u/PreparationCold1737

I finished up midterms ab a week and a half ago, I spent a lot of time prepping and doing practice exams and MCQs and did well enough to be satisfied. However, ever since I have struggled greatly to get back to the level of productivity I was at before. The weekend immediately after I (like seemingly everyone else in my section) took the weekend off reading to just give my brain some rest and reset time. This weekend though getting back into the swing of things has been rough, I’m still getting my readings done and meeting the deadlines I need to, but I’m having a much harder time pushing through then I was before. This past week I found myself relying way more on Quimbee then I would’ve of liked so I’m just curious if anyone else can relate to this feeling or has ever faced this, and if so what can I do to get myself back to where I was?

I am currently in my first year of law school and I’m wanting to propose to my girlfriend by July of next year. The only problem with this is being in law school my income is quite literally zero and the money that I have in savings is what’s keeping me afloat. I’m just curious if anyone has any small ways that I can start saving up to buy a ring, essentially a side hustle while in school.

Pt 1 is linked in the replies. Not a lot of people have asked for an update, but I didn't like where I left the original, and more had happened after that to warrant getting it out there. Unlike most of the people in my life, it seems a majority of those on the internet have some belief in what I experienced on this trip, and I am very grateful for that. So, for those that care, here is the rest of this story up to date. 

After Emily's seeming kidnapping attempt, I didn't know what to do. Some might argue the obvious answer was to call the cops, but I think that might've been a harder sell than you might think. Of course the circumstances were weird, but telling an officer that a man tried to kidnap my girlfriend by hypnotizing her didn't really seem like something that would be taken too seriously. Instead, I made it my mission to figure out a way to get whatever he had planted in her out. I wasn't entirely sure how, but I knew there had to be some way. 

The next day had an undeniable weird energy. Neither Emily nor I had gotten much, if any, sleep the night before, and we both seemed equally reluctant to address what had occurred the previous night. For almost the entire morning, we sat in silence while we both seemingly tried to make heads or tails of the situation we had found ourselves in. We decided around the early evening to head to a restaurant and have a few drinks. Figured it would be easier to sit with all this shit after we'd had a few drinks in our system. Thankfully, everything was and stayed normal for the remainder of our dinner, but upon returning to the cottage it seemed Emily had had enough with pretending. Mere minutes after we stepped foot through the door, she broke down in tears. At first I thought it was due to the amount she had to drink that night (she's a crier whenshe'ss drun,k) but I quickly came to realize it was rooted in pure fear. She kept commenting on how scared she felt and how she hated this feeling of powerlessness. I did what I could and just held her. 

It was in that moment that something started to weigh on me as well. In a way, this was my fault. I had made the decision to leave her that day and be encountered by Joel. I had left her again last night, assuming we were safe in a new location. All of her mishaps this trip were in direct result of something I did, or more accurately, failed to do, and it began to become a heavy weight on me. Around midnight emily was out cold. On top of being a crier, she tends to crash hard once the emotions are out. I continued to sit, staring out the window, thinking about just what I might be able to do, when all of a sudden I was alerted by a buzz. 

It was Emily's phone. I looked at the screen and saw text from an unknown number that was once again different from all previously used. I stared at the locked home screen for a good 2 minutes before building the courage to unlock the phone and see what the message said. When I did it was exactly what I had been dreading. “Sleep”, the bastard was still trying. Even after a failed attempt at kidnap, the guy still continued to try. I thought carefully about my response before I ultimately landed on “who is this”. Almost immediately, the three typing bubbles appeared and stayed for a while. After a minute or so another response came through “Ill take it this isnt emily”. This enraged me, im not even sure why but something about the causalness of the words being said just made me mad to the fact this person didnt care about the turmoil he was causing. I answered again and this time said “who is this and what the fuck do you want”. Again the bubbles appeared but this time the response was much faster. It was a picture of emily. 

It appeared to be from when I had left her alone, and she met Joel for the first time. She was sitting by herself on her phone, clearly oblivious to the fact someone was stalking her from mere feet away. I was so angry I didn't know what to say; the only words that came to mind were obscenities and threats that would more than likely only serve to give this guy more pleasure in what he was doing. I deleted and blocked the number from the phone and immediately got up to lock the doors and make sure everything was secure. I once again didn't get much sleep that night.

The next couple of days were our last on this trip. The plan was to leave Cape Cod and go back to the city, but an idea came to me. Joel clearly got the itinerary from Emily while he had her originally hypnotized, so what if that plan changed? I decided to make a detour up to Vermont, a few hours away. My family had a room at a ski resort that we would book out to people throughout the year, and as luck would have it, it was empty for the days we would need it. That morning we ate a quick breakfast and hit the road. The entire drive to the resort, I was paranoid. I kept checking behind me to see if at any point I noticed being tailed. Luckily, I never did, and we made it with no issues to report. Upon getting there, the air felt so much less tense. For the first time in days, we both felt like the threat of Joel was passed. It was during this time Emily and I finally discussed everything that had happened and what our next steps should be. While we both agreed going to the police seemed rather pointless, we did have the idea to just notify the hotel staff of a man to be on the lookout for. I called down to the desk and, to the best of my abilities, explained Joel's appearance. I asked them to please be on the lookout for him and,d if they see anyone even remotely matching that description, to notify me asap. While I didn't tell them the exact reasoning for this request, I essentially told them my girlfriend had a stalker who had been ramping up his intensity recently. 

