Nefarious Nanny
“I’m a member of a local Facebook group to help moms find babysitters. One of the admins was a man in his mid-20s who babysat for tons of kids in the area and specialized in caring for nonverbal and autistic children.
His posts always gave me (and some other members) a weird vibe, but he was loved by the group as a whole. He was just arrested for touching 2 children, and possession of inappropriate material of children. His bail is set at $2 million. It’s estimated that he sat for over 500 children in our area. Who knows how many he abused.”
Can I Help You?
“About 15 years ago I left work early, like really early, for no reason. I got home and all these kids were standing near my door and they were all staring at me and not saying anything. I went inside and dropped my bag, and it wouldn’t stop weighing on me how weird it was so I went back outside.
I spoke to them, asking what was going on, and one kid meekly asked if I could help his friend. A kid I didn’t see was sitting on a curb surrounded by all the rest. They had all jumped the fence next to a nearby pond, except he slipped, impaled the flesh of his inner thigh, and got stuck.
The kids helped pick him up off of it, but he was just sitting there bleeding everywhere with a bunch of meat hanging out. I got him treated and called for an ambulance. He came back a few weeks later with his family to thank me, and said I saved his leg.”
Hate To Say I Told You So…
“My father started publicly dating a woman shortly after my mother died. I liked her.
One evening my father took me aside and asked how I’d feel about him asking her to marry him. I got an awful feeling in the pit of my stomach and felt nauseated. I told my father I didn’t want him to, and he asked why as he thought I liked her.
I explained that I did like her but had a bad feeling, and he said, ‘that’s just a feeling, they don’t mean anything.’ He already had the ring and proposed straight away. I got really excited about the engagement, the wedding, moving house, and my impending little sister.
After the wedding, she changed. When my half-sister was born she went crazy. She abused me, my full sister, and later my half sister. My dad only left her when my doctor told him something was clearly going on with her that was affecting my health (she was putting a substance that I’m intolerant to in my food and my father wouldn’t believe me and would force me to eat whatever she made).
My maternal grandmother told him that if he didn’t leave her she’d go for custody. He accused me of lying for the entire time leading up to that.
He never apologized for all of that, or for running over my foot, or for saying he came close to hitting me when I was in the middle of an anxiety attack at age 10. He never asked about what she did to me or what I’d said to the people I’d tried reaching out to for help, which to me says it all.
I gave him a letter almost 10 years ago saying I’d have nothing to do with him until he put it in writing that he wouldn’t use violence or threats of violence against me ever again. He hasn’t responded, so I like to think it was a mutual decision that neither of us could reach an agreement that allowed us to maintain a relationship – he wants to hit and threaten me, I don’t want to be hit and threatened, it just wouldn’t work out. C’est la vie!”
More Than A Feeling
“When I was 19, I was walking home at midnight from a tram stop and got the feeling I should pretend to be on the phone. A minute after doing so, a car pulls up next to me on the empty road.
It’s four guys all leering at me, and the one in the passenger side starts saying things like, ‘How about we take you for a good time?’ and his tone is predatory. I try to keep it cool because I didn’t want to look frightened to encourage them that I am prey, and start telling my ‘friend’ there’s a group of guys in a car harassing me, and I describe the car.
I hear the driver say to his mate something about my conversation on the phone and they take off. I ran home faster than Usain Bolt, ready to dial the police should they change their mind and come back.
A couple of months later, I hear on the news that in my area there was a group picking up girls and assaulting them. The description matched the car and the guys in it that followed me that night.
I had the sense after my encounter to tell my work what happened and I refused to do night shifts anymore unless they paid for my taxi home. I shudder to think what may have happened if I hadn’t pretended to be on the phone that night.”
Always Watching
“Before my husband and I were married with good jobs, we were young and poor and didn’t care where we lived. We rented out a crummy little house behind the landlord’s place that was clearly a shed poorly transformed into a small studio space.
At the time I worked late nights and my husband worked mornings, so I would sleep til around 12 and work all night. The landlord, Greg, was this bald old man with a heavy Russian accent. He was kind of odd but seemed nice, as was his wife.
He’d made odd comments and invited me into his house to video chat with his friends in Russia. One time I complained the chipmunks were crawling into the roof and asked him to patch it up better.
