36 Wildly Lucky People Who Narrowly Avoided Getting Murdered, Kidnapped, Or Assaulted
Recently, we wrote about terrifying encounters people had with strangers, and members of the BuzzFeed Community submitted their own examples. Here are some of their hair-rising stories — along with some from the original Reddit thread.
NOTE: There are mentions of violence, murder, sexual assault, and animal harm (but no animal death).
1. “A normal-looking guy and his girlfriend fell over into me and my girlfriend on the dance floor of a club, spilling both our drinks just after we bought them. They bought us new drinks to say sorry — but they spiked them with Rohypnol. Our flatmate, who was hanging with a different group, noticed us looking really fucked-up and being led away by strangers way earlier than we’d usually leave, and rescued us to make sure we got back home with her safe and sound. We don’t remember shit all after getting our fresh drinks. That was our second drink of the night; we would usually have six and stay till 2 a.m. It was still 10 p.m. when we were being led out.”
2. While on our honeymoon in Mexico, our hotel phone started ringing in the middle of the night. My wife answered and heard breathing on the phone. A deep, creepy voice just said, ‘Are you alone?’ The room number was the same as the phone number. … So now this creep knew the room my wife was in. I told my wife to stay in the room and not to open the door for anyone other than me, no matter what they said. I went out and patrolled the hotel floors and corridors in the dark to try to find the creep if he was around. I couldn’t find anyone but reported it to the night porter, who was completely uninterested in my complaint. Chances are that he was the creep — either way, it was quite terrifying.”
“I went back to our room and lay in bed, wide awake, and to make matters worse, I researched murder reports and missing persons reports for the area. Turns out there had been loads of ‘accidental deaths’ and suicide reports from people jumping from balconies, sometimes newlyweds… and people disappearing when on holiday. Not the best night’s sleep I ever had…”
3. “Because of my work hours, I tend to get home late from work. I often use the one-hour drive from work to home as a way to catch up with people. My friend and I had gotten into a conversation that was pretty interesting (I can no longer remember what it was). As a result, when I pulled into my driveway, I did not go immediately inside. Instead, I stayed in my car to finish the conversation. I saw a man standing at the beginning of my driveway, staring straight ahead. There was something off about his face, but I couldn’t make out what it was.”
“He then began walking into my driveway. I have relatives who live on the same block as me, so I remember trying to figure out if it was one of them. Then, I caught a glimpse of his face. It looked like he had a clown mask on. I immediately just started honking my horn like wild. It threw him off because he did not realize someone was in the car. He ran away.
It turns out my next-door neighbor’s wife was having an affair and that her lover was attempting to kill him. I guess she told her lover we leave our backyard gate unlocked. He planned to enter our yard, jump over the fence separating our yard from hers, enter their house through a broken window facing their yard, and kill him.
He wasn’t successful that night but did make another attempt on the husband’s life later that week. I remember that night, too. I came home from work and saw the husband staring straight down the street with a worried expression on his face. He didn’t even notice me saying hello until the third time I said it, and he told me everything was fine when I asked. An hour later, I heard gunshots.”
4. “I was walking home from the mall on Christmas Eve in 2010. I was staying with my mom as I had moved out of town and didn’t have my car. I had called to ask for a ride, but my mom was preparing for company. It was about -20 degrees Celsius in Winnipeg, so I was wearing a big winter coat, and it was around 3 p.m. I was taking a shortcut across a footbridge over the river when a tall man (well over six feet) wearing a winter coat and hood up passed toward me. The next thing I knew, his arms were around me from the back, and I just started flailing and screaming. At the other end of the bridge was a man and his young child, and the guy who had his arms around me let go and ran off (I’m assuming he saw the other man).”
“I was flustered and just kept walking. The man with his child didn’t ask if I was okay, though I am not sure if he realized what was happening. I am so lucky he was on the footbridge at the same time; otherwise, I know what would have happened. I haven’t told my mom about this to this day.”
5. “About ten years ago, I opened the thrift shop where I worked to take the trash to the curb for pickup. I was alone as the other worker wouldn’t be there for another hour. I opened the door to take out more trash and saw two weird young men digging through the garbage. They’d gotten there so quickly I knew they’d hidden somewhere close. I felt a flash of danger. They were agitated and oddly dressed: one in fake tiger fur pants, the other all in black with a black cowboy hat. Their eyes looked dead. My spidey sense screamed, ‘GET OUT OF THE SHOP!!!’ I did, backing away from them. Every hair on my body stood up.”
