The Lets Read Podcast - 92: Episode 082 | Online Dating & Anarchy Stories | 23 True Scary Horror Stories

Episode Date: February 23, 2021

Welcome to the eighty-second 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 Online Dating, Guard Dog & Anarchy In Their Town. 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

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I went to the grocery store to pick up some things the other night. When I got to the register, there was a man helping me bag my groceries while the cashier was checking me out. I was buying some dog treats and he asked what kind of dog I had. I said a golden doodle. I have a golden doodle and my boyfriend has a German shepherd. And he said, oh my god, me too. I didn't really get an off vibe from him, but he would stare and not break eye contact at all. I chalked it up to him missing social cues and trying to be friendly. After I paid, he started pushing the cart for me out the door. This isn't uncommon, they typically help you take your things to your car. I have social anxiety and feel very awkward and guilty having them do that for me, so I always say, I'm good, but thank you so much. And every other time,

they've said, alright, have a good one. When I said I'm good to this guy, he said, no, I got it. Very bluntly and stared at me the whole time. I started to get a bad vibe and it was about eight at night and barely anyone was there. He said, well, my shift is over, so I'm walking to my car anyway. Weird because he didn't clock out, but maybe he had before he did the last checkout. He was very talkative in the store asking a ton of questions about my dog and tell me about his but when we got outside he barely said much. I started asking questions about his dog because I felt anxious with the silence but I really regret that. He took it as an interest. He immediately said, well if you give me your number you can meet him and just stared yet again. I responded,

oh I'm sorry I don't give my number to strangers. I didn't want to say no because I have a boyfriend because he seemed like he might get angry over that. I don't know, just the feeling in the moment. We had loaded all the groceries into my trunk and I was just thinking thank god I can get out of here but no. The cart was between me and him and he was positioned on the driver's side so in order to get to my door I would have to go past him. I said, well I gotta get home, my dog is waiting for his treats. He just stared. I realized I was going to have to go past him if I wanted to leave, so I looked around to see if anyone else was in the parking lot in case something more happened. No one.

I started to get extremely anxious. He could push the cart into me or just grab me himself. I have had a traumatic experience before and my problem is I don't have fight or flight, I just freeze. And just like that he walked away pushing the cart to where they returned in the parking lot. I took the chance to get in my car and I locked the doors immediately. I wish I left then but I needed a moment to breathe. I saw on my side mirror him getting into his car. I quickly put the car in drive and drove out. The exit is a stoplight and just my luck it's red and I'm turning left. I see his car right behind me not 30 seconds later. I panicked but then thought

he said he's going home. It's nothing. I only lived two minutes from the grocery store. I made the turn and he was hanging back. I didn't put my blinker on for the next turn. He made it too. The next turn was a stoplight and then the turn for my road. As I get to the light, it's red again. I thought maybe I should drive to a police station just in case but as soon as that thought came the light went green. My boyfriend and I only moved here two months ago so I couldn't think in my head how to get to the station and I am terrible at using my phone while driving. I'm not even 30 seconds from the last turn onto our street. Our street is a dead end with only four houses on it. It's very long and we're at the end.

No one goes down it unless they live there or lost. I turn and he makes a turn too. Oh god, I think. I literally just directed him to my house. Thankfully I have bluetooth so I call my boyfriend. I said, hey a guy from the grocery store is following me. Turn all the lights on, open the gate, and let Nike out. Nike is his German shepherd, and he was trained to be a German police dog and then got extra bite training. He can hold someone for up to six hours, so now knowing he was outside, I didn't feel nervous. I was nervous that my boyfriend wouldn't have gotten the gate open in time and I would have to either sit in my car or get out fast and put the code in. As I pulled up,

I saw the gate was open, thank god. My boyfriend was on the front porch with Nike on leash and his gun in the air. I fly through and down the driveway. This guy actually follows. Does he not see the gun and guard dog? Well, he did at that moment, because my boyfriend let Nike go and he charges the guy's car, jumped up at the driver window, frothing at the mouth, showing all teeth and hair on his back standing up. He looked terrifying even to me, and he was protecting me. I gave Nike his command to come back, hoping this guy got the hint that if he gets out of his car, he's going to die. And he did. He reversed that car so fast out of the driveway he nearly hit the gate. I collapsed on the front porch and hugged my boyfriend.

Nike got a steak for dinner. I reported the man to the grocery store because I remembered his name on his name tag purposefully. They later contacted me that he had been served termination papers. So I, a 20-year-old female, lived in a shady apartment complex in an otherwise rich suburban area for three years and have lots of stories that could fit on here, but this one is about a neighbor I'll call Bob. Now a little backstory, me, 18 at the time, and my then 16 year old sister used to babysit all the neighborhood kids. These kids considered us their friends and it got to where they seemed

to have a radar of when me and my sister went outside. They'd come out and talk to us and we'd let them ride our skateboards and such in the parking lot and these kids were ages 8 to 13. So one day we were outside with them and we were joined by a stranger. He stood between us and our car towering over us. He introduced himself and asked us to sign a petition he had made up. We did, just being friendly, then he asked us how old we were. I thought maybe he was a fellow teenager that looked older or that he was just awkward, so I told him I was 18 and the very next question was if I wanted to go out with him. In front of my mom and the other

kid's mom. I awkwardly declined and he continued talking about how he thought me and my sister were in middle school. Also, he was 28. Eventually, he wandered away to ask someone else to sign his petition. A few days later, he knocked at our door door After asking the neighbors for the address He had a bag of what he said was chicken and wanted us to go eat it with him at the park We declined because we both had school work to do We walked away and he was mumbling about how antisocial everyone was Later we look out our window and see him playing baseball with two girls He kept physically moving their arms to different positions even though they shrugged away from him.

Next day, one of the kids runs up to me. I'll call her Maddie. She's eight. She got a new pair of Heelys and wanted help with them. I was holding her hand and guiding her along when Bob appears and says he can help better. Maddie says no no but he insists. He pushed me aside and reached for Maddie holding her tightly around the upper chest area. Her grandma was there too and flips out and he just wanders away. The next day Maddie is freaking out saying Bob was just sitting on her porch when she left for school that morning. Her parents found out and

as they walked outside he let himself in and they said he went to their kitchen to make orange chicken. We later found out another neighbor had a similar story. Another time we were helping a family move. They have a two-year-old son. The garages are in a triangle shape to the road, almost a roundabout. There's a flat patch of grass behind them. Well, here comes Bob to help us. He criticized the way we pack things and didn't help until our neighbor politely asked him to leave. Well, he left the garage, but instead of leaving, he asked the two-year-old if he wanted to play. The kid said no and it made him mad.

He picked up the kid to play and the kid slapped him. He asked the kid if he wanted to go behind the garage to play ball. The kid's mom doesn't notice so I go with them and guide the kid to his mom. The climax of the story is when me and my sister went on a walk with our 17 year old friend and her other friend. Maddie found us and wanted to come along. So we are starting out when Bob comes out. He sees our friend and asks how old she is and how much she weighs because she's so skinny. He asks where we're going. My friend tells him we're going for ice cream on a girls trip. We didn't ask her to say that. He's like, ah man, and stomps away. We continue our walk but halfway through we have a weird feeling. I look behind us and Bob is running towards us. He yells at us for hiding from him while also telling Maddie how pretty she is. An older neighbor sees us and asks him what's going

on. He tells the man we're being mean and he needs to go write a song about us. He leaves but we see him sitting at the park. Well he saw us and again comes running. We stop and he asks which one of us is over 18. Maddie's dad is here at this point and tells him we aren't interested in him. He explodes, telling the dad to go screw himself and that he's so rude, calling me all sorts of terrible names in the process. Maddie's crying and the neighbor who saw us before came to check on us since he saw Bob running. Bob goes inside muttering to himself. For weeks we don't see him. A single dad and his five-year-old move in and we are introducing ourselves to them. My mom kind of

tips him off that there's someone in their building who is a little off, especially around Maddie. The dad says he's seen someone like that giving kids candy at the pool when the kids looked uncomfortable. Well, here comes Bob as if on cue. He immediately tells the girl in front of her dad that she looks like a movie star and that she's so pretty He asks to play with her but the dad says no and they go inside Turns out they're next door neighbors We still didn't see him much but other neighbors were telling us stories about him There's a woman who's alone most of the day with her two kids under five

Who told us he watches her when she goes to and from her car Also Maddie's parents continue to see him watching her. Then one day, we're again babysitting and here he comes. Only this time, he's swinging nunchucks. Maddie screams and hides in our car. Bob strolls over with his nunchucks and starts talking to us all casual. Then he cranes his head to look into the car and says, where's Maddie? We told him she wasn't here and he walked away. But then, most of the kids were afraid to go outside when they saw him. He had a habit of wandering around the complex. We could tell by his height and lanky gait. A few times we'd see Bob with his dad. Those times, neither

even glanced at us. Then one day, he just stopped showing up. We'd see his dad and brother come in and out all the time, but never him. We only saw him again a year later, and it was only for one day near Christmas, and then he disappeared again. So So I don't know what happened to him, but it was just one of our weird experiences with weird neighbors in those three weird years living there. This all started my sophomore year of high school. I was 15 at a new school so I didn't have many friends yet. I was in that phase where I thought I needed a boyfriend to have validation so I was actively trying to find a date for the homecoming dance. A classmate suggested a junior in one of our classes, whom I'll call David, to be my date and got him to ask me out.

He seemed nice so I said yes, a decision that would haunt me for the next two years. David and I had fun at homecoming so when he asked me to be his girlfriend I said yes. It's important to note that he was quite the loner. He was very much into science and often spent time alone conducting experiments in his room and even at school sometimes. I just brushed it off as him being quirky and figured I shouldn't get in the way of his passions but it wasn't long before I realized that there was much more to this nice guy facade. Over the first several weeks of our relationship we would talk over the phone and David would make increasingly inappropriate comments about things he wanted to do to me. I was 15 at the time and he was 17 so

not only was I incredibly uncomfortable but he was also nearly an adult himself making those comments to a younger girl. I kept telling him I wasn't comfortable with the things he was saying but he always laughed it off as me being a prude. I was fed up after a while and finally threatened to break up with him and that finally made him stop. I should have recognized the red flags and bailed at that moment but again I was dumb and felt I wasn't worth anything unless I had a boyfriend. Although the inappropriate comments stopped for the time being he would still become increasingly possessive and downright obsessed over what I was doing at all hours of the day. He would intrude on conversations I had with my friends and want to know things that frankly weren't any of his business. One day when I was getting into the shower, he called and my dad told him I would call him when I was done. Instead of simply waiting like any rational person would do, he called a total of four times over the next 10-15 minutes to see if I was out of

the shower yet. I began to feel suffocated but every time I asked him to back off, he would cry about how depressed he was and that he only wanted to talk to someone to feel like he was wanted. I always fell for it like the dummy I was but now I recognize the clear manipulation that it was. One day I finally had enough. I broke up with him in person at school and he bawled like a child. I didn't let it get to me this time however and firmly told him I didn't want to be his girlfriend anymore. Although he couldn't get it his way, he still somehow convinced me to stay friends. I know, I was an idiot, but things didn't end there. Oh no, dear readers, we were only just beginning. Over the next several months, David kept trying to get me to go out with him again, even going as far as to cry in front of other

people to garner sympathy. He even tried starting rumors about us having been intimate. We never were. Fortunately for me, David had earned a bad reputation throughout his school career so no one really believed him. He would even try to trick me into dating by subtly suggesting we go see a movie as friends, which I always got around by inviting my friends to come along too. They knew what he was doing and never turned down the chance to help a girl out. In the last few weeks I spoke to him, he would sit on the phone for hours on hours literally begging me to take him back and thankfully I held on strong and kept refusing.

One night his brother actually called me telling me he was crying hysterically. Eventually it came to a point where I told him I didn't want to hang out anymore, because it was clear that he would not stop until I became his girlfriend again. He agreed to not approach me anymore, but I wouldn't be writing this story if it had ended here. The very next day at school, David came up to me like nothing had happened. I once again reminded him of the conversation we had had the night before about how we agreed to not hang out anymore but he acted offended that I would even suggest such a thing. Eventually my friends and I convinced him to leave but of course it didn't stop there. For two weeks straight he would follow me around school, call my friends and I convinced him to leave, but of course, it didn't stop there. For two weeks straight, he would follow me around school, call my house and my cell phone.

This was the days before smartphones, so blocking his number wasn't as easy. I tried to get help from the school staff, but the vice principal basically told me that there was nothing I could do because he wasn't trying to hurt me. I was frustrated, but thankfully, David seemed to back off when it was clear that I wasn't going to hurt me. I was frustrated but thankfully David seemed to back off when it was clear that I wasn't going to give in. This is until I got another boyfriend. The following school year my junior year I started dating a senior named Justin. Not long after we went public with our relationship I noticed David following me again. Now Justin was a football player and he was a pretty big guy with unresolved anger issues so he didn't take kindly to this guy. He would hang out with me and my friends and David would hover around nearby, walking by every now and then and

making it blatantly obvious that he was spying on me. One day Justin walked straight up to David and confronted him. He didn't lay his hands on him or threaten him in any way, but he did ask, What are you doing? in a really angry tone. David simply muttered some kind of excuse and scurried away. We thought that was the end of it, but later in the day I was called to the principal's office. Turns out, David claimed that Justin threatened him and blocked the doorway so he couldn't move. Justin denied it, of course, and told the principal I could back up his claim, which I did. Thankfully, nothing came of it, but this was only the first of a long line of incidents.