The staff and security happily obliged, and for the first time in days we had finally let our guards down. Emily opted to have me hold onto her phone as a way of ensuring she doesn't get caught off guard again. Everything finally seemed to be setting up to allow for us to enjoy the rest of the trip we had left. I just wish it had remained that way. Our first night in the resort, everything was fine. We went and enjoyed the bar, some restaurants, and even used the pool and hot tub. But at the end ,horror struck again. 

Around 11:30, we were sitting in the room watching a movie when all of a sudden the room phone rang. I picked it up, and the unfamiliar voice of a woman came through the other end. “Hello, sir. This is Amber with the front desk. We found a man matching the description you gave for us to be on the lookout for, and we think we might have him in custody down here.” I felt relief. Even if we couldn't really do anything with the hypnosis antics, I knew for certain if the staff at this hotel caught Joel in the act, we could easily go after him with some form of stalking charge. I jumped to my feet and told Emily I would be right back. I opted not to tell her where I was going as I didn't want to get her hopes up and also out of fear she would ask to join, and he would try some last-ditch effort to do something else to her. I told her I would be back momentarily and that they needed me for something. She looked a little frightened, but I insisted I would be back in just a few minutes and to make sure the door was deadbolted and locked until I got back. 

The distance from the room we were in to the front felt like a mile. Endless hallways of rooms and elevators till you eventually reach the central point of all of it. If you've ever seen Severance, it felt a lot like the hallway scenes in that show, endless and confusing. I reached the front desk, greeted them, and said almost proudly, “I was told you guys had someone you wanted me to identify”. The look on the girls' faces was one of confusion. “I'm sorry, what happened?” one of them responded. “I was told you guys had someone in your office that matched the description I gave earlier”. Even more confused, the same girl said: “Hold on, let me go ask someone for you”. I began to grow frustrated; could the communication of staff really be that bad, I wondered. But thats when a thought occurred to me. I looked down at the name tag of the girl still at the desk, “Angie”. A feeling of fear started to creep back once again; I hoarsely uttered the words “excuse me are any of the girls here now named amber?”. The girl stared at me with an eyebrow raised. It felt like eternity, but she said: “ I'm sorry, I'm not sure ive ever met an Amber here”. My blood ran cold, and my heart sank. There was no way this was a trick. Before even saying anything in response, I started to sprint. Ive often heard people say in moments of pure fear and terror that adrenaline can give you borderline superhuman abilities. This was never more apparent to me than in how fast I was running to get back to our room. 

Upon opening the door, I knew my worst fears were true. The door was unlocked and unbolted; I ran in, yelling for Emily but got no reply. The hotel phone had been dropped to the floor, and I figured out pretty quickly how they had done it this time. I stood for what felt like hours trying to think of what to do next. I never saw her in the lobby or hallway, so I wasn't sure where else to look. My thinking was then interrupted by yet another call. I answered and heard a familiar voice. “Hi sir, this is angie, Im not sure what's going on, but hotel security found your girlfriend walking out. They have her down here. Can you please come?. The feeling of relief I had from hearing she was okay was unforgettable. I rushed back to find Emily wrapped in a blanket in tears. I hugged her and stepped to the side to talk to the head of security while the desk girls tried their best to comfort her. Basically, he told me they saw her walk out one of the side doors and something felt off; they called out to her a couple of times and got no response. It wasn't until one of the team walked over to confront her that they noticed she was barefoot and not wearing pants of any kind. They reached out to try and get a response, and right after making contact with her, she jolted and started screaming. She dropped down to the floor, having a full-on emotional breakdown, when a van parked across with all of its lights off peeled away. The guard said they tried to get the plate, but it was gone so fast they didn't even have the chance. 

After telling me all this, he got even more serious, “Listen Im ex law enforcement and have seen plenty of stalkers in my day, but I have never seen a victim walk seemingly directly to the ones stalking them. So, you mind telling me what the hells going on?. I was reluctant at first, but I eventually broke and told this guy everything. At first I could tell he didn't believe me, but when I showed him Emily's texts and explained the similarities that had already occurred, he seemed to start to. He asked me to please open Emily's Find My Friends app and check the people who had her location. I felt like an idiot, as this was something I hadn't even considered until this very moment, but thankfully Joel wasn't there. I closed out of the app and saw something I hadn't before. In one of the folders she had on her home screen was an app I wasn't familiar with. I opened the folder and saw the name, Life360. While I had never used the app, I knew the name and knew exactly what it was. I opened it and saw that it had location being shared with one person who was listed as H. I knew it was him and very promptly deleted the app. I thanked the guard for bringing this to my attention, but before we parted, he offered a couple of pieces of advice. The first was something I had already thought,t and it was to get out of here in the morning; hopefully now that this guydidn'tt have our location, he couldn't follow us, and seeing as how tomorrow was the last full day of the trip, we were almost home free. The second was something that I'm honestly unsure if I ever even could've thought of on my own. 