“The guy in black ran into the shop saying he needed to look for his lost iPhone. After a minute, they left. I ran into the shop and locked the door, shaking with fear. The next day, they were in the news for killing a young woman in San Francisco the day before and then a man on a hiking trail the day after I’d seen them. I was supposed to be their next victim!”
6. “Eight years ago, I was hiking through a forest with my ex in PA. We were both around 24 at the time. We passed these two teenage dudes who were just…off. We said ‘hi’ as we passed, but they didn’t respond. They just stared at us. It’s hard to explain. Something about them felt wrong — sinister and non-feeling. It made my hair stand on end a little bit when I looked at them. They had this ‘we are in our own world observing you’ energy, and that world looked fucking dark.”
“Later, I saw them carving something into a tree. We went and looked, and they had carved ‘DEATH IS ABOUND’ into the tree. I still remember it exactly. Maybe it was silly; maybe they were just trying to be creepy or mess with people. But at that time, being alone in the woods, reading that on a tree, and knowing the person who had carved it was nearby…well, that creeped me the fuck out.
We left, and I never heard anything. But there was something about those teenagers that always stayed with me, like I got away from something that maybe someone else didn’t.”
7. “I (25F at the time) was on a swing set in my hometown. This guy (mid-early twenties) came and sat on a swing beside me. We chatted a bit, and after a while, he started talking about how he was obsessed with serial killers, specifically the famous kind that targets women. He spoke a lot about how the victims deserved it. I acted nice and eventually made an excuse that I had somewhere to be. As soon as I was out of sight, I sprinted and went to my mom’s work a few blocks away. Less than a year later, I saw a news article that he had stabbed a few women.”
8. “I snuck into a sketchy bar just outside of town when I was 19, but thankfully, I ended up not drinking much. While I was in there, an older man came up to me and started talking about the river that isn’t too far away from there and how it would be a good place to hide a body. The guy gave me the creeps, but I know plenty of older men around here who just like to say things to try to freak you out, so I just ignored him and went about my evening. However, later in the night, he came back up to me and started chatting, then asked me if I wanted to go on a walk. I asked him, ‘where to?’ His answer was, ‘To the creek, it’s a great place to walk.'”
“Everything inside me was screaming to get away from this guy, so I didn’t go, but he did keep following me around after that, including when I went outside, and I’m pretty sure he would have tried to do something to me had I not gotten my friends and made them leave after that.”
9. “When I lived in Chicago, I was getting formula out of the trunk of my car. It was dark out. I heard the sound of someone running towards me. I thought I’d turn around to see a kid running away from their parent, but I saw a fully grown man. (For reference, I’m 110lbs and 5′ 5″.) My husband happened to have his tools in the trunk, so I grabbed his electric saw and put it between me and the man. He froze in place, and we just sat there for a second, staring at each other through his ski mask. He changed paths and began walking in another direction. I ran and locked myself in the front seat of the car with the saw and cried for a minute before working up the courage to run back inside.”
10. “I (solo female) went to a grocery store late after my swing shift. It was probably like 11 p.m. As I was getting back in my car, this man approached me and asked me how I was doing. Then asked me for a ride. I said, ‘No, man, I can’t do that.’ For obvious reasons. His voice turned chillingly cold, and he said, ‘You made the right choice.'”
11. My family and I lived in a very remote house on a lake. Before we moved to Hawaii from Michigan, my stepfather had already left to get settled. So, it was just my mom, my brother, and I. One night, I decided to sleep in my mom’s bed for the heck of it. She had a huge bed and a gorgeous view of the lake. I got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. I noticed the blinds in the bathroom were open. I thought it was strange, but I wasn’t concerned, telling myself that way out there, no one could see me anyway. For some reason, I glanced outside and saw two very white eyes staring back at me. The man was huge and menacing. I went back to my mom’s room immediately and laid down under the covers. A few minutes later, I sat up to make sure he was gone. Nope. He was standing, just staring at me. I laid back down totally under the blankets, wide awake for the entire night, and refused to get up until the sun was out.”
