14x27: A Decade of Stalking

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During the pandemic, I lived in a flimsy apartment building next to a rather creepy, empty business parking lot with rows of bushes along the edge.

My apartment door was on the ground floor and led directly outside.

There were no apartment gates or anything like that.

Since I was in an apartment, I had to walk my dog throughout the day so that he could do his business.

I would always try and take him out before bed.

My dog is quite large, but he's a very good boy and very loyal.

One night, while I was walking him before bed, I let him do his business as usual and then went back to the apartment.

However, when I went to open the door to try and go inside, the dog wouldn't let me move.

I asked my dog what's going on, then turned around to see him staring at the bushes between the apartment and the parking lot.

I figured he saw a squirrel or a rabbit, but at the same time, I found his reaction strange because he wasn't barking or anything.

He just stood there, still and tense, with his eyes focused and his head lowered.

When I followed his gaze, what I found was a masked man wearing a hoodie with the hood pulled up.

He was hiding in the bushes, staring directly at us from just a few feet away.

I had never felt so scared in my life.

I froze for a couple of seconds before moving toward the door, but I didn't take my eyes off of the man for a single second.

I yelled for my roommate and told him to get the gun.

We didn't actually have a gun, but the weirdo didn't know that.

Just a few seconds later, the man crept away, back through the bushes.

I then managed to get my dog inside the apartment, even though he still really didn't want to move.

I have no idea what the man was doing there in those bushes, but that was the first time I ever filed a police report.

After that, the police started hanging out in the empty parking lot behind the bushes more often, and I never saw that man again.

From that night until the day that I moved out, both me and my dog constantly checked for people lurking in those damn bushes.

When I was seventeen years old I had long hair that I had never colored before.

I was ready for a change, so this was my first time going to a hairdresser.

I wanted to go from blonde to a reddish brown color, and I was excited since this was honestly the first time I had ever really done anything for myself.

This man approached me a few minutes after I exited the salon.

I was on my way home, but he stopped me and said that he just wanted to have a look at my hair to see if his colleague had done a good job.

The guy appeared to be in his forties.

He had his hand in my hair, twirling it between his fingers for a few seconds.

After he said he liked it, I backed away and excused myself to leave.

I went home, which was the first home I had ever lived in without my family.

I went on about my evening as I had no one to talk to, but then the next day, the man who stopped me outside the salon was now outside of my place.

He was in his car where he had clearly been waiting.

I didn't even know he was there until I stepped out to go to work.

Right away, he offered me a ride.

I told him I didn't want to catch a ride with him, and I politely explained that I wanted to get my morning walk in as I was heading to work.

He just smiled.

I wound up seeing that same smile every single morning because he continued staking out up my place.

I'm not sure how he figured out where I lived.

I'm guessing he either followed me home from the salon or since he worked there, he might have snagged my address from their database somehow.

This went on for a couple of weeks.

It got to the point where I hated waking up because I knew I would be seeing him first thing in the morning.

He would just sit there, open his window, and tell me everything he wanted to do to me if we ever found ourselves alone.

I was young, and I had a lot of baggage due to having bad experiences in my life.

This man was persistent in trying to do things with me, but I never let him.

I told him that I wasn't interested and had a boyfriend that I loved, and that he was too old, but he didn't seem to care.

Every moment of every morning when I went out to work, I was scared of him.

He used to drive his car beside me on the street as I walked, trying to get me in the car or book a date with me.

My boyfriend at the time knew about the guy and he wanted to talk with him, but I never let him because I just really wanted to deal with it my own way and I was worried that my boyfriend would have interfered and ended up in prison.

Everything ended when my boyfriend and I were in the city.

We saw him on the street walking with his family.

He was with his wife.

They had two kids in the stroller.

I met him with a blank stare and said, Hey, I didn't know you had a wife and kids.

I went along my way after that, but when I glanced over my shoulder, I saw that his wife was furious and screaming at him.

I never wanted to upset her, but he certainly got what he deserved.

And that was the last time I ever saw him.

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This is a story that my dad told me.

It happened when he was 17.

He grew up in Platykill, New York, and their house was this old two-story place that my grandpa built way out in the woods.

This place was desolate.

There weren't any neighbors for miles, just trees everywhere.

If you've ever been upstate, you know exactly how isolating it can be.

Anyway, one night, everyone else went to the city and left my dad home alone.

It was just him and his twenty-two.