Over the school year, David and his brother, who was a year younger than me, would try to get Justin in trouble every which way they could, even starting rumors and threatening his life. A classmate of mine overheard them talking about ambushing Justin and hurting him, but even though I brought this to the staff, nothing was done about it. All the while, David kept following me when Justin wasn't around. This was even an incident in the school gym one day when a bunch of classes had to stay there for the period. He and I were both there and he made sure to sit on the bleachers nearby, even following me when I moved. I was on the verge of tears, but then I saw two guys I knew sitting a few rows down from me. They were cool with me, so I got their attention

and, after explaining what was going on, asked them if I could sit with them to feel safer. They accepted and we ended up having a good time talking about music and anime. In spite of this, things just kept getting worse with David. Finally it came to a head when David's brother wrote a letter to Justin's sister. They had been good friends before this whole mess started and in the letter David's brother threatened physical harm to me and to Justin. The sister gave me the letter to Justin who then came to me and we both brought it to the principal. That was when the principal called everyone involved into his office and had a nice little chat with us. The principal showed the letter to David's brother and said,

I can expel you for this right now, but I'm willing to let it go on one condition. David and Justin were both about to graduate, so the principal gave them an ultimatum. He stated that David and his brother were to not contact me or Justin in any way, shape, or form for the rest of the school year, or he would see to it that neither of them would graduate. I was mad because Justin did nothing wrong, but in the end, we just wanted this whole mess to be over with. From that point on, David didn't bother me again, thankfully, but I'm still filled with anxiety to this day. He made me afraid for my life or even to walk the halls of my school. Justin and I ended up breaking up that semester for unrelated reasons and the following year I didn't have to see either of them ever again. A few years later,

however, David tried to send me a friend request on Facebook. I had an immediate panic attack and not only deleted the request, but I blocked him as well. I even unfriended and blocked the two mutual friends we had for good measure. Sure, I was being paranoid, but it made me feel better. There was one last incident involving David, not with me, but with my younger brother. When he was 14, he took his then-girlfriend to see one of the Transformer movies and David walked in. Upon recognizing my brother, he sat behind him in his date and kept laughing uncontrollably at inappropriate times and even started kicking their seat. My brother tried confronting him, but it did no good. They didn't bother getting the manager

because my brother's date was too afraid he would attack them if they tried to leave. Thankfully that was the last instant I or anyone else close to me ever had with him. I'm doing much better now. I'm 30 years old and ironically I ended up marrying one of the guys who sat with me in the gym that day. My advice to any teenagers reading this is that you should always pay attention to red flags and get rid of toxic people in your life. It's always better to end up alone than stuck with someone who makes you feel bad and treats you like your feelings don't matter. I used to work as a manager of a fast food place in a rather seedy part of a medium-sized city. I'd worked at the nicer location until they decided to transfer me and there were rumors

that the location I ended up getting sent to was going to be shut down, which did end up happening a few years after I finally left. The point is that the place wasn't well taken care of. The dining room was dated and old and the owners were currently not updating or maintaining the place well. They were just barely maintaining the very basic safety requirements and sometimes they weren't at all. For example, I often worked the closing shift which for this location at the time was 4pm to midnight. Between 7pm and 11pm it was me running the drive-thru and front counter by myself and one employee running the kitchen. At 11pm that other employee would go home and I was left by myself to tidy up and do the deposit

between 11pm and midnight. This isn't really safe and I'm not sure if it was even entirely legal at the time this was over a decade ago so who knows. Just to provide a little context and background here I'm a girl but I'm not what you would consider small and six foot and during this time I think people would probably say I came across as more than a little stern. I was younger but I'd already spent years working in fast food, getting treated terribly by customers and having drinks and food thrown at me. The location I worked at was a swarm with junkies and drug dealers and just generally scary behavior. All this to say, I didn't get ruffled that easily and I took a lot of things in stride.

However, on this night, I was working the night shift with a new guy. The new guy had probably been working there for more than a few weeks. I'd worked with him a few times before, but never the closing shift and from the first time I'd met him, I'd always gotten a strange vibe from him. And again, I'm not someone who, at the time, got ruffled easily. Prior to this, I'd worked with a night janitor at the other location who'd had an Adderall addiction and rather unpredictable and scary rage problem, and some creepy incel kid who barely spoke more than two words at a time. And when he did it, it was always something about how much he disliked women, and me in particular. Not an exaggeration.

But this guy, this new dude, he was a whole different level of weird. He had a kid and professed to be a single father. He brought the kid around during the day and the kid and his clothing were always really dirty. Like really dirty and not only that but the kid also occasionally had bruises on his head and arms. The kid was a toddler and I know that toddlers can get into things but one look at that kid and I knew that those bruises were not just a little kid messing around. I never saw the new guy behave aggressively towards this kid at all but I don't know it was just a feeling and that feeling translated into other things. I don't know he was just just a feeling. And that feeling translated into other things.

I don't know, he was just creepy, it wasn't one thing in particular. It was just a feeling I got when I was around him. He was a medium height, stocky young guy. He was totally average in every way, but he just had a vibe about him. He was always friendly, never rude or aggressive but his eyes were just lifeless for lack of a better descriptor. On this night I think he might have been called in to cover a shift for someone else. I was in charge of making the schedules most of the time and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have scheduled him to work a closing with me since I found him so off-putting.

The first part of the night was fairly normal. I ran the drive-thru in the front counter and he ran the kitchen between 8 to 11pm. He was talking to me on and off between orders, telling me about his ex and how he'd come to be a single father. Apparently the mother of his child had a drug problem. In hindsight, I think a lot of what he said meant to inspire sympathy. He really laid out the troubled tale of him and his son on thick but at the time, I just felt a little bad for both of them. Especially his kid who I suspected was being abused. But despite being seen as stern, and I was definitely still young and naive when it came to manipulative people,

he told me that he had moved to the city and immediately had trouble finding work prior to getting the job at the place we worked at. He said he'd been running out of money and was behind on rent, bills, and didn't have any formula for his son. At the time, I think I just empathized with him and said that that sucked. We were both working in fast food and I thought it was obvious that neither of us had any money. The place was bare bones minimum wage and I was barely getting by with three roommates and only pretty much eating the free meal I was given from the restaurant every day. Anyway, he laid it on thick at night but I don't know that I was really paying

all that much attention to it. People tended to ramble when working the late shift and I'd gotten used to listening to people spontaneously talk about their personal problems. I had a habit of just listening and not really reciprocating the sharing and I guess this didn't really go over very well with the new guy. At some point the new guy said something to the effect of, you don't talk much, do you? I'm telling you my whole life story here and you got nothing to say? I don't know if it was just that I was coming across as unsympathetic or more likely that he was frustrated that I wasn't successfully manipulating me into giving up personal details about myself. As far as I was concerned, he was just someone I was working with and I didn't

know him. I didn't really want him to know me and certainly I wasn't about to start telling him anything that wasn't surface level chit chat. But the guy was really intimidating. Something about his tone was off. It definitely wasn't a jokey accusation or off-the-cuff comment. I can't remember exactly what I said, but I remember I just tried to play it off somehow. He didn't say anything more about it, but after the silence between us seemed a little tense. At 11pm it was time for him to go home. The normal procedure was that the kitchen closer would tidy their area and an actual kitchen cleaner would come in a few hours later to deep clean things. In our case it was a husband and wife team who did several

locations but they didn't usually come in until a few hours after I left. So this guy was only tasked with basic cleaning and then I would let him out after which I would stay behind to prepare the deposit. But instead of this happening smoothly, this guy goes into the staff bathroom and stays there for a long while, like almost 20 minutes or something. I didn't know what was going on, nor did I know exactly how to handle the situation. It had honestly never happened before. People usually couldn't get out of there fast enough at the end of the night. Was he sick? Did he fall asleep? I didn't know but I honestly just wanted to get my work done and go home.

He finally emerged and quickly walked to the door and left. I was relieved. It was weird but I just shrugged it off and hurried back to the office to get done with what I need to get done. Not ten minutes later, I start to hear a banging at the back door of the restaurant. Loud, repeated banging. Normally, I would ignore this. The back door faced an alley and was right next to a street full of bars and pubs. People leaving the bars and pubs often got the idea that banging on a door would get them after hours food service because, well, they were drunk. So this wasn't necessarily uncommon. So I just ignored it and kept hurrying to get things done. But the banging did not stop and

it somehow just seemed to get louder and louder and more urgent. So I finally got up and went to look out the peephole to see who was there. At this point I was definitely on edge and this edginess swelled into a full out anxiety attack when I see that it's the new guy standing at the back door. Now my first thought was to not open the door. I really didn't want to open the door but I knew that he knew that I was in there. What if he forgot something inside? What if it was his house keys, car keys or something? I was going to have to leave the building by that same door at some point so there really seemed to be no escaping him. So reluctantly and very stupidly, yes trust I know, I opened the door. What I opened the door

to was quite frankly terrifying to me. He said he left his jacket, or his keys maybe I can't remember, inside and I told him to tell me where and I'd go get them. I didn't want him to come inside. If this had been any other person I worked with regularly this would be no big deal. I'd let him back in, let them get whatever they left behind and they'd take off but I instinctively knew I didn't want this dude back inside, in the dark, empty restaurant with me. But new dude was not having it. He pushed past me and said he'd get him himself. Then he proceeded to shut himself in the bathroom again and at this point I just panicked. Instead of staying there by the door, which in hindsight I should have,

I rushed back to the office. Stupid girl, that's me, had left some of the cash I was counting for the deposit out. Question, what dummy would answer the back door at night at all, and especially with a till out? Well, this girl I guess. This dumb girl. I managed to stuff the cash in the safe and lock it before it came to find me The office was dark, it was summer and the air conditioning was on full blast but this dude was sweating a lot I was taller than him and I'm not a small girl but somehow I just knew that this guy was about to hurt me He was keyed up As I watched his eyes dart around the office I grabbed my jacket hanging on the hook next to me. I hadn't finished my deposit, but I was getting out of there.

I didn't care how much stuff I got into in the morning for my work not being done. I smiled and told him that I was just leaving and that he could walk with me. I was really just trying not to show my panic. Whatever he had planned, I wanted to give him an out for him to rethink it. So I smiled, grabbed my purse, and started to move towards the door. New guy, who was standing in the doorway, did not budge though. He started talking though, about his son, about the money trouble he'd been having, and capped the whole story off with a request for a loan. From the tone of his voice it was clear this was not a loan.

He was demanding money from me. He said he would pay me back as soon as he got paid and that I'd really be helping him out. I didn't know what to do. He had me trapped. I wasn't leaving the office or the building unless he allowed it, or at this point at least I wasn't leaving without a fight. Something told me that despite my height difference, I wasn't going to win. So, I gave him money for my wallet. Fifty dollars, I think. When I gave it to him, he said, thanks. You're really helping me out and my son. I won't forget it. And when he said it, he had no expression, no smile, no speech affect at all. He didn't seem grateful or even relieved, just dead eyes, arms limp at his sides. It was terrifying. To this day, I don't remember how I got him to the door. All I remember was shutting the door

behind him, making sure the door was securely locked and rushing into the office to burst into tears. I didn't finish my work but I stayed in there until I could force myself to leave out of the same door. I was sure he was going to jump me when I left. The thought never occurred to me to call the cops. I don't know why, I guess I just felt like nothing serious had happened yet. He'd asked for money, and I'd willingly given it to him, despite the fact I felt I had no choice and had been scared out of my mind. I only saw him one more time after that, but neither of us ever mentioned that night or the money. I don't know why I didn't ask for it back. I think I was embarrassed or scared or both. I don't know. I don't think I've ever told anyone in my life this story, or at least if I have, I definitely left out the part where I gave him money and never got it back.

Pretty quickly after that, he stopped showing up to his shifts and I never saw him again. I don't believe in throwing words like psychopath around. I think people overuse psychopath terms like that, making them just synonymous with anyone who's just horribly behaved. And there are a lot of varying degrees of terribly behaved people in the world, unfortunately. But after taking a lot of abnormal psych classes, I can say that there was definitely something about this guy's affect that was just wrong, for lack of a better term. I'd smile, he'd smile. I'd frown, he'd frown. It was almost like talking to someone, pantomiming emotions. Maybe I'm just remembering it that way

because it was such a terrifying experience for me, but the truth is that I've never been comfortable talking about this event and to this day, when I do think about it, I feel just as uncomfortable as I did the day it happened, more than a decade ago. Wherever you go, you can get it from our tread experts. Toyo's open country family of tires will get you through tough weather in a variety of terrains. Until May 31st, save up to $100 in rebates on select Toyo tires. Find a Toyo tread experts dealer near you at treadexperts.ca slash locations. From tires to auto repair, we're always there. Treadexperts.ca Discover the exciting action of BetMGM Casino. Check out a wide variety of table games with a live dealer

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. So this happened almost a year ago now when I still lived in my apartment complex, which was in a nice area but seemed to attract the weirdest people. Basically, I live at home with my mom and younger sister to attend college. The backstory, there was a neighbor in the building across from mine, an older single woman named Susan. When me and my sister first moved in, we'd hang out near her building with a former friend. She's worthy of her own story to be honest. And so we developed a rapport with Susan. We'd bring her tea when she was sick and walk her dog. I was next door neighbors with a

different woman called Laura. Laura's a woman of two young kids and she and her boyfriend like to sit on their balcony overlooking the parking lot and smoke into the late hours of the night. Well, one day, Laura was doing this at around 2am. Laura texts my mom that there's been an incident. My mom tells me and my sister we tend to stay up pretty late and we went to her balcony to see what was up. In the parking lot, we see a car that's halfway backed into another parked car but almost at a side angle. Lawyer says the person who was in the car ran away as soon as they hit the other car. The car however remained, still running too. So we're wondering what that was all about. My mom goes downstairs to the car to check for damage when she sees a figure standing at Susan's building.

It was a man we'd never seen before and he was just standing there. Turns out the owner of the sideways car freaked out because he saw us looking and claims literally someone stole it and moved it out of the way so they could have my parking spot. The next morning my mom texts Susan about the incident as the sideways car was kind of blocking hers. She says she knows what happened and has us come outside so she could tell us. She's standing with the man from the parking lot the night before. He introduces himself as Eric and that he's seeing Susan. When we started talking, turns out he didn't actually know what had happened. He only saw someone running from the car, but that story's irrelevant now. Anyway, we get to talking and apparently Susan had told him about our family and that I'm studying

to be a therapist. I confirm and he just lights up. He goes on and on about all the similar work he's done and thanks me for my service, which was odd. He starts giving me names of places I go to for shadowing hours and resources for getting a job. Finally, he tells me to use his name when applying for jobs in the future and he'd get me a job at the psych center he apparently helped found, which I looked up and could not corroborate. He was very insistent that I use his name. Next, he talks to my sister. Susan had told him she likes movies, so he told her that he had a small speaking role in one of those teen book to film adaptations we used to obsess over. So of course, when we go home we look up his name that he gave me along with the movie title.

Nowhere is he pictured in the film or given any sort of credit for it. So we dropped the movie title and just looked up his name. It wasn't a movie that we found. Nope. Apparently he had been infamous in our town for years as someone known as the Child Biter. He had earned the name by biting an 8 year old girl who was playing with his daughter. A few years later he bites another girl and apparently stalked her family in a public parking lot after. Another few years pass and he is a third victim. We're freaking out and text Laura who's kind of our gossip buddy. She has two young kids so she's furious that this guy with actual criminal records was allowed to move in though he wasn't put on the lease.