12. “About 15-odd years ago, I was doing the evening shift at my Internet café; I was 30 minutes away from closing, and a youngish lad walked in straight away. I noticed that it wasn’t going to be a last-minute student wanting something printed; he just oozed danger. He came up to the counter and started rambling on about how he bought a stab vest and tried it out earlier by stabbing himself. At this point, I would like to say that being an ex-serviceman at the ripe old age of 42, I wasn’t going to play dumb games and lose my life with a foolish act of bravado; I wanted to get home to my girlfriend in one piece.”
“After what felt like an eternity, he left. I called the police, and it took them 30 minutes to find him and arrest him. They contacted me and told me that he had been released from prison a few days before and couldn’t handle life outside. He wanted to go back after killing someone. That someone would’ve been me. I was in the army for 12 years, and that was the only time I felt I had no control over what was happening.”
13. “Me and two buddies were leaving a university-area bar around 2:15 a.m. We got to the car, and there was a guy sleeping in it. One of my buddies knocked on the driver’s door and opened it. The guy was all disoriented. We told him to get out, and he claimed it was his car. He was clearly still disoriented from sleeping and, potentially, something else. Eventually, he got out, and we got in. The driver immediately felt something on the seat that he was sitting on. He had sat on the guy’s gun. We dodged a bullet that night.”
14. “I remember going skiing in Switzerland when I was maybe 23 or something, laying in bed with my girlfriend and being woken up by a loud banging on the wall behind us. I looked out into the hallway, and there was a naked man’s ass bent over in the bathroom, doing something strange, like cleaning up and moving around and groaning. I shouted thinking it was my cousin, who was a similar build. The guy stood up, fully naked, and looked at me, and it was someone I’d never seen before in my life. I’ve never shit myself so much. I bolt past him into the living room to wake up my sleeping dad and cousin. They rush the guy, who turns out to be drunk as hell and had stumbled into our (stupidly unlocked) apartment thinking it was his.”
“It was more funny than creepy, but at the time, I absolutely completely and utterly shit myself. Things are a lot more scary when it’s the middle of the night and a strange guy is naked inside your apartment. Oh, and the guy was trying to clean up all the vomit he had projected into the bathroom. It was a disaster.”
15. “I was leaving a club with my friend and happened to walk out at the same time as two very, very drunk young women. They were so drunk that one of them kept saying, ‘Where is my phone? I’ve lost my phone,’ until she realized it was half wedged into her top. They started talking to us, and I decided to make sure they got home safely. They didn’t want to pay for an Uber and wanted to walk home despite not being able to walk and not being able to operate their phones. I insisted that they order it and did it for them. I also decided to wait to order mine because they were extremely vulnerable and unwise, probably recently 18. While this was happening, a very sketchy-looking dude with a weird look in his eye came up to us. He asked us if we wanted to go to an after-party and mentioned that his Uber was on the way. I politely refused for all of us, and he kinda hung around looking at the girls and toward the club entrance.”
“His ‘Uber’ (van-style people carrier with a sliding door) pulled up. He opened the door and said nothing to the driver, suggesting we come to the party again. He waited for an uncomfortable amount of time and realized we were not going to come. He closed the ‘Uber’ door without saying anything to the driver, and the ‘Uber’ drove off. He then made his way back up to the club. He was in the club that night and probably followed the women out, but unfortunately for him, they got talking to me.”
16. “A girlfriend and I were on a work trip. We stayed at the same hotel in different rooms. We had dinner one night at the restaurant on the ground floor. … We ate at the bar because it was busy, and the bartender was waaaay too interested in her. And he kept giving her free drinks. She didn’t drink much to begin with, so she was getting toasty. I got a really bad feeling and closed out and paid the check. I don’t think he drugged her, but to be safe, I took her back to her room. After I put her to bed, I laid down on a towel in front of the door. Guess who knocked on the door 20 minutes later? Fuck that dude.”
17. “I had been working late and had about half an hour before my train would arrive. When I got to the platform, there was an older drunk man sitting on the ground. He seemed like he might be homeless, and he had blood all over his face. He told me that he had been beaten up by cops and thrown off the train, and he didn’t know how to get home. This was in the middle of a very cold winter, and there was no one else around to help, so I took pity on him.”
“I got him to tell me where he was headed, and I helped him up, holding him steady as we walked down the steep stairs that were covered in ice and then up the stairs to the second platform. I figured he probably would’ve fallen and hurt himself if he had tried to navigate them on his own in the state he was in.
