly eager to promote
his business for his mate but the whole encounter felt very off to me and I was relieved to leave
the town the following day. I can't help but wonder to this day whether or not we were being sent
into some sort of trap.
For a little context, I'm now 22 and this happened when I lived back in my hometown around the ages of 11 to 13.
For this story you should know that where my house was was like any other normal UK street except for the fact that there was an alleyway down to a train bridge that led to a dirt track
that led down to what we called the commons i.e woodland area with a small cafe and a golf course.
The commons were somewhere myself and my family would go all the time as I grew up
as something to do to cure
boredom, to walk the dog, etc. I even used to go down there with my friends as we got older.
On this particular occasion, I was taking a walk down to the commons with a family member as
something to do to cure boredom. The commons are beautiful in the summer. It is a lovely time to
walk down there. It never felt creepy or sinister until this particular day.
As myself and my family member have walked the train bridge and are walking down the dirt path
towards the woods we stop at a turnstile that leads to the train tracks which you just cross
in order to get to the woods. As we reached here we were greeted with the sight of a middle-aged
out-of-shape man laying on the train tracks.
Red flags immediately start firing. The man jumps up and makes his way to talk to us.
In conversation with him, he seemed normal. He was polite, positive, I'd even dare to say happy-go-lucky.
He immediately spoke with my family member something like the following. Afternoon. What brings you two out on this lovely afternoon? We're just enjoying a walk through the woods to kill some time.
Sounds lovely. What a nice idea. Have a nice afternoon. And then he went straight back to
laying down on the tracks. As we passed by him to the woodland my family member paused and went back to have an
exchange with him. I couldn't hear what was said but weird guy changed in a flash. Aggressive,
violent. Whatever he said to my family member it shook him as he came back pale. He wouldn't tell
me what was said but just said we should push on and for me to not look back. Anyway, we continue walking and despite
being shaken up by the incident, it slips to the back of my mind. The woodlands we walk in has a
route that circles all the way back around to the dirt path and that's the one we always took.
As we were walking back up, we passed the turnstile and the weirdo was nowhere to be seen.
However, as we walked the dirt path covered
in thick foliage, we suddenly heard blood curdling screams. They were loud, terrifying and downright
bone chilling. Someone was getting hurt. That person sounded to be female. My family member
rushed us back up the path and back to the house ASAP. Fast forward a few years later and my family
member explains that in the confrontation with the weirdo he inquired as to what he was doing
and if he needed help and that it was unsafe to help and his response was basically
leave me alone or I'll seriously hurt or kill you. That was enough for my family member to
leave him alone. Also we later found out that the screams that we had heard were linked to a murder in the woods.
My family member couldn't remember if it was linked to the guy we met, but it seemed likely.
This happened when I was quite young.
I was at a train station in London with my family walking through a crowd of people to catch our train.
When all of a sudden this old man from behind me grabs my shoulder and starts screaming in my face that I kicked him.
I immediately start crying so my mom and her husband turn around and start asking this man what the problem is.
He just continues shouting and swearing saying that I kicked him. Bear in mind that I honestly
didn't kick anyone and he was behind me. My mom's husband starts getting in his face and he runs off
somewhere so we go to find a member of staff to report what happened. We finally find someone and
once we've explained our situation they get some other staff to go and find this man, which they eventually do and remove him from the station because of his behavior.
We also got moved up to first class, which was really nice of them.
This happened to me in Europe when I was still a student, about 11 years ago, this time in France.
I went to see my friend Jay in the suburbs and wanted to take the last train home to the city
where I lived. It was past 11pm but I do not remember the exact time. He dropped me off in
front of the station in his green estate car and left. Nothing unusual.
On the platform, I was told by a couple of teenagers that the trains had been cancelled due to a suicide on the line.
This was confirmed by the announcement screen on the platform.
The station was unmanned at that time of the night.
Being a student, a taxi was out of the question, so I called Jay to ask him to come and drive me home.
He said it would only be a few minutes as he was only around the corner. A few minutes pass and a green estate car
arrives and parks in front of the station. I don't hesitate, open the passenger door and climb in
and I am puzzled. Why does Jay have little plastic bags filled with leaves on the dashboard?
They weren't there earlier. Why does
he have a machete stuck between the passenger seat and his seat? I look up at him to ask these
questions and, why is this guy not my friend and why is he staring at me like that? I snap out of
it. I think I have the wrong car. I think you do. My friend is just around the corner. He's coming to pick me up.
You have the same car. He locks the door. Thankfully, Jay arrives at that point, passes us,
and parks and gets out of his car. Jay is big, does boxing, and the guy next to me sees it.
The door clicks open. I bolt out of the car, run to Jay, shouts at him to get in his car and drive. He doesn't ask
questions and we drive off. Once I calmed down, he told me he got out of his car because he could
see a bunch of youngsters approaching the exit of the station and they had baseball bats. He was
wondering if I was in any kind of trouble. Jay thinks the guy locked me in the car to protect me from the young guys. I'm not that sure myself.
I'm glad he came back when he did, so I never had to find out.
I've only told this to a few people outside of my family, and I only recently started talking about
it. I wish I'd told someone sooner as I discovered a co-worker encountered these men as well.
I work downtown, standard 8-5 hours. Once in a while I work overtime, but not often,
and not on the day this happened. It was just a couple of minutes after 5pm when I left work.
It's just a few blocks from my office building to the train station.
There are a few bars and back alleys along the walk,
but the worst I've ever dealt with along there are homeless folks who get a little aggressive asking for cash.
They don't bother me much.
The train ride from the station downtown to the station where I park my car is about 40 minutes.
If I'm lucky, I manage to get a seat and don't have to
stand for the whole ride. On that day, I was lucky, more or less. I got a seat next to a window,
which left the seat next to me open. At the next stop, three men got on. One of them sat next to
me and the other sat on the seats across from me, so they were facing me. I was listening to my
music on my iPod, so I couldn't really hear them.
I did notice however that the guy sitting next to me was trying to move closer to me on the seat.
He would move close enough that his leg was touching mine so I'd scoot away and he'd move
closer again. Eventually I was pressed right against the window and had no doubt that he had
more than a few inches of free space on his other side. I was wearing sunglasses
and could surreptitiously glance at them. I noticed that they would occasionally say something
then all look at me. It was incredibly creepy and uncomfortable. I was nervous about getting
off at my stop but minus the second to last one on the train line so when the train pulled into
my station I got off. The guy sitting next to me
tried to grab my arm, but I was moving quickly and was able to get out. I was hoping they wouldn't
get off the train there. It was a busy station and they couldn't know where I was parked,
and they did. I guess it was their luck that they'd targeted me. I parked in the farthest
lot from the station because the parking there is free. It's about a 7 minute walk, which isn't usually too bad but my lot tends to be pretty quiet and I was really worried about these guys following me.