We were concerned too because a lot of kids live in ours in Susan's building. The question came up of whether to tell Susan. We debated but decided it was the best thing. My mom covers for me and my sister by saying we looked up his name and movie in front of Laura. Susan demands to know why Laura is concerned. My mom tells her to talk to Laura herself, so she does. She knocks on Laura's door and asks her what her concerns are. Laura barely gets one sentence out about how there are kids everywhere and she's trying to be a good parent before Susan turns around and just leaves,

just like that. There are a few families whose kids I babysit who pretty much let their kids wander the complex all day with no supervision, unless I'm outside then it's free babysitting apparently. We tell some of them and they're enraged. For two days there's not a single kid outside. After that I guess the parents decided actually looking after their kids was too much work and gradually let them play outside again alone. A few days later, an 8-year-old girl we babysit and her friend ran up to tell us about a nice guy at the pool who gave them M&Ms. A few minutes later, Eric strolls up with his bathing suit and Maddie tells us it was him. We avoid eye contact, but he slows when he passes us. We warn Maddie and her friend in 8 year old terms to stay away from him.

Another time we're visiting a friend who lives in his building. He emerges right as we enter the hallway. He puts on a huge grin and starts making small talk. We awkwardly excuse ourselves and go to the friend's house. We go inside and our friend keeps looking out the window. There's Eric, standing by his car just staring through the window. Part of our babysitting includes picking up Maddie from the bus randomly in the week when asked. The bus stop is right next to the pool. And who do we see in a lounge chair with sunglasses not doing a thing every

single day at bus time? Eric. Now we're all kind of mad at this dude. We contact the property manager who says she can't do anything because he's not registered as living there. If he stays longer than two weeks though he'll be charged for not being on it. Well, the two weeks ended, and then we never saw him again. I'm still stumped as to why he told me to use his name as a reference when a simple search of his name shows all this history. Again, I lived in a nice area in a small suburban town. No idea what it was about those apartments that attracted these weirdos and criminals. Before I moved away for work, I used to be heavily involved in the art scene in my old city, especially small theatrical type gigs. When you run in those circles, you see and interact with the same people a lot. Broadly this was fine and that's how I met plenty of my best friends. This is a story about a dude I did four shows with and god was he a

weird one. Enter Eric. We're both involved in a local production and our characters share a ton of scenes so predictably we spend a lot of time together and get pretty friendly, sending each other memes, venting about annoyances over messenger, typical friend stuff. I'm a touchy-feely person so the occasional hug when we hadn't seen each other in a while was par for the course. I did the same to all my other friends too so I didn't think anything weird was about it. The same happened when he started asking me to get coffee before rehearsal. I love caffeine. I love conversation. Sounds good to me. Little did I know is that to him, the simple act of getting coffee and hugging now meant we were dating. He hadn't asked me out, hadn't used the word date or boyfriend, girlfriend or anything of that nature.

I was definitely not in the room for this decision he just decided I was his girlfriend. He also began to craft some off-the-wall narrative that we were in love which he kept texting our mutual friend Max about. When on Halloween he kept telling me how sexy my costume was I was a little confused. Generally friends don't talk like that but I brushed it off. I chalked it up to the fact that it involved a dress and fishnets. Figured it was whatever. Until we randomly kissed me. Because I didn't know the whole girlfriend thing yet I didn't mind it too much. He was a handsome enough guy and we were friends. I wasn't opposed to having a fling with

him which is what he acted to me like he wanted. We made out a few times, kept making inside jokes and it was more or less chill. That was all I signed up for and I told him as much. Then he starts getting creepy. He starts pressuring me to get into his car with him at night to cuddle. Something about him being so focused on wanting me alone at night gives me a weird vibe I can't explain and I keep declining. I start to wonder if he has the wrong idea so we get coffee again and at some point I mention that I can't be his girlfriend. I wish I could say it ended there. He also starts making a big deal about me being the only younger girl than him he's ever wanted. Eric is six months

older than me and we're both in our mid-twenties. Weird then, weird with hindsight. He follows it up by saying he still has a high libido and really wants to bone. Meanwhile, he is still obsessively texting Max about how in love with me he is and thinking we have a deep connection which again mostly consists of memes and caffeine. All the while he says none of this to me. When we were in shared spaces like rehearsals and I didn't give him my full attention or drop whatever I was doing and pay attention to him he'd do increasing dramatic things like start randomly crying or other dramatic nonsense. The next time we try to talk about this he keeps insisting I played with his heart. I try and insist I had no intention of playing him, that I've told him multiple times we weren't

dating and that I'm honestly not sure what I did. It ends in a rant about random things I'd done months ago that he apparently never stopped being annoyed about. He pretty much totally stops talking to me after that, being cordial at rehearsals, which is frankly a relief. When getting coffee with Max near closing night one week, they show me all his dramatic and all his weird confessions of us being in love. I show them my own text history, showing that Eric literally never clued me in about our apparent whirlwind romance. She gives me some pleasant closure by showing me one text about our last weird conversation wherein Eric said my refusal to apologize for not stopping mid-rehearsal to hug him months earlier had made him lose all feelings for me. That's more or less where my weird fantasy not romance

with him ends, but I don't feel good knowing that after a bunch of other people including me left the cast party, he apparently hooked up with three 19 year olds at once. So much for thinking a woman six months your junior was too young, huh? This all started when I was probably around the age of nine in the summertime. My brother was a year younger than me and long story short, he convinced me to go look for some cats that he had seen. I put my shoes on and followed my little brother out the door. We walked the streets in search of these kittens, completely unsupervised. We lived in a small town and my mom worked at a Pizza King until 9pm every weekday. My dad worked until midnight at Johnson Controls.

That left our older sister, 13, to supervise but she was always off doing God knows what. Because of these circumstances I realized later we were perfect targets. Predictable schedules, lack of supervision, and comfortable in our tight-knit midwestern neighborhood. My brother led me about six blocks away when someone called out to us. I turned my head to find four young men leaning up against an old gray two-door beater. They were standing outside of a known drug house and they were smoking cigarettes seemingly minding their own business. The one who called out to us closest to the passenger seat asked us,

Do you guys want some gum? I stopped dead in my tracks and my brother looked confused. They offered us gum. It was eerily reminiscent of our yearly stranger danger assemblies in the school auditorium. My brother and I looked at them for a second but then turned around and started walking back the way we came, saying nothing. They yelled at us to stop and we turned our heads and saw the driver getting into his car quickly and the passenger pulling the seat up to let the other two in the back. As the engine started we ran. We ran through the yard of a man whose lawn was always way overgrown. We tried to crouch low and lose them but that loud engine and that old beater was getting closer. It didn't occur to me that they could

see the grass moving as we crawled through. We got up this time and ran at full speed, weaving in and out of people's yards to try to buy us some time. They followed. When I realized there was no outrunning a car, we took a straight line to one of our neighbor's houses and started beating on their back door. The car sped out from around the corner and stopped abruptly in the driveway, so we abandoned that idea and jumped over a fence. We eventually made it back to our house and thought we'd lost them. My mom's voice startled me from behind my sister. Where have you been? Where's your sister? I think she had come home because she was on delivery route that day. Sometimes when someone messed up a pizza the owners would let my mom

take it home to us if she was on delivery so that we had something to eat when the pantry was empty. I started to tell my mom what had happened, and she didn't look like she was too keen on buying the story until I stopped mid-sentence at the sound of a sputtering engine. I looked outside and the four men drove past our house slowly, looking into our windows, making eye contact, and giving us a menacing look. My mom saw the men, tried to close the blinds, the track was broken, but failed, and took us to stay inside for the rest of the day. She left after that. I can't explain why, so don't ask, she just did. Later that night, still no sign of our sister and we were hungry. We made some mac and cheese and put on Hannah Montana to get our minds off of things. Laughing at scenes that weren't funny, my nerves started to settle a little bit. However, I kept seeing this tiny

red light in the corner of my eyes coming from the window. I kept brushing it off. It could have been anything. After some time, I finally stood up and went over to the window to investigate. I saw this red dot was actually the light of a video camera. I gasped at the sight of this and he ran away immediately towards another man illuminated by a street lamp down the road. Naturally I panicked and I cried. I ran outside and screamed my sister's name as loud as I could and ran back inside. I called 911 first and then my mom and told them that there were two men with what I thought was a video camera outside on the street. The police showed up after circling the

area and said they'd stake out for a couple of hours at the house on the corner but that the man would probably be long gone. They never found the man but the man found us over and over again. A couple of years later my brother had the neighbor kid over for a sleepover. We all hung out in his room until late at night laughing loudly and shooting BB guns at the ceiling and each other. I left the room and when I came back, my brother told me that a hand had slapped the window and slid down like in a horror film. I thought he was just trying to scare me and I still believe he was probably lying. I was in the middle of telling him he was full of it when I saw that little red dot again, silencing us. We ducked to the floor at first, silent, unbreathing, and then my brother crawled

over and turned off the light. We stayed there for a long time until waking our parents up, but they found nothing. I passed off as a prank. Another couple of years later, in an insomniac induced all-nighter, I was sitting in our sunroom, with big windows all around and no curtains except for one to my right, reading a book. It was about three in the morning and the whole house was asleep. I had my headphones in, listening to my mp3 player when I thought I heard a loud noise over the music. I looked up, startled, and saw a man at the door, watching me. At three in the morning, this was the closest I had ever been to him. I froze and stared at him. He was about six feet tall, and his hair was long and wavy over his eyebrows. It kind of looked like bangs or a comb over without enough gel. He was wearing a white

hoodie and long blue pants that nearly covered his shoes. He looked like an aged version of the guy who offered us a piece of gum years before and he had a blue digital camera in his hand down to his side. He walked away casually without fear or haste maintaining eye contact and I followed him with my eyes past the windows and behind the only window that was concealed with blinds, out of my line of sight, I ran inside and told no one. I passed it off as a sleep-deprived hallucination for months, denying the nightmares and the cold chills before I finally came to the realization that this was the man I had seen years before. And I remembered something. That door's lock was broken. Those weren't the only times we caught someone outside

of our windows. It happened for years, and it became an odd fact of life, but he seemed to be less interested the older I grew. It's strange because he always purposely reveals his presence instead of trying to stay discreet, and even showed his face to me that one night. It makes me wonder what kind of pictures and videos he captured, and how long he would watch before making himself known to us. I used to convince myself that these were several unrelated instances, because it scared me more to think that one person had the capacity to invest that much into us. It seemed like an odd revenge for outrunning him years before. Oh, our tread experts. Toyo's open country family of tires will get you through tough weather in a variety of terrains.

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You'll put a smile on your face. Bet on the sports you love with BetRivers Sportsbook. Take a chance. Must be 19 plus. Available in Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. So I'm sure by now all of you are aware of the virus outbreak

and have seen the stories on the news of stores selling out of toilet paper and canned goods and the media acting like it's the end of the world and whatnot. While I personally think we're going to come out of this okay in the end, I feel like I have to share what's going on in my area right now because I'm seeing some red flags that are pointing to things going south pretty soon. I live on a large forested property in a rather remote part of the state and for the most part we've been doing alright throughout this ordeal because we're pretty distant from the major urban areas. The virus also didn't make it to my state until quite recently so I haven't been that concerned about it. Unfortunately, a few days ago it did make it here and the announcement was made that all schools would be shut down and all public gatherings like

sporting events would be suspended indefinitely. Many workplaces including mine have also shut down in order to contain the spread. Unfortunately when the announcement was made it caused a lot of panic and many people who had cottages or hunting camps in the woods or around the lakes in my area began fleeing the city in order to ride out the supposed end of the world in isolation. My town really can't handle a massive influx of people like this since we only have one small Walmart and a few small grocery stores. Everything sold out pretty quickly and stores were lined up out the door with people trying to get supplies that I guess they weren't able to get before leaving the city. This meant that not only was my town running out of supplies fast but

the likelihood of someone from outside bringing the virus here was very high as there was confirmed cases in the city about an hour from us. I hate grocery shopping and as a result I generally go to the Costco in the nearest city once every month and just load up on as much as I can afford all in one go. This way I don't have to go out shopping as often and as a side effect I also have at least one month's worth of food and supplies in my house at any given time so I was fine and was able to stay out of the mass panic taking place down at the local grocery stores. I hate to say it but I was actually kind of looking forward to a nice peaceful vacation from work where I could just stay home and get a few things

done around the property and spend some time with my girlfriend who was also off of work due to the virus. The first night of our self-imposed quarantine we made pizza and settled down on the couch for a movie marathon. Once we had finished eating, I got up and turned off all the lights in the house, leaving the TV as our only light source. This was our favorite way to watch movies, snuggles up under a blanket and the dim glow from the screen. We were about halfway through our second movie when I could see through the window that one of the motion lights on one of the outbuildings had turned on. I ignored it, figuring it was probably just an animal. Sometimes our own horses even trip the motion lights. Then I saw reflections of light on the ceiling that

were moving. Okay, our motion lights definitely don't move. Something is definitely outside. I quietly get up and walk towards the front door, leaving all the lights off so that I could see outside but no one could see me. I peek out the narrow window beside the front door and see a white Range Rover sitting in the middle of my driveway by the garage. Someone is outside the car messing with the fuel tank I have beside the garage trying to fill up some jerry cans. What they don't realize is that the power to the fuel pump is controlled from inside the garage and there's no way to turn it on from outside so I figure they'll just give up and leave but I still keep an eye on them. Unfortunately for me they notice the electrical conduit leading

into the garage and put two and two together and start walking towards the door. I suddenly remember that the door isn't locked and bolt upstairs and grab the shotgun from the safe. I throw the front door open which startles the guy as he's walking back out from the garage. I don't even point the gun at him but he still freezes. Uh, hey man, I didn't know you were home, he says sheepishly. I just needed some fuel for my generator, that's all. Gas station's closed in town. Without getting too close to him, I politely ask him what kind of generator he had. When he said it was a Honda something or other, I told him that what was in my tank was dyed diesel fuel meant for farm tractors and heavy equipment and that his generator wouldn't run off of that. I then

firmly told him he should leave. He apologized and got back in his car. I might be paranoid but I gave the fuel tank in the garage a good spray down with some disinfectant the next morning. I also decided that even though I'm pretty sure that guy was just trying to help his family and meant no harm, I should still probably tighten security around here just in case. There are three ways to get onto my property. The main driveway that comes in off the paved road and two trails that lead in from dead end dirt roads at the bottom end of my property. The public road just kind of becomes my property at a certain point and there are signs posted as such. I took the skid steer loader down there and blocked both trails where they met the road with big logs and other brush I found laying around in

the woods to really make a point that I didn't want people coming down there. I also shut the gate on my main driveway for probably the first time since it's been installed Since the gate opens inward I then used the tracker to place two large round bales up against the back of the gate So that even if someone cut the padlock off the gate wouldn't be able to open it My girlfriend laughed at me calling me a doomsday prepper and saying that I was taking things a bit too far And to be honest I probably was overreacting a little bit. That night, which I guess is last night if you're reading this the day it was posted, it wasn't even dark yet and we had another car pull up to our gate.