Once we got to the other platform, I stayed and kept him company for a little while, but I kept trying to find polite points to cut the conversation short and get back to my platform so that I wouldn’t miss my train. I could barely understand what he was saying, but I smiled and nodded when it seemed appropriate. At one point in his story, he took me by the hand and jokingly danced around a little bit. I was kind of uncomfortable at this point, and then he asked for a hug. I think my thought process was that if I gave him a hug, he would be satisfied, and I could leave, but instead, he took the opportunity to turn me around and wrench my arm up on my back.
Suddenly, he didn’t seem so drunk. He whispered in my ear, ‘We’re going to make love,’ and I stayed still for a split second until I felt him being off-balance, and I tore myself free and ran down the stairs as fast as I could.
As I got up the stairs to my platform, I yelled something at him; I don’t remember what; I was just so scared and angry. He was still standing on the opposite platform, but when he heard me and saw me again, he immediately jumped down onto the tracks and tried to climb over the fence in the middle to get to me.
Luckily for me, at that point, some other people had arrived on my platform, and he turned back around when they started yelling at him. I tried to report it, but the police told me that trying to find this man would be pointless. I know that there’s CCTV at the station and on the trains, so I think he would’ve been trackable.”
18. “When my oldest daughter was about a year old, I took her to Walmart one day. While we were shopping, I noticed an older woman watching us. She looked to be in her mid-fifties to early sixties, and she was dressed nicely and very clean and neat. When she saw me look at her, she came over with tears in her eyes and said, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry for staring! I know this sounds unbelievable, but your daughter looks just like my little girl did before she died!’ She gave me this wildly sad story about how she’d had a little girl who died of leukemia years earlier and that my daughter looked exactly like her deceased daughter. I felt bad for her and told her how sorry I was — and then she reached for my daughter.”
“As she was reaching toward my cart, she asked, ‘I know this is kinda weird, but can I please hold her?’ I immediately jerked my cart back and put my arm between her and my daughter. I said, ‘No, ma’am, you cannot. Don’t touch my daughter.’ She jerked her arm back and looked SO offended, but I didn’t care. I immediately felt the urge to run out of the store. She mumbled a half-assed apology and walked off, but I was so creeped out I immediately grabbed my daughter and left everything in the cart right where it was and left. It was 20 years ago, and it still gives me chills to think about. I really think she was about to try to abduct my daughter right in front of my face.”
19. “Years ago, my then-boyfriend and I decided to walk to a convenience store for some snacks. It was about a 30-minute walk out in the suburbs. It was not super late (around 10 or 11 at night), but it was summer, so it was not really dark. It was also Sunday — not a big party night. On the way back, nearing my street, these two carfuls of guys drove by, and they beeped their horns and called out offensive things. Whatever, right? Except then, both cars braked hard. I remember so clearly the bright taillights and the doors all open, and suddenly, there were about seven or eight guys running at us.”
“We immediately turned and ran. Nothing nearby was open (suburbs), so we ended up in the big park at the end of my street. It was heavily forested and went to the bank of the river. There was nowhere to run in time. We had a bit of a lead, but we were both out of breath. Fortunately, I used to play in this park all the time, so I really knew this park, and we hid in some thick bushes that I knew would conceal us. Those guys thrashed around in the woods for a good thirty minutes looking for us while two of the guys went to move the cars closer. Thank god they gave up and left.”
20. “My young daughter was at soccer practice. A middle-aged man with a dog was on the other side of the fence, just staring at them in a creepy way. I finally said, ‘Are you worried about bringing your dog in here with the kids playing soccer or something?’ He didn’t acknowledge me but crossed the street and continued to watch them. After a while, I couldn’t take it anymore and yelled at him, ‘Are you looking for someone or something?’ He said something under his breath and walked away. My mom instincts were going off like mad. When we got home I looked up that neighborhood on the Megan’s Law website, and sure enough, he was a registered sex offender who did 20 years in prison for some truly disgusting things. Trust your instincts, people!”
21. “One time, I was at a gas station in the middle of the night during a road trip, and I … went into the store to buy some food and use the bathroom. While I was in the candy aisle, an old lady was staring at me. … I smiled at her, and she just walked away. I went to go get a slushy. She approached me and asked about my ethnicity, and I said that I was a first-generation Mexican-American. She later started to talk about how her father used to shoot Mexicans in her old town. I was starting to get more and more uncomfortable, and then she said that she had friends that were here that would kill me and that she didn’t like people like me — and randomly walked away. I was scared, so I just quickly grabbed my things and went to my car. Later that night. I realized that the gas station I went to was inside of a sundown town, and I considered myself lucky.”
