Video is being processed...
Feel free to roam the site while you wait.
Some, after reading these stories, cannot sleep peacefully at night or are afraid to stay in the dark. So, be careful, because below we have selected some really scary stories. Reddit is the community where everyone shares their experiences, including great stories. Bemorepanda has collected the 10 most voted horror stories.
1."The man on my patio." by u/ByfelsDisciple
Upvotes: 29.0k
Warning: Long post, but I recommend you to read it all.
Ok, so this happened when I was around 9 years old (25 now) and It’s something I will never forget. It gives me goosebumps to this day.
I live in a terraced house (four houses combined) and my neighbors and I each have our own little patio. There’s a small road 10 meters from my yard where people do their Sunday walks and so on. Only a small fence separates my small yard and patio from that road. I live in a pretty crowded area, with several of these terraced houses spread around in my neighborhood, so seeing people walking on that road is pretty normal for me. Seeing random people standing on my patio is not.
When I was 9 I usually got home from school about an hour before my mom got home from work. I live maybe 50 meters away from school so my mom figured I was mature enough to be home alone for around an hour before she got home. This one day I got home from school. I did the usual thing which was to make sure I locked the front door, and double checked that the back door leading to the patio was also locked. (I was 9, being alone was a little scary even though it was in the middle of the day and only for one hour) I then rushed to my room upstairs to play as much PlayStation as possible before my mom came home and made me do homework.
While playing, I heard this noise coming from outside my window. (My room was located one floor over the patio, with a view to the road I told you about before) It was kinda like the sound of a cat. But my cat had been missing for over three months. Hope sparked and I thought “OMG, did he finally come back?!” I ran downstairs to check if it was my cat, but the sight that met me gives me goosebumps just writing this.
There was a guy standing on my patio. A tall guy with black hair covering half of his eyes, making him look like a male version of the ring women or something. I could hear him making high pitched sounds, almost like a cat meowing. A brown liquid was running down from his mouth, and I could see him spitting out my dads stomped cigarettes. He was actually eating from the ashtray. I was frozen observing this, eventually snapped out of it and screamed so loud that the man must have heard it. He didn’t react, he kept on eating from the ashtray.
I ran upstairs to my room, locked the door and called my mom who then called the cops. I’ve never been more terrified in my life. Laying in bed under my sheets, shivering with fear, as I hear these creepy high pitched noises from the guy eating cigarette stomps from the ashtray on my patio.
I kinda blacked out for a moment, because the next thing I remember is the police arriving on the road by my yard. I hear them talking to the guy saying stuff like “what are you doing?” “Get over here or we will come down and arrest you” and so on. He didn’t respond, but the high pitched sounds was more frequent and louder. I decided to look through the window, feeling safe now that the cops were there.
I could see two police officers standing by my fence, one man and a woman. I did not see the creepy man however, because he was standing directly one story under me and my field of view. The police jumped the fence, and I remember hearing the creepy guy screaming louder than anything I’ve ever heard before. He charged the female police officer with full force, and he fucking knocked her out cold.
The male officer then immediately tazed the guy, leaving him shaking on the ground, screaming still. The police man struggled to keep him on the ground while putting handcuffs on him, but eventually made it.
After a while he managed to wake up the female police officer, who seemed to be badly hurt. He called for backup and an ambulance, and then he sees me standing in the window above him. The expression on my face must have been something else, because he just looked at me and said “I sure as hell hope you didn’t see all that” I started to cry. By this time neighbors started to arrive wondering what the hell was going on. One of my neighbors, an elderly woman, made me come down and she took care of me until my mom came back home. The police took the creepy guy with them in the car and left. Before they left they promised to come back and talk to us about what had happened.
This is where the story takes an unexpected turn. The male police officer came back later that night and sat down with me and my mom to talk. He explained that the guy on my patio was actually diagnosed with severe autism. He had escaped a facility where mentally challenged people lived, located around 5 km from where I live. He explained that the guy had actually been living in my house 5 years ago but he had been forced to move when his mom, his only caretaker, died. The poor guy probably thought he would find his mom in my house. He missed the routines and he missed living there with his mom. The police had to move him from the house that time 5 years ago, because he was extremely strong (From what I heard he had extreme tensions in the body because of the autism, making his muscles grow stronger and stronger throughout the years) This was the reason he reacted the way he did when the police came this day. Still frightened I told the police officer that he needed to make sure this would never happen again. He promised it wouldn’t.
After a few sleepless nights my life got back to normal. The years went by and the guy didn’t come back. Until one year ago. At this time my mom and dad had moved out, I bought the house from them and I’m still living there today. I was enjoying my morning coffee on the patio when I see this random guy stopping on the road by my fence. He just stands there, looking at me. I look at him and give him a nod. And then I hear the high pitched noises. “Holy shit it’s him” his hair had turned grey but the high pitched sounds made me realize. My heart started racing and I instantly remembered the reason why he was back. I realized that he must have managed to escape again. Because I kept my cool a bit longer then when was 9, I started to realize how sorry I felt for the guy. 16 years later and he was back to look for his mom. I decided to carefully ask him if he wanted to come down to the patio. He instantly jumped the fence. I started to think he would knock me out like he did to that police officer. He didn’t. He smiled. He looked at me and smiled.
I offered him to sit down. He didn’t respond. I offered him to come inside. He started laughing. We went inside. His face lit up, pure joy. He was home. It reminded him of the life he had with his mom. It almost made me tear up. All of a sudden he sat down in my couch, turned on my tv and switched directly to the cartoons. I observed him for a while, he was just completely focused on the cartoons. I just wanted him to enjoy the moment so I didn’t say anything to him. I realized I had to call the facility to let them know. The caretakers arrived 10 minutes later. After a lot of convincing he got back up, crying, and they went back to the facility. I called the facility two days later. We made a deal.
His name is Tom, and I now consider Tom my friend. Every Sunday from the day he returned, Tom and his caretakers visit me to watch cartoons. They say it’s the highlight of his week. It makes my heart warm. Now, for several years my thoughts were “Let’s NOT meet, guy on my patio eating from the ashtray” now my thoughts are “Let’s meet every Sunday to watch cartoons, my friend Tom”
Upvotes: 20.2k
I was about 7 years old; my brother about 10. It was well past our bedtime when our mom woke up off the couch to put us to bed. Our dad worked construction out of town back then, so it was often just us three at the house for weeks at a time. Up the stairs and to the immediate right was our parents' bedroom. Going left put you in the middle of a hallway. Taking another left down that hallway led to my brother's room. The opposite end was my room which was also across the hall from our upstairs bathroom. At either end of the hallway are windowed doors we always kept locked and rarely used. The door on my end led to a balcony overlooking our front yard, and the door on my brother's end opened to our back porch (the house kinda leans into a small hill).
My brother and mom both had a habit of waking up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. I only knew this because I was always a light sleeper and they just couldn't help flushing with the door wide open. This night, however, my brother stopped on his way to his room and came back towards the bathroom, "I'm gonna try to pee before I go to bed. The past few nights I've been too afraid to walk to the bathroom. I keep seeing a man wearing stripes at the end of the hallway.". I don't know if my mom wrote it off as my brother telling ghost stories to try to scare me or if she was already half asleep and didn't catch it, but she didn't react at all to my brother's confession. I, on the other hand, was terrified by it. The fear of seeing a ghost like that at the end of the hallway or through the windows is the reason I started running from the stairs to my bedroom at night.
Years later, when I was about 18, my mom and I were having a conversation in her car about a dog we had for a very short time when I was little. We were sharing stories about Max's tendency towards destroying my shoes and other unruly behaviors when my mom blurted out, "Do you remember that time I opened the front door for the cops and Max ran inside to the kitchen and started tearing open that big bag of dog food we had?". This really caught me by surprise, because in all the years I lived in that house we never once called the cops (gun owner family in a quiet, rural WV neighborhood, etc.).