As a bit of background, I was fat.
I work in an office job and I was sitting all day and not working out.
Add to that my strong sweet tooth and you've got a recipe for bad body.
I was about 30 pounds overweight and
probably couldn't run more than 30 seconds. Sad considering I ran track and played hockey in high
school. I still play hockey but on a woman's day team league and it's really not competitive.
I'm the youngest on my team by about 20 years but my mom is on the team and it's something fun to do
together. I was crossing the bridge over the road from the station to the parking lot when I noticed the three guys less than ten feet behind me.
I wasn't carrying a knife, though I do own a legal sized knife, nor any pepper spray because it's illegal in my Canadian city.
I know a little bit about personal protection though, a required class for girls at the private high school I attended in my youth.
So I put my car key and my house key between my fingers so if I needed to hit someone it would
hurt them at least a little. The guys followed me across the main lot. They didn't hide the fact
that they were there and the more nervous I was the louder they laughed. I managed to get across
the road between the lots before they got to the
road. They had to wait for a couple of cars to pass before they could cross. I was almost halfway
across the lot when they crossed the road. I started to run. I could hear their feet pounding
pavement behind me. I used my clicker to unlock my car when I got close. I retched the door open,
so glad that there was no one parked next to me.
I had barely closed my door and slammed the lock when the guys reached my car.
They were banging on my window and yelling, jeering. I'd never been so afraid in my life.
I was worried they'd break the windows to get in. There was a guy behind me banging on the back of
my hatchback so I couldn't reverse out of my spot without running him over. I should have but I was afraid and not thinking. I was screaming but no one was around
to hear me. I didn't know what they wanted but I knew it wasn't anything good. I wish I had the
screamer my mom had given me for protection but it needed a new battery so I didn't bring it with me.
That thought, the one about the screamer, made me realize I had something even better.
When you're being assaulted, you're not supposed to scream for help.
No one wants to help.
And you scream fire because everyone wants to watch the blaze.
So I turn on my car alarm.
It was incredibly loud in my car, so loud I thought I would go deaf,
but it had the reaction I wanted.
The guy started backing off. I saw people walking into the lot looking in the direction of my car. People could
see what was going on. The guys took off back towards the train station and I drove home crying.
The next night I started working out. I have worked out almost every day since then. If those cars hadn't been
in the road at that time, if I'd just run a little slower, if I'd been too slow clicking the lock,
it all could have ended so much differently. I've lost 20 pounds since then and have gained a great
deal of muscle. I quit my job. I've had anxiety issues for years and this encounter made it so much worse.
I never want to feel that powerless again.
In order to really paint the picture of you of the scariest event I have ever experienced in my
entire life and to really feel
that moment when my blood turned to ice in my veins. I've got to give you a little background
on my rather unconventional and messed up childhood. I'll try to keep this part brief.
I'm sure this will sound like utter crap to some but I assure you it's not. I'm telling the absolute
truth even if it does sound like a badly produced after school special. My father kidnapped me from
my mother when I was a baby, not because he loved me and couldn't live without me, but because he's
a sociopathic douchebag that wanted to hurt my mother as much as he could. I was missing for
roughly six years, based on the back of a milk carton, the whole nine. My father was an ex-military
survivalist that smuggled drugs over the Mexican-American border, among other things, at that time.
During these most formative years of my development, I was surrounded by criminals and raised by this neglectful idiot.
I had a lot of severe trauma very young.
Let's just say that I knew what real monsters were. By the time I was located and returned to my mother just after I turned seven,
I knew how to load, clean, and assemble several different types of guns. I knew to aim for the
head of the men wearing blue uniforms, and I was a good shot with a handgun. I'd been left alone
for days at a time repeatedly and often, so I was completely self-sufficient and could care for
myself. I didn't go to school
and only had been around other kids for very rare brief moments in time. I was a feral little beast
at this point. I didn't trust adults or anyone for that matter. In my experience most people were
liars and didn't show you their true face. Lucky for me I was returned to a loving home with my mother and stepfather.
With love, therapy, and protection by the two of them, I think I turned out to be a relatively
normal and surprisingly mentally healthy woman, albeit with a few idiosyncrasies.
Now, the point of all this preamble is to give you some context regarding the kind of person I am.
I'm not a victim. I don't take crap from people
and there are very few things in this world that truly terrify me. I am a survivor. Growing up that
way I did. I studied people intensely as a defense mechanism. I am very good at reading people and
their emotions. At times even the feelings they won't admit to themselves. I have been left with an obsession for my security and of those I love, so I tend to be hyper-vigilant of my surroundings.
There is always a weapon of some type on my person or in my belongings wherever I go,
and I take note of every exit and entrance of any place I step into. As a teenager,
my stepfather taught me some tricks on how to take down someone that was
bigger and or stronger than me. He was a biker and at one time a bartender and bouncer at a rowdy
biker bar, so he knew his stuff. You would think I would be prepared, right? The story that I am
trying to get to here was one of the few times in my adult life that someone slipped through all my
defenses and nearly got to my young daughters.
Now it's one thing to fear for your own safety,
but to fear for the safety of your children, as I'm sure every parent knows,
is something entirely different.
It is ice cold, blood curdling, absolute sheer terror,
and I never, ever, ever want to experience it again.
I was living in San Francisco roughly
seven years ago. At the time, I managed a medical office inside a large residential drug rehab
center. The residents were a mix of characters ranging from the homeless and mentally ill
to straight out of San Quentin parolees. I actually enjoyed my work and never felt unsafe
there, but it was exhausting.
It was Friday at the end of a 50 hour work week and I couldn't wait to get home and put my feet up.
The building I worked in was donated by the Catholic Church and used to be an old convent.
It's a four story stone behemoth and I ran up and down three of those floors all day every day that week.
It's been a rough week and I was deep to the bones tired as well as mentally fried. It was no quick commute home for me however. My job was in the Fillmore Lower
Height area and my babysitter lived near Balboa Park where I lived in the Sunset District next
to San Francisco State. The fastest way home involved walking two city blocks to get to a bus which would drop me
near the closest underground station. From there hop on a train that would take me all the way
across the city nearby to the end of the line. At least the babysitter didn't live far from the line
so I didn't need to transfer to another bus. Once I had my girls I would have to wait for the next
train to head back down to the M line and finally a 15 to 20 minute trek on foot to the back of the small
city-sized complex where our apartment was. I had made it to the babysitter's house uneventfully and
stood waiting for the next train, counting the minutes down until we would be at our front door.
