11. There was a woman outside my front door, waiting for me to open it
Two and a half years ago, I woke up in the middle of the night because my wife's Chihuahua was barking at the front door. This wasn't a rare occurrence by any means, and usually my wife and I would think nothing about it because that dog would bark at anything, and I assumed that it was just a car going by or something like that.
Usually, my wife is the one to settle the dog down but she was three months pregnant with our child and obviously needed sleep, so I got up to go and see what the fuss was about.
Our other, bigger dog was cowering in the bathroom, which was a habit of his because he's a rescue and would run and hide at the slightest noises. I thought nothing of it and went to the living room, where I found the Chihuahua going absolutely nuts.
I picked him up to try and calm him down when I just got this feeling that I needed to check the front door. I have learned to always listen to those feelings, and so I carefully peeked out the curtains of the nearest window (which thankfully gives you a direct view of the porch area and the front door).
On the porch was a woman, mid-thirties, disheveled, and looking like she'd crawled out of a sewer. Her clothing was ripped and her face was dirt-streaked, just generally a bit dirty looking. And then I noticed that she had a kitchen knife in her hand, and she was just standing there, patiently.
I immediately went and called the police. Long story short, they came, but she had left in the two minutes that it took me to call the cops and then check on her again. They never found her.
What scares me most about the situation is that my wife is the first one to leave in the mornings and that she could've walked straight into a trap. Needless to say, we did end up moving and we never doubted the instincts of a Chihuahua again.
10. Attempted kidnapping in Walmart
There are tons of stories on social media of women fearing for their lives in stores. I can't speak to the validity of their stories, but I can tell you mine.
I was working a job that sometimes had late hours and I would blow off steam in my local Walmart afterward, either to pick up groceries or to just walk around to wind down before bed.
When I pulled up to the parking lot there were two men hanging out in the almost deserted parking lot. I sat in my car for a minute because they scared me.
I almost didn't go in, that's how much of a bad vibe they were giving me. They were sitting on the hood and it wasn't until two other people showed up, that I decided I felt safe enough to walk in with the two new people.
The other two men followed.
I did my shopping as usual across the store, until I realized I was being followed. The two men waiting outside previously were suddenly in my eye-line every time I looked up. They were across from me in the makeup aisle. They were down the aisle from me in the house goods section. Down the aisle from me by the groceries.
So I decided I would test them to see if they were following me. I walked to my left and one of the men ended up looking at women's bathing suits while he was watching me. That was it, there was no denying now.
As I made my way towards the front to the checkout, I saw one of the men sprint out the front door ahead of me. As I checked out my items, the second made his way out the door. That's when I decided, this was really going to happen if I went out those doors. Those men were going to take me.
I decided to get an escort. It took a long time for me to find someone working. It was already after 12 a.m. and most people were stocking, but when I finally did, I told them I didn't feel safe that those men were following me and that I wanted an escort.
In that time, the second man came BACK into the store to see what was taking me so long. The manager said they had been hanging out in the parking lot all day. So the manager finally found a man to walk me out and what I saw when we walked out will stay with me forever.
The first man was crouched down, off to the right of the doors, as if he was going to jump someone from behind.
When I saw his face, he knew that I knew what he was doing, and he ran to his car, called his buddy, (I'm assuming), he got on the phone real quick, and went and sat in the car while I was escorted.
I called the police as I drove away. I should have done it inside the store. That’s my one big regret.
| jendsan
9. She was holding a fake baby
This happened two years ago. A typical normal day in my suburban neighborhood. My wife asked me to run to the grocery store for something. It was around 2 or 3 p.m.
When she asked me, I was sitting in the dining room, which was right next to the garage, so instead of walking to the front door, and then all the way around the front of my house to my car in the driveway, I just went out the door next to me that led into the garage. I hit the button to open the garage door, and it started to rise.
I walked over to the door and ducked to walk out before it was finished rising. I stopped dead in my tracks when there were two people standing right in front of me in my driveway: a man and a woman.
