There is the potential darkness in all of us.
We're all capable of far more wrong than we believe.
That is why it's always a shock when we learn of the evil doings of people we knew.
"We never would've believed it..."
Redditor notlayingnow wanted to hear about the people we've known with some dark pasts.
So they asked:
"Redditors who knew murderers, and other hardened criminals, what was it like knowing them, and how did you react to finding out?"
I've been shocked by the murderers I've met. Didn't see it coming.
'wisdom'
"I've know a few murderers through work. I mean, nothing much to talk about really. I remember being 18 and visiting jail for a school project and talking to a guy who killed his mother and lived with her corpse for about a week. Always struck me how boring and very human he looked."
"Up until that point I had figured that something so intense, even if it was violent and gruesome, would somehow impart some form of... 'wisdom' in you. Nope. Turns out you are still a regular human being, probably very bland and boring, only that + you killed someone."
"Makes me believe pretty much anyone can be a killer if the conditions are right."
VloekenenVentileren
40 Times
"A kid who me and my best friend used to infrequently hang out with turned out to be a murderer, stabbed his ex girlfriend about 40 times because he was so upset they broke up. Finding that out was horrifying but honestly not surprising, he always seemed kind of off when he was younger."
RenegadeOfBonk
He wouldn't have stood out...
"My father had a work friend for years. I only ever knew him as a hard working, nice guy with a good sense of humor. He'd had dinner with us many times and he was a good friend of the family."
"Years later I was reading a book by a local author about the criminal history of my area and I came across a bit about a grisly murder with three suspects and only two convictions."
"This guy was the third suspect, but dodged the charges. I asked my father about it and he confirmed it was true. I asked what he thought and he told me that chances were pretty good he was involved based on his history."
"He wouldn't have stood out in the crowd for any reason I could think of."
Theearthhasnoedges
Trigger
"Back when I was a teenager there was this guy who was into skydiving and was always wearing military fatigues. He was older than us and he had this crazy look in his eyes. I wasn’t comfortable around him but he wasn’t a threat because we liked rock music and so did he."
"I even remember him protecting some of the kids from some wannabe skinheads. A couple of years later he was involved in a robbery where the cashier girl was shot dead. Later I read in the local paper that it wasn’t him who pulled the trigger. He went to prison and I’ve never seen them again."
ronadian
A Mistake
"I worked at a knights of Columbus hall as a teenager and would usually stay until around midnight cleaning up, sweeping etc. There was an older guy who would come in, quietly sweep, take out the trash, and then go outside and smoke before leaving."
"I smoked with him one day and he told me he had been in prison for 30 years for murder. He said he was a dumb kid who made a mistake. Given the area was prone to gang violence I have to assume it was related. Nice enough guy who did his time and recognized his mistakes."
DoubleSoupVerified
That is a lot to process. Do we know anybody we've met?
The New Hire
"Had a coworker who was hired shortly after getting out of prison halfway across the country. His wife claimed it was because he got into a fight at a bar while drunk, but I don't think that's the whole story. Turned out to be an abusive, cheating, drug addict b**tard who blamed all his problems on everyone else."
Logical-Wasabi7402
Tempers
"Starting in my teens and into my twenties, I worked in a warehouse with a much older guy who had done 10 years in prison for killing a police officer when he was younger. I found out about his past after knowing him a few years, but learning it didn't change our relationship much."
"I heard from other guys that he still had a temper and could be violent, but never saw it myself. We weren't friends, but I joked and swapped stories with him much the same as I did with my other older co-workers. I can remember wondering why he wasn't still in prison, but I never heard the full story of the crime itself."
sdss9462
Experiences...
"Truthfully, it felt normal because of the environment I grew up in. Here, everyone knows someone like that. It gets frustrating though when you realize that it’s not normal and is disgusting. Like it genuinely took me to hearing about normal people’s experiences through life and reactions to those sorts of things to realize that something is fundamentally wrong. However, these things are normal in certain neighborhoods or high-crime cities."
MovieMysterious2464
The Crush
"Old buddy from high school who had an unreciprocated crush on me got involved in a gang and caught a first degree murder charge. He’s in jail now. Found out from another old buddy and while disturbed, wasn’t exactly shocked."
Micshakee
From CA
"My friend is a former gang member from CA."
"One early morning, as we were traveling between cities in Texas, he told me stories of the rival gang members he killed at point blank range, I guess he was doing so to keep me awake. Needless to say, I was up the whole 5 hour ride."
"As a mental health worker, I’ve always seen signs of PTSD. After hearing those stories, I knew my sightings were accurate. I still keep in contact with him to check up on him to this day."
BigNattyZaddy
The world is full of a lot of darkness.
Do you have any experiences to share? Let us know in the comments below.
School is intended to be a safe place.
Children are sent there with the purpose of coming home to parents in one piece.
Physically and mentally.