He said that on the way out of town there was a lady named Rose who had a what he called “spirituality-centered shop”. He said she was all into astrology, chakras, and all that kind of stuff, but supposedly offered something called “cleansing hypnosis” and said maybe we should talk to her. I thanked him again, and Emily and I went back to our room. Once again, neither of us slept much, if at all, that night, and in the morning we began to pack up. I had told Emily about Ros,e and while nervous, she seemed eager to at least see if she could tell us what was happening. 

We arrived at Rose's shop, and it was about exactly what you would expect. Crystals, rock stacks, and various astrology jewelry and trinkets lined every wall you could see. Rose greeted us, and it was obvious this lady was a complete hippie. I let Emily do most of the talking as she seemed eager to meet and discuss with this lady how she's in this current situation. The entire time Emily spoke, Rose looked disgusted. Every point in Emily's story would be accompanied by some form of gasp or comment. When she finished, Rose stated how disappointed people like this guy made her feel. “Hypnosis is meant for healing and restoration, not control. People like him are the reason so many fear it and refuse to consider the positives.” After she finished her rant, though, she was seemingly able to figure quite a bit out about Emily's current state. She had her do several tests. Like at one point she told Emily her fingers would feel like two magnets and become stuck together, and that seemingly had a great effect. She then had her do breathing exercises and had Emily imagine looking up at her head as she breathed. I'm not sure what this was for, but at one point both of Emily's eyes were totally white, and her breathing almost seemed robotic, if that makes any sense at all. 

After the tests, Rose gave what I can only describe as her diagnosis of the situation. She told Emily she seemed to be what she called a somnambulist. If you're like me and have no idea what that means, basically it's that Emily can enter a hypnotic-like trance much quicker than most people. Because of that, she was much more susceptible to suggestion and things being planted into her subconscious. I didn't know what any of this meant, but Emily seemed to have some understanding. Rose then posed a question I wasn't really expecting. “Would you be willing to let me hypnotize you again to see if I can undo what he did?” Hesitant but with seemingly no other options, Emily agreed. 

I'm gonna skip over a lot of the hypnosis session, because all of it took about two hours. But here's the speed-run, important-part version.  Rose had Emily lounge in a big red recliner and follow a swinging crystal with her eyes. I almost could believe that I was seeing someone actually swing something in front of someone's eyes to hypnotize them, but I digress. After a few minutes of telling her to relax and take deep breaths, Emily looked gone. It was a look I had grown far too familiar with, where her eyes were open and following, but you could almost see the lack of thought behind them. Rose snapped and told Emily to sleep, and just like that she was in. Rose spent most of the session telling her to access different parts of her brain and “clean” them. She explained that this was to try and remove any previous suggestions left over. This in itself took nearly an hour, but Rose seemed to believe it was working. The next part was focused on trying to access memories that had been subdued by the subconscious. I once again didn't quite understand what she meant, but figured it out when I saw it in action. 

“Tell me about your first encounter,” Rose said. “Which one?” responded Emily faintly with her eyes still closed. “The first time you met Joel.” Emily winced in response to this but then started to give an in-depth description of the day at Faneuil Hall. “He walked up to me and looked nice; he introduced himself and asked how I was enjoying my day. He kept talking about how relaxing it was and how it felt good to breath the air in deeply this time a year”. The disgusted look returned to Roses face and I asked her what was wrong. She explained to me it seemed Emily was what was called “covertly hypnotized”, which meant that due to her highly suggestive state someone could potentially induce a trance simply by talking to her in a certain way. This enraged me even further; not only did this guy take full advantage of my girlfriend, but he did it without her having any knowledge it was even happening. Rose explained the story she initially gave regarding her, and Joel's meeting was probably another one of his fabrications.

After about another hour, the session ended, and she woke Emily up. She, like before, seemed out of it and tired but also lighter and happier. She claimed that she could feel that it worked, and I decided there was one way to test it. I kept around one of the text logs from Joel when deleting everything, just in the hope that if we needed it as evidence I could provide it. But for now, it was being used for something else. Without warning, I asked Emily to read what the phone said, and she did. She handed it back, asking what that was, and I just told her I'd explain later, as in the moment I was too thrilled to see it did not affect her. We thanked Rose profusely and headed back onto the road and into Boston. 