Also their German shepherd, Prince, who was police trained and supposedly fearless.

The land that the house was built on was already known for a lot of weird stuff.

People said that there was paranormal activity and even some Native American remains somewhere on the property.

So, on this night, there was a crazy thunderstorm.

Upstate New York has a lot of storms.

They would get crazy.

Whole houses would shake, the woods would get pitch black.

Well, my dad was just chilling, probably reading or listening to the radio, when out of nowhere, someone began banging on the front door.

Not just knocking, but pounding, like they were desperate or pissed off.

As I said, there was literally nobody around for miles, and the driveway was long and muddy.

There was no way someone just wandered up there, especially during a storm.

As soon as the banging started, Prince, the big, tough police dog, freaked out and bolted upstairs, and he peed himself all the way up.

My dad then grabbed the 22, followed Prince, and he ended up barricading them in a bedroom on the second floor while Prince hid under the bed, shaking.

My dad was sitting there wondering what was happening.

He thought maybe it could have been a bear, but bears don't knock like that.

The pounding continued, but it got tougher to discern, mixed with the thunder and the wind, so my dad just sat there in the dark, gun ready, heart pounding.

Eventually the banging just stopped.

The storm also died down, but it left behind this creepy silence.

In the morning, my dad went downstairs and checked the door.

Nothing was broken, but there were these muddy prints all over the porch.

To this day, he has no idea who was out there, but he swears he had never seen prints that scared before, or ever since.

So, if you ever end up alone in a house in the woods during a thunderstorm and someone begins banging on the door, maybe just stay upstairs.

I'm a 25-year-old female, and this happened when I was waiting for my then partner to finish work.

He worked at a pub in our city as a chef.

I was always done with work earlier than him, so sometimes I would have a drink and talk with the locals who frequented the bar.

One day I was outside on the balcony having a cigarette, and this guy came out and asked if he could join me.

He seemed as normal as can be.

He was wearing normal clothing and had tidy hair.

Essentially, you could walk past him on the street and easily not even notice him.

I said sure and handed him a lighter.

All seemed normal, and I felt safe, as a lot of people were out on the balcony sitting and drinking.

Our conversation started normally.

He asked what I did for work, and I reciprocated the question.

He said he was an orderly at the hospital, but then he randomly said, Don't you just wish the balcony would collapse so that everyone would fall and get crushed?

I was shocked, and I laughed a little because I thought maybe he just had a very dark sense of humor.

I then tried to change the subject and asked him more about his work.

I remember, as I did this, I looked around for my partner.

He wasn't finished with work yet, but I had hoped he was.

Asking this guy more about his job was a mistake, though.

He told me that he would often go into rooms where there were people who had been in long-term comas, and he liked to mess with them.

But the way that he talked about it, his eyes just went weird.

It was like he was excited to tell me about this.

His eyes were kind of wild when he spoke.

He had the creepiest smile stretching across his face as he talked about it.

At one point, he stared off off into the distance as he rambled on about wanting to kill one of them while they were in their coma.

I freaked out.

I jumped up and said that I needed to go to the bathroom.

I went straight up to one of the bouncers and asked for the man to be removed.

As he was being taken out, I was standing at the door watching to make sure that he left.

He began screeching and pointing at me over the bouncer who was clearly carrying him out.

He yelled, You laughed.

When When I said I wanted the balcony to collapse, you laughed.

You're in on this, too.

I felt gross and dirty after this.

I should have said something to someone, but I never did.

I didn't even tell my partner.

I just wanted this crazy guy with his crazy eyes to disappear.

This happened 15 years ago when I had just come home from college on winter break.

Where I was living during this time wasn't the house that I grew up in.

My parents had just moved closer to a city, so it just didn't feel the same.

Maybe that's what triggered my worry.

In my family, I'm always the one thinking of worst-case scenarios.

I'm distrustful in general, and I mostly seem to come off as an annoying worryward.

Call it what you will, but it's also the gift of fear.

One cold night my parents had gone upstairs to go to bed, and the dog followed suit.

I thought that I would watch some TV in the living room for a bit before going to sleep, and I settled in on the couch.

The living room was in front of the house, and with the recent move the shutters on the windows weren't there at the time.

In the interim, we only had the see-through curtains on the windows, and they were hardly drawn.

I noted this, but was used to our former rural setting, so I really didn't think anything of it.

After watching TV for about half an hour, the screen cut out, and the monitor went snowy.