No one got out, they just turned around and left when they saw the barricaded entrance. I had been keeping in touch with my friends and neighbors in the area via daily phone calls and they had all reported similar things of people coming onto their properties trying to obtain extra supplies. At this point the supply chain to our town is still functioning however our tiny Walmart and two or three grocery stores just don't have room to keep enough stuff to meet the demands of everyone panic buying so I'm not surprised that it's come to this. I wouldn't consider what's happening to be full-blown looting yet as most of my neighbors have said that the people have just politely asked for anything they could spare and left peacefully. I seem to be the odd one out with my encounter

with the man attempting to steal fuel for my tank. Later, after it got dark, my girlfriend and I were settling in for another movie night when my phone rang. It was my neighbor up the road who is rather elderly. He tells me he's having a problem with his well pump and can't get water and was wondering if I could come have a look at it and also bring him a few jugs of water. I knew he didn't leave his house much anymore and I had been the one to get him supplies when all this started happening so I knew he was probably safe from having the virus. I was a little concerned if I had it and didn't know that I would give it to him since the elderly were the most at risk but he just shrugged it off saying that I had been there

a few days ago so if I had it he probably did already and that he was old and would likely die soon anyway so he wasn't really worried about a stupid virus named after a terrible beer. Well I couldn't argue with that logic so I got a few big jugs of water for him, collected a few tools and after moving my hay bale barricade and then locking the gate behind us, my girlfriend and I set off for the neighbor's place. We gave him the jugs of water and I got his well pump working again and it was actually just a leaky pipe causing it to lose water pressure and we headed back home. Once I had parked my truck and I had put the hay bales back in the place blocking

the gate, I went to put my tools back in the garage when I noticed something odd about the fuel tank. I walked over to it and realized that someone had removed the filler cap and had stuck what appeared to be a hand-operated bilge pump from a boat inside the tank to try and siphon out some fuel. There were a couple of jerry cans left near the tank as well and they were all empty. This led me to a worrying conclusion. Whoever this was had likely seen us drive in and had run off to hide somewhere in a hurry and they probably weren't too far off. I yelled out into the night that whoever was out there better get off of my property or there would be consequences. I heard someone run through the trees behind the garage and the sound slowly faded away. I removed the pump from my fuel tank and closed the filler cap.

I took the jerry cans and pump and just tossed them over my front gate and went inside, locking all the doors. My girlfriend and I watched one more movie and then went to bed. The next morning when we woke up, we took the ATVs and did a quick perimeter check of the property. The pump and jerry cans I had tossed over the gate were gone. They had come back and retrieved them sometime in the night. We also found tire tracks leading up to one of the log barricades on the lower trails and a bunch of footprints indicating that they had tried to move some of the brush but then gave up and just climbed over and walked in on foot. I know these incidents are minor however if people have already resorted to trying to steal things and the situation

hasn't even gotten that bad yet I'm genuinely concerned for what's to come. I'm not trying to add to the panic by sharing this however however, I do want to stress that everyone needs to be careful during these uncertain times. I have to begin this before the day I was stalked. I was sleeping on my parents' couch when I had a really strange dream. The dream consisted of a few strange things. I was dreaming that I was sleeping on the same couch I was actually asleep on when I woke up, in the dream, to the slam of a car door outside. Thinking my parents came home late at night, I looked outside. I saw one of the strangest, most demonic creatures hobbling across my front yard. I felt really uncomfortable so I rushed down my hallway to

get my phone and my brother's gun. The next thing I heard was a huge thud on the front door. I started loading the gun and looked out the peephole. All I saw was fur reflecting in the light. It was the creature trying to break down the door and kill me. I couldn't remember where but I read three words that still scare me to this day. I'm watching you. I then woke up for real with my heart racing. I then heard a car door shut and I looked outside. It was just my mom. I told her about the dream and she then told me she had to go to JCPenney. I decided to go with her just because of how scared I was. I then went shopping with my mom and I decided to look at the men's department.

As I was looking at some different ties and shirts I noticed a man watching me. He then quickly looked away while picking up a random item within his reach. I didn't think much of it but he decided to look back in a few minutes. As I looked back I noticed that he looked away from me really quickly like before. I had to go to the bathroom but I felt a little uncomfortable. I decided to suck it up and go just thinking I was being paranoid. I had gone to the bathroom and did my business. The man then walked in and walked up to a urinal. I got a bad feeling in my gut, then looked back at him while washing my hands. He was watching me. Then he noticed I was looking at him. He smiled at me like I was his next meal or something.

I had started to walk out of the bathroom and he quickly zipped up and started after me. I ran to the end of the aisle and just started looking at other things. I then see the man start to look at some things near me. I walked over a couple of aisles. The whole time the man was not far behind. The man seemed to be in his late 60s or early 70s and I was around 9 or 10. I had heard different stories of people kidnapping kids and it freaked me out. But after being followed I ran out of the store and hid in a nearby store watching the door.

After a while I decided to find my mom. I was watching everywhere around myself and finally found her in the JCPenney. I freaked her out when I found her. I then remember the words I read somewhere in the dream of that morning. I'm watching you. After that, I've never seen that guy again, but sometimes I'm reminded of him and I think back to that time and feel strange. I'm 20 now but the memory of that day just scares me sometimes. Was it somehow related to my dream? Maybe. It just doesn't make a lot of sense. But that's my story and the lesson is this. Please watch your surroundings at all times. You never know what people are thinking, or what they're capable of doing.

Now, I'm not a big fan of Uber. Random people picking you up sounds like a bad idea waiting to happen, and this experience only confirms my problems. I work as a bartender in the UK at a pretty popular bar. I always take cabs to and from work so I don't have a car. One night was extremely busy and cabs were coming and going with people, so many that I couldn't get a hold of one. Desperate, I downloaded Uber and found a driver two minutes from me. He arrived and I attempted to open the back door but it was locked.

I looked at the driver who signaled for me to open the front passenger door. I found it odd he wanted me sitting right next to him but I assumed that he had a bunch of stuff in the back. Reluctantly, I got into the passenger seat. The man had a thick Russian accent part of me considered just speaking Russian to him but looking back on it now I'm glad I kept that ace up my sleeve where are you going he asked an aggressive way as if I was wasting his time I told him the address he plugged it in and we were on our way. Now usually in these stories, the kidnapper starts following the route and then goes off track once your guard is down. This guy took the first wrong turn he could. Um, this isn't the way. Can you please turn around?

I begged. I, I know shortcut. He said. Except he didn't. I saw his phone and his turn added four minutes to the drive time. Just then his phone started ringing with the ID saying Liova K. He picked up the phone and that's when I heard the most horrifying call in my life. Now to translate, they said, Yes. Yes. She's in the car. She suspects nothing. Prep the chains. I'll be there in 10. Make sure everything is ready. We can't leave

any remains. We were too sloppy last time. He said all of this in Russian, assuming I couldn't understand. To this day, sometimes I wish I didn't. Now I knew I had less than ten minutes to get out of this situation or I doubt I'd be seen. We were approaching a stoplight. I had to quickly formulate a plan. The door was locked, but it was one of those button locks you could pull out to unlock the door. There was a risk of the man being armed but I didn't have a choice. Another problem was that we had entered a bad neighborhood, one that was dangerous for a young woman walking alone at night to be in. I decided that after escaping I would have to order another Uber and pray it was safe.

The light turned yellow, then green, and as the car was moving forward I pulled the button and leapt out of the car. Hey, get back in here! The driver yelled, but I was already running. I didn't expect to hear footsteps behind me, but when I turned back, the driver was chasing after me. He just ditched his car and came after me. I turned down an alley and hid behind a rubbish bin. I heard him run past the alley. I waited for what seemed like hours until I heard his footsteps again run past the alley entrance. I left the alley and looked back down the street. The car was gone, but my nerves weren't any better.

I was still in a bad neighborhood. I was about to call for another Uber when I wisened up. He was probably expecting I'd do that. He was probably on his phone waiting for the alert. So I trekked home. I made the whole two hour walk home. I was lucky enough not to encounter any trouble in that way and as soon as I was back home, I broke down crying. I lived alone so I didn't feel safe one bit. The Uber driver still had my address. I called the police and gave them the description of the man and the make of his car. They attempted to utilize Uber and my pickup history to match the driver with my description, and it turned out that my original driver was supposed to be a woman in a completely different

vehicle. In my ridiculous haste, I saw the Uber light and didn't even think to check my app, and like a classic horror story idiot, I didn't get the license plate either, so they couldn't do much, but they said they would send an officer to the area. A few weeks later, I had the urge to check the internet to see if anything had been done about my complaint. I came across an article on a Jane Doe found dead by a riverside, her hands chained and a bullet in her skull. The man, not my Uber driver, charged with the crime, told the police of a man named Leova Kasanova, who led the entire gang. Nothing ever came up about Leova though. I decided not to come forward with what I knew.

I just wanted to return to my life. It's been three years since then and I've been able to move on with my life. I'm happily married now, now manage my own bar and have twins coming in a few months. For everyone out there who uses Uber, I won't tell you not to use the app because I made a huge mistake that night not double checking the driver with what it said in the app itself. Even though I haven't used it since that night but I will tell you to make sure you have the driver's license plate, his description, the make of his car and always make sure he stays on route. It may seem like a long and hard process but it may just save your life. And to the Uber driver who wanted to turn me into another Jane Doe, I pray we never meet again. I now have the means to defend myself, and if we

do meet, I promise only one of us is leaving the encounter alive. This happened during the summer of 2008. For context, I'm a gay male and at that time I was in a relationship. We'll call my then boyfriend Mark for privacy reasons. Mark was 35 and I was 30. It was July 4th weekend and my boyfriend wanted to go camping, as he always has every July 4th, usually going with his ex-wife and son who was 7. However, since he is now out of the closet, he wants to take me with him. A little about me, I'm definitely not an outdoor kind of person. I don't like dirt, I don't like bugs or wild animals and the thought of not having running

water or a roof over my head terrifies me. You know, I'm spoiled rotten. As reluctant as I was, Mark persuaded me to go and reassured me that this would be a weekend to remember. Well, he didn't know how right he was. He told me we would be leaving Friday morning, which was the 4th, and would come back Monday morning. As we both lived in San Jose, California, the nearest place to camp would be the Santa Cruz Mountains near Felton and Big Basin Boulder Creek vicinity. We were going to go off map in a more secluded area to experience nature and less people. We headed out Friday morning around 7am. It was about a 45 minute to an hour drive on the car ride there mark told me about these people that supposedly live in the mountains

first thought that popped in my head was wrong turn and the hills have eyes i told him that and he chuckled and said no but there are some similarities he explained in great detail that these people were uncivilized, not socialized, and unlike the rest of us in society and could possibly be dangerous if we encountered one of them. They basically live like cavemen and are inbred. Yes, they very well might be. He told me even though he has never come across any of them, he knows they exist and has even been told by his brother that they do indeed exist. Having just heard this I flipped and told him it's a good

thing you just sprung this on me now because you and I both know I would not have come along with you knowing this information. He explained I'm just letting you know not to frighten you but to inform you if anything should happen but nothing will happen I guarantee it. Oh really I said and how can you possibly guarantee me that? I always come prepared he said. If you don't believe me then open my glove compartment he said pointing to the glove box. I did as he asked and opened the glove compartment. Inside, I noticed a leather case. I pulled it out. What's this? Fearing what I already suspected it was. I opened it and right before my eyes was a revolver. A gun, basically. I don't know what kind or anything. All I know is it was a black gun. This is your guarantee, I suppose, right? I told him. Yes, you must have known on some level that I wouldn't take us out in the middle of nowhere

and not have us protected, he said. I guess maybe in the back of my mind I thought, yeah, but seeing it now makes me feel very uncomfortable, I said. Then also knowing that there is a chance of something happening for you to even bring that gun makes me even more scared than anything else, I said. He didn't respond. He took his hand off the steering wheel and grabbed my hand and held it tight. He looked over at me and said, I won't let anything happen to you. This weekend is for us to enjoy each other's company and that's what it will be. You'll see, he said. He did a good job of reassuring me because I didn't think about the gun again. We reached our destination not too long after that.

All around me was just nature. Trees and trees, branches, rocks, and boulders. Everywhere you could barely see the sky from all the trees blocking out the sunlight. We began to unload everything from his Toyota. I was impressed by what he had brought. A two bedroom tent, a king size airbed and a portable generator with three outlets to run power off of. Wow, I said, maybe this won't be so bad. He smirked that smirk that I loved. Now that I think about it, I think it was more of an arrogant smirk. Well, my cell doesn't get any service whatsoever and was basically useless and I did use it as my MP3 player. Smartphones were just starting to make their way available to us, but I had my Motorola KRZR then and was ready for the upgrade. Mark said, yeah well I need the power because I do have to get some work done this weekend as he pulled out his laptop from the back seat. What am I supposed

to do, go play outside while you're working I said? Don't be like that, I've seen all the books, magazines and your Nintendo DS so you obviously had ways to occupy your time as well he said. He was right, I did bring things to entertain myself and was absolutely delighted that I could enjoy them longer with the help of portable electricity. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were uneventful. We took hikes, made campfires, took naps, relaxed, and barbecued. I did actually enjoy myself. That is, until Sunday night. We were in

bed. Mark was asleep and I was reading R.L. Stine's Fear Street book. Yes, I know, but I love those books. I thought I heard something in the distance. I was kind of used to the little noises of animals like chipmunks and squirrels running around through the leaves, but this sounded more distinct. The footsteps, not that of a four-legged animal, it sounded more like a human, like someone was trying to walk as quietly as possible. No, no, I thought, it's just my imagination from reading this book. I set the book down and started to strain to hear more. Closer. Whatever it is, it's getting closer. A bear, maybe. I looked over at Mark, who was sound asleep. Contemplating what to do, the footsteps reached the tent. Right above our heads was a zippered screen window that we had zipped closed and that was where whatever it was

outside stopped. I held my breath. All I could hear was my rapidly beating heartbeat. I heard someone else breathing. Not Mark, whoever it was outside. I wanted to wake Mark up but I knew if I did he would make some kind of noise and that would alert whoever it was out there that we were awake. That was when I heard a click. I know that sound. It's the same click sound when I open up my pocket knife. Oh my god, I thought. This is it. This is where I'm gonna perish. Mark, I thought. I knew this was a bad idea.