Luckily, the rest of the trip went fine. We received no more texts, calls, or any of the sort, and I can only hope it stays that way. Since returning home, we have gotten some weird calls where it's nothing but dead air or the occasional weird, obviously fake social media page trying to DM us about something, but nothing that has screamed Joel. Emily and I are doing okay with all of this, but we are obviously still working through it all. Emily has started going to a local hypnotherapist just to ensure all of what Joel had done was undone. I still keep an eye out and try to remain vigilant, but I do think we might finally be free from whatever it was he wanted with my girlfriend. Thank you so much for reading, and as always, stay safe out there

So my girlfriend after not much convincing agreed to let me try hypnosis on her for reasons I will not disclose here. I’m trained and researched but heavily out of practice and she’s presented a real challenge for me. I’m able to get her in trance somewhat easily but it’s seemingly never been more than a light one. Part of my problem I believe is she’s the type to always be thinking, she’s usually anxious about something and getting her to fully relax can be a challenge. I’ve found inductions involving confusion elements or fixation tend to work better but I’m just looking for any suggestions on more specific ones I might want to try. Thanks!

This story is going to make me sound insane and is going to be rather long as to give all details to show just how weird and bizzare everything has been. Even after writing all of this out I barely believe what I’ve seen, but after experiencing it with my own eyes I really have no other explanations to give. Im a 29 year old male and my girlfriend is 28. Through the almost year we’ve known each other she’s always been a normal quiet to herself kind of person. The only fault I can ever really find is her overly trusting personality. She’s the kind of person scammers and other sorts feed on as her empathy doesn’t allow for her to ignore people who seem to be in need or present themselves as trustworthy. For the sake of the story and protecting animimity lets call her Emily

About a month ago we went on vacation together to a small town outside of Boston. We planned to explore the city and take a couple day trips around the area just to the do the usual tourist sight seeing shit, stuff you usually do on vacation on a budget. Our first night was totally fine and normal, we flew in checked into our airbnb and grabbed a pizza and took the train to go check out Fenway park. The next day was when shit started to get weird. We headed into the city to get lunch at the fannuel hall market. If you've never been it's basically a suped up mall food court with about twice the people. Emily has always had a disliking of over crowded loud areas and on this particular day the place was jam packed to a point where even I was getting overwhelmed. We found a nice area outside to sit and eat and I ventured in to grab our food while she held down the fort. Some might give me shit for leaving her alone but she's always been one that can absolutely take care of herself if the situation arrised so I didn't think much of it at the time.

Getting food took what felt like an eternity as the sheer amount of people was completley overwhelming most of the options. About 20 minutes later I had ordered and was standing waiting for 2 sandwiches when I decided to text Emily apologizing for the long wait. She was sitting scrolling tik Tok when I left her so I was kinda surprised when I never heard anything back but I just figured maybe she was really locked in on a video or something.

10 minutes later I got the food and was headed back to where I had left Emily. I walked out the doors to the little outside area and was stopped dead in my tracks. I saw Emily but she wasn't scrolling on her phone like I left her, instead she was sitting with a man. He looked to be about 40 something and looked clean cut enough but his appearance isn't what bothered me. I noticed that he was holding Emily while she was slumped into his shoulder and looked asleep. I immediately thought something was wrong like maybe she passed out and this guy came to help or something. But upon getting closer I noticed a few odd things. The guy was speaking to her in almost a whisper, and it almost looked like she was responding to him. He was evidently very caught up in whatever was going on bc he didn't even notice me walk right up to them. After only a few seconds of this I finally broke his focus and blurted out “the fuck are you doing” he turned his head and looked at me and smiled. He slowly moved away and laid Emily down on the bench where they had been sitting and extended his hand to me. “You must be the boyfriend of this lovely lady” he said. I stood frozen unable to really do anything because I had no idea what was going on, I was split on whether I wanted to beat the shit out of this guy or figure out more. I said again but this time much more aggressively “what are you doing to her who are you?”. He introduced himself as Joel a local hypnotist. He said that he was in the area today and noticed a pretty girl sitting by herself and wanted to make sure she was okay. Apparently through their brief conversation he told her about how he was a hypnotist and she was eager to see if it was real. Unfortunately this explanation made sense to me. Like I said Emily has a tendency to trust people to a fault and if this guy gave her enough pressure she would unfortunately agree to just about anything. But there was something else that just didn't sit right.

I don't know how to explain it but some people just feel off and Joel felt almost creepy. He looked like he could've been anywhere from early 30s to late 50s. He was dressed in nicer clothing but it was stained and just from where we were standing I was able to get the scent of stale coffee and cigarettes. Worst of all though his eyes were just evil. I don't know how else to explain it but if you've ever seen someone with almost dead eyes you know exactly what I'm talking about. The way he talked about Emily almost felt obsessive, he kept commenting on how “lovely” she was and how she was “one of the most suggestible people he's worked with”.