But sadly, schools have become a hotbed of danger and chaos.
You'll see things that will haunt you forever.
Redditor SuperLeftyAliReddit wanted to know what memories of being a student keep people up at night. So they asked:
"What was the most gruesome thing you saw at your school?"
I remember the run of the mill fights and being mugged. Yeah, school was a blast. But I lived.
Blinded
"Witnessed the end of a girl being jumped by about 6 other girls in high-school. Don't know what exactly they cut her face with but they tried to cut her eye out and did a pretty close job. Sadly she went blind in that eye. That was sophomore year and she graduated with us as the second highest GPA. The amount of blood that was there and the eye almost hanging out of her skull was just wild to see."
skeedlz
Ripped Off
"We used to spray soap on the floor in the shower and do penguin slides. One kid got a running start, jumped and slid across the floor on his chest full speed. Right up until he hit the black grip tape on the floor exiting the showers... Ripped one nipple clean off... Or should I say sanded one clean off."
User Deleted
Turned purple...
"Saw a kid die from cardiac arrest at wrestling practice. I was in 6th grade, he was a seventh grader We were doing a takedown drill. Him and his partner were right next to me. He got taken down and stopped breathing. Turned purple. They rushed us out of the gym. Apparently, he had a hole in his heart and the doctors warned him not to do sports. RIP"
coci222
elementary
"My elementary school used to be a high school. We had a big a** football field next to the paved playground, with concrete ramps going down to the field, dropping probably 12ft in from start to finish, and about 40ft long. Up top, the playground had a little ledge to prevent you from falling down to the ramp, but kids would sit on it because it was perfect kid-seat height."
"I'm sure you know where this is going: there was a spot on the playground where kids could fall backwards 12ft down onto concrete. That's exactly what happened. A kid was standing next to that ledge and a bigger kid thought it would be funny to throw a football at him really hard."
"The kid predictably fell backwards when he was hit by it and landed on his head. We could literally see his broken skull, possibly bits of what was inside. The pool of blood slowly expanding around his tiny body. I'll never forget it. Shockingly, the kid survived. He wasn't quite the same after that, traumatic brain injury and all, but he was a 2nd grader."
"Good chance he'd grow out of it, or at least I hope he did. The 4th grader who threw the ball at him was expelled. It wasn't the first time he'd hurt a little kid."
User Deleted
In self defense...
"Our female gym teacher was a tough lady, built similarly to WWE's Chyna if that helps paint a picture. Anyhow, kind of a rough school district in the city, and the gym teacher had just gotten this f**king rough girl suspended for fighting. Upon rough girl returning to school, word was she was going to attack the gym teacher."
"And well, she did. Only this rough a** girl, she had sticthes in her face from the previous fight, and the gym teacher went right for the stitches, she grabbed them by the handful and just ripped the stitches right out of the girl's face, right there in gym class. In self defense."
Scapular_Fin
I never knew school was such a minefield of terror.
Sad
Sad Cartoon GIFGiphy"My 8th grade year I saw a kid got run over by a school bus. He died later that day."
spacebarthingy
don't run with scissors!!!
"In Primary School (aged 8-9ish), we'd quite often have those safety scissors, with the rounded tips but still metal, for different crafts and tasks. I remember one time when the teacher had an emergency and had to leave the classroom. The class clown decided this moment was the ideal time to run around the room with said scissors in hand."
"He tripped, fell towards another child and the scissors went into the back of the other child's hand removing a good square inch of flesh to the bone and showering the table in blood. I remember the substitute teacher almost passing out when she got to the classroom. There's a reason they say don't run with scissors!"
WritingFromABasement
Inside... out?
Saturday Night Live Ugh GIF by HULUGiphy"Classmate turned his thumb inside out with a table saw. Blood didn't squirt, it just oozed out in big drops. Still picture one guy eating a chocolate cupcake while looking closely at the wound."
Nonamanadus
Blood everywhere...
"A guy in wood shop class turned up a lathe at too high a setting, had some boards glued together I think and wanted to make a bat or something. He revved it up and applied a chisel or something during the process, the wood blew apart and it gouged out one of his eyes. Blood everywhere."
privatemidnight
Dribble
"Our star basketball player died on the court during an afternoon practice - he had an undiagnosed heart condition and that was that. The rest of us players were shuffled into the other gymnasium as a coach grabbed a defibrillator, but at that point it was too late. It was a very sad and surreal experience."
GoFightFoo
“wow, my arm looks weird”
"A kid tripped during cross country practice and broke his arm. And by broke, i mean broke. About of the third of the way down the forearm it was bent 45 degrees. When he got up it was flopping like a dead fish. Wasn’t any blood, and the kid wasn’t screaming, either, according to him he couldn’t feel a thing."
