r/creepyencounters

I live in a tiny student residence where the rooms are very small. Due to both the size of the rooms and the rules of the residence, everyone in this building lives alone, so it’s usually pretty quiet, especially late at night.

This happened this past weekend, between Saturday and Sunday night around 1:20 AM. I was in my room with my noise-canceling headphones on. Out of nowhere, I noticed a flag, which is pinned to the wall, moving around. At first, I thought I hadn't closed my window properly and it was just the wind, but the window was completely shut.

I took my headphones off to figure out what was going on, and that's when I heard it: loud, heavy knocking. The flag was moving because the wall itself was vibrating from the force of the hits.

Someone was relentlessly pounding on my next-door neighbor's door.

I quietly crept over to my door and looked through the peephole. Because of the angle of the hallway, I couldn't see his face, but I could clearly see a tall man standing there wearing what looked like dark coat.

I immediately turned off my room lights so he wouldn't see the glow from under my door and realize I was awake. I went to my kitchenette, grabbed a knife just in case, and stood in the dark waiting.

This went on for 30 continuous minutes. It was incredibly unsettling standing in complete darkness in such a tiny room, listening to a stranger violently pound on the door right next to mine.

Eventually, for no apparent reason, he just stopped and left. I have no idea who he was, what he wanted, or why he spent half an hour trying to get into a student room in the middle of the night. Thankfully nothing happened, but it was creepy asf.

Hi Reddit, I am sharing this story in hopes to help bring awareness. I’m aware that some of the decisions I made in the moment weren’t the smartest. However, it is the transparent truth of how I reacted.

Growing up, I thought I was pretty aware of the dangers around me. Like most kids, I grew up hearing about “stranger danger.” Don’t get into a stranger’s car. Don’t talk to people you don’t know. Pay attention to your surroundings. What I wasn’t prepared for was how I would actually react when I found myself in danger.

This happened several years ago, during the summer of COVID. I was an upperclassman in high school and lived in the suburbs outside of Kansas City. It was August, and there were still a lot of pandemic restrictions in place. At the time, I had a “situationship”with a guy I had known for several years. One morning, he called and asked if I wanted to go fishing with him. I agreed, and we decided to meet at QuikTrip to grab some snacks before heading to the park.

Because of COVID, we drove separately.
That ended up being a decision I would regret.

We met at QuikTrip, bought what we needed, and agreed to meet again at the park. He pulled out first, and I left shortly afterward. I had only driven about a mile and a half when I started noticing a van behind me. At first, I dismissed it. We were traveling in the same direction. That happens. I remember thinking I was probably just being paranoid. Then we stopped at a red light. The driver pulled into the lane directly beside me and started shouting through his window. He was trying to get my attention and telling me to roll my window down. I didn’t.

There was something about the urgency of it that immediately made me uncomfortable. He wasn’t casually trying to tell me my gas cap was open or that something was wrong with my car. He seemed desperate to get me to talk to him.

The light changed, and I kept driving. So did he.

I called the guy I was meeting and told him what was happening. He was about five minutes ahead of me at that point. I kept him on the phone while I drove, but I still wasn’t completely convinced that I was actually being followed. Looking back, I know that sounds strange. But part of me kept trying to come up with another explanation. I wondered if I had misunderstood the situation or if I was overreacting.

My friend told me to pull into a nearby business.

“If he follows you in, then you know.”

He told me that if the van followed me, I needed to get inside and ask the employees for help. At the same time, he turned his car around and started driving back toward me.
I pulled into a Taco Bell parking lot.The van pulled in behind me.

That was the moment my stomach dropped.
He was following me.

I quickly pulled into a parking spot close to the entrance. By then, the van was practically on my bumper. Everything was happening so fast that I didn’t even have time to think through what I was supposed to do next.Before I could get out of my car, the man was already there.
My passenger door opened.
He got inside.
I screamed.

