11. A New Meaning to Ride or Die
Just to give you a bit of background I’m female and I drive for Lyft at night. I’m on the shorter side at 5’4” tall and have been driving for nearly six months. I tend to drive downtown Denver especially on weekends when there is the most money to make. In this time, I’ve only had a couple truly scary encounters and I drive seven nights a week at least a couple hours a night.
The first scary one started out normally enough for that late at night. I had just dropped off a passenger in Aurora and was marking my way back towards Market Street since the bars hadn’t closed yet. I get a pick up that’s on the way. It’s a nice enough area that I don’t feel uncomfortable but anyone who knows Aurora CO knows it’s not really the best even with the few nice areas.
A couple of guys hop in, one in front one in back. Both have on hoodies and are carrying backpacks, but this is Colorado and almost 1:30 in the morning so not that odd. Where it gets odd is after they get in. I give my normal greeting, but they completely ignore me shove their backpacks onto the floor and pull their hoods up while shielding their faces from the windows with their hands. I was instantly uncomfortable, and I could feel something was off.
It was only a 10-minute drive and we were in a secluded area so I decided the safest thing I could do was complete the ride. I could feel my fight or flight instinct kicking in. Within about a minute I had decided if they tried anything I was going to crash my car. Neither one had put on a seat belt, so I figured that would be my best chance. Once we arrive at the location they wanted to be dropped off at I could tell it was not a good area. Bars on all the windows, trash everywhere, and cars in disrepair.
They get out but don’t shut my doors and start whispering to each other while glancing at me. One of them has his hand in his pocket fidgeting with something (I have no idea what). At this point, I’ve had enough and step on the gas driving off with the doors open. I drove a couple of miles until I get to a gas station with lights and people before I stopped to properly close both doors. I called it a night and headed home to cuddle my toddler and my husband before having a good cry in the safety of my own bed. I have no idea what they were planning but I do know I was terrified from the moment they pulled their hoods up to the moment I drove off with my doors open.
The second story takes place a couple of weeks after the first. I had sworn off all pickups in Aurora and the shady parts along Colfax at night. I would still drop people off there, but I would also turn my app off and leave the area when I was done. I was downtown as usual for a Saturday night and the bars were closing. I get a shared ride which can be very good at bar closing.
Now the thing to know about shared rides is you can’t request more than two seats, leaving room for two more people. I have on multiple occasions had a full car with these types of rides. I get to the person, unlock my doors as normal, and in get three people. OK small problem. I’m polite, but tell them I can’t give them a ride with three people, so they will have to order a different Lyft. This is where this one turns.
Guy: I don’t want to pay more.
Me: I’m sorry but either one of you has to get out or all of you do and you need to order a different ride. This is a shared ride and that means I could get two more passengers and they need seats. With shared rides you are only allowed to book two seats for two passengers.
Guy: I’m not paying more so you can just ignore other rides and take us home!
At this point, he became aggressive and was putting his finger in my face. Maybe I should have been more scared, only this is Market Street at bar close and it’s packed. There are drunk people everywhere and where there are drunk people there are cops. I roll down my window as he continues to tell me what I’m going to do and starts threatening to “put my b**** ass in its place” if I don’t start driving right now. I didn’t catch the whole thing since I had made eye contact with a cop and was focusing on getting his attention.
Me: Ok you now have a new choice. You can all get out or I can get the cop right there to get you out.
Said cop was making his way over, seeing something was wrong. They all jumped out and they disappeared into the crowd still looking for rides. The cop stopped to ask if I was OK and I gave him a short rundown of what happened and thanked him for coming over. I headed off to my next ride, who was a very polite gentleman. In both cases, I reported them to Lyft so I wouldn’t get paired with either again. I also carry a foam pepper spray for defense and have a dash cam that records the interior of my car now. Since that last one, I haven’t had any issues, so there’s that.
12. The Ninja Turtles Wouldn’t Stand for This
This happened a few months ago. I had an argument with my girlfriend, so I decided to do the healthy thing and take a walk to cool off. Live in a small city and it was around midnight so not many people around. Most of the walk was normal. I had calmed down about half way and just wanted to get home, so I was walking down a sparsely lit street and a figure with a hood on was standing on the edge of the sidewalk across the street from me with a parking lot behind him.
I'm on the opposite side of the road, but as soon as I noticed him, my heart begins to pump faster, and fight or flight kicks in instantly. As soon as he's out of my immediate line of sight, I notice he has silently made it halfway across the street towards me. It freaked me out. He was absolutely silent. I tried to keep him in the corner of my vision, but he was quickly behind me and I still couldn't hear him.
I was just getting to a line of apartments on my left, and each apartment had small porches with lights on each one. I could see my shadow in front of me, and the figure's quickly closing in behind me. My mind is racing, I'm fast walking, and I see the shadow within arms distance. This entire encounter has been five seconds, six at most. I've decided fight is my only option, so I twist up the plastic bag in my right hand with a big Gatorade in it and I'm about to duck and swing high while turning right to surprise him and hopefully catch him off guard, so I can run while he regains his stamina.
Just then, as I'm coming up to the end of the line of cars parked to my right, a woman holding a baby and a child following her (four years old or so) turn the corner from behind an SUV. She made eye contact with me and I felt instant relief. Still no sound from shadow guy behind me. As I'm passing the family, I turn to look behind me and see nothing, anywhere.
I continue looking behind me the entire jog home, but nothing. Nobody. I didn't even see where the woman with the kids went. I'm not deaf, no hearing problems at all. I know somebody or something was about to attack me that night, but the complete lack of sound from it freaked me out to my core and still bothers me today. So, shadow ninja a few blocks from where I live, let's never meet again.
I should note that I don't believe anything supernatural happened here. I think this stalker was going to rob me and was likely timing his footsteps in sync with my own, so I wouldn't notice him until he was already robbing me. I think he probably did duck out behind a car or porch nearby when the mother and kids noticed us. I am by no means posting this to suggest he was a demon, alien, actual ninja, or bigfoot, trying to eat my soul. I think he was a man, albeit a very quiet, skilled (on his feet) man who wanted my money or Gatorade.