This was an above-ground stop so my habit was to hold the hand
of my seven-year-old and heft my three-year-old toddler on my hip, clamber up the steps and carry
her through the train to find a seat. Although she was able to walk she wasn't so balanced on a moving
subway train as well as being a toddler so she tended to fall over and become easily distracted
by the other people in the train. Strollers seemed to me more of a pain
than they were helpful when dealing with public transit, so this had become my routine. Looking
back, I'm sure I looked an easy target. It's not like I present this as a hardened and grizzled
person. There's really nothing intimidating about me, I don't think. I knew I had balls of steel,
but unless you challenged me me no one else would.
I was a 27 year old exhausted single mother just trying to get home with my kids and belongings in
tow. We were on the final leg of the journey home and being so tired and wiped out my defenses were
down. So when I managed to get up the stairs onto the train and realized that the car was empty
except for one homeless man I just didn't feel it was worth to continue through the train and realized that the car was empty except for one homeless man. I just didn't feel it
was worth to continue through the train cars to a more populated area. I observed this guy and
quickly took mental note of him as was my habit. He was at the end of the train in the last car,
right next to and opposite the door I entered from. He didn't look to be something I should
be afraid of. Remember, I worked with this population every day and I knew that most of these people were nothing to be afraid of.
In my experience, most of these guys just had terrible lives followed by a series of mine to sit down in the empty seat next to a homeless person,
if they didn't appear to be intoxicated or schizophrenic, that no one else would take and strike up a conversation.
If you ever want to see true joy in the eyes of another human, sit down next to a homeless person and talk to them like a regular person.
You will make their day, but I digress.
He appeared to be in his mid-forties, unkempt, shaggy hair and scruffy facial hair,
wearing several layers of raggy, stained clothes with an oversized coat that hung past his knees.
He had a tall can of beer in his hand, I noticed, but didn't seem overly attentive to my presence.
Even though this man didn't set off a fear response for me,
I was not in the mood
to deal with an intoxicated hobo with my girls tonight, so I headed up the train hoping I'd make
it onto the next car before we started moving. No such luck. Being the only group that got on
the train at this stop, the train pulled off quickly and I had only made it near the end of
this car. Balancing a tot on one hip, holding the hand of the other
and all the weight of bags and purses on the other shoulder, I just kind of dropped and wilted into
the empty seats we were next to at the front of the car. We didn't have far to go now and I could
see from my vantage point two people in the car ahead of me. I was in the habit of placing my
girls on one seat to situate bags and I always sat in the aisle seat as a protective measure.
While we were getting settled and the train gets going I hear this guy in the back start singing to himself.
Honestly I don't remember what I just remember he seemed happy.
I had filed this man away in my brain as just another homeless guy riding the train at night on a loop to stay warm which they did often.
Most of the time they don't bother anyone because they don't want to get kicked off the train. I figured he had
hand-handled enough that night for a beer and a ticket and I didn't begrudge him a little joy
and warmth as long as he stayed away from my kids. As I'm sitting there attending to my girls,
kind of half aware of the hobo in the back. I slowly register that his singing is getting a
little louder, more boisterous and closer. I glance over my shoulder to see he is hobbling
our direction and looking at my toddler who is peeking at him over the back of the seat
as she's sitting on her knees. I start to pay a little more attention to his whereabouts
but again there's nothing that says to me he's dangerous. I have no problem enforcing boundaries
with strangers in public, but I also have a lot of compassion for these guys. After all,
with a couple of different turns in my own past, that could have been me. It's apparent this guy
has had more than one tall boy that night as he is sort of swaying and slurring his words,
but he appears to be singing for my little tot because she is tickled pink, giggling and smiling
the more animated his singing becomes. I study his face but his smile doesn't seem creepy to me at
all. He honestly doesn't seem like a possible Chester to me or have any ill intent. He just
seemed to enjoy entertaining an adorable little girl. Maybe he had kids of his own somewhere that
he missed or maybe he was just
lonely. Even so I didn't want to engage with this guy and encourage him so I was paying a little
more attention to what he was doing now out of my peripheral view. By this time he had made it
pretty close to us and he dropped into the bench seat that was a couple of rows and on the opposite
side of us roughly seven feet away. We were sitting in the forward facing seats at the front of the car.
Now I was wary but still not afraid or skeeved out by this guy.
He starts chatting with me at this point.
In his slurred speech he says,
Beautiful family you got there.
You're a lucky mom to have such cute kids.
I'm so not in the mood to talk to anyone right now but as I said
I have too much compassion for people down on their luck so I just politely say thank you without
turning around. Still slurring he launches into a tale about the family he used to have and
everything that went wrong in his life. It doesn't seem to matter to him that I'm not really engaging
but he's not coming any closer
to us so I don't stop him or interrupt. Now what happens next is my first inkling that this guy
may not be what he seems. It's not so much what he says that does it but the sudden shift in tone
and personality. He's not slurring anymore. The volume of his voice has dropped a bit and the
tone of his voice changes to this Hannibal Lecter smugness.
He's not talking to me anymore, but at my tot who is peeking at him again over my shoulder.
Hello, little girl.
Now, this guy had my full attention.
Every cell in my body is saying pay attention to this Hello Clarice fellow.
I look over my shoulder to look directly at him
and really assess his demeanor. His joviality seemed to be gone and I don't see a happy hobo
anymore but a leering grin on his face that doesn't reach his dead looking brown eyes.
He is looking at my littlest tot but then shifts his eyes to look at my seven-year-old who is also
staring at him although looking less entertained than her sister.
This is the moment my blood runs cold,
and that same Hannibal tone of voice, still not slurring, he says,
Oh, aren't you the pretty little one?
Such pretty white skin.
So sexy.
I'm looking directly at him when he says this and what I see in his face has me
terrified. I do not like the way he is looking at my daughter like she is a piece of meat.
He realizes I am looking at him and shifts his eyes to look at me now and grins a little wider
to show me a perfectly white intact smile that seems incongruous with the rest of his getup. I also
noticed that while his attire is dirty he himself seems pretty clean and his scruffy facial hair has
a distinct line as if though he shaved it that way with purpose. Now maybe I'm just paranoid due to
my past. Maybe this guy had gotten free dental work. Maybe he had showered at his shelter but
had nothing clean to put back on and maybe he
had gotten a free shave from a barber giving back. There are plenty of plausible explanations for
what I observed but it's when I lock eyes with this guy that alarm bells go off in my head.
What kind of man calls a seven-year-old sexy and why did his demeanor seem to change so suddenly?
Why did he seem perfectly sober?
I have absolutely no doubt this man is a predator. My intuition which I trust completely
says to get away from this guy now. All of this goes through my head in a nanosecond.
I stand up to pick up my bags, adrenaline surging, have the little one back to my hip,
grab the hand of the oldest and head for the door of
the car. Because I want the two people in the car ahead of me to hear, I wait for the doors to open
before I turn back to him and loudly with my mama bear authority say, you stay away from us.