I asked her what she was talking about and she looked equally surprised as if she had just revealed something by accident. "Oh, that's right! I never told you because you were too young at the time. One night, I woke up hearing noises outside my window and when I looked I saw a man staring into my bedroom.". She went on to describe how turning on the lights caused him to take off running and how she grabbed my dad's pistol before calling the cops. "I can't remember all the details I gave them when they showed up... tall white male, wearing a striped shirt and jeans, short dark hair... something like that. They said it matched the description of a man they were looking for in the area. It turns out he had escaped from jail on a murder charge."
Now, I know it sounds so obvious hearing those two stories back to back, but it wasn't until a few years ago, in my mid-twenties, that I pieced together that my brother had unknowingly warned us about a murderer who spent multiple nights casing our home.
3."I survived a mass shooting at a movie theater." byu/Neon_Pikachu
Upvotes: 12.3k
This happened to me four years ago. It’s by far the most extreme and life threatening situation I’ve been in. The eyewitness account you are about to read is 100% true, and is mine.
For some understanding, this happened in the United States. It was the summer of 2012. My longtime boyfriend and I had recently gotten married. Even though we were dirt poor college students and lived in a dinky apartment, we were having a blast. That particular summer we gathered with our friends at the local movie theater almost every weekend. There was one just down the street from our apartment that had really cheap movie tickets. A night out that was under $10 was certainly within our budget! Anyway, one Thursday night I received a call from this group of friends inviting us to watch the midnight premiere of the newest Batman movie. I had just finished working a 12 hour shift and was pretty tired. I almost refused the invitation and thought of crashing in my apartment instead. However, I didn’t want to miss out on the fun, and it was a movie I'd wanted to see for a while anyway. Certainly it wouldn’t do any harm to stay up later than usual and miss a few hours of sleep, right?
At 10:30 PM we met at the theater. We passed large cardboard cut-outs of Catwoman and Batman as we walked inside, greeted by the smell of buttery popcorn and the chatter of excited movie goers. The ticket booth was to the right of the entrance, and just above that was an electronic list of movies being played. The 12:00 AM showing of the Dark Knight Rises was displayed up there in bright red letters. Being paranoid that the tickets would sell out quickly, one of my friends swung by earlier that day and purchased tickets for all of us. We bypassed the ticket line and went straight to the ticket taker. She smiled at us and kindly directed us to Theater 9, which was on the right side of the lobby.
If only I had known what I do now. That among the crowds a killer was lurking. That as I walked across that tacky red and purple carpet towards Theater 9, I could have been walking to my death. I think about it often now, what I would have done had I known. Pulled the fire alarm, called the police, screamed for people to run away....But, of course, I had no way of knowing what was about to happen. Oblivious to the peril I was putting myself in; I pushed open the doors for Theater 9 without giving it a second thought.
The hallway in this theater was shaped like a U and you could go either right or left. Theater 9 was the largest screening room in the building, perfect for accommodating the crowds that midnight premieres brought in. The screen was motionless and gray; not even the previews had started yet because there was still a good hour and a half to go until the movie actually started.
We entered on the right side, so all of the seats were to our left. I remember being surprised at just how packed the theater already was. Just about every seat was filled, much to our dismay. At first it seemed like we wouldn't find a spot to sit together. Now, the way this theater was set up, there was a section of seats right in front of the screen. This area was flat, and there were about five rows of seating in this section. A lot of seats in that section were empty, but sitting right in front of the movie screen sucks and none of us wanted to sit there. One of my friends then spotted a row with five empty seats all next to each other, perfect for the amount of people we had. These seats were about 3-4 rows up from where the seating rows start to elevate. We ran up the stairs before someone could take the seats and filed in. My husband, Brock, sat in the 5th seat. I sat next to him, and my friend Samantha sat next to me on my right side. Her boyfriend, Tommy, sat next to her, and another friend named Leo sat in the aisle seat.
We spent the next several minutes casually chatting, joking around, and laughing. After a while my three friends went to the lobby to buy drinks and that addicting movie theater popcorn. While they were gone, Brock and I passed the time by people watching. The theater was bright since the lights weren’t dimmed yet, and I could see everyone clearly. There were a lot of people dressed in Batman T-shirts and hoodies. One person even had a mask and one of those shirts with an attached cape. There were a lot of kids in attendance as well, which wasn’t surprising because, even though it was a Thursday night, it was summer vacation so that meant no school the next day. Of all the people I saw, the person I will never forget was the little girl sitting in our same row a few chairs away. She was really cute, blond with blue eyes, and passed us several times on her way to the lobby, each time coming back with various snacks and popcorn. Overall, people seemed very excited to see the movie, and the room was filled with energy and laughter.
After what seemed like an eternity of waiting, the lights started to dim and the previews began. Just like every movie I've seen before, a quick animation flashed across the screen reminding us to get refreshments from the lobby (we were already devouring that popcorn like ravenous animals), to silence our cell phones, and to make sure we know where the emergency exits are. The animation had this ugly CGI cat in a tuxedo that was sitting in a movie theater. I casually glanced at the bright green emergency exit signs that were on the left and right sides of the movie screen.
I didn't think much of the reminder, like usual. After that, I only remember one preview for the Man of Steel, the others I’m not sure what they were about. When the movie started the theater erupted into cheering and clapping. The title of the movie, The Dark Knight Rises, exploded onto the screen. This was followed by the scene where Bane is hijacking a plane. I thought this scene was pretty cool and it caught my interest right away. Only when the movie started to get a little less interesting did I remember just how tired I was. I decided I would close my eyes at the more boring parts to get a little bit of rest. I had been awake for 20 hours at that point, so I was rightfully sleepy. My eyes were closed for most of the duration of Batman and Catwoman’s encounter. I don’t really remember what was going on in that part of the movie (perhaps some of you have seen it and know what I’m talking about.) Anyway, when I opened my eyes again Bruce Wayne was on his computer digging up information on Catwoman. This is the last scene I saw. I never got to watch the rest of the movie.
All of a sudden, a loud BANG erupted from the left side of the theater. I sort of screamed a little because it startled me. A strange smell started to fill the auditorium. It was like the smell of a firework, so I thought it was a cherry bomb or something similar. Had someone thrown fireworks into the crowd as a prank? Then, down near the right sight of the movie screen, the dark silhouette of a person caught my attention. They were just a black frame against the bright movie screen. A series of flashing lights was coming from this person. It was a weird moment where time literally slowed down and everything went strangely quiet. I was completely frozen, unable to move and really unable to think at all. It was like my brain had stopped working entirely.
Brock caught on immediately to what was happening and he grabbed me. He pulled me to the ground and lay on top of me, shielding me with his own body. At this point time and sound returned to me. I could hear the gunshots ringing out across the theater. People were screaming. The movie was still playing on top of it all, creating a chaotic explosion of sound. I realized the flashing lights I had seen were bullets flying out of a gun barrel. An instant sensation of adrenaline flooded my body. There was absolutely nothing I could do except lay there and hope to God that the bullets I heard ripping through seats and walls wouldn’t go through me, too. At one point shrapnel hit my head, cutting off a good chunk of my hair, and as I reached for the spot to make sure it wasn’t bleeding hot pieces of metal fell into my hand.
I was lying face up, so I could see everything that was happening. The lights from a still-playing movie danced across the ceiling and walls. My friends were on the floor with me. Our unfinished bucket of popcorn was spilled all across the floor. Leo had his legs sticking out into the aisle because there wasn’t enough room for him to hide completely behind the seats. At some point Samantha's water bottle, which had been in the cup holder between our seats, exploded. Water splashed all over my face. The smell of gun smoke was overwhelming. Riot grade tear gas made me cry and caused me to cough uncontrollably. There was another smell, too; the horrible metallic smell of blood that I’ll never forget. I remember my lower body feeling wet all of a sudden. For some reason I thought this came from the leaking water bottle, but I soon realized this wasn’t the case.