"The juxtaposition of such an obviously bad injury with the kid casually laughing like 'wow, my arm looks weird' was profoundly unsettling.To narrow it down, this happened almost 10 years ago in the Northeast US to one of a set of identical twins. One of y’all contacts me and I found the same crap happened somewhere else I’m gonna be freaked out."
Karatekan
Broken
"Kid his neck broke in a wrestling match by a dude slamming him in a full nelson. Circa 2006, before phone cameras and such thankfully. His poor parents. He did not die but he's in a wheelchair now."
TheHeresyTrain
This was 1995...
"A kid grabbed some fries from another kid's tray during lunch. Other kid leaps up, grabs him, and bangs his head into a metal railing until it's bleeding. Also in the parking lot a kid I barely knew pulled me aside, and popped his trunk open. Inside were several AK47's. Not gruesome, but pretty surprising for the time. This was 1995."
BlackLetterLies
Blood Flying
"Two guys were fighting pretty good, saw some blood fly, then we see shit coming out of one kids pants. They fought from one end of a hall to the other so the entire hall was covered in blood and crap. Turns out the kid had his spleen ruptured. Felt pretty bad for the kid because from then on he got bullied for not only getting his butt kicked, but pooping his pants in the process - like anyone could have controlled that with a ruptured spleen."
msm2485
Eyes Sucked
"About 12 at a swimming lesson someone decided to show off by jumping off a board, with his speedo goggle’s on, hit the water started screaming as one of his eyes had been sucked into the goggle, jeez a very short lesson, not sure if he lost it or not."
Old-Ambassador-8143
In my Mind
"During 4th grade my elementary school had a tall rusted fence that blocked the school yard from the outside, and some kid tried to climb it to get a ball back. He slipped on top and his arm got stuck by the top of the railing, perfurating his arm and cutting it deep almost from wrist to elbow."
"He collapsed from shock and loss of blood still stuck to the railing. Fortunately the fire department got there in less than 15 minutes and they got the kid out of it, saving him. He has this huge scar in his arm, but it's alive, well and moves his arm well. To this day I can't shake that image out of my mind."
_Didds_
Lookout Below!
"My high school had three balconies on the second floor. Walking between classes you could see the mass of students moving below. There were massive skylights above, so I assume this was designed to allow natural light into the ground floor. One day someone thought it would be hilarious to toss an unopened can of soda over the balcony."
"People start yelling duck and a kid looked up just in time to have the can land right on his eye socket. He lost that eye. Second would probably be the kid who ended up at the bottom of the pile in football practice and came off the field screaming and his thumb was in the middle of his palm."
DisownedByMother
Slammed!
"Middle school. Go to bathroom during class, hear yelling inside. Go inside, to find on of the big bads of the school grab a dude the back of his head and repeatedly slam his face into the sink counter. Blood was flying everywhere. Ran to tell a teacher. Dude got suspended for two weeks, the one getting beaten never came back to school as far as I know."'
Penetrations...
"Dude got stabbed in the forehead with a screwdriver. Did not penetrate the skull, cuz that's literal armor and also 6th graders don't have a ton of arm strength, but it sliced across his forehead from center to hairline left to right. That was a lotta blood."
Cyrakhis
"Similar story - I got stabbed in the forehead with a pencil in second grade, I had the lead in there for years afterwards."
I_am_eating_a_mango
Lord, I'm thankful I made it out of school alive. Seriously.
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Human beings are cruel.
Humanity tries its best to sweep that all under the rug, but like dust, truth spreads when you dig deeper.
There are some historical facts and stories that could make one's skin crawl.
And you thought a late-night Dateline NBC episode could give you nightmares.
Redditor DaredevilDude36 wanted to share some sordid details about the past. They asked:
"What is the creepiest historical fact?"
I don't know much about history... so here I go learning.
Death Fear
tales from the darkside 80s GIFGiphy"Male mummies are found to better preserved because female bodies were not sent for embalming right after their death for the fear of necrophilia."
curiousstrider
"mummy brown"
"In the past, people used mummies for everything from medicines to colors to paint with. There was even a tonic to drink that had ground up mummies as part of the ingredients. As for painting, the color was called 'mummy brown.' It became in such high demand that, in some instances, the remains of executed criminals were mummified and used to satiate the demand of artists."
jlanger23
Stocking Up
"In WW1 there was a Hungarian man that said he was stocking up on oil and was sent off to war. His towns people needed it and opened up the cans to find several dead women in there apparently he also tried to suck their blood and he was never seen again."
AffectionateBat6818
The Yellow Tiger
"Zhang Xianzhong, also known as Yellow Tiger, was the leader of a seventeenth-century peasant revolt which conquered the Chinese province of Sichuan at in the end days of the Ming Dynasty. There he lived the life of a warlord, in constant battle, and eventually descended into madness and barbarism wherein he turned upon his own people in merciless slaughter."