This was back in the days when you watched whatever your local cable provider was able to broadcast.

I looked up from whatever I was doing and thought, well, that sucks.

While my attitude towards this was initially casual, something felt off.

I tried the remote, but no other channels were coming in, so I was sitting there trying to think of what I could do instead.

Just then, my cat jumped onto the windowsill and started wailing.

Now this may seem innocuous, but anyone who knew my cat knew this was not par for the course.

He was pacing and wailing at the window, which made a feeling of dread wash through me, and I was frozen.

That feeling of dread was so fiercely visceral.

What the hell is going on?

I thought.

What is out there?

As I tried to settle myself down in this unfamiliar, dark house, this cold waft of air blew through the room, and I heard the side door.

I honestly didn't even realize that a door was there at the time, but once I heard it, I became unfrozen and bolted.

I ran upstairs, woke my parents, and the slumbering dog, and frantically told them that someone was trying to get into the house.

They were annoyed, since, as I mentioned, I'm the worrier of the family.

But they still got up and looked around the house to try and placate me.

They went and checked all of the rooms, including the basement.

As I waited, scared and exasperated, they were sleepily roaming about in dark rooms, unarmed when God knows who had probably already made it inside.

They didn't end up finding anything, and once their search was over, they patted me on the head and said goodnight, leaving me feeling a bit foolish.

I'm not sure what prompted this, but the next morning, my parents called the police.

When they showed up, they asked me how I knew someone was there.

I was surprised that they were there and wanted to hear my story, so I started.

Well, the cat was meowing a lot on the windowsill.

As I trailed off, the cop smirked and remarked, A cat, huh?

He then went on to say that somebody had cut the cable wires on the side of the house.

He thought that whoever was out there probably thought that they were disarming some alarm, or they saw me watching TV through the window and decided to mess with me.

As for the noises I heard at the side door, the grounds were muddy, so that gave us the ability to see fresh footprints leading right up to it.

The door didn't appear to be tampered with, which struck me as strange, since I know what I heard.

I knew it, I victoriously said to my parents.

The triumphant feeling was short-lived, though.

It was true that I knew that someone was out there, but something else I knew was that from then on, I would always check that side door and take some cues from the cat, just to be safe.

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Drew and Sue and Eminem's Minis.

And baking the surprise birthday cake for Lou.

And Sue forgetting that her oven doesn't really work.

And Drew remembering that they don't have flour.

And Lou getting home early from work, which he never does.

And Drew and Sue using the rest of the tubes of M ⁇ M's minis as party poppers instead.

I think this is one of those moments where people say, it's the thought that counts.

M ⁇ Ms, it's more fun together.

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This happened when my friends and I decided to go camping on spring break.

We had planned everything a week in advance, but as our day of departure grew nearer, the weather got worse.

It was suddenly cold and gray, unheard of for Arkansas during this time of year.

The night for us to leave came along with yet another cold front.

It was in the thirties, but we had dressed warmly and stalked up on whiskey and beer.

The plan was to hit up a spot that my buddy knew of, which was barely accessible with his four by four.

We went to camp, but not in any of those designated camp sites where most families and seniors in R V s go.

So we took off away from civilization, which, for us, was only a town of about one hundred people people with a single stoplight.

After thirty minutes of bone rattling dips across dry creek beds and detours around trees, it started to rain.

By the time we found camp, it had turned into hail.

The spot that we parked was by an old VW bug along a dirt road that was a few hundred feet long.

The night was spent passing a bottle around, hoping that we would figure out the tents before we were too drunk.

Eventually we managed to set set them up, and we started a fire with diesel.

By this point, the hail had stopped, and an empty whiskey bottle lay broken in the fire.

With a decent pile of empties growing, we continued to drink and play cards until we retreated to our tents to pass out.

The next morning I gradually regained consciousness to the sound of something large being dragged past the tent.

It was something that looked to have been a station wagon at some point.

It was stripped and completely covered in rust, as it dragged the VW with a chain.

The VW had been there for so long that the floor had rotted out, and roots had anchored it to the forest floor.

A woman was driving the station wagon with a man beside her, and three shirtless kids were sitting in the back, where there should have been seat belts.

The man stared out the window, facing away from us the entire time.

The children had grime smeared on their faces and and glossy thousand-yard stairs.

Once the woman saw us, she spoke in a deep, nicotine and whiskey-soaked draw.