I quickly grew tired of our conversation and I asked him to undo whatever was going on. Emily was still slumped on the bench unmoving. I have never believed in hypnosis but seeing this made me question that. He uttered the stereotypical “when I count to 5 and snap your eyes will open and be completely out of trance” he quickly counted back and the second he snapped his fingers I saw her eyes flutter open and she sprang up. Joel apologized for the inconvenience and shook our hands, he thanked Emily for her participation and she gave him a solemn sounding “yeah”. I could tell immediately something was off with her. She looked completely dazed and out of it, almost like she was drugged.

The second Joel was far enough to be out of earshot I looked at Emily and said “what the hell was that what happened”. She explained that not long after I left Joel came up and asked if she was okay. She told him she was just holding a spot waiting for her boyfriend to get back to which he politely asked to wait with her. She stopped talking after that part and I asked “so how did that lead to you getting hypnotized?”. After a few seconds of silence she stuttered and said “I don't remember” I kinda laughed and said what do you mean. She said she literally couldn't recall anything after that part of the conversation. Her last memory before being woken up was him joking about protecting her from creeps and then next thing she knew she was being woken up. This creeped me out because I believed her fully, Emily isn't one to make things up like this and I could see she was also pretty unsettled by whatever just happened.

We ate our lunch and then meandered through the city for a while but the entire time Emily just seemed off. She seemed completely out of it, everything we did everywhere we went she just had this 1000 yard stare that never seemed to improve. We headed back to our Airbnb that night and decided to have another night in. We watched movies and decided to call it an early night around 11. Now my girlfriend is a notorious insomniac. In the year we had been together I’d never actually seen her fall asleep before me, usually she’d be up on her phone or reading. This night however it felt like the literal moment she put her head down she was out. And I’m not just talking lightly asleep I’m talking mouth wide open breathing heavy wouldn’t wake up to a train blowing through the place kinda asleep. This didn’t really register as odd and I wrote it off as exhaustion from the last few days finally catching up to her.

Around 2 am I woke up to pee. I laid back down and upon laying down I noticed Emily was gone. This wasn’t entirely out of the normal on account of the aforementioned insomnia so I decided to go see what she was up to. I walked into the living room and was confused to find all of the lights off, the only light in the entire room was coming through the window facing the street and that’s where I found her. Standing rigid and unmoving was Emily, she was staring directly out of the window with her back to me. I called out “Em what’re you doing” and got no response. I started walking closer and this is when I noticed the whispering. I couldn’t quite make out what she was saying but as I got closer I was able to decipher “where is he”. Her eyes were locked on to the road in front of the home and she didn’t even seem to notice me. I put my hand on her shoulder and gently said “em?”. I wasn’t expecting her to just full on collapse but that’s exactly what happened. The second my hand touched her shoulder her body went completely limp and hit the ground. I was luckily able to save her from hitting her head on the fall but upon hitting the ground it seemed to snap her out of whatever was going on. She was freaking out claiming she had no idea how she got out here. She has never been one to sleep walk so this spooked the both of us pretty bad. We both went back to bed but neither of us were able to get much sleep that night.

In the morning Emily seemed to be back to normal, her bubbly personality had come back and she seemed eager to go to today’s plans. We had a tour scheduled for Fenway park and were both very excited to see it as we were huge baseball fans. It didn’t take long for the day to get weird though. We had to take the train from the town we were in to the park and it was about as crowded as public transportation can be. Emily was able to get a seat and I stood in front of her doing my best to keep my balance on a moving train with 1000 other people on it. I zoned out while holding Emily’s hand for a few minutes partly due to the exhaustion of not sleeping the night before. I was lost in thought of what that all was and if that guy from yesterday had anything to do with it when I noticed Emily’s hand go limp. I looked at her and that same stare was back but this time it was directed across the train. I couldn’t believe my eyes but it was Joel. He was standing at the far end just and was directly in Emily’s line of site. I almost wanted to go say something but stopped due to not wanting to cause a scene on an already packed and loud train. Instead I focused on Emily and after a few pokes she came back to. I asked what had happened and once again she said she had no idea it felt like she had fallen asleep and woken up to me poking her. I looked for that creep when we got to our stop but couldn’t spot him in the crowd. We went on with our day and had no more sightings or weird occurrences.