"He would pile the heads, hands, ears and noses of those he had killed, so as to better keep count of his murders. In Chengdu, there was erected a stele to commemorate his murders. It has come to be known as the Seven Kill Stele, and read: Heaven brings forth innumerable things to nurture man. Man has nothing good with which to recompense Heaven."
wogatic662
Oh Cleo
Elizabeth Taylor Cleopatra GIF by 20th Century Fox Home EntertainmentGiphy"Cleopatra was the product of four consecutive generations of brother-sister marriages."
pivasi5937
History is really littered with scandal. How is so much of this left out in school?
Leather
"The Leather Man was an individual who would walk the same 360 mile route between the Hudson and Connecticut Rivers approximately every 30 days for 30 years. He was named Leather Man because of the hand sewn leather clothes he wore and the fact that he never spoke to anyone other than shopkeepers for supplies and would never divulge anything about his past. He is believed to be French or Quebecois because a French bible was found on him when he died. When his grave was recently exhumed to test his DNA, no remains were found."
figejiy586
No Air
"3 sailors survived the sinking of the USS West Virginia at Pearl Harbor, only to die 16 days later, due to the lack of air. The Navy knew they were there, but couldn't get to them."
pivasi5937
"To add to this: if I’m remembering correctly, they couldn’t get the cut open the ship to get them it could flood the whole ship, and they couldn’t use a torch as it was covered in oil, it would cause a massive explosion. Marines who were in the immediate area would hear them banging on the hull, they’d cover their ears to block out the sounds."
TalkingFishh
During the Famine
"I live in a city named Halifax in the province of Nova Scotia, Canada. During the potato famine in Ireland thousand of immigrants would land here first before heading on to other parts of Canada. Many did not survive the crossing so mass graves were dug. One day workers who had been loading bodies into these graves went to lunch and upon their return found one person had crawled out."
feyeb41097
It Worked
"Berlioz's 'Symphonie Fantastique' was written by him for the woman he was relentlessly stalking and harassing. His idea was to basically reveal to her that he had written it for her after she attended the performance, which he had pressured her into attending. Somehow, that crap worked, and I believe they married... don't believe the marriage lasted. They literally did not speak the same language."
figejiy586
Painful on Purpose
"Vlad III, better known as Vlad the Impaler. It's said that when he impales the Ottomans, he'd use a stick with a dull tip to impale them from the anus through the mouth STRAIGHT UP. And from what I've heard, he used sticks that has dull tips because it would push the organs aside rather than stabbing through."
"So they won't just die right away but they would have to suffer painfully. I can't imagine being a soldier marching through a forest of my comrades moaning in pain, knowing that if I make one mistake, I would end up with them suffering their fate."
TR45H_Pr0TaT0_69
'entertainment'
"Probably not the creepiest but still disturbing. Japanese warriors during many battles used to behead enemy generals/higher ups and present it to their lord/general at dinner as an 'entertainment' after winning the battle."
TomokaTheAxolotl
"The ancient Celts would embalm the heads of the enemies they had slain in battle and nail them above the entry of their house, or keep them in a chest to show to guests."
phailanx
To Shore
"The Raft of the Medusa. In 1816, France sent a ship called the Medusa to go reclaim the French African colony of Senegal. The captain was appointed based on politics rather than merit. Captain Dumba** ended up running the ship onto a sand bar and refused to dump the cannons in order to make the ship light enough to get back into sea."
"The giant raft they built to hold the ship's cargo was eventually used to float the 147 people who couldn't fit onto the lifeboats. The idea was that the lifeboats could tow the raft to shore. The lifeboat folks, including Captain Dumba** and the governor, decided to cut off the raft and leave everyone for dead while they sailed to land. After two weeks, there were only fifteen men left alive on the raft and boy, did they have a story to tell."
neporap453
“unhygienic”
"Not really creepy more like.. gross. One of the King Louis. His servant said that he had so much lice that when he would eat, clumps of lice would just fall onto his food. Apparently washing your head/hair was 'unhygienic' back then. I don’t know much about lice or medieval times, or which King it was, this was just something I heard from several people and I never thought it was fully true. I thought it was something I could share on this question. Again I’m so sorry and just wash your hair, people!!!!"
M1lk_st1ck
Trial and Tribulation
"One of the creepiest events I tell students in my Western Civilizations class is the ecclesiastical trial of Pope Formosus around 875 AD. This event was called the Synodus Horrenda, also known as the Cadaver Synod. Formosus had been dead for 7 months, but the new Pope, Pope Stephen VI, found it necessary to exhume Formosus' body and bring it to the papal court to answer for accusations of perjury and acceding the papacy illegally."
"Granted, the Catholic Church has gone through many strange things over the course of its history, however, this event always gets a reaction, especially when the Jean-Paul Laurens painting is shown."
VisualInstruction378
full of absolute psychopaths...