13. My Phone Died so I Could Live
At the time of this story, it was the summer after junior year, and a couple of my buddies and I were at someone’s house doing the usual things teenaged guys do. After a couple hours of Xbox and basketball, one of our friends, Sam, rolled up with a trunk full of fireworks, and we decided that it would be fun to go set them off in an empty field a mile away from the house.
As we all piled into Sam’s car and started driving out of the neighborhood, a man stepped into the road and blocked our way. He was huge and covered in tattoos. Probably 6’3" or so, with long dark hair pulled back into a ratty ponytail. Sam honked the horn as the man stood in front of our car yelling obscenities at us. Finally, my friend has had enough and whipped the car around him while flipping the guy the bird, speeding out of the neighborhood and towards the main road.
A couple minutes later we got to the field and set up the fireworks. As we all hid around the edges of the grass, Sam stepped forward and lit the fireworks up. Seconds later, the firework ignited and exploded, much louder than any of us had expected. I panicked and ran back to Sam’s car with him, and he slammed on the gas and flew out of the parking lot onto the main road. As we neared the entrance to my friend’s neighborhood, it dawned on Sam that he had left the rest of the guys back at the field.
So, he stopped the car and made me get out, so he could go retrieve the other guys. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t go with him, but it didn’t matter. It was a nice summer night and I sat down on the sidewalk near the entrance of the neighborhood and pulled out my phone. After a couple minutes of phone games, it died in my hands. I sat back and enjoyed the weather, waiting for the headlights to come back down the road, when I heard a slight noise behind me.
I turned my head, expecting to see a bird or windblown branches or something, but the streetlight outlined the figure of the man from earlier. He had crept up behind me while I was sitting there. He locked eyes with me and I was immediately struck by the wild look in them, like he was both looking at me and looking through me at the same time. I got up and backed away slowly, then turned and started walking away from him. He kept pace behind me and began to yell at me. “HEY YOU! GET BACK HERE!”
I increased my pace and he continued to match it, screaming at me the entire way. Eventually, I was full-out sprinting away from him and I heard him slow down. I tore down the sidewalk back to the parking lot of the field and reunited with my friends before relaying the story to them. As we drove back, we searched the area for him, but he was nowhere to be found. It dawned on me that if my phone hadn’t died, I probably would not have noticed the footsteps of the man and probably would have not had such a fortunate outcome. So, crazy tattooed man, let’s not meet.
14. Never Too Young to be Creepy
This was back in second grade. I was around the age of seven or eight. There was this little boy in my class who had a huge crush on me. He always cheered for me. If the class had an assignment for giving a presentation, he would cheer for me the loudest. One time he had mistaken another girl with the same name's birthday as mine.
He was so excited, clapping his hands and saying happy birthday. When given a choice for partners he'd always choose me. Learning from my teacher that it's impolite to turn someone down I never did. When I was younger I didn't know what it was, but I was always creeped out by him. When he chose me for his partner, I was uncomfortable.
When he thought it was my birthday, I felt uncomfortable. There were moments where he would boast about me. Hating to be center of attention I was uncomfortable. I was always nervous around him. Thinking about it now, I feared he was going to do something embarrassing involving me or do something I didn't like, and he did.
One day after lunch we waited in the halls as my class took a bathroom break. It usually took a while so people usually sit down. We would play all sorts of little games in groups. However, that day I decided I didn't want to play games, so I sat alone. A few moments later, he walked up to sit beside me without saying anything.
A few seconds go by and he slips his hand under my butt. He proceeds to squeeze it for a couple of seconds. Then he left. He left as if nothing happened. He didn't even bother looking at me once. I knew it was wrong and that I didn't like it at all. I was so disgusted, but I kept quiet. From then on my fear of him tripled. Guy who formerly had a crush on me, let's not meet again.
15. You Won’t Find a Gym There...
In 2007 I worked as a dishwasher at a pizza chain with an Italian plumber in their name. I was 14 at the time and walked to and from work about four times a week, about a 30-minute walk each way. I was a 6-foot, 125-pound kid with long hair that floofed out with what we called “wings” at the time. I probably looked pretty scraggly and vulnerable, looking back in hindsight, as I was wearing clothes I didn’t mind getting wet and dirty.
I never paid much heed to walking home at night, until one Friday evening in late July. I was on my way home from work at around 9:15, it was still semi-bright out as I lived fairly north in Canada; It wasn’t a huge town at about 55,000 people at the time, so it was fairly busy on Friday nights. As I was walking along the sidewalk parallel a parking lot with my headphones in, some dude in a truck is trying to get my attention and motioning me to come to his window. I pulled my headphones out and he was asking me something about a gym.
Now being a young dude working at a pizza place with adults of varying ages, I didn’t think anything of this mid 40s guy asking me for help. It wasn’t until I actually approached his window and he grabbed my pants by the belt that I realized what was happening. Like I said earlier, I was sort of a skinny dude, thank God I had my belt on super tight.
He was asking me where the closest gym was, asking if I worked out, telling me I sure looked like I worked out...all while trying to get his hand down my pants. I was pretty shaken up, but I kid you not, I had a flashback to those Bert and Gert PSAs (a little late mind you...) and remembered the stuff about making an excuse to stop talking to some stranger.
So once I got a grip and could stop stuttering about not knowing where a gym was, I told this dude I was diabetic and needed to get home to take my insulin! I felt his grip on the top of my belt loosen and I booked it home. I didn’t tell my parents when I got home, or my friends at school or work. I actually don’t recall telling anyone about it. So I guess the moral of the story is... STAY ALERT, STAY SAFE
16. Do You Have the Wrong Number?
About ten years ago, when I was 17-19 years old, I would periodically get phone calls from a private number at night. Whoever was calling me wouldn’t speak, but I could tell that there was someone on the line by their breathing. This would always happen after 10 pm and would last a few minutes after I would say hello until I or the caller would hang up. Sometimes I would get frustrated and say something around the lines of “oh it’s you again” or “do you just want to hear my voice?” They would usually click immediately after.
Now you may be wondering why I would still answer these creepy calls. My phone number is a digit away from a local police line. So I usually got calls from people trying to reach the police and would direct them to the right number. I figured the calls were wrong numbers at first, but after a few months that was obviously not the case. It didn’t bother me until one night.
