Stalking is a horrible crime. It leaves people afraid and vulnerable all the time, but how does it begin?
These brave Redditors share their stories of how they learned that a stalker had entered their lives. They're chilling.
(Content edited for clarity.)
She Was Able To Escape, But He Wasn’t Done Yet
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“I knew someone was stalking me when a guy tried to sneak onto my bus. We were both in high school, and he was mentally disabled and much bigger than me. He was convinced I was his girlfriend and I had severe social anxiety and didn’t know how to handle the situation.
He’d always talk to me in the hallways and before I got on the bus. I tried to be nice but not stay near him for too long. He asked to come to my house, but I lied and said my parents wouldn’t like me inviting a boy over.
He then tried to get on my bus but the bus driver wouldn’t let him. This happened a few times until the bus driver told a teacher and then someone had to watch him while we waited for the bus. I thought that’d be the end of it, but he only got more obsessed with me after that.
He memorized my schedule and would follow me in the hallway asking me to meet him somewhere outside of school. He was scaring me, but I didn’t think he knew what he was doing.
It pretty much came to a head after my grade 11 finals. He was there before my friends, and he was waiting outside the classroom alone when he found me. He grabbed me and sat on the floor with me in his lap. I was terrified but didn’t know what to do. He asked me to kiss him, but I said no. He kissed me anyway. I started to cry and then a teacher found us. They punished him, but I begged them not to tell my parents; I just wanted to forget it ever happened. For unrelated reasons, I went to a different school for grade 12, and I heard he violated a girl that looked just like me. I’ve always felt guilty. I should have said something or done something to stop him. I’m still nervous around men, especially ones that look like him.”
Two Stalkings For The Price Of One
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“My mother dated a man who turned out to be abusive. Once she ended the relationship, he began to stalk us.
Some clues we found were seeing odd cars driving slowly in the neighborhood. Then we started hearing from friends about things we had done that no one would know about. Like if my mom may have visited a relative or I went to a party with friends, somehow a neighbor or other person asked how that was. We found out he was talking to these people as ‘friends’ without them knowing what he was up to.
Then our trash started being disturbed. Found out he was going through it and taking out things like billing statements, letters, and so on.
I noticed once I had my license, I was being followed, even when I was out on country roads.
He stopped with my mom after it came to a head with him showing up at her place of work with a weapon to ‘talk’ to her. Part of our family is in law enforcement and handled that REALLY quickly.
He stalked ME a few years after that but never confronted me so I couldn’t get any legal protection. He just kept sharing information back in my small hometown. Being bi, leaning gay, that was awful because the rumors never stopped about what I was doing and with whom I was doing it while living away.
In some ways, it ruined my life. It has made me as a person have difficulties in trusting other people. I can be insanely private at times because of it. I tend to be hyper-aware in public situations. That’s not always a bad thing these days, but it can be exhausting, to be frank. I have weird habits with trash for instance. I shred and make sure I put items in the trash in a way that makes them as messy as possible so that if someone is going through it, it’s going to be disgusting.
He died last year. I think, honestly, that’s the first time I’ve taken a breath since my teens where I felt truly at ease, and I’m in my mid-40s now.”
Just An Abnormal Day At The Office
“I once received a text from a number I didn’t recognize telling me to look outside. I lived in a first-floor apartment, and there were flowers and chocolates on my balcony. The guy worked for IT at my company and was in a position that he had access to the employee records, so he got my cell number and address out of it.
What was even crazier was I told my upstairs neighbor to keep an eye out for him and she said he’d stalked her too. Apparently, this guy had a reputation for stalking every new girl in town. It escalated over the course of the year but was more absurd than terrifying because the stuff he did was so bizarre.
Following the flowers, a co-worker told him I was a gamer. He ‘built me a PC’ and left it on the balcony of my apartment where he’d left the flowers. Apparently, he didn’t think I was smart enough to try it out because it was literally an empty case with the blank faceplates still on the back and a gaping hole where the power supply ought to be.
After that, he comes into my office in front of all my co-workers and asks to talk to me. I’m like ‘oh god no.’ He gets down on one knee, grabs my hand and literally jams a ring onto my finger and pours his heart out and proposes. I didn’t even manage to laugh, I was just so completely perplexed I just stood there with my mouth hanging open like a fish and didn’t say anything. He told me to ‘think it over’ and took off. I’m 90% sure the ring came out of one of those gumball machine dispensers.