I didn't care if I was wrong in my assumption and I didn't care anymore if I hurt his feelings.
I lumber to the front of the car and again sit in the very front forward seats.
I don't go any further because this happens to be a long train with probably 6 or 7 cars
and I don't see anybody on the next couple of cars from my vantage point.
I want to stay with the other passengers.
It's not unusual for the train to be this empty this far away from downtown
and at this time of night in
between the commute rush and the Friday night club crowd. I'm used to disembarking alone or with very
few others at my stop when I work this late. I'm starting to panic at this point about what I would
do at my stop coming up. It is also in this part of the line that is still above ground and I'm not
going to have a crowd of people to get lost in. This creep could easily follow me on my walk through the complex and either attack me alone
or follow me home. Because I'm pondering my predicament and literally terrified,
I don't immediately register that the people who were on the car with me have gotten off the train
and I am now alone again. Several minutes go by and we are getting close to our stop
when I hear the whoosh of the car doors open behind me. Please be another passenger,
I'm praying to myself before I look behind me. Nope, it's creepy Hannibal Hobo headed toward
me again, but this time he is glaring at me. No more smile, no more singing, no more slurring,
just an evil glare as he plods my direction.
He's got his left hand up on the overhead bar with his right hand seeming to hold something
inside his jacket as he plods toward me. My stomach drops into my toes and my heart leaps
into my throat. We are all alone several cars behind anyone I can see. I don't wait to find
out what he's got in his jacket. I hadn't set down
any bags this time. They were still over my shoulder and I was still holding my youngest.
So I grab the hand of my oldest and tell her we need to get to the front. I can tell she is scared
now too but I'm trying not to frighten her too bad. I kind of push and pull her gently in front
of me thinking if I can get to the front of the car even if it's empty I'll be right behind the conductor. I'm going as fast as I can which
isn't very fast with everything I'm juggling. As I'm nearing the doors again I can see that the
next car is empty but the next car has people. I'm almost there as long as he doesn't catch up to us.
We should be safe. We are now almost to my stop and the train
is slowing down again. I hear the doors swoosh open again behind me. I glance over my shoulder
to see this guy is running at me. Jesus Christ, I have never been so terrified in my entire life.
I move ahead as fast as I can into the next car but I know I'm not going to make it to the next
filled with people and no one seems to be looking this way from the car ahead and the train is pulling it to the stop.
This is that moment when time just seems to slow down. I'm thinking this guy plans to incapacitate
me with no hands to defend myself and he is going to run off the stopping train with one or both of my girls. Now my adrenaline is surging
and I can feel my heart thumping at warp speed. I drop the bags from my shoulder not caring about
what's in them now. I need free movement. I tell my seven-year-old to stay behind me as I squat
down to plop my youngest on the train floor. In one motion I turn around, raise up, pull my pocket knife out of my back pocket,
flip it open taking a wide legged defensive stance. I don't know if it was the security of
my knife in my hand or that one final surge of adrenaline but I swear to god as I stood up,
I grew. I felt like Mario having just gotten his mushroom. I felt invincible, three times my size and superhuman.
No one was going to get through to me to my babies even if I was going to get stabbed.
He stops dead in his tracks when he sees the knife about five feet in front of me.
I sway a bit with the brake on the train bringing it to a halt but keep my footing.
Without thinking I scream at this guy, take one more step and I'll
cut off your balls and choke you with them. I see his eyes widen at this. He obviously did not expect
this kind of reaction. He looks in my eyes, looks at the knife, looks behind me at my kids and one
more time glances back to my eyes. Then he turns tail and runs out the open doors
and off the train. I barely register a couple of college students by the look of them. They hop
onto my car and immediately hop off, probably because I'm still standing there looking like
a psycho with a knife out. I hear the ding and swish of the doors closing again and the train
moves on. At this point I just kind of crumpled to the floor
and hugged my kids to me and burst into tears. My oldest is crying too while her little sister is
just completely bewildered. I didn't move from the floor until we pulled into the next stop at
West Portal where we disembarked and I called my roommate and best friend. He was a man with big
biceps and uncanny strength for his size. I wanted him to
meet me at the train stop so we didn't have to walk through the complex alone in the dark after
this craziness, which of course he did because he's amazing like that. I never stayed on an
empty train after that. No matter how tired I am, I will move to a car full of people.
I never saw Hannibal Hobo again and I don't care.
I don't think he ever wants to meet me again either.
This is without a doubt the most terrifying thing that has ever happened to me.
I have only told a few people but feel like I need to share it in case it helps any students traveling abroad to be more cautious.
So a little background.
This happened to me about five years ago when I was 19 and studying abroad in Italy.
Our school had its own campus about an hour outside of Rome in a quiet town where the Pope has a summer place. Part of our
school's program in Italy was that we had to leave campus for 10 days to vacation and explore Europe
in October. Everybody would split off into their friend groups and travel. I didn't really have a
group I was attached to but not wanting to go by myself I asked these two girls I was friendly with
if I could travel with them. They were best friends and roommates and were nice enough and said I could go with them.
We decided to travel from Rome to Austria, Prague and Germany via the Eurorail, the train.
We went the entire trip having fun and without incident until the last day which is where my awful experience begins.
On our last day we were in Munich meeting up with most of our class as a
school tradition of sorts. The two girls I was traveling with and I had tickets to take the
overnight train that night back to Rome from Munich left around midnight. During the day one
of the girls tells me that she had changed her plan 10 days before we left and was going to stay
in Munich overnight and come back the next day which
was a surprise to me but I still wasn't that worried because she was joining up with our
classmates and staying in a booked hostel with them and I would still be traveling with this
other girl. Then to my dismay the other girl says she is changing her mind and staying overnight in
Munich as well. I asked her where she planned to stay as we hadn't booked
a room in a hostel. She said she would sneak into the hostel and share a bed with the other girl.
I told her that I was really uncomfortable traveling alone and that it wasn't fair for
her to abandon me like that. She told me nonchalantly that I could just find a hostel
and book another ticket if I cared too much. I told her I didn't have the extra money to
pay for a separate ticket back to Rome let alone a hostel in addition to that. Now I was a college
student on a very tight budget and already spent a lot on this trip and didn't have enough in my
bank account. Despite my pleas those petty girls said essentially that it was not their problem
and ditched me. Luckily we had already met up with another group of our classmates who felt bad for me and spent the entire last day of our vacation
running all around Munich trying to find me a hostel to stay at that night and even offered
to pool their money together to help me pay for a ticket back. Unfortunately it was Oktoberfest
in Germany and literally every hostel was completely booked up and despite my
attempts to sneak into my friend's hostels with them I was stopped and thrown out. At this point
it's night time. I was defeated and worried but my other classmates who had tried to help me were
still sticking with me. I figured at this point the only options I had were to sleep outside on
a bench in Munich, totally unsafe and ridiculous,
or take the overnight train back to Rome by myself. Not super safe, but I figured I'd be
around other people so maybe not completely awful. So I decided to go ahead and take the overnight
train back to Rome by myself and my classmates walked me to the station and saw me on the train.