22. “I worked at a late-night sub sandwich joint in college, and since I was a student during the day, I always had night shifts. The front door had a bell on it. One day a man came in and I swear I didn’t hear that bell go off. I had my back to the door, and I was leaning against the register counter talking to a coworker or on my phone or something. I turned around, expecting absolutely nobody to be there, but instead, I saw this customer. He had to be the scariest person I have ever seen — an older guy, disheveled, with one white eye. I swear to god. He was so soft-spoken when he finally did talk, and he asked for a cup of hot water. I think it was September in South Carolina, so not a cold time of year by any means. I said sure, of course, and went to the back to get him some hot water. Upon giving it to him, he kept his eyes locked on me before saying, ‘I make you nervous.'”
“‘No, you don’t make me nervous,’ I lied. He proceeded to sit at the table closest to the register (maybe two feet away) and sip his hot water while ‘reading’ a book upside down and laughing. He stayed there for hours. Freakiest guy ever. I still think about him sometimes and get the heebie jeebies.”
23. “I lived alone in my first apartment and had been living there for almost a year. I had recently gotten a new neighbor who seemed kind of sketchy, but he minded his own business, so I minded mine. One evening, all the lights were out because I had no ceiling lights (for some reason), and I was just on my bed, kind of looking at the ceiling, not doing anything. … I started hearing some kind of commotion, but my neighbor often had male visitors over for pretty loud sex, so I thought he maybe just had a visitor. All of a sudden, I heard footsteps that seemed to come from inside my apartment, but since it was dark, I couldn’t see.”
“The footsteps came closer, and it became very apparent that they were in MY apartment. Someone was kind of stumbling around, trying to figure out where to walk in the dark. I started hearing the person touching the walls, flicking light switches to turn on the lights, and that’s when I saw the shadow of a person standing in the doorway into my room. I have never felt my body freeze like that before. Some stranger was in my apartment in the dark, walking around. I immediately thought he was going to find me and maybe hurt me, and so I started debating with myself if letting him know someone was home was just gonna get me hurt or maybe scare him off. Out of nowhere, I just let out this pretty loud ‘Hey!’ and he froze. I kept on going with, ‘What are you doing? Can you go out again?’ I spoke in a lower register, which I didn’t know I could naturally speak in. He quickly started apologizing, tried to turn around and find his way out in the dark, and said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Didn’t know anyone lived here,’ and he proceeded to fumble out, to which I fucking replied, ‘Oh, that’s okay. It’s okay,’ in some weird attempt to still be friendly.
When he got out, I caught my breath, freaked out on the inside, and ran to the front door to find out it wasn’t locked. I ran back into my room and saw these two shadows on my wall and heard men laughing. … I couldn’t completely make out what they said, but it sounded like the dude who was in my apartment was kind of nervous and confused, saying, ‘I didn’t think anyone would be in there. You said no one was in there,’ to which my neighbor laughed, and they walked into his apartment. I started crying my eyes out because I had been so prepared to get hurt, then called my dad and freaked out (and he freaked out on my behalf).
The next day, I contacted my housing company. I told them what happened, that yes, my door was unlocked but that it sounded like my neighbor had sent his friend into my apartment, knowing I lived there. They replied and said sorry for the situation, but they were very confused that I had a neighbor since there was not supposed to be anyone living in that apartment at that moment. Then I freaked out about who the fuck this dude and all his friends were, and my housing company acted just as confused but decided not to figure out who he was or why he was there and kind of just let him stay there. I have never felt so unsafe in an apartment before or since.”
24. “I finished a night class at my MMA gym … at about 10 p.m. as usual. … As I was walking out of the place, there was a lady on her own, in her late 50s … [with] a prosthetic leg who used a wheelchair. She asked me, ‘Sir, can you take me across the street to the bus stop?’ … I started pushing her to the stop light so we could cross the street, and I asked her basic questions like how her day was, blah blah blah, but she kept asking me weird questions like if I had my phone or wallet on me to help pay for her bus trip.”
“As soon as I said I didn’t have my phone or wallet on me, she told me to stop abruptly and thanked me. As soon as she said this, I heard a loud van turn on behind me parked in the red, and I saw two dudes hop out and start approaching me. At this point, I realized this whole thing was a trap. I started running. I ran across the street in traffic and down the side street to my car, ditched them, got in my car, and sped off, not even looking back.