That night Emily once again fell asleep faster then I’ve ever seen but luckily this time she stayed that way. In the morning we headed toward her aunts cottage in cape cod where we were going to be spending the last few days of our trip. We got there around mid afternoon and were blown away by how nice it was. The cottage was right on the beach in a little development. The area we were in was secluded and quiet and was honestly perfect. When we got there Emily had to take a couple work calls so I decided to run to the nearby grocery store to grab some stuff for the next few days. While I was at the store Emily texted and asked how long I was gonna be. I responded quickly and said hopefully no more then half an hour why what’s up. I got no response after that which I chocked up to het being on another call. I quickly grabbed everything I needed and headed back. Upon getting back to the cottage I noticed Emily was no where to be found. I called out for her and couldn’t find her anywhere. I checked the rooms, the beach basically everywhere she could’ve been and could not find her. I decided to call her phone and see if I could find her that way but my heart sank when I heard the vibrating coming from the under some papers on the table. Emily would never leave to go somewhere without her phone and this to me was enough of a red flag to start to get pretty freaked out. I started frantically walking around looking for any sign of her. I called out her name a few times and got no response. Eventually I made my way toward the front desk building to see if maybe they had seen or heard from her. I was about to cross the street when I saw them. Two guys walking. One in front and one behind and in the middle of them a woman. It took me only a few seconds to immediately recognize that woman as Emily. I sprinted over towards them just as they reached an old beat up SUV. I shouted “hey hold on” and they immediately seemed to go on alert. The one in front jumped into the drivers seat while the other tried for a moment to get Emily in the back of the car but upon realizing he didn’t have the time he jumped into himself and they peeled off. I reached the area right as the door was slammed and from it I got a whiff of a familiar scent. Stale coffee and cigarettes. I never saw his face but I knew it had to have been Joel. Somehow and for some reason he had followed us over 2 hours from where we just were and seemed to know exactly where we were staying. I grabbed Emily and she freaked out. The started pushing me away and screaming but calmed down quickly once she saw it was me. I of course immediately asked what was going on to which she answered once again “I don’t know”. She was in tears at this point scared of how she went from taking a work call to standing in the parking lot nearly about to get into a car with two complete strangers, all while having no memory of doing so. She was emotionally a wreck and we won’t back to the cottage where she went to lay down. I sat at the table just thinking of everything that had happened when I heard a vibrate. Emily’s phone was still sitting out in the kitchen and I noticed an unsaved number had texted her. Before you judge Emily has given me and trusts me with her password so I decided to take a look at what she had just received. I was confused for a moment but when it all clicked my blood when absolutely cold. The text was one simple word “sleep” and I knew exactly what that meant. I quickly went to see if there was more when I noticed that was all this number had said. I quickly went to the rest of the chats and saw one from a couple hours earlier. Reading it filled me with more rage than I’ve ever experienced.

The first text was the same. It simply said “sleep” to which Emily responded “yes”. I knew who it was that was sending these and that somehow Joel had gotten Emily’s number so I kept reading. The next text explained some of what I had seen but didn’t leave me feeling any less terrified by what could have happened. It said “come down to the beach and leave your phone, you’ll see me and another man and you’re going to follow us. Come slowly and make sure no one sees you. Emily responded saying “yes” but there was one more text that said “you won’t remember anything between being put to sleep and waking up”. My blood ran cold. This creep somehow had my girlfriend in his control and was using for god knows what reason. This is already long enough and I’m getting tired of typing so if you want more please let me know and I’ll post a part two as we are still actively dealing with the ramifications of this encounter. Thank you for reading and stay safe out there

This story is going to make me sound insane and is going to be rather long as to give all details to show just how weird and bizzare everything has been. Even after writing all of this out I barely believe what I’ve seen, but after experiencing it with my own eyes I really have no other explanations to give. Im a 29 year old male and my girlfriend is 28. Through the almost year we’ve known each other she’s always been a normal quiet to herself kind of person. The only fault I can ever really find is her overly trusting personality. She’s the kind of person scammers and other sorts feed on as her empathy doesn’t allow for her to ignore people who seem to be in need or present themselves as trustworthy. For the sake of the story and protecting animimity lets call her Emily

About a month ago we went on vacation together to a small town outside of Boston. We planned to explore the city and take a couple day trips around the area just to the do the usual tourist sight seeing shit, stuff you usually do on vacation on a budget. Our first night was totally fine and normal, we flew in checked into our airbnb and grabbed a pizza and took the train to go check out Fenway park. The next day was when shit started to get weird. We headed into the city to get lunch at the fannuel hall market. If you've never been it's basically a suped up mall food court with about twice the people. Emily has always had a disliking of over crowded loud areas and on this particular day the place was jam packed to a point where even I was getting overwhelmed. We found a nice area outside to sit and eat and I ventured in to grab our food while she held down the fort. Some might give me shit for leaving her alone but she's always been one that can absolutely take care of herself if the situation arrised so I didn't think much of it at the time.

Getting food took what felt like an eternity as the sheer amount of people was completley overwhelming most of the options. About 20 minutes later I had ordered and was standing waiting for 2 sandwiches when I decided to text Emily apologizing for the long wait. She was sitting scrolling tik Tok when I left her so I was kinda surprised when I never heard anything back but I just figured maybe she was really locked in on a video or something.