These guys actually ended up being some of
my closest friends in years to come. So now I'm on this overnight train by myself and I head to my
carriage. The way it was set up was it was a room off a hallway with six seats. No beds because
trying to save money. I was the first one in my carriage so I sit next to the window on one side
and put my giant backpackers pack
which was my only luggage on the two seats next to me. Eventually two German guys in their 30s
come in and are polite enough and sit opposite me. They converse with each other, they've got
their suitcases and are looking at maps of Rome and tourist things to do. I feel safe enough with
these guys since they're minding their own business, and this is where it gets bad.
I settle in and listen to music and try to sleep for a bit, and perhaps after an hour or so I start to notice there's a super sketchy guy standing right outside our carriage in the middle of the hallway staring at me.
I'm completely freaked out because 1. No one is supposed to just be in the hallway standing there.
You're either on your way to the loo or headed back to your carriage.
Why would anyone just be standing in the hallway?
And two, he didn't break eye contact with me once when I looked at him.
He just kept staring at me with a sinister look on his face like he wanted to eat me up.
So I'm kind of freaking out and trying to look away and pretend like I didn't really notice him.
I wait a bit to see if he was just a normal guy going to or from the loo or something,
but when I look back, he's still there, hasn't moved,
and is still leering at me from behind the window door of my carriage.
I want to go shut the curtains to our carriage so he can't look in,
but I don't want to get too close to him or anger him or anything,
so I turn to the two German guys and quietly tell them that the guy there is creeping me out and staring at
me and making me uncomfortable and I asked them if one of them could casually in a minute or so
close the curtains. I had hoped that they'd be men and kind and protect me and tell the guy to
bugger off or whatever but they seemed annoyed at me and mumbled that they
would but never did. When I brought it up again they kind of acted miffed but eventually shut
the curtain. I thought that surely that would have deterred the guy from lurking and I soon fell
asleep. A few hours later I awoke to three young Germans in their mid-late 30s join our carriage
in the remaining three seats. As they come in I notice
that the creepy guy from before is still there standing outside my door. I kind of freak out
inside and really don't feel comfortable at all and I'm a bit panicky. I try to talk to the younger
Germans but they weren't very friendly and perhaps didn't speak English very well. It's been hours at
this point and I notice that I really have to
pee. But the only way for me to get to the loo is to go outside of the carriage and down the hall
to the loo and at the very end of the train a bit away from other carriages with people.
I notice that when the younger Germans came in they moved the curtain a bit so I can see the
creepy dude standing out there leering at me still. He refuses to go away. I notice that when people
walk by to use the loo or whatever he kind of acts casual like he's waiting for someone or something
and looks away from my carriage but once they're gone he's back at it again. I try to hold it in
as long as I can but this is a 12 hour train ride and would be another four hours or more before we
made it to Rome and there was no
way I was going to make it. At this point everyone in my carriage has been asleep for a long time and
I don't want to wake anymore. I have to nudge the young Germans on my way out of the carriage to go
to the loo and I try to tell them I'm going to the loo and could they just keep an eye on me and
the creepy lurker and they brush me off like I'm a jerk for waking them up and they go back to
sleep. I exit the carriage freaked out of my mind and also about to pee my pants and of course I
basically run into the creepy dude standing outside my carriage. There's hardly any room in
the hallway and he's not giving me any space and is staring me down. I'm 5 foot 4 and he was towering
over me like 6 foot 2 or something and burly so I do my best to book it to
the loo as fast as I can and lock the door behind me. My heart is racing and I'm going as fast as I
can so that hopefully he hasn't followed me here. But alas, I get out of the loo and he is right
there with this disgusting smile on his face. I mean, I don't like to exaggerate, but there was an evil in his eyes,
and it chilled me. I was sick to my stomach. I tried to squeeze by him quickly, and he started
to press himself against me. I gave him my nasty face and yelled for him to let me go.
And praise tiny baby Jesus, there was a man headed to the loo my way just then,
so the creepy guy dude moved off me and I booked it back to my
carriage where I proceeded to stay for the remainder of the ride. I thought that my outburst and little
scene I caused would have deterred that sketchy guy from creeping on me anymore but when I looked
up at some point I noticed he was right back where he was in the hallway staring at me. At this point
I was kind of in disbelief that someone could be this blatantly
lecherous so I started to wonder if there was actually a seat out in the hallway that was
cheaper than a shared carriage but then I realized that I had left to go to the bathroom earlier and
I had seen no seats and I also remembered one unsettling detail too. This guy had no luggage, not even a briefcase. This was a 12 plus hour trip
from Germany to Rome so everyone on this train was either coming or going from work or a pleasure
trip but all of them had at least a small travel suitcase of sorts. So the fact that this guy had
no luggage or briefcase or anything on him and was just standing in the hallway staring at me made my stomach drop. This man did not have good intentions and I couldn't rationalize it any
other way. I spent the last hour or so of the trip devising my plan for once the train arrived in Rome.
I knew the train station there very well and knew that the metro train I needed to transfer to get
back to my campus was down several flights of stairs and around more than a few twists and turns. I felt pretty confident so when the train stopped
I had my backpack on ready to go. The other Germans got out of the train ahead of me and
the creepy guy had to move for them to pass and I quickly followed in between them and jumped off
the train and booked it through the station without looking behind me. Thank God I was crowded in the station with people headed to work,
and so I felt safe that I was disguised in the crowd.
I flew down the flights of stairs and around the turns without stopping.
When I finally got down to the platform for the local metro train I needed, I felt safe.
I was just catching my breath when I saw none other than the creepy guy come down the stairs
and look around for me when he saw me he had that evil lecherous look in his eye and I wanted to cry
I grabbed tightly onto my pocket knife in my coat pocket and made my way to a group of harmless
looking Italians and tried to stand in their group they seemed annoyed that I was standing
so close to them I don't know maybe it was my giant backpacker backpack or my scared and sweaty disheveledness, who knows. I was standing still about several
train car lengths away from him at this point but he was starting to make his way over to me just as
the train pulled up. I hopped on my car immediately and tried to position myself near some folks
who rudely kept scooting away from me. I noticed he got on a few cars away.
As the car was moving he made his way down his car into the next and with each stop the train
made he got a little closer to me. I myself moved a car's length down away from him but I grew
increasingly worried that the farther outside of the metro Rome area the fewer people were on the
train and the closer he was getting to me.