I was out with some friends around 9 pm when I got a call from an anonymous number. I step aside to answer and am greeted with the ever so lovely, “You freaking b****” etc. etc. I quickly hung up. This wasn’t my callers usual MO. About 20-30 minutes later when my boyfriend and I got back to his place, I started getting call after call, getting screamed at.
The person on the line would be screaming saying they were going to get me, kill me, you name it. At one point my boyfriend picks up the phone—he was incredibly angry and screamed back (I’m not with this person anymore). He’s silent for a minute and hangs up. At this point, my boyfriend tells me to call the police. The caller told him that they knew where we were, where I lived, and that they were going to kill me and my family, along with other threats.
So now we’re pretty spooked and decide to call the cops. Since we live in a pretty safe town with not much for the cops to do, so they come to us and basically say there’s not much to do in this situation. It’s obviously a gross prank going too far. At this point, another call comes in. The officer picks up my phone, interrupts their screaming and answers with, “Hello, yes this is officer ______.” The caller hung up and never called again.
After that night I never got another late-night call. It didn’t hit me until a few weeks later that it must have been the same person who had been calling all those times before. I don’t know why they snapped that day and broke their silence. Was it a sick joke? Something more sinister? Were they always angry when they called? I never found out who they were, and shudder at the thought that it could have been someone I knew. So, creepy angry late-night caller, I hope we’ve never met, or meet.
17. Armed With Nothing but Confusion
Here’s a little bit of backstory. This happened back in the fall of 2016. I was a newlywed, 18, and moved halfway across the country to live with my husband. I was in a new town and had no friends. My husband deployed in the early spring of 2016. A few months into deployment I was lonely and wanted to head home.
I decided to make the 16-hour trek home, alone. I packed up my essentials and my cats. I left at 11 pm because I couldn’t sleep. I was about four hours into my drive and I was growing tired. I pulled into a well-lit public rest stop so I could catch some shuteye. I pulled my car into a spot right under a light and I made sure cars were nearby.
It’s about three in the morning at this time and I fall asleep. Next thing I know I hear a knuckled tapping on my driver’s side window. Sleepily I wake up and see an older man (about mid-forties) kneeling down to my window. Stupidly I open my driver side door.
Man: “Please don’t shoot me!”
Me: “Um, I won’t. What do you want?”
Man: “My wife and I are stranded here. We need money. Do you have some? We’re right over here (points to the van parked in the dark off behind him) if you want to follow me.”
Me: “Uh...no man, I’m good. I don’t have any money, I’m sorry.” (At this point I’m beginning to feel like something is wrong).
Man: “Aw, come on. I swear I’m up to no harm. Come over to my van, my wife is in there.”
Me: “Sorry, but I have no money. I’m using the rest of my money to go home.”
Man: “Alright miss, God bless. God bless.”
With that, he stumbles off to the next car on my right to do the same thing. By now I’m wide awake and I’m feeling scared. I turn on my car and peel out of the lot. I don’t know what he wanted. I didn’t see a woman in the van he kept pointing at, but I didn’t want to find out. Man in the rest stop parking lot who most likely wanted to kidnap me, let’s not meet again.
18. This Isn’t My Stop…
This happened when I was around age 12. A little bit of context: I was out of the district for the school I was in, so I rode in a van (one of those big, creepy white ones), with about five other kids. I was the first one on the van every morning, picked up around 7:30 AM. The bus driver was always friendly enough. He was an overweight, white man, probably in his 50s.
One day as he was driving us home, he pointed out his house to us. On the first day of him driving us home, he stopped at Burger King to get us each an ice cream cone. (This alarmed me at the time, but I shrugged it off.) I was a pretty small kid, and I certainly wouldn't be able to defend myself against any sort of physical assault.
Anyway, I got on the van one morning as I always did. I think it was March. (In Minnesota, so it was still quite cold outside). I was looking at my iPod, not really paying attention. When we stopped, I looked up, assuming we were at the next stop. I looked up to discover that we were at his house. He didn't say a word to me. He got out of the vehicle and went inside.
I was alone, and absolutely petrified. Until that point, I always thought that people were exaggerating when they said they were "paralyzed with fear," but I absolutely was. You hear those stories, you know, of young girls getting kidnapped. I really thought he was going to rape and/or kill me. A million thoughts were running through my head. Do I call 911? Do I hide? Do I get out and run? (I knew someone who lived nearby). But instead, I just sat there, frozen. I have no idea how long he was inside, but it couldn't have been very long, because he came back (again, still not saying a word) and we continued on the route.
I told my parents about it when I got home. They thought it was odd, but figured he probably had just forgotten something or really had to pee. They told me to tell them about it if it happened again. It did. The second time (I think it was a few weeks later), I looked up, and saw that we were at his house again. It was the same—no explanation, he just parked and went inside, leaving me in the van by myself.
This time, I texted my mom to let her know what was happening. She called me immediately, asking if I was okay, what happened, etc. I had to hang up after a few moments, because he came back more quickly this time. Again, we continued on the route. My parents called the bus company, and I guess he was yelled at. He obviously knew that I had told on him, because the next morning I rode the van he was clearly very angry and silent. I was absolutely terrified to continue riding the van after that—he was angry and knew where I lived!
So that was definitely the most terrified I've ever been for my life. I think about it all the time. He definitely should've been fired. I'm 99% sure that what he did was illegal. If school bus drivers need to make an unscheduled stop, they're supposed to call the bus company, let every kid off, etc. They probably only kept him because he was the only person who was willing to drive as far as we all lived.
19. I Don’t Like This Song
So this is one of many stories my dad told me when I was a little girl about his adventures hitchhiking when he was a few years younger than my age now (28.) He’s a super deadhead and him and a friend named John followed them on the road with nothing but their acoustics and some cash. Apparently, they got to Georgia at one point and were getting tired but needed to make it a few towns over in order to see the Dead the following day. They walked miles and tried to catch a ride for hours to no avail, and started to lose hope when a beat-up pickup truck stopped and let them in.
