People Share The Exact Moment Someone Made Them Think 'That Person's A Psychopath'

People Share The Exact Moment Someone Made Them Think 'That Person's A Psychopath'
Florian Olivo on Unsplash

Warning: some of the stories shared here are extremely graphic and violent.

Who would've thought that Norman Bates, the devoted good boy who ran an adjoining hotel near his home while taking care of mother was a knife-wielding psychopath?


Not audiences who first flocked to movie houses to see Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 masterpiece thriller, Psycho.

But that was why the movie was shocking at the time. It defied expectations about how we perceive people who may seem completely harmless on the outside but are actually unstable and violent on the inside.

What is your perception of people? Do you think you have an individual pegged as a certain type of person based on appearances?

That was explored when Redditor Shanyy87 asked:

"What seriously made you think “oh well that’s a psychopath?"

It's a mystery how we fall for certain people and we don't see their colors until it's too late.

When The Relationship Went South

"Was my mother's ex-boyfriend."

"Used to be a great guy- even raised me like one of his daughters by doing stuff like paying for my school fees and buying stuff for me. Don't know what happened but his relationship with my mother turned sour and sh*t went crazy:"

"He locked us in the house and locked the fridge so my mother and I just lived in my bedroom and had to buy a fridge for there and live there."

"Would turn off the hot water in the morning and lock the gate so I would have to bath in freezing cold water in winter and have to climb over the walls to get to school, and."

"When she got a court order to get him out of the house, he would stalk her and constantly ram his car into the gate until the early hours of the morning, I think once he snuck into the yard ad smeared chicken blood all over our door."

"All of this in a span of two months."

– zodwa_wa_bantu

A Thing For Knives

"I think I almost hooked up with one once. All the things and had a boner for sharp knives. A friend messaged me to say he used to be with another friend and he beat her up. I never spoke to him again and asked him to stay clear of me."

– Impossible_Fold5059

Manipulative Date

"Girl I went to school with, was totally manipulative (in ways like bullying me for two years then finding out I was self harming and told the teacher to get praise for 'helping out') She was crazy. She bragged about killing her sister’s rabbit. EDIT: also just remembered, she used to use makeup to fake bruises all over herself and claimed she was being abused. Also claimed her mum was verbally abusive. She used to purposely not bring any lunch to school, but claim her parents refused to give her any."

– Rainbow_squirell69

How well do you really know your coworker?

Rescue Animals And Facebook

"I met a psychopath while volunteering with rescue animals."

"Many years ago I volunteered with stray animals. We'd rescue, fix them and find families to adopt."

"After a big rescue, there was a specific animal that was in pretty bad shape and the vet said it should be euthanized. This vet was very reliable and would never suggest such a drastic procedure if the poor animal had a fighting chance."

"Because of this rescue, I was interviewed by a TV station and my picture with the animals appeared in a local newspaper."

"Right after, one of the members of the group said she'd do anything to save that extremely sick animal and wouldn't let it be euthanized The group didn't agree because we had over a hundred animals also in bad shape that could be saved."

"She went rogue, banned everyone that didn't agree with her (leaving the animals with us, except the very sick one) by changing the password to all our pages, organized a big fundraise to save the animal's life and so on."

"She kept posting pictures with the animal on Facebook to gather more money while making up all kinds of lies about the former group members."

"She also lied saying she was a veterinary student when in reality she was only the cashier of a pet store."

"I was too busy with the other hundred animals so just made a new group and didn't pay more attention to her."

"Anyway, months later one of the former group members message me to apologize for not believing in me when we went against that girl."

"The reason she finally believed in me was because she took her own animals to the vet for their annual checkup, and when she commented about how well the sick animal was looking, the vet said 'but he died months ago.'"

"Then she went to the girl's house to confront her, and the girl finally told her what happened: the girl kept the animal's body in her freezer and would take the corpse for pics to get attention and money."

"She was from a upper middle class family and only snapped after I got interviews and not her, so I'm pretty sure she did it all for attention."

"I knew something was wrong with her (attention whore, pathological lier), but the freezed corpse really got me thinking she was a psychopath."

– znhamz

"Major Creep Vibes"

"I used to work with a very manipulative guy. He had a lot of sob stories and I would say about half the people who knew him felt sorry for him. Thought he was a good guy down on his luck, trying to get it together."

