Sometimes you just get a vibe or a tingle down your neck that you're in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It can be wise to trust this gut instinct, as we learned from many in the Reddit community.
Often those goosebumps or the voice in their head actually saved them from serious harm.
It all started when Redditor throwaway_district9 asked:
"what has been your most bone-chilling, hair-raising, "Let's get the hell out of here" experience?"
A Frightening Weekend
"I don't tell this story often but this seems like a good place. Back in college I used to drive up the Oregon coast on weekends, then just crash in my car when I got tired. I woke from a nap in the driver's seat and something just didn't feel quite right. It was just dusk and the light was fading pretty fast."
"I yawned and stretched and as I did so I turned my head to the side and just caught a face ducking down below my rear passenger window. I went to hit the lock button just to make sure and in my panic I accidentally unlocked the doors briefly and then locked them again."
"I stared at the window for a few minutes, knowing that someone was crouching just out of sight. Eventually, I started the car and thought I heard a scuffing sound. Whoever it was didn't reappear, but that was enough for me. As I noped out of there and pulled out back onto Highway 101, I glanced back and a bald figure in a red t-shirt with something wrapped around his face booked it into the woods on the side of the road."
"That was the end of that weekend trip. I drove the two hours back to my dorm room, white-knuckled hands locked on the steering wheel. I had to pull over a few miles down the road though to deal with the adrenaline shakes."
– jasonhackwith
What Could It Be?
"Me and a couple of my friends were walking around at night when we were around 11 or 12 and I specifically remember all of us feeling like something was off and we started joking about someone or something getting us and saying to each other we’re not afraid of anything. Then we heard a raspy growl that we all agreed had to be a mountain lion."
"All of us were in a dead sprint to my house, scared sh*tless as soon as we heard it. I didn’t live in a place where they usually are so people mostly didn’t believe us, but shortly afterwards and after some more sightings, a mountain lion was caught just 10-15 miles from my home. In hindsight it definitely wasn’t very close to us and we didn’t actually see it, but we definitely exaggerated and acted like it was right next to us."
– bringeroflightning
Not So Abandoned
"A friend and I were exploring an abandoned factory in North Philadelphia about 8 years ago, and when we got to about the third floor...I discovered a booby trap in the stairwell."
"Basically it was a trip wire that swung an axe down from the ceiling."
"Right as that fully set in, we heard someone from up above shout "YO!""
"Time to go."
"I've never covered that much ground so fast. I think we were two or three blocks away before we realized we were riding each other's bikes."
– PlayerH8rsBallz
Furniture Troubles
"When I was 16 I had a pickup truck and my parents asked me to pick up some new furniture on the way home. As I’m driving home it starts pissing rain and I was worried the furniture would get destroyed, so I pulled over on the side of the road under an overpass to wait it out."
"As I’m waiting, another car pulls up behind me. An overweight bald man steps out and begins walking towards my car. I tell him I’m waiting for the rain to stop so I don’t ruin the furniture for my parents."
"He was acting very odd and telling me he would help me out as he was fingering his belly button. I was creeped the f*ck out."
"He says one minute he has to grab something to help and leans into his car window. All of my alarm bells are going off so I figured f*ck it and just sped off furniture be damned."
"So glad I did, who knows what would have happened"
– DrPeterVankman
Volunteer To Prey
"My wife and I were on a search mission for some missing fern pickers. We were volunteers with the local search and rescue (SAR) team. We decided to stay in the search area that night and had built a pretty nice fire. We were sitting there and it was about 0200, hoping this dude would wander into camp."
"I had heard animals around us throughout the night. No surprise, we're in the middle of the woods, I'm used to animals stalking around outside my camp."
"I knew there were two animals, one one each side of us. It was at about that point when we heard a bird chirp. It came from about the place I figured one of the animals were. Then another, from the opposite side."
"I immediately realized we were being watched and stalked by at least two cougars. We very quickly climbed into the back of my truck. It's got a camper shell and is outfitted for truck camping."
– SGTRhoads16
Drive Off
"Driving Uber one night a couple years back. I picked up four guys from a club, listening to them talk I realized that two guys (one of them ordered the ride) had met the other two at the club and were on the way to get drugs from one of their cousins."