My dad got in the front and John got in the back, thanked him and fell asleep, leaving my dad awake with this guy driving them. According to him, things were bad right from the start. The driver asked where they were headed and why they had guitars and asked if my dad knew how to play well. My dad told him about the Grateful Dead and how he did play and usually picked a banjo but left it back home. So the guy gets super creepy and says, “I’ve always wanted to kill me one of them guitar boys.”
My dad started freaking out at this point and said he just laughed it off but tried to be as unnoticeable as possible while attempting to wake up John. Things kept getting more tense; he asked the guy if he’d mind pulling into a gas station, he said no. He asked how long until they would get to the next town, no response and he eventually went completely silent.
After a few HOURS of driving (with John waking up in the meantime,) the guy got really eccentric and asked if they’d ever seen a “bad death.” He started driving the truck into mailboxes and street signs, and eventually HIT A STRAY DOG WHILE LAUGHING MANIACALLY. My dad and John laughed right along with him until he finally stopped at a gas station and they were able to get their things and take off. They ended up missing the show, but I’m glad my dad wasn’t the "guitar boy" the guy was looking for.
20. No Star Diner
So this happened when I was about 17 years old. For context, I’m a 21-year-old girl. At the time I was working at a failing seafood restaurant. I was a busgirl so I had to deal with touching peoples old half eaten seafood all day long. I’m a vegetarian and have never ever liked anything that comes from out of the water. Not even shrimp, I assure you.
Working at a restaurant can be a super interesting job. The amount of people you meet through work is immense and your coworkers can become like family. You’re all suffering together, you can become pretty close. The chefs at this restaurant were pretty strange. One was super chill, one was always drunk and angry, and the last...well he was something else altogether.
To make things easier I’ll just call the creepy chef “creep.” So creep starts working, he’s new and he seems like a decent guy. He’s in his mid-to-late-40s, salt n pepper hair, nothing throws you off by just seeing his physical appearance. I deeply love everything 60s and 70s, and so creep and I would sometimes talk about music especially rock n roll. He seemed like a cool guy, someone who claimed he saw so many of the bands that I drool over daily.
It seemed nice to work with someone who generally shared the same interests. Some weeks go by and creep wasn’t showing any signs of anything strange. I felt totally okay within my workplace. Wouldn’t blink an eye, and actually enjoyed the job. Me and a fellow busgirl became pretty close friends. We bonded over the fact we both had pretty messed up family lives. So we instantly became work buddies.
The restaurant was slow. Me and the busgirl were having a conversation. Laughing, smiling, and joking in the kitchen. This changed in less than five seconds when creep came right behind me and says by my ear “this wouldn’t be so funny if I had chloroform.” I turn around and look at him thinking "freaking weirdo, who jokes about things like that?" His eyes were blank, he was staring at me, but it felt as though his eyes were burning an imprint on my face. The staring lasted a couple of seconds but eventually, I just turned and just walked away. I really didn’t know how to react.
Throughout the next week creep would stare at me through the kitchen window while I was working. I tried to avoid going to the kitchen but that was nearly impossible when it was my job to transport dishes from the tables back to the kitchen. Twice more while in the kitchen the situation repeated itself. I was talking to a fellow coworker and creep would drop whatever he was doing and interrupt the conversation with “Well it wouldn’t be so fun if I had chloroform on me.”
At this point, he had mentioned chloroform to me three times. I was freaked out. Luckily, I stopped working there a few weeks later because I was leaving to travel Europe for the summer. When I returned the restaurant was already shut down, so I didn’t see creep ever again after this. I wish I would’ve told my manager at the least, I don’t know what I was thinking. I clearly wasn’t. No one should have to feel that threatened at their workplace.
21. Creepy On Rye With No Lettuce
This happened to me about five years ago, so I must’ve been a freshman or sophomore in high school. I went to high school in a big city and left around 4 pm with my friends like any regular day. We walked to the subway and stopped to get some food on the way. I got a sandwich to go and we continued walking to the train.
We parted ways since we all took different trains to get home and I walked all the way to the end of the platform so that I would get on at the front of the train when it arrived. I was starving so once I got to the end of the platform I sat down and started going at this sandwich. There was one woman standing a little bit further down the platform than me but other than that there weren’t really any other people around.
I heard the train coming so I went to take my last bite and this giant man appeared literally out of nowhere and smacked the sandwich right out of my hand before it reached my mouth. I saw my sandwich skid across the platform in slow motion and I just sat there with my mouth open and hands frozen in shock. He just stared at me for a second, didn’t say anything, then kept walking down the platform.
I jumped up and ran onto the train and it was pretty crowded, so I ended up standing and facing the platform. The doors took an eternity to close and this man walked back and forth a few times with his eyes locked on me but didn’t get onto the train (thank God). The whole experience was totally bizarre and to this day I have no idea why this random man felt the need to ruin a perfectly good sandwich and scare the snot out of me. So creepy subway sandwich hating stalker man, let’s not meet again.
22. From Playdate to Child Abduction
It was a very long time ago—back in 1973. I know that it was summer, I was six, and we were living on Monica Lane in Madison, Wisconsin. Thing is, I sort of recalled it but never put two-and-two together until a few months ago when I was talking to my mom who went into great detail.
I was a very gregarious child; outgoing, extroverted, friends with anyone. It was at the time a middle-class neighborhood, and three houses down from ours, on the same side of the street, was a huge park. My mom was a nurse and my dad was a salesman, but mom worked 2nd shift at Merriter, while my dad worked days. I rarely had a babysitter, only if they went out for dinner or a movie. But they did go out often and there were always older kids in the neighborhood to babysit.
One sitter who I really liked lived a few blocks or so away, and down the street a little bit. Vicky had babysat a few times before that and it was pretty uneventful. She'd play games with me, and do my hair, play dress-up, pretty basic stuff. So anyhow, one day I had gone with friends down to the park. I remember there was a ball field at the time, and a sandlot next to the field. My friends wanted to play on the monkey bars, but I wanted to play in the sand. I looked at the sandbox and my babysitter Vicky was standing there. I told my friends I was going down to the sandbox and ran off.