He said, ‘Bah, no need, I take care,’ and I swear to God he would snatch them up with his bare hands and break their necks. I wish I was making that up. Weird. He made me feel uneasy, but seemed kind to us.
When we first moved in, I kept waking up feeling uneasy when I should’ve been exhausted. I’d feel nervous and get up to check the doors, look in closets, etc.
One week my husband went away to visit his father, so I was alone and literally felt like I was constantly being watched. The bedroom window was facing the yard and it was heavily wooded, so I’d hear crunching of leaves and footsteps all the time. My husband said I was being paranoid because I was alone, and I thought so too.
But then that same week my husband was away, I offered to watch my friend’s dog. I got home from work around 2 am and got to sleep around 3-4am. I woke up around 8-9 am to the dog barking and growling like crazy.
Now, because the space was similar to a studio, we had no doors on anything besides the bathroom. I spring up, and see Greg the landlord literally in the living room, hand on the front door, just frozen.
He was caught off guard by the dog and I yelled, ‘What the heck are you doing?!’ I thought the house was on fire or something, and I know the front door was locked. I always locked it. He quickly apologized and walked out.
When I shook from my sleepy daze, I realized that this might not be a one-time thing. I took a shower, dressed, and walked up to their house. Greg’s car wasn’t in the driveway, but his wife was home.
I told her what happened, and asked why Greg would use his keys to go in the house without giving me notice. She was nonchalant about it, and replied, ‘It’s his house he can do what he wants. He likes to check on things from time to time.’
I flipped out on her. Clearly, this was happening often and I’m 10000% sure the eerie feeling I was getting was from Greg literally coming in the house, watching me sleep, and completely invading my privacy when he knew I was alone and asleep.
My husband and I got out of there as soon as we could. He actually tried to take us to small claims court for breaking the lease, but I had already reported him to the police and found out the space we were renting wasn’t even up to code or on the books to be rented.”
Just Double Checking
“I used to work in a big city as a medical emergency responder/dispatcher. One night, I arrive at my shift, and an hour later I get a very strange call. It’s a man calling for his wife, who was choking on food, and who suddenly started to ‘feel better’ during the call, which made him change his mind and say he didn’t need an ambulance anymore.
I could’ve stopped the call there, cancel, or rank it as a low priority. But I had this feeling, and when the man asked me if I wanted to speak to her I said yes.
‘Ma’am, this is emergency services, are you sure that you don’t need help of any kind? ‘
No answer.
‘Would you need the services of the police?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Is the guy beside you dangerous?’
‘Yes.’
Man, the rush of adrenaline I got. I made her go to safety, and then she told me all about how he had been beating her for a long time, how she had no way to get out, and that she was choking while eating due to the stress of being beside him.
I worked with the police, and they went on the scene and probably preventing the woman from being beaten up again. Always trust your instincts.”
The Power Of Friendship
“I came back to work after a week off for Christmas vacation and immediately noticed something was off with my friend. I had no clue what it was, I just knew something was wrong with him but I couldn’t explain what it was. I kept asking him if he was alright, and he kept saying everything was fine.
On the second day, he came up to me and asked me to explain something that I know he knew how to do because I had trained him on how to do it. I became very concerned at this point.
The 3rd day was New Year’s Eve, so we only had a half day, and he was working on a spreadsheet. End of the day came around, I took one look at it, and I swear I could have printed it out and called it modern art, that’s how horrifying it looked.
I called the boss over, and he pulled him off of it, which caused my friend to break down and start crying because he couldn’t understand that he had done anything wrong. I told him that something was wrong and that he needed to get some help.
We came back in on Friday and my friend wasn’t there. I found out that he was in the hospital because of a heart attack. Later on, we learned that during the days leading up to the heart attack he was suffering from mini strokes and that all of my constant nagging made him question his health too. A doctor later told him that if he had not gone to the ER when he did, he wouldn’t have made it through the night. Because of this, my friend says that I saved his life through the power of our friendship.”
Not Today!
“When I was 15, I hung out with some friends after school and got a ride home that night. No one had been home all day, so there were no lights on inside or out.