10 minutes later I got the food and was headed back to where I had left Emily. I walked out the doors to the little outside area and was stopped dead in my tracks. I saw Emily but she wasn't scrolling on her phone like I left her, instead she was sitting with a man. He looked to be about 40 something and looked clean cut enough but his appearance isn't what bothered me. I noticed that he was holding Emily while she was slumped into his shoulder and looked asleep. I immediately thought something was wrong like maybe she passed out and this guy came to help or something. But upon getting closer I noticed a few odd things. The guy was speaking to her in almost a whisper, and it almost looked like she was responding to him. He was evidently very caught up in whatever was going on bc he didn't even notice me walk right up to them. After only a few seconds of this I finally broke his focus and blurted out “the fuck are you doing” he turned his head and looked at me and smiled. He slowly moved away and laid Emily down on the bench where they had been sitting and extended his hand to me. “You must be the boyfriend of this lovely lady” he said. I stood frozen unable to really do anything because I had no idea what was going on, I was split on whether I wanted to beat the shit out of this guy or figure out more. I said again but this time much more aggressively “what are you doing to her who are you?”. He introduced himself as Joel a local hypnotist. He said that he was in the area today and noticed a pretty girl sitting by herself and wanted to make sure she was okay. Apparently through their brief conversation he told her about how he was a hypnotist and she was eager to see if it was real. Unfortunately this explanation made sense to me. Like I said Emily has a tendency to trust people to a fault and if this guy gave her enough pressure she would unfortunately agree to just about anything. But there was something else that just didn't sit right.

I don't know how to explain it but some people just feel off and Joel felt almost creepy. He looked like he could've been anywhere from early 30s to late 50s. He was dressed in nicer clothing but it was stained and just from where we were standing I was able to get the scent of stale coffee and cigarettes. Worst of all though his eyes were just evil. I don't know how else to explain it but if you've ever seen someone with almost dead eyes you know exactly what I'm talking about. The way he talked about Emily almost felt obsessive, he kept commenting on how “lovely” she was and how she was “one of the most suggestible people he's worked with”.

I quickly grew tired of our conversation and I asked him to undo whatever was going on. Emily was still slumped on the bench unmoving. I have never believed in hypnosis but seeing this made me question that. He uttered the stereotypical “when I count to 5 and snap your eyes will open and be completely out of trance” he quickly counted back and the second he snapped his fingers I saw her eyes flutter open and she sprang up. Joel apologized for the inconvenience and shook our hands, he thanked Emily for her participation and she gave him a solemn sounding “yeah”. I could tell immediately something was off with her. She looked completely dazed and out of it, almost like she was drugged.

The second Joel was far enough to be out of earshot I looked at Emily and said “what the hell was that what happened”. She explained that not long after I left Joel came up and asked if she was okay. She told him she was just holding a spot waiting for her boyfriend to get back to which he politely asked to wait with her. She stopped talking after that part and I asked “so how did that lead to you getting hypnotized?”. After a few seconds of silence she stuttered and said “I don't remember” I kinda laughed and said what do you mean. She said she literally couldn't recall anything after that part of the conversation. Her last memory before being woken up was him joking about protecting her from creeps and then next thing she knew she was being woken up. This creeped me out because I believed her fully, Emily isn't one to make things up like this and I could see she was also pretty unsettled by whatever just happened.

We ate our lunch and then meandered through the city for a while but the entire time Emily just seemed off. She seemed completely out of it, everything we did everywhere we went she just had this 1000 yard stare that never seemed to improve. We headed back to our Airbnb that night and decided to have another night in. We watched movies and decided to call it an early night around 11. Now my girlfriend is a notorious insomniac. In the year we had been together I’d never actually seen her fall asleep before me, usually she’d be up on her phone or reading. This night however it felt like the literal moment she put her head down she was out. And I’m not just talking lightly asleep I’m talking mouth wide open breathing heavy wouldn’t wake up to a train blowing through the place kinda asleep. This didn’t really register as odd and I wrote it off as exhaustion from the last few days finally catching up to her.

Around 2 am I woke up to pee. I laid back down and upon laying down I noticed Emily was gone. This wasn’t entirely out of the normal on account of the aforementioned insomnia so I decided to go see what she was up to. I walked into the living room and was confused to find all of the lights off, the only light in the entire room was coming through the window facing the street and that’s where I found her. Standing rigid and unmoving was Emily, she was staring directly out of the window with her back to me. I called out “Em what’re you doing” and got no response. I started walking closer and this is when I noticed the whispering. I couldn’t quite make out what she was saying but as I got closer I was able to decipher “where is he”. Her eyes were locked on to the road in front of the home and she didn’t even seem to notice me. I put my hand on her shoulder and gently said “em?”. I wasn’t expecting her to just full on collapse but that’s exactly what happened. The second my hand touched her shoulder her body went completely limp and hit the ground. I was luckily able to save her from hitting her head on the fall but upon hitting the ground it seemed to snap her out of whatever was going on. She was freaking out claiming she had no idea how she got out here. She has never been one to sleep walk so this spooked the both of us pretty bad. We both went back to bed but neither of us were able to get much sleep that night.