That's when I heard a scraping sound run across the tent. I knew what they were doing. They were running that knife all around the tent, taunting us. I knew this person had to know one of us was awake. Why else would they be doing that? The sound of the blade went all along the side of the tent and came back around to where we were, then started again. It was then I nudged Mark to wake up. Mark, I whispered. He started to groan,

what? And I said, shh, please. I whispered, there's someone outside. I couldn't see his face or anything for that matter because I had turned off the reading light. There's someone outside, I whispered, look. I then saw a flashlight shining on the tent. Mark reached over to the side of the bed, grabbed his case and pulled out the revolver. He yelled, stop. Whoever's out there, I have a gun and I'll not hesitate to shoot you in the face. Leave now or I will. The flashlight switched off and whoever it was started to walk away. Not even a speed walk, just casually walking away and without any light, it was completely pitch black out. Mark held onto that gun as I lay there in horror. Silence. Nothing. We didn't say a word,

just listening for any kind of sound. Somehow in all the chaos I must have fell asleep because I woke up to Mark shouting my name to come outside. I rubbed my eyes and looked at my watch. It was 6.15am and it was already light outside. I darted up and ran outside to see what he was yelling about. I ran to him to see him kneeling down by his tires. Slashed. I looked at the other ones and they were too slashed. The driver's side and passenger side window had been shattered. Oh my god, I shouted. What are we going to gonna do now Mark grabbed my hand and said we're gonna walk back to the main highway as fast as we can before whoever did this comes back my wallet I cried I need my wallet my keys and my phone my phone was still in the tent inside the bag I rushed over to the

tent grab my messenger bag realizing oh wait my wallet and keys are in the glove box. Oh god, I said the glove box, I ran over to the Toyota, swung open the door and noticed the glove box was torn open and everything gone. I started to cry, realizing that this situation is too much for me to deal with. My heart sank into my stomach and my knees got weak. I felt like I was going to faint. Mark, they have my driver's license, my house key, my money, and bank cards, I cried. Mark yelled so loud I heard his echo in the distance. Let's go now, he said. It's only about a mile and a half to the highway. We're going to have to flag someone down or find a call box since my phone is dead, he said.

Don't say that word I told him. Weak and scared I started walking with him down the dirt road. We drove just a couple of days prior. As we walked I could sense that there was someone or something else near us. I had this feeling of being watched. Oh no I thought. Please let us get out of here in one piece. Mark, I said. He stopped me, putting his finger to his lips and said, I know. I don't think we're alone. I can hear leaves crunching. I think we're being followed. Just keep moving and know what I told you on the way here. I mean it. I'll do whatever I have to protect us. I won't let anything happen to you. Thank goodness for that gun, I thought, but I wish we weren't in this predicament to begin with.

Speedwalking got me tired and thirsty. Then I could hear cars in the distance. We were almost there, I said. Yeah, we're just a little more. Finally reaching the highway, I pulled out my phone and I had signal. Not much battery, but just enough for us to call the police and Mark did call the police. They were there in less than five minutes. Two patrol cars arrived. Mark explained everything while I sat on the curb. I was questioned about the events and said all my identification and cards were stolen and my house and car keys. The officer told me to cancel all those cards immediately and have my house locks changed ASAP.

He suggested also to have the vehicle's locks changed. Two more officers arrived taking Mark and I back to the camp. I really didn't want to go but having the police with us I felt somewhat safe. Mark had called his insurance and was expecting a tow truck there soon. When we arrived, three of the officers looked around and took pictures and questioned us more and sealed off the area with yellow tape. Made it look like a crime scene which I guess it was because a crime did take place there. The officers asked Mark and I if we had any idea who or why someone would do this. I said no and furthermore I didn't tell anyone besides my mother and best friend that I was coming but I didn't say where. Mark said he only told his ex-wife who was at home with their

son. I thought maybe her because she obviously didn't like me and the feeling was mutual. I brushed that thought out of my mind because it was almost impossible for her to pull it off. Also, Mark and I got together way after they were divorced. It wasn't like I broke them up and turned them out. All her rage at him was then directed at me but she didn't scare me and I could handle her and didn't see her as a threat. The officer explained to us that it was most likely an isolated incident and it could have been someone who most likely didn't agree with our alternative lifestyle. Big surprise I thought but even this was extreme and I wasn't really buying that load of nonsense the officer was telling us.

Seemed like he knew more than he was willing to tell us. Seemed like he knew more than he was willing to tell us. So what's going to happen now, I said. The officer told me, well, we have your information and reports. We will investigate and we'll search for fingerprints or any other evidence. If and when we come up with any leads, we'll let you know. You might have to testify against any culprits we apprehend. And until then, he said, get all your locks changed, cancel your credit cards, and let us know if you come up with any new information. Great, I thought. So that's it.

The officer couldn't give us any more information as to who or why this happened. About ten minutes later, the tow truck arrived. We gathered all of our belongings. I was confused that nothing in the tent was stolen, not even Mark's laptop. Now if I let my imagination run wild, I could think of other things that didn't make sense, but I didn't want to go down that path. On the way back to the city, I was so much in disbelief. I wanted to say to Mark, I told you so, but he looked so hurt and confused I couldn't do it. Plus, it sucked to be

right. I mean, I really did want to enjoy myself this weekend and it started out pretty good. I got home immediately, cancelled everything, had my mom call the locksmith and changed all the house locks. I made an appointment for my car to get the locks changed and left it in the garage. I was still tense just knowing someone had my address and keys. Even though they couldn't unlock our house door that wouldn't stop them from breaking in. Nothing ever came of the situation or if it did Mark never informed me of it. We spoke about it and he was constantly checking in with the police department. He bought a new SUV. He didn't want any kind of reminder of

that weekend and I agreed on that. We broke up a few months later for other reasons. I always wondered if he ever went camping again after that or if he ever regretted that weekend. As for me, it's been 12 years since that horrible weekend. I now live in a different state where people do camp a lot. Good for them. I haven't camped since then and I never will again. Growing up, I spent a great deal of my childhood with my grandparents. They were travelers of different lines. My grandma being an Irish traveler and my grandfather being of Romani descent, despite being born and bred in Ireland. I was staying with my grandparents during the Easter break. My granddad's mother, Leonora, was still alive and kicking, around 90 years old. She was the monarch of the family, outliving her

spouse and siblings by almost 25 years. For an elderly lady, she was incredibly tough as she was still physically able to walk unaided and get around. I called her Nora, which is what I still refer to her as in the story. My days would start with porridge for breakfast followed by hours of playing outside no matter the weather, eventually coming back to the trailer to spend the evening helping Nora cook. She would tell me stories of her childhood and plate my hair. After we had eaten, my grandmother would put me to bed. After a while, Nora would come and settle my bed and stroke my head. What I didn't know at the time was that Nora would place and replace stones around my bed and windowsill to come back and remove them before I woke, and I would never have nightmares. Around the tenth day, things went as usual. I was put to bed and Nora came to place the stones.

This is the night I had the most vivid, terrifying dream I've ever experienced, which woke me up. Upon waking I saw the stones. I picked one up to investigate. As I retrieved it, something in the hallway caught my eye. I looked out to the hallway and saw Nora, but she appeared cloudy and translucent. She turned her head to look at me, smiled, and proceeded to move down the hallway. She wasn't walking, however, it was more like a gliding-like motion. Despite being awoken by a nightmare, I felt calm. Still clutching the stone, I got out of bed to follow her down the hallway. As I passed her room her door was closed as it usually was when she slept.

I reached out to open it but my hand would not touch the door no matter how hard I tried. I just couldn't touch it. Frustrated and sleepy I headed back down the hallway to my room to go back into bed. I placed the stone back where it was before I picked it up. I slept the remainder of the night peacefully. At one point, I felt Nora stroking my hair. When I woke up in the morning, Nora's door was still closed. I was greeted in the hall by my granddad who took me to the kitchen. He sat me at the table with my grandma and cousins as my grandfather explained to us that Nora had gone away and we won't see her again for a very long time. Later in life,

it became clear to me that me not being able to open the door was Nora's way of protecting me from seeing something damaging to a young child, and for that, I am grateful. I have quite a lot of stories such as this all dating back to my teen years, and this story I am remembering a day where I luckily dodged a bullet. I was a rather attractive 17-year-old with with shoulder long black hair and an edgy attitude. I was staying at my dad's who lived in Stockholm and had decided to go outside to enjoy the rain. It was going on 10pm or so. As I was standing there a taxi pulled up and a man and woman exited. The woman, after having said goodbye to her, I assumed friend, left down the street.

The man, however, going on 40-something, walked up to the apartment door that me and my dad lived in. He stopped and looked at me, his attitude friendly and relaxed. Why are you standing out here in the rain? he asked. I like the rain, I replied, thinking I was quite cool for the fact. Yeah, it was that age. Come, you'll catch a cold, he said after a little chuckle and opened the door. I followed in and we shared the stairs on the way up where he asked how old I was. I told him 17 and he appraised me from head to toe and said with surprise that he thought I was older. Again, being that age, I was nothing but flattered. All teens want to be adults after all, or the very least appear it.

I laughed anyway and we continued up the stairs when he gets a strange idea. Ever seen Stockholm from the roof? No, I said, intrigued but also apprehensive. It was raining so the idea of walking the roof didn't make sense in my head but being a bit of a stupid thrill seeker I obliged with a smile. He led me all the way up until we reached the apartment attic. He turned around and grinned at me which at the time I thought was only innocent. We make it to the roof anyway and he holds my hand so I won't fall. The view is amazing and it's not raining so much anymore.

We walk around there keeping balance until eventually he helps me back downstairs into the attic. We continue to innocently talk until we make it to where he lives a few stairs down and this is where my alarm bells really went off. Want to come inside? He asked, standing there outside of his door. I was stunned by the question because he knew how old I was and while legal in Sweden, it's still creepy considering our age difference. Realistically, there is only one thing a man could possibly want with a 17-year-old girl he quite obviously found attractive. Um, I stammered, still taken aback by the question. I have a friend over. We can watch TV and eat pizza.

A friend? I can't tell if that makes it worse or more secure. No thank you. I politely replied and made it towards my dad's door which was ironically right next to the man's. You live there? He asked, pointing at my dad's door and he said his name. Yeah, that's my dad. I answered with a proud smile as I made my way over there. He looked a bit more on the fence now, a strange wary look in his eye as he opened his

door. Alright, well, tell him I said hello. We said our goodbyes and I told my dad what happened. He looked angry but didn't tell me whether or not he'd do something about it. Knowing my dad today though, he probably had a stern talk with this man. Since I visited my dad quite rarely, I thankfully never bumped into this man again. I don't like to use the word ghost to describe specific paranormal activity. However, I like to use the word as a blanket term. I truly believe that there are things in this world which influence us with an invisible eye and most are willing to ignore the fact by being blissfully unaware.

But there are a few who can see through the veil and are forced to believe otherwise. I am one of those lucky or maybe unlucky people that have seen enough to not ignore its existence. I could probably talk all day about why some people are chosen to see through the veil but I'm not here to talk about that. For a long while I've been listening to ghost stories on YouTube that have been narrated and it never fails to fascinate me. I've had the idea to type out my ghost stories but failed to make them entertaining enough to be read out. Hopefully this will be different. My story begins when I was a young boy. I'm 23 now but don't remember how old I was when this happened. Just know it was a while ago. I believe my family and I were in Arizona. The house that

this occurred at was a big house. My dad has always liked big houses and preferred them over anything else. The moment you open the front door you see an angled wall that went left to a rather sizable area that eventually led to an even bigger living room. Maybe I'm being overdramatic with this but could be because I was small Directly to the right of the front door was just a wall and to the left was a big window that led to a curved staircase that went to the right Right underneath the top of the stairs was a bathroom that was a Jack and Jill styled bathroom One room was for the toilet then the other room was a sink that then opened to the large front room. That's about how much you need to know in order to fully understand the story so I won't be indulging in any more about the house.

It was a typical evening and we decided to go out to eat. Being that we didn't get to do this often I was excited and got ready as fast as I could. Because of that, I was the first to be ready and seeing as I was impatient, I ran downstairs to the front door to wait for the rest of my family who were still upstairs getting ready. I don't recall how long I sat there for, but at some point I began to have a funny feeling. At the time, I didn't know how to explain my feeling, but I now know that it was the feeling of dread. I thought I was just too anxious and put the feeling aside even though it was a strong feeling. However, while I was minding my business trying my best to be patient, I heard long drawn out breathing coming from the back of

the unlit bathroom. This freaked me out so much that I was thrown off guard and tried making logical reasons on why I was hearing off guard and tried making logical reasons on why I was hearing this. My first reason was that maybe someone had gone down the stairs and was trying to scare me, but I quickly threw that reason out because I had seen no one come down the stairs due to the fact that I was staring at them for the majority of the time. My second reason was that it was one of my parents' friends trying to scare me, but that idea was quickly thrown out as well because I was right next to the door. Then whatever was in the bathroom, it began to take slow and heavy steps towards the entrance of the bathroom. It sounded as if the thing was stomping or weighed 200 tons as each footstep

echoed out from the bathroom. I got too scared to move but at the same time I was driven mad with curiosity on what exactly was making the noise. So I waited in anticipation as this thing walked slowly towards the entrance of the bathroom. It then stopped midway and turned the sink on. I could clearly hear the sounds of someone washing their hands. Keep in mind that the heavy and drawn out breathing continued. I then got enough courage to say something to see what would happen. I said, hello? Is someone there? To my dismay it shut off the faucet and continued to walk around. As it did, the breathing became louder and louder to the point that it sounded like someone was loudly breathing in my ear. At that point,

I was too scared and ran up the stairs while loosely covering my ears. I never dared to look in the direction of the bathroom but noticed the footsteps had stopped. It didn't chase me up the stairs and as I neared the room where everyone was getting ready I slowed my breathing and entered. Everyone was still getting ready. I didn't feel like being by myself anymore for that day and decided to stay with the rest of my family until we finally went out to eat. And before you ask, no I didn't bring up the incident of my family because I didn't think they'd believe me. Fortunately I didn't have a whole lot of encounters with this thing but it did freak me out one more time before

we moved. Oddly enough that happened at night around the same time as the first encounter. I was playing with toys with my two brothers in the massive living room when I had the idea of getting another toy to add to the plot of whatever we were playing. The toy that I had in mind was in my room that I shared with my brothers, so I eagerly run up the stairs and began to approach the room. I didn't find this odd at the time, but the room light was on. I just thought maybe someone left it on, but I paid no mind to it at all. Maybe when I was ten feet away from the room the light turned off. The door had suddenly went from fully open to ajar as if someone were peeking out,

and my absolute horror was accompanied with the same drawn-out breathing coming from the room. I wisely chose to turn and run back down rather than face whatever it was that was blocking me from my toy. When I got back I gave my brothers it was that was blocking me from my toy. When I got back, I gave my brothers an excuse that I couldn't find the toy. Thankfully, nothing else happened. When we finally moved, we went to Colorado. My dad rented a small home that barely fit the big family, a ranch style I believe. We didn't stay in that house for more than 5 years but we eventually moved again. But not before facing another ghost that seemed to target my brothers and I. We even got to see what it was. Now I don't particularly remember the layout of that house

but I do know that the room that me and my brothers shared had a big window that faced the backyard. That is where we saw this other ghost. The encounter with this thing though stands out from the rest of my ghost encounters. On this said night, me and my brothers were in bed just talking to each other in the dark about elementary kid stuff. I was talking about something when I noticed my twin brother staring behind me at the window with the look of pure terror. That was when I saw my oldest brother looking at the same direction. He too had the same look. With my eyes wild I quickly turned around to see a child-sized shadow person standing at the window looking in on us.