She asked if we were doing some camping and told us that was fine as long as we weren't doing drugs.

Then she asked, Are you doing drugs?

We weren't.

She continued.

Just drinking, then?

Hell, I like to drink now and again.

That's fine.

Just fine.

Do you want to know how I knew you were here?

See those black helicopters flying around?

They work for me.

See, this is my land, and we told them about you.

I figured it was best to check you all out.

She then started laughing.

The man beside her kept staring out at nothing, and one of the children put both of their hands on the window and gazed through at us.

Do you know Bethany?

she asked.

We didn't.

Well, everyone knows Beth, I lied.

You go to church?

she responded.

I ain't got time for those that don't fear God.

You all should come to church tomorrow.

You could see Bethany.

It's just over the hill up there.

You can't miss it.

Boy, I'm sure she'd like to see you.

They all would.

We assured her that we would, so she drove away into the trees, slowly dragging the VW.

As soon as she left, we all looked at each other and laughed.

It was just nerves, though.

There wasn't anything funny about this interaction.

We all have the remnants of a primitive warning system for danger.

It's been eroding by living safely and civilized, but every once in a while it goes off, and when it does, you should obey it without question.

Because something is wrong.

This feeling started for me even before she spoke, when I looked into her eyes.

Something was wrong.

The kids in the back seat, the man beside her, her laugh, something was just wrong.

Eventually, we did hike up the hill that she pointed out.

From the top, you could see for miles.

According to her, there was a church just beyond the hill, but we didn't see a thing, no buildings, no clearings, just forest.

We then decided to cut our trip short, so we packed up our things and left before noon.

I'm a music student at a small university in Canada.

Since I was staying the summer and not going back home, I asked the director of the program for a key to a rehearsal room so that I could have a designated practice space and stay fresh during the summer.

The building is very old and musty, and it has so many hallways and open spaces.

There are also a bunch of practice rooms, green rooms, stairwells, etcetera.

It sits near a walking trail beside the woods.

On the other side of the woods there's a marsh, and then a large basin that leads into the ocean.

I had classes in this building during my first term, and I have spent a lot of time there ever since.

I never once felt uneasy while spending time alone in the building, whether during the day or at night.

Sometimes I would stay and play music until one or two in the morning, and and I would only ever see security during their 11 p.m.

patrol.

I never had an issue, and they always announced their presence before knocking or coming around the corner where they were out of sight.

I was in this large room that I cleaned and converted into some type of studio and rehearsal space.

It used to be a wood shop for theater students.

There are two ways to get in.

One is through the main large double door that leads into the common area, fire exit, main auditorium, and theater.

The other entrance is through the percussion room door, which is secured by another door.

Essentially what I'm saying is that when I'm in there, I'm locked in at both ends.

The other night, while I was practicing, I heard the door open from out in the hallway, and just assumed it was another one of the five or so students who stayed behind over the summer.

No big deal, I thought.

A little while after that, I heard some of the music students returning gear from a show that they had played that evening, which substantiated my thought of it being no big deal.

One of them even came by my space after announcing themselves and knocking.

They just wanted to say hello, and they knew that I was in that big room rehearsing because I had a lamp on.

After a few hours of that, probably around 1:30 a.m., I started to wind wind down and back my things up.

I'm not supposed to be in that area late, but I had an important show come up and had been practicing hard.

I was sitting down near the large double door, and I could hear footsteps on the other side.

I sort of froze upon hearing this.

I immediately stopped what I was doing, just to listen.

There's a square hole in the wall.

It's about one and a half inches by one and a half inches, and I assume an exhaust vent used to be installed there to remove sawdust and all that debris as the theater students were building sets and props.

While cleaning the room and turning it into my rehearsal space, I put a thin piece of plastic over this hole.

I didn't do it for any reason in particular.

I just happened to find this piece of plastic and thought, huh, that would fit right in the hole.

So I put it there.

As I was sitting in the chair, continuing to quietly listen, I stared at the door.

Then I saw someone bend down and look right into the hole.

Whoever this was looked into the practice room right at me, and then quickly straightened back up before darting out of sight.

The hole was lower on the wall, probably at thigh height.

I was so focused on the door and looking at the crack underneath that I only caught this person peering through the hole out of the corner of my eye, but then they quickly moved away from it.

So I barely saw who it was, but I caught that they were wearing brown and had black hair.