All of a sudden things went strangely quiet. The bullets had stopped for some reason. Tommy shouted “LET’S GET OUT OF HERE!” We took advantage of the opportunity and made a run for it. We ran down the stairs, across the front of the screen towards a bright green EXIT sign. We crammed into a small, closet-like space where the door was. It was so dark we had a hard time finding it. We were screaming and slamming on the walls to find the door, blinded by the tear gas and dumbfounded by shock. Then, finally, my hands felt the metal door handle and I pushed against it with all my strength. The door flew open and the light of a nearby streetlight flooded our eyes. We pushed against the door so hard that we all fell over onto the concrete. Samantha lost her pink flip flops just outside this doorway.
As I scrambled to my feet and literally ran for my life, I realized my legs were red; absolutely soaked with blood. It was like I dipped my legs into a bath tub full of it. I checked my body all over and realized I wasn’t injured at all. Where had this blood come from? I looked behind me and realized that the blood was my husband’s. He had been shot in the leg. A massive, gaping hole had ripped through the lower half of Brock's right leg. His foot was barely hanging on and dangled lifelessly. Leo and a young man I didn’t recognize were carrying Brock because, after falling outside the door, he lost all his strength and he couldn’t walk. I was completely shocked. I had no idea he had been injured, especially since he was right behind me the whole time and managed to escape the theater all by himself. How he did it on one foot, I’ll never know.
At this point I screamed. My scream was so loud that it alerted nearby construction workers. At the back of the theater there was a narrow parking lot, followed by a grassy lawn and then the street beyond that. The construction workers were doing road repair on this street, but as soon as they heard my scream and saw us running they stopped working and watched what was going on. I’m not sure why this is such a vivid part of my memory. Anyway, they carried Brock along the back sidewalk all the way to the end, where the corner of the building is. This was quite a distance, several dozen feet. My husband then collapsed from exhaustion and pain, saying he couldn’t move anymore. He lay down and a puddle of blood started to form beneath him. I looked back, and realized we had left a trail of blood leading from the door all the way to our current position.
I was trembling. I knelt beside Brock and glanced around to see who else was injured. Tommy had been shot in the knee and the hip, and was further away in the parking lot. The teenager who helped my husband was also injured. His dad and mom were with him; his mom was sitting against the wall and looked like she was going to pass out. She was bleeding from several places. That family escaped at the same time we did. I guess they heard the bullets stop and decided to make a run for it, too. We were all lucky, because the shooting was still going on inside.
I had to take off my shirt and use it to stop the bleeding. I’ll never forget how lifeless and limp his leg felt, and I imagined that’s what a dead body must feel like. I got blood all over my hands and arms. The police showed up really, really fast. I’d say we were only outside for a minute or two before the red and blue sirens filled the night and rushed to our location (we were literally a block away from the police station). A female officer stood by us the whole time until paramedics arrived, which took a very long time.
Brock was one of the last to be taken to a hospital. He was bleeding out for almost twenty minutes before an ambulance pulled up on the same street with the road work. At this point he had become almost unresponsive and was on the verge of unconsciousness. Several massive guys rushed across the grass with a stretcher, loaded him onto it, and then ran with him back to the waiting ambulance. I wasn’t able to go with him because there was another injured person in the ambulance, and it was too crowded. I wandered around to the front of the theater alone, unsure of where my friends had went. My blood stained shirt and a pool of blood were left behind on the corner of that sidewalk.
Walking through the crowds felt like a dream. I couldn’t believe what just happened. People were in hysterics and crying. A lot of people such as me were covered in blood. And, like me, I’m pretty sure the blood staining their skin and clothes wasn’t their own. A lot of people seemed to notice how lonely and dazed I looked, so they kept me company and even offered me a ride to different hospitals to find Brock, because I hadn’t been told what hospital he was taken to. I hung around these people for a while as police swarmed the area and asked us what we saw inside the theater. The whole parking lot was on lockdown, and we weren’t going to be allowed to leave any time soon. It was around 2:00 AM, so it was very dark outside still (and I was pretty cold, wearing only an undershirt and shorts). The flashing red and blue lights of what seemed like 100 police cars were blinding. I remember seeing a big police vehicle pull up that said something like “Crime Scene Investigation Unit” on it. I think that’s when it really sank in and hit me. I started to get sick to my stomach and wanted to vomit, but somehow I was able to hold it back.
Eventually, police started letting people leave. I jumped into my truck and booked it out of there.
I was in such a panic that I didn't even think to go back to my apartment, grab my cell phone (which I had forgotten) and call my parents or someone else to help me! I was angry, upset, scared, and most of all still in a state of shock. Was I really going to lose Brock only a month shy of our first wedding anniversary because of some psychopath with a gun? Thankfully, by the time dawn rolled around I found the hospital he was treated in. This was in the next city over, maybe 45 minutes from the theater if you're going the speed limit. I was so happy to be there, and the hospital staff were all so welcoming and understanding. After making sure I wasn't injured as well, they let me wait in the ICU room that Brock would be placed in when he was done recovering from surgery. I was so glad he was alive. Brock and Tommy both had survived, though many others weren’t so lucky.
I found out the following day (after some much needed sleep on a hospital couch) that 12 people were killed in this shooting and over 70 were injured (I remember they first thought 15 people were killed, but the real number was 12). The little blond girl sitting in my row did not survive. She died in the theater no more than a few feet from us. She had been shot multiple times. A heart broken police officer, who cried during his court testimony, tried unsuccessfully to save her by carrying her out of the theater and having her sent to a hospital. Tommy was rushed to a different hospital in the back of a police car. He underwent surgery and made a full recovery. The bullet missed his hip bone and narrowly missed his urinary tract and bladder. According to the surgeons, my husband lost almost half his blood. Brock made it to the hospital just in time; any later and he would have died. He underwent several blood transfusions and was in the hospital for 21 days. The wound to his leg was severe enough that they had to amputate it after trying unsuccessfully to save it.
It’s been so long since the shooting happened that my husband, friends, and I have been able to recover from it somewhat. The event was pretty horrifying and has left us scarred for sure. I wouldn’t consider that part of the story to be creepy, though. No, the creepy part is the shooter himself. I later learned much about him from the murder trial that would follow in the coming years. Though my encounter with this man was very brief, he has affected my life greatly. Just to know that people like this exist…is disturbing. He is certainly one twisted individual that I never want to see again.
I learned everything from watching the televised trial that took place in early 2015. This guy was going to school for neuroscience or something in California. I guess he was a pretty smart guy. However, for some reason he had an obsession with killing people and had a stalker mentality. After dropping out of his university, he moved to my state and chose my local theater to commit a mass shooting. Before that, he was planning on hiding along remote hiking trails up in the mountains, jumping people, pulling them into the woods and killing them there, though he never went through with that idea. He stalked my theater for months and had this shooting all planned out for the night of July 20th. Though I never saw him before this, its unnerving to think this guy could have been watching us every time we went to the theater, and we would have never known it. We were completely unaware of what he had planned against us. This completely ruined my sense of security, because who knows what the stranger next to you is planning on doing to you.
I came very close to the shooter, but I never actually saw his face in person until I was forced to testify in court. Of course I saw his mug shots on television, but while in the theater I only saw him as a dark silhouette in the shadows, like a demonic figure rendered from the darkest and most sinister nightmare. He was even in the hallway that we passed upon running for the emergency exit. The only thing stopping him from killing us there and then was his jammed assault rifle. To commit this crime, he ordered a few thousand rounds of ammunition, riot gear and armor, tear gas, an assault rifle, and a shotgun. He took pictures of himself, which were shown in court, wearing all of this gear like some sick trophy and holding up these weapons with a menacing smile. He dyed his hair orange and put in these creepy black contacts while making devilish faces into his camera, something that made me sick just looking at. Before driving to the theater with all of this gear in his car, he booby trapped his entire apartment and set it to explode if anyone opened the door. Then, once at the theater, he posed as a movie goer and even bought a ticket for the movie. I think his ticket had Theater 8 on it, which was next door, but Theater 9 had more people in it so he went into number 9 instead. He was in the few front rows.