At this point, I’ve told him not to contact me and I’ve got it in writing that I told him not to contact me. I’ve also already talked to the local police and the guy I talked to basically corroborated my neighbor’s story by saying, ‘Oh…yeah we’ve spoken with him before.’
Stalker has hidden in my bushes, possibly vandalized my car, left me countless letters, and followed me all over the freaking place, so stalker is no contact. But I get an email from his ‘friend in the military.’ He’s being deployed, and before he goes, he wants me to PROMISE him that I’ll take care of stalker. Wat? You see, stalker has told him that I’m the perfect woman, and he wants me to swear that I’ll take good care of him because he’s a special guy and if ANYTHING HAPPENS TO HIM I have to promise to marry him. I print the email out and I don’t respond.
Literally SIX HOURS later I get an email from a different address. It’s military friend’s brother. He’s been killed in duty because he magically got from the middle of nowhere midwestern United States to Afghanistan and got himself killed in SIX HOURS. Brother tells me that stalker and military friend were like brothers and he hopes that I’ll make good on my promise to marry stalker. HAHAHAHAHA no.
This comes to an amazing conclusion when I get a text message from an unknown number. Stalker is in the hospital, and he’s dying of his heart condition. This is the only lie that’s been believable so far because stalker was morbidly obese and did have cardiomyopathy (which everyone at the office knew about after he passed out one time). Anyway, he doesn’t have long and he’s asking for me. I bite and ask what happened. Well, this is his friend who claims they found him unconscious at his computer an hour ago. Yeah, there’s one problem with this. I’ve been keeping an eye on one of stalker’s online accounts, and it’s logged on and has been idle for under a minute. Uhhhh huh. I text back and say I’m not coming and not to text me again and block the number. Stalker shows up at my apartment BAWLING and begging me to give him a chance. Wow, he got out of that emergency room in a hurry. I laugh in his face and call the cops. I jump through the hoops to get a restraining order. Thankfully a few months later I land a new job and move.
Several years later he messages me on Facebook. He’s very sorry for the way he behaved and he wants me to know he’s now wheelchair bound and paralyzed. I click on his profile and ‘in a wheelchair and paralyzed’ translates to ‘slipped on some ice outside the building and broke his ankle and is on crutches.’ Blocked him and thankfully haven’t heard from him since.”
Flowers Can’t Cover His Stench
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“I had to kick out one of my bar regulars after he admitted he was in love with me and made unpleasant intimate comments towards me.
I am in my mid-20s, and he is in his mid-50s. He used to come in every other day and bring me flowers and gifts. One day, after he had a couple drinks, he made a gross comment towards me. I grabbed my manager, but by the time we both came back to the bar he was gone.
The next day, flowers and an ‘I’m sorry’ card showed up at the restaurant. The day after that he showed up like nothing was wrong and I had to pull him outside and tell him to take a break from coming in for a while. After this, he just lost it.
Three dozen flowers showed up at the restaurant. Posts on Facebook saying that he will never love anyone again. Sending me crazy messages on Facebook telling me the same thing. Messaging my close friends. Leaving gift cards and cash. More flowers. Candles. More cash.
He called one of the other regulars saying he was going to kill himself, who then called the restaurant demanding to speak with me and begging for my number. I wasn’t there that day and my manager refused to give out my number.
He started posting reviews on Yelp, Facebook, and Google about the restaurant and getting kicked out. The last thing I received from him was one white rose and a card that just said ‘thank you’ on Valentine’s Day.
There is a similar restaurant right down the street that he started to frequent after I kicked him out. Little did he know that I was friends with the bartenders over there. He would go to the restaurant and tell stories about getting kicked out and how a woman broke his heart. And then started bringing flowers to that restaurant, going there every other night until they kicked him out for more lewd comments. I guess old habits never die.”
When A Parent Is Your Stalker
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“I went to go visit my Dad out-of-state because I really needed to get away from my extremely toxic mom and her family for awhile. Toward the end of my vacation, I was like, ‘I’m a legal adult, there’s nothing stopping me from just staying here.’ I decided it was better for my mental health and overall well-being to just stay near my Dad.
My mom flipped her lid. I told her, ‘I want some space. When I’m ready to talk to you I’ll call you.’ But she had no sense of boundaries, so she and my half-sister constantly called my dad’s house trying to get me to come back to live with them. My sister would call, hang up when I wouldn’t answer, and then call again right away so there would be 30 calls on our caller ID in the span of 30 minutes. When I wouldn’t pick up the phone, my sister switched to bombarding my Myspace inbox with one insane message after another at 3 a.m.