My friend was still on the phone and could hear everything, but the man seemed completely unfazed by my reaction.
Instead, he looked at me and asked, “Why are you nervous?”

I froze.

People always talk about “fight or flight,” but that was the day I learned there is another response: freeze. I couldn’t move. My mind was racing, but my body wasn’t. I remember trying to figure out whether running would make things worse. I didn’t know if he had a gun or a knife. I didn’t know what he wanted. I didn’t know what would happen if I tried to get out of the car.

Then he told me I shouldn’t be “shy” because I was “wearing an outfit like that.”

I was wearing a cropped T-shirt and jean shorts.

He started trying to convince me to go back to his house with him. I kept refusing.

Eventually, I told him that my friend was meeting me there and would be arriving at any moment. He still didn’t want to leave.
Then I looked in my rearview mirror. I saw my friend’s car. He had been racing back toward me the entire time.

I immediately told the man, “He’s here. I need to go.”

The man looked behind us and realized that someone really was waiting for me. He sighed and finally got out of my car. Before leaving, he actually tried to hug me. I got away from him and went straight to my friend’s car.

Only after I was safely inside did we call 911.
My friend had stayed on the phone throughout the entire encounter, silently listening to what was happening. We gave law enforcement our initial report, and a case was opened.

Then I waited.
For several weeks, I heard nothing. Eventually, one afternoon, my phone rang. It was a detective.

They had found surveillance footage. There was footage from both the QuikTrip and the Taco Bell parking lot. The cameras at QuikTrip showed the man watching me before I left. Then they showed him following me. They were also able to get his license plate.

Police identified him.

He was in his late 30s. He was married. When questioned, he openly admitted that he had wanted to sleep with me.

He was arrested on multiple charges related to what happened. But then the detective told me something I hadn’t expected. They were escalating the case because they determined that the man had also been stalking me.

That part terrified me more than almost anything else. I had never noticed him before. I didn’t recognize his face. I didn’t recognize his van. I had absolutely no idea that this man had apparently been watching or following me.

There is something uniquely terrifying about finding out that someone knew of your existence when you didn’t even know they existed. There was one more detail that made the entire situation even more disturbing. I had turned 18 two weeks before this happened. Had this happened just a couple of weeks earlier, he could have been facing an entirely different situation involving a minor.

For a long time afterward, I thought about how differently that day could have ended.
I thought I understood “stranger danger” before this happened. What I didn’t understand was that when you are actually put into a terrifying situation, you may not react the way you always imagined you would. I thought I would run. I thought I would fight. Instead, I froze.

I also learned to stop worrying so much about whether I’m “overreacting” when something feels wrong. After that day, I bought pepper spray and attached it to my car keys. And I started locking my car doors the second I got inside.

Last year I was trying to find a place for me and my boyfriend to rent. I was in my second year of university and I was trying to find a place close to my school. My mum sends me a private house listing and we both enquire about it. It was an old house but pretty large and was cheap for the size and it was a 10 minute walk from my university. The owner of the house reaches out to both me and my mum (My parents lived 2 hours away and they wanted me to rent a place big enough for them to stay in if they decided to visit). He asks some questions and mostly just seemed very awkward, there wasn't really any warning signs initially. He organized for me to come see the house as part of a group house tour with the other applicants. It all seemed pretty legit, even the cheaper price of the house wasn't a red flag because it was quite old and needed some work.

Over the weekend that I was meant to view the house there was a massive storm, the man called to cancel and we rescheduled for the following week. So when the day came I finished my last class of the day and headed to the house. I got there 15 minutes early and there were no cars around the house. I didn't want to go inside so early so I decided to wait , sitting on the wall of a church that was across the street. The house just creeped me out for some reason. The front door was wide open but it was really dark inside so I couldn't see into the house at all and I felt like I was being watched. It was enough of a weird feeling for me to call my aunt who lived close by to come and look at the house with me. I just felt so uncomfortable, kind of sick, like there this anxious pit in my stomach and I couldn't shake the feeling of being watched from the front doorway which was shut when I looked back. While I waited for my aunt I decided that when the other potential tenants arrived I would walk over to the house.