I must have passed him several times in the lobby while he was there. Maybe he had seen me, too. At some point during the movie, he got up and went through the side exit (which didn’t have an alarm for some reason), kept it propped open with something, then went to his car to put on all his armor and grabbed his weapons. Then, he came back inside and started shooting. When we escaped the theater, we ran past his white car which was parked right at the exit. We didn’t even notice it. At some point he came outside, and he would have seen us there on the concrete. I don’t know what stopped him from shooting people that were outside, too, but he could have easily ended us there and then if he wanted to.
I think the hardest part for me was facing this twisted individual in court. I’ll never forget rising as they called my name, walking down the center row past my family, other survivors, and crowds of news hungry media personnel. I sat right across from him, maybe only 10 feet away. While his orange hair was gone and he wasn’t wearing black contacts, being so close to him was a creepy and uncomfortable experience. My encounters with this man are certainly ones I will never forget. I can now say that I've come face to face with a true, deranged psychopath. He just had this blank stare in his eyes the whole time. If eyes truly are the windows to the soul, then his soul was filled with nothing but a cold indifference for those he had murdered and harmed. He wouldn’t even look at me. Sitting across from him in court was the second time I had knowingly been in the same room with this man. A man who had tried to take my life, but thankfully failed, a man who would end up spending forever behind bars when, at the end of it all, he was sentenced to 3,318 years in prison for his crimes.
This is to the man who tried to kill me. The man who has caused countless nightmares and fueled the fires of my paranoia. The man who hurt my friends and family, causing years of untold grief for my husband because he will never walk the same again. The man who stole the innocence and joy from a 6 year old child who went into that theater alive and came out dead. To the man who carried out the worst mass shooting in Colorado history, let’s not meet again. Ever. I hope you rot in prison.
(Edits: grammar and stuff. Also, I forgot to mention that Leo, Samantha, and I escaped without injury. A lot of people have asked, so I thought I'd mention that.
Thanks for all the support! I never expected so many people to read my story! Also, thanks to all you anonymous gold-givers :)
No, I will not be giving anymore information about my identity for obvious reason. I have provided proof to the moderators, and I don't think it's necessary to share that info with everyone else. I do have photos of my husband's injury, though I will not likely post them here for his privacy and for the graphic nature of the photo...)
4."Sociopath kidnapper in supermarket parking lot." byu/officefern007
Upvotes: 10.9k
My husband and I were at the supermarket and our baby was being especially fussy, so he took her for a quick drive, the motion of which usually calms her down.
It only took about ten minutes to settle her and I was still in the store (but was unsure how much longer I’d be and there’s poor cell reception inside) so he pulled back into the parking lot to wait for me. It was an unseasonably nice day, so he took her in her car seat to sit on one of the benches outside the store.
He took a business call and had just sat them down, absentmindedly rocking the carrier, when a woman (well dressed, mid thirties, average height, fit build) approached them.
It’s not uncommon for people to ask to play with our baby, she’s got big rosy cheeks, soft whisps of gold hair, and the most adorable gurgely toothless grin, especially when she’s deep into a good nap.
But her nap schedule is paramount, so my husband was preparing to tell the woman she actually couldn’t play with our baby right then.
She walked over right in their direction, brimming with nonchalant confidence, and before he can even finish his sentence explaining she was napping and not to be touched, she picked up the carrier and started walking off.
He was in shock for a minute, not fully believing someone would be ballsy enough to do something so sinister in plain daylight, so he said “excuse me, put her down” as his panic mounted.
She remained calm this entire time, but when he called after her she started walking away more briskly than when she’d approached. He ran full speed ahead tried to grapple the carrier out of her hands, finally resulting to restraining her arms.
This woman yells “HELP, HE’S TRYING TO TAKE MY BABY, KIDNAPPING, 911, HELP” kicking him in the shin and pulling a pink bottle of pepper spray out of her handbag.
Of course, no one in the parking lot was clocking the earlier interaction, and assumed he really was a kidnapper (a lone man in a Deadpool T-shirt versus a tiny well dressed woman.) Immediately a man knocked my husband to the ground and was holding him down.
He could hear bystanders encouraging the woman to file a police report but she was doing a very convincing job of acting shaken up and insisted she just wanted to get home. To make matters worse for my husband, she was driving a minivan.
He was in a raw state of panic, realizing the entire parking lot had banded together to inadvertently facilitate the kidnapping of our daughter. He was begging and pleading with them, but no one was listening. They just kept screaming at him that the jig was up and he needed to lie still and wait for police and stop terrorizing a young mother.
My husband finally had the novel idea to show them family pictures on his phone. But, too panicked to think clearly, this manifested as him shouting “I have pictures of the baby on my phone!”
Which, of course, everyone interpreted as him having either stalking photos, or worse, pornographic images of the baby.
It was at this point that a man, I can’t entirely blame the man considering what he thought was going on, kicked my husband as hard as he could in the ribs.
It was at this point I was coming out of the store and I thought he was being robbed by these people. I was yelling for security, so panicked my chest constricted and I could barely get any sound out. It was only then I realized he did not have our baby with him.
When I saw she was being held by a woman, I was relieved, I thought maybe the woman had intervened to move my daughter out of harms way while my husband was being robbed and was walking away to get help.
I couldn’t find a security guard outside the store so I ran up to the people holding my husband down, waving my wallet, pleading “Take everything you want, just let up and leave us alone.”
And one of the men holding him down said something like “Lady we need to wait for police to deal with him.” And I was so confused, why would the muggers have called the police? I just kept stammering “What do you mean, what are you talking about” and made out someone saying “He tried to abduct that woman’s kid” I did not understand and was sure I’d misheard him. My husband would never hurt a child. And we have four kids, if he were going to commit a crime, bringing home another kid would be at the bottom of his list. I kept trying to understand what the man was saying and suddenly, it all clicked.
I looked around for the woman who had the baby carrier and she was halfway across the parking lot. I went into total ballistic tiger-cub mode, literally leapt out of my heels, and sprinted across the parking lot. I’m not a UFC fighter, I’ve never even taken a self defense class, so all I could think to do was grab the woman by her hair and squeeze her throat with my other hand (which didn’t do much, she was getting away even as I grappled with her). Amazingly, none of the other bystanders had yet to connect that my husband was telling the truth and this woman was absconding with my baby.
I yanked on her hair as hard as I could and that was enough to make her drop the carrier. I was so scared and surprised that I actually just threw myself on top of the carrier, covering the entire thing like a blanket, and stayed that way without saying or doing anything else. The woman left. Not one person tried to stop her. Even though she was clearly leaving without the child she claimed was hers, which would be pretty damn incriminating if I’d watched this scene unfold.
Within the next couple minutes, police had arrived. After all that, there were still several bystanders who explained it as my husband trying to kidnap the baby.
The police, to my horror, assumed that she must not have had bad intentions. The first questions they asked me after getting her description weren’t investigative, they were questions thinly veiled trying to convince me not to pursue charges. Still placing blame on my husband.
A small sampling “Do your husband and the baby look dissimilar? Is there a chance she thought he was abducting the baby and she was trying to intervene?”
“Could your husband have been doing something inappropriate or violent to the baby that would make her feel compelled to extricate the baby from the situation?”
“Did she seem groggy or confused, could she have mistaken either of them for her own family members?”
They spent more time verifying that the baby was actually mine than they concerned themselves with the fact that the baby was not actually hers.