This caught me totally off guard, and I probably muttered some type of hello, and then asked if I could help them with something.
Before I had time to focus on their response, I noticed the woman wasn't looking at me like the man was. She was holding a fake baby in her arms, cradling it and telling it to "shhh, shhh."
I looked over to the man, and without missing a beat, he asked me if I could give them a ride to the store. I made up some excuse why I couldn't take them, even though that's where I was going, and the man's face turned red. The woman never looked up at me and I walked around them and got in my car. I locked it, hit the garage door opener on my visor, and then called my wife.
Meanwhile, the man is glaring at me through my windshield. I told my wife what was going on, and to make sure all the doors and windows were locked, just in case.
Before backing out of my driveway, I waited for the two people to start walking away, and eventually, they did. I asked my wife if she wanted me to stay, but she wasn't worried and told me it was fine, that she'd still like me to go get what she needed. The grocery store was only a couple miles away from my house, and I grabbed the item, paid, and left as quickly as possible, still kind of worried about the strange encounter I had.
As I was driving back home, I saw the two people walking down the sidewalk towards me. The woman was still looking down, and the man saw me and again, got very obviously upset, and then walked out into the middle of the road in front of me. He was saying something, but I drove around him and continued home.
My wife called the local non-emergency number, and they told us they'd send an available officer to the area to drive around and take a look.
I never saw them again. I have no idea if they were going house to house asking for a ride, or what. A part of me feels bad, thinking they just wanted a ride to the store, but the whole encounter was just too bizarre.
8. The car chase
So, this happened about nine years ago when I was a 17-year-old teenager. I was a wild girl and was often getting into trouble with my two friends Amy and Jackie.
This one particular night, I was dropping them off after staying out late doing our usual shenanigans. It was about 3 a.m. and they lived less than a mile from my house in a safe neighborhood.
First, I dropped Jackie off and next, I was going to drop off Amy. They lived one street over from each other off of a (normally) busy two-lane road, with a median separating the traffic. But this night, we were the only car on the road.
That is, until I saw headlights coming straight for us. I originally thought a car was coming from the opposite side of traffic, but it wasn’t.
I started frantically honking my horn because it was picking up speed and getting closer. I got as far right as possible and put on the brakes, bracing myself for a possible collision. Once the car was directly to the left of us, it abrasively skidded to a halt.
I could see the figure of an older man, between the ages of 50-60, with grey hair, and glasses. I thought maybe he was having a medical emergency. I rolled down my window and started yelling “Sir, are you alright? Do you need medical attention?”
And this guy was staring straight ahead with his hands on 10 and 2. Not moving a muscle. So I repeated “Sir? Are you okay? Can you hear me? Do you need me to call 911?”
This dude ever so slowly turned his head to face us and I repeated the questions for a third time, feeling uneasy now but still concerned. He still hadn’t uttered a word when he slowly got out of his car and just stood there. In the middle of the road. Staring at Amy and I.
Slowly, a smile started blooming on his face and I realized it’s time to get out of here. I quickly put my car in gear, but when I do, this dude starts sprinting towards us.
Now we’re both screaming obscenities at each other. I looked in my rearview mirror and this guy was standing in the middle of the road, motionless.
I decided to loop around to see if he was still there and because I still had to drop Amy off. We looped around to the same road in maybe three minutes and he was nowhere to be found.
He and his car are gone, with the only proof of our encounter the skid marks left behind.
Nine years later and I still have no idea what happened. Did he need medical attention? Probably not because he stood up and chased us. Why didn’t he speak? Why was he driving on the wrong side of the road? And why was he moving so slowly?
7. Landlords from hell
When I was in my early twenties and living in Chicago, I wasn’t making much money. When I found this apartment it seemed too good to be true — the top floor of a duplex with six rooms for $775 a month.
The agent who showed me the apartment stressed to me that the landlords were very religious. I didn’t have a problem with that, even if it did sound a little ominous.