They never arrived. I was the only one meant to be viewing the house that day.

No one else pulled up to the house until my aunt got there. There wasn't even any sign of the owner. She arrives parking on the front lawn and we go up to the house. My aunt didn't knock she walked right in and we run into the owner of the house. He seemed extremely surprised to see my aunt and he looked kind of annoyed. But I assumed it was because she just walked in and didn't knock. He proceeded to give us the tour of the house. It was much more run down than it looked in the pictures and they had put up walls and blocked off doorways very haphazardly. The house smelt kind of weird, a bit damp and gross but it could've just been old house smells. The house was very windy and complex and it was very easy to get turned around. The man would either follow us extremely closely, seemingly without any idea of personal space and when he wasn't following us he would just vanish, only to appear in front or behind us without warning.

We tried to make small talk but he would just stand close to us, not say anything and just smile. It was very uncomfortable. He would occasionally ask questions about my boyfriend as I had mentioned him in the initial phone call and he asked if I would be living with any other girls. I said no, just me and my boyfriend and occasionally my parents and siblings when they came to visit. The listing had mentioned that it was pet friendly so I decide to ask if when my parents visited if it would be okay for them to bring our golden retriever and if the yard was safe for a large dog. He suddenly became extremely annoyed and snapped at me for even asking about pets, especially a dog. He went on a rant about how he had spent YEARS on his garden and he wouldn't have a dog ruining it. The garden consisted of a single tree, some weeds and dirt. There was no plants, no garden bed, nothing.

I got an awful feeling from him that I just couldn't explain and looking at him was very strange. It felt as though I was looking at someone who was trying to appear older and more frail than he actually was. He was dressed like he was in his 70s and he would hunch over, but occasionally I would see him standing up straight, I remember he had extremely clean white sneakers that were kind of chunky and in fashion especially among guys around my dad's age. He also had really yellow teeth which i remember thinking was strange because he was apparently a dentist. We ended up leaving the house very quickly and we never enquired about it again or heard anything from him.

But I did look him up and I was right, he was younger than he appeared, he was in his late 50s, maybe early 60s and he ran a dental practice nearby. I don't know if this counts as creepy because nothing really happened aside from me feeling uncomfortable but I just hope that he didn't end up renting that place out to any young girls.

I’m 16M and I’m in Spain right now trying to get into football here.

Yesterday I went to a public football field near where I’m staying and was just playing football by myself, doing some freestyle and practicing moves.

Eventually this lady showed up with her son and some other kids. Her son was around 9 and the other kids were like 10–12, so I ended up playing with them for a while.

Afterward, the lady came up and started talking to me. She asked where I’m from, why I’m in Spain, what team I play for, how long I’ve been playing, etc.

I told her I’m from the US and I’m trying to get into a Spanish academy.
Then she asked for my phone number. I gave it to her.
She told me she knows people in football and could send my info to them.

She mentioned this big academy and even showed me their training complex on her phone. She also randomly said she’s friends with Achraf Hakimi, which I have no idea if that’s actually true.

She also told me she’s a DJ. I later found her public TikTok and she actually does seem to DJ at parties, so that part checks out at least.

There were a couple things that made me uncomfortable though. At one point she offered me a ride somewhere, which I declined. She also offered me some gum, but I said no because I couldn’t really tell what it was and it looked kinda weird to me.

She also gave me this really weird/creepy smile at one point that caught me off guard.
Nothing actually happened to me and she didn’t threaten me or force me to do anything. I also know I might’ve just been overthinking because the whole interaction was completely unexpected.

She also mentioned if im gonna be coming tommorow again to the feild but after that interaction i dont think i am.

I’m mainly wondering what you guys think. Is this just some random adult who saw me playing football and genuinely wanted to help me, or are there enough red flags that I should just stay away?

What would you do in my situation?