We played in the sand, building a castle, and then she asked me if I wanted to go get something cold to drink. It was stifling hot, and I, of course, said yes. So she takes my hand and we start walking to her place. She starts telling me about her puppies and asking if I want to play with them. Of course, I get giddy and now can't wait to get to her house. This was where my memory had stopped and after my mom told me what happened, the rest of it flooded back.
My mother just happened to be talking to my sister and I about some of the places we lived, and we got to Monica Lane. I told her I remembered the park and how big it seemed, and she asks me if I remember being kidnapped. I immediately thought she was kidding and then the look on her face told me otherwise. She said it was around five in the afternoon and one of my friends had come to the door to ask me to come back outside, sure that I had gotten bored and walked back home. When my mom checked the house, she realized I wasn't there and (seven months pregnant with my sister) sprints to the park, screaming my name.
After asking several kids if they'd seen me with no clue, she went to the ball field and asked the older boys if they'd seen me. One of the boys (she guessed around 14) said that he'd seen a younger woman playing with a girl that fit my description in the sand and walk off in a general direction and that was all he knew.
My mom ran across the street to one of the houses and asked to use their phone and called the police. By the time the police got there, my dad had come home and some of the neighbors were trying to help my mom. So there's this search party out looking for me, screaming my name and knocking on doors. The police had gone back to the park to ask the boys if they knew who had been with me and if they knew who she was.
Between the boys and the neighbors, they had deduced who it was that had led me off, but I have no idea how, honestly. The police and the entourage go to her home (she lived with her parents but they weren't home) and knock on the door. She came to the door and told them she hadn't seen me, and that she'd been home all day.
The police asked to come in and for some reason, she said okay. They went through the house and went to the basement and found me. That's what my mom knew and then I remembered. It was literally like a flood gate had opened and I started crying. At six, you sort of trust everyone, and she'd been in our home. I never got a bad feeling from her and my parents didn't, either. But when we walked into her house I remember that cold, holy feeling washing over me and getting very worried. I remember starting to cry and saying I wanted to go home, over and over.
She takes me into her kitchen and gets me a glass of water and a tissue. I hear dogs barking, and next to the kitchen is an open stairway that goes down and where the barking was coming from. She starts trying to cajole me into going downstairs—telling me there's all sorts of toys and games. I reluctantly agree, and she grabs my hand to head down the stairs. The dogs are going nuttier and I start screaming.
At this point, Vicky is getting bizarre. She's screaming at me to "SHUT UP!! IF YOU DONT SHUT UP I WILL THROW YOU IN THE CAGE WITH THE DOGS AND THEY WILL EAT YOU!! SHUT UP!!" Dragging me down the stairs and still screaming. I was scared out of my mind. I remember crying so hard I was hyperventilating, and I am screaming so hard I'm not making sounds. Vicky then flips a switch and starts being syrupy sweet, trying to calm me down. She tells me that she was just playing a game and tells me she wants to play hide and seek.
She must have been relatively skilled at calming me down because the next thing I know, I hear knocking on the door upstairs and I wasn't crying. The houses were all the same sort of tract houses that Sears used to sell, not huge but not small, but you could hear everything at any spot in the house. I keep hearing the knocking and she tells me that it's her friends. They're coming to play hide and seek!!! She convinced me to let her put a piece of masking tape over my mouth, so I wouldn't make a sound, and lifted me into this big wooden box next to the kennel. She put a big pile of blankets over me and told me to be really quiet, so they didn't find me.
The whole time the dogs were going crazy but when she calmed me down, they calmed down, too. They still looked incredibly mean, but they were no longer frothing at the mouth, and only slightly growling. Until the knocking started. I remember scrunching in there, confused. Still scared and convinced that the dogs were going to get out and eat me. I was crying again and hyperventilating. I remember taking the tape off my mouth because I couldn't breathe, but remembered I needed to be quiet because I was afraid of what she'd do if I screamed.
I laid in that smelly box next to a big bag of dog food, sweating to hell, tears rolling down my face. I sort of pushed the blankets to the side but only enough so that I could pull them back over me when someone came. I recall thinking about my dad and wondering if he'd come find me. All of a sudden, I hear what sounds like adults yelling my name. They come down the stairs and the dogs are going crazy again. Over and over men are yelling my name and then I hear a man say, "If you don't shut those dogs up I will!!"
I was in a large storage box (like a carpenter’s toolbox type of thing) with tape hanging off my mouth when they opened the lid. I remember a very nice man asking me my name and if I was okay. I don't remember answering him in anything other than screams and tears and grabbing his neck so hard my dad had to practically pry me off of him.
I remember my parents taking me to the hospital to be checked out and that's all I really remember. Mom said that Vicky was found guilty of attempted kidnapping, and last she knew was in prison but couldn't remember when the last time was she had heard anything. We moved from the area shortly thereafter, and I haven't been back since.
I do know that mom said that her parents were odd but that they didn't know them. She had met Vicky from neighbors that had used her as a babysitter and had never heard of anything bad and that I always seemed happy with her. She lived in the general neighborhood, but it would have been two blocks over and one block down. Mom said they never picked her up, she always walked over. When they'd get home, they'd drive her home but never noticed anything out of the ordinary.
Mom and dad had only met her parents when they came to the door to ask for forgiveness; that Vicky hadn't meant to do anything bad, and was a good girl. Mom said my dad picked up her dad by the shirt and told him that if they ever came on our property again, he'd kill them. I remember her name and sort of what she looked like, but would have no idea if she walked up to me who she is.
23. Prince Charmless
The following account occurred roughly three years ago during the summer of 2012. It has always been difficult for me to talk about, but I have found writing about it to be therapeutic. I was 17 at the time, and I had just gotten my first job. I lived in rural western Virginia, in a small mountain community. My mom’s friend owned a camping resort not far from my house that had a general store, and she said she’d pay me to help out in the store during the busy months in the summer.
It was a pretty easy job, and I met a lot of out-of-towners, which was nice because our community could get so isolated; most of us lived pretty far away from each other. One day, a big burly mountain man type came into the store. He was in his late 40s/early 50s, probably 6’5”, and about 280 lbs. He looked dirty, like he worked outside a lot; his clothes were sort of tattered and he had a long beard.