Nothing really stood out except the milky white eyes that glowed. I immediately had the impression of hate, death, and decay. Weirdly enough, we didn't scream but ran out as fast as we could out of that room with our blankets and pillows. On that night, we decided to sleep in the hallway with the room closed for two months until we were forced to move back into our room. My brothers thankfully never saw that thing again, but I would see it one more time. The last time I saw it was not as scary, but more interesting. I remember that it happened in a winter season because there was snow. I was told by my father

to bring out a trash bag to the trash bin that was in the backyard against the wall. I gleefully took the trash and hopped my way to the back gate. I opened it to see the same shadow child looking in our room as before. I tried to study the situation but before I could do that it turned and ran from the window in the opposite direction and vanished halfway through the yard. Curiosity got the best of me and I threw the trash in the bin and promptly went over to the place I'd seen it stand. I saw two footprints in the snow where it had been standing and saw the trail that it had made before disappearing for good.

Something strange is going on in my town. I'm an 18 year old male. I consider myself a very athletic guy maybe because I do a lot of sports. I live in a small town in the state of Texas. It's not much going on here. So one night I was walking my dog out in the woods behind our house when suddenly the night sky turned very bright orange on the horizon. At first I thought I was looking into a sunset but then I remembered that it was already past midnight. Then the sky went back to normal and repeated that process two more times before it disappeared as fast as it had happened. I then felt pretty sick and immediately started to walk back home, dragging my poor dog behind me

After I arrived back home, I told everyone, expecting them to have seen it as well, but nobody did so I thought this was a bit odd The same night, I woke up at 5am to helicopters flying over my house I stepped outside onto our porch The choppers flew really low but had no lights, so they were almost impossible to locate. There were at least four of them. The night after, I saw more choppers after I heard a strange noise from our main road in our town, almost like an animal type of scream, but I can't replace it with any animal I know around here. Nothing more occurred after that. A thing I noticed later

was it was completely silent during the lights in the sky, almost like everything had stopped breathing. So that kind of discounts it being any sort of explosion or something of that sort. I have a few theories, but to this day I don't know what I encountered that night. I'm a fresh teacher board passer last 2018. After getting my license I was asked by a friend to become a substitute teacher in a nearby school for him since he is going to be gone for a month. I happily accepted and started the next week after. So the class that I was going to be substituting was for grade 7. I was quite nervous to start but the first day went well.

However, on the night of my first day, my friend texted me. Hey Bree, um, I forgot to tell you about one of my students. Anyway, his name is George. He's kind of weird and he might intimidate you but don't worry, he's harmless. He just needs a little attention and guidance. By the way, thank you so much, hope you have fun. Well, that's what he said. I was now aware of who the George kid was. He was small, wore glasses, and was sitting at the back. His classmates were kind of mean to him, I must say, so I decided to be kind to him and to approach him since my friend told me he needed guidance and I wanted to help.

Hi George, I'm Miss Bree. How was your day today? I started the conversation while the rest of the students were leaving the room. Uh, good, he replied shyly. Well, if you need any help, I'd be glad to assist you. I'm now your new friend, all right? I said. Oh, okay, thanks, he said and we parted ways. I didn't know that with that simple conversation, everything would change. George started to smile at me. Not the cute smile, nor the innocent smile, but the smile that would send chills to your spine. I always smiled back, anyway, since a teacher should be friendly. Random letters appeared on my desk in the faculty room with a similar handwriting like George's Stating weird and very sensitive things about him Like how he does things to pleasure himself

How he likes to stalk his classmates and more He didn't sign the letters but the handwriting was unique and I just know it was his I ignored it, which made it worse I started to receive the same letters in my house, someone ringing the doorbell at 3am for one whole week, my tires getting slashed, random accounts sending hate on my social media, my windows being smashed, and a lot more. I decided to let my friend, whom I substituted for, know all the things that had been happening. He was very alarmed and told

me to report it to the principal as soon as possible, and so I did. George was called into the guidance office and was suspended for a week. I was not able to hear what he had to say as my friend already came back and was attending the class again. My friend shared everything to me though. Apparently me ignoring the letters made George upset. He felt like I lied to him about being his friend and so he started doing these things to me to get his revenge. His parents visited me one day and apologized. I accepted it, told them to get help for their son. So to George, I'm sorry I didn't understand you, but please don't do this to your teachers. I would highly appreciate it if you get guidance and help. You're a smart kid

and you still deserve to be treated nicely since you clearly need help. Now all these events destroyed me and my love for teaching. I decided to have a fresh start in a new state and took therapy while I looked for a new job, specifically not teaching for now. If it's a flat or a squeal, a wobble or peel, your tread's worn down or you need a new wheel, wherever you go, you can get it from our tread experts. Toyo's open country family of tires We'll be right back. This is hands down one of the creepiest experiences of my life and probably the most in danger I ever was, even though I didn't realize it at the time. I'm a 19-year-old female. I live outside of a medium-sized Virginian city. Even though we're only about 40 minutes away from a decently

sized city our area is still very rural and unpopulated i had been in community college during the time working toward a nursing degree like most young women who hadn't found a good boyfriend or husband yet i turned to internet dating apps i was a bit hesitant about doing so but i really wasn't in the partying scene and there weren't any guys that I already knew who I was interested in, so Tinder just seemed like the logical option. At first, I didn't have very much luck. It was pretty bad. The first month I was on there, I got nothing but invitations to one-night stands and creepy guys asking to do all kinds of horrible things. There were a few guys that tried to act smooth but it was very obvious that they were only interested in getting me in their bed.

The only positive thing to come out of it all up at that point was that I had made $50 selling pictures of my feet. Joke all you want but $50 is $50. At a certain point, I realized that I either needed to lower my expectations or find another place to find dates. I decided to give one of the less perverted guys on there a try. He didn't wow me very much, but he seemed like he was a nice guy. He told me that he had a job, came from a nice family, and finished college. We met at a coffee shop in my town and hit it off from the beginning. We were very compatible from the start. He was compassionate, driven, and very smart. Those were all qualities I was looking for in a guy and he looked a lot better in person than he did on his

profile picture, as surprising as that is to say. We eventually drove around in his car for a few hours just so we could talk. What we talk about, you might be wondering? Conspiracy theories It was like the moment we left the public, he turned into a conspiracy theorist nutjob When he first started talking about the government and listening to our conversations I'd joke with him and said something like Okay, Alex Jones He didn't take kindly to this lighthearted joke and there

was a little bit of tension for a few minutes. Eventually though, he went right back to blabbering about the government and aliens. I'm not going to lie to you, I was halfway interested in some of the things that he was saying because they seemed at least a little true. But some of his conclusions just didn't line up, didn't make logical sense. It was like he could get you from point A to point B, but when he went straight from point B to point X for no reason. We eventually got off topic and things went back to normal for a short while. We started talking about our past relationships and some more intimate details like that. We really bonded there and I felt a weird connection with him. As strange as he may have been, I felt like I could be there for

him. We had gone on about two or three dates before I started asking around about him. I wasn't big into the whole gossip scene but I always want to know everything I can about someone that I'm dating. Most people I asked around town that I knew said that they had never heard or met him before. This was a little strange considering he lived in this town and seemed like he would have met at least a few of these people. The only people that I had found who had heard of him had some really strange stories to tell. One of them went like this. I guess he had rented an apartment that was on top of a beauty salon in town. At least according to this person, he got really violent

one day and started stomping around upstairs and yelling. It wasn't like he was angry, but it seemed more like he was trying to talk himself into doing something. And what was he saying? He was chanting, kill them, kill them. The whole thing seemed a little ridiculous. I wasn't sure I believed it and I just convinced myself that this couldn't have been the same guy. Sure he was a little weird, especially with the conspiracy theory thing, but he seemed like an otherwise normal human being. I kept this in mind during the next two or three dates we went on. I tried picturing him during the next two or three dates we went on. I tried picturing him being the kind of person that would do something like that,

flying off the handle for some kind of reason, and I just didn't see it. Couldn't imagine it at the time. And oh how wrong I was. One Friday night after I finished all my homework for the weekend, he texted me. He told me that he wanted me to come over. I honestly wasn't in the mood. I was really tired from class and just wanted to be alone for the night. I put my phone down and walked into the bathroom so I could shower. When I got out I had 53 missed calls. I got worried that my mom died or something.

I looked at all the notifications and they all came from this guy. I checked my text messages and he had repeatedly sent me the same sentence over and over. It said, I need your help right now. And it was in all caps. Unsure of exactly what to do, I gave him a call. He answered the phone and seemed extremely panicked and worried. I finally got to ask him what was going on and he told me that he was worried that someone had broken into his house but he couldn't find them. I guess he was home alone and this had been going on for about 30 minutes by this point. I told him that if he couldn't find someone else in his house then there probably wasn't anyone else there. It just seemed

obvious to me. But he didn't buy it. He was thoroughly convinced that someone was in there. He told me that he heard a door smash open on the other side of the house and when he rushed over there it was wide open and he thought that whoever had smashed it open was still there, hiding, waiting for him to relax so they could jump out and attack. I started asking myself whether or not he was in a healthy state of mind. I wasn't sure if I believed that his door had been smashed in. Maybe he really is crazy, I began thinking to myself quietly. He kept begging and pleading with me that I needed to come out there and help him.

I didn't have a gun and I was just some girl. What was I going to do? I decided that I didn't want anything to do with this guy anymore. I blocked him on everything and just kind of hoped the problem would go away. I tried getting my mind on to happier things. I figured that I was just going to watch my favorite movie, The Lion King, and just eat some ice cream. Before I left to get some ice cream, my mom asked me if I could stop and get her some cigarettes. I agreed. I was happy about it because I knew that I would have to drive by his house tonight. I didn't think that he was crazy enough to do anything about it or even notice, but it still made me a little uneasy

to think about being closer to him like that. There was a lot of traffic about a few minutes ahead of his house and when I finally passed it I saw police cars everywhere. My heart dropped. I started feeling guilty. I instantly thought that somebody really had broken into his house and tried attacking him. I pulled over on the side of the road and started making my way to his house. I asked one of the policemen who was on the scene what was going on. He told me that the guy who lived in this house had taken his mother hostage and was holding her at gunpoint. I was shocked. He wasn't being attacked.

He was the attacker. I ran back to my car, slammed the door, and drove away as quickly as I could. That really freaked me out that night, and ever since I've wondered what would have happened to me if I had gone to his house when he'd asked me to. Thankfully, no one was seriously injured and the police got him into custody after three days. He's in federal prison now. It was hands down the scariest experience of my life, but as bad as it may have been, I still have a Tinder profile. I'd like to preface this story by telling you that I was always a very good kid growing up.

My name is Mike. I was always nice to people and always followed all the rules. I never drank alcohol, smoked cigarettes, did any other drugs, never partied, never even had a girlfriend or did anything inappropriate with girls. So when I tell you this story, I want you to remember that this was during a phase in my life when I was really questioning reality and going through a serious identity crisis. With all that being said, let's get into it. So, I consider myself bi. I like girls, and I also find boys attractive. I don't seem gay or feminine or anything else, and if I didn't tell you, you probably would never guess.

And it's not all guys, there are just a few that I find myself attracted to. And after reading about it online a couple of years back, I realized that it wasn't a big deal, that sometimes you're just attracted to the same sex a little bit. I never had the opportunity to be with a guy, I only ever thought about it. I was fairly shy and had a hard time making friends and relationships, so I did what any sane person does. I created a few internet dating profiles. At first, I was only looking for women. I was definitely interested in dating a guy, but I didn't really want to that bad. I knew that there was going to be a certain stigma attached to our relationship. It wasn't like we lived in San Francisco or anything and kind of had that social freedom,

so I knew I was going to be doing myself a favor by simply dating a girl. After a few weeks of trying to find a decent woman, I found myself a little frustrated. The women that I met were horrible. I started simply matching with any woman I could, and all I got were uggos, single moms, and thoughts. I remember getting an attitude about it. The women online just seemed like lower quality people, as rude as that sounds, and any of the decent seeming ones never messes me back. And I feel the need to point out that I'm not ugly or anything, I'm fairly attractive. I'm not Brad Pitt, but I thought I was handsome enough to

at least get someone of equivalent looks. I guess I was wrong. I remember getting really excited at one point when a girl agreed to go out on a date with me. She seemed like a real catch and was incredibly attractive. No kids, great. But then when the night of the date came, she told me that she was having car trouble and her mechanic needed $500. She wanted me to loan it to her and she promised to pay it back. I blocked her and gave up on women for a little while. That's when I decided to make a grinder profile. I mean, I didn't have anything to lose. And I'm sure there were plenty of decent guys in the area that could at least keep me company until I can find someone that would be a subtle long-term partner.