The landlords were an elderly couple that lived downstairs. They seemed OK at first. When I saw them in the yard they would smile at me. I took good care of the house. Then, when they saw I was having my boyfriend over, things started to get really weird.
One time, I was in my kitchen cooking. My boyfriend was at work and I was by myself when I heard what sounded like the click of a door. I walked into the hallway and looked around. I didn’t see anyone at the end of the hallway. I poked my head into all of the rooms, but nobody was there. Then I looked down the staircase leading to their house and the neighbor lady was standing there, staring me down.
I screamed. She flinched and stepped back into her apartment and swung the door shut.
After that, every time I left the house (and I spent every possible moment out of the house after that incident), I would come back and something would have been moved. A window would be shut. Once, the shower was dripping and my towel was damp. I couldn’t lock the door because since it was technically a door to their house, they were the only ones with the key.
The knocking got so frequent (three or four times a day) that me and my boyfriend propped up an old mattress so we wouldn’t have to hear it while we slept.
The second to last straw was when I opened the door for work and the stairs were gone. I physically could not leave my house because there were no stairs. They had been dismantled and were sitting on the porch. I called the landlords repeatedly but they didn’t answer. Finally, their son came out of the house and explained that they were remodeling their porch. He told me I had to cut through their apartment downstairs.
I descended the stairs and opened the door and they were both sitting at their filthy kitchen table, staring at me. The phone was in its cradle. They must have heard it ringing. They kept staring at me with this blank look on their faces. I crossed their kitchen and left out their back door.
A few days later I came home from my job and noticed the bathroom floor was almost completely flooded, like somebody left a faucet or the shower on. The old woman, seeing that I had come home, came upstairs and knocked, screaming at me that I had flooded the bathroom and that her son had to come up to fix it. I was so run down at this point that I just told her it was OK.
Her son came by a few hours later. He was wasted. I told him that I needed an hour or so before he came in and he picked something up and swung it at me. It was a massive wrench.
I somehow ducked out of the way and he stumbled over. I booked it down the newly repaired stairs as quickly as possible and called the police. They came by and took down a complaint but claimed since there was no physical contact they couldn’t do anything. I learned later that the old couple had a daughter on the force.
In the middle of the night, my boyfriend, several of his friends and I packed all of our stuff into a Chevy Astro. We lived in hotels and the van for a month until we found another house. The landlords never attempted to contact us again.
6. A night walk
I am female, almost 38 years old and would like to tell you about an experience that I had with my dog one time. It's been about 11 years.
It was an autumn night and I decided to take a little walk around our housing estate with my dog Sunny. Sunny is a big black Labrador hybrid. She is really good and cuddly, but she hates other female dogs. She also has a strong protective instinct and always snarls when she doesn't know or doesn't like someone or something.
There were no street lights inside the settlement that night. The only lighting was from the house entrances. There was a small park with small playgrounds between the rows of houses. But, as already mentioned, everything was in complete darkness.
So Sunny couldn’t be seen, just heard now and then when she was chasing a rabbit into the bushes since she wasn’t on a leash.
So while I strolled comfortably through the dark settlement, Sunny ran happily through the area and the bushes. At some point I noticed a small shadow that was whizzing around me. When I looked more closely, I could see Sunny. She ran in large circles around me and the place where I was and I thought she was chasing something. But the circles she drew grew smaller and smaller. She didn't make any noise and I went on.
At some point, I didn't see her anymore, but I went on, knowing she would follow. Then I heard a sound — footsteps — but they weren't my own. I was startled because they were so close behind me so suddenly. I turned around but couldn't see anything thanks to the darkness. I got nervous and called for Sunny because it could have been someone with a dog. Sunny didn't come and I panicked. She suddenly stood in front of me out of nowhere and began to growl violently as she’d never done before. My blood froze because this couldn't have been a good thing. And then she started walking straight ahead, growling, about 6 to 8 feet and stopped, and at that moment I saw a figure, completely in black.
This person didn't move and Sunny started barking like there was no tomorrow. The person slowly walked backward, towards the lighted house entrances.