We had a few of the woodsy hermit types in the area, and he definitely looked like one of them. He bought some basic items, one of which was one of our homemade bars of soap. When he came to the register, he looked me up and down carefully. He didn’t talk for a minute, just stared. His people skills clearly needed work.
“Did you make this soap?” He asked gruffly. “Possibly,” I said. “I help out with that sometimes.” “You make a lot of your own stuff?” “Toiletries and things like that, yeah.” “I like that,” He said, nodding to himself. I honestly did not know how to respond. I quickly rang up his items and he paid with crumpled money. Right before he left, he asked, “You cook, too?”
“Sometimes,” I replied. “Bet the boys 'round here are itchin’ to marry you,” he said as he smiled to himself. I said nothing. I was puzzled as to what I said that stood out as wife material. I told Krista (mom’s friend/boss) about the bizarre encounter and she laughed it off; so did my family and friends.
But then, Mountain Man started turning up more often. We chatted a little bit here and there, and I found out he had a cabin in the woods that he claimed he built “with his bare hands.” He said he hunted and lived off the land, other than the things he bought at the store. Over time our chatter escalated, with him making comments about how nice it would be to have a woman like me around who could make those things and cook his kills. One time, he even said I had the "birthin' hips that men lust after." Shudder.
He even started inviting me to fish with him, hunt with him, see his place, etc. and I always politely declined. But he got more and more insistent and I told Krista about how uncomfortable he was starting to make me. The intensity with which he said those things really scared me. She said that when he came in, go get her and she would ring him up.
Thanks to her, I started speaking to him less, and I thought I wouldn’t have to deal with him anymore. But one night, I was closing up, and it was late, around 10 at night. Krista had left about an hour before, and I was leaving by myself. The only two cars in front of the store were an old blue pickup and mine; I was immediately alarmed because I knew Mountain Man drove a blue pickup. But I didn’t see him in the lot, just his car, so I walked quickly to my car and checked the backseat before I started her up.
But then when I first turned the key into the ignition, I got nothing but sputters. I tried several more times and got scared quickly. "Of all nights, why is this happening tonight?" I remember asking myself angrily. Just as I was reaching for my phone to call for help, there was a loud pounding on the driver’s side window. I’m shocked that I didn’t piss myself.
I didn’t even want to look, because I knew it was him. But I did, and my suspicions were confirmed. He smiled a big grin at me, showing me exactly which teeth were missing. “Need some help?” He said loudly through the window. I shook my head furiously. “My dad is on his way.” I said, hoping to scare him off. I hadn’t spoken to my dad in years. Mountain Man laughed.
“No he’s not.” He said. “Open the door.” The hairs on my neck stood up straight. How did he know I was bluffing? “No,” I said firmly. “Leave me alone.” Suddenly he looked angry. He pulled the handle but I had locked all the doors when I first got in. He kept furiously pulling the handle and started pounding on the window. “Leave now or I’m calling the cops!” I screamed at him.
He clearly wasn’t getting the message, so I pulled out my phone and called 911. I must have sounded hysterical to the dispatcher, and I knew she could hear him pounding. She said she would have officers out ASAP, but out here, that could be a while.
“THE COPS ARE ON THEIR WAY! LEAVE NOW!” I screamed at MM, who didn’t seem to let it deter him. But after a few more minutes of pounding, he suddenly stopped and walked back to his truck. I watched him go, hopeful he would leave me alone. But then he started walking back toward me, with a crowbar in hand.
“NO!” I screamed at him. “GET AWAY FROM ME!” He started swinging at the driver’s side window with the crowbar. I ducked down into the passenger seat on the floor and covered the back of my neck like they teach you in tornado drills. I heard the sickening crack of the window but not for long; suddenly, I heard male voices shouting, telling MM to get away from the car. I sat up and saw two men approaching, one with a shotgun pointed at MM.
I recognized them as a couple of guests staying at the resort for a camping trip. I breathed a sigh of relief and got out of the car, telling them that the police were on the way. I thanked them profusely as we waited for the police, and surprisingly MM didn’t make any moves to get away, but the cops came pretty quickly after that, so he didn’t have much of a chance.
They took him away and I gave them my statement; I was pretty shaken up for a while afterward. A few weeks later I finally got the scoop on the man. Apparently, he had a history of mental illness. He had been in and out of state institutions. He really had been living in an old cabin in the woods, where he wasn’t taking his meds and his issues were only getting worse.
My cousin Luke is a cop, and later on he told me some more about the case that he had heard about through some other officers. The police did a search of the cabin after the incident, to see if there was anything that might be of interest to them. They found a journal that MM kept. Apparently, in it he said he was lonely and wanted a wife.
He mentioned me by name a lot (stupid name tag), and Luke said there were a lot of lewd things in there about me that he didn’t want to share but tried to put it simply by saying that MM had a detailed plan to abduct me, starting with sabotaging my car engine to get me into a vulnerable position. When Luke said that, I nearly burst into tears thinking about how horribly that night could have gone if those two men hadn’t come along. Thankfully, he has been put back into a state institution. With any luck, he’ll stay there for good. Mountain Man, let’s not meet again.
24. A Doctor Should not Make Housecalls
A week or so before my 10th birthday, I walked to the corner store with a $5 bill and picked up a jar of Ragu for my mom. On my way home, a man I'd never seen before fell in step with me and began talking. "Hi!" he said, cheerfully. "My name is Dr. Ramsey. I'm a pediatrician. Do you know what a pediatrician is?" I walked along silently, not replying and fervently hoping he would take that as a sign he should leave me alone. Subtleties were not his strong suit, though, because he kept right on chattering.
"Are your parents looking for a pediatrician for you? Of course, you're almost a big girl now, you'll be needing another kind of doctor soon, won't you? That's okay though. They can still bring you to me until then. What's your name? You have beautiful hair. I was just on my way to get some suckers for the candy jar in my office. Do you like suckers?"
Thankfully, we were nearing my house, so I ran forward, up the back steps and into through the kitchen door. I didn't know it then, but that was the beginning of a very long, very scary ordeal. It didn't take long after that for "Dr. Ramsey" to begin showing up. At first, it seemed benign enough...at least to a kid. He would drive by nearly every day, smiling and waving. I told my mom, who said maybe it was on his way home from work. But then, the phone calls began.