The wild part is that night on my Citizen app (I live about five minutes away, so I get updates on this place), I saw that someone was kidnapped at this stop 25 minutes after I had left.”
25. “This was about 25+ years ago. Picture it: So Cal, in the middle of summer, hot as hell. I (F, 30-ish) stopped by a small market I had frequented a time or two before to get a pack of smokes. The owner (I assume) was working. No one else was there, just him and I. I greeted him with a friendly ‘hello’ and commented on the heat wave and how hot it was. Polite chit-chat, as one does. This is where it got weird/creepy…He began telling me how nice and cold the walk-in fridge was (where all the drinks and such are kept).”
“I said something along the lines of ‘I bet it is…’ He tried to get me to go into the walk-in fridge. He kept telling me how nice it would feel, how cool it was, how I needed to see for myself, etc. I kept politely declining. Then he stepped forward a bit and got a little more insistent about me following him into it to see how ‘cool’ it was. I had a flash of me being pushed over a case of Coors Light and assaulted. I backed up a step or two and told him I had a kid in the car (I did not) and just needed to get my smokes and go.
The feeling I got and his utter determination to get me into that cold room…nope. Never went back. That’s not how I die.”
26. “It was a sunny Sunday. We slept until about 8 a.m., opened the front door, and let the dogs out to sniff around the garden and pee. I cooked coffee in the kitchen, still in my pajamas, and chatted with my husband. Right when I was pouring the hot water over the coffee powder in the French Press, we heard our eldest dog bark like wild. Then we heard the garden gate (it’s made of metal, so it is quite loud if closed with force), and the barking got even louder. I still remember how both my husband and I froze, looking at each other before we both rushed out of the front door. I was first and ran into a guy who was about to walk further into the garden and stopped when I came out, turning to me. I connected the dots and realized he had planned to go after our dog, who was nowhere to be seen and who obviously had fled into the garden.”
“The guy … had a sledgehammer in one hand and a knife in the other hand. As soon as my eyes fell on the knife, my brain went empty, and all I could think of was to get this dude off our property. So I did the only thing I could think of — I started talking. And I basically managed to talk this guy out of our home. I can no longer remember what I said or what I thought, but it worked. He told me he had personal issues and that his life was in shambles; there was some sad story about his aunt. As soon as he was out of the garden gate and went his way, my husband called the cops. He tried to flee, but one of their dogs caught him. We learned later that he was full of drugs.
Later, we discovered that he had already hit our dog at least once with the sledgehammer. That’s why our sweet, protective baby fled into the garden. The vet said that if the guy had hit one of our smaller dogs that day, they’d have been dead. But our eldest dog had like 80 pounds and was lucky that he was ‘only’ hit between the rib cage and hip (so a fleshy area).
My husband later told me that he had been terrified of me getting killed. Because I was so close, he saw no safe way to intervene and get me out of the way without the dude losing it completely.
Throughout that day, I was in a strange disbelief as if I had narrated a story. The next day, I snapped. I suddenly realized how freaking dangerous the whole incident had been and couldn’t stop crying. Also, it took me years to feel safe at home again, and to this day, I have a strange feeling when opening the front door for the dogs.”
27. “I like to walk/run in the forest trails, and one day, I decided to go alone (I always go with someone). As soon as I was about to enter the trail, a man who was just arriving at the parking area in his car honked his horn and waved at me. At first, I thought, ‘Oh, maybe it’s someone I know,’ so I waved back, but then I started walking towards the car and noticed I didn’t know him, so I started to walk back into the forest. He drove off, and I thought that was the end of it. I thought maybe he was just a friendly stranger, so I kept walking, but within two-ish minutes, he was behind me, and then he started to walk next to me and talk to me; he was thin, with long, unkempt hair, and overall, he just scared me. He had a big tote bag hung from one shoulder and his opposite arm inside the bag. He said, ‘Yeah, I just came to walk with my cat; she’s inside my bag. She loves coming here.'”