Since it was so dark, the man must not have seen Sunny and she must have surprised him at the right moment. Sunny started to jump and at that moment the guy let out a scream. You could hear something falling from his hand onto the ground. He ran and my dog followed. After I recovered from the shock, I called out to Sunny as loud as I could, until after a short time she was standing in front of me again, wagging her tail. I put her on the leash and then went to where the guy had dropped something and indeed, there was an arm-thick branch on the floor that he certainly didn't have with him to throw sticks…
I was and still am so grateful for this great dog!
5. The hotel knocker
My boyfriend and I had to go to Atlanta this weekend (following social distancing). We weren't in the heart of the city, but a little outside of it. We've been here many times before and it's always been safe for us. We might have been a little too naive.
We got to the hotel around 7 p.m. My boyfriend wanted to take a shower so I said I would go to the McDonald’s drive-thru. I went to McDonald’s by myself at 8 pm and was back at about 8:15 p.m. The hotel we are staying in is right next to a mall and strip of restaurants and shops, but somehow still a little secluded. The front faces a big empty lot, and the back is a freight shipping place.
When I was walking in, I noticed two guys in the empty parking lot across the street with no car in sight. Weird, but I was already in the front door so I wasn't nervous.
My boyfriend and I were just eating and watching TV. At about 10:00 p.m., I heard an alarm. I said to my boyfriend, "Someone must have gone out the emergency exit." He looked outside and saw that it was our car alarm going off. The key was on the side table the whole time, so we didn't accidentally press it. He said he was going to turn off the alarm since it wasn't working through the window. I didn't think anything of this.
Right when he left I had an overwhelming feeling of dread and anxiety. It hit me like a train. I immediately got up and locked the deadbolt. I laughed at myself for doing this, thinking I was paranoid. I then went to look out the window to check if he turned it off and was on his way up so I could get ready to unlock the deadbolt. When I looked out I saw a guy in the empty parking lot. I called my boyfriend and said, "Don't go outside, just click it from the lobby, there is someone in the parking lot." He said I was paranoid, but he always goes along for my peace of mind.
All of a sudden, I heard a light knock. I thought it was my boyfriend, but I'm no idiot. I always look through the peephole, and I'm so glad I did. I looked through and my heart sank. It was a man…staring straight through the peephole like he was trying to look in! That alone could have given me a heart attack, especially because it's a fisheye so he looked huge. He had a dark beard and a black or navy blue sweatshirt with a hood.
Obviously, I was not opening the door. I wanted to call my boyfriend, but I didn't want the man to know I was in the room. I went into the bathroom, called my boyfriend, and whispered, "Someone is at the door, please come back" The knocks started getting louder and louder. The man didn't say anything though. Maybe because it was late, or maybe he was drunk and had the wrong room?
Then, silence. I wanted to know if he was still there, but I dreaded seeing him in the fisheye peephole again. My legs were like lead walking over. But, to my surprise, he was gone. Not even 10 seconds later, I heard frantic knocking that made my heart drop yet again, but I heard my boyfriend’s voice. I opened the door, and he said right when he turned into the hallway, before he could even say anything, the man booked it down the fire exit.
Maybe the two things weren't related at all, but it seemed way too weird and eerie to me. We told the front desk the next morning what happened, but since it was all so odd and potentially not connected we didn't call the cops or anything. We have left though and are back home thankfully!
4. Ran from a creep at university campus
So, I live in a city in Ontario, Canada. I was attending university for science and it was the end of the semester, so no more classes, just exams.
I had to go to one of the science buildings at the school to drop something off to a professor I was doing work on the side for. The science building was one of the separate buildings from the main university center. The school was empty. There were no students anywhere since exams were going on and classes were done.
I decided to go in the side entrance to the building since it was closer to the parking lot. As I approached the side entrance door, I saw a man, maybe 40 years old, with glasses, shoulder-length, greasy brown hair and a blue jean jacket standing against the wall by the door.