My husband had called his brother at that point who works in an office with a lot of lawyers and connected with one ASAP who gave us the priceless advice to get every officer’s name and badge number, to request copies of the store’s security tapes right away, and to escalate our complaint higher up the chain if these officers weren’t taking us seriously.
Finally, we had reason enough to believe we were being taken seriously, and we went home, and both just shook and cried until we had to get our other kids from school. My husband is seething with rage and grappling with a feeling of helplessness from how little he was able to do, and has two cracked ribs from when the man kicked him. (To the officers’ credit, they did ask if he’d like to press charges, but considering the man was genuinely convinced at the time that he was on the right side of intervening in a kidnapping and stayed to talk to police and apologized profusely when the truth became clear, he declined to press charges.) Amazingly, and frustratingly, there were still people who stuck around to talk to police who were giving my husband dirty looks and one man who even implored the police to involve CPS to verify it was really our baby.
Parking lot kidnapper (and parking lot skeptics), you better hope we don’t meet.
Edit: thank you very much for the premium and happy new year!
Edit: Thank you so much for the good and happy new year!!
Edit: After hearing from everyone and weighing the pros and cons we got in touch with the police and decided to move ahead with pressing charges against the two men involved in anything beyond basic restraint to set an example that these men made the wrong decisions, even if they did come from a well intentioned place. Thanks for weighing in. I am trying to reply to as many comments as possible, but if I don’t get to yours specifically, thank you sincerely!!
5."I (a pizza guy) intercepted a kidnapping during a delivery." byu/enoughpizzanow
Upvotes: 9.8k
I deliver pizza and I’d been having a really busy night, non-stop back and forth, without any time to even pause and take a leak.
I’d been so busy that I wasn’t really thinking about bathroom breaks. But we’re also going through a bit of a heat wave in our area, so I’ve been drinking copious amounts of water.
All of a sudden as I was driving to this particular delivery, the urge to go hit me. Like, things went from 0 to 60 in an instant. Thankfully I was close to the customer so could get this one over with quickly. Or so I thought.
I pulled up to the house, and it was an area I’d delivered in before, so I could immediately see that something wasn’t right. All the lights were off in the house, not even the glow of a television or anything. It was extra apparent because the streetlight closest to the door happened to be out of order. And on top of it all, the block was dead quiet.
This is a big university area, and obviously there aren’t many student renters in July, but there had to be at least one person, because someone ordered this pizza.
Maybe they just liked sitting in the dark or they were out back in the yard, whatever, I just didn’t want to get out of my car and knock on a quiet house in the middle of the night (around 9:30pm) without first checking that I had the correct address and the customer was inside.
It was scorching that night, even after sundown. My car’s A/C is a joke, and the piping hot pizzas don’t help things much, so I have to try and open the car door as infrequently as possible to keep any cool air in.
I called the number the customer provided and the voice on the other end said, kind of brusquely and out of breath, “Yah?” I just tried to keep it clear and concise, “Hey, it’s your pizza out front but there doesn’t appear to be anybody home?” And the customer replied, still gasping for air, “Yah, I’m not home.”
I had to pee so badly by that point that I was much less patient than I’d otherwise be with a customer right out of the gate, “Well, then we’re going to have to terminate the order, because I’ve arrived in the stated delivery window and you were supposed to pay in cash, so, I don’t know what to tell you. Plan ahead next time.”
I instantly regretted letting my bladder do the talking for me as the voice on the other end came through more clearly as a young, bubbly, and very distraught girl who couldn’t have been older than 20 or 25.
“Oh my gosh I’m so sorry I was running down the street so I could barely hear you!” She cried, “I just switched you out of my AirPods. Is that better? Sorry, I completely lost track of time at work, but I knew you were coming, that’s why I’m literally running home right now. Please don’t leave, I’m starving and I don’t have a car. Seriously, please don’t leave. Five minutes tops, ok?”
I know what it’s like to be hungry, and running late, and have no car but not live near any restaurants. Plus when I heard her voice I began to remember more specifically having delivered to this place a couple times before, and she’d always been perfectly nice. Now I felt bad for snapping at her. I tried to walk it back, while simultaneously looking out my window for potential spots to pee.
“No, no, my bad, I’m letting the heat get to me and it’s not your fault. No need to rush. See you when you get here.” I hung up and, while surveilling the street, was starting to think I was really out of luck.
All the other houses had people in them, and were close together, so there were no clumps of trees or out of the way patches of land or anything. Of course I had just tossed my empty water bottle at the last delivery, because I’m an idiot.
Finally, I decided it was escalating to the point of an emergency, and the safest bet was to use a bush in front of the woman’s house. She wasn’t home. The street light was out so no one would see me. The people who were home were inside. My car was parked across the street and we’re a small shop who don’t wear uniforms, so if someone did spot me, they’d have no way to connect me to my employer. Animals pee outside all the time, humans are animals... this is fine.
I scurried over to the tallest bush in her front yard. She didn’t really have much of a yard, more just a walkway lined with bushes and flowers that ran adjacent to her front door. The biggest cluster of bushes, the only one where I could be sure there would be no visible splatter on the side of the house, was about four feet from her door.
I looked both ways, unzipped, and let fly. After the initial millisecond of relief, I noticed the sound was way off, more like pissing on something solid than something leafy.
I started panicking, thinking I’d aimed wrong. But once I start, I can’t stop mid-stream, so I kept squinting into the darkness to see if maybe I was hitting a key rock or something and could just move a few inches over. Instead, all of a sudden, I heard a way more concerning noise. A deep voice exclaiming, “What the fuck?”
And before I could turn around, assuming I’d been caught by a neighbor, a man came leaping out of the bushes.
He blew by me, brushing my golden shower off him as did. He spit pretty emphatically on the ground, so I think I might’ve beaned him right in the face. I didn’t see where he went after a few paces but, though this next part is kind of a blur, I do think I remember hearing a car screech out from a bit further away after a minute.
I’d gotten some night vision by that point so I was able to make out his height, build, and outfit, but only the most general details of each.
I was in such shock that I didn’t even put my dick away. I just stood there trying to figure out what had happened. The reality was so terrifying that my mind refused to accept it, and impulsively searched for a reasonable explanation that could make everything ok.
I thought, “Could these bushes lead to some backyard area and just looked like they were against the house? Could they have been obscuring an open window?”
My inner voice was desperately screaming “Bruh that man was wearing a hoodie in 90 degree weather. That was a bad man. You’re in a bad situation.”
But the very idea that I was within inches of a guy who would be hiding in bushes at all, let alone in front of a young woman’s house at night, just wasn’t something I was ready to grapple with yet. I was coping by not coping.
My fight or flight response totally failed me at that point, because my dumb ass did the absolute last thing I should have done, and approached the bushes to try and validate this “There must have been a good reason for a man in a hoodie to be behind these bushes in the middle of the night.” theory.
So I walked over to the side, turned on my phone flashlight, and tried to peer around the line of shrubbery.
Pro tip, as scary as things may look in the dark, seeing them with a single beam of your flashlight can sometimes make it even worse. That’s when I saw the bag.
There was a tattered drawstring bag sitting behind the bushes. Slightly splashed with pee. But I was in such a moronic daze from shock that I groped around for it thinking “See? This is it, this will explain why he was back here.”
It explained it. Once I maneuvered it over and pulled it open I saw a sharp knife, a roll of duct tape, and a bottle of pills. The delusions officially broke at that point and all the adrenaline, endorphins, and self preservation instincts that had been suppressed kicked in ten times over.
I became whatever the opposite of dazed is. More laser focused than I have ever been in my life, with one singular goal: “Get back to my car.”
I dropped the bag, booked it across the street, got in my car, and slammed the pedal to the floor before the door was even all the way closed. I went as far as I could as fast as I could until I hit a red signal, then I pulled off to the side and realized I shouldn’t be driving anymore than necessary in the condition I was in.