“At this point, I had stopped walking, and we were just standing on the trail facing each other. The whole time he talked to me, he kept coming closer and closer to me. I didn’t realize just how much we had traveled until I noticed I wasn’t on the cement trail anymore; I was on the actual forest grass really close to the trees. He kept asking if he could walk with me or if I wanted to go with him. That, coupled with him continuing to get closer to me and his arm inside the bag like he was going to pull something out, really began to freak me out. I began to get really anxious and nervous, and I knew he could tell, but that didn’t stop him. Any normal person would’ve sensed the discomfort and left me alone. I told him I had to go and started to take steps backward to the entrance of the trail (where I had just come from). I decided I wouldn’t keep going and would just go back to my car. He kept walking towards me as I was walking away, yelling, ‘Oh, why, do you have a husband?’ or ‘What else do you have to do?’ I’m not sure what his intentions were, but I’m convinced that if it weren’t for the fact that there were so many bicyclists passing by that day, he would’ve done something to me.”
28. “I was walking home from the grocery store when I was approached by a young man. I stopped when he got close, and he asked about the location of a hostel. I said I had no idea where the hostels were located, but thought most were downtown, indicated the direction he needed to go, apologized, and started walking. Within a few steps, I realized he was walking behind me as I could hear the snow squeaking.”
“I increased my walking speed (as much as I could manage in 30-ish cm. of fresh snow with a bag of groceries). He continued to follow. I started to become both concerned and slightly alarmed when I heard a loud, gruff voice yelling from behind my follower, ‘What the fuck are you doing? Why are you following her?’ I glanced around to see my neighbor coming towards me and the guy. My neighbor looked angry, and my follower seemed startled. I kept going as I was almost home. My neighbor caught up to me, and we exchanged stalker details — I thanked him for his help, and he waited until I was in and my door was locked. I thought my follower was kinda creepy, but I wasn’t concerned anymore...Until I was watching the local news a few hours later. His mugshot flashed up on the TV screen. He had an outstanding warrant for AGGRAVATED SEXUAL ASSAULT and was considered ARMED and DANGEROUS. I called the police to report my encounter immediately. They suggested, as he could easily know where I lived, I should stay elsewhere for a few days. … I found out later that creepy guy had raped and beaten women he didn’t know, beating them so badly that one almost died and all were left with multiple knife wounds.”
29. “When I was a teen, I worked at a doctor’s office. We had a patient, ‘Charlie’ come in. He was a workman’s comp case, so he hadn’t been a patient before. He was handsome and about 6’5″ of pure muscle, but there was something just ‘off’ about him. At first, I thought it was me, but when he left after his first appointment, ALL the office staff (all female) felt something wasn’t right about Charlie. We were all so uncomfortable that we talked to the doctor (male) about it and asked if he could be the one to treat Charlie from start to finish. The doctor also got a bad vibe from him too, so he agreed and told the receptionist to schedule him only during busy times so there were a lot of people around.”
“Charlie came in for his treatments over the course of three months and, other than him just being kind of a strange guy, nothing really happened.
He finished his treatments, his lawyer sent some requests for paperwork for WC when he was done, and we all thought that was that. About TWO YEARS later, I was reading the paper, and Charlie was arrested for violently raping a woman (and nearly killing her in the process). I KNOW it was him because he had an extremely unusual last name, and the ages matched up. He was eventually convicted and went to jail (though I don’t know for how long). That was my affirmation that, as a woman, I should always trust my gut.”
30. “I almost got kidnapped. I was 7 or 8, and we went to Disneyland. We got off the small world ride, and I grabbed what I thought was my mom’s hand. I had a snack. I was at Disney, so I didn’t pay much attention. We got a bit away, and I heard my name being called by my mom’s distinct voice. I turned and saw my family looking around, then looked up, and I didn’t recognize the person. I broke my grip and ran back to my mom. As I was running, I looked back, and the woman was still casually walking in the direction she was taking me. It took a few years to realize what happened. I was about ten when it dawned on me, ‘Wait, if she thought I was her kid, why didn’t she turn around to find hers?’ She just kept walking. It was scary as hell to come to that realization.”
31. “In fifth grade, in the late ’60s, my friend and I rode our bikes and played in a field, climbing trees not far from our homes. A guy in a gold station wagon stopped not too far away and wanted us to come to his car; he lost his puppy and wanted help finding it. My friend and I looked at each other and took off running as fast as we could back to our homes, leaving our bikes there. We went back hours later to get them. I’ll never know what could have happened, but it just sent chills down our spines. 1966, there was the murder of a little girl in our town, Susan Brady, and that was always in the back of my mind.”