I started noticing weird things around town: cars I didn’t recognize would slow down by me when I was out walking. People that I had just met would suddenly know things about me and ask about my mom like they were trying to get info.
Then my mom called out of the blue one day to ask about my hair. When I lived with her she always made me keep it long as a means of control. My hair is thick, heavy, and on the dry side, so it was always a nightmare to keep it down past my waist like she wanted. After I decided I was staying with my dad, one of the first things I did was cut my hair short. It felt great getting rid of it all, and I found out after all this time, my hair was actually curly. I never knew because all that hair weighed the curls down. When my mom called and gave me this nasty, ‘How long is your hair now?’ I just told her, ‘I cut it because it’s my hair. Why? You have people out here spying on me?’ She sputtered, ‘Wha-…I…wut….no? I just asked because I’m your mom, and I could feel that you cut your hair because mom’s always know stuff like that about their children!’
After a year, my dad and I moved to a different house and never gave my mom or her family the new address. I never filled out a change of address form, but when my maternal grandmother sent me this weird card in the mail, she addressed it to the old house. The post office wrote my new address on it and send it back to her, and she sent it to my new place.
After that, random cars would start showing up in our driveway and just sit there. Our driveway wasn’t lit, it was on a main road with a lot of traffic, and if you didn’t know the driveway was there, you’d miss it. My friends would miss it even when they knew it was coming up, or they started parking on the side street because my driveway was such a pain in the neck. Point is – this wasn’t the type of place where you pulled in to turn around. Yet, here were these cars in our driveway. My stepmom caught one, and as soon as she went to the window to ask ‘Can I help you?’ the car booked it out and went off down the street.
I had a job at a fast food restaurant to pay for college, and things were good until one day someone came in and said in this sing-song voice, ‘Oh, Hi. So good to see you.’
I looked and there was this woman standing on the other side of the counter, and it took me forever to recognize her as my mom’s sister-in-law. I didn’t talk to her, but apparently, she called my maternal grandmother and mom right away to let them know she found me and where I was working. Then my mom packed up her entire family, her parents, my half-siblings, my insane sister, her husband, their kids, everybody, and drove halfway across the country to show up at my job unannounced. I don’t even know why they came, but they were filming me with a video camera, and with a whole crowd of them I had a feeling my mom was attempting to gang-kidnap me because she kept trying to get me to come out from behind the counter while they were all crowded around. I refused and wouldn’t answer with anything but, ‘I’m at work and you need to leave.’
Thirteen years later, I’m still dealing with their nonsense. It’s not as frequent as it used to be, but every once in a while, they can’t help but try to send me messages through whatever means possible. Thankfully, I have a great assistant that runs my work Facebook page so not only does she catch all the crazy so I don’t have to see it, she gets a taste of their insanity firsthand so there’s some validation there.”
Guys Get Stalked Too
“I’m a guy, and I used to be a bartender. I was working a shift one night and started chatting with a girl. She seemed nice enough, so I asked her out, and a couple days later we went on a casual date. We just met up for a cup of coffee and a chat.
My next shift at the bar, she turned up alone and sat at the end of the bar. I was just doing my job and started having a laugh and a joke with one of the regulars when the girl stormed over and started full-blown screaming at the girl. She told her to stop ‘flirting with my boyfriend.’ It almost got physical, and the bouncers were already over, standing by to chuck her out.
I told her that I was not her boyfriend and that we had been on one date that lasted an hour, and if that’s how she was going to react when I just talk to another woman, especially when I’m just serving a customer, she could get lost.
She screamed at me and stormed off.
I woke up the next day to about 50 text messages. They started with, ‘I’m sorry,’ and ‘Why aren’t you answering?’ Then a ton of abuse before she would apologize for that and the whole process would start over again.
I blocked her number.
On my next work shift, she came screaming into the bar, begging for forgiveness, that she was sorry, and asked me to unblock her number. I told her in no uncertain terms to leave me alone. She screamed and left.
Then, a few nights later, I was going to bed, turned off my bedroom light and my phone went off. I had a text from a number I didn’t recognize that just said, ‘Goodnight.’ I looked out of my window. She was parked across the street watching my house.
That went on for a week or two, then the strangest part happened:
I was at work, and she walked in, came to the bar, and told me she was there with her new boyfriend. I breathed a sigh of relief while pitying the poor dude. Then her new boyfriend walked in.