I couldn't think of any students matching that description, and I knew no one from security would bend down and look at me through that hole.

They're usually hard asses as they patrol and always announce themselves.

Plus, it was 1.30 a.m., so I knew this wasn't another student or someone from security.

If security was around, they surely would have kicked me out, and they probably would have been pissed that I was there that late.

Still frozen, I didn't know what to do, I just nervously called out Hello?

Who's there?

But nobody answered.

I felt so creeped out that I just sat there in silence, waiting for another sound, or someone to just say, Hey, it's me, I'm messing around with you.

But there was nothing.

I literally sat there for about five to ten minutes, looking around quietly.

I was covered in goosebumps, since I was pretty scared.

About ten minutes later, I could hear the sound of someone walking away towards the front of the building.

I heard the sound of jeans rubbing together and a jacket rustling as they were walking.

I packed up so fast after that.

I left most of my music stuff set up and just exited through the main door and out the fire exit as fast as I possibly could.

Luckily, I only only live about a five minute walk away, but I was checking over my shoulder the entire time to make sure that nobody was following me.

This really scared me, especially since I knew all of the music students who were staying at the school over the summer.

If the person who peered at me through the hole was a student, they absolutely would have said hi.

And, like I said, if it were security, they would have 100% kicked me out and told me to go home.

My only worry is that it was someone who was up to something something sneaky, trying to steal something from the school or something worse.

The main doors are open all day, even over the summer, so anybody can just walk into the theater and wander around.

Security does come around at 11 p.m.

every night, and that's when the doors will finally get locked, so thankfully, that minimizes the chance of someone sneaking in at night.

But there's not much stopping someone from walking in during the day and just hiding out.

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These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to progressive and save hundreds.

Because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home, and more.

Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help you when you need it.

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Not available in all states or situations.

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I wanted to share this story because the person this involves recently tried to send a friend request to my husband on Facebook, and it brought back all of these crazy memories.

I just need to vent.

I got married right when I turned 18.

I was a very book smart kid, but I lacked street smarts.

By the time I turned 20, my now ex-husband and I had moved into a rental property in a nice suburb outside of Chicago.

In the basement of the house, there was a big mother-in-law suite, where a good male friend of ours, Nick, lived as well.

I was about halfway through nursing school at this time.

During this particular semester of nursing school, I had a very early clinical rotation once a week.

I'm not a morning person, so in order to maximize the amount of time I spent asleep, I started loading all of my stuff into my car the night before.

Bags, books, even my purse.

Again, I was lacking street smarts here.

One night before clinicals, I asked my ex-husband Bobby to get a book from my car.

He did this, but he forgot to lock the car doors afterwards, so the next morning when I got to my car, I immediately noticed that my purse was gone.

I filed a police report for this.

I was mostly concerned because I had just gotten this new job as a nurse's aide at a hospital, so I had my social security card in my wallet.

Almost immediately after the theft, strange things started to happen.

We started getting ding-dong ditched at all hours of the day and night, and someone vandalized my car and and Bobby's car with strange graffiti.

Nick's car was vandalized as well.

His tires were slashed.

Our house was egged as well.

At first we just chalked this all up to neighborhood pranksters, but once we started having damages that cost a decent amount of money to repair, we called the police.

Not to mention, one day when Bobby was mowing the lawn, he noticed piles of cigarette butts outside the bedroom window.

The police came out, but pretty much did nothing besides take the report and tell us to consider investing in car alarms and some brighter floodlights for the driveway.

A few weeks after all of this, at 2.30 in the morning, I got a call on my cell phone.

It was the police in a neighboring town.

They had picked up someone who had my ID on them, somebody named Craig.

When they asked him why he had somebody else's ID on him, he claimed I was his girlfriend.

The cop called me because my name had popped up since I had filed a police report for theft.

I assured the cops I had never heard of him before and was told that I could pick up my ID at the police station within the next few days.

Things escalated even more at that point, but I still didn't make the connection that any of these incidents were related.

I then started getting strange messages on MySpace as well as on Facebook.

These messages were typically long winded.

They didn't make any sense, and they were clearly from fake accounts.

This person started messaging friends of mine as well.

I deleted MySpace and blocked the person on Facebook, but new accounts kept getting created.

Somehow this person got my email address and started sending emails to me.

I had no idea who they could be, but they seemed to know details about me, which indicated that this was either someone I knew or possibly a friend of a friend.