"Ancient Japan was full of absolute psychopaths, for example during the Sengoku period if a daimyo won a battle a lot of them would order the executions of entire villages, women and children included, just to send a message to their rivals that they weren't to be f**ked with. Nobunaga Oda and Masamune Date were both definitely noted for this. Absolutely unnecessary, they cared more about their own reputation and flexing than they did about the lives of an entire village."
Conqueror4life
Dirty
"The assassin of US President James Garfield, Charles J. Guiteau, had a long history of priapism and phimosis. This resulted in chronic pain because his foreskin was so tight that it would not and could not retract normally. A group of doctors claim the severe pain led to a form of insanity that led him to kill the president. At Guiteau's autopsy, he was found to also have an advanced case of balanitis and balanoposthitis with a significant accumulation of smegma. Go figure. A dirty *ick killed a president."
figejiy586
The Emporer
"The first emperor of China Shih Huang Di wanted to live forever so he was looking for the elixir of immortality. His doctors were given a choice find it or die.. Anyhow soon he discovered a liquid that is considered to be it... Thus he drank it daily... Not knowing his magical liquid was actually Mercury and it was slowly poisoning him... He died of Mercury poisoning..."
wogatic662
Pure Evil
"Madame Delphine LaLaurie was a wealthy socialite in New Orleans Louisiana who happened to be a most disturbing sadist and serial killer with a secret torture chamber in the attic. She tortured and killed her servants and was found out because of a fire that started in her house."
feyeb41097
Dominoes
"The Einsatzgruppen has always freaked me out. They were the Nazi death squads that went around and shot people into mass graves. But they started to go crazy having to look people in the eye and shoot them, so the high command came up with the idea for death camps."
"The whole series of events is basically the worst game of dominoes ever. Edit: Also, I think the cost of bullets was too high - another contributing factor to developing gas chambers. While we are on the topic: they used to suffocate people in vans with exhaust pumped in."
wogatic662
History is gruesome. It's like real life horror movies.
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Stalkers are a special kind of scary.
That is just a cold, hard fact of life that we must deal with.
And for some reason, these people get fixated on others.
They think they're in love... meanwhile we're calling the police and moving cities.
There is nothing more horrifying than having your life held hostage by someone.
Redditor rentinghappiness wanted to see who would be willing to discuss what it took to live through this scary life experience. They asked:
"People who have had a stalker, how did you realize you were being stalked and what ended up happening?"
I was had an ex who wouldn't take the hint. Keep my phone blowing up for months. I'm lucky though, finally they gave up. Others haven't been as fortunate.
“this is not goodbye”
"It was my ex. When we broke up it was all very dramatic and he got on a bus across the country the same day for whatever reason and sent a long message from the bus ending with 'this is not goodbye' I said 'yes it is, good luck.' Two years later I met my now husband and I suppose he moved back after 3 years. I started seeing him everywhere."
"He followed the two of us around Walmart for 45 minutes until I just posted up near a security guard and slipped out as he tried to wait for me to get away from the security guard. Then I saw him wandering around near my mother's house, but I had at that point moved in with my husband."
"Then I saw him outside of my work. He was clearly trying to get the courage to come in and he was also very clearly high. Some of the regular police officers came in by chance for their coffee and he left when they arrived. Then he figured out the general location where I was living and I saw him sort of wandering around a few times. I didn’t go home when I saw him, I went and sat in a public place for a few hours."
"Then I changed places of work and I saw him outside about three times. I was near a major transportation hub so I tried to ignore it. But when he started doing the pacing/tweaking/chain smoking thing again I figured I oughta do something so I waited for a family friend I knew would be in who was pretty domineering and I knew would go to bat for me and let him know who it was and what he was doing."
"He went outside and told my ex off I suppose. And scared him I guess cause he left quite quickly. My family friend was a bus driver so I gave him a picture and he shared it with some drivers along my regular route and as long as I stuck to that route the few more times I saw him trying to get on my bus we drove right past him or the wrong door opened to let people off and not let him on."
"We finally moved again and I quit my job because I had been bouncing around the same chain and was easy to find. Since then I have seen him once but he didn’t see me and I think it was unrelated because he actually bought something. I just sat in the camera room and watched till he left. It’s been an additional 5 years now so I assume he has figured himself out."
"I got an air of doom every time I saw him. He was kind when we dated, never abusive. But he was anti drugs and anti smoking and so seeing him high and things like that set off alarm bells. I know he was not well when he returned. I don’t know what would have happened had he gotten close to me. Maybe nothing. But every bone in my body was screaming danger. So I trusted my gut and took steps to maintain distance and I was okay. The police wouldn't have done anything. No threats were uttered and we were always in public. But all in all it turned out ok."
rkspm
Why are you up so late?
"I had a stalker in high school, and he didn't make it a secret."