I walk up to the door, smile at him, and he just looks at me with this dreadful straight face and "dead" eyes. It was like looking into something but not a person. He just seemed VERY out of place.
As soon as I walked through the door he turned behind me to walk inside as well. I started walking down the hallway and he followed me. I started walking faster and so did he. I made the turns down various hallways to get where I needed to go and he was literally right behind me.
I started running. He starts to run as well but I outran him and took a sharp corner into the first room I saw, which had some students studying in it.
I told them I was being followed and they peeked their heads out of the room to check and see where the guy went. They came back into the room and said he looked really angry and was looking in the bathrooms and other empty classrooms. I was SO scared.
15 minutes later, he left the hallway. I had the other students walk me to my car and I drove home. I called campus security when I got home and told them about the experience. Sure enough, they had him on camera literally chasing me down the hallways. There was a notice put out for students to watch out for that man.
I really wonder what he wanted. I think maybe he would have tried to steal my backpack? Or worse. It was one of the scariest experiences in my life.
| kellybad
3. The ballad of crazy Tim
A few years back I had just moved into a new condo with one of my long time friends. It was a cozy little place, a very party and drama free zone for the most part, which suited me just fine.
While we were moving in, we met the previous tenants, a very sweet older woman and her son, who was maybe a few years older than I was. She explained that they used to live in the condo before us and had just recently moved out, since they had saved up enough money to buy their own across the way from us. All and all she seemed like a very sweet older woman, and the son (henceforth referred to as Tim) seemed nice enough. He was incredibly quiet, didn't say a word and wouldn't make eye contact with us, but I just figured he was the shy, introverted type.
Maybe a month or so into our stay, I ran into Tim while I was getting my mail and he looked noticeably worse than the last time I'd seen him, to the point I barely recognized him. He looked like he had lost about 20 pounds, had scratch marks all over his neck, shaved his head completely, and was way more jumpy and fidgety. I exchanged a few pleasantries with him when he suddenly dumped the story about how he and his girlfriend had broken up onto me.
He explained that he had wanted to move in with her, get married and start a family, but that his girlfriend was reluctant to do so. He went on for at least five minutes, complaining about anything and everything about his relationship and going into way too much detail for my liking.
Meanwhile, I was just standing there, nodding along, holding my mail and wondering when he was going to stop. Eventually, he wrapped up and thanked me for listening since he had been holding it in for so long, and told me how beautiful I was. I thought it was kinda weird at the time, but brushed it off as him just being socially awkward. It wasn't long after that when the visits started happening.
At least once a week he would knock at our door, asking if he could look around for something he was sure that he had forgotten to grab when he was moving out. He would never find anything, of course, and it was pretty obvious that he was just coming over to try to see me, since he would just kinda linger around trying to make conversation. I thought it was a harmless little crush, and that it would fizzle out in time once he realized that I wasn't interested. This went on for a week or two, with his visits becoming more frequent and his attempts and flirting becoming more blatant and him asking me out several times, with me doing my best to let him down gently each time.
Eventually, I got tired of it all and asked him to stop coming by, but that only led to him "coincidently" running into me every other day. To make matters worse, he was now starting to leave poetry taped to our door, which my roommate found to be hilarious at first until they started to go further off the deep end. They had started off as typical mushy poetry, but eventually, they started turning into quasi-religious nonsensical rants that would be pages long, mostly talking about how he was an angel or some other kind of divine being. I went to the security team and the police several times, but neither one seemed to care all that much, since he apparently hadn't done anything illegal. However, the security team said they would talk to him.
Fast forward a few weeks, and it was summertime. My roommate went on vacation with her family, and I had the whole apartment to myself for two weeks. To make matters better, I hadn't seen or received any new letters from Tim.
I was lounging in my room when I heard someone knocking at the door, but, by the time I got up to check, nobody was there. I was getting ready to go back to my room when I heard a loud and strange sound coming from the balcony — which was connected to my room by a window. It sounded like something was being ripped or snapped off and, a second or two later, I heard the sound of something heavy hitting the floor of my room. I immediately ran out the front door, running as fast as I could to the security office.