The messages weren't overtly threatening, but they were creepy enough that I was becoming uncomfortable.

One night, my friend Lauren and I were sitting on the couch watching TV.

Bob, Lauren's husband, and a few other friends had gone out for the night.

As we were just sitting around chilling, we heard something that sounded like somebody shaking the garage door.

It was an attached garage, so I went out to check out the garage, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

We had occasional issues with raccoons, so I chalked it up to that, but the noise continued, and it started freaking us both out.

The sounds that we were hearing then moved to the kitchen window.

We heard the distinct sound of somebody knocking and scratching hard on the windows.

We called our husbands, but they didn't answer.

We debated calling the police but hesitated because what if it was an animal or tree branches?

We didn't want to seem stupid.

As we debated, I saw Lauren's face go sheet white as she looked past me.

I spun around and I could see the handle on the front door wiggling.

Thankfully, it was locked.

We were seated near the kitchen, but this made us spring to our feet.

Loring grabbed a knife from the butcher block on the counter, and I went for the small hammer that was in the junk drawer.

We then booked it to the back of the house, where the bedrooms were, cell phone in hand, and locked ourselves in one of the bedrooms to call the police.

The dispatcher told us to stay on the line and move furniture in front of the door if it was possible to do so.

As they let us know that the police were on the way, we shoved a dresser in front of the door while we clutched onto the weapons that we pulled from the kitchen.

We remarked that if this person made their way in, they better be bigger or stronger than us since we're not going down without a fight.

We decided that if this person got inside before the cops came, I would go for their head with the hammer while Lauren went for the gut with the knife.

The cops showed up, banged on the front door, and announced themselves as the police.

We saw the red and blue lights through the window, so we left the room and let the cops in.

They didn't find any signs of somebody being present and saw no evidence of an attempted break-in.

As they took a report, our husbands finally called us back.

Then they came home and the cops left.

A few months later, a very close friend of ours, Sean, was renovating his apartment and needed a place to crash along with his girlfriend.

Bob and I decided to stay in the third bedroom in our house.

On the first night Sean was staying with us, we were awakened at two in the morning by Sean screaming at someone.

Bob and I jumped up out of bed and rushed into the hall to get to Sean's room.

Sean and his girlfriend were wide awake with the lights on, looking completely freaked out.

The screen on the window was sliced open and flopping in the wind.

Sean told us that he woke up to a man using what appeared to be a knife on the screen.

After he sliced it, he started climbing through the window.

We called the cops, so they came out and took his statement.

Sean described the guy as best as he could.

He said that it was a young-looking male with a semi-shaved head and what looked like darker hair.

The cops dusted for fingerprints, and it came back as a match for Craig, the guy who had my ID.

Turns out, I knew who he was, vaguely.

He was a year younger than than me, and although we had gone to the same high school, I couldn't remember having any significant interactions with him.

He lived with his parents only a few blocks from my parents' house.

I ended up reaching out to high school acquaintances who knew him, and they remembered him as a nice but odd kid.

The consensus was that he was kind of quiet but definitely on the strange side, and he dropped out of school before graduation.

Upon realizing that Sean had just moved in, the cops made a statement that chilled us all.

They said

He probably didn't realize anyone was staying in this bedroom, and thought that the room would be empty.

So then the cops went to his parents' house and arrested him.

As they were doing so he suddenly had quite a story for them.

He said that he and I were secret lovers.

He told them that I had been ignoring him, but we were in a relationship.

He also claimed that he had been allowed into my home many times.

I was floored.

He ended up being charged with something like trespassing or breaking and entering.

He was sentenced to very light time for it, maybe a month, and had to pay a fine.

In the meantime, I got a restraining order on him.

When he got out, I didn't hear anything from him.

I also developed a completely irrational fear of first-floor windows.

By the time Christmas of twenty ten rolled around, I was twenty three.

It had been three years since all of this started, but I figured the whole Craig thing was in the past.

Bob and I decided to divorce, for reasons unrelated to this, and we went our separate ways.

Also, our other friend, Nick, had long since moved out.

After the lease ended, I moved into a less desirable suburb that had more affordable rent.

I settled on an apartment in a four-unit building that had a locked entrance.

The only way in was with a key or someone opening the door from the inside.

I lived on the second floor.

By this time I had graduated and was now a nurse and working at a nursing home.

The following spring, weird things started up again.

I was having calls coming through to me at work, but the caller kept hanging up.