"We were friends at first, kind of talking romantically, but I was very shy when it came to relationships or being physical. We had never even kissed before when he asked if he could send a song he wrote about me. It made me very uncomfortable and I asked him not to send it, but he did anyway. I expressed my discomfort and tried to continue the friendship, but it was just not working because he would still write me poems and send me weird songs."
"He started following me to my classes even though his were on the other side of school, but he wouldn't speak to me at all. It was insanely uncomfortable. This continued for weeks. He started sending me mean messages anonymously online and sending me songs with scary titles. He sent me that Smith's song The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get every single day, sometimes multiple times."
"Then one day at lunch he gave me a hand written poem and, I can't remember what all it said but the end was something about how he wanted to watch me get eaten alive by sharks. While friends, I had told him sharks were my biggest fear. I showed my teacher the poem and she freaked out and took it to the guidance counselor. She knew all the previous incidents so the letter made her worried. Especially how his handwriting changed when he was writing about me dying."
"I ended up getting called into a meeting with the principal, a guidance counselor, and the teacher I told. They even called my mom in and we all sat down and talked about what would be the best thing to do. The principal was really nervous he would do something crazy, so he said I should just avoid him as much as possible and be polite anytime we may interact. Basically how I was already handling it."
"I'm not sure if they ever spoke to him about it, but the last interaction I had with him still creeps me out to think about. I was up very late, and received a text from him, 'Why are you up so late? You should get ready for bed.' He had been to my place once before and I lived very close to the school. I'll always wonder if he was outside my house that night."
rat-kabob
I may be paranoid...
"It started while I was still in high school, he would be in a few of my classes and we would occasionally see each other around town (a very small, rural town). It slowly turned into him showing up at some of my friend group's hangout spots and saying that I had inspired him to start looking into similar hobbies. We thought it was kinda weird but just brushed it off and avoided him."
"Flash forward a couple weeks into the start of summer vacation. He had found or followed me to all of my favorite places and my work even though both were sometimes towns over from our own. I would see his car at parks where I did outdoor painting, at my place of work as well as at friends' houses, and he would drive passed the house of the family I nannied for during my days on."
"I thought it was creepy and told local authorities, but they told me not to worry. This went on for the rest of high school and up until graduation. I didn't tell anyone what university I was going to and lied claiming it was one hours away from mine. He was accepted and attended there while I left for another. He found out after a semester that I wasn't there and showed up at my dorm hall."
"He tried to break in and convince me and other people in the building to just let him in. I hid out in another girl's room until my friend was able to pick me up and take me to her boyfriend's off-campus apartment. I found out he was arrested the next morning for assaulting an RA. I called and showed them the evidence I had for his persistent stalking and finally filed a restraining order."
"He just got released a few months ago and I have never been more nervous. I'm just happy my current job and living area has amazing security and they all have pictures and his information to be safe. I may be paranoid, but better safe than end up on a true-crime podcast."
MalkiaBahari
From Church!
"He followed me home from church! He left long letters on my car every night for about a week. He was a lot older than me. The police spoke with him and he left town. I know how lucky I am that it was so simple. It was a small college town. I only know what the police told me, which was that they located him through the letters and the description of his car, found out he was not a resident, and told him there would be charges if he didn't move on."
"I realized he had followed me home the first day, so I parked at a different house and even walked into the back yard to try to throw him off. I didn't have a garage so when he came back to the neighborhood it wasn't hard for him to see my car and he started leaving the letters."
ExxoMountain
leave her alone...
"My wife did, it became a real problem. He was a maintenance man at the school where she taught. She was throwing out a lot of old, damaged books, he asked if could have them for his kids, of course. After that he wanted to always be there, wherever my wife was, he was always sweeping or cleaning near her room."
"Then one day in the winter, my wife got a flat right after leaving school, it was getting dark and her new best friend is there to fix it. While changing the tire, he started asking sexual questions, he wanted to know if she ever had a black man. Of course she said nothing."
"It got worse and the school administration was ignoring it, I was now going way out of my way to take her and to pick her up from school, she was scared. Then he said something to her while she was eating in the cafeteria, she lost it, she just started screaming and crying for him to leave her alone."
"They sent her home for a few days paid leave. Since the school was no help I went to see 2 school board members I knew, but not well. I told them that I had hired an attorney and would be suing the school district unless my wife felt safe. They moved the custodian to another school, but it took months before my wife felt safe. The custodian got in trouble at the next school and was arrested. We never heard from him again."
Disposable70
Well that is a mess of scary. How are people allowed to act out like this?
“you again?”
"I have a weird kind of related story… there is a man in my town that for the last 15 years I see him constantly, almost everywhere I go he’s there, at least 3 times a month… the grocery store, the corner store, the gas station, Walmart, the liquor store… occasionally we catch each other’s eye and look at each other like 'you again?' and kinda laugh it off."
"It has come to be a little bit of a joke where I will come home and tell my husband 'guess who I saw at the store today?' The only catch, he’s always at these places first!!! so it’s ME who looks like the stalker!"