When I made it to the first car and realized I had nowhere else to go, I looked and noticed he was only one car away from me and headed my way. As we pulled into the next stop, I grabbed my
pocket knife tightly and made a last ditch effort to evade him and get off the train.
I looked to my right and to my horror saw that he had gotten off as well and was briskly running
toward me. As the last few people shoved past me to get on the train I realized I had no options
left and threw myself back and dove into the train without breaking eye contact with this
sicko as the doors to the train closed in front of him and I realized I had made it safely onto
the train leaving him on the platform fuming and yelling as the train sped off.
Not really believing I had made it safely,
I spent the rest of the metro ride still in fight or flight mode
and dashed upstairs to my above ground bus up to my campus,
making sure I was sitting next to a sweet old lady.
The creepy dude never showed up on the bus,
and once I had made it back inside my campus'
walls, I immediately fell to the ground and sobbed. I realized I was so incredibly lucky
that I had evaded what was probably a certain kidnapping, or even worse, who knows. But I have
never forgotten that man's face and the look in his eye and how it made me feel like I wanted to peel my skin off and crawl under a rock and die.
I ended up telling my ordeal to the dean of our campus and pleaded for him to reprimand those girls who abandoned me
and forced me into a compromising position which was completely unsafe.
I wanted the dean to tell all the students and future students that it is never okay to let someone travel alone, especially females,
and especially since most of us were young and felt invincible and were just plain naive and
stupid and didn't know what was safe and what wasn't. But that weasel of a dean thought I was
overreacting and I was probably asking for it. Yeah, it was a school that victim blamed and
thought leggings were impure and thought the girls who abandoned me were goody goodies, and I was some loose rebel who got herself into this position, and he never addressed it.
I haven't heard anyone else at my school getting into situations like me, but I've made sure to tell all the girls and guys who are in years below me to be careful when they study abroad and to not do what those
girls did to me. I hope this helps someone in some way and if you ever see a man traveling
a long distance without any luggage or briefcase at all, be wary. This happened a few months ago when I was on my way home from my boyfriend's place.
I am a small, shy, 20-year-old girl, 5'2 and just barely above 100 pounds.
It was around 4pm when I got on a very packed train.
I could not find a seat and had to stand by the door.
I held to the yellow bar connected to the glass thingy.
At the next stop, more people climbed on and instead of having my back against the door,
I now faced the glass part and had this skinny, tall guy, possibly late twenties, stand directly behind me.
Suddenly, I felt a little bit of pressure on my butt.
I inched forward, filling what little space there was between myself and the person
in front of me. The creep also stepped forward a bit more, pressed his hand on my butt. Being in
a packed train with very little room to move elsewhere, I bit my lip and fought tears and
tried to ignore the creep who was now squeezing on me. Then I made eye contact with a rather big
man in his fifties and he asked, Are you alright?
I shook my head, no, and the man got up, gave me a seat and grabbed the creep by the front of his shirt and yelled stuff like,
Can't you see she's not interested? Leave the girl alone!
And slammed the creep into the handrail as the train stopped at the next platform.
I never got to thank the man as he got off on that stop.
And thankfully, the creep got off on the stop before mine the day after black friday I was working later than usual
because retail life
I made plans to walk home from work with my two guy friends
since we all
lived together and worked for the same company about a mile away from each other. Fortunately,
I was able to get a ride from a co-worker to the train station where I was going to meet my friends,
avoiding the almost mile walk to the train station through a drug riddled and crime heavy area.
When I arrived at the station, I texted my two friends that I was there and was going
to wait on the platform since I didn't want to loiter outside on the street so late at
night.
They said that they were finishing up and would meet me on the platform soon.
Once underground on the platform, I leaned against a wall and just generally looked around
and watched people since I don't like being on my phone in very crowded places.
It was past 11.30 pm but the place was still packed with Black Friday shoppers finally headed home for the day.
Trains were becoming less and less frequent,
and I was getting a bit annoyed that my friends weren't there yet since each train was coming about 15 minutes apart.
Finally, one was arriving in 5 minutes,
and my friends texted that they were on their way and would hopefully make it to the next train. I start lining up expecting to make the next train coming when someone behind me put their hand on my shoulder. I bulky with a scruffy beard and wearing wrinkled
neutral toned clothes. Naturally my smile began to slip but he had already caught my friendly
disposition and took advantage releasing my shoulder and standing so close next to me that
I took a couple of steps back from where I was starting to line up and ended up next to the wall
I had originally been leaning against earlier. He reached out his hand for a shake and on autopilot I stuck mine out as well.
He clasped my hand with both of his all the while smiling and said,
Hello, what's your name?
I was caught off guard and not necessarily worried,
just annoyed with myself for allowing this interaction to begin.
I responded half-heartedly with,
Jolene? He still hadn't let go of my hand. for allowing this interaction to begin. I responded half-heartedly with,
Jolene? He still hadn't let go of my hand. Never dropping the smile, he goes,
Jolene, you're beautiful. How was your Thanksgiving? At this point, I had yanked back my hand and stuck both my hands in the front pockets of my jacket. Where I live, stuff like this occasionally happens
to me,
so I've become better at dealing with it and giving non-committal answers that hopefully won't encourage nor anger someone who may be unstable. I responded with a,
good, thanks, and stopped making eye contact, looking around and trying to see if I saw the
train or my friends coming. Unfortunately, the man was not deterred. He started cupping my
elbow in his hand asking me more questions about where I come from, where I live, where I was going,
what I was doing that day. I'm generally a nice person and don't know how to stop the conversation.
I did see two guys notice what was happening and when I made eye contact with them they both
looked away like they hadn't noticed my situation.
Finally, the train was approaching. My friends hadn't made it there yet, but I didn't care.
I was praying that this man was getting on the train. As it starts pulling in, the man goes,
is this your train? I tell him no, that I'm waiting for friends, which he definitely thought
was probably just a line I was feeding him
but no matter he says let's take it together come on. The man still holding my elbow in his hand
begins to gently tug me toward the train. I keep saying sorry this is not my train I'm waiting for
my friends this isn't my train but I'm starting to freak out because nothing like this has ever happened to me.
And I'm also panicky laughing because I don't know how to get out of this situation.
The train stops and the doors open.
People start pouring out as people on the platform start crushing in.
The man starts tugging me harder toward the open door and I'm freaking out.
At this point I keep saying,
This isn't my train and trying to yank my arm away but now he's gripping it and unfathomably I'm trying not to
make a scene I guess. Probably because I'm in shock that something like this is happening.
So I'm starting to move towards the doors against my will. I'm starting to think that maybe I'll
just get on the train and jump off at the next stop. I'll text my friends to meet me there. I'll pretend someone is calling me.