Letters suddenly appeared in the staff-only mail-box.

They were addressed to me with no return address.

Then the strange emails started up again, and I was getting them from a bunch of random accounts.

The messages were never overtly threatening, but they were long and happened far too frequently.

I could tell that this was Craig again, and he was speaking to me, as though we were long lost friends, with some sort of connection.

I don't think he ever threatened to hurt me, although the cutting of the screen with the knife to get into my house is a little ominous.

I don't know what was going through his mind.

What I somewhat managed to piece together over the years from all of his ramblings was that he had some sort of crush on me when we were younger, even though, as I said, I never remember even speaking to him during high school.

He said that he was interpreting the fact that he happened to rob my car as a sign from the universe, implying that we were meant to be together.

I called the cops, but they essentially told me that since no threats had been made, there was nothing they could do other than watch and wait.

So I continued getting emails, random calls, and letters to my workplace until finally, one night, I woke up at two in the morning.

My doorbell was ringing, and I was instantly in a panic.

I looked out the window, and there, illuminated by my floodlight, was Craig.

I burst out crying, and in my half-awake state, I ran across the hall and started banging on the neighbor's door.

The man in the apartment across from mine was an older, divorced guy who lived alone.

He went downstairs, confronted Craig, and told him that the cops had been called, so he took off.

I filed a report, and the cops claimed that they would go talk to him, but this only made things worse.

Some friends I had on Facebook were getting random messages from Craig.

He was asking about me and telling them that he had important information for me.

Other times, he would alternate his approach and tell my friends that I owed him money and needed to pay off my debt.

My friends ended up having to block him.

Around this time, my younger sister was living in the city with a few friends.

He somehow found out where she was living.

He drove to her apartment and confronted her while she had people over.

She was freaked out.

So her friend kicked him out.

She called the cops who again didn't do anything.

They just stated that he didn't commit a crime and offered her a restraining order.

Right after this, there was another incident involving another family member.

My younger cousin is a high school senior who's on the cross-country team.

He showed up at my cousin's practice.

My cousin had no clue who he was, but he was demanding information about me.

My cousin's coach got involved, and Craig got into a physical altercation with the coach.

The cops were called, and he was banned from the school grounds.

But that was it.

After all of this, he called the nursing home administrator at my job.

He asked him to talk to me since he said he had important information to tell me.

The administrator, who was aware of the situation, told him not to come onto the property, or he would get arrested for trespassing.

This made me paranoid beyond measure.

But then, just as quickly as he started with all of this, he faded away, at least momentarily.

The summer of twenty twelve was the finale of this saga.

I was almost twenty-five, and my friend, named Stacey, who was incidentally Sean's ex, moved in with me and my roommate temporarily while she looked for a place.

She was dating a new guy and spent quite a few nights at his place.

One day, I picked up a double shift.

It started at 7 a.m.

and ended at 11.30 p.m.

Stacy texted me at around 3.30 p.m.

stating that she wouldn't be home that night since she was out with a guy.

I arrived home at almost midnight.

The first thing I noticed noticed was that the door was unlocked.

This made me uneasy, but I thought Stacy or my roommate might have just forgotten to lock it.

As such, I cautiously peered inside.

As I panned my gaze to the kitchen and the living room, I couldn't shake this unsettling feeling.

Something wasn't right.

Due to all of these incidents, I always made sure that one or two lights were on even when nobody was home.

I wasn't even fully in the door when I noticed that I was staring into a pitch black apartment.

This immediately made my brain full on panic.

I am glad that it did since, realistically, Stacy or my roommate could have forgotten to leave the light on.

But I knew that wasn't it.

My instincts were in overdrive and sounding off major alarm bells.

I had a neighbor in another unit who was known for his weekend parties, and I could hear a party going on downstairs, so I booked it down the stairs, burst into the party, and told him what was going on.

My neighbor looked at me like I was crazy, but he agreed to go upstairs with me.

We went inside my apartment and he looked around, but we didn't find anyone.

Honestly, at that moment, I was starting to wonder if I was just nuts.

My neighbor agreed that maybe I was being paranoid and then he jokingly pulled open the pantry door.

The visual of what I saw next will never leave my mind.

There, crouched inside the pantry, was Craig.

My neighbor immediately put him into a chokehold while I called the police.

The cops came out and he was arrested.

Since my neighbor was having a party, he had the main door open to the alleyway, so chances are, Craig saw the open door door and just walked right into the building.