I pulled into the parking lot of a 24 hour drug store and took a breath. I was finally calm and coherent enough to zip up and formulate a plan of action.
My first lucid thought was “Who do I call first, the police or the girl whose house that was?” I thought about it for what couldn’t have really been more than ten seconds, but felt like an hour, and decided “Ok. I am in my locked car with the engine running. If trouble starts, I can drive away. I know somethings up, she might not, she needs to know not to keep walking in that direction.” But as I was dialing her number, it occurred to me, “What if there was no girl?”
I thought I remembered delivering to that house before, but what if I was wrong? What if the girl on the phone was just a decoy to get me there to rob me, or worse?
Every pizza guy on the planet has seen the Evil Genius documentary by now, so I thought “She called me all out of breath. She wasn’t home. The whole thing was off, can’t risk it, I’ll start with the cops.”
I called 911, the operator was very helpful in keeping me calm, because I was a complete wreck by this point. He kept assuring me that someone would be there soon.
I kept telling them they had to get there before the girl did, but I was trying to express three thoughts at once, and really damaging my own credibility. It came out more as:
“You’ve got to save this girl because he wasn’t after me I was just delivering a pizza. Unless they were after me, in which case there might not be a girl, but I talked to one on the phone, so then you should find that girl because they used her to lure me there. But if she’s real she doesn’t know about the guy, who was also real, and there could be more guys if there’s actually a girl, and you know what? Even if there isn’t a girl there might actually be more guys. I only checked one part of the bushes so I don’t actually know. But we’ll know which guy is the one I saw because I pissed all over him, you know. I didn’t mean to, this was back when I thought the girl was real but not home, but she might be real so you really need to find her if she is because the guy was real—“
Finally they basically just asked me to stop talking and stay on the line. But that was when I saw an incoming call from the customer. I couldn’t answer it without disrupting my 911 call, so I just ignored it.
But then she sent me this text like, “Hey I’m here, don’t see you?” I told 911 she was there and they said officers were only minutes away. But who knows how long that meant? Especially after I’d given such a scattered account of the events in my panic.
I just felt overwhelmed with guilt. Because my rational mind said the odds of her being a decoy girl for some large scam targeting pizza guys were low and the odds of her being the intended victim of a predator were high.
So I put my 911 call on mute (where I can hear them but they can’t hear me) and turned back, heart absolutely pounding out of my chest, compulsively muttering “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” the entire way.
Then I took 911 off mute and told them I had returned to look for the girl. They weren’t happy about that, but I saw her meandering past the parked cars in the street looking to see if one was mine, and I waved her down, flashing my brights.
She bounced on over to the window of my car, happy-go-lucky. I figured that was a good sign that she wasn’t in on whatever this was. But I was just so scared to be back in the general area and to not know what had just happened or what was going to happen. I kept whispering “Get in. Get in!” And she was like, “Get it? Huh? Oh! You want me to get the pizza from the back?”
I didn’t want to make the same mistake with her that I had made with 911, so instead of trying to tell the whole story, I stuck to the bare basic facts. “There was a man in your bushes. I’m on the phone with the police. I don’t know where he is right now. Please get in the car so we can lock the doors.”
I was barely able to get even those sentences out, and I was shaking like I’d had 10 cups of black coffee. I held up my phone with 911 on the call screen to verify it for her. I thought that was why she got in the car with no further explanation, but it turns out that wasn’t entirely it.
“You still there? Is she with you? Are you safe? Is anyone else there?” 911 kept checking in, not knowing who the third party I was talking to was. I reassured them, and we drove, more cautiously this time, to a location 911 instructed us to wait at to speak with police after they cleared the area.
I didn’t actually have to do much after that. The police came pretty soon after, a police car met us, I gave a statement telling them everything I observed, and she went to go speak to more officers in more detail than they needed me for.
It turns out the reason she got right into a strange pizza guy’s car without probing any deeper into my story is because she knew who the man was right away from my description.
She had an abusive ex-boyfriend who was apparently psychotic enough that he immediately came to mind from hearing “There’s a guy in your bushes.”
She later called us to thank me and insist on leaving a huge tip. I wasn’t there when the call came in so the kid who answered didn’t know to refuse to accept the money. But the manager already promised the next time we see her we can load her up with enough “one free pie” cards to last a lifetime.
Easily the scariest thing that has ever happened to me, on the job or off. I don’t get the chance to tell the story much, because I try to avoid sharing it with anyone who could possibly know the girl or know of the event.
But I’m still not the same since. Even though I know he didn’t even have anything to do with me directly, this truly shook me to my core. So, man in the bushes, let’s not meet.
Upvotes: 8.5k
So last night, I was at a classmates house working on a group project we have due tomorrow. I live in an apartment in the town where our university is located and my classmate lives at his parents house which is in the foothills just outside of town. In order to get to the house, you have to drive along a relatively secluded and narrow two-lane road for about 5-6 miles.
We started working on the project at about 6 pm and I ended up hanging around for a while after we had finished our working. So I left his house pretty late at about 11 and started down the road back towards town. I didn't realize how tough it would be to navigate the road at night; there were no streetlights and the road was unkept and riddled with potholes. On top of this, I had no cell service so I had to drive very slowly to make sure I didn't blow out one of my tires since I had used my spare a couple of weeks back.
I figure I was about 3 miles from the house when I rounded a tight corner and saw a pickup truck with a camper shell parked diagonally across the road. The manner in which it was parked completely impeded my path and I couldn't drive around it because there was a gully on both sides of the road.
The only way for me to go at this point was backward, where there was a pulloff that I could use to turn my car around. At first I couldn't see inside the cab, but when I turned on my high beams I saw that there was a man slouched over in the drivers seat, his head resting against the steering wheel as if he had been knocked out after a bad accident. I immediately sensed something was wrong, the way his car had just "coincidentally" come to rest in a position that totally blocked the road was a big red flag for me. I had heard stories of people playing dead in the road as a way to lure unsuspecting people out of their cars so they could rob them.
I decided "fuck this shit" and elected to go back to my classmates house and explain what was going on. I threw the car into reverse and kept my eyes darting back and forth between my rearview and the truck. I looked and saw that I was almost to the pulloff where I could turn around. When I looked back, my heart skipped about five beats. The man who had been slouched over in the drivers seat was now walking at my car at a hurried pace while a few other men jumped out of the camper shell and started moving towards me as well.
I panicked and accelerated backwards into the pulloff, which messed up the undercarriage of my car pretty bad. As I put it into drive the guy was already at my passenger side door tugging on the handle which, thank the lord, was locked. I only caught a brief glimpse of him but his face appeared to be scabbed and leathery, definitely a meth head or some sort of drug abuser. I sped away and didn't slow down at all until I reached the house, constantly checking my rearview to see if they were following. Thankfully they didn't tail me, and when I reached the house I explained what had happened to my classmate and we called the cops. I was grateful that my buddies parents were kind enough to let me stay the night.
They didn't find anyone on the road matching the description but I filed an incident report and they told me they would be on the lookout for similar vehicles and suspicious activity. But holy shit, I'm still so shook up over it. I keep getting the same adrenaline rush I got when I saw the guy charging me whenever I think about it. Please share similar experiences you've had, as I would appreciate a good read or a good discussion to help clear my headspace!
7.“He asked for me by name?” “Yes.” “Call 911. I’ve never seen him in my life.” byu/ligamentary
Upvotes: 8.3k
I was watching my daughter’s kids while she and her husband go out of town.
They have a teenage daughter (let’s say her name is Alyssa.)
At like 3am I‘m woken up by a weird rustling sound and look out the window and see movement. I saw a boy emerge from the bushes on the side of the house. I saw a bike tossed on the lawn that definitely wasn’t ours.