I'll sit next to another stranger on the train. Anything. And then the greatest thing I've ever
heard in my life. Jolene! My friends had arrived at the platform and saw from a distance some
random stranger holding on to me. I yanked my arm away from the
man who had loosened his grip when he saw that I really did have friends and I darted to them as
the stranger jumped on the train and the doors closed. As the train pulled away my friends asked
me who that man had been and I just started crying because I had definitely almost complacently
gotten on a train with a stranger because I was too scared to say no or
make a scene. My initially bewildered friends gave me a hug after I told them what happened
and vowed not to be late again just as I vowed never to go to that train alone again. I am a Canadian student, early 20s, studying in the UK and am currently travelling home to see my family.
I typically fly out of Manchester as it's simpler to get from northern UK to where I'm living,
but I found a cheap flight that leaves early tomorrow, or today I guess, morning, that I couldn't pass up.
The problem
is it takes quite a few hours to get to the airport from where I live so I ended up having
to take the train from downtown London to Gatwick airport from 2 to 3 a.m. I waited mostly alone for
an hour for my train to arrive but about 20 minutes beforehand a guy comes in and sits on a bench about
20 feet from me. I immediately got a bad
vibe but figured they're security cameras and he was far enough away that I just forgot about it.
The train arrived at 2am and the journey takes just over an hour. As it pulled up I had this
urge to walk away from this man and sit in a different compartment with more people
but when I turned to walk away he gestured to help with my bags and I ended up getting into
the compartment that pulled in front of us. There was only this man and one other in the compartment
with me, neither one with luggage which struck me as odd on a train headed to the airport. One of
the men was sitting a few rows in front of me and one a few rows behind. I felt very uneasy but felt
slightly trapped so I decided to keep an
eye on the man in front of me by watching his reflection in the window. He kept muttering
things to himself, looking at me and smirking and had multiple short phone conversations in a hushed
voice. The man behind me was doing similar things. After a few stops another man got on who calmed
my nerves but seemed to annoy the man in front of me. He
then moved seats to a row closer to me and now within his eyeline where he pretended to read a
book while staring at me intermittently over it. He was close enough now that in his next phone
conversation I could make out the phrase, yeah not now. There was one stop left before the airport
and the third man got up to get ready to exit.
I can't explain the feeling of fear I felt that I'd be alone in this compartment with these two
men as I fumbled with my keys to get them between my fingers in the horrible case that I'd have to
fight them off. The man in front of me got up again and moved behind me a row away to where
the other man was sitting and I heard a faint,
yeah, let's go for it.
At this point, I saw my opportunity,
and I guess my body decided to flight rather than fight,
as I picked up all my bags, and hauled it past the man about to get off,
and into the next compartment.
Thankfully there were a few people there,
and I was able to relax.
When we arrived at the airport,
I tried to stay with the group getting off, as I knew the other two men would be exiting as well but in my confusion
finding the way to the terminal the man from in front of me caught up to me. I veered off over by
some station employees and dawdled there while I waited for him to leave. He kept looking over at
me as he paced around a bit before leaving. I watched him go up the escalator, staring at me as he ascended.
I waited a minute and figured he'd given up, so I stepped onto the escalator.
As soon as I reached the top, I saw the man standing there behind me,
so I quickly shouted to another employee, asking if they would show me the way to the terminal.
Thankfully, it was close by and I was soon in the safety of the airport.
Obviously there is no way to know if I was just being paranoid but I sincerely believe that there
is something built into our genetics that lets us know when we are in danger. I am not typically a
paranoid person and wasn't originally nervous about traveling in London alone nor was I scared
or uneasy around any of the other men I encountered
tonight but something about these guys told me to get out of there fast and I'd rather have
overreacted than ended up in a dangerous situation. When I was 14, my grandfather wasn't able to take me home from the train station,
so I had a 5km walk ahead of me. It was autumn and already getting dark and chilly,
so I wrapped my jacket closer around my body, put on my over-ear headphones and started walking.
After just a few minutes, I noticed that the guy I already saw on the train
was following me. I thought not much of it as I was walking in the city and there could have been
a thousand reasons that this guy, mid-30s to beginning 40s, short brown hair, totally modest
in appearance, was walking in the same direction. I continued walking and after some time I was
leaving the city in the direction of my little village about one kilometer from the border of the city. As I walked past the little skate park I began getting
scared because actually at this point it was odd that he was still walking behind me. Not many
people live in that direction. I walked a little faster now and pressed pause on my phone so I could
hear better where the guy was. When there was about 600 meters left to my home, I started running, and the man ran after me.
My panic grew, and as I arrived at our front yard, I hurried to get the lock of the door open.
We had a huge yard, and our house was on top of a little hill.
The metal door was at the bottom of it.
I slammed the door shut behind me and ran the rest of the way up to my home's front door. I was so relieved when I was inside that I began to cry and my grandma asked
me what happened so I told her but she just waved it off. I grew up with grandparents but it wasn't
the best and happiest time ever and my grandma would believe a stranger in the street more than
she would believe me. I looked out the kitchen window and there he still was, standing outside the door to our yard, staring directly at me. After about 20
to 30 minutes later, he turned around and walked away. I don't know if that person wanted to prank
me or if I actually escaped something worse, but luckily I never saw that man again, even though
I still panic from time to time when someone walks
close to me. This happened six years ago at the time I was 17 years old male. I live in the biggest
city of Switzerland probably the safest country
in the world but still this has happened. So it was a Saturday night and a friend of mine turned
16 that day. He decided to celebrate his birthday in a well-known bar in the old town of said city.
As you may not know, you're allowed to drink alcohol at the age of 16 in Switzerland.
So we were having a great time that night, drinking and partying.
My friend, whose birthday it was, got heavily drunk in no time because of all the drinks he
was offered, so he decided to head home pretty early, around midnight if I remember properly.
Me and two of my friends didn't want to call it a night yet and went out for a smoke on the back
door of the bar. After we finished, we realized we had drunkenly shut ourselves out,
so we had to go all the way around the block to enter through the front door again.
As we're making our way to the entrance, more of a staggering than walking,
we pass this old shady looking dude.
In my drunken state, I even bumped into him with my shoulder,
but carried on walking anyways.
Shortly after, we hear him shouting,
Foreigners, stop!
And some other things I can't really remember.
We were quite puzzled by his sudden rage.
Just stood in the middle of the walkway trying to rationalize his outburst.
I mean, it was just a bump with the shoulder.
I didn't even hit him hard, nor was it intended.
As we were standing there, he started speedwalking my direction.