"There was an odd vibe, some of the conversation didn't seem the most linear, and I was hyper-aware that these drunk dumba**es were heading with two strangers to a drug deal. And I was the one driving them."
"I did not want drugs in my car, and I was very aware that we might be on the way to an ambush. If we'd been heading anywhere remote or sketchy I had to figure out how to end the ride."
"The two wannabe dealers kept trying to get in touch with their cousin via cellphone, went to an apartment just off a main street, and after both had gone into the building I just said "should be leave?" to the guys and we did. I still don't know if it was just a ploy for a free ride, guys too drunk or dumb to pull off a basic drug deal, or something nefarious that didn't finish."
– verminiusrex
Trust Your Gut
"I was in an upstairs lab in med school, just a friend & I practicing surgical skills. There was a main enclosed staircase down to the lobby/classrooms & a weird outdoor stairwell that nobody ever used except in fire drills. It wasn't a fire escape, but the old main entrance to the lab classroom. When I put my hand on the door handle to the main stairs, I was FILLED with a weird sense of "Get out! Not that way!" Just absolute fear, I felt trapped & anxious. For the first time in 3 years, I said "Let's take the outdoor stairs..." My friend had literally no idea there even WAS another exit."
"The next day we found out that at the exact time we were taking the outside stairs, one of our classmates was pulling a gun on the admin & students in the lobby at the base of the main stairs. He'd been kicked out of the program for his grades & snapped."
"My friend still talks about it & tells people to always trust my instincts. I actually asked her to stop telling people, because I felt so weird about it. I'm sure I just heard something in the distance that gave me that feeling, but Gavin de Becker would be proud!"
– ittybittylurker
Lightning Strike
"One time I was out in Colorado with some buddies hiking near the top of a mountain. Some bad weather started to roll in but the top was only 15 mins away so I went ahead while they went back down. As I was getting to the top I felt static in the air and the hair in my head started to stand up. I immediately started to panic cause I thought I was about to get struck by lightning so naturally I ran down without ever getting to the top. I’m not sure if I was gunna get struck but I sure as hell wasn’t sticking around to find out."
– shlable710
Bone Trail
"Hiking in the Rocky Mountains, on a trail I knew pretty well. I was leading a group of kids, maybe twenty or so middle school aged children from the camp where I worked."
"I turned a corner and saw a jaw bone of a deer. Pretty cool, showed it to the kids. Didn't have any flesh on it, so I assumed it was pretty old."
"A hundred feet further down the trail I find another bone. Femur maybe (I specialized in insect populations, not deer anatomy.) This one looked a little fresher. Another ways down, another bone."
"I'm getting a little nervous at this point, so I explain that we should probably turn around and head back. My students all groan that they want to see more dead stuff, but I shepherd them down the train and back to camp."
"Two days later we got a call at the camp that someone had been attacked in the area by a mountain lion. Apparently a mountain lion had set itself up in the caves on the cliffside and it had gotten pissed when someone got too close."
"I'm glad we left the area, even if my students would have loved to see more dead stuff."
– SalemScout
Yeah, I would've left too!
Do you have any similar experiences? Let us know in the comments below.
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.
Redditorrentinghappinesswanted 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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There are creepers in our midst. Sometimes, they are the most unassuming types.
Lone straphangers on a semi-crowded subway are a dime-a-dozen, and they seem to mind their own business.
But when you notice out of your peripheral a person staring at you and grabbing their crotch, well, it's time to either get off at the next stop or move to another car.
Yeah, it happens.
Curious to hear about creepy encounters from strangers on the internet, Redditor T3H9 asked:
"What's the creepiest thing you caught someone doing?"
How well do you know your friends? These Redditors wished they could unlearn some things while others realized it's been too long since they've last seen acquaintances from the past.
Human Lollipop
When I was 13, I went to a friends house. He put his dog under his bed covers and made the dog lick his nipples repeatedly."
."...needless to say, I didn't go back to his house again."
Kid Sister Has Your Back
"I was in my bed then my 5 year old sister came in and said my name, i didnt say anything back, shes went into the bed and started licking my back."