My dad called me into the living room, and sat me down. He asked about the day Dr. Ramsey followed me home, and if I talked to him. He said I wasn't in trouble, but that I needed to tell him the truth. I told him no, and he asked if I was sure...could I be forgetting something? I told him no again, and he frowned, then asked: "Then how does he know your name?" I didn't know.
It turns out, that was not all he knew. He knew my sister's name as well. Pretty soon, neither my sister or I were allowed to answer the phone. He called several times a day; at first, neither of us knew what he was saying. Then, one night, one of my brothers told us that he was telling my parents that he was going to hurt me (and later, my sister).
Things got complicated after that. My dad had called the police, but as this was before there were any stalking laws, there was not a lot they could do. They told my parents to call back if he "tried anything." When access to me was completely denied, things escalated. It was around this time he began threatening my sister as well.
Then one afternoon my sister, two of my brothers, my mom and I were in the kitchen. One of my brothers saw a glimpse of someone in the garage; they'd seen him too. Dr. Ramsey came bolting out of the garage, my brothers chasing after him. They ran all the way to Cherokee Park, where he lost them in the trees. My parents called the police again, but nothing came of it. The only information they had was a description and a name that was almost certainly fake.
His phone calls became more informative in the meantime. He would talk about who was home, and who wasn't. If my brother would say my dad was home, he would tell him who was really in the house. He also would talk about the house itself...about the window in the kitchen he could easily open with a knife from the outside even when it was locked, and about the French doors that connected the living room to the side porch and how the lock could be finagled from the outside if you jiggled it just right. That night, my dad put in some carpenter nails at the bottom of the French doors until he could get a new lock ordered.
My parents had to go to a company event for my dad's work. My older brothers were at Saints West roller-skating rink. My sister was on the phone with her best friend. My little brother was on the floor asleep. I was watching Devo on the Midnight Special with Wolfman Jack. It was late. Suddenly, the top of the French doors swung inward, and in the few milliseconds before the nails in the bottom caused them to snap back, I could see his silhouette.
My sister whipped the phone at the television, and we ran up the stairs. About halfway up, we realized our little brother was still asleep on the living room floor. As quietly as we could, we slipped back down the stairs to get him. We all went into our bedroom and didn't turn on the light; this way we could see outside. We watched out the window for a while, and when we didn't find him, we crept down the hall to our brothers' room to look.
We looked down and could see someone standing at the backdoor. He knocked, loudly. "What do you want?" my sister asked out the window. He stepped back and said "Is this the Mercy residence? I have a pizza for delivery. Can you come to the door?" She scoffed at him, declaring she was not stupid, she could see he didn't have a pizza, and she was calling the cops. He left.
We were at the table playing crazy eights, and my brother was restless. My sister asked him what's wrong, and he said he always felt like any minute now there would be a 'boom boom boom!' on a door or window. Almost immediately after he finished his sentence, "BOOM BOOM BOOM!" on the window right behind him. In the chaos, the two eldest ran out, but he was already gone.
A couple of weeks later, I was at school and we were outside on the playground during recess. I was swinging upside down when I saw that now-familiar blue Ford Galaxy cruising by, moving slowly. There he was, smiling and waving. He called my name, and I ran to the teacher and told her. The school had been told all about him, and she took me inside right away and called my mom. That same day my mom had gotten a call from the school office asking her to verify that my dad was picking me up, as he'd called to say he was on his way. He wasn't.
Not long after that, I woke up one night, thirsty. I went down to the kitchen for a drink and there, sitting alone in the dark, was my dad. On the table, a gun. He was tired of the police waiting until Dr. Ramsey "tried something," he was tired of his children being terrorized, he was tired of being afraid every time he left for work that something would happen to us while he was gone. I sat with him for a time, watching, before he sent me back to bed.
These events, and many more, took place over a period of around 18 months. Then, as suddenly as it began, it was over. He had vanished from our lives; the phone calls, the drive-by with the creepy waves, everything. For a long time, during and after the Dr. Ramsey days, I would have a recurring nightmare in which I would wake up to find him standing over me as I slept. It took a long time before I felt like a kid again.
I found out years later that when he was calling, Dr. Ramsey would tell my parents that he was going to rape and kill me, and later my sister...and that there was nothing they could do about it. I don't know what happened to him when he disappeared. I don't know if he was in a car wreck, locked in prison, in a coma...but sometimes I wonder if the wait ended for my dad when he was sitting in the darkened kitchen one night. I don't know, and I'm not sure I want to.
25. Unwelcome Visitors
One night after having a few drinks, I came home to my small house where I lived with two other girls, probably around 2:30am. We were all serious students (I was probably the least serious, actually), and when we partied it was not your typical UCSB mega-rager. More like a small get together with friends. We would often have a few people spend the night, sleep on our furniture our in our beds as the case may be.
That night my roommates had had a few people over whom I didn't know, and I saw when I returned home that one of them had opted to sleep on the couch from the shadow that I saw there (I didn't turn the light, so I wouldn't wake anyone up). But as I was passing the couch to enter my bedroom, I noticed that the figure was lying very stiff.
He just had this weird energy to him. He was lying down, but it was like he was putting all of his energy into lying as still and rigid as possible. I paused, and the guy quickly jerked his head to face me, without moving his limbs, so quickly that it startled me. I could see his wide-open eyes glinting in the dark.
Figuring that I'd startled him or that he was drunk or maybe on some kind of stimulant and unable to sleep, I just hurried past into my bedroom and locked the door. The dude made me nervous and I wasn't taking any chances. I fell asleep. At 4:30 am I woke up. There was a strange sound at the door almost like somebody was drumming their fingers against the wood very quietly.
I lay still and listened. There were more quiet sounds like someone scratching the door with their fingers, which got louder and louder until it was clear that he was using both hands and scratching as fast and as hard as possible. It created an extremely loud and intimidating sound that filled me with fear.
I got my cell phone and texted my roommate because I was afraid to make a sound. "Your friend is freaking me out, is he coked out? Can you talk to him? He's banging and scratching on my door." She didn't text me back, probably because she was asleep. I texted my other roommate to the same effect, covering all my bases. Keep in mind that the scratching has been going on at this point for a couple of minutes. I have no idea how he could have sustained it, scratching a wooden door with your fingernails can't feel good. He also grabbed at the knob and jiggled it super forcefully.