He probably figured if anyone noticed him, they'd just assume he was there for the party.

So it was easy to figure out how he got into the building, but I have no idea how he got into the apartment itself.

My theory is, my roommate at the time was from the countryside.

She was just used to leaving the doors unlocked and wide open, so I think locking up must have just slipped her mind when she went out the door for the night.

I confronted her about it and she, of course, denied it, but that's the only logical way that he could have gotten in.

I always locked the knob lock and the deadbolt whenever I left the house, so unless he was a skilled locksmith, I have no idea how else he could have gotten in.

I didn't stay home alone or go anywhere by myself for a long time after that.

I feel that I actually developed paranoia because of all of this, since I'm highly suspicious of giving my number or any any information out to anyone.

He ended up being charged and convicted of aggravated stalking, breaking and entering, and some other charges.

I met his parents in court who were both shockingly, very normal and apologetic people.

They tried explaining their son's behavior.

They claimed that he was mentally ill and suffered from bipolar disorder.

When he's medicated, he's okay.

When he's off his meds, he's nuts, they said.

After he served time, I didn't hear from him for years, until 2016 when he found me on Facebook.

I was much older by then, around 29.

I replied to him very firmly and stated that any further contact would result in the police being called, and I said that I had no interest in him at all.

Then I blocked him in every way that I could.

Recently, he found my new husband on Facebook and sent him a friend request, but my husband blocked him as well.

To this day, I still have paranoia.

I had parked my car near a baseball diamond after all of this happened.

Some kids most likely hit a baseball into my windshield and took off since I had a perfect baseball-sized spider crack on the glass.

Despite it being completely logical that this was most likely a ball, I still couldn't help reverting to, oh my god, he's back.

I also am now a total psycho when it comes to things being locked.

I have an acquaintance who monitors Craig on Facebook, which has been easy to do since his page is in on private.

From what I hear, he appears to go through periods where he is pretty inactive, and then out of nowhere he'll show up and start up with his rambling and over sharing while he acts generally deranged.

Part of me feels bad for him.

I'm older now, and I've been a nurse for almost ten years, some of which was spent in a psych speciality.

The mind is a hell of a thing.

Looking back, though, those were some of the worst years of my adult life.

He put me through a lot of anxiety and caused a lot of issues for me.

I slept with my couch pushed against my apartment door for the next two years before I moved out of there.

I'm now married, but on nights when I'm home alone, I still find myself resisting the urge to stack furniture in front of the doors.

Another product of this situation is that Craig either sold, lost, or gave away the social security card that I had in my purse.

Someone tried to file for Medicaid benefits in Arizona using my name and social.

This person was able to obtain a job using my social, but they failed to pay any taxes, leaving me with the surprise asset freeze from the IRS and a whole financial mess that needed to be untangled before they unfroze my accounts and paid me back.

My credit was extremely messed up for years because of it, and to this day, I have a lock on my social security number and monitor my accounts like a hawk.

The moral of the story is: never leave your purse in the car and always lock your doors.

Thanks for listening.

Send your stories into Let's Not Meet Stories if you'd like to hear them on the show.

And stick around after the music if you're a patron for your extended version of this week's episode.

If you'd like to get access, head to patreon.com forward slash Let's Not Meet podcast, where you'll get access to ad-free versions of all of our episodes at a higher bit rate, plus bonus content every single week with stories you won't hear anywhere else.

And be sure to check out the new episodes of my other podcasts like Odd Trails and the Old Time Radio Cast at crypticcountypodcasts.com and follow me on Twitch at twitch.tv/slash cryptic county for my live streams.

This week you have heard Dog Walking Encounter by Miles K.

Solomon, The First Time I Went to a Hairdresser by Helen Elias,

The Night the Woods Knocked by Lisa, Pub Creep by Creech84, Trust Your Gut, Your Dog, or Your Cat by Emile Six.

In the Middle of the Woods by Justin Blevins, Alone at School by Mewtwo's Son, and finally, A Decade of Stalking by Paradoxical Mind420.

All of the stories you've heard this week were narrated and produced with the permission of their respective authors.

Let's Not Meet, a true horror podcast, is not associated with Reddit or any other message boards online.

If you have a story to share, send it to let's not meetstories at gmail.com to hear it on the show.

We'll see you next week.

Everybody, stay safe.

I'm a 32-year-old female, and this happened to me six years ago.

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