He was my absolute doppelganger. I mean people could have mistaken us for twins. He even wore the same glasses I did. I was standing there in shock, and she introduced this guy to me as her ‘ex.’ It’s only funny looking back now, but the look on the guy’s face when he saw me was just pure ‘Shiiii, she’s insane.’
She made a big deal of wrapping herself around him all night in front of me, while he looked more and more uncomfortable. Then, at some point, he left, and she tried to get behind the bar crying hysterically that she was only dating him to make me jealous and she loved me.
I went to the police station and reported her, and asked how to get a restraining order but never ended up needing one; being removed from the front of my house on another late night camping session by the police scared her into leaving me alone.”
The Postman Knocks And Leaves You Terrified
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“I knew something was up when I started receiving certified letters. I had moved twice since the last residence (out of state and almost 900 miles away) that my stalker knew. It put me in a Catch-22. I needed all the evidence I could get that he had tracked me down and was continuing communication despite me refusing to speak with him. But every time I signed for the letter, he would receive notification, and it would embolden him.
Then my husband called me while I was at work to tell me some guy came to the house asking for me. We live in a residential area, and there’s nowhere to just hang out. He had to have been waiting for me in a car.
I got home, and less than 10 minutes later, he was at my door.
He demanded to speak to me, saying he loved me. He argued that he had a right to tell me and he wasn’t going to leave until he spoke to me, all while pushing into my house. I was desperately trying to hide my pregnancy (so as not to set off anymore crazy) and my husband was pushing the door closed and calling the police. It was stressful and bizarre since the stalker and I were legitimate friends at a point.
He did this one more time with multiple letters in between.
I went to court.”
With Shoes Comes The Stalker
“When I was in my early 20s, I worked in a shoe store in a mall.
One day, a large old man with a big white beard on a red scooter rolled into the store. He was one of the regular old men who hung out in the mall. I’d seen him around for a long time.
He wanted some new shoes, so I helped him find a pair. Since he was too fat to bend over and put them on, I sucked it up and put the shoes on for him. A 23-year-old woman actually touching him was obviously more than his mind could handle, but I didn’t know what I’d gotten myself into.
So he bought the shoes and rolled away happy. For the next few weeks, he’d wave at me every time he drove by the store, which was at least 4-5 times a day. I’d be polite and say hi, but it was starting to get weird, and my co-workers were teasing me.
I didn’t feel threatened because he was a fat old man who could barely walk, but then he started trying to join me in the food court for lunch or dinner, so I sat on boxes in the back room to eat after that. He’d still try and pay for all my meals and snacks whenever he saw me buying something, but I’d never let him and by then, lots of workers in the mall had heard about the weird old man, or just knew it was weird by my panicked expressions, so most other cashiers ignored him.
I then started actively avoiding him. At least he was easy to spot being huge and having a red scooter. I just used the back employee hallways through the mall. And my co-workers would give me a warning if they saw/heard his scooter coming down the hallway, and I’d hide in the back room, and when he asked after me they’d say I wasn’t there.
So he started bringing me snacks he’d buy at the coffee shops in the mall or even meals he’d seen me buy myself. Now even though I was totally naive at that age, I knew better and tossed out everything he gave me. Even being a glutton I wouldn’t eat anything he’d touched.
There were benches in front of our store and he’d sit there for hours on end every day just watching me.
It got creepy. One day he caught me in the hallway in front of my store and started talking to me, and I just froze up. I didn’t know what to say, but I wanted it to end. I hated that I had to hide at work and that he was disrupting my working hours.
My boss, an awesome guy, went to get security and explained the situation. They were pretty blasé about it since he was a disabled, harmless old man. But they did ask him to stop coming down to our end of the mall unless he had business there. We were in a dead end corner, so he never had business there. He had to be escorted out a couple of times as well. I ended up getting a job elsewhere but came back a few years later to manage another shoe store in that same mall. He wasn’t there anymore.
It was an anti-climatic ending, but it was really uncomfortable while it was happening. Certainly not as bad or scary as many other women have it, but still not fun.”
Her Boyfriend’s Dark Secret
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“I went out with a man for five years. During that time, we were long distance for two years. He introduced me to two of his best friends, and I spent nearly all my college years talking to them online.
Both of them died at a young age. One died from a car accident when he was hit by a driver under the influence. He died at the scene. The other committed suicide when his wife and child died in labor.
My boyfriend and I were devastated. I held him for years while he cried furiously into his pillow. Every year on their birthdays, I looked up into the sky and did that sappy thing where you think only of them.