Pinkiepie1111
Freaky
"I worked as a secretary at an adult school when I was 18. An adult student kept bothering me taking pictures of me outside the office etc... I quit that job and got him banned from the school. Fast forward 3 years later I’m in a relationship 6 months pregnant and I’m working at a drs office."
"A police officer shows up and tells me I’ve had a private investigator on me for a few weeks but he reported his client to the police because his client said he was my husband but the PI after following me for a few weeks figured out he wasn’t and was stalking me. He went to jail for a few days never heard from him again it’s been 19 yrs... freaky a** crap."
lola2203
Crazy
"He wasn’t subtle about it. He threatened me by phone and email, followed a moving truck to my new apartment, ignored police instructions to stop contacting me multiple times, then contacted me through other people, showed up in random places in my new city."
"It only stopped after he got arrested for assault (on someone else) and ultimately moved to a different city, where he was again arrested for assault. That last part I only know because I was regularly looking him up on court records to see if he was free."
TerrifyinglyAlive
Be careful out there. Stay aware of the people around you.
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Prison is one of the worst places on Earth.
So it's best for all of us to do the most we can to stay far away from them.
Ex-cons and even ex-staff will have plenty of warnings about what it's really like behind those concrete walls.
Prison isn't the version you see in Hollywood films and TV.
It's much much worse.
Redditor Shrekisball101 wanted to hear from people who have served time about what life is like in the inside. They asked:
"Ex-Cons of Reddit, what’s the most terrifying thing you saw inside of prison?"
***WARNING - THIS THREAD IS FOR 17 AND UP ONLY!!***
Intense
Excuse Me No GIF by Late Night with Seth MeyersGiphy"A dude got two full kettles of boiling water poured on his head. And a convicted murderer explaining how he killed, dismembered with an angle grinder then disposed of the body."
mcchronicles2
"It must have been tense waiting for that kettle to come to a boil for the second round."
curiouscuriousmtl
“shorts”
"Not me, but- I spoke to a former inmate after his release who had developed severe ptsd from some of the things he witnessed while incarcerated. One of the stories was that he was playing cards with some guys and one of them was smoking a cigarette."
"Another inmate who was not playing with them approached the table and asked the guy smoking if he could get 'shorts' on the cigarette ( shorts means, before you finished smoking, you gave the cigarette to someone else so they got the last few puffs of the cigarette before putting it out) the smoker agreed, the inmate wandered off and they went back to playing cards. Well the guy playing cards must have forgot and finished the cigarette."
"A little while later the other inmate came back to the table asking for the short, and the guy at the table told him that he had forgotten about it and finished the cigarette. Guy wanders off again and they go back to playing cards. Shortly afterwards, the inmate who wanted shorts comes back to the table, comes up behind the player, pulls his head back and started shanking him in the eye and throat with a pen/pencil. Dude died over forgetting to give someone a damn cigarette butt."
GeiCobra
Farts Away
"My brother said a guy across from him had a new cellmate who had gastrointestinal problems and wouldn't stop farting these rancid horrible farts after the guy told him repeatedly to stop (not like he could help it,) so the guy beat the farter to death in their cell with his bare hands. My brother said he had never seen so much blood from one person before."
I_Only_Eat_Tacos
Kajang...
"I did a 4 month stint in Kajang (Malaysia). This Nigerian dude used to pilfer from other cells. This Malay gang found him and dipped his hand in boiling oil (basically deep fried it while it was still attached to him). That scream, it still curdles my blood."
DeusExKFC
Bones
"I was in a South American prison, there was a lot of drug addicts, they usually sold their food in order to buy more drugs so they were always hungry. One day I was eating my lunch: rice, a leg of chicken and some beans. When I finished my meal there were some chicken bones left in my plate, and a drug addict approached to me to ask if I could gift him the chicken bones. So I lend him my bones and he started eating them. It was heartbreaking."
randy_robott
Until he was dead
"A guy got stomped to death my first day in. The 2 guys fighting were rival gang members. The guards didn't do anything until the guy getting stomped stopped breathing. Then they came in and took them both away. One in a bag and one in cuffs."
"The were in different cells and always talking sh*t to each other. When we had rec time they both ran at each other. They were both pretty big. One picked up the other and slammed him on the concrete and proceeded to kick him in the stomach and face until he was unconscious. Until he was dead."
fosnin
What happened to prisons initially being about rehabilitation? This is a mess...
casually walked away...
"Brixton, A Wing. Coming back from canteen this scary looking wild eyed dude steps across and tells me to hand over my burn/tobacco. I laugh and say no and walk by, waiting for him to do something. Nothing happened. Few minutes later, same guy opened some poor lads stomach with one slash and he was lying there trying to hold his intestines in, I saw the fear and panic on his face. The scary guy just casually walked away. No idea what happened to either of them. Alarms went off. Everyone back to their cells and locked up again."