In the morning Emily seemed to be back to normal, her bubbly personality had come back and she seemed eager to go to today’s plans. We had a tour scheduled for Fenway park and were both very excited to see it as we were huge baseball fans. It didn’t take long for the day to get weird though. We had to take the train from the town we were in to the park and it was about as crowded as public transportation can be. Emily was able to get a seat and I stood in front of her doing my best to keep my balance on a moving train with 1000 other people on it. I zoned out while holding Emily’s hand for a few minutes partly due to the exhaustion of not sleeping the night before. I was lost in thought of what that all was and if that guy from yesterday had anything to do with it when I noticed Emily’s hand go limp. I looked at her and that same stare was back but this time it was directed across the train. I couldn’t believe my eyes but it was Joel. He was standing at the far end just and was directly in Emily’s line of site. I almost wanted to go say something but stopped due to not wanting to cause a scene on an already packed and loud train. Instead I focused on Emily and after a few pokes she came back to. I asked what had happened and once again she said she had no idea it felt like she had fallen asleep and woken up to me poking her. I looked for that creep when we got to our stop but couldn’t spot him in the crowd. We went on with our day and had no more sightings or weird occurrences.

That night Emily once again fell asleep faster then I’ve ever seen but luckily this time she stayed that way. In the morning we headed toward her aunts cottage in cape cod where we were going to be spending the last few days of our trip. We got there around mid afternoon and were blown away by how nice it was. The cottage was right on the beach in a little development. The area we were in was secluded and quiet and was honestly perfect. When we got there Emily had to take a couple work calls so I decided to run to the nearby grocery store to grab some stuff for the next few days. While I was at the store Emily texted and asked how long I was gonna be. I responded quickly and said hopefully no more then half an hour why what’s up. I got no response after that which I chocked up to het being on another call. I quickly grabbed everything I needed and headed back. Upon getting back to the cottage I noticed Emily was no where to be found. I called out for her and couldn’t find her anywhere. I checked the rooms, the beach basically everywhere she could’ve been and could not find her. I decided to call her phone and see if I could find her that way but my heart sank when I heard the vibrating coming from the under some papers on the table. Emily would never leave to go somewhere without her phone and this to me was enough of a red flag to start to get pretty freaked out. I started frantically walking around looking for any sign of her. I called out her name a few times and got no response. Eventually I made my way toward the front desk building to see if maybe they had seen or heard from her. I was about to cross the street when I saw them. Two guys walking. One in front and one behind and in the middle of them a woman. It took me only a few seconds to immediately recognize that woman as Emily. I sprinted over towards them just as they reached an old beat up SUV. I shouted “hey hold on” and they immediately seemed to go on alert. The one in front jumped into the drivers seat while the other tried for a moment to get Emily in the back of the car but upon realizing he didn’t have the time he jumped into himself and they peeled off. I reached the area right as the door was slammed and from it I got a whiff of a familiar scent. Stale coffee and cigarettes. I never saw his face but I knew it had to have been Joel. Somehow and for some reason he had followed us over 2 hours from where we just were and seemed to know exactly where we were staying. I grabbed Emily and she freaked out. The started pushing me away and screaming but calmed down quickly once she saw it was me. I of course immediately asked what was going on to which she answered once again “I don’t know”. She was in tears at this point scared of how she went from taking a work call to standing in the parking lot nearly about to get into a car with two complete strangers, all while having no memory of doing so. She was emotionally a wreck and we won’t back to the cottage where she went to lay down. I sat at the table just thinking of everything that had happened when I heard a vibrate. Emily’s phone was still sitting out in the kitchen and I noticed an unsaved number had texted her. Before you judge Emily has given me and trusts me with her password so I decided to take a look at what she had just received. I was confused for a moment but when it all clicked my blood when absolutely cold. The text was one simple word “sleep” and I knew exactly what that meant. I quickly went to see if there was more when I noticed that was all this number had said. I quickly went to the rest of the chats and saw one from a couple hours earlier. Reading it filled me with more rage than I’ve ever experienced.

The first text was the same. It simply said “sleep” to which Emily responded “yes”. I knew who it was that was sending these and that somehow Joel had gotten Emily’s number so I kept reading. The next text explained some of what I had seen but didn’t leave me feeling any less terrified by what could have happened. It said “come down to the beach and leave your phone, you’ll see me and another man and you’re going to follow us. Come slowly and make sure no one sees you. Emily responded saying “yes” but there was one more text that said “you won’t remember anything between being put to sleep and waking up”. My blood ran cold. This creep somehow had my girlfriend in his control and was using for god knows what reason. This is already long enough and I’m getting tired of typing so if you want more please let me know and I’ll post a part two as we are still actively dealing with the ramifications of this encounter. Thank you for reading and stay safe out there