My first thought was it was a burglar casing houses, but since he looked young and came through on a bike, I figured scaring him straight would be enough for him to decide to head home. Didn’t want to ruin a teenager’s life by calling the cops straightaway.
So I went out on the porch, flipped the lights on, and said “Can I help you?” In my classroom voice.
The guy looked surprised but not nervous. He was wearing a letterman style jacket, but once I got a clear view of him in the streetlights, he seemed much older than my granddaughter. Gruff. And more wirey than athletic.
He walked up closer to the house and said “Yah I’m looking for Alyssa.” I gave him a disapproving glare, hoping he’d realize he came looking for a girl late at night and a grumpy old person answered, it’s time to split.
I’m thinking what must’ve happened is Alyssa knew her parents were going out of town and maybe before she knew I’d be staying over told a secret older boyfriend to come over.
It was late and I was alone with several kids so I didn’t want him coming any closer to the house. I also thought it was weird he came so late and wanted to be sure Alyssa actually wanted to talk to him. So I said “I’m sorry. Who?” And he said Alyssa. You know, Alyssa Lastname. This is her house.” I thought, he knew her full name, they must be at least friends.
I said “you wait there.” He started to walk up and I felt a sick burning in my gut. Instinct kicked in. I yelled “NO. STOP. FREEZE” Then readjusted and said “You stay right there. This is private property don’t take a step closer. Wait. There.”
So I go in and Alyssa is asleep just one room over from where the rustling first occurred and I wake her up and say something to the affect of “I don’t know what the big idea was to have friends over this time of night but you tell them to go home.” She has no clue what I’m talking about.
I say “There’s a guy outside asking for you.” Confused, she gets up and goes to the window. She sees him and goes white as a sheet.
“He asked for me?” “Yah.” “By name?” “Yes.” “Call the police. I’ve never seen him in my life.”
I called 911 immediately, but as I was on the phone with them, Alyssa started tugging at my arm. “He’s coming up!” I had younger kids in the house to think about so I kept the door latched and pulled it just open enough for the latch and yelled “I asked my husband and none of us know an Alyssa Lastname. Leave my property or I’m calling 911.”
He got angry and started yelling for her to come out. Thankfully the police came pretty quickly and when he heard the sirens he grabbed the bike and ran off. I watched where he was running and he jumped into the passenger side of a car without headlights or front plates and sped off.
The police followed in the same direction once I pointed them. But they didn’t get him. They advised us to take all her social media details offline if she was sure she didn’t know this person and said they’d had a couple similar reports recently and were looking into it.
I got a heavy duty lock and she slept in my room for the remainder of my visit.
8."Someone broke into my house and tried to find me." by u/StaringVoid
Upvotes: 8.1k
A few years ago, I was renting a house in Northern California. The neighborhood was just outside the suburbs. It seemed like the perfect balance of having space and having nice neighbors close enough not to feel isolated. The area had no street lights, so it was very dark at night especially if there were clouds blocking the moonlight. It didn’t bother me though. It made my little house feel even more quaint on dark nights.
I got home from work one day in mid winter. It was a cloudy night, so pulling up to my house, I saw only what my headlights and front porch light illuminated. When I got out of my car, I caught a whiff of cigarette smoke. That was odd as I had never smelled that before around that house. I didn’t see anyone nearby, so I ignored it and went inside. I had just got off a shift with a few hours of overtime, so I felt pretty tired. Even though it wasn’t even 7 yet, I decided to take a shower and call it a night.
I woke up sometime later sure that I had heard a noise inside my house. I wasn’t worried right away because my friend would sometimes stop by to use my shower after work on his way to his night classes. I even gave him a spare key so he could stop by even if I wasn’t home. He would always text me to let me know beforehand though, and I hadn’t heard my phone go off.
I reached over to my bedside table and picked up my cell phone to see if my friend had sent me a text. The bright light from my phone’s screen and number pad blinded me. These were the days before phones had a light sensor that would dim the screen in the dark, and this particular phone was so bright I could use it as a flashlight. Through squinted eyes, I could make out that it was 9 something, but I couldn’t tell if I had an unread text or not.
I set my phone aside and called out my friend’s name. There were a couple of seconds of silence before I heard loud foot falls as someone started running through the bottom floor of my house. I leapt out of bed and ran to the closet. They were already up the stairs by the time I had opened the door and stepped inside.
That house had three rooms upstairs: two bedrooms on either side of the hallway, the one I was in and a spare, and a bathroom at the end. The bedroom doors were both closed, but the bathroom door was cracked open. I heard whoever was in my house thunder down the hallway past my door and into the bathroom. Thank god he did. That gave me enough time to open the attic access in the ceiling of my closet and hoist myself up.
I had just started to lift myself up when the person ran back out of the bathroom. My feet were barely inside of the attic when my bedroom door burst open. I heard footsteps run into my room and stop. When they didn’t see me in that room, they ran back to the hallway and into the other room which just had boxes stacked in a corner, some weights, and a table where I painted my miniature models. I guess they decided that if someone were hiding, it would be in the bedroom because they charged back into my room and turned on the light. A moment later the closet door was ripped open.
I was crouched in my attic just a foot or so away from the access, so I could try to stop them if they started to climb up. From my vantage point all I could see was from about their knee down. They were wearing dirty blue jeans with frayed cuffs and worn work boots. After a few seconds of looking in the closet, they stepped away and I heard a loud crash come from my room followed by a scream of frustration and anger. That scream was the most unnerving part of the incident for me. It reminded me far too much of my stepfather who would scream in a similar way when he lost his temper. He would eventually be put in a mental hospital for several mental disorders that resulted in erratic and violent tendencies.
The man in my house ran back down the stairs. I heard crashes and clatters as things were thrown around and furniture was knocked over. I stayed crouched in the attic. I had left my cell phone when I ran for the closet, and I wasn’t certain I could climb down without him hearing. After some time, the noises stopped. I started counting slowly. When I reached 1,000, I decided it was safe enough to climb down and call the police.
The first thing I noticed when I exited the closet was the intruder had flipped my bed over. I assume in an attempt to find me. That was the loud noise I had heard after he stepped away from the closet. I couldn’t find my cell phone, so I went to the land line by the bed and called the police. I waited in my room until I heard them call out from downstairs.
The first floor was a mess, but I had expected that. Chairs had been knocked over, the sofa had been flipped. All the books, pictures and knick knacks I had on my shelves were strewn across the floor. The cupboards in the kitchen had been opened and all the boxed and canned foods had been thrown to the ground. As far as I could tell though, the only thing missing was a single knife out of the wooden block in my kitchen.
The police checked the house from top to bottom. They found that the side door had been forced open by something like a crowbar. They also found a few cigarette butts along my fence line along with some foil and an empty pen tube which the police said people often use to smoke meth, so they think he had been watching my house for a while. I realized that he must have been out there smoking a cigarette when I got home. They collected up the ‘evidence’ and told me I should stay with family or friends that night and get that door fixed as soon as possible.
I opted to just not sleep. I moved a shelf over to block the broken door and spent the next couple hours cleaning things up. I would often go to the window with a flashlight and shine it along the fence line where the police found the cigarette butts and foil, but I didn’t see anything.
The next day I called to have the door fixed and motion lights installed at the back and sides of my house. I ran a phone cable up into the attic and added a landline. I never wanted to be stuck up there without a phone again. Nothing else happened at that house though. I lived there another three years without incident.
One more precaution I took was practicing getting out of my bed, going to my closet and climbing into the attic as quickly and quietly as possible. I even kept at it when I moved, except now I go to a crawl space at the back of the closet instead of the attic. I try not to think about what would have happened if I had been a bit slower getting to the attic or if he hadn’t gone into the bathroom at the end of the hall first.