Because neither of them answered, I decided to call and really wake them up, though I was scared to make a sound. I know it sounds stupid but there was something seriously horrifying about being teased like this through the door. I knew that he was trying to terrify me. I felt like a little kid but I could tell this guy was up or something and maybe the police needed to be called, and I wanted to loop my roommates in since it was one of their friends.
The scratching stopped abruptly, and I called my roommate, who answered sleepily. "Yo, your friend is messed up, can you please deal with it? Do we need to call the cops? He's seriously scaring me and he was scratching at my bedroom door, really weird." She didn't say anything for several seconds and when she did speak, her voice had no sleepiness in it at all. "What friend?" She said.
"That guy that was sleeping on the couch!" I said. She was quiet again. "We didn't have any guys over," she said. "Call the police." My adrenaline surged, and I told her to please lock the bedroom door as quickly as possible. I realized that I hadn't heard scratching in a while and I had no clue where the dude had gone.
Suddenly I heard a loud banging in the other end of the house, where my roommates, Lauren and Monica, shared a bedroom. The bangs were followed by the sound of them screaming in fear. I quickly dialed the police as this maniac proceeded to bang against the (luckily) locked bedroom door of my two roommates as they screamed. The heaviness of the blows left no doubt that he was trying to break the door down.
I'd told the 911 operator the situation and she'd dispatched two squad cars. At one point the banging stopped and everything was quiet for a while. I talked with the dispatcher and suddenly looked down to see that this guy had slipped his fingers through the 1-inch gap between my door and the floor and was just kind of waggling them around, making this weird growling sound. I screamed and backed away, which is my biggest regret about this situation, since when I look back it would have been so awesome to just stomp the heck out of those fingers and hear the guy howl in pain.
When the cops rolled up, I heard running and the sound of our sliding glass door opening and closing, and then he was gone. The cops never caught him. He had broken in through our side door by jimmying the lock somehow. My door was covered in what turned out to be huge gauges he'd made using a pair of scissors, which he discarded on the ground before he left.
What terrifies me most about this was that I walked right past him. I looked him right in the face. I realize now that he was not trying to sleep or on drugs but was lying so stiff like that because he was hiding. He probably heard me open the door and freaked out because he hadn't realized there was another girl living there and tried to blend into the couch in the darkness.
26. Leave It, Don’t List It
This is a popular story with my family and most of my friends. Amanda is my brother's girlfriend. At the time of this story, she was looking for her first apartment and moving out from her parents' house. Her and my brother didn't want to move in together since they had only dated for a few months. She opted instead to search for a roommate online. Browsing Craigslist, she found an ad titled something like "Roommate Wanted: Females Only." This sort of thing was common since the area she was looking in was mostly young professionals.
The listing was for a room in a house for about $225 a month, which was quite cheap compared to most of the places listed. The occupant listed herself as a 23-year-old college student that wasn't comfortable with living with any males. The other roommate would have their own room and attached bathroom. So far, Amanda was into this place. However, the listing only had a single photo from outside the property. Amanda sent an email wanting to meet the occupant and tour the house. Within 30 minutes, she receives an email back with all the details and time to stop by. The girl worked late hours and wanted Amanda to stop by at 8pm.
When Amanda arrives, there is a handwritten note on the front door saying, "Door broken, use back door." Walking around the house, it looks nice but slightly unkempt: tall grass, weeds, dusty windows, etc. Still no alarms for Amanda though. When she knocks on the backdoor and an older man opens the door. At first, Amanda thinks she has the wrong house, but the man reassures her and says that the occupant (I forget the name) was out and he was the landlord. The occupant asked him to meet Amanda since she was working late. He seemed pleasant and offered to show her around.
Alarms start going off but aren't at red alert yet. First, the guy was clearly in his 40s, unshaven, and looked like he lived in his car. Also, only the kitchen light was on. As they walked around the house, Amanda noticed one huge red flag: No furniture. Nothing. The landlord was polite about answering questions but seemed irritable to keeping lights on for too long, rushing her around and only letting her look at rooms for a few moments.
There was a single room that the landlord wouldn't open, telling her that it was the occupant's room and he didn't want to invade her privacy. As they walk down the hallway into the living room, she notices the front door has a plank nailed across it. "Broken" for sure. Amanda's creep-o-meter is started to ding so she decides to wrap up the walk-through and leave but trying to polite.
As she's giving the guy her "thanks for the showing" bit, he perks up and states that he forgot to show her the basement. It's recently furnished and would be a great rec room...and she should take a look down there. At the time, Amanda and the landlord are standing in the small hallway between the front living room and the back kitchen. In this little hallway was the basement door. When he opens the door, it opens outward to create something of a barrier between Amanda and the backdoor. The basement is pitch black. He smiles, motions down the stairs, and says "Ladies first."
What happens next is nothing more than a stroke of luck. Amanda got a text just as some random person parks in front of the house. Thinking on her feet, she pretends it's a phone call and answers her phone. "Hey! Yeah, are you here? I'll come out from around back and let you in. It's great, you have to see it." With a motion of confidence, she excuses herself around the landlord and walks out of the back door. She says the guy just looked at her like he was confused. Once outside, she sprinted to her car and sped like hell out of there. When Amanda got home, she told her mother and my brother everything. Cops were called, they took her statement, and went to investigate. The Craigslist post had been removed.
EPILOGUE
The house had been foreclosed over six months earlier and the property had been abandoned. When the police investigated, they found that the closed room the "landlord" didn't want her to look in was where the man had been staying. There was a pile of old dirty blankets, rotten food, and empty gallon jugs everywhere. Creepier was he had plastered ripped up pages from porno mags on ALL the walls in the room (where do they even find porno mags!?).
The really scary part of this was the basement. The man had tied a thin piece of fishing twine at about shin level across the stairs about halfway down. The basement was empty except another pile of old blankets, a broom handle wrapped in leather belts, and a small box with a few rolls of assorted tape (duct, electric, etc). Amanda ended up not moving in.
Sources: yoast