The night I installed Grindr I had a guy wanting to meet up. He was definitely my type. Tall, muscular and not afraid to take his shirt off. We skipped the whole dinner thing and got right into the action. It was a really fun night and I enjoyed myself way more than I ever thought I would. That was when I became semi-addicted to one night stands with guys. Months went by and I was out doing this every single weekend, sometimes even during the week. And I remember meeting one guy in particular that changed it all. His name was Fred and for someone who might be the most malicious person I've ever met, he had a very innocent and unfitting name.

He was one of the few guys that wanted to do weird stuff before getting into it. He wanted a lot of roleplay which was quite unusual and unexpected. He was extremely manipulative and I don't know why I went along with any of it. For some reason, I just couldn't say no to him. He was sadistic, domineering. It made me feel horrible about myself. I ended up giving him my number, and we started having regular encounters. He told me that he didn't want me seeing anyone else, that I was only to see him.

I couldn't explain it to you if I could. I've thought a lot about this in retrospect. The only thing that I can imagine is that he had been slipping drugs into my system somehow, which may very well have been the case. Whatever reason for it, he always got his way with me. And then, things started escalating. The foreplay became even more extreme. It started resembling the freaky stuff you see on the internet, like the really freaky stuff that you wouldn't even dream of doing in your wildest fantasy. I remember being choked one time and passing out. I had something in my mouth to prevent me from saying anything or stopping him in any way.

I couldn't resist. After that, I tried telling him that I wasn't into this kind of stuff, but he refused to listen. He told me that he didn't care what I wanted. As horrible as that may have seemed, I still didn't really do anything about it. I just let it happen. Things climaxed when he tried forcing me to... kill a dog. He had already psychologically manipulated me in so many ways that I almost did it. It was like he had read a psychology book on how to program someone into obedience. He had already psychologically manipulated me in so many ways that I almost did it.

It was like he had read a psychology book on how to program someone into obedience. Because I'm not gonna lie, I came really close to doing it. I remember punching him in the face and literally running away. I blocked his number and did everything I could to avoid him after that. He's tried to contact me a few times, showed up at my workplace a couple of times, but I've decided to stick to a firm no. I told him that I wasn't bi anymore and I didn't like men, especially him. Looking back, the whole experience makes me really sad. It was really traumatic, and I didn't even realize it until after it happened. But he was using the roleplay as a way to psychologically condition me,

and there's a part of me that's really scared that he's going to do it to someone else. I tried calling the police and reporting him before, but I never had any evidence. I got a restraining order on him last month, and I'm hoping that's the last I ever hear from him. I know all of that went from 0 to 100 quick, but it's been a while. But I think after this, I'm going to stick with only dating girls, if I even date at all. Being in a relationship with a bad person can really take a toll on your soul. I dated a girl for three years. I did everything for her and really gave her my all. And in return, she stole, lied, and cheated. I genuinely went out of my way to avoid spending too much time with other girls. What was she doing? Well, I'm sure you can figure that out. I was angry.

I had always been the nice type of guy. Not that weirdo that would randomly buy some girl flowers and expect her to date me, but the kind of guy that understood a thing or two about people and knew a little bit of kindness goes a long way. I really did pride myself on being a nice guy, but I guess my ex took it as a weakness. So without putting on a whole pity party for myself, that was what led me to downloading a few dating apps online. I wanted to just date as many girls as I could and, I don't know, get revenge in my mind, if that makes any sense. I hated feeling like I was being played. I didn't want to necessarily hurt anyone, I just wanted to raise my self-esteem.

My brother, who had always been skeptical of my ex-girlfriend, was very supportive of the whole getting out of there and doing whatever I want with whoever I want. Well, I ended up getting myself in the biggest dumpster fire of my life. There were points when I really thought I was in genuine danger. It was quite a nightmare and in retrospect, I never should have gone down this path. Someone being a bad partner to you doesn't justify what I did and I take responsibility for my actions. Two weeks into the whole internet dating thing and I found it pretty easy to find a couple of girls that wanted to date me regularly. And for a one month long period, I was dating three girls at the same time

and they all thought I was only dating them. One of them was basically as interested in doing it as I was. She was pretty easy to handle. There was another one that was a tall brunette and she was truly something else. I kind of wish that I had met her under different circumstances because she was probably the best one of them all. And then there was the blonde one. She wasn't an actual blonde, one of those bleach blondes with country boots types of girls. Let's call her Stephanie. Stephanie had a very bad background herself. She told me about her past where she had been abused by her father and had multiple horrible boyfriends. There was something very off about her and I

figured that I would find out what that was sooner or later. And oh boy, did I find out. As crazy as Stephanie was, she was definitely a perceptive little girl. She could read into my thoughts in a way that I found very surprising. There were at least two separate occasions that she had asked me if I was seeing anyone else. Of course I lied. I knew that if I came clean that she was going to end it, and I wasn't done having my revenge on the world just yet. I remember taking Stephanie out for a date on Friday night.

I took her to a decent steakhouse. I wasn't trying to be nice for anything. I honestly wanted to eat steak myself. When the date was over, we hung out and talked for a little while and then we had some fun. By the time I was ready to head home, it was only 10 o'clock. When I was getting ready to leave, I had already been texting the other girl that was really easy, getting her ready for maybe a 12am time of fun. Everything seemed like it was going as planned.

I got over to the other girl's house at 12.15. She was home alone. We started getting ready to go to the bedroom and we heard a loud knocking on the door. She had no idea who it could have been. Her parents were out for the weekend and she rarely had people come to her house like this. She answered the door. I was waiting in the bedroom when I heard her fall to the floor. I rushed out to see what happened.

It was Stephanie. She must have followed me here. My heart dropped to the floor and I felt extremely panicked. I looked down to see the girl and her face was bloody. Must have been punched in the nose or something. And then I saw something in Stephanie's hand. It was a hammer. She had tears running down her cheeks but I also saw hate in her eyes. I'm sorry. That's all I could murmur out before she threw the hammer at me. It hit me in the back, left a horrible bruise.

It was honestly mortifying. I was worried that she was going to pull out another weapon of some kind. A knife or maybe a gun. There's no telling with her. The other girl was on the floor completely unconscious. Stephanie started asking me a bunch of questions. How many other women were there? How long has this been going on? And why? I also noticed a theme with the questions she would ask me. She always related it back to her not being enough. Like the reason I was cheating on her was because of the fact that Stephanie didn't fulfill my needs or something like that.

I'm not going to lie to you, I came clean completely. Beginning this whole charade felt wrong from the very beginning. If it hadn't been for my brother's encouragement, I never would have gone through with any of this. I tried explaining to her that I had just gotten out of a really bad relationship and wanted to be a player for a little while. We talked for a little while more and then she asked me something that really caught me off guard. Do you still love me? I told her yes. Honestly, I didn't really care for her very much but I knew that I was running serious risk if I said no. I figured that I could just end this entire dumpster fire in a couple of days through the phone or something, kind of guarantee my own well-being there.

I talked Stephanie down and she became more calm. I told her that she should get back in her truck and go home and try to relax. For some reason, she still wanted to be in a relationship despite all of this. I told her that I still loved her and got her back into her vehicle, and when I did, I noticed that a hammer was not the only thing she had in there. I definitely saw a shotgun, and would look like a gallon of gasoline, and I'm only assuming that she also had some matches. Suffice to say that I was extremely terrified of what this girl was capable of. I brought the other girl to the hospital.

She didn't remember anything. I tried convincing her that it was some random stranger that hit her in the face and somehow she was as dumb as she was easy. She was totally fine, didn't even have a concussion, just unfortunately a broken nose. I ended the relationship with the easy girl and the tall brunette. I knew that breaking up with Stephanie was going to be a little bit more difficult though. I deleted all my social media and blocked her on everything. I wasn't sure what else I could even do. She only knew my name and maybe what my car looks like and that's

about it. It's been a couple of weeks since this whole thing and thankfully Stephanie has not reached out since and I'm really hoping she never finds me again. I can understand the pain of being cheated on but the way she hurt that other girl was outright wrong. But I guess some people react to things differently. I can only hope that Stephanie gets better after this whole ordeal. Maybe get some therapy because, God, she needs it. I created a Tinder after I moved out of my parents' house. Anyone out there can understand how hard it is to date people while living with your parents. It doesn't matter how old you are, how experienced you are, or how many times you've been with someone,

you will always be a child in the eyes of your parents. And that's why after my first long-term relationship ended while I was in college, I decided to wait until I officially moved out to pursue anyone seriously again. Little background about me, I was 21 years old at the time and I graduated from a four-year university a little early. I was never reckless or wild at any point in my life, although I really wanted to be. I always felt like I was holding back. So when I moved out and started living on my own after college, I decided to get experimental with my love life. That started out as going to the club

twice a week, but I realized that it was only attracting perverts there. That's why I created the Tinder profile. That way, I could at least vet guys before I let them into my life. I remember looking at each profile carefully before swiping left or right. I didn't want to be too superficial because I know that some guys have redeeming qualities even if they don't look like supermodels. I remember learning a lot about men in my last relationship. One of the things I learned was that guys don't really know how to dress nice or present themselves in a nice way. A good outfit and a nice haircut can make such a difference. In my last long-term relationship, my boyfriend went from a 6 to a 9

with just those changes. I remember I was swiping around on Tinder one night while I was watching Netflix. It was exactly what you'd expected. A true crime documentary. Love those. And I remember feeling a little bugged out because I saw a face on Tinder that I recognized. I had never seen the guy's face anywhere other than Tinder but I felt like I had seen him multiple times now. It was a little weird because I remember swiping left the last time I saw it. It was like I was seeing him a second time or something. That time I went out of my way to read his name. Tyler. He had a very narrow face and looked like the kind of guy that likes to go to biker clubs on the weekends.

He looked really rough. He had this long black hair that looked extremely unkempt and he had a really mean face on his profile picture. Those were enough indicators that I knew I was not interested in this guy. I swiped left and checked out a few more profiles before losing interest in going back to watching this Ted Bundy documentary. A couple of days had passed. I hadn't been on Tinder for a while. No particular reason, I just didn't have any time for it. I landed a really nice job after college in the local laboratory and I was working pretty hard. Between having that new job and moving out, it was a little difficult finding time for the whole

dating thing. So this is where things got a little leery at first. I logged back onto Tinder and started checking out more guys. I was extremely surprised to see that Tyler was back. I didn't match with him or anything. He didn't super like me or anything. He was just there, recommended to me again. I remember looking around online to see if Tinder would just show you the same few guys a couple of times and I didn't find any convincing answers. I remember reading a few comments on Reddit that said it's possible to see the same person more than once but only if you swiped a lot and ran out of people to see. And as much as I use Tinder, I didn't use it enough to run out of people to match with. I live just outside of a mid-sized

city and my local community was large enough. I thought it would have been extremely weird to have run out of people enough to see this guy multiple times like this. And here's the other weird thing. I'm a girl. This is supposed to be a guy multiple times like this. And here's the other weird thing. I'm a girl. This is supposed to be a guy problem because there aren't enough women out there. There also weren't any other guys who repeated. Of all the guys on Tinder, the weird biking guy with greasy hair and probably carries a knife on him, he was the guy I kept having to see. There were probably three or four more occasions when I'd seen his profile. I remember getting frustrated. I purposely matched with him and then blocked him before he even had a chance to message me. I figured that would get rid of the problem, right?

Guess again. Because the very next day I was on there, I saw him again. Exact same profile picture and everything. That was the point when I started getting really freaked out. I took a break from Tinder for a few days. I tried telling myself there just weren't too many men in the area I guessed. I couldn't think of a more logical reason. Next creepy incident happened when I saw that exact same profile picture and name try to add me on Facebook. I don't use Facebook all that often and it was the first time I probably used it in a week that I logged in and saw this. I got a little braver than I normally am and decided to accept the friend request just

to see what he would do. And you guessed it, he messaged me saying that he had seen me on Tinder. We hadn't exchanged 5 messages before he was asking me what restaurant I wanted to eat at. I explained to him that I wasn't interested and didn't want to date anymore. He said that I was lying and started threatening me. He started describing horrible things he was going to do to me. They were mostly lewd in nature but some just seemed a little violent. Now I know that I probably shouldn't have accepted his friend request to begin with. I probably should never have messaged him either and I should have blocked him right then and there but I didn't. In a weird way I was so curious and

interested in this. I agreed to meet him in a parking lot of a strip mall in town. I don't know what possessed me to do it but I agreed to it. I wasn't consciously planning on pursuing him in a serious capacity but then again, here I was now, driving to some strip mall for a really freaky guy. I remember being excited and nervous like I hadn't been in a while as I drove over there. It was such a thrill and I'm not sure why it was either. I pulled in at one end of the parking lot and sat there for a few minutes. I pulled up my phone and opened Facebook Messenger. He had already messaged me a minute ago asking where I was. I told him that I was almost there. I lied. I really

wanted to see him before he saw me and thankfully I did. I spotted him about 6 car lengths away. He hadn't seen me and my windows were pretty dark so I doubt that he would be able to see inside. I sat there in complete silence studying him. He looked even rougher in real life than he did online. His hair was even longer and more disheveled and there was one beat up old car. Rusted, filthy inside and out. Death trap was spray painted on the driver's side door. One look at him and one look at that car and you knew it was his. My better judgment finally kicked in and I drove away. I blocked him on Facebook and closed my Tinder profile. Again, I'm not sure what I was really expecting to happen. Maybe some part of me wanted

to date a wildly unhinged bad boy. It wasn't long after this point in my life that I had met my now fiancé. We have a really happy and loving relationship and that probably wouldn't have happened if I had gone along with that degenerate. Whatever would have happened, I'm really glad I don't have to find out. This is a pretty weird story. I'm a 24-year-old man. I was friends with a 29-year-old woman who had two kids. Her mom and my mom were best friends at the office where they worked a

couple of years back and our families became pretty close. Me and this girl, let's call her Angela, became quite close. We were never romantically interested in each other, we just had a very compatible sense of humor. She was a single mom and she honestly struggled a lot. Her former husband seemed like a really good guy, but the pressure of raising a kid broke him. He tried convincing Angela to get an abortion a week before the baby was born. That was pretty messed up, and then he started gambling obsessively. Angela told me that he gambled away their combined savings account, which was about $8,000. Their marriage lasted for about a year or two before he finally just disappeared.

And as bad as it might be to say, she was better off without him. Raising two kids might not be easy, but raising three is a lot more difficult. Angela and I had become good friends after I started helping her take care of her kids. I honestly felt bad for her and as much as her family tried to help, they didn't have enough time outside of work to make a big difference. I didn't do a lot and she was always appreciative of what I did do. She was really lonely and have been looking for a guy for a while. She had the great idea to go on Tinder. I remember her telling me about this one really handsome guy. I wasn't exactly sure what to expect from the first time I met him. I hated him. I had a really bad feeling about his motives.