The friend that drove me home didn’t stick around to see if I made it in, so as I’m starting to make my way up the walkway to the front door, I sense someone waiting to meet me there.
I calmly stop after taking a couple steps and say ‘nope!’ loud enough for the potential criminal to hear me, then briskly turn around and walk swiftly down the street, cut through a neighbor’s backyard to get to the next street over, make my way to the nearest pay phone, dial the police, and tell them I think there’s someone trying to rob the house.
I return with a police officer, and he shines his flashlight around the door and sees footprints in the snow leading from around the house. He follows those and sees they are around the entire house. There was someone waiting for me to open the door that night. I laugh at the thought of their surprise to have some teenage girl acknowledge them from a distance and tell them ‘not today!'”
A Sinking Feeling
“I was at my freshmen year of college, September 2012, barely a week in. My dad comes to visit me on campus unexpectedly. We text pretty frequently, but I wasn’t expecting an actual in-person visit from family until a month in since campus was an hour and a half from home.
He seems pretty excited, and tells me that he found my high school class ring, which I thought I’d lost toward the start of the summer. It was a shade too large for my ring finger (which was how I lost it in the first place), so I decide to put it in my drawer for safekeeping.
He stops me, though, and tells me he’s taking it back with him if I don’t wear it. It fits pretty well on my middle finger instead, so I roll with it, but something about the wording… worries me. Bad feeling number one.
As mentioned, we texted frequently while he was working, and the following week he was telling me all about a charity bike ride he was participating in on Friday morning. He was really excited about the whole thing, he’d been getting in shape for it and everything.
Friday afternoon rolls around, and I text him to ask him how he did. Never get a response. Something about this…again, it worries me, but I brush it off. Maybe he was really tired, he probably fell asleep already. He’ll text me tomorrow. Bad feeling number two.
Next day, my uncle and cousin drive up to visit. I’ve been close with the cousin for years and he wanted to visit me on campus, so this didn’t surprise me all that much, though I figured he would have called.
Something seemed off, though, like he was hiding something. And at the end of the day, my uncle said that my mom wanted me to go home with them, as ‘there’s a surprise at home’ for me. Again, something was off in his voice when he said it. Bad feelings numbers three and four.
When I get home, I find my mother weeping at the kitchen table, my brother is locked in his room (shared with me, so I slept on the couch that night), my sister is practically catatonic, and even the dog looks depressed.
Dad is dead. He suffered a heart attack during the bike ride, veered off course, and fell off his bike. No one found him until it was too late. He died alone and in pain. I still haven’t taken that ring off.”
Close Call Commute
“I used to pick up hitchhikers in the 80s & early 90s. I was into Jesus and wanted to do good deeds.
One day I saw two women who looked rough hitchhiking on the side of I-295 in Jacksonville, FL. Based on their appearance, I thought they were leaving an abusive situation or something. I pulled over to pick them up.
As they walked up to my van, they exchanged creepy looks, sort of a ‘are we gonna do this?’ expression. I got bad vibes and drove off right as they were reaching for my door. I felt bad later and beat myself up for it. What if they really needed help?
A few days later, I saw sketches of them on the news. It was Aileen Wuornos (the serial killer from the movie Monster) and her girlfriend. The guy who picked them up after I drove off was murdered and dumped in a swamp. Trust your gut!”
It’s Just A Game!
“I met some guys in a large game of Dungeons and Dragons that a mutual acquaintance had invited us to. Once the campaign was over some of us started a smaller group with a good friend of mine, and another friend’s former roommate.
I just thought that the former roommate was a bit of a harmless burn out, forgetting names and acting a tad spacey at times. We even caught a couple movies with him at the theater, and during one such outing he got a call at the restaurant we were having drinks at, and told someone to ‘hold me one until I get out of this movie.’
He said it was his crank dealer, and I laughed thinking he was cracking one of his oddball jokes. I asked the friend that introduced us, and he said he knew the guy dabbled in some stuff, but thought he mostly just smoked or ate edibles.
Turns out this guy was taking crank on the weekends and staying up for hours on end before crashing enough to go to work on Monday mornings. I think at some point he stopped waiting for it to be the weekend.
We had a game night planned and ended up playing a really fun card game called ‘Smash-Up.’ We got started learning the rules and waiting for the old roommate to get over. He comes walking in and immediately I know something is very wrong.