32. “I was 19. I was still living at home. I went out with my boyfriend and came back home around 3 a.m. We had a wooden fence, so I would have to get out of my car to open the fence so that I could pull my car into the driveway. For some reason, that particular night, something told me to wait. So I just sat in the car with it running for a few minutes in front of the gate. There was a car parked across the street with no lights on that seemed to be off. After a few minutes, I noticed movement in the car. There was a man staring across the street at me. I panicked (this was before cell phones, so I couldn’t call anyone). I continued to sit, trying to decide if I should drive off or not. After a few more minutes, he slowly pulled his car over to mine and stopped right next to me, staring at me. I just knew I was dead.”
“But then he slowly pulled off and went down the street. I waited until I thought he was far enough away, jumped out of my car, opened the gate, and pulled into the driveway. I swear I moved so fast getting into the house. It was an absolutely terrifying experience.”
33. “I was heavily pregnant with my first child and arranged for a plasterer to come over to the house, plaster a wall inside the house, and fix up a patch of outside rendering. He was aggressive, moody, and rude all morning, so much so that I rang my husband at work and said this guy scared me and asked when he was coming home. My husband worked 50 miles away as a teacher and couldn’t just leave, though. I decided to offer the plasterer a drink and snack. I hoped that would make him chill out a bit, but when I did, he sort of rounded on me in the hall and was in my space, getting agitated and saying that he’d had a terrible time and been ill. All his family abandoned him because his adult daughter accused him of raping her as a child, and the wife had then left him. He seemed very angry at women in general.”
“I felt genuinely scared as he was ranting all this very personal and intimidating stuff at me, but then he just stopped and looked through me to a photograph from my wedding on the wall behind me. It was of me and my dad, who had died the year before. He started crying and said quite hysterically, pointing at my dad, ‘How do you know that man? That man saved my life.’ It turned out that my dad (who was a doctor) had pushed for tests for him that helped diagnose his cancer and had been very caring toward him during that difficult time in his life. He packed up his tools in a rush and told me someone else could finish the outside wall as he was no longer free to, and then he just left. I had never felt more relieved that my dad was watching over me that day.”
34. “I have a very common name, and finding myself on any public website is difficult unless you know very specific things about me (middle initial and where I grew up), simply due to the thousands of people with my name. I was working for the government, and a citizen reached out to file a complaint about a situation in my program area. This was a significant issue and involved multi-million dollar lawsuits. I provided the citizen with the information I had. He called up several weeks later looking for additional information, and when I said I wasn’t able to help him, he responded with, ‘As a professional who has worked with (former employer) and (another former employer), how would you feel if your wife (wife’s name) and two children were in this situation?’ I immediately deleted my Facebook account (that didn’t have much information on it anyway) and locked down my LinkedIn profile (where I only connected with people I knew).”
35. “When I was about eight months pregnant, my best friend at the time was performing poetry. I would go and support her. This one particular night, she signed up at a place on the east side, which is a really rough area in my town. I talked with my husband, and we agreed that I could go since it was a populated area. I actually had a great time at the show until I had to pee. When I came out of the bathroom, there was a scrawny, greasy guy in a white tank top waiting for me. When he saw me, he immediately started hitting on me. I was clearly pregnant and had a ring on my finger, but that didn’t stop him. I hurried back to my friends and told them I was extremely uncomfortable and wanted to go home. They had been taking shots and told me okay, they’d call me tomorrow. I asked if one of them could walk me out, and they pouted and said they just ordered a round of shots, and I can make it on my own.”
“Pissed, I just turned around and hurried to the door and paused. I didn’t see him. I took off to the car, and within 20 seconds, the guy was on my ass. He figured out what car I was in, ran to it, and started yanking the handle. At this point, I was midway between my car and the venue. I turned around and booked it as fast as I could to the security guard and was screaming. The guy started chasing me, acting like we were together, and grabbing my arm. The guard knew the guy, escorted me to my car, ensured my doors were locked, and watched me safely drive away. I was terrified.
36. And finally…”Not me, but my partner was campaigning for Obama in some rural town, and an older gentleman on a bicycle rode by, stopped to look at him and said, ‘Satan, what are you doing inside that little boy?’ and then rode off. Still haunts him to this day.”
What’s your scariest experience with a stranger? Let us know in the comments or via this anonymous form.
Submissions have been edited for length/clarity.