"The other half of us got major creep vibes, something was just wrong. I wouldn't even talk to him about anything not work related, would not ever go out after work if he was going to be there. I hated being around him, I warned all the new hires to stay away from him, we had a lot of young girls working there."

"One night he did end up attacking one of my coworkers. Luckily, some people saw and broke it up before he could hurt her too badly and he got fired and banned from the building."

– SailorSpoon11

Haven't we learned by now? Don't F**k With Cats. Or all animals for that matter.

Punishment For Kitty

"The ex-husband of my mother tried to snap our cats neck because she misbehaved and didn't listen to him..."

– Skevinger

Cat Killer

"I used to be a social worker."

"Had a client that I knew something was off about. He gave everyone the creeps, especially the women in our office."

"Part of my job required obtaining background checks. We got one on him and it turns out he was arrested for being a cat serial killer."

"Guy was stealing cats from his neighborhood and killing then in different ways. He stabbed some of them, threw some against walls, broke their necks, etc."

"And the police found them in his freezer."

– ApatheticWithoutTheA

The Lawnmower Man

"I used to live next to this dude who was COMPLETELY F'KED. One day I hear his mower going, nothing out of the ordinary. It was around the time on the day he normally would cut his lawn... but on this particular day it took him a few times to start up his mower, which was brand new. I kept hearing it whir up, then spin down, whir up, spin down, over and over."

"I told my dad we should go over and give him a hand since we have both worked on mowers together. As we peeked over his fence we saw 6 kittens buried up to their necks with their little heads poking out of the ground... God this gets me crying everytime I think of it 😥... they were all screaming and howling, you could clearly see them struggling to get out of the ground... we watched him lift the mower up, it whirred up, and he quickly brought it down on one of the kittens face."

"As we busted through the fence my dad broke his leg on a previously dug hole. He called 911. I went to jail for assault but goddammit it was worth it. As I went to help my dad up I saw that there was no less than 10 more bloodied kitten sized holes surrounding him."

"That still haunts me to this day."

– the_ba5ili5k

"Euthanized" Dog

"A man who lived in my freshman dorm complex at BYU was a natural leader, very charismatic and charming. He went on a Mormon mission to Honduras and when he came back after 2 years, we bumped into each other and he invited me to dinner."

"At dinner, he told me a 'funny' mission story about an elderly widow in Honduras. This woman's little pet dog was sick, and he told her that he'd bring the dog to a vet to be healed. Instead, he 'euthanized' the dog. Shocked, I assumed that the vet had determined that the dog was ill beyond help and compassionately put them down (still not ok without the owner's permission). No - this missionary snapped the dog's neck with his bare hands in the yard outside the widow's house. He was chuckling as he told me as if this was a charming, relatable story. He told the woman that he brought the dog to Jesus. This man seemed absolutely normal, no indication whatsoever that he would do something like this. He should have been sent home from his mission dishonorably."

– Nyctut

The Young Neighbor

"When i was like 11 my neighbour at camp (he was probs like 15 ish at the time) cut up a live frog and tried to cook it alive with a lighter and tinfoil. He then tried to make me and my cousin do things to eachother and pulled his pants down trying to lure us in the outhouse."

– [deleted]

Dark Humor

"A guy I briefly was seeing talked about how much he loved animals. Majored in biology, loved talking about different native creatures wherever we were at. It was actually one of the things that attracted me to him since I’d initially planned on majoring in marine biology due to my love of nature as well."

"Then one day, while laughing, he tells me how him and his friends used to stick firecrackers up bullfrogs’ butts and watch them explode. He thought it was hysterical."

"I started to distance myself because wtf they’re living creatures and what a horrible way to die (he laughed about how it didn’t usually kill them right away). Then his abusive tendencies started coming out left and right, and he was not at all ashamed. Told me how his ex-wife once got so scared she put fists up to him. Called me at 2am once to tell me he’d gotten in a street fight and thought he’d paralyzed the guy (and was proud of it)."

"My dude, you should be on a watch list."

– retroverted_uterus

If your gut tells you something is off about a person, chances are, your instincts are spot on.

Happy dating!

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