The situation was just weird. Now don't get me wrong, Angela is a great person and any guy would be lucky to have her, but she was a single mom. It didn't matter how nice or attractive she was. She had two kids, didn't make very much money, and if it wasn't for her family and friends, probably wouldn't be able to keep her life together. I always expected her to either go for an ugly, wealthier guy that could take care of her, or a guy with kids of his own. You know, something like that. But this guy that she was dating now, he was a freak. He was attractive, had a good job, and seemingly had everything going for him. And here was the kicker.

He claimed to have never dated a girl before, and he was 28. And just think about how weird that is for a moment. Every time I saw them together, it was so obvious to me that he was faking his personality in order to impress Angela. And the sad part is she totally bought all of it. She ate it up with a shovel. Call me a jerk but when something seems too good to be true, it normally is. I knew there was going to be some kind of dark demon behind this little act. He was going to turn out to be a drug addict or something worse. I was honest with Angela about the whole situation from the very beginning and she really didn't appreciate that. She started telling me to mind my own business and that I should just be happy for her. After the third or fourth time that I said something to her,

she told me that I should stop being jealous and that I was in love with her. Angela was definitely not my type and I was not attracted to her. It made me mad that she insinuated that I was, but after that I stopped helping her and created a lot of distance. About two weeks had gone by before I started feeling worried about her again. I decided to look into the guy that she had been dating. I knew that he was some kind of freak and if I could somehow prove it then at least I could save her some trouble.

This is going to sound ridiculous but it really was this simple. I googled his name. I looked around on the first few pages in the results and found his Facebook account. It was a public profile and I could view everything that he commented on and posted. But here was the weird part. The profile said he was in a relationship with another girl and it was another single mom. I also noticed that he was quite active in a few LGBT communities online. But here was the weird thing. He had a couple of posts about the stigma against maps or minor attracted persons. It had been within a year that he posted a five paragraph rant about how children can be in love with adults and that age was just a number. I found it really disturbing and immediately knew that he had some bad intentions with Angela's kids.

I got together with Angela and made sure that her mother was with us when I told her. Her mom was very street savvy and I knew that she would side with me on this issue. I didn't want Angela to think that I was making stuff up. I took as many screenshots as I could and I showed it to both of them. First of all, Angela didn't even know that he had a Facebook. He had told her that he didn't believe in social media, and even worse, he had watched her kids alone before. Angela's mom freaked out and started lecturing her about creepy men. I could tell that it was really tough for Angela to accept the truth.

I know it's hard. She really wanted to believe that a nice, smart, wealthy, and attractive guy wanted to be with her, but this guy clearly wanted to be with her kids more than the other way around. Angela apologized to me for being an idiot about this situation, and she thanked me for going through the trouble to find out. Angela told me that they reported him to the police and she broke up with him. She asked her kids multiple questions about potentially being abused and it seemed like nothing had happened, thankfully. I don't know how close it came to being a bad situation and I'm just really happy that I was smart enough to google the guy's name. If I hadn't done that, her kids could have potentially been kidnapped or worse. All of the information that I used to convince Angela and

her mother that this guy was dangerous came from one little search. A search that Angela apparently didn't do herself. It also made me realize how gullible people are when they really want to believe something. If you want to lie to someone, don't tell them something that's difficult. Tell them something they really deep down want to believe, and you'll have a much easier time of convincing them. Angela told me that she was going to take a break from guys for a while. I went back to being a good friend and helping out, and everything has been fine. Since. since this happened a few years back the worst thing I've ever gone through since this is going

to be completely anonymous I'm going to be able to tell you the entire truth of what happened writing this out has been a big revelation for me when you realize how bad the situation was and how stupid I had been. It also made me realize I have incredibly low self-esteem and a horrible self-image. I've been working on these things since this experience and I've been going through therapy regularly. After something like this I really needed it. I was in my early 30s. I was single and didn't have any luck in finding a good girlfriend.

Never had a relationship last longer than a year. I didn't know what I had been doing wrong for all the time and a part of me started to believe that I was incapable of keeping a girl around. This was a couple of years back now and I found myself looking for a potential partner on Craigslist. You guys have it easy these days with all the apps and stuff around. Dating on Craigslist was honestly tough. The dating scene on Craigslist in my area was populated enough that I had never lost hope in finding someone. I didn't have the confidence to approach a stranger and didn't even know where I would do that if I did have the confidence. Someone had posted on Craigslist that they were interested in finding a guy for a potential group activity, if you get my drift

They claimed it was a girlfriend and a boyfriend who were interested in experimenting I figured that I didn't have anything to lose and if they turned out to be weird or something I could just leave I messaged them and we got in touch We agreed to meet and see what happened on one Friday night It has been about six months since my last relationship and I was excited to be getting some action. I met them in a bar in the downtown area of my city. The girl, let's call her Natalie, was very pretty but her boyfriend wasn't the most attractive in the world. He was really overweight and pretty ugly if I'm going to be completely honest.

I didn't really care how he looked though, I was more interested in her. We went back to their place and things took a surprising turn. She told her boyfriend to go wait in the other room while we had our fun. I thought that this was going to be one of those group kind of things and I didn't expect this but hey, I wasn't complaining. After we finished, she started telling me that she was feeling really unsatisfied with her boyfriend. She told me that she'd been looking for another guy to come into the relationship who could better satisfy her needs. She told me that her boyfriend was honestly too obese to participate. I almost didn't believe her at first, but she said it with a dead serious face and had clearly put some thought into what she was going to say to me.

She told me that she would love to date the two of us and be in a polyamorous relationship. I told her that I would give it some thought. I basically got the vibe that I was going to be used and that was about it. I figured that I couldn't complain. That's a dream for most guys. We had a couple more experiences before we all agreed on what this was going to be. Two months into the relationship, I moved in with them. I didn't interact with him all that much. We had a few conversations, but it was honestly pretty awkward. After all, I was only here because he was too big to really

please his girlfriend. I'm sure that was in a healthy frame of mind to be in. As time went on, our relationship expanded. We had brought two more people into our relationship, a girl and a transgender. Everyone was always pretty nice and nothing ever happened without approval. I understand this probably sounds extremely strange, but it worked. At least it seemed to work. The entire relationship revolved around Natalie. We eventually started running a house that could provide us all of our own rooms except for Natalie. She didn't have a room of her own. She would just sleep in a different room almost every night. I always looked forward to the nights when she slept in my

bed. I also noticed that there was a dynamic where being nice to Natalie meant that she was more likely to sleep in your bed that night, so it turned into a big competition of who could buy her the most stuff or do things for her that would make her happy. I didn't see it at the time, but that's exactly the way the entire relationship dynamic was set up and I completely fell into the trap. I remember buying these expensive steak dinners and cooking them for her in hopes that she would sleep in my bed that night. I remember when there was this one occasion when I had bought Natalie a new necklace, brought her home a special dinner and did all of her laundry that day. I really wanted her to myself that night, but

her original boyfriend had gone out of his way to pay all of her bills for the month, which normally didn't happen. Me and him started arguing and things got a little confrontational. Thankfully, it didn't get violent. Natalie may have been a manipulative devil, but she was good at diffusing these tense situations. I remember a couple of times when we would sit down and have these group chats where we discussed what was on our minds. I brought this topic up and said that it wasn't fair how Natalie got everyone to do her favors. It felt like it created a competition and we had to compete for her love and acceptance. Now it had probably been about 14 months of living with them and being in this polyamorous relationship. The night I said that, I could tell that she was extremely offended that I

had even thought this. She stopped sleeping in my bed after that. The dynamic had completely changed. It didn't matter how much effort I put into getting her to sleep with me after that, she never did. And as desperate as it might sound, I really needed her love and acceptance. I started feeling really bad about myself and I couldn't stand it. It was about a month later when she sat me down and told me that it would be best if I packed my things and moved out. She said the chemistry just wasn't there anymore. My heart was broken. I couldn't believe it. As strange as it may have seemed, I have really grown accustomed to this lifestyle and I couldn't imagine not living this way anymore. I was about

to go from living with other people to living alone and that night I honestly thought about ending my own life. I went for a drive right after she told me that and almost drove off the bridge. I started going but something in me snapped and I decided not to. When I got back home I packed my things, went to a motel room for a few days and found an apartment to live in alone. That was a really dark time in my life. I reached back out to my parents and ended up moving back to my hometown. The whole ordeal was miserable and had nearly driven me to ending my own life. I found a decent job and started going to therapy and that was when I had really started to connect the dots. This relationship was never about new experiences

or loving as many people as possible. It really was about Natalie making us compete for her attention. She had this savior complex and treated all of us like we were less than her, less than nothing sometimes. It was extremely psychologically manipulative and I can't believe how easily I fell for it. It was only after a few therapy sessions that it all became so clear. I've been single since then and I spend most of my time with my family now. My sister has kids of her own and I've gotten really since then and I spend most of my time with my family now. My sister has kids of her own and I've gotten really close with them. They are really nice kids and a part of me really wishes I had kids of my own.

I'm not really sure if I'm going to start looking to date again, maybe ever. It's been a few years since I moved back home and I'm honestly really scared of ever trying to be in a normal relationship again. Whatever happens the rest of my life though, I'm happy I at least still have a family that loves and accepts me, where I don't have to compete for attention like some kind of puppy in an animal shelter. Jessica has been my best friend for a very long time. And when she started dating this psychopath, I knew that she was in danger. But she wouldn't listen. Now I'm getting ahead of myself.

I am a 22 year old male and this story is about my friend Jessica. Before you make your accusations, yes, I did have feelings for her. We had dated once and it completely changed the dynamic of our relationship. We had been best friends before and then we dated and she told me that she didn't want to lose me as a friend. Our friendship never really was the same after that. I made it clear that I had feelings for her but I guess she just didn't feel the same way. I still don't know why she wouldn't date me because she lost me both as a friend and as a boyfriend. This had been about a year after we tried dating each other. It was only two days and it was pretty strange. Dating someone that you've been best friends with for a very long

time is tough because you have to start acting a certain way. It's not like meeting someone on Tinder. You have this relationship and all of a sudden there's a romantic element to it and it can be tough and I guess I didn't try hard enough. Anyway, we still agreed to remain friends after that experience but again, it didn't really go back to normal. Life continued and we slowly but surely drifted apart. I'm not sure if she had dated other guys at that time, but she didn't tell me about them if she did. She didn't tell me about any other men she was romantically involved in until she started dating a guy named Aiden. This guy was a complete jerk. He wore this dirty camouflage hoodie all the

time and always smelled like beer. I only met him a few times and I really disliked him. It was one thing to be dating Jessica but he was borderline abusive. Like he started telling her how to fix her hair and how to dress. He starts controlling every aspect of her life. It wasn't very long into the relationship that she told me that he didn't really care for our friendship. She told me that she still wanted to be friends with me but I knew that this was going to be an issue sooner or later. She completely changed her haircut. Now, it was short and blonde and she also started getting tattoos.

I always found that strange because she never expressed a desire to get a tattoo before but I had a feeling that he was making her. She gradually started cutting out all of her friends and spent all of her time with Aiden. I asked a couple of our mutual friends about it and they all agreed with me that Aiden seemed like a bad guy and that he was controlling her. Things had finally gotten to the point when I had enough. I made the decision that I was going to tell her that she needed to break up with this guy for her own well-being. It was very obviously affecting her life. She started doing things that she had never done before. She started showing up late to work. Even started smoking.

Like, literally, who does that? I called her on her phone one day when she was driving to work. She had a shift at 1pm and hadn't woken up until 12 something and she was late. I tried explaining the entire situation to her and how she had become this completely different person. I told her that I was worried for her own well-being and that this guy was clearly toxic. She told me to screw off and hung up. As you can guess, she eventually blocked me on social media and completely ghosted me. Not going to lie to you, it really hurt my feelings that she did that. It was one thing to hang up on me and not reach out, but to go out of her way to block me on everything just seemed a bit extreme. I was half suspicious that Aiden forced her to do it,

but that wasn't my problem anymore. About two weeks had gone by when I honestly started thinking about her again. I realized I did genuinely miss her and kind of wanted her back in my life. She had made it clear when she blocked me on social media that she wanted nothing to do with me but it didn't stop me from sending an apologetic text message to her. I never got a reply and I don't think she even read it. I was pretty sure that she had blocked my phone number too. At any rate I found myself getting really curious about her. I knew that I should have stopped thinking about her at this point but I just couldn't help myself. I created another

Facebook account to be able to check in on her. I knew that she had the privacy set to open and she had my regular Facebook profile blocked, so the second one was the only way I could keep up with her. In a few weeks that we had been out of contact, she got three more tattoos, started posting memes about smoking weed, and even got engaged to Aiden. They hadn't been dating for three months and they were already engaged now. I didn't even know what to think. I didn't cry or anything, I just kind of sat there for a minute and looked at her profile picture. It was a picture of her and Aiden sitting at the

lake drinking beer. The more I looked at it, the more I had a feeling that she was completely a different person now. The look in her eyes had been a the more I had a feeling that she was completely a different person now. The look in her eyes had been a look that I had never seen before. I asked a couple of our mutual friends about her and she didn't really keep in touch with anyone. There wasn't a big falling out with everyone like there was for me, but she just didn't reply to text messages or anything anymore. She was just too busy with Aiden. I haven't thought about her too much since then. I haven't reached out or anything like that. I'm not that desperate.

She just isn't part of my life anymore. I find it so strange how you can just meet some random stranger on a dating app, have them come into your life, completely change who you are, and then you eventually cut off contact with everyone. I never understood what about Aiden that made her go so crazy. She made so many radical changes in her life so fast, I don't ask about her anymore. It took all of this to make me realize that I had stronger feelings for her than I had previously thought, but that opportunity is gone now. Even if she broke up with Aiden, she's a completely different person now and I'm not sure I could ever look at her the same again. I just hope that she isn't

being abused or something. Aiden definitely gives me those vibes which is part of the reason that I disliked him from the very beginning, but again, it's not my problem anymore. All I can do is try to move on with my own life. So yeah, that's the story of how I lost the girl next door to a drunken Tinder user. Hey friends, thanks for listening. Be sure to subscribe and click that notification bell to be alerted of all future narrations if you got a story be sure to submit them to my subreddit r let's read official and give and receive feedback from the community and maybe even hear your story featured on the next video and join my discord interact with me and other listeners directly and if you want to

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