Out of nowhere he’s got a terrible bleach job on his hair, his appearance is very rumpled, and overall he looks pretty strung out. We welcome him in, explain the rules, and start playing. The cards you plan on playing may change radically depending on what the person ahead of you plays, so each person usually takes a couple of minutes before playing to ponder what will get them the maximum score.
Old room mate guy is getting more and more impatient, and we’re joking around. All of a sudden, he looks at the guy directly across from him and says if he doesn’t play his hand, he’ll kill him. Everyone else nervous laughs but I can tell that this is no joke.
Then he abruptly slammed his cards down, got up with such force that he knocked his chair over backwards, and charged around the table trying to get swings in while I’m holding and shoving him back. He finally stops and just grabs his stuff, storming out the front door before ominously saying that ‘he’ll be seeing us around real soon.’
By the time we all calmed down, he had blocked all our phone numbers and social media accounts. The guy he tried to attack was looking over his shoulder for weeks, but nobody has seen or heard from him since.”
Broody Brody
“This happened a couple of years ago at the church I attend. One day this young lady in her mid-20’s started attending our services. She was very polite and friendly and seemed eager to be a part of our congregation.
After several weeks she started bringing her brother, who I’ll call Brody, along with her. He was slightly younger than her and seemed nice enough. The more time I spent around him, however, the more I began to realize how different he was.
He was very socially awkward with odd mannerisms and speech patterns, but I just assumed he was autistic or something, so that wasn’t a big deal. I didn’t become alarmed until I noticed how fixated Brody was becoming on our pastor and his wife.
He constantly followed them around like a puppy, begging for their attention, and growing upset when they associated with anyone besides him. Once, while walking beside our pastor, I looked across the parking lot to see Brody giving me the most hateful stare you can imagine. I was instantly creeped out.
From that moment I knew something was dangerously wrong with this man, but no one else seemed to notice it. Fast forward to several weeks later, I walk into church for the Wednesday night service to find our pastor alone, without his wife or children. He tells me he’s sent his family away to a safe place for a few days.
Apparently, Brody had called the pastor’s wife and threatened to assault and murder her. Luckily he couldn’t find a car to borrow, or he very likely would have carried out his threats. After the police came and placed him in custody, it was revealed that Brody had done this exact thing several times before to other women.
It was all such a surreal experience. I’ve wondered if perhaps I should have spoken up about my early suspicions, but part of me thinks I would’ve just been laughed off or dismissed.”
Everybody Out Of The Pool
“I was 6 years old and in my neighbor’s backyard, swimming in a kiddie pool. She went inside to ask for something, and right as she left, a guy on a motorcycle drove down the alley and stopped.
The fence was a small chain link fence, so he definitely saw me and stopped. And I could see him, clearly. 20 years later it’s still so vivid.
He pulled out some blueish green medical gloves and put them on, which is the last thing I saw him doing as I got out and ran through their garage, out the front, and inside my house next door terrified. He drove around the front, then slowly down the street, and about 10 minutes later he shot 2 kids at the park at the end of my street.
Luckily he didn’t get away, and my mom was sorry for not believing me when I was crying and screaming.”
She Was Only 18
“When I was in high school, there was this girl a year below me. A really lovely girl, very clever and friendly to everyone. I spoke to her on my last day at school, talking about where I’d decided to go for university.
She told me that she really wanted to apply to Cambridge University, and that she was working super hard to get the grades. I don’t know why, but I suddenly felt really uneasy and sad for her, particularly because she was so chipper and optimistic about it. At the time, I put this down to the fact that getting past the interview stage for Cambridge is really tough.
About 18 months later, I’m at university and I bump into a different girl who was from my school and also in the year below. She was quite upset, and since the university term was only 3 weeks into her first year, I was concerned that she was feeling down. It turned out that she had just received the news that the lovely girl who wanted to go to Cambridge had died two nights ago.
She did get into Cambridge to study philosophy. She had just started her lectures after orientation week, when she contracted bacterial meningitis. She was feeling under the weather, put it down to freshmen flu and went to bed early one night, and then didn’t wake up the next day. She was 18 years old.”