Bully2533
The Cool Kid
"I was never in prison, but in jail a bit for drug charges. I was in my 30s, but my bunky was a really nice 19 yo kid in there for selling drugs. He seemed a bit over his head, but introduced me to the jits (I didn’t know anyone) and we’d play cards and stuff. He had a real high bond, and one day they said to get his crap he got bail."
"He didn’t know who, but I was so happy for him. The next morning the CO told me he was shot and killed that night (Being very respectful, everyone liked the guy). It was confirmed on the evening news. Really messed me up, and I can guess who got him bailed."
JoseZiggler
Misfits
"Not a crazy story but was in for a few days and didn't realize they put you in cells based on the color of your skin. I'm a white dude with a Hispanic last name and they put me in a cell with a straight nazi who told me if I went to actual prison (I was only in for a weekend) that I would be a misfit because I wasn't one thing or the other."
undego1423
"million dollar man"
"My criminal justice professor always used to tell us about the 'million dollar man' in his prison he used to work at. The prison was an old school style with multiple floors and the open part of the middle like you see in the movies. To avoid jumpers they put chainlink fencing along the walkways."
"One day this guy managed to squeeze through the fencing on the third floor and swan dive face first to the concrete floor below. When they came in they all thought he was dead until he began making noises. The prisoner was then transferred to a hospital for a year and a half getting around 12 different surgeries. Eventually he was released back to the prison and on his second month back he did it again but didn't survive this time."
"The running joke was that he was named the million dollar man because he had cost taxpayers millions from all his surgeries and time in the hospital. Our teacher also liked to add in every time he told the story that some how his glasses survived both falls completely fine."
juquavius221
Sicko
"I don’t know if this counts but, my dad was in prison with Richard Speck, who is, if you don’t know, an American mass murderer who brutally murdered and raped 8 nurses. My dad told me during his time in prison, Speck bragged about what he did all the time, and said prison was a wonderful vacation for him and he would do it all again if he had the chance. He would even go as far as saying how much he loved to kill those women. So sickening. Speck also made porn in prison, which I’m sure is on the internet somewhere."
Abisnailyo
Nightmares
"I saw someone take a hotpot fill it up with baby oil add a pound of sugar, add some magic shave, bring it to a boil then splash it in a person's face... It literally melted the guys face off. This happened around 1999 and I still have the occasional nightmare about it."
XconJon1978
So Casual
"Just the way that some people talk about murder. Some of the people in there would be telling a story, casually drop the fact that they killed someone, then keep going on with the story like nothing happened."
DrinkJazzlike3487
In the Yard
"I’m not a con but my dad told me when he was up stream, guards informed them that they had a high case child rapist coming in. When the guy got there he ended up being this old white man walking with a cane. He didn’t last very long on the court yard. (They killed him on the prison yard)."
Infamous-Reyug
Where to Begin?
"I spent time in county on misdemeanors. During my first week an alcoholic died in the cell below me. We could hear him moaning and calling for help and the guards had been in multiple times. The last time I heard the guard tell the “bum” to deal with his bad choices like a man. The man had a seizure and died in that cell in a pool of crap. The following week the jail was on lockdown and inmates where rioting in their cells."
"Fire sprinklers where broken and the pods flooded. I saw multiple inmates hauled out after being peppered and subdued. The guards left the inmates not participating alone in their cells, just bored. This all happened in a relatively small town jail (population ~80,000). The man who died was a well known homeless fixture."
"He was known for getting petty charges to have a warm bed during especially cold nights. He was arrested for drinking on the courthouse lawn. I consider this to be terrifying because as an incarcerated individual your medical care is given through the facility, and I have never met a more callous individual than the medical staff in jail."
Excellent_Chef_1764
Photo Proof
"Some forensic photos the guy in the cell next to me showed me of his victims (corpses, he killed them after he tortured them), in gang related abductions. He 'removed' a tattoo with an electric sander, and knives in both eye sockets, still in. (They were part of his trial evidence.)"
J_David_Settle_1973
The Corner Spot
"Ok so unfortunately, my bunk was close to the corner where everybody came to fight or whatever. So this one guy claimed that he was a gang member but it was discovered that he was a false-flagger. So, the gang members put him in the corner and took turns beating him."
He was in the infirmary for about a week. When he came back, the gang got him all over again. He was transferred after that. I promise there aren't many things more terrifying than hearing a grown man scream while he's being attacked."
NoObjective427
Patches
"I’ve had ex-cons as clients. One saw his friend get stabbed (a lot, to death) and couldn’t jump in to help him or he’d get stabbed too. Same guy was in charge of removing gang patches from other inmates. Patches, in this case, meant tattoos. You don’t see many elderly gangsters for a reason."
Catflappy
Well those stories are horrible. Let's all stay on the straight and narrow.
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