I had one tiny moment in which I wondered if my boyfriend was pretending to be them online so he could spy on me while I was in college and make sure I didn’t cheat on him. I felt guilty for this and immediately dismissed it.
It’s been 10 years since my boyfriend and I broke up, and today I found one of his deceased friends online. He told me via LinkedIn messenger that he hadn’t spoken to my boyfriend since before we met. Their friendship ended in high school.
My boyfriend stalked me and pretended to be more than one person, tragically killed them off once he didn’t need to spy on me, and kept up that lie all that time.”
“I Was 12 When This Was Going On, And It Was Terrifying”
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“I was playing with a friend in my room when I had this weird feeling. I looked up and at the window. The light in the room made it so I could only see our reflections, so I decided to go up to the window and cup my hands to see.
To my shock there was a car across the street, and inside was a man with a camera. I could tell he had a camera because he was leaning the giant lens on the door of the car. What was eerie is he didn’t react or anything when it was clear I noticed him. He just kept presumably snapping away. I ran and told my mom that there was some guy taking pictures through our window.
My mom never believed me when bad stuff happened, but she humored me by peeking out of the curtains. I watched the surprise register on her face which quickly turned to anger. She grabbed our most loyal and scary looking dog and went outside. The guy started putting away the camera and then my mom let the dog off of the leash. By the time the guy started to speed away, our dog was about a foot from his door.
After that, the man started showing up exclusively when my mom and her boyfriend weren’t home. I was about 12 when this was going on, and it was terrifying.
I never found out who the man was. I’m assuming he was a pervert, though. Once I left the state I heard he didn’t show up anymore, even though the other people living in the house (mom’s ex-boyfriend and his kids). For some reason, he just wanted pictures of 12-year-old me.
To this day, I have a really hard time even looking in the direction of a window if I know the blinds aren’t drawn and it’s dark out.”
When They’re Never Going To Give You Up
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“I wanted a prom date in 1986. I ended up with a psychopath. He was abusive, and it took me four years to get away from him. I’d go to the police, and they’d tell me he just liked me and wanted to date me. I’d go to my parents, and they’d say it wasn’t their problem. I had to take extreme measures to get away from this guy.
I tried to break up with him a few times. Once, he jumped off the roof of the shopping mall and hurt his leg. Another time, his friend called me and told me to look out of my bedroom window. There the guy was in a tree with a weapon pointed at my little sister’s bedroom window. I finally got rid of him in 1990 when he told me that only death would separate us. I faked an overdose of pills. I didn’t take them all but made it look like I had. I knew I’d be found. My roommate took me to the emergency room.
I told the psychiatrist on duty that my death was the only way to get away from this guy. Finally, someone listened to me and put me in touch with services and support so I could get away safely.
He moved away at the end of the summer. I was free, or was I?
In 1991, I got some random junk in the mail: carpet samples, samples of Depends, Elvis commemorative plates, just weird junk. I knew it was him.
I was in my first apartment. The apartment across the hall opened up. And who moved in? That’s right! The guy!
The building was for sale. Who bought it? The guy! I’m not kidding. He bought my apartment building. No idea where or how he got the money. I moved out in the middle of the night. I took my stuff and ran.
I got a new job. I got fired because of a customer complaint. I pointed out that the complaint was for a time when I wasn’t working.
I got a new apartment. My landlord called me into the office to ask if I really was turning tricks in my apartment.
Weird things like that keep happening.
He kept popping up and undermining my life and my friends. He told anyone I dated that we were dating, that I was cheating on him, and that he was going to kill them.
By 1996, I had moved halfway across the country. It was awesome. He had no idea where I was, and I was so happy. Unfortunately, I had to move home in 1998.
And he kept messing with me.
I would come home and all of my radio stations would be tuned one digit down like 95.7 would be 95.5. There was an alarm clock in my closet that went off at 3 a.m. He let the air out of my tires. Thankfully, a cop moved in upstairs and then his games stopped.
I didn’t hear or see him until 2002.
He strolled into my work. I quit immediately.
I was married by this point, and I told my husband what was up. We moved.
The last time I saw him was in 2008. I was dropping my son off at a day camp. I heard my name across the street. It was the guy again. He had a camera with a long lens. I kept my cool and ignored him. I went into the camp office and told them there was a guy across the street taking pictures of the kids as they’re being dropped off. They called the police.
There was a bit of a dust-up, and he was thrown on the ground and driven off.
That’s the last I’ve heard or seen of him, and I hope he rots.”