Long-Haired Stalker
"When we were about 18 years old my friend Rich was telling me he was being followed by a strange dude with long hair, beard and mustache. He said he would turn around and see the guy following him from a distance. At night Rich would look out his front window and see the guy standing in the middle of the road staring at his house. 2 weeks later we finished up our band practice in our lead guitarist's back yard and Rich left to put his amp in his car. A few moments later Rich came running back terrified saying the bearded guy was out front and that he was coming through the gate to the backyard. I saw the creep come in and he asked 'Rich?' a few times. Rich asked who he was and he said 'Doug.' They had been schoolmates but Doug had moved away for a few years and grew his hair long. Rich asked him why he didn't say anything earlier and Doug said he was nervous about approaching Rich because he wasn't sure it was him. So he just stalked him for 2 weeks and Rich was terrified the entire time."
Lurkers and stalkers are unnerving, but these creeps have gone way too far.
Bad Photographer
"I caught some weird dude pointing his phone up a lady's skirt in the produce section. I went to confront him and he took off. I told the lady and she just freaking laughed it off...wth?? Told security and they were just like 'oh' like he was a regular problem in the store. Totally f**ed up."
– Marjie94
People Break Down The Creepiest Research Holes They've Ever Fallen Down | George Takei’s Oh Myyy
Malicious Bar Patron
"I watched a guy ghost up to the bar while I was drinking with friends, drop something into a girls drink and fade back into the crowd. Super stealthy and if I hadn't been looking down at the bar I wouldn't have caught it."
"Notified the bartender, and the girl. He exchanged the drink, no questions, the bouncer asked me some questions about the guy, and I never found out how it ended up. Scary how fast it happened."
Creepy Dad
"I was in bed lounging around in my former boyfriends house (who lived with his parents at the time), and I heard a knock. I ignored it because I was too sleepy to care. Then I heard the door open a crack."
"Maybe it was instinct, but I knew I was being stared at. I opened one of my eyes slightly and saw my boyfriend's dad peeking at me through the crack in the door."
"We locked gazes and he scurried off, awkwardly."
"I never returned to that house again, and never told anyone."
Safe Dining
"Ok, nobody is going to believe this, but I swear on my life, in roughly 1990, on a greyhound bus, I saw an old lady unwrap and eat a condom. It haunts me to this day…"
Stabbing Witness
"I was serving at a soup kitchen in high school and something shiny caught my eye out the window. I looked and saw a guy holding what looked like a knife and polishing it. About 5 seconds later he lunges out of the bush and stabs a guy minding his own business who was waiting in line for the kitchen to open. No idea what happened to the victim but the whole thing played in slo mo, it was awful. Looking back it seems obvious what was about to happen, but I was like, 15 at the time?"
Some people are neighborly by nature. But there ought to be limitations.
Neighbor At The Loo
"Once I was taking a sh*t in a public restroom and heard weird noises, so I looked under the stall to check the feet of the dude next to me. I'm not sure why, I just did it to be safe. Turns out the dude next to me was checking at the exact same time I was. It was so f'king awkward as we made eye contact nearly upside down by our underwear. I guess it was weird for both of us."
High-Tech Toilet Stall
"Oh man kind of similar story... I was in Germany with my wife, we decided to take a break from sight seeing to just have a pastry and go to the bathroom. We go to this nice restaurant in the city square, my wife orders for us and I run to the bathroom. The stall doors to the bathrooms were clear glass and when you closed the door and locked it the doors would frost over so you couldn't see into the stall but you could see out. Anyway a guy, mid sh*t hadn't locked his stall door just closed it. The dude literally just made bizarre faces at me while I pooped, making direct eye contact the entire time while I was at the urinal. He had no idea I could see him though and it took my entire being to not laugh hysterically."
– The-loon
Looky Loo
"My neighbor stands in the backyard and stares through my windows. She also stands outside my apartment door and occasionally follows me into town and into stores."
"She's a well known creep in town but nothing can be done really because that's as far as she ever takes it also, my state doesnt have great stalking laws so the police can't touch her either."
You would think crowded subways would be places for creeps to avoid doing their pervy things. But being caught must be an added thrill for such offenders.
A friend of mine was literally groped by a strap hanger as she and I boarded the packed subway car.
She yelled directly, at him, "Did you just grab my A**???"
The non-reactive not-so-gentleman just stood there as every passenger glared at him for his ride of shame.
Although we doubted he needed to get off at the next stop, it was good to see him haul his own a** off the train.
Creeps, beware. You never know who won't put up with your handsy proclivities.