To make a long story slightly shorter, the police eventually came down and pulled Tim out of my room. Apparently he had tried using his old apartment key on the door, but didn't know the locks had been changed when he and his mom moved out. When I didn't answer the door fast enough when he knocked, he somehow managed to climb up 15 feet onto the balcony and rip off the screen on my window, easily managing to slip in since I had kept the window open to get fresh air.
He must’ve been on something because he told the police that I was the reincarnation of Mary and, in order for Jesus Christ to be reborn and save the world, I would need to have his child.
I moved out the next day and never looked back. It didn't exactly go over well with my roommate or the landlord, but I just couldn't stay there after that.
2. Eerie encounter with a family in a black SUV
A few nights ago, this happened to me and I keep thinking about it.
Now, I work in the criminal justice field where I see a lot of crime and am also naturally a follower of scary movies and scary stories in general, so I have to disclaim that I do have a heightened sense of paranoia sometimes, but my girlfriend and her roommate both agreed this was weird.
I was out walking my girlfriend’s roommate’s dog as she was working a night shift in their neighborhood in New York. I walked across the parking lot and to this field in the middle of a rotary (or a roundabout, whatever you call it) and was screwing around on Reddit since it was near midnight and in the middle of quarantine and there were no cars out.
The dog has a long leash so she was sniffing around and then I kind of saw her stop and stare towards the road. I looked up and saw a black SUV stopped in the rotary. I pulled on my COVID mask that was on my chin (since no one was around I had it half off) as some people in New York are touchy about that (understandably) just in case they stopped to lecture me and I didn’t care to engage in an argument.
I looked back at my phone and then back up and the SUV was still there. There was a family — mother and father in the front and 12-year-old daughter in the back seat, and I was a bit startled because they were all just blankly staring directly at me. I sort of waved and nodded and started walking the dog a bit around the grass again and the car started to slowly move.
It came around the rotary and I looked back and all of them were again staring directly at me. I figured they might want to talk to me, so I stopped and waited for the car to get around the circle, but when it approached it kept going very slowly, with the family staring directly at me still.
I gave another half-wave and they drove past me (still slowly and staring) back around the circle. Then again around the circle. Literally all of them were staring at me, even the little girl in the backseat.
They did this a couple more times and I started to walk up to the edge of the circle to engage (normally something I would not do but it was a family so I sort of felt a bit braver to do so). They sped up a bit and went around the corner and turned off the rotary.
I started to feel even weirder so I decided I would walk back to my girlfriend’s apartment building when the car entered the rotary again. I was watching it out of the corner of my eye and the family was STILL STARING. I started picking up the pace and they turned off the rotary towards me and I picked up the pace as they followed me. Once I got to the sidewalk I turned around because I didn’t want them to know which door I was walking into (it’s on a strip mall with a few other apartment buildings and stores) and they stopped about 30 feet behind me and they were all staring out the front window — the little girl was in the center seat now, staring too.
I raised my arms like, “CAN I HELP YOU?” but I got no response at all from them. I stood there and took my phone back out and typed their license plate into a note app (again a weird thing I do, probably from my work in criminal defense and general paranoia), not really knowing what I’d do with it.
Then they slowly turned to the other side of the parking lot, all still staring, until they got to the end of the lot and I rushed into the apartment building, which luckily needed a code to enter. I got up and told my girlfriend (and then her roomie in the morning) and they both were kinda freaked out. I watched out of her window and the family pulled back up to where I was standing on the sidewalk and just sat there in their car. I couldn’t see them at this point but I saw the roof of their car. It felt like 10 minutes before they slowly drove away.
I can’t stop thinking about their creepy blank stares at me, somehow it made it creepier that it was a normal looking family with a young daughter. If it were like two younger guys I could have marked the encounter off as them being bored and screwing with me, but their blank, unmoving expressions made it so eerie.
1. It was a completely different house
So, about five years ago, I set out to travel the world. I felt isolated and alone in my small town in Washington and found the only way to get out — travel.