9."Creepy dude in the pharmacy with a weird fetish." byu/Cygnus875
Upvotes: 7.4k
This happened maybe 10 years ago when I was in my early 30's. I was standing in line at the local pharmacy to get my prescriptions. This is a small town and I am a regular there, so they know me on sight. I was behind a couple of other people in line, and there were a couple of people behind me.
I kept feeling a tickle in my hair in the back of my head, but every time I looked behind me, the guy there was a few steps back and looking at the floor. This happened several times by the time I was at the front of the line. The pharmacist told me she wanted to talk to me about my medication in the consultation room they had at the time (since converted to a bathroom). I thought this was weird because we both knew I had been on this medication for years and would be for life. Nothing new.
I get back to the room and close the door, and she comes in from the door at the other side that leads from the pharmacy. She told me that the man behind me had been stepping forward, sticking his nose in my hair, and smelling, before stepping back and looking at the floor. This shook me pretty badly as this is such weird behavior, especially in my little town.
The pharmacy staff insisted on having me wait there until the guy was distracted (by another pharmacy employee), and they had a security guard walk me to my car and watch me drive off, to make sure I was gone before Hair Sniffer came out and saw what I was driving and what direction I was going.
I still use this pharmacy and some of the same people still work there. I will always be grateful that they took the initiative to make sure I was safe that day.
10."The one day I woke up late may have saved my life." by u/[deleted]
Upvotes: 6.3k
I've told this story in other places, on other accounts before, but it bears repeating.
One day, when I was an elementary schooler (I think probably 3rd or 4th grade), I was awoken by my mom in a rush. She had overslept, and since she always woke me up in the morning, this meant that I too overslept and now there was just no way I was gonna be ready for school early enough to get on the school bus.
IIRC, school started at 8 AM, and my bus pickup time was 7 AM, but it was already like 6:40 or something, and I was still in my pajamas and hadn't even had breakfast yet. So mom decided that today, we would just tell the bus driver to go on ahead and she would take me to school, which would give me plenty of time to get ready.
So I'm sitting there at the dining room table eating breakfast, still in my pajamas, and it's now about 6:50. We hear the bus pull up, about 10 minutes earlier than usual. My mom peeks her head out of the door, into the foggy morning and waves the bus on. She closes the door and comes back inside, but the bus doesn't pull away.
There's a knock at the door, and mom opens it to find a man in a bus driver uniform. He explains that he's a substitute driver, because the regular driver called in sick. He says he knows he's a few minutes early, since he wanted to get an early start on the route since he didn't know it well. Mom explains to him that she was gonna take me to school since we woke up late. He gets visibly upset, and says that he can wait a few minutes since he's already running ahead of schedule. My mom insists that no, I won't be ready to go in a few minutes, and tells him to go on ahead. He seemed angry about this, but turned around and got back in the bus and left.
I return to eating my breakfast, and still don't have my school clothes on at this point. But at 7:00 AM sharp, another bus pulls up to my house. Mom thinks this is weird and goes outside to talk to them. She comes back inside looking terrified, but doesn't really say anything about it and tells me to finish getting ready for school. At the time, I didn't know what happened, but mom would end up telling me a few years later.
When she went to this second bus, she found that it was being driven by my regular bus driver, and it was full of all the other kids that are usually on the route (the other bus was empty, by the way). Mom asks the driver about the substitute driver and about him calling in sick. "I never called in sick. There is no substitute driver on my route." he says.
The driver immediately called dispatch in a panic, and told my mom to go inside and call the police (which she did, without me knowing) and report this incident. There was absolutely no one doing my driver's route that day. Whoever this was, was most likely a kidnapper who had targeted me.
I never heard anything about it again. Not even if someone else had ended up being picked up by this mysterious fake bus driver. But chances are, had I gotten on that bus, I would have never made it to school, or back home. And if mom hadn't overslept on that specific day, I would have been on that bus.
A Russian athlete from Primorsky, Dmitry Yakuhny ran a hundred kilometers around the bed in ten hours during self-isolation, in order to check how well is he prepared for the ultramarathon in the Sahara desert.
"In April, I was supposed to participate in the heaviest ultramarathon in the world - MDS (Marathon Des Sables), 250 kilometers in the Sahara desert, but because of the coronavirus it was postponed for another date. So I decided to run 100 kilometers around the bed at home," told RIA Novosti Dmitry Yakuhny.
He added that he was preparing for the marathon for nine months and decided to test his strength.
According to him, the family initially took the idea as a joke, but then the children became interested - the son Artem and daughter Nicole even ran part of the distance.
"The whole family supported the initiative, the children ran a little, the wife filmed everything on video and prepared the food," Dmitry said.
He added that the marathon lasted almost ten hours, the neighbors were received the news "with understanding."
According to the athlete, music also helped to overcome the distance. Diet - oranges, bananas, "everything is on the run, as in regular competitions."
Dmitry went live on Instagram every hour, and the final broadcast lasted half an hour. A second breath opened after the 50th kilometer, and the 76th kilometer of the ultramarathon around the bed turned out to be the most difficult.
"Usually at the 35th and 75th kilometers there comes a" wall "- a lack of carbohydrates, but I tried to eat and drink on a schedule," Dmitry said. The athlete finished by 20:00 (13:00 Moscow time) local time.
The beginning of the 35th Marathon Des Sables is scheduled for September 18, the race will be held in the Moroccan part of the Sahara, during which participants will have to run 250 kilometers in seven days.
Black Friday is one of the most important events in the world of shopping. What is Black Friday in the USA? This is the Friday after Thanksgiving in the United States, which kicks off the traditional Christmas sales season. The custom to sell goods on a specific day originated in the 19th century, and the term Black Friday took root in 1966. This year Black Friday fell on November 27, 2020.
The most profitable purchase is considered to be expensive equipment, for example, laptops, TVs, stationary computers. You can save up to $ 1000 on their purchase. The second place is taken by electronic gadgets (from fitness trackers to iPhones), video games and children's toys. The savings will be up to $ 100. And the third place is clothes, also with a profit of up to $ 100.
Black Friday is not an official holiday, but many employees take time off on this day, with the exception of retail employees, as the flow of customers increases significantly on this day. On Black Friday, shops open very early - around 5 am, and some of the largest retail chains even open at midnight. The first buyers are offered serious discounts - from 50 to 80% - this is done in order to attract as many customers as possible to the stores.
Almost all buyers are also active Internet users, who after Black Friday create funny memes. Bemorepanda chose the funniest Black Friday jokes and memes.
1.Recording fights
2.About Black Friday
3.Go shopping
4.Let it begin
5.Brace yourselves
6.I'm going shopping
7.When it's Black Friday
8.People on Black Friday
9.Cheers
10.This face
11.When is friday
12.After holiday shopping
13.My pockets after I waste my money
14.Black Friday
15.Americans as shops open
16.Save money
17.Sales are here
18.Black Friday lines
19.Hunger Games
20.Starter pack
21.Stuff I don't need
22.Dawn of Dead
23.Save a dollar
24.Football is here
25.None of my business
26.Hunger Games be like
27.You're going to the Black Friday sale
28.I don't care
29.Camping on Black Friday
30.Didn't get arrested
31.It's called Black Friday
32.No way
33.Black Satrurday
34.Go to the Gym
35.More important
36.Democrat city
37.The one just
38.Just wait
39.Tennis balls
40.You mean to tell me that
41.Petsmart
42.So sad
43.Black Friday be like
44.Rangers
45.Children on this day
46.Watching news
47.Cheers to this day
48.There are no rules
49.Getting ready
50.Just pay
Copyright © 2020 Bemorepanda Limited. All Rights Reserved.
The content available on the Bemorepanda.com website can be copied and republished in the limit of 200 characters and in the limit of 10 pictures and must include the URL of the article. It is forbidden to completely copy the material and place it anywhere else without indicating the link and the full name of the page.