I assumed he's going to
curse at me or whatever, but I was very wrong. He started throwing fists at me. His punches didn't
hit me that hard and he wasn't even aiming for my face. I took one hard punch to the backside of my
ribs though and that was when one of my friends pushed him away. I collected myself and we gathered
in front of him. He was just standing
there in front of us shouting that we have no respect of the elders and that he was going to
kill us all. This old man was nuts and probably on drugs. As he was frantically shouting us we
realized that there was a knife in his hand. We then booked it out of that situation and back to
the bar in hyperspeed, adrenaline pumping through our veins. Because of that, my drunken
state suddenly cleared up and I started to feel a pulsating pain at the point he hit me.
As I wanted to touch the spot, it felt wet. I took my hand out from under my shirt and saw blood,
adrenaline rushing again. I didn't hesitate and took off my shirt in the middle of the bar.
By the reaction of the people around me, I could tell something was wrong. They took me to the toilet where I could see it myself.
I had a big wound in the back of my ribs. It was bleeding, but to my surprise, not that heavily.
Still, I was in a bit of a panic and didn't know what to do. In fear of the police, as we had also
smoked marijuana and I was afraid they could drug test me, I know it's stupid,
we decided to head for the train station and take the first train home. Half an hour train ride
later I arrived at my parents. I woke them up telling them what happened and that I took a
knife to the back. They were understandably up in no second. Only thing my father said was that he
saw the wound. A band-aid will do. My mother on the
other hand wasn't having any of this and drove me directly to the hospital where they saw the depth
of my wound. They said I was very lucky. A little more to the right and he would have punctured my
lung. Me probably drowning by my own blood. Police then came to the hospital as well and I had to
give them a statement. I told them everything I could remember. I even had to came to the hospital as well and I had to give them a statement. I told them
everything I could remember. I even had to go to the police station again the next day and to my
surprise they had a collage of mug shots prepared. I could identify this old guy right away. Obviously
he was already registered and they even told me he stabbed another guy the same night. Shortly after
we met again in court. I can't remember what he was
sentenced to. I suppose it doesn't matter because karma got him. After some time passed, two or
three months or so, I received a letter explaining the death of my attacker while he was in prison.
And I suppose I was pretty happy to hear it. This happened a few days ago and I am still pretty shaken.
I visit my cousin a few towns over as she needed some help from me. I spent a rather long time here.
We finished over a few hours later but as we don't see each other that often she wanted
me to stay for a bit more and so I did and that bit ended up being two hours so I left her house
in the dark. Not that I minded, I have never been afraid of the dark and always carry some mace
around with me, always just in case. I went to the train station and started waiting on for my train.
I put on my headphones and just looked at my phone, reading through my messages and stuff like that.
Suddenly I felt somebody sit next to me.
It was a middle-aged man.
He was bold and quite tall and skinny.
I didn't pay much attention to him until he touched my shoulder and smiled at me.
He started talking but as I had my headphones on, I couldn't hear him.
I pulled one of my headphones out and looked at him.
Excuse me?
His smile widened as I had given him my attention.
That smile was really disturbing from what I remember.
His eyes seemed like he wanted to eat me up or something.
He pulled his hand away from my shoulder and placed it near my thigh instead.
I asked, where was a pretty girl like you headed?
I was confused. Why would he ask that? I was already ruining my mother's rule by talking to
a strange man, so I wouldn't cross the line any further. I decided that I should lie.
Um, I'm going to Tallinn. He smiled even wider at that. I was really starting to get nervous at that smile why wouldn't he stop
smiling was the question that ran through my mind oh i'm going there as well i nodded and stayed
quiet until the train arrived a few minutes later i quickly went to the area where there were more
people i luckily didn't see him follow me i I sat down, took my phone out and started looking
at random YouTube videos. I was already feeling a lot better. I stayed like this until I had to
get off. I got off at my actual stop and started walking home. I was humming quietly to my songs
until I felt eyes burning into my back. I turned around and there he was. That freaking creep was smiling widely at me
and starting to quicken his steps. I quickly broke into a run and I am no athlete but I can run for
a long time when needed. I could hear him talk behind me. I didn't pay much attention as the
only thought running through my mind was to go. Beauty, stop running and let's have some good times. I quickly took out my mace
just in case, holding it tightly in my hand. I knew I could defend myself if he had caught up
with me. I already saw the town lights in the distance and I knew if I could get there that
I would be safe. I screamed out loudly when he caught up with me and grabbed my hand. I did the
first thing in my mind and let him taste some of the mace. He screamed out in pain and let me go. I used that chance to run again.
I was already very tired at that point but I didn't care. I knew I had to run and that's what
I did until I got home. I broke down crying when I got home and explained everything to my parents
through my tears. My mom held me and wiped my tears away, letting me stay home for a day to collect myself a bit.
I can only imagine what that creep wanted to do to me and I feel glad to still be here today.
I used to ride the train to and from work.
This happened on my second day of taking the train.
I live at the very end of the line and a couple of the stops before mine are not in the greatest of areas.
However, the last two to three stops are in great areas.
Usually when I get to my stop, there aren't that many people left on the train.
On this day, there happened to be no one in my specific car on the train so I was content sitting all by myself. As we stop at
the worst stop on the line, a large man around early 30s, 6 foot 2, wide and broad shouldered,
long dreads and a very large puffy jacket got on the train. I don't pay too much attention until
he sits literally right next
to me. An entire empty train and this huge dude who takes up the entire seat basically sits on
top of me. He doesn't say anything to me but then turns on some jazz music on his phone and held it
up to his ear which is right next to mine, blaring the music. I didn't want to be rude, although he
was, so I decided to just act annoyed and hoped he
would get the hint. He didn't. As we near the final stop, each stop before then, he seems to
be pushing into me more and more, pushing me against the window. Finally, my stop comes and
I am relieved. However, he doesn't move. I look at him and say, excuse me. He replies with, do you like this tune? I said, what? And he says,
this tune, this jazz, do you like it? I replied and said, yeah, it's great, but excuse me,
I'd like to get off the train. He then proceeds to ask me where I'm going, again not moving.
I tell him I'm getting off the train and would appreciate if he would let me. He doesn't.
At this point I start to get angry instead of scared as I have a bit of a temper and say,
are you kidding me? Let me out of the freaking seat. The look in his eye terrified me. They announce in the overhead speaker that the train will be out of service for the rest of the night.
At this point the conductor starts walking through the cars to check for sleeping people. The guy looks at me and says,
You're lucky this time. I wouldn't ride the train alone anymore.
And I'll see you again. Don't you worry.
We both get off the train and walk in the opposite direction,
but I make sure to keep looking behind me while I take my mace out of my purse.
I then have to walk the car ramp to my car when I see him watching me from
across the street and then start following me to the elevator. Luckily there were a few other
people in the elevator and the door closed before he got there. I asked a couple of people who were
getting off my level if they would mind walking me to my car because there was a man following me.
They did and all was good and I didn't see him again. I bought a taser flashlight
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