The excitement of being able to purchase a ticket to almost anywhere in the world got the best of me, and on the advice of my dumb hippie volunteering partner, I chose it at random. I went to a randomizer website and clicked the country button — Georgia. The country of Georgia.
To say I didn’t know anything about it was an understatement. But the fear of the unknown made it exciting and exotic somehow, and so, I did it. I purchased a ticket and started browsing for a farm that could host me.
There were few options, and most were remote, without even an internet connection. I messaged every single one, because few ever respond, and got a response from a person at one farm on top of a mountain. The pictures showed a traditional Georgian stone house with a large garden out in the back, animals, a family with several cheerful children and grandparents having dinner. It seemed warm and inviting, the description was written in good English and the requirements for work seemed reasonable. I was excited.
After I flew into Tbilisi, the capital, I followed the directions that the owner sent to locate the farm, which wasn’t an easy task. It took me around 20 hours of buses and taxis, weird serpentine roads and paths to get to that desired blue pin on my map. It was a dirt path leading up a steep hill, into a National Park up north in the country. There was nothing for miles on end but trees and silence. As I got up that hill, I saw the house about half a mile away on an even steeper hill, surrounded by trees. From that viewpoint, it seemed abandoned. Overgrown, brown and dreary.
As I walked past the gate, Giri, the apparent owner, approached me. He was a heavy, small, middle-aged guy with a big smile on his face. He shook my hand and, in broken English, started to show me around. He also smelled of booze. As he was showing me around, I noticed that there wasn’t anyone there but us. I asked about his wife and kids, but he brushed that aside and said something to the extent, “They’re away right now”. By this point, I was creeped out.
From browsing around, it was apparent that the farm was in deep decline — apple trees and crops were dying, the roof of the small barn caved in, the house itself full of trash and smelling of mold. It was obvious that Giri was going through a rough patch. But I wasn’t going to turn around and just leave in the middle of nowhere, without a plan, having not slept for the past 36 hours.
It was evening, and after feeding me well and trying as best as he could to hold a conversation in English, Giri showed me my room on the second floor and I went to sleep. I almost immediately blacked out from the exhaustion and stress, and would have slept for 10 hours if I wasn’t awoken by a strange noise in the middle of the night. It sounded like something metallic and heavy was being dragged across the wooden floor. In that sleepy in-between state I listened to it for a few minutes, thought nothing of it, and went back to sleep once it stopped.
In the morning, Giri, now sober and grumpy, asked me to repair some of the windows and doors in the house as he himself planned to go and fetch some components in a nearby village. Again, I got this weird feeling creeping down my spine. Something wasn’t right. He didn’t maintain eye contact and was evasive. There was no cell reception, no internet. Once he left, I checked around the house to get a general idea of the place, and it became apparent that the place was hardly ever lived in. Like one of those abandoned houses, there were broken furniture, newspapers and old photos on the floor, a shattered mirror. I took my phone and looked through the saved listing again.
The photos didn’t match the backyard, the garden or the walls. Giri wasn’t in any of them. It was a completely different house.
Now by this point, I was full-blown panicking. I packed my stuff and started to leave when I saw a group of three men going up that first hill.
There weren’t any other paths I could take, so I went behind the house and rushed down this hill into the forest. After some time I stopped and listened. I heard the men in the house, they were clearly looking for me. Afraid of making any noise, I remained still, hidden behind a bush. I don’t know how long I waited, but they were persistent.
At some point I heard them leave, so I counted up to some large number and proceeded back into the house and path, and once I found it all clear, I booked it. Never ran that fast in my life. But I was still in the middle of nowhere, no traffic, no public transport. I reached a paved road and started walking in the general direction from where I remember coming. Hours went by and finally a car drove by and stopped. In a horror movie, this would’ve been Giri and his friends, but it was actually a really nice Russian family that gave me a ride to town.
The listing disappeared from the website in a few days after I left and I haven